Saturday, December 21, 2013

Sthitapragna

STHITAPRAGJNA 
Thiru Dr. M. S. SWAMINATHAN


Imagining this great scholar 
Is no more with us, And
This architect of Green revolution
Found his place in Heaven,
Left me in grief unmeasured.

Glory and glitter,
Simplicity and grandeur
Thine inner chambers
Even in charming greens.

Knowledge you inhale
Research you exhale
Thou art breathing farming fresh
Benevolent thou, beckon
Nation’s Farm Policy.

Bright in looks
And long in titles
Only short of ‘Nobel’,
Sweet and warm
Your gesture unforgettable.

Penning ‘Foreword’ for
Agricultural Banking:
Getting the perspective Right
Thou art conferred a great honour unto me.

‘Files drive Right to Information
Farmers drive Right to Food’
Who else but thou can short-script thus.
Recalling my humble offering,

Tears rolled down
Hearing your sad demise
May your soul rest in peace
With Gods holding a bouquet
To welcome you.



B. Yerram Raju
28-10-2023




Financial Inclusion - Full of Sound and Fury

Financial Inclusion is full of sound and fury:
As India faces General Elections in the next four months it is time to look at the Financial Inclusion efforts as it is a barometer for poverty reduction. The CRISIL Financial Inclusion index showed a marginal improvement of around 2.2 between 2010 and 2011. The RBI's composite analysis recently put down by its Executive Director, P. Vijay Bhaskar says that from the NSSO 59th round (Jan-Dec 2003) reflecting a financial exclusion of 51.4 percent farmer households there is considerable improvement but fails in its own study to make exact comparison where it mentions in of all the rural households having access to financial services from the banks. This chart depicts from 1951 to 2002 the course of debt from the formal and informal sources. The formal sources increased by just 4.2% between 1991 and 2002 - the initial years of reforms in the banking sector while the informal sources of debt increased by 13.8% during the same year.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

VITALINFO: RBI's Joshi on the bank's wide-ranging strategies to raise financial awareness

VITALINFO: RBI's Joshi on the bank's wide-ranging strategies to raise financial awareness
While RBI's Joshi rightly highlighted the current efforts of the Central Bank on financial awareness, the snail space at which such efforts are moving only expose the lack of interest on the part of the actual players: even the FLCs are not functioning the way they should. In fact their creation happened with lot of drive and push from the RBI. If such efforts do not internalize in the organizations for effective delivery, they remain cosmetic. The opportunity cost of monitoring from the central bank would be quite high. It is desirable that an external monitoring group be set up by the RBI where region-wise, a representative of reputed academic or training institution, a representative from NGOs, a representative from the RBI regional office as members who can oversee the outputs of the FLCs at the ground level.