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The webinar organised by NCAER is part of the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) Chair Unit’s webinar series. NCAER established the IEPF Chair Unit in 2020, with funding from the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority, Ministry of Corporate Affairs. NCAER’s IEPF Chair Unit conducts research on contemporary issues related to investor education and protection, and an analysis of related economic and regulatory issues.

Recently a government-appointed committee to review the quality of audits has recommended that the powers of the National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) be enlarged.  It should cover much more than investigating misconduct by auditors and company managements. If the committee has its way, the NFRA will be able to seek information from promoters, directors, and executives in the course of investigation into the conduct of auditors. Financial statements certified by chartered accountant are the very bedrock on which everything else is based, whether it is investment decisions by retail investors and mutual funds or lending decisions by banks. Consequently, anything that improves the quality and integrity of these statements is a shot for retail investors.

What does all this mean for investor protection? How can the NFRA deliver on its promise? To discuss this and more, NCAER along with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, under the aegis of the ministry-funded Investor Protection and Education Chair at the NCAER, organised a webinar on this subject. The panel of experts invited for the discussion were; Amarjit Chopra, former head of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and member of the Expert Committee; Pradeep Ramakrishnan, General Manager, Securities and Exchange Board of India and Hemindra Hazari, Independent Analyst.  The discussion was moderated by Mythili Bhusnurmath, Senior Adviser, NCAER.

About the NFRA

Amarjit Chopra is a Chartered Accountant with more than 46 years of professional experience. He is a senior partner in GSA & Associates LLP, New Delhi. He was elected to Central Council of ICAI for five terms of three years each consecutively from 1998 to 2013 and also served as its Vice President and President. He served the Northern India Regional Council (NIRC) of ICAI for two terms and was its Chairman for the year 1988-89. He completed his Ph. D. from Apex University.

Hemindra Hazari is a Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered independent research analyst with over 25 years’ experience in the Indian capital markets. He has specialized in banking and the macro-economy. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Studies from the University of South Carolina, USA and a Bachelors in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.

Pradeep Ramakrishnan is General Manager, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). He joined SEBI in the year 2002 and worked in the Compliance and monitoring division. He is presently at the Department of Debt and Hybrid Securities at SEBI. Previously, he has worked with Madras Fertilizers Limited and Kothari Petrochemicals Limited. He is a commerce graduate and a qualified Company Secretary.

Mythili Bhusnurmath is Senior Adviser, NCAER, and Consulting Editor, ET Now TV. She holds a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. She also holds a law degree from Delhi University.

The webinar organised by NCAER is part of its Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) Chair Unit’s webinar series. NCAER established the IEPF Chair Unit in 2020, with funding from the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority, Ministry of Corporate Affairs. NCAER’s IEPF Chair Unit conducts research on contemporary issues related to investor education and protection, and an analysis of related economic and regulatory issues.

Stock market instruments come in various forms. But regardless of the nomenclature and the finer differences between them, all instruments can be classified into two broad categories: Equity and Debt. However, the difference doesn’t end there. In the Indian context, equity markets are well-developed and have a huge retail presence, especially post-Covid-19, when thanks to a combination of factors retail investors turned to equity in a big way. In contrast, our bond markets are notable for the absence of retail investors. Whether it is government bonds (G-Secs) or corporate bonds, the market is dominated by institutional players. While the G-Sec market is dominated by banks, insurance companies and pension funds that are mandated to invest some proportion of their funds in G-Secs, private placements are the norm in the corporate bond market.

Why are retail investors reluctant to invest in either G-Secs (despite their risk-free nature) or corporate bonds? Is it lack of awareness/financial literacy/high (?) incidence of fraud and default/poor recourse? Can we energise the bond market and make it as vibrant as the equity market? The webinar hosted  discussions on these issues and the way forward with panel of experts: Usha Thorat, former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India; Ananth Narayan, Associate Professor, SPJIMR, Mumbai and Senior India Analyst, Observatory Group, LLC and Madan Sabnavis, formerly Chief Economist, Care Ratings, presently Chief Economist, Bank of Baroda. The discussion was moderated by Mythili Bhusnurmath, Senior Adviser, NCAER.

Panellists:

Usha Thorat is a former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Her experience covers foreign exchange and reserves management, debt management of Central and State governments, development and regulation of money, forex and government securities markets, rural planning and credit, cooperative banking, customer service and grievance redressal, and payment and settlement systems. She has an MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics.

Ananth Narayan is an Associate Professor at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. He is an international banking and financial markets expert. He holds over 24 years of experience in banking and financial markets with Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Citibank. He holds a B.Tech. from IIT Bombay, and a post graduate diploma in Management from IIM Lucknow.

Madan Sabnavis is the Chief Economist at the Bank of Baroda. Prior to this, he was the Chief Economist at Care Ratings Ltd. He has over 30 years of experience across development banking, commercial banking, engineering, commodity exchange and credit ratings. He has an MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics.

