Narasimham Committee on Banking Sector Reforms (1998)

From the 1991 India economic crisis to its status of third largest economy in the world by 2011, India has grown significantly in terms of economic development. So has its banking sector. During this period, recognising the evolving needs of the sector, the Finance Ministry of Government of India (GOI) set up various committees with the task of analysing India's banking sector and recommending legislation and regulations to make it more effective, competitive and efficient. Two such expert Committees were set up under the chairmanship of M. Narasimham. They submitted their recommendations in the 1990s in reports widely known as the Narasimham Committee-I (1991) report and the Narasimham Committee-II (1998) Report. These recommendations not only helped unleash the potential of banking in India, they are also recognised as a factor towards minimising the impact of global financial crisis starting in 2007. Unlike the socialist-democratic era of the 1960s to 1980s, India is no longer insulated from the global economy and yet its banks survived the 2008 financial crisis relatively unscathed, a feat due in part to these Narasimham Committees.

During the decades of the 60s and the 70s, India nationalised most of its banks. This culminated with the balance of payments crisis of the Indian economy where India had to airlift gold to International Monetary Fund (IMF) to loan money to meet its financial obligations. This event called into question the previous banking policies of India and triggered the era of economic liberalisation in India in 1991. Given that rigidities and weaknesses had made serious inroads into the Indian banking system by the late 1980s, the Government of India (GOI), post-crisis, took several steps to remodel the country's financial system. (Some claim that these reforms were influenced by the IMF and the World Bank as part of their loan conditionality to India in 1991). The banking sector, handling 80% of the flow of money in the economy, needed serious reforms to make it internationally reputable, accelerate the pace of reforms and develop it into a constructive usher of an efficient, vibrant and competitive economy by adequately supporting the country's financial needs. In the light of these requirements, two expert Committees were set up in 1990s under the chairmanship of M. Narasimham (an ex-RBI (Reserve Bank of India) governor) which are widely credited for spearheading the financial sector reform in India. The first Narasimhan Committee (Committee on the Financial System – CFS) was appointed by Manmohan Singh as India's Finance Minister on 14 August 1991, and the second one (Committee on Banking Sector Reforms) was appointed by P.Chidambaram as Finance Minister in December 1997. Subsequently, the first one widely came to be known as the Narasimham Committee-I (1991) and the second one as Narasimham-II Committee(1998). This article is about the recommendations of the Second Narasimham Committee, the Committee on Banking Sector Reforms.

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