Excerpts from the report, “Peoples’ Convention on Infrastructure Financing: A Peoples’ response to AIIB Annual Meeting”, released as curtain-raiser ahead of Civil Society Organizations’ (CSOs’) meet on June 21-23, 2018 in Mumbai: The 3rd Annual Governors Meeting of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank [AIIB] will be held in Mumbai, India from 24-25 June 2018. This two-year-old … More AIIB, unlike older banks, does not have a clear line on reducing poverty, other safeguard issues

By Venkatesh Nayak* Readers may recall the gory incidents that took place at Thoothukudi (Tuticorin) in Tamil Nadu in the southern part of India on 22 May, 2018. Thirteen protesters died on the spot when the police opened fire to disperse an assemblage of thousands of local residents and representatives of civil society groups. They were protesting … More Why are 17 Indian companies, including Sterlite, blacklisted by Norway’s investment fund

By Gautam Thaker* From January 2016 onwards, the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, has been advising the Banks and the Indian Banks Association (IBA) to initiate and conclude settlement in time well before November 2017. Several reminders were given by the Government. Even then the IBA has not bothered to … More Government of India is indifferent towards bank employees’ justified demand for pay hike

A civil society-trade union joint statement on cash crunch in ATMs: In the past few weeks, ATMs across India have gone cashless, bringing back nightmares of the cash crunch during demonetisation. Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Telangana are some of the states that have experienced severe cash crunch during this … More Cash crunch: Prepare white paper on demonetisation, publish names of wilful defaulters

By Venkatesh Nayak* To say that the banking sector in India is going through a “crisis phase” would be a bald understatement. Bad loans or “non-performing assets” (NPAs) have risen to unprecedented levels in 2018. According to the statistics that the Union Minister of State for Finance, tabled in the Lok Sabha on 06 April, … More In the time of crisis Public Sector Banks reject more RTIs than ever before: CIC’s Annual Report

By KM Seethi* The Fifteenth Finance Commission’s (FFC) Terms of Reference (ToR) have generated a lot of criticism across a wide spectrum of thinking, especially among the South Indian states. The States which have already been affected with the winding up of the Planning Commission, as well as with the introduction of the Goods and … More Terms of Reference of fifth Finance Commission are an encroachment into States’ functions

By Himanshu* A general misconception around inequality in India is that the level of inequality is low by international standards. However, such a comparison is largely misplaced as inequality in India is usually measured by the consumption expenditure data, which is not comparable to inequality in most countries which is measured by income dimension. While … More Gini of wealth in India in 2017 is at 0.83, which puts India among countries with high inequality