Contributed articles presented at the Fifth National Seminar on "Indian Banking by 2000 A.D." convened on October 31, 1994 at Salem (Tamil Nadu) by the Department of Commerce, Madras University.

It has been often said, even by dispassionate observers, that our economic policies built on ideological considerations and economic assumptions are far removed from the realities of our situation. For more than three decades, we have been striving to design an economic policy and a planning procedure that are distinctly Indian, but the effort has often resulted in only mixing and merging borro wed ideas and experiences. However, whatever may have been the ideological elements influencing the thinking on economic policies in the formative period of the pre-independence days, the situation has changed considerably in the actual formation of economic policies since Independence, and the effort has been not to be too closely identified with any ideology, but to work out a policy that will draw upon all these ideological positions. To what extent we have succeeded, required a detailed examination. Accordingly, I brought out, a few years ago, a treatise on 'India's Economic Policies' which continues to be extremely popular, with the inteIlec tual elite, the world over. In this, the learned contributors, dwelt at length on the different aspects of India's Economic Policies from 1947-77, and brought out the strength and weaknesses of the Indian economic scene. The present work on 'India's Economic Development Strategies' is born out of the conviction that what India needs now is a set of strategies, which are a consistent set of policies, and that there is an urgent need for the same in Indian Planning.

Barons of Banking highlights the contributions of six distinguished personalities from the world of banking—Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas, Sir Chintaman D. Deshmukh, A.D. Shroff, H.T. Parekh, and R.K. Talwar—who not only played a pioneering role in the growth of the institutions which they founded, or were actively associated with, but left an indelible mark on the banking industry as a whole. Through the narration of the history of five key institutions - the Central Bank of India; the Reserve Bank of India; the State Bank of India; the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Ltd; and the Housing Development and Finance Corporation Ltd—the author gives us a keen insight into the contributions of these luminaries to banking in India. Also included is a narration of the recommendations of important committees and commissions which influenced the course of Indian banking. Divided into four parts, the book uses hitherto unused archival material recently put in the public domain by the RBI. Of particular interest is a discussion of the acrimonious relationship between Sir James Grigg, the Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council and Sir Osborne Smith, the first Governor of the RBI, which throws fresh light on a spat which remains unprecedented not only in the bank’s history, but possibly in all of banking history. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, this book will be of interest to both the academic and general reader and, of course, to the professional banker interested in a selective peep into the history of his profession.

INDIAN BANKING FOR STUDENTS OF B.COM/B.A & MANAGEMENT COURSES