06 | April | 2017 | Mostly Economics

Archive for April 6th, 2017

Why did Bombay takeover Calcutta as the leading financial centre? Some probable reasons…(Part -II)

April 6, 2017

This post written in jiffy has become one of the most popular posts of this blog. The post looked at a timeline when Bombay probably replaced Calcutta as the leading financial centre. The post drew data from Clearing house data which shows how by late 1940s more cheques were cleared in Bombay over Delhi. This data was supported by RBI history which showed how overtime RBI moved from a twin office of Calcutta and Bombay to just Bombay. This transiton also happened towards late 1940s.

However, the question still remains why did Bombay eventually take over? I came across a wonderful book written in 1943 – A study of Indian Money Market by Bimal C Ghose (1943). The book particularly studies Calcutta Money Market but compares Bombay and Calcutta financial centres.

Before why Bombay, let us look at some more data which shows how Calcutta was more prominent compared to Bombay. All data is drawn from the Ghose book.

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Posted in Discussion, Indian Economy/Financial Markets | 1 Comment »

Political bribes go cashless…The voters in TN get Flipkart and Amazon gifts?

April 6, 2017

Interesting story by Anna Issac:

Eight years ago, it was the ‘Thirumangalam formula’ that made headlines. During the 2009 Thirumangalam bye-elections, the ruling DMK, led by its Madurai strongman MK Alagiri, the elder son of party chief MK Karunanidhi, allegedly bribed voters systematically with cash.

Today, if the AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) faction belonging to former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam is to be believed, the modus operandi has changed. Cash is no longer the only currency operating in the RK Nagar bye-elections.

In a complaint filed to the Election Commission on Tuesday, the OPS faction accused the AIADMK (Amma) of wooing voters with gifts bought from e-retailers like Flipkart and Amazon.

Speaking to The News Minute, Manoj Pandian, former MLA, says, “They order gift items in bulk from Flipkart and Amazon and they send it to NBT Quarters in Tiruvottiyur. They then give tokens to voters and ask them to collect it.” Tiruvottiyur, incidentally, does not come fall in the RK Nagar limits but is in Chennai North.

While Pandian says that the AIADMK (PTA)’s legal team detected the malpractices on Monday, they fear that the bribes are still taking place in the constituency. He also added that the party has submitted evidence to the EC.

They create rules and break them as well…

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How many banks migrated from West Pakistan to India?

April 6, 2017

Yesterday, I had blogged about Pakistan bound banks during Partition. In the post, I pointed to two broad types of banks.

One which was Pakistan bound (East and West)
Two those who migrated from India to Pakistan and vice-versa.

We had shown most banks were in the first category. Only Habib Bank had migrated from Bombay, India to Karachi, Pakistan.

What about the banks which migrated from West Pakistan to India? (We keep our discussion to West Pakistan here as not much happened in East Pakistan.)

Again, RBI Statistical tables (1947) provide several answers and raise questions.

There were a total of 17 banks which migrated from West Pakistan to India. Around 14 were from Lahore, 2 from Rawalpindi and one from Sialkot.

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