Showing posts with label Finance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finance. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Still too many go hungry

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/still-too-many-going-hungry/article7322506.ece


Despite the high growth years, malnourishment stalks the countryside. This calls for a small-farmer led focus
At a time when India’s GDP growth is hopefully pitched at 7.5 per cent this fiscal, touted to be higher than China’s, three global reports of significance also grabbed the headlines: The Global Findex Data Base 2014The Global Food Policy Report of the UN and the State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2014.
Ahead of all these, the IMF and the World Economic Forum reported that 25 per cent of India’s population still remains poor.
The Global Findex Data measured the financial inclusion around the world. The other two reports dealt with the food insecurity and the measures to tackle them.
It must be remembered that the data is mostly up to March 2014. The findings are of great import to this government for designing policies tackling financial inclusion, hunger and malnutrition.
The government would like to measure the poor by the JAM method — Jan Dhan account, Aadhaar, and the mobile. It has been acknowledged universally that there were no deaths due to hunger. But the farmers who produced food committed suicide were burdened by excessive debt.
The undernourished poor, like the Jan Dhan accounts, showed an impressive decline in the reports and these are counted once every three years.
A range of indicators can be used to measure a nation’s food security. These include average dietary energy and protein supply, access in terms of road and rail line density, domestic food price index, prevalence of under-nourishment, stability measured in terms of cereal import dependence ratio, political stability as well as absence of violence and terrorism, undernourished children below five years, anaemia among pregnant women, and vitamin A and iodine deficiency in the population.
Measuring insecurity

Malnutrition is redefined to include obesity and overweight. In India, child stunting (under five years) is 47.5 per cent while undernourishment is 15.2 per cent; whereas overweight population is 11 per cent. The country witnessed an average GDP growth of 8.7 per cent in 2003-08, 6.7 per cent in 2008-09, followed by 8.6 per cent and 9.3 per cent in the next two years.
When the growth of GDP was high and food inflation was also high, there was a decline in the percentage of under-nourished population.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Mudra Bank for the poor - Confusions Galore

http://www.moneylife.in/article/mudra-bank-confusions-galore/41221/62915.html

Will MUDRA Bank put its stamp on the Indian Financial System as the institution to resolve the Financial Inclusion dilemmas in the rural areas?

Piper calls the tunes. Inauguration of Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank by the Prime Minister before he left for Canada, Germany and France on a nine-day tour is being seen as a landmark akin to ‘Garibi Hatau’ and IRDP of the forgotten decades. People say that name has a lot to do with institutions. The name and style of MUDRA has built into it an agency and a bank. It has in it, development and refinance as functions.

Friday, December 26, 2014

Crude Shocks keep India in Smiles

B. Yerram Raju  & Nitin Gupta*

“The economics of oil have changed. Some businesses will go bust, but the market will be healthier,” says the Economist (December 6, ’14). Is this the beginning of cheap oil regime or just an interlude between two big bumps?

2013, in retrospect,  had turned out to be the strongest year of recovery, with growing US Economy and stabilizing Chinese economy. Commodity prices were projected to remain flat with an up-side risk due to unexpected supply-side shocks.

Enter December 2014 and all the projections seem little more than wishful thinking. IMF went on record recently: “the global economic growth may never return to pre-crisis levels” ! All the Quantitative Easing (QE) from the US (3 till now – totaling over $ 4 trillion or, twice that of the entire Indian economy) which was supposed to push cash to banks ended up just in increased valuations and stock indices accompanied by higher prices of gold and other commodities. Emerging economies like India had to contend with high inflation. Some even said: it is ‘US Fed exported inflation’!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Rural Cooperatives


Rural Cooperative Credit Structure beg for urgent reforms

Cooperatives with their spread are the best means for reaching the goals of financial inclusion and Jan-Dhan.
Their form and content needs change. Meaningful recommendations of Vaidyanathan Committee have been implemented more in breach. The States that received the reform package have breached on the MOUs and misspent the grant released and NABARD also did not put its heart in the monitoring of the grant assistance.
GOI should recall the grant assistance from all these states or should give them an year's time to re-engineer the rural cooperative credit structure to the promised health. 

The vast potential of cooperatives can be fully utilised only through de-bonding them from the politicians and vested interests and by ushering in legal and governance reforms. 

Sunday, December 25, 2011

A great legacy indeed

The legacy I enjoyed:
After a couple of years as Assistant General Manager of a Textile Mills immediately following my post-graduation in Economics made me sterner stuff having handled a strike by a 450-labour and later the management declaring a lock-out for 24 days. My fatehr desired that I should become a Probationary Officer in either RBI or SBI or get into civil service. I could fulfil his wish preferring SBI PO to IPS where also I got selection. The grooming I got from my dad made me hold my head high.

