According to data from the World Bank, 400 million people remain unbanked in India despite impressive gains in recent years. Most unbanked are poor and female; only 27% of individuals in the bottom quintiles and 37% of women have access to a bank account.India has the highest number of bank branches...
Arundhati Bhattacharya is the Chairman, State Bank of India, one of the biggest banks of the world. Against the backdrop of the critical situation facing the Indian banking industry, her exclusive views are very important for the country. In her interview with BE’s Kishore Kumar Biswas, she has to...
The Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan advised the journalists in a meeting in Delhi the other day to avoid ‘unpleasant truths’ and write only ‘nice things’. True, today’s paper is full of news ofviolence, corruption, communal hatred, terrorism, and rape. You hardly find a ‘positive’ st...
I like lizards. I think their eyes are beautiful. I find it is possible to engage with them, however briefly. My granddaughter likes them too. But I know lots of people who will not enter a room which has lizards. Recently I received a letter from a child “Why do lizards enter my room and how can ...
The warehouse industry is in a growth mode with the introduction of new technologies and online retail stores. According to a report by Ernst & Young and the CII Institute of Logistics, the size of the Indian warehousing industry, across verticals, is estimated to be around `560 billion. The sec...
After the demonetisation policy, the Indian government set a target to install 10 lakh Point-of -Sale (POS) devices by March 2017. It also waived the 12.5% excise duty and 4% special excise duty on POS machines to incentivise banks and the manufacturers. While the doubling of POS terminals doubled...
The increasing number of mega multinational corporates with large asset bases in multiple countries has necessitated the advent of a centrally administered global insurance programme. Designing a global insurance programme that provides comprehensive cover along with providing efficiency, cost effec...
In India, the penetration of banking in the rural sector remains limited. In such a scenario, the micro finance institutions (MFIs) play an important loan in strengthening the rural economy. Village Financial Services Private Limited is one of the leaders in the MFI sector in West Bengal and is aggr...
The situation in the Kashmir Valley deteriorated after the death of the Hizbul Mujahedeen terrorist Burhan Wani last year. The mutilation of two Indian army personnel by a Pakistan Special Forces team that came 250 metres across the LoC in the Poonch district worsened matters. In February 2017, thre...
History repeats itself. The Han dynasty started building a trade route from Xi’an, the ancient capital of China to the western world in about 100 to 150 BCE. The road connected the present-day countries of India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in South Asia and West Asia and Uzbekist...