If in the 1950s somebody wrote a future finance story about India, they may not have predicted the market that faces a retail consumer today. Till the 1990s, your savings and investing decisions were dependent on the government. No wonder Indian households chose gold and real estate as saving sumps. The financial sector was a reflection of the overall direction of the economy. Costs were high, service poor in state-owned and run finance. But post 1991, change came suddenly to finance and this column maps some of those changes as India celebrates 70 years of political and 26 years of economic freedom.
Banks
The cracking open of the Indian economy in 1991 spilled over to finance. A new set of entities were given banking licenses. Axis Bank Ltd (earlier called UTI Bank), HDFC Bank Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd were banks of the 1990s. With hungry-for-business private-sector banks in the marketplace, there was an infusion of products, services, technology and choice. By the 2000s we began to forget the tyranny of the sweater-knitting bank clerk who refused to budge, the sweltering lines at the cash counter and the time it took to clear outstation cheques.
