The high level coordination committee on financial markets, which consists of financial sector regulators, is likely to opt for a phased reduction in the commission paid to insurance agents.
With the Reserve Bank of India allowing retired teachers, kirana shop owners and public call office (PCO) operators to be hired as business correspondents, banks are set to hire over 200,000 people over the next few years to push financial inclusion initiatives.
Vedika Bhandarkar, managing director & head of investment banking, recounts how even in a supposedly bad year, the bank raised about Rs 1,00,000 crore (Rs 1,000 billion).
Whether the Ranganath Misra/Sachar kind of recommendations (some of them are similar) will help improve the lot of Muslims is open to question, given how social transformation is a very difficult and time-consuming process, accepting them will be a boon for the BJP. Whether the Congress party wants to score another self goal after Telangana is the question.
With even the division bench of the Delhi High Court ruling that Communications Minister A Raja's decision to come up with an arbitrary cut-off date of September 25, 2007 was illegal, the government is in huge trouble.
A common carrier policy, as in the petroleum sector, is worth looking at.
It's difficult to say whether the CBI will find enough proof against telecom minister A Raja or whether it will get caught in the parcel of half-truths he's been dishing out on how he's just followed the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the actions of his predecessors.
RBI Governor D Subbarao explains the rationale for the moves announced in the second quarter review of the monetary policy in an interview with Sidhartha. Excerpts:
The solicitor general and the TDSAT have both okayed Raja's moves.
According to sources close to the development, finance secretary Ashok Chawla, who is driving the process, is working on a concept note to provide the framework for consolidation.
There are 10 million new subscribers each month, but they're not adding much value - telecom revenues are flat as a chapatti.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India is now planning to enable investors to buy and sell mutual fund units through stock exchanges. Fund houses will also be allowed to sell new fund offers (NFOs) through exchanges, helping them to save on distribution costs.
This is in addition to the $3 billion (around Rs 15,000 crore) infrastructure fund being set up in association with the Macquarie group and International Finance Corporation. Though SBI would be a late entrant to the private equity space, Bhatt was confident that it would not be a deterrent.
One indication of this was the fact that many large bond buyers stayed away from the Rs 12,000 crore auction conducted on August 7.
India has a huge infrastructure problem and the solution so far appears to be to throw more money at the problem, without much effort to fix the core issues, says Sunil Jain.
He worked on the Delhi electricity privatisation
This has to be one of the most blatant tricks Raja is pulling off.
One lesson the government should learn from the Air India-Indian Airlines merger fiasco is that combining two sick people ends up making them sicker.
The Comptroller and Auditor General has indicted the way the DMRC is run and points to the novel 50:50 management structure that neither of the governments is in charge, so the company is pretty much run by the management, namely Sreedharan.
Despite the reforms of the 1990s, the country's corporate structure hasn't transformed in any major manner.
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