'Father of banking reforms': Ex-RBI governor M Narasimham passes away at 94

Narasimham also founded the credit planning cell in RBI, which became the monetary policy department

The architect of modern Indian banking, former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Maidavolu Narasimham died in Hyderabad on Tuesday. He was 94.

Narasimham was known for being the chair of two high-powered committees on banking and financial sector reforms. Such is the importance of the two Narasimham Committees that some of their aspects are referred to and employed to this date. For instance, the idea of bank mergers and creating strong megabanks was first mooted by the Narasimham Committee.

That is yet to fructify even as successive governments tried much to complete it. Recently, the government merged 12 banks in order