This post is a follow-up to our earlier post where we had invited public comments on Payments. In this post we seek your thoughts on the theme of Priority Sector Lending.
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Dvara Research’s Household Finance Research initiative aims to rigorously understand the financial choices and decisions of low-income or excluded individuals and households, and their relation to achieving households’ objectives. It has been our consistent endeavour to study financial inclusion as a gateway to a suite of appropriate financial services eventually enabling well-rounded household balance sheets and consumer financial well-being.
Head - Household Finance
Senior Research Associate
This post is a follow-up to our earlier post where we had invited public comments on Payments. In this post we seek your thoughts on the theme of Priority Sector Lending.
Given the magnitude of investments and expertise needed for sustainable development of urban infrastructure in India, it is essential that there be substantial private sector involvement.
Making access to formal payments infrastructure universal is a key component of the overall vision of financial inclusion and the RBI vision document on payments correctly aims towards an economy that is eventually entirely cash less.
IFMR Finance Foundation’s “Complete Financial Inclusion and Financial Deepening” site has been created with a view to track national progress on these fronts over time.
Gary Hustwit’s documentary film, Urbanized (2011), presents an optimistic overture about the future of cities, but is not unchecked with caution.
Continuing our focus on Municipal Finance, we look at the financial statements of Srirangapatna TMC in Karnataka in this post. We are currently working with the town of Srirangapatna as a part of IFMR Finance Foundation’s Financial Access for Small Cities initiative. In this post, we examine the town’s finances over the past ten years and find similarities to national trends.
Financial inclusion is a key enabler of economic and social development. The effectiveness of the financial inclusion agenda in India can be significantly enhanced if there are objective ways to measure it.
Following the IMF-FSB-BIS definition, the FSLRC defines systemic risk as “[a] risk of disruption to financial services that is caused by an impairment of all or parts of the financial system and has the potential to have serious negative consequences for the real economy.”
The Technical Group on Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy proposes to carry out a nationwide survey to assess the ‘state of financial inclusion and financial literacy’ in India. Prior to commissioning this large-scale effort, it would be important to look into the design aspects of such a survey, including: (I)Coordinating with existing large-sample surveys on financial inclusion
A few colleagues and I recently travelled through Varanasi and Mirzapur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh visiting Micro Finance Institutions (MFI) in that region and their clients. I am delighted to report that this region, one of the poorest in India, is a hotbed of innovations.
In all our research efforts, we strive to maintain an independent voice that speaks for the low-income household and household enterprises. Our ability to perform this function is significantly enhanced by our commitment to disseminate as a pure public good, all the intellectual capital that we create.
