A few months after the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-Operative Bank Ltd (PMC Bank) was put under moratorium in September 2019, I met an announcer in a function on banking organised by an industry body, with which I have been associated. She was young, pretty beautiful and had a sweet voice and modulation. She had dreams in her eyes of getting married, and for which she had saved all her earnings of
For those not familiar with chess nomenclature, a gambit, like king’s gambit, is move that offers a material sacrifice of a pawn or bishop, in return for a strategic advantage that may benefit the person initiating the gambit. The respondent has the option to accept or decline the sacrifice and pursue countermoves in its best wisdom and interest. In a dramatic turnaround, t
In 2015, India started its Smart Cities Mission (SCM) with the purpose of harnessing technology to initiate infrastructural makeovers and transform the country into a more liveable, economically dynamic and environmentally sustainable nation within five years [see: https://pqars.nic.in/annex/253/A30.pdf]. Since then, cities ac
India has made overhauling commitment in the ongoing COP 26 at Glasgow, where it sets the deadline for becoming net zero emitter by 2070. This shows India’s resolute approach for combating climate change effects and sets an example for its developing counterpart. I often call it the “utopia of net zero emission”, and it is a fairly complex task to execute especially for India,
Access to decent healthcare facilities is a basic right of every individual. But it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that for a majority of our country’s population – the 65% that resides in rural areas – that right isn’t accorded. The rural healthcare infrastructure in India leaves a lot to be desired. And all the critical problems plaguing it became more evident du
An RBI appointed committee to review the working of Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) recently submitted a report containing a set of 42 recommendations. The recommendations have been made to ensure the flow of NPAs to ARCs gather speed and momentum, so that bankers can focus on core banking activities like lending, leaving stressed asset management to specialised regulated institutional fr
Fed up of being contained, our lives have become acutely more exciting than that of a lab rat, Covid has taken the centrefold in every socio-economic sense and the coronavirus is the only star we see on posters these days. Now, the competition is the three Khans and SARS; who would you like to see? The first and second waves have emerged as teachers, deteriorators and finger pointing infrastruc
The union government enforced a nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020 to curb the spread of coronavirus as it was causing large-scale infection and disease. Challenges of pandemic management and levels of distress were revealed during this time. The fear of Covid spread like wildfire and a necessity was felt to teach people about Covid-appropriate behaviour. Civil society of Ind
A long life span free from diseases and disability, the so-called healthy aging, has been a matter of prime interest to humanity. It is widely held that the life expectancy is a function of interplay between various genetic and environmental factors. There is scientific evidence to support the fact that only about 20% of the average lifespan is governed by the genetic milieu and rest 80% by the
The launch of the Gati Shakti master plan will be a booster dose for India growth story. The plan, as the name indicates, will ensure Gati, i.e., speed and Shakti, i.e., empowerment to the ₹1 trillion national infrastructure pipeline. The plan will break inter-ministerial silos. For example, there are ministries of roads, railways, ports, aviation, mining etc and the left hand
This year during the second wave of Covid-19, an unprecedented ‘oxygen shortage’ crisis gripped the national capital and several other parts of the country. A similar situation is brewing in respect of the ‘power’ situation in the national capital and the rest of the country too. However, the authorities seem to be in a denial mode, hoping all is well, and it is a tempor
After almost a century, the Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize 2021 to two journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. The last Nobel Peace Prize won by a journalist was way back in 1935, by a German named Carl Von Ossietzky for his “burning love for freedom of thought and expression” after revealing that the Nazi regime was secr
In 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic which got the entire world at a pause, the Indian healthcare sector was in progress at a steady but slow pace. The pandemic boosted the rate, and within a year, the sector made a leap into the future – something that would have taken the industry another five years to achieve had the pandemic not been a catalyst to the whole situation.
The brutal second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India has left a significant death toll in its wake. Health experts advise that the imminent third wave can be delayed by following simple measures like wearing a mask and engaging in social distancing. However, near the end of the second wave, we witnessed a surge of tourists thronging the Mall Roads of Manali and Shimla, blatantly refusing to
After the recent announcement of the government guarantee for Security Receipts (SRs) to be issued by a public sector-owned National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL), there is a surge of interest around this desi version of a super bad bank. The entity will acquire around ₹2 trillion bad debts from banks (which is around 25% of estimated ₹8.34 trillion of bad debts outstanding as of
We are at a defining moment of history twenty years after the deadliest terrorist attack that killed 2,977 and injured more than 6,000 in the USA. Just to recollect, four commercial flights were hijacked midtraffic by terrorist group Al-Qaeda. They took control of the flights and crashed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York. The third flight was crashed into the Pentagon and the f
OTT is here to stay. Even after Covid restrictions are lifted to open cinema halls and multiplexes, customers will still continue to subscribe to the OTT platform for its user-friendly formats, privacy and most importantly, anytime anywhere convenience. Aided by cheap data plans, Indians spent about 5 hours daily on smartphone, as per the Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (Mbit) 2021. An exp
With multiple big-brand vehicles outsourcing parts of their production to India, and many others putting up assembly-line factories in India, it is no surprise that India is on its way to becoming a known name in the automobile industry. Keeping pace with the global shift towards electric vehicles, in 2013, India had put together a board that focused primarily on the Indian auto
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) 2016 was enacted in May 2016. It was a milestone event in the financial sector reforms. In its five years of journey, five key takeaways of IBC are as follows: 1. End of the promoter’s divine right to rule the company. In the earlier restructuring / rehabilitation schemes, the success was limited as the reins of th
During an online course promoted as a foundational step towards tuning one’s mind for personal spiritual growth (presumably for eventual greater happiness and even bliss through self-realization, liberation, and other big things), the guru asked a simple-sounding question: “What is the difference between fact and truth?” Then answering his own question, he explained that while
