Quick notes: Bad loans, Foreign degree...

• Irretrievably lost: Indian banks have restructured over Rs6 lakh crore (over $93 billion) in bad loans in the last three years.  Nearly 30% of all bad loans in India may not be recovered—ever.



• India's non farm-loan debts could settle all distressed farm loans: 7.5% of all lending in India have become non-performing assets. Prior to 2014, the ratio typically remained below 4%. Much of the NPA problem arose when commercial banks lent aggressively, for long durations, to the non-priority sector in the early 2000s, when the economy reached a growth rate of over 9%.



• Banking scam has UPA era roots: “Advice” came from the UPA govt to all PSU banks to change over to Finacle. They obeyed in a herd, despite the high cost involved. Given the leakages that have taken place in the banking system, a ruthless examination by investigating agencies should be made of the UPA decision to change a well-functioning software with a much more expensive (and plainly inadequate) alternative.



• Finacle: Was PC behind the 25-fold procurement of Banking Software in PNBScam? Chief executive of PSU Bank most likely did not know what “benefits” he or she was getting from the new product.




• Unified Payments Interface: Google is beating the Indian govt at its own game.



• Trump is making India great again: For Indians rethinking college abroad, home has new degree of possibility. “Earlier the US was pretty much the only option for students, but now there are more options within India and in Asia.”



• J-20 Chengdu: China deploys J-20 stealth jet fighter, names India as threat