as, urban and rural women and men, senior citizens, defence personnel and even school children. let me illustrate with a communication initiative that rbi has undertaken two years ago. the ombudsman scheme for banks was revised recently and hence, the objective was to inform the widest section of our population. a press release might not have fully served the purpose. so, a decision was taken to issue an advertisement in print media – for which the content was indeed common but the languages differed. it was interesting to note that while the 15 leading hindi newspapers with a larger circulation at 8. 1 million and a far larger readership at 87. 0 million helped us reach an audience that was almost five times larger than what we could have reached if we had advertised in leading english newspapers which are 17 and have a combined circulation of 6. 3 million and readership of 17. 9 million. in fact, in india, 54 leading non - english newspapers have a circulation of 21. 4 million and a readership of 197. 2 million. given this experience of ours, we made the rbi website available apart from in english and hindi, which are official languages of the union government, in 11 other national languages spoken by a large section of the population. further, the rbi last year launched a financial literacy project to educate the common person who is generally not financially literate. the project aims at imparting information and knowledge about banking, finance, and central banking to the common person in her ’ or his own language. the material published under this project is, therefore, also made available in 11 major indian languages apart from english and hindi through a multi - lingual website. these illustrations fully endorse what professor blinder has said in his paper “ in the end, central banks derive their democratic legitimacy and hence their cherished independence from the consent of the general public ” select issues relevant to emes let me attempt a few generalizations on the subject, keeping in view the eme perspectives. first, it is not very clear whether the empirical research on the subject referred in professor blinder ’ s paper has adequately covered emes. for example, bric countries ( brazil, russia, india and china ), south africa, indonesia, saudi arabia etc., are emerging as significant players in the global economy. are their experiences different from those researched so far? second, the government happens to be a significant player in many emes, especially in the financial sector. in the circumstances, should communication

bank of japan lowered the policy rate to 0. 25 percent in september 1998, reaching a situation in which the conventional monetary policy tool of setting the policy interest rate had been almost exhausted. in the jargon, japan ’ s economy was facing the “ zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. ” however, economic activity and prices did not improve. in this situation, the bank decided to embark on various unconventional monetary policy measures ( chart 4 ). i believe many of you have heard expressions such as “ zero interest rate policy, ” “ quantitative easing, ” “ credit easing, ” and “ forward guidance. ” these are names of unconventional monetary policy measures introduced by central banks in the united states and europe after the global financial crisis. in fact, most of these policy measures were originally implemented in one form or another by the bank of japan ahead of other central banks in response to the 15 years of deflation since the latter half of the 1990s. because of time constraints, i will skip discussing the specifics of the respective policies ; but examining the policy responses taken prior to qqe highlights the following two points. first, the past policies have contributed to preventing japan ’ s economy from falling into a deflationary spiral of continuing rapid economic deterioration and considerable price declines, by containing systemic disruption of the financial system and underpinning the economy. with financial institutions burdened with massive nonperforming loans, the financial system was under considerable stress. however, large - scale liquidity provision by the bank had the effect of dispelling financial institutions ’ anxiety about liquidity, and, as a result, prevented a severe credit contraction. one of the important lessons we have learned the hard way thus concerns how liquidity provision by central banks through their lender of last resort function can contribute to maintaining the stability of the financial system. i have shared this lesson from japan ’ s experience with the central banking community, and it has been incorporated in the responses of the major economies to the 2008 global financial crisis. from immediately after the collapse of lehman brothers, central banks in the major economies provided large amounts of liquidity. in addition, they took coordinated action in providing u. s. dollar funds - supplying operations. in my view, the past policies by the bank of japan contributed not only to maintaining the stability of the financial systems, but also to underpinning the economy by providing accommodative financial conditions. in fact, japan ’ s long - term interest rates remained at a low