However, despite the surge, the average income of banking correspondents has taken a beating due to the low value of transactions.
Like everything else, the structure of banks may change, and banks may depend more on digital technologies and artificial intelligence for dealing with both their customers and employees.
Industry fears waiver of interest on interest would distort credit culture, may encourage borrowers who can pay to defer repayment.
Following suggestion from Minister for Roads Nitin Gadkari, Centre seeks ideas from IRDAI and General Insurance Council on feasibility of providing insurance cover for retrenchment.
Unlike other health insurance policies, which mostly covers hospitalisation expenses alone, the specialised cover is likely to include the cost of treatment during quarantine and payment of cash for incidental expenses.
For states like West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, where migration is high, the return of workers could be as much an opportunity as a liability. All states have launched portals to register migrant workers; additional fields like nature of employment and remuneration in the past 2-3 years are being added to help in skill mapping.
'States have done a tremendous job of identifying health facilities for COVID-19 care and equipping them well.'
For smaller MFIs, resuming operations is more difficult because they haven't got any fresh bank credit sanctioned from their lenders.
In Sandelerbil village alone in the Hingalgunj block in the Sundarbans, around 36 families from the Scheduled Caste community migrated from Tamil Nadu in March, where they had been working in a gas oven factory. A majority awaits dues promised but not paid. The story is no different in the villages of Manipur, Atapur, and Amtoli under the Sandeshkhali block in the Sundarbans.
Perched in the hills of Darjeeling, the factory was set up in 1874, but has remained shut since 2001. Efforts to reopen the colonial era establishment are now on a war footing.
'At this point of time, West Bengal is doing better than other states in tackling the crisis. We have a chief minister who herself has hit the streets to do what is to be done, and at the same time ensuring a proper lockdown. She is also trying day and night to set up the requisite infrastructure.'
As the world awaits the end of the global pandemic, rural Bengal might be witnessing a recession unfolding in bits and pieces. With factories and tea gardens closing down, agricultural income falling and storm Aila ravaging a large part of deltaic West Bengal in 2010, migration gradually became a norm.
Bandhan Bank is expecting that a little less than 50 per cent of its portfolio will be dominated by affordable housing loans in the next three to five years.
All transfers and promotions for next financial year will be decided by respective banks, not by the merged entity.
According to a 2011 impact assessment study of the programme by Banerjee and Duflo, along with economists Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Jeremy Shapiro, Bandhan's THP results in a 15 per cent increase in household consumption and had a positive impact on wealth and welfare, such as assets and emotional well being.
Banks are also weighing the option of hiring experts for help in specialised areas.
Under the PMFBY - introduced in 2016 - farmers have to pay a maximum of 2 per cent of the sum insured for kharif and 1.5 per cent for rabi food and oilseed crops and 5 per cent for commercial/horticultural crops. Eighteen general insurance companies, including five public sector insurance firms, have been empanelled for the scheme's implementation.
Private insurance firms say, over the past few years, they have been investing on digital technologies to reach semi urban and rural areas.
'The plan is to secure nod of the Union Cabinet and other relevant regulatory approvals within the next three months,' a senior finance ministry official said, requesting anonymity.
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