50 Years of Bank Nationalization: A Peek into Social and Development Banking

By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | July 19, 2019

Fifty years ago, on July 19, 1969, Indira Gandhi, who was both Prime Minister and Finance Minister at that time, decided to nationalize 14 major privately-owned commercial banks of India. Banks with a deposit base of over Rs500 million were selected for nationalization while foreign banks were excluded. Six more private banks were later…

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India’s Shadow Banking System is Facing an Imminent Crisis

By Kavaljit Singh | Briefing Paper # 26 | June 14, 2019

India’s shadow banking system is in deep trouble. An imminent crisis has been slowly but surely brewing in India’s shadow banking sector for the past one year. The first signs of trouble in this sector emerged in June 2018 when Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) – a major non-banking financial company – defaulted…

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The EU’s Proposal for WTO Modernisation: A Critical Assessment

By Biswajit Dhar | Briefing Paper # 25 | June 12, 2019

In June 2018, the Council of the European Union gave the European Commission a mandate “to pursue WTO modernisation in pursuit of the objectives of making the WTO more relevant and adaptive to a changing world, and strengthening the WTO’s effectiveness”. A few months later, a group of 13 countries, which also included the…

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“Greening” the Belt and Road Initiative? What about People’s Rights?

By CSOs | Statement | May 30, 2019

The second Belt and Road Summit took place in Beijing, China from 25 to 27 April 2019, two years after the first summit was held. Attended by 38 head of states from around the world, United Nation’s Secretary General António Guterres and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, this year’s summit was bigger than the…

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Recent Experiences with Capital Controls

By Kavaljit Singh | Policy Brief # 4 | May 2, 2019

It is difficult to make any generalization on the countries’ experiences as significant heterogeneity exists across countries in terms of type, nature, sequencing, and intensity of capital controls. However, some notable trends are visible. For instance, over the last three decades, there has been a marked shift regarding preference over the types of capital…

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