What are your views on Making Payments Ubiquitous?
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.
Improving Competitiveness in Agri-commodity Markets – Part 3: Recommendations for Policy and Market Framework
How can policy enable competitive agri-commodity markets thereby also improving the conditions and incentives for farmers and others?
IFMR Finance Foundation seeking public comments on Financial Inclusion and Financial Deepening
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.
Improving Competitiveness in Agri-Commodity Markets – Part 2: The Policy Environment
This post is part 2 of a three-part series, and depicts the legislative and policy backdrop to agri-commodity markets in India
Improving Competitiveness in Agri-Commodity Markets – Part 1: Understanding the Markets
The Indian farmer might earn only INR 30 a day, but there are many of him. According to the 2001 census, the Indian agriculture sector employs about 60 percent of the population, of which farmers comprise 119 million (the rest are agricultural non-owner labourers).
Land as a source of financing urban infrastructure
At a fundamental level, it can be argued that internal revenue sources are the most critical funding levers available to a municipality because without effective, predictable generation of internal revenues, it will be impossible to attract new, external sources of funding.
Alternative Model of Rural Housing Finance – Part 2
In the previous post of this series, we discussed the status of rural housing and motivations that determine the pattern of construction/upgradation of houses in rural areas.
Great expectations for the financial inclusion agenda
Even in an environment of great expectations, new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s opening statement was remarkable for its ambition and clarity of purpose
The crucial link between financial access and decision making of the poor
A new paper by Anandi Mani et al in the August issue of Science has a stunning finding – that the cognitive impact of being poor may be equivalent to as much as 13 IQ points.
Improving the Competitiveness of the Indian Banking System
This note assesses the state of the Indian banking system including its small overall size and high concentration risk, poor indicators of financial inclusion and depth, opaque balance sheets, weak profitability, and highly covariant strategies followed by government-owned banks.
