For people at the bottom of the pyramid, which I would rather address as mass market or emerging class; the primary challenge in accessing banking services are not just affordability but applicability and accessibility of services.
India's top IT companies have shown a hiatus between their performance on the bourses in the pandemic period and earnings growth. The combined market cap of the top five IT companies - Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Tech Mahindra - is up 87 per cent since the end of March 2020. In comparison, the benchmark BSE Sensex is up 68 per cent during the period. So the industry beat the broader market by a big margin in the last one year.
What's different this time is that global financial stress -- which has its genesis in four policy choices made in recent years -- is juxtaposed with a more resilient real economy, observes Sajjid Z Chinoy, chief India economist at J P Morgan.
Airlines are slashing salaries and re-negotiating vendor contracts as drastic fall in passengers has hurt revenue. Go First has cut staff salaries by around 16 per cent while IndiGo and SpiceJet are enforcing a leave without pay (LWP) policy and pay by the hour structure respectively to prune expenses. Vistara, which reversed pay cuts for junior staff including managers and cabin crew in March, is not touching employee salaries at the moment and instead focusing on vendor renegotiation and maximising cargo revenue. An Air India executive said efforts are on to pay salaries by 7th or 8th of June.
Employees across segments, including those involved in specialised jobs such as technology, compliance and risk management, have started leaving the bank fold in hordes, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
One thing is for sure: It smacks of the regulator's lack of confidence in the bank's board, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
A US count of Pakistan's F-16 fleet has found that all the jets are present and accounted for, a report claims.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
Chinese alumina refining and metal smelting technologies have emerged as a match for the best anywhere in the world. In fact, Vedanta and Hindalco have bought technologies from China. Our aluminium makers will be haunted by twin fears of rising imports and low metal prices squeezing margins over a long time.
Tax benefit on WFH expenses, regulatory clarity on cryptos figure high on their wish list.
'Start-ups that generate a majority of their income in India are likely to opt for an Indian listing.'
'Facilitating conversion of well-run NBFCs into banks is urgently needed.'
Such listings will help internationalise our currency, give us economic heft, compel best in class regulations and further develop the professional-services ecosystem., says Amit Tandon.
The post-crisis debate on capital account management focuses on matching instruments with vulnerabilities.
On November 12, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to ring in uniformity in asset classification and income recognition across all lending institutions. Shadow banks, or non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), like commercial banks, are to test non-performing assets (NPAs) on a daily basis and upgrade them to "standard assets" only when interest and principal arrears are settled by borrowers. This is going to create all manner of headaches for shadow banks and their clientele. Says Y S Chakravarti, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO), Shriram City Union Finance: "NPA levels will go up, especially of small borrowers.
The government must send out a clear signal that leadership positions at regulatory bodies are not a preserve of retired government officials, argues A K Bhattacharya.
'When you need to revive the economy, when you need to revive aggregate demand, you cut taxes.' 'But what's this government doing?' 'It's increasing taxes for the middle class and the vast majority of the poor on fuel, which has a ratchet effect on most other products.'
While analysts remains overweight on financials, property, discretionary, industrials and materials, they maintain a neutral stance on pharma, telecom and energy; and underweight on staples, utilities, and IT services.
The speed at which he led the central bank in different areas -- ranging from internal reorganisation to inflation fighting, stabilising the currency, taking on rogue corporations, cleaning up bank balance sheets, and opening the sector -- makes one believe that Rajan knew he had only three years to do his job. A fascinating excerpt from Tamal Bandyopadhyay's MUST-READ Roller Coaster: An Affair with Banking.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is precariously balancing two opposing objectives - maintaining easy financial condition in the domestic market, while ensuring external stability - and economists have started taking note. They say India is going through the classic trilemma of the 'Impossible Trinity'. The RBI cannot have an independent monetary policy (setting domestic interest rates) in an environment of an open capital account and flexible exchange rates. What is even more complicated for the central bank now is that financial market stability overlays all the other three objectives.
'The minimum holding period for equities should be three years.' 'Try goal-based investing.' 'Link your equity portfolios to specific goals such as retirement, purchase of a house or car...'
Scams happen with high regularity because the price of getting caught is insignificant. Aggrieved investors run from the police to already clogged courts to find redress for issues for which financial regulators have been specifically set up. For over 3,750 years we have known what to do, but we don't do it, observes Debashis Basu.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday released Rs 20,946 crore to 10.09 crore farmers across India as the 10th installment of financial aid under the PM-KISAN scheme and said there was a need for innovation in agriculture along with promotion of natural farming. Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme, a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year is provided to the eligible farmer families, payable in three equal installments of Rs 2,000. The PM-KISAN scheme was announced in the February 2019 Budget.
December 2022 could be the last Christmas for Santha Bakery, a business drawing its lineage from the first Christmas cake baked in Kerala.
Amid improving fundamentals, the bank is keen to double the corpus over the next year and a half, said a senior official.
While its deposits from Iran accounts have come down from a peak of around Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 2,200 crore, it's been offset by the bank receiving almost Rs 24,000 crore in deposits post note ban.
'Information highways are getting stronger and being strengthened.' 'Occasionally, accidents could occur. But do you stop constructing highways because two motor cars collide?'
There has been an exponential increase in the use of technology to validate financial numbers, with a greater reliance on electronic evidence, use of live videos where possible, data analytics, and project management software to overcome the physical limitations in verifying transactions and accounts.
Solar equipment manufacturing, however, is unlikely to pick up in India as Chinese imports are more cost-effective
The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved the construction of National War Memorial and Museum near the famed India Gate in New Delhi.
Poor land-use planning, indiscriminate approvals of building plans and the absence of disaster-risk assessment in urban design have resulted in what experts term concentrated concretization, predisposing cities to disaster risks
Cash flow-based analysis should throw up businesses better able to survive the transient effects of a working capital crunch, says Devangshu Datta.
'There is a certain irony embedded in this asymmetric geographical distribution of FDI because most state leaders have shed their inhibitions about promoting 'business' and have understood its virtues as a more cost-effective way of replacing the mai-baap welfarism that passed for economic policy till the early nineties', says Kanika Datta.
If new goals have emerged, this is the time to make fresh investments.
Naved Masood, former secretary in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Sebi board member; TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education and Dinesh Kanabar, CEO, Dhruva Advisors have ceded their position on the NSE board following end of their tenure.
The one-size-fits-all approach adopted by the AICTE is not suitable for regulating business schools in India, argues Asish K Bhattacharyya.
The bank has one of the highest current account savings account share, stable credit quality, robust credit growth, adequate capital and low cost-to-income ratio, said PNB chief Sunil Mehta.
Reports suggest state-owned banks have lapped up Rs 40,000 crore, so far, using both bonds and equity instruments. The question, though, is whether there will be a perceptional change for PSB stocks.
A group of public health experts, including doctors from All India Institute of Medical Sciences and members from the national taskforce on COVID-19, have said that mass, indiscriminate and incomplete vaccination can trigger emergence of mutant strains and recommended that there is no need to inoculate those who had documented coronavirus infection.
India's gold obsession needs a correction.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances