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Money and Finance
Caste and credit: Not such a woeful tale?
Caste is an enduring predictor of economic status in India and caste-based discrimination continues to pervade several spheres of life. What about rural lending? This column suggests that most caste-wise differences in access to loans reflect differences in application rates and only a smaller part are due to discrimination: backward caste-members are a lot less likely to apply for loans than the advantaged groups.
Stock market participation in the aftermath of an accounting scandal
An emerging literature shows that exposure of fraud in the corporate sector leads to a fall in trust on part of households and decline in their stock market participation. Analysing data on daily investor account holdings from India, this column finds that contrary to international experience, an event such as the Satyam scandal did not have a big impact on investor activity.
Financial inclusion: Concepts, issues, and policies for India
The International Growth Centre recently brought out a synthesis paper (Singh 2017) that lays out the basic concepts surrounding financial inclusion, and reviews a wide range of IGC and other studies on financial inclusion. At a workshop organised by the IGC in collaboration with Ideas for India and Indian Statistical Institute, Rohini Pande (Harvard Kennedy School), S. Krishnan (State government of Tamil Nadu), Ashok Bhattacharya (Business Standard), and R Gopalan (ex-Ministry of Finance) discussed the key lessons emerging from research, implications for policy, and areas where further work is needed.
Post demonetisation: Is digital finance in India's future?
Analysing RBI data from June 2017 – six months after demonetisation was announced on 9 November 2016 – Mukherjee and Wadhwa show that reliance on cash has reverted to pre-demonetisation levels, and the sharp increases in digital transactions did not sustain. While consumers don’t seem ready to give up cash just yet, the experience proves that the digital financial ecosystem of India is in good health.
Towards financial prescription
The Securities and Exchange Board of India has proposed that the distributors of mutual funds should only be allowed to sell financial products and not act as financial advisers for customers. Drawing analogies from the regulatory frameworks for driving on public roads and practising medicine, Gurbachan Singh contends that this is a step in the right direction but much more needs to be done to regulate financial advice.
Bank financing of stressed firms
There is anecdotal evidence that banks in India have been extending credit to highly distressed firms. By delaying recognition of bad loans, banks may improve their own profitability in the short run, but in the long run, this has only exacerbated the non-performing asset crisis in the banking sector. This column provides preliminary empirical evidence that banks have indeed been throwing good money after bad.
The size of personal bank credit in India
In May 2016, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code law was passed by Indian Parliament and received presidential assent. The law consists of provisions for both corporate and personal insolvency. However, only the corporate insolvency provisions are being implemented. In this article, Sane and Sharma focus on personal credit extended by banks with a view to informing policy actions on personal insolvency provisions of the Code.
Has regulatory intervention been effective in maintaining stability of Indian banks?
To address the challenges that Indian corporates faced in the early 2000s in meeting their debt-servicing obligations to banks/financial institutions, RBI introduced a corporate debt restructuring programme in 2002. This column finds that in the absence of a strong legal system, this out-of-court regulatory mechanism has indeed helped Indian banks remain stable, as there has been no bank failure in India unlike in other countries.
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