We produce blogs to discuss new research findings, ongoing projects, and even personal reflections on the research process. Our blogs are written for a variety of audiences, including other researchers, policymakers, practitioners, financial service providers, grassroots organizations, impact investors and the public. The format is simple and easy to grasp. The language is straightforward, and the tone is non-academic. Our blogs can be of varying lengths. We choose to write a blog when we don’t want to do a full- fledged study or follow a rigorous research process. Blogs may contain opinions and they can also be based on experiences. Some of our blogs may just share some observations, learnings, or challenges.
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.
The financial-legal framework envisaged by the FSLRC comprises nine important components, one of which is Micro-prudential regulation.
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.”
On a recent visit to MFIs working in eastern Uttar Pradesh, we chanced upon some great innovations and field practices, which are clearly taking customer focus to the next level. In this post, I elaborate on the innovation we saw at Utkarsh Microfinance in Varanasi.
India’s regulatory architecture has been driven by the creation of product-specific regulators. We have multiple regulators: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that regulates savings and credit,
The FSLRC report identifies three problems that occur when regulators pursue the objectives of financial inclusion and market development like subsidizing credit for agriculture or increasing the flow of credit into certain states,
Continuing on our series on Unemployment Support In India, this post provides an overview of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005).
Keeping in mind the existing state of consumer protection measures in place for India, FSLRC has proposed a consumer protection framework for financial services, with the stated objectives being – to protect and further the interests of consumers of financial products and services; and to promote public awareness in financial matters.
This post is cross-posted from our Financing Small Cities blog. The post marks the beginning of a new blog series “Cities in Books", in which we will put across posts that reflect on how cities are portrayed in books and relate them from an urbanisation perspective.
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.
