Our opinion editorials are published in newspapers, magazines, and new-age online publications. They are an important tool for public discourse and advocacy. They help us to raise awareness about important issues, and they often provide a platform for perspectives from our researchers, to be presented and to be heard.
India needs a robust and comprehensive financial customer protection regime, which it currently lacks. Imagine the following scenario. Raja and Rani are a low-income householder couple with two children in elementary school. They also take care of Raja’s ailing mother. The household’s monthly income is ₹20,000.
These fraudulent messages have proliferated during the pandemic, where fraudsters induce panic or excitement that impairs the customers’ ability to think clearly.
The microfinance industry has witnessed moves by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to revise the regulatory framework (March 2022) for it and also caution it against an exclusive focus on business growth (November 2022).
Insurance companies should align their sales practices to generate the best outcomes for low income households by ensuring easy access to a variety of products with disclosures that provide accurate information.
The promise of SP-ODEs is compelling but it is worth reiterating that deploying them would not automatically translate into better welfare delivery.
Tremendous efforts have gone into creating new authoritiessuch as the Central Consumer Protection Authority.
Low-income households work with irregular income inflows, resulting in shrinking financial planning horizon and necessitating frequent decisions in response to frequent changes.
Indian households and businesses hold their wealth primarily in physical assets like real estate, gold, and durables, while barely investing in any financial assets.
Protecting citizens’ privacy is a pre-eminent mandate of any data protection regime. The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill appears to have departed farther away from that mandate
Social Protection Open Digital Ecosystems (SP-ODEs) can provide beneficiaries, government and service providers a unified, digital platform to better access welfare schemes.
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.
