Modern banking in India

The first edition of this work was in press in the early months of World War II. The second edition delayed con siderably by war time difficulties should have seen the light of day in the closing months of the war but for cer tain deplorable mishaps. The reception accorded almost without exception to the first edition of the book everywhere, and nowhere more emphatically than in Great Britain and the United States, was as great a surprise as encouragement. Its recognition by the University of London as meriting the distinction of D.Sc. was only the most conspicuous of many generous tributes. While ex pressing gratitude to them all and particularly to bankers in this country, I should like to acknowledge that this makes the author all the more keenly conscious of the blemishes and short-comings of the work.

In the economic upheaval set in motion by a war of such magnitude, banking like other economic activities had to operate amidst a radically altered environment. While it cannot be doubted that some features of this environment must continue to influence banking for many years to come and new ones are likely to be introduced as a consequence of any post war reconstruction, there are many influences in operation at present which are but of temporary signi ficance. The original text of this work which carried the account almost to the outbreak of the war has therefore been left materially unchanged except for the statistical material which has been brought up to date as far as pos sible. The trends and developments of war time banking based on these statistics are presented in the closing chapter.

While there is in India still much cause to lament the absence of close co-operation and mutual assistance between "academic" and "practical" people such as have advanced strikingly both interests in countries like England, Sweden, etc., it must be recorded here that the present work could hardly have been undertaken or executed but for much generous and appreciative assistance from many quarters, particularly distinguished bankers in this country. Till the recent establishment of the Reserve Bank of India with its means and powers to collect and publish banking informa tion, serious study of banking meant an approach to each individual bank or banker with all the difficulties which such approach must entail. The highly confidential charac ter of all banking business is itself a legitimate difficulty, which in one case at least was carried to the length of pre cluding the author from the use of even printed and pub lished balance-sheets and those too, of the years before World War I!