Since independence, expanding the outreach of financial services to the poor has been at the centre of the poverty alleviation policy in India. The successive surveys of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) {All-India Debt and Investment Surveys (AIDIS)} document a steady rise in the importance of banks as a source of rural household credit since 1951–52.
The rebalancing in global portfolios, as funds search for better yields, has surfaced in our domestic financial markets as volatility in the peso/dollar exchange rate, and in the local bond and equity markets. Going forward, should the uneven global growth scenario persist, we may see this translate into more pronounced changes in trade patterns.