Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
The End of the Silly Common Banking Correspondent Model?
since may this year, i have been tracking a plan from the department of financial services to split india into 20 clusters, and to appoint a common banking correspondent company for all public sector banks operating in each cluster. it is a textbook case of policy adventurism. the department, a part of the finance ministry, has not paused to wonder whether putting one company in charge of all financial transactions of the poor — between the government and them, and amongst themselves — can result in that company developing monopolistic tendencies. something that banks themselves are deeply apprehensive about. strangely, alarm bells did not go off inside the department even when the auctions to appoint BCs started, and bids touched unexpectedly low levels.
well. there is good news at the end of all that. as this story reports today…
the government is now thinking of using micro-atms, as the nandan nilekani report on micropayments had suggested, to make cash transfers reach across the last mile to targeted beneficiaries. whether these will work or not is an open question as well. but that is another story. to be written after another set of field trips. for now, i am glad that this one cluster, one BC model might be on its way out.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
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