The Government of India called for pre-budget consultations in early January 2025. Dvara Research was one of the invitees, and we are once again grateful to policy makers for reposing trust in our work. In the past as well, Dvara Research has been a partner and advisor of choice for key policy-making bodies in the country.
This consultation with the leaders of the financial sector was chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and attended by Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Secretaries of Department of Economic Affairs & Financial Services, Ajay Seth and M Nagaraju and Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran. Deepti George, Dy ED & Head of Strategy at Dvara Research got the opportunity to participate and present Dvara’s independent, research-backed views to this group of senior members of the Ministry of Finance. Since Dvara Research focusses on improving the access to suitable financial services for low-income households and enterprises in India, the four recommendations she made reflected this stance. These have been arrived at in part by the research conducted by Dvara Research team, and in part, informed by various interactions with stakeholders involved in the delivery of financial services to Indian low-income households and enterprises.
The four recommendations pertain to:
- The need for drawing up an updated approach for enabling basic banking for last-mile citizens who are ill-equipped to access UPI, bank branches and Digital Banking Units. This approach must prioritize uninterrupted Cash-In Cash- Out for the last-mile citizen and embed principles of interoperability, risk sensitivity, and customer-centricity as foundational principles, for serving the interests of the citizen where they are, with as little barriers as possible for them to overcome.
- The need to significantly solve the final-mile challenge of claim benefits delivery to the families of citizens who die while under the coverage of Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) as we approach its 10th year since launch. Three mechanisms are offered as a means to make the claim benefits delivery process be triggered from the supply side at the time of death of the insured under PMJJBY and PMSBY. We strongly believe that these mechanisms, if introduced, can make it possible to realize at scale, the program’s positive impact on India’s citizens, and serve as a powerful tool to kick-start the demand for insurance by India’s households as an essential part of financial management.
- Obtaining for India, a humane mechanism for discharge of personal and enterprise debt, by fast-tracking the implementation of Part-III of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, so that a dignified exit from unsustainable debt becomes possible for borrowers. Such an effort must also involve designing policies that encourage the creation of a ‘safe to fail’ ecosystem especially in contexts where citizens perceive failure resulting from the inability to repay debt as a stigmatizing failure (this is the case in many parts of India).
- Making credit bureau data available not just for study and monitoring by policymakers and industry but also by civil society actors such as academicians and think tanks so that greater, sharper and more useful insights can emerge about the credit ecosystem, its borrower segments, and the larger economy.
The attached note provides more details about these four recommendations.
