speeches foreign exchange reserve management managing our country ’ s foreign currency assets and gold reserves is another responsibility of the reserve bank. today, our foreign exchange reserves stand at nearly us $ 300 billion, up from just a few billion in 1991. an adequate level of foreign exchange reserves is important for several reasons. in particular, it protects us against external shocks and inspires the confidence of foreign investors. in investing our foreign exchange reserves, we are guided by three principles : safety, liquidity, and return. in our investment policy and practice, we exercise utmost care and caution to maintain a high degree of quality of foreign currency assets. in november 2009, we bought 200 metric tonnes of gold from the international monetary fund. this triggered a lot of public and media interest on the rationale of the transaction. in recent years, although there has been significant accretion to our reserves, our gold holdings have remained stagnant. this purchase from the imf helped in raising the proportion of gold in our reserves. secondly, you will recall how, at the height of the balance of payments crisis in 1991, we had to pledge gold to raise resources. in view of the strategic importance of gold as a reserve asset, we exploited the opportunity that came our way to buy a sizeable quantity of gold from a reliable, multilateral financial institution at market prices in a single deal. financial inclusion in recent years, financial inclusion has become one of the top priorities of the reserve bank. we all know that economic opportunity is strongly intertwined with financial access. such access is especially powerful for the poor as it provides them opportunities to build savings, make investments and avail credit. importantly, access to financial services also helps the poor insure themselves against income shocks and equips them to meet emergencies such as illness, death in the family or loss of employment. financial inclusion is good for the poor. but it is also good for the economy as it channels the savings of the poor for productive use. let me just say this : till financial inclusion becomes a reality, we have not conquered the final frontier of development. despite all the progress we have made in other spheres, our performance on the financial inclusion front is disappointing. more than half the households in the country do not have a bank account, and a larger number of those that do, do not use the banks account in any meaningful sense. of the 600, 000 habitations in the country, only 30, 000, or just 5 % have access to a bank

, i am going to visit a village in orissa, and will go to a village in kerala in march. conclusion i have tried to give you an idea of the reserve bank ’ s main responsibilities and the challenges that we address. i hope this has given you a fair perspective of how the reserve bank makes a difference to your life in both direct and indirect ways – even if most of the time you are not perceptive to it. in the best traditions of convocation speeches, let me conclude by giving you some advice. all of us, all the time, are complaining about all the things that are wrong in our community, in our society and in our country. we want things to change. just “ wanting ” is not good enough. we, each of us needs to be a change agent. and as mahatma gandhi said, we need to be the change that we desire. all i can say, as you go out as degree holders, is to go and make a difference in the real world and in the process make a name for sambalpur university. bis central bankers ’ speeches