Since this is the first in the series of lectures, I will recall in brief Mr. Ray’s major achievements. First, and perhaps the foremost is his pioneering role in the development of women’s help groups in Andhra Pradesh, which led the SHG movement to become the most impressive mass movement in this area.
If we revisit the discussions based on the experience of the recent crisis, it can be summarized as follows. First, the complementarity of functioning between banks and capital market is important. While the functioning of corporate bond and CP markets declined significantly in Japan during the crisis, bank lending substituted the financial intermediation function during such phase and underpinned the rapidly deteriorating firms’ funding.