several initiatives have been taken to achieve financial awareness and literacy among various target groups, which included publication of comic books on banking and rbi ; games on financial education ; arranging school / college visits for creating financial awareness ; participation in exhibitions / fairs / melas at the state & district levels ; conducting essay competitions and quizzes in schools to create awareness about banking and rbi ; outreach programmes undertaken by thetop management and regional offices ; rbi ’ s young scholars scheme, etc. banks have been advised to setup financial literacy centres ( flcs ) in the 630 plus offices of the lead district managers ( ldms ). as at the end of december 2012, 658 flcs were functioning and 1. 5 million people were educated during the period april to december 2012. further, 35, 000 rural branches of scbs including rrbs have been mandated to undertake outdoor financial literacy activities, at least once a month, with focus on financially excluded population. in order to link the financially excluded segment with the banking system, a “ model ” for conduct of literacy camps to be held by banks has been designed, detailing the operational modalities to culminate in effective financial access to the excluded people. further, to ensure consistency in the financial literacy material reaching the target audience in a simple and lucid manner, rbi has prepared a comprehensive financial literacy material consisting of a financial literacy guide, financial diary and a set of 16 financial literacy posters ( few posters have been displayed below ). v ) education one of the most important things, which i want to touch upon before concluding is education, as i see there are a large number of youngsters assembled here. the efforts and outlay made by government alone will not meet the requirements of outlay on education. the scope of education has widened both in india and abroad covering new courses in diversified areas. realizing the importance of education for economic development and raising overall living standards, rbi, has classified loans and advances granted to individuals for educational purposes, including vocational courses up to rs. 10 lakh for studies in india and rs. 20 lakh for studies abroad, under “ priority sector ”. with a view to enable banks, the indian banks ’ association has brought out a model scheme for educational loan in the year 2001, bis central bankers ’ speeches which facilitated economically weaker sections of the society to avail educational loans from scheduled banks with modified easier norms. the scheme was revised by iba subsequently, the latest being in september 2012. loans for education should be seen as an investment

the ccps to be treated as “ too big to fail ” systemic entities and regulated / supervised within a globally harmonized set of standards. containing pro - cyclicality both prudential regulations and accounting standards have increased pro - cyclical behavior among banks. regulators need to recognize pro - cyclicality as a very natural unavoidable behavior. as noted by kindleberger ( 2005 ), “ … the cycle of manias and panics results from the pro - cyclical changes in the supply of credit ; the credit supply increases rapidly in good times, and then when economic growth slackens, the rate of growth of credit has often declined sharply … minsky believed that pro - cyclical increases in the supply of credit in good times and the decline in the supply of credit in less buoyant economic times led to fragility in financial arrangements and increased the likelihood of financial crisis. ” the basel committee broadly defines pro - cyclicality as the adverse feedback mechanisms through which the financial system can amplify business fluctuations and possibly cause or exacerbate financial instability. the committee is working on various proposals intended to contain procyclical elements in regulation. building countercyclical capital buffers : given the fact that pro - cyclicality is unavoidable, building capital buffers during good times over and above the risk weighted capital levels is necessary. such counter - cyclical capital prescription could theoretically be influenced through any of the elements of the capital equation : the percentage number which could oscillate between a point measure and a range measure, the risk weights applicable to different asset classes, individual constituents of capital etc. there is a consensus on the establishment of a capital buffer above the minimum that is met or exceeded in good times. there are several technical issues to be addressed including whether these should be linked to broad measure of credit aggregates or earnings. dynamic provisioning : the fundamental principle underpinning dynamic provisioning is that provisions are made against all outstanding loans based on an estimate of forward looking expected loss instead of incurred losses. the benefit is that such provisioning would make the balance sheets less vulnerable to cyclical fluctuations. the foremost critique of the above approach has come from the accounting fraternity which interprets this as an instrument which can be potentially misused for profit smoothing. however, post crisis there is greater appreciation of the prudential benefits of dynamic provisioning even from accounting standard setters. it should be possible to have inbuilt checks and balances