down. it protects us all : taxpayers who had to bail out failing banks during the crisis ; savers and investors who lost money ; business owners who could not get loans ; and, yes, it also protects the banks themselves. still, the history of finance seems to follow an eternal cycle. a crisis happens and the rules are tightened. after a while, people forget the crisis, and the rules are loosened. this leads to the next crisis, which takes everyone by surprise. the rules are tightened. listening to some politicians, i am worried that we are about to enter the next stage of the cycle : a new wave of deregulation. as george bernard shaw said : “ if history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience! ”. isn ’ t it time to prove that we are capable of learning from experience? thank you for your attention. 1 reinhart, c. and rogoff, k. ( 2009 ), “ this time is different ”, princeton, nj. jorda, o., shularick, m., taylor, a. m. ( 2011 ), “ when credit bites back : leverage, business cycles, and crisis ”, nber working paper no. 17621. 2 fender, i. and lewrick, u. ( 2016 ), “ adding it all up : the macroeconomic impact of basel iii and outstanding reform issues ”, bis working paper, no 591 ; de - ramon, s., iscenko, z., osborne, m., straughan, m., andrews, p. ( 2012 ), “ measuring the impact of prudential policy on the macroeconomy : a practical application to basel iii and other responses to the financial crisis ”, fsa occasional paper, no 42. yan, m., hall, m. j. b., turner, p. ( 2012 ), “ a cost - benefit analysis of basel iii : some evidence from the uk ”, international review of financial analysis, vol 25, pp 73 - 82. 5 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches

compression of time to change is the major message that we should take from the discussions in the session. the other critical point in the session that mr narayana murthy of infosys made is that technology people in india are already prepared for the change. he made a point that “ hardware, yes ; software, yes ; we are available for both ; we are already supplying these to the rest of the world ”. all it means is that our financial sector should learn how to use it, and use it sooner than later for its own survival. another important point that came out was that the technology is not anti - poor. technology is at best neutral and more probably pro - poor. though unsaid, what came out from mr murthy ’ s exposition is that the banks in future may have to be a lot more oriented to customer needs and not just paternalistic in behaviour in the guise of assisting the poor. from the reserve bank of india, what i would like to add to what mr narayana murthy has said, is that we in the rbi are getting ready with technology and we are already going ahead with computerisation of the public debt office. in about 18 months, we will be ready with a real time gross settlement system ( rtgs ). thus, the central bank is providing whatever technological infrastructure is required, particularly in terms of externalities for banks, and so the ball will squarely be in the court of the commercial banking sector. human resources in the second session, dr sushil chandra, a management expert, made an excellent presentation. among the most important points he made are, that trade unions are less aggressive now and that changes should be consensus oriented. in my view, consensus will be productive under two conditions. one, when we share a common perception with regard to where we want to go and second, those who are involved have reasonable symmetry in their negotiating strengths. so if there is an asymmetry and one party has no stake in consensus, and, in fact, has a stake in status quo than in change, then it is very difficult to achieve a consensus. a situation may, therefore, have to be created where every party crucial for consensus suffers losses if consensus is not arrived at. two, in this context it becomes necessary to address some of the basic issues, basic building blocks of an environment, whether they are legal or attitudinal, that would facilitate consensus building. in this regard, there are some