Viral V Acharya: Some reflections on micro credit and how a public credit registry can strengthen

Remarks by Dr Viral V Acharya, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) Tech Fest, Mumbai, 24 January 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
24 January 2019

Sometimes when I sit down to write down a new set of remarks, the same old thoughts cross my mind, a bit like one's favorite songs that are so deeply entrenched in the psyche that at the end of a long day when one is reflecting on the subject, they start playing all over again, without any reason and without any conscious decision to rewind to them. In my case, a few striking images flash across my eyes. I have tried in what follows to describe these images and what their collage means for me. They also convey how I try to think about economics and finance more generally - as the media to understand daily situations of households around us and to derive insights on how these situations could be made better, most often in some small ways and occasionally with a big bang- After all, the origin of the word 'economics' is in the ancient Greek term 'oikonomía', meaning 'management of a household'. Based on careful research, many [notably Professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)] contend, that it is the poor who often practice the best economics as the costs they face from mismanaging their households can be rather high.

So let me describe these images that flash across my eyes one by one.