RBI chief Shaktikanta Das receives Governor of the Year award at Central Banking Awards 2023

Prior to Das's appointment, in August 2018, IL&FS, a significant non-banking financial company, went bankrupt, triggering a liquidity crunch and revealing deficiencies in the business models of several mid-sized banks that had lent heavily to NBFCs.

Subsequently, several other firms, including Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank, also collapsed. Das's predecessors, Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel, had already initiated some measures to address the non-banking financial crisis, such as revising the bankruptcy code to resolve NBFCs, but additional measures were implemented during Das's tenure.

These included implementing liquidity regulations for non-banks and closer supervision of major players in the sector. In October 2022, a new scale-based regulatory framework for NBFCs was introduced.

While non-banks are vital to the Indian financial sector, the banking sector remains the more significant issue, exerting a drag on growth and sometimes threatening to plunge the economy into crisis.

Public sector banks (PSBs) have the most profound challenges, with high levels of non-performing assets (NPAs), weak capital, and little lending growth. However, since 2018, there has been a steady improvement in the banking sector, which looked to be in dire straits at the time.

Das has also managed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its inflationary impact. Despite the challenges, India has been the fastest-growing major economy in the world, and poverty has fallen significantly.

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