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By: Raghuram Rajan,  Viral Acharaya The RBI recently released a report of an Internal orking Group (IWG) to review bank ownership guidelines. RBI reviews its regulations periodically, and by and large this working group has done the usual thorough job. Yet its most important recommendation, couched amidst a number of largely technical regulatory rationalisations, is a bombshell: it proposes to allow Indian corporate houses into banking. The proposal raises an important question: Why now? Have we learnt something that allows us to override all the prior cautions on allowing industrial houses into banking? We would argue no. Indeed, to the contrary, it’s even more important today to stick to the tried and tested limits on corporate involvement in banking. As in many parts of the world, banks in India are rarely allowed to fail – the recent rescue of Yes Bank NSE -3.74 % and of Lakshmi Vilas Bank NSE 4.79 % are examples. For this reason, depositors in scheduled banks know their money is s

 By : Grima Bora  ET India has around 89.5 crore people living in rural areas. The number of ATMs? 5%. According to an RBI data, BY Garima Bora English Edition | E-Paper Tariq / out of 6 lakh villages in India, less than 30,000 villages have ATMs. To ensure nancial inclusion to the last-mile consumers bereft of digital payments or even ATMs at the least, the Reserve Bank of India came up with the Business Correspondents (BC) model in 2006. BCs are retail agents deployed by banks for providing banking services at locations which do not have a bank branch/ATM. These agents can perform various nancial services such as identication of borrowers, collection of money, and preliminary processing of loan applications. However, the grass is still not greener on the rural side. Nearly 10 lakh BCs work in rural and urban underbanked areas on a commission-based model where they get 0.5% of the transaction amount or Rs 15, whichever is lower by the bank on Direct Benet Transfers (DBT). Anand Kumar

 By: ET (This story originally appeared in on Nov 25, 2020) Bengaluru: The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is seeking inputs from a slew of ministries and government agencies to build consensus on and hasten the launch of regulations to govern all forms of electronic commerce in the country, people in the know told ET. At a recent meeting, attended by representatives from Reserve Bank of India, India Post and the ministries of electronics & IT (MeitY) and consumer aairs, DPIIT oicials discussed the proposed regulation, the rst draft of which was released in February 2019. The DPIIT outreach aims to ensure the ecommerce proposals do not clash with other upcoming legislations, government oicials said. Some Issues Identied Personal and non-personal data policies, the consumer protection Bill and various taxation policies are in the works that aect online commerce, social media and Internet companies in India. “The process is on and some issues have also

 By:  By  Saritha Rai ,  Bloomberg A battle between Amazon.com Inc. and Reliance Industries NSE -0.81 % Ltd. to dominate India’s $1 trillion consumer market is stoking nationalist rhetoric in a courtroom and outside, as the two companies tussle over the future of a distressed local retailer. At the center of the case is Amazon’s eorts to block Reliance’s planned purchase of Future Group’s assets, saying the Indian retailer violated a contract by agreeing to a sale to a rival controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. The Delhi High Court is now weighing if the U.S. e-commerce giant has any legal basis to object to the transaction and a ruling is expected in weeks. The legal spat has not only revealed the intensity of the ght between two of the world’s richest men -- Je Bezos and Ambani -- but has also sparked a “foreign versus local” debate. A lawyer for Future, in his argument, painted Amazon as the “Big Brother in America” out to crush a small local company, while a retailer lobby grou

 Surabhi Agarwal  ET NEW DELHI: The IT industry is seeking permanent work from anywhere arrangement for units operating in  Special Economic Zones  (SEZ), from where nearly 60% of IT services are exported. This follows a government move earlier this month to ease a set of rules for the IT and IT-enabled Services industry permitting work from anywhere on a permanent basis. In discussions with the  Ministry of Commerce  – the latest of which took place on Tuesday -- IT industry lobby group  Nasscom  said clarity on this issue will allow the industry to plan a blended work model in future. In a significant reform initiative, the government eased regulations for the industry under the Other Service Provider (OSP) guidelines of the  Department of Telecom  (DoT). The registration requirement for OSPs was done away with altogether and the BPO industry engaged in data-related work was taken out of the ambit of OSP regulations. Other requirements, such as deposit of bank guarantees, frequent re

 By: Danish Khan When it comes to 5G use cases, enhanced mobile broadband and fixed wireless access are major use cases. There are devices available already for these use cases...It is time to make the spectrum available and go straight into commercial deployments." Swedish telecom gear maker  Ericsson  said that India needs to go straight into commercial deployment of  5G  technology with already available use cases like enhanced mobile broadband and fixed wireless access. In an interaction with ET’s Danish Khan, Nitin Bansal, Head of  Ericsson India  and Head of Network Solutions, South-East Asia, Oceania & India said that devices are already available for  5G in India  and affordable spectrum can help telcos quickly roll out 5G services. Edited excerpts How do you see delay in 5G trials and auctions? When it comes to 5G use cases, enhanced mobile broadband and fixed wireless access are major use cases. There are devices available already for these use cases. We have done tr