My father, a banker who joined the Imperial Bank of India (IBI) in 1936, had his grooming at the altar of efficiency in banking and finance. He was an upright cashier and the most loving and yet most feared Head Cashier of the Bank in the composite Madras Circle of the IBI. I used to carry coffee flask to the main branch of Visakhapatnam when I was seven years at 12noon – his coffee hour for the entire 94-year life he lead. One day, he asked me to wait and there was lot of anxiety in his face. He went to the Agent to report that he gave one section in excess to the captain of a ship and the ship was about to sail in the evening at 4p.m. The Agent telephoned to the Port Authorities to allow this cashier, i.e., my father to reach the captain. He gave his car to go to the port. My father could go to the captain. He seemed to have told the captain of the excess payment. The Captain said: “I did not count: young man, for a IBI cashier never faults. He pulled the cash cover and asked my father to recount and take if the amount was alright. My father recounted and showed to him the excess one-rupee note section (Rs. One hundred in all – and this was a big sum for a cashier whose monthly salary was just Rs.36 with a biennial increment of four annas (quarter of a rupee). That was the image of a bank cashier in that by-gone era. My father was later cautioned by the Agent but the Captain insisted on the British Agent R.L. Wishart to reward the young cashier that accelerated his increment by an year!!
He was posted as Official-in-charge of a Pay office at Ramachandrapuram in East Godavari District and was given ten days time to take over the charge of his official position. During the take-over period, the person-in-charge was supposed to verify all the stocks and gold ornaments pledged to the bank to confirm that the drawing power was well within the drawing power. The predecessor was known to be lax in all the official matters. My father was examining the stocks – and they were supposed to be oil drums. He took a wooden stick and started beating all the drums and asked the owners to break open the seals. Initially, there would appear to be lot of resistance and later there were veiled threats. Unrelenting, he insisted and one drum opened, revealed that it was water and not oil. He lost no time in advising both the branch controlling the pay office and the Madras Local Head Office while serving a notice on the borrower firm to make good the entire advance within 24hours. The Agent who had a hand in perpetrating this fraud became angry at his reporting to Head Office but could not find fault in calling up the advance. The event led to the suspension of the predecessor. The Agent, however, transferred my father even before the complete take over to another pay office. This incident was narrated to me when I was undergoing training as probationary officer. Another lesson I learnt from him was the way I should do physical inspection of stocks of wooden logs and iron and steel. The length, tensile strength of the steel measured in weight and the quality of wooden logs – measurement and volume etc.
At another branch, he noticed that a cashier working at the counter, for whose omissions, commissions and intromissions’ he is responsible by virtue of the Agreement that the Head Cashier had with the Bank, was opening the clipped notes at the cash verification table. He lost no time in asking him to quit the table by dislodging him from the work. He recommended that cashier’s suspension and the Bank had to conduct the enquiry and on admission of the guilt, the cashier was let off with a cut in increment. He used to say that a cashier who cannot see the cash in the safe or counter at work as pebbles or insects, that person was unfit for cashier’s job. Such rigidities have no place today. But the legacy he left and the lessons he taught me held me in good stead during my nearly three-decade career in the State Bank of India – the legatee of IBI. I had the unique opportunity of serving his retirement letter as I was posted to the branch as Branch Manager where he was serving as sub-accountant (both son and father cannot serve in the same branch and his posting to another local branch was also issued but he preferred to retire having only an year left for his actual retirement in 1974). The Regional Manager processed his application for retirement during my one-month taking over period. On the day of my assuming charge, he retired from the same branch. The most fortunate legacy, I thought worthy of recall in these days when corruption and bribery are being fought in streets.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Demonetise

IT IS TIME TO DEMONITISE:
B. Yerram Raju*
“Not all the perfumes of Arabia will sweeten this little hand” (Shakespeare from ‘Meckbeth’)
The rate cuts of 2010 from the RBI did not influence the prices of food articles in particular and others in general, with the food inflation at the alarming level of more than 18%. Rampant corruption surfaced in nooks and corners of the economy. Recently the stories of forged notes coming into circulation via Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Bengal have also come to light. Rs 1000, Rs 500 notes have become the minimum denominations in circulation. All bank counters can stand evidence to this phenomenon. Several ACB raids revealed that the cash stored and seized in raids were mostly in Rs.1000denomination currency or Rs.500 currency. It is not certainly the 8.5% growth of economy that is responsible for this.
This will certainly bring down the inflationary pressure as it will flush out excess money in circulation. For a moment, this may foment the bear hug that has already started, for a few more days and market correction may in fact be facilitated.

This measure would not certainly affect the small and marginal as also tenant farmers, wage earners, salaried class and the aam admi in general. The rich might regret for the stack. Extraordinary situations require extraordinary solutions.