what does provisioning mean?

SBI incurred losses in Q1 and Q2, not able to understand how wold it affect the largest psu bank. Can anyone please explain this and does it mean it should be a buy at dips or one should exit the stock.

In terms of banking , whenever a bank gives a loan (say for 10 Lakh) it has to keep certain amount of money separately against that account, this is kind of safe deposit money which bank has to mandatorily put. Now the % is not 100 but well below that (I am not sure exactly how much %). This money will be used to credit the bank's PL (Profit/Loss) account incase of loan going bad.
This is not just a practice but a regulation. RBI monitors the provisioning. This helps in controlling the amt of loan (esp: high risk loan) given by bank.

SBI had accumulated lot of bad loans in due course time which sooner or later had to be written off and whatever the provisioning amt set be adjusted with PL. this process has resulted in the bottomline dip.

there is nothing to worry as such regarding the functionality and growth of SBI. I hope you have got the concept now, if not let me know will try to give more explanation