Today's Free Press Journal carried a review of the jointly authored book: India's Growth Resurgence: Sectoral Issues and Governance Risks. The book is now available at Amazon.com and Flipkart.
My blogs are only subject oriented - Finance, agriculture, MSMEs, Cooperation, Corporate Governance etc. Do not relate to any comments on caste, religion, sex etc.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
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, April 10, 2015
Growth has to pare with human development
Business Advisor, Vol.X, Part 1, 10th April 2015 carried this article of mine.
ile:///C:/Users/dell/Documents/Business%20Advisor%20-%20April%2010,%202015%20-%20Contributor%20copy.pdf
February 2015, towards the
close was crowded with the vision-led railway budget, the release of Economic
Survey and the Union Budget. The next twenty days in Parliament did not have so
much to discuss on the approach to the budget as on amendments to the land
bill, the rape incident of West Bengal and some unholy acts in Haryana. The
most significant budget discussion related to the allocations to AP and
Telangana states and the devolutions under the 14th Finance
commission. The strategic intent and the road map for growth laid out in the FM
Budget speech, would seem to have got full endorsement.
Growth by itself even if in
double digit, would be inconsequential if it escapes the human development. The
300mn poor are not so much worried about how the dollar is moving against the
rupee or how the rupee is globally pared although its consequences will have
definitive impact on them. In an event crowded out during the last few days of
February 15 was the release of a book: ‘India’s Growth Resurgence.’
In spite of the change in
the base year from 2005 to 2012, the CSO credibility of the growth figure is
still in question in the context of lowest/negative manufacturing growth and
not too impressive growth of services sector. The statistical jumble did not in
any case put the human development in a better frame than what was on hold till
2014 with 134th rank out of 183 nations surveyed by the UN.
The near two and half
decades of reform process were literally in waves with turfs and peaks between
1991. Never ever in the past has the Indian economy been so keenly watched by
global community with hope, expectation and anticipation. The sheer size of the
economy and the potential it holds has global investors, multi-national
corporations, and players in different sectors, queuing to take part in the
country’s economic progress and the growth agenda, what with, Make-in-India,
Swatch Bharat and Jan Dhan, the new instrument of inclusive growth.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Indian Agriculture - Transforming a Natiion
Can Modi’s eloquence respond to farm credit vows?
Mobile Banking can show the way.
http://www.mlmsoftwarezindia.com/images/mlm-mobile-banking.jpg
“India accounts for only about 2.4 % of the
world’s geographical area and 4 % of its water resources, but has to support
about 17 % of the world’s human population and 15 % of the livestock.
Agriculture is an important sector of the Indian economy, accounting for 14% of
the nation’s GDP, about 11% of its exports, about half of the population still
relies on agriculture as its principal source of income and it is a source of raw
material for a large number of industries.” (State of Indian Agriculture
2013-14, Ministry of Agriculture, GoI, New Delhi)
Policy
Brief
‘Agriculture credit is one
of the main drivers of agricultural production.’[1]
Farming and credit have been highly interdependent for ages because the farmer
would have his cash stashed either in soil or in silo and never in liquid form
for him to spend for both production and consumption requirements. So is the
case for credit at any cost and anywhere for the farmer. This is where the
roots of money lender lie. He sits in the village close to the farmer.
Efforts at
institutionalizing money lender started with the starting of primary
cooperative agricultural credit societies. Post nationalization, nationalized
banks, regional rural banks took to agriculture lending in a big way. NABARD
was established in 1982 to accelerate productive agricultural credit flow with
focus on improving the lot of the small and marginal farmers.
Post liberalization, with
India becoming an important constituent of the WTO, Agreement on Agriculture
and Market Access has also witnessed diversification of agriculture and rural
economy. The wide ranging definition of farming encompassing dairy, poultry,
piggery, fisheries, and all animal husbandry and horticulture activities led to
inadequacies and delays in extension of credit from institutions. Public sector
banks are mandated to extend credit for agriculture that now includes
agro-industry and agri-businesses up to 18 % of the total credit.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Cyber Risks
http://www.moneylife.in/article/the-threat-of-increasing-cyber-risks/40639.html?utm_source=PoweRelayEDM&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Subscriber%2320149&utm_campaign=Daily%20newsletter%2027%20Feb%202015
Hyderabad City Police commissioner in a press conference recently revealed that the city police registered 21,035 cyber crime cases in 2014 as against 19,011 in 2013 and 18,744 in 2012. A near ten per cent rise in just two years is a cause for alarm. The rise is attributed to the large scale use of technology and mobile phones.
Hyderabad City Police commissioner in a press conference recently revealed that the city police registered 21,035 cyber crime cases in 2014 as against 19,011 in 2013 and 18,744 in 2012. A near ten per cent rise in just two years is a cause for alarm. The rise is attributed to the large scale use of technology and mobile phones.
Social
media contributed significantly with the uploading of fake woman profiles,
online payment frauds, blackmailing, hacking, skimming, identity theft and data
theft etc. The police are trying to use technology again to track and trace the
criminals. Global trends are no different although it cannot be a solace.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Budget Discussion - 1
My response to the above article is as follows and can also be seen in the Livemint discussions:
GDP in itself is a poor indicator. It escapes several areas of income in the aggregation that has become the springboard for black money. For instance, all the waste and scrap dealers till date in all the cities deal only in cash. Several jewelry merchants take only self cheques from their clients and not account payee cheques. Several doctors doing private practice do not ever, ever give any receipt for the consultancy. Several leading advocates are no exception. Like this many areas still escape our GDP. All the ratios depend upon such aggregation as GDP suffer credibility.
Second, India's prism of planned economic development rested on the tripod of politics, poverty and patronage. We have traveled a long way from the erstwhile socialistic pattern of society. But inequities still persist.
Areas which are the essential domain of public expenditure - universal education, health, safe drinking water and good sanitation moved to private or public-private domain. It is time that the government looks at what are its key responsible areas and provide resources adequately with periodical monitoring mechanisms as part of the Budget.
All the laws impacting on state finances should be subject to Regulatory Impact Assessment annually and the relative Report should be presented to the first session of the Parliament for discussion and modification.
Once these are done, the fiscal responsibility budgetary management exercise becomes simpler. The country is currently in transformation phase and this is the right time to plug all the loopholes in the existing system of monetary and fiscal management.
It is good to recall John Stuart Mill: "It must always have been seen more or less distinctly, by political economists that the increase in wealth is not boundless: that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state.."
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Budget Hopes and Hypes
Fiscal balance |
Union Budget 2014-15 was
more on aspirations. It had to address the legacy issues. But 2015-16 Budget in
the wake of series of policy announcements by the NDA government during the
last nine months has promised to be progressive and inspirational. The recent
statements of FM leave more expectations on this count.
Notwithstanding the hope of the World Bank President
the dragging growth in farm and manufacturing sectors is still a matter of
great concern and this led to pragmatic low pitch by the RBI at 5.5-5.7 percent
growth at the end of this fiscal.
Inflation has come down but the fundamentals are
still weak; gross domestic savings has not improved markedly; credit has not
picked up. The domestic food and vegetable prices are yet to record the type of
decline that would give confidence to the RBI to tame further the lending
rates.
The 14th Finance Commission handed over
its Report to the President. Once it is tabled in the Budget session, the new
formula of dispensation of resources among the States and Union and between the
States and the sub-states would lead the budget formulations.
Expectations on the Finance
Minister:
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