Category: Banking and Finance
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The Climate Finance Mirage: When Green Promises Meet Empty Pockets
The Cost of Saving the Planet Climate change is often presented as a technological challenge. In reality, it is increasingly becoming a financial challenge. The world is asking developing countries to build renewable energy systems, strengthen climate resilience, protect vulnerable communities, modernize infrastructure, and reduce emissions, all at the same…
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Currency Wars and the New Geopolitical Economy
For decades, currencies were treated largely as economic instruments linked to trade balances, inflation control, and monetary stability. Today, currencies are slowly transforming into geopolitical weapons. Exchange rates are no longer merely numbers decided by markets or central banks. They are becoming instruments of strategic influence, economic pressure, export competitiveness,…
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Banking Expansion or Systemic Risk? The Hidden Questions Behind India’s Push for Rural and Informal Sector Lending
India’s banking system is once again being asked to play the role of economic rescuer. The recent direction to Public Sector Banks to prepare scalable lighthouse initiatives for rural lending and informal sector financing appears positive on the surface because agriculture, small enterprises, street vendors, artisans, and rural entrepreneurs continue…
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Platforms, Power and the Invisible Control of Everyday Life
The history of economic power has always moved through different centres of control. In earlier centuries, landowners controlled agriculture, industrialists controlled factories, and banks controlled finance. Today, a new form of power is emerging through consumer technology platforms that increasingly shape how people buy, travel, communicate, learn, entertain themselves, and…
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The Strange Moment When Global Markets Rise but India Slows Down
For many Indians watching television or checking stock apps every evening, the current situation feels confusing. American markets are touching new highs, some European and Asian indices are recovering, technology stocks globally are attracting fresh investment, and optimism around artificial intelligence and energy transition is pushing capital into many economies.…
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India’s Tax Maze and the Growing Global Discomfort with Investing in India
For decades India was presented to the world as a land of demographic strength, entrepreneurship, democracy, and long-term growth potential. From the economic reforms of 1991 onwards, foreign investors slowly began to see India as a serious alternative to many emerging markets. Global fund managers travelled across continents explaining the…
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MSMEs and Credit Facilities: Growth Without Ground Reality
Historical Expansion but Structural Weakness For decades, India has celebrated MSMEs as the backbone of its economy, contributing nearly 30 percent to GDP and employing over 110 million people. Yet, the story of credit to MSMEs has always been a story of intent without deep structural correction. From nationalisation of…
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From Easy Liquidity to Measured Capital: Rewriting the Logic of Finance
A shifting foundation of growth and disciplineFor decades, financial systems across the world have oscillated between abundance and caution. The period after the global financial crisis saw liquidity becoming the primary engine of growth, with central banks flooding markets to revive demand and confidence. Cheap capital flowed easily, often overlooking…
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Liquidity discipline meeting growth ambition
The financial system today stands at a delicate intersection where liquidity management is no longer just a technical exercise of central banks but a strategic lever shaping the direction of economic growth. Historically, financial systems moved in cycles of excess liquidity followed by sharp tightening, from the post liberalisation credit…
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The Fracturing Path to 2030: When Finance, Debt, and Geopolitics Collide
The global development narrative has always been shaped by cycles of ambition and constraint, but the current moment reflects something deeper—a structural dislocation in how development itself is financed, governed, and prioritized. The vision of achieving global development goals by 2030 is increasingly strained, not merely due to implementation gaps…