Mythili Bhusnurmath is Senior Adviser, NCAER, and Consulting Editor, ET Now TV. She holds a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. She also holds a law degree from Delhi University.

A webinar on Health Data Ecosystem and Pandemic Preparedness was held with Dr Gagandeep Kang, Professor, CMC Vellore; Dr Sanghamitra Pati, Director, ICMR Bhubaneswar; and Dr Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, Professor, University of East Anglia. Dr Aravinda Meera Guntupalli, Senior Lecturer in Global Health, University of Aberdeen, was the discussant. The discussion was moderated by Dr Arokiasamy Perianayagam, Professor, NCAER.

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought into focus the need for a more comprehensive integrated health data ecosystem to generate real-time data for enabling policy decisions. Public health systems, policy response, and pandemic preparedness depend on the quality and range of health ecosystem data, including the speed and efficiency of data analysis. The World Health Organization (WHO) envisions a world where people are better protected and safer from health emergencies, irrespective of the locations and circumstances in which they live. The public health response to the ongoing pandemic in a high-resource setting shows how the data ecosystem system can be used as an effective information, knowledge, and policy tool for tackling health emergencies and augmenting preparedness by leveraging and linking different data sources. These diverse sources of data could include clinical settings, primary care, diagnostic laboratories, public health surveillance systems, clinical research, emergency departments, epidemiology, and multidisciplinary studies. It is also imperative to use innovative approaches for capturing data and harnessing the existing resources during ‘peace-time’ for building infrastructure capabilities to deal with pandemic outbreaks. This seminar  deliberated on the lessons learnt and the infrastructure that would be needed through forecasting and prediction models to facilitate decision-making in the real world through adaptation to operational realities.

Gagandeep Kang, Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, and currently, Executive Director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, recently became the first Indian woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Dr Kang’s research focuses on viral infections in children, the testing of rotaviral vaccines and other enteric infections. She has written extensively on COVID-19 policy response, including the book, Till We Win: India’s Fight against the Covid-19 Pandemic, co-authored with Chandrakant Lahariya and Randeep Guleria, (Penguin, 2020).

Sanghamitra Pati, a physician-cum-scientist, is currently the Director of Regional Medical Research Centre of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She is an expert in public health and has worked extensively on multi-morbidity research in public health settings. She has also been a lead in the first ever study of multi-morbidity in India.

Peter Lloyd-Sherlock is Professor of Social Policy and International Development at the University of East Anglia. His main area of research encompasses social protection, health, and the well-being of older people in developing countries. He is also interested in the economic and social effects of non-communicable diseases, such as stroke, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Aravinda Meera Guntupalli is Senior Lecturer in Global Health, University of Aberdeen. Her research interests are motivated by welfare issues, nutrition, and health. Her recent work is on gender differentials and well-being; nutritional transition, and health inequalities across the life course; and non-communicable diseases and non-monetary indicators of poverty and health in later life mostly using quantitative methods and/or historical perspective. Her research covers various countries, including India, the UK, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.

Arokiasamy Perianayagam is a Professor at NCAER leading research programmes in the area of health and health economics.
He has been a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, and prior to that, served as Professor and Head of the Department of Development Studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, where he served as faculty for over three decades. His areas of teaching and research expertise cover demography; public health and health economics; ageing and global health development studies; and, large-scale health survey research.

A webinar to discuss the Implications of the Haryana Government’s job quota for locals in the light of recent judicial pronouncements was organised by NCAER.  The webinar, the fourth of our webinar series titled ‘Conversations with NCAER’, was held with Neeraj Kaushal, Professor, Columbia University, Santosh Mehrotra, Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, and Arghya Sengupta, Founder and Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.  The discussion was moderated by Mythili Bhusnurmath, Senior Adviser, NCAER.

The discussion focused on the implications of job quotas legislated by the Haryana state government, in the light of the Supreme Court setting aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s earlier stay on the job quota law. The recent order came on an appeal filed by the Haryana Government challenging the High Court order granting an interim stay on its law providing 75 per cent quota in private sector jobs for residents of the state.

Neeraj Kaushal is Professor of Social Policy at Columbia School of Social Work, Columbia University, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a labour and health economist and conducts research on how policies and events affect the well-being of low-income families, with special emphasis on immigrants.

Santosh Mehrotra is currently Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, and Adjunct Faculty at the Public Health Foundation of India.  Earlier, he was the Director General of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research, New Delhi. His research interests include industry and trade issues, impact of macroeconomic policy on health and education, and the informal sector.

Arghya Sengupta is Founder and Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. His areas of specialisation are constitutional law and regulation of the digital economy. He has served on a number of government committees including the Justice B.N. Srikrishna-led committee of experts on a data protection framework for India.

Mythili Bhusnurmath is an economist-turned-banker-turned journalist and is presently Senior Adviser, NCAER, and Consulting Editor, ET Now TV.