'IT players failed us in financial inclusion drive'- says the RBI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has accused IT giants of being indifferent towards the cause of financial inclusion in India. “The scale of business in financial inclusion is so big that we need participation from big IT companies,” said KC Chakrabarty, deputy governor, RBI, speaking on the sidelines of a financial inclusion seminar organised by Skoch, a consultancy firm. He added lack of interest and involvement by big IT companies was making banks’ endeavour of financial inclusion unsuccessful.

According to Mr Chakrabarty, involvement of big IT companies was important to bring down the transaction cost. (via 'IT players failed us in financial inclusion drive' - The Economic Times).

How India missed out …

Due to our well-cultivated tunnel vision about English language (amongst many other things), India missed out on Japanese investments, technology and business. Indian loyalty to English language exceeds the loyalty of the British themselves to their language – and we refuse to see how this affects us.

Reforming Indian education

India urgently needs to put more languages in lingual-education basket – instead of putting all our eggs in the English language basket. We can't do business with the French or Germans, Spanish or the Arabic speaking world. The Chinese and Japanese are out of bounds to us – as are the Swahili and the Bantu.

The Indian language basket also calls for diversification. India needs to learn more foreign languages. But with our bankruptcy of ideas on restructuring Indian education system or the vested interest banging begging bowls in front of the Indian tax payer!

The Indian software 'success'

The great ‘software' success story is actually two countries – US and UK who give between 70%-80% of Indian software business! This is coolie labour! We are missing out on the massive Japanese, French and the Spanish markets because we have not invested in those foreign languages. Same story in Europe also – major opportunities overlooked and ignored. And we have missed out on computing in Indian languages, because we have not invested there either. So, RBI's peeve is right - but the solution is somewhere else.

Is it due to the apparent Indian decision to tie its future to the sinking ship of the Anglo Saxon Bloc?