Municipal finances in India are characterised by the constant tension between the funds and functions of local governments. Cities in India have insufficient revenue tools to meet their expenditure requirements.

As part of the NSE-IFMR ‘Financial Inclusion’ Research Initiative, Vishnu Prasad, Anand Sahasranaman, Santadarshan Sadhu, and Rachit Khaitan of IFMR Finance Foundation have authored a working paper for the series.

As part of our blog series on the recently held Spark sessions, in this post we cover a talk by Vishnu Prasad & Rachit Khaitan on their recently released research paper “How much can asset portfolios of rural households benefit from formal financial services?”

In recent years there has been rising interest among financial service providers, NGOs and policymakers in educating customers and potential customers to enable them to make informed decisions on taking up and using financial products.

The Report of the Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low Income Households (CCFS) was submitted to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in January this year.

This post is the third in a series on Social Security for the Indian Unorganised Sector.

In the latest edition of The Euromoney Securitisation & Structured Finance Handbook 2014/15 (published by the Euromoney Handbooks, London) Sreya Ray & Vaibhav Anand of IFMR Capital have authored a chapter on the topic of Mortgage backed securitisation for affordable housing finance.

Simon Kuznets’ seminal 1955 study on income inequality is famous for the inverted ‘U’ hypothesis1 which posits that as an economy develops, inequality first increases and then decreases if a certain level of income is achieved.

This post is the second in a series on Social Security for the Indian Unorganised Sector.