Banking & Financial Awareness Quiz: History of Banking in India

On 19 July 1969 the Government of India issued an ordinance taking over the fourteen largest Indian scheduled commercial banks, those whose deposits stood at ₹50 crore or more.

It was founded in 1865 and is remembered as the oldest joint stock bank in India, a joint stock bank being one owned by shareholders rather than by a partnership of agency houses.

The Reserve Bank opened in 1935 as a shareholders' bank with privately held share capital.

The rupee was tied to the pound sterling from colonial times and stayed pegged to it after independence. In 1975 the link was cut and the rupee was tied instead to a basket of currencies of India's major trading partners, with the Reserve Bank fixing the daily rate.

Formally the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, it reported in 1926 that the control of currency and of credit should not be split between the Government and the Imperial Bank but placed in one central bank.

The All India Rural Credit Survey Committee under A. D. Gorwala reported that rural credit needed a bank with branches across the country and in state partnership.

On 15 April 1980 the Government nationalised six more private banks, this time using a deposit cut-off of ₹200 crore.

It was registered in 1894 and opened at Lahore as the first bank floated entirely with Indian capital and run by Indian management, with Lala Lajpat Rai among those associated with its founding.

NABARD was set up on 12 July 1982 on the recommendation of the Committee to Review the Arrangements for Institutional Credit for Agriculture and Rural Development, chaired by B. Sivaraman.

The Reserve Bank of India Act was passed in 1934 and the Bank commenced operations on 1 April 1935, taking over note issue from the Controller of Currency and the management of government accounts and public debt from the Imperial Bank of India.