The History Cell of the Department of Economic
Policy and Analysis is entrusted with the Project of writing the
institutional history the Reserve Bank of India. This aims at
documenting, collating, compiling and presenting a comprehensive,
authentic and objective study of the working of the Bank, the
events, the policies, the institutional development of the organisation
as well as the evolution of the central banking in India.
The History intends to serve as a work of reference
and an important contribution to the literature on monetary, central
banking and development history of India.
The institutional history of the central bank reflects,
in some ways, the monetary history of the country, bringing down
to concrete and human terms the policies, the considerations,
the mistakes, the thought processes, the decision making and the
broader canvas of political economy of the times.
The Bank has so far published three volumes. The
first covered the period leading to the inception of the Bank
in 1935 up to the establishment of the Indian Republic in 1950;
this was written by SLM Simha under the overall guidance of the
editorial committee headed by former governor C.D. Deshmukh and
published in 1970. The second covers the period 1951 to 1967,
i.e., just prior to the nationalisation of banks which marked
a watershed in Indian banking; this was compiled by the History
team, written by G. Balachandran and published in 1997.
The third
volume published in March 2006 has documented the period from
1967 to 1981, i.e., the run up to the nationalisation of banks,
and the post nationalisation era, the "growth period"
of banking which led to an exponential expansion in banking, bringing
banking to the masses. The logic of the cut off date of 1981 is
that this period represents the high point of statist logic in
banking and finance. This was also the period when the seeds of
change were being sowed and intellectual and industry thoughts
were veering towards libralisation.
The source material for the project is essentially
primary material from the Bank's archives, the various committees
appointed by the Bank and the Government, the Bank's reports,
Five Year Plans, Lok Sabha proceedings, newspaper reports, as
well as secondary material etc. which reflect the public perception
of the Bank's policies. The source material also consists of oral
history recorded, especially of past executives and other functionaries
of the Bank.
The History Cell looks forward to suggestions /
comments / photographs / documents as well as material, anecdotal
or otherwise, from members of the banking community, retired officials,
past employees or for that matter any member of the public at
the address rbihist@vsnl.net