India's mutual fund (MF) industry had barely any retail footprint when it completed 50 years in 2013. MFs had Rs 7 trillion in assets under management (AUM) in March 2013, of which around Rs 5 trillion was in institution-focused debt funds. By comparison, bank deposits in the country stood at Rs 67.5 trillion around the same time.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
Policymakers should aspire to restore the pre-Independence environment where the rupee was trusted and used all over South Asia, in Southeast Asia, in West Asia, and in East Africa, suggests Ajay Shah.
Growing up in the Mumbai of 1970s, Uday Kotak aspired to be a cricketer and trained under legendary coach Ramakant Aachrekar. However, it was an on-field injury which resulted in a shift to finance. He started off with bill discounting, turned to lending and successfully applied to start a universal bank in the first decade of the millennium, as India was warming up to private play in banking.
KTR indirectly referred to the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said the country does not need opposition unity on the basis of blind hatred against one party or one man, but on a positive model of governance
The most important institutions have been and are being undermined with almost no resistance, warns Aakar Patel.
Adhil Shetty, CEO, BankBazaar.com shares his thoughts on what could help make digitisation and going cashless easier in the New Year.
Rahul Gandhi could be where Modi has not been. Modi aspired to be with the pantheon of gods on the walls, while Rahul could sit with the family because there is a family member in the picture.
Former Reserve Bank of India governor Dr Raghuram Rajan -- the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago -- walked with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan, on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.
In view of the tense situation due to the overnight protest at the assembly premises by MLAs of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the assembly secretariat on Tuesday issued an order banning the entry of members of Parliament and political party leaders in its premises.
No form or requisition slip is required for exchange of Rs 2,000 notes up to a limit of Rs 20,000 at a time as part of exercise to withdraw high-value currency notes from circulation. RBI on Friday in a surprise move announced withdrawal of Rs 2,000 currency notes from circulation but gave public time till September 30 to either deposit such notes in accounts or exchange them at banks. Unlike the November 2016 shock of demonetisation, when old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were invalidated overnight, the Rs 2,000 notes will continue to be a legal tender.
At Rs 30.88 lakh crore, the currency with the public is 71.84 per cent higher than the level for the fortnight ended November 4, 2016.
The real risk is that the core assumption -- that the votes for a candidate sponsored by an alliance will at least equal the sum total of its parts -- proves to be facile, observes T N Ninan.
The upcoming Opposition meet in Patna scheduled for next week will not discuss a possible prime ministerial candidate and will focus on deciding the common agenda for the parties to work on in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
Even as demonetisation continued to be the hot topic in Parliament, forcing adjournments in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, other topics too were discussed in Parliament. Here are the other issues that were discussed.
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday said that RBI is monitoring the situation regularly with regard to the withdrawal of Rs 2,000 currency notes and expressed confidence that the entire exercise will be completed in a non-disruptive manner. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday announced the withdrawal of Rs 2000 denomination banknotes as part of its currency management and permitted the exchange of Rs 2000 currency notes up to Rs 20,000 in one go from Tuesday onwards. The exchange or deposit window is available until September 30, 2023.
If a 5% to 10% fall in the equity market gives you sleepless nights, you are not cut out for a 75% to 80% allocation to equities and must reduce it.
Taxing the rich will fetch nothing; only votes, argues Debashis Basu.
Both prime ministers believed in crafting schemes to help the common man. Modi used quite effectively the instruments Dr Singh introduced. In assessing Modi's success with many schemes, Dr Singh's fundamental work should not be ignored, points out A K Bhattacharya.
Uncertainties on account of COVID-19 pandemic have increased the demand for currency notes not only in India but across the globe, official sources said, dismissing the criticism that demonetisation has failed to reduce cash in the economy. Government sources said that growth of the digital payments system post-demonetisation will ultimately curb the dependence on cash. Official data points out a jump in digital payments through different modes, including plastic cards, net banking and Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal demanded Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's resignation over the horrific triple train crash in neighbouring Odisha.
Cash deposits of up to Rs 2.5 lakh by housewives post demonetisation will not come under I-T scrutiny as the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has held that such deposits cannot be treated as income of the assessee. Ruling on an appeal filed by an individual, the Agra bench of ITAT said the order would act as a precedent for all similar cases. The appellant, a housewife Uma Agrawal of Gwalior, had declared total income of Rs 1,30,810 in her income tax return filed for fiscal 2016-17.
This form of government, where secrets and major decisions are kept from the Cabinet itself, appears to be continuing, which is why the speculation around this special session, asserts Aakar Patel.
The opposition alliance that will take on the ruling National Democratic Alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be called Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and an 11-member committee will be set up for coordination, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced after a meeting of the parties in Bengaluru.
The finance ministry and the RBI have performed many somersaults in these last 42 days.
Justice Nazeer, along with then Chief Justice of India J S Khehar, was in minority in the 'triple talaq' judgement which was delivered in August 2017.
'The government has been anti our civilisational values.' 'My fear would be that they erode that some more to have their way and to consolidate their power.'
According to analyst firm RedSeer, the absence of cash on delivery has hit daily e-commerce sales by 30% over the past few days.
Four BJP leaders and former Supreme Court judge S Abdul Nazeer, who was part of the Constitution bench that upheld the archaeological report on Ayodhya, were among six new faces appointed as Governors on Sunday.
He also launched a strident attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he was 'globe-trotting', afraid of facing questions over the Manipur violence.
What is most troubling is that not a single party that is part of INDIA has talked about any kind of reform and economic sense, argues R Jagannathan.
'80% of the rural and urban population don't have enough purchasing power.'
The study says the entire supply chain of goods and services will suffer a massive liquidity shock.
The Delhi high court on Tuesday restrained the Aam Aadmi Party and several of its leaders from levelling "false" allegations against Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena and his family, after they claimed that he was involved in a Rs 1,400 crore scam.
I kept insisting that Rs 100 notes were in short supply and there was an urgent need to augment the supply of 100 rupee notes while also rapidly bringing into circulation the proposed new Rs 500 notes. But this was easier said than done because all the note printing machines of the RBI were programmed for printing Rs 2,000 notes and required at least three weeks before the machines could print the new Rs 500 currency notes. The availability of currency paper posed another major bottleneck, and it had to be imported. It was decided to immediately start printing the Rs 500 notes. It was only when the supply of the new Rs 500 notes started improving and the process of change of cassettes at the ATMs gathered momentum that the situation began limping back to normal. A fascinating excerpt from former SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar's The Custodian of Trust: A Banker's Memoir, five years after demonetisation, November 8.
The BJP's challenge is whether it can again deflate a Congress, which now looks reinvigorated and has adopted sharper messaging around its 'guarantees', and several regional parties, especially in Bihar, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
By the end of March 2022, only 2,140 million pieces of Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes were in circulation, or 13.8 per cent of the total value of notes.
It is day 5 of the Budget session of Parliament on Tuesday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to reply on Presidential speech in Lok Sabha.
Mahalaya, though essentially about the goddess, wasn't religious for us. And it isn't for most Bengalis. Mahalaya is an emotion. It's gooseflesh for a memory. A welling up of happy tears. A celebration of what is to come.
