Positive impact of globalization

Personal Finance:

• Entry of the private sector banks has completely transformed the functioning of public sector banks

• Opening up of mutual funds; thirty five players; 15 joint ventures

• Commencement of the depository that helped common men to become the retail investors
• Deregulation of insurance industry; Nineteen players; 14 joint ventures in life insurance sector

• Fall in interest rates; smaller monthly installments made life more simple to Indian customer
• ATM's (Automated Teller Machines) made bank transactions more easier to common men than few years back
• Online trading, online purchanse of various finance products and online banking have helped common men to participate in investment process.

Job Sector:

• Salaries are now more attractive than in the nineties.Average annual IT salary has increased from Rs 1.6 lakh in 1998 to Rs 5.5 lakh in 2008
• Students get selected by the companies through campus recruitment an year before the date of completion of their technical education.

• Large salary hikes than offered few years ago.

• More emphasis on performance and not on number of years in the job

• More flexibilties in timings and work from home arrangements are becoming common

• In the last ten years, annual revenue of software industries has grown by 350%.

• Around 1.16 crore people are employed in BPO sector compared to only few lakh in the year 1998

• Office automation has helped improving effeciency of employees

• More and more recruitments are being made using job portals. Earlier ads were placed in the newspapers.

Banking sector:

• Number of ATMs has increased from 500 in 1998 to 32300 in 2008; 1st ATM was installed by HSBC in 1987
• Copmputerization of banks has helped speed up the bank transactions
• Net banking is used by 32% of saving bank account holders in 2008 compared to 1% in 1998. Likewise mobile banking was offered by 6% banks in 1998 that is now being offered by 90% banks in 2008

• 1^st debit card and 1^st credit card were issued by Citibank in 1998 and 1990, respectively.

Tax reforms:

• Tax reforms have given common men more freedom to invest money and more purchasing power than ever before
• Tax concessions on interest of houising loan, and easy availability of house loans have helped common men to own a dream house. However, increase in interest rates recently has made life difficult for salaried people. Housing loan accounts have increased from 4 lakh in 1998 to 45 lakh in 2008.

Some common indicators of change:

• Now most of the households have more than one color TV sets
• Number of people travelling by air or AC class in trains have increased tremendously
• There are 42 million internet users in India in the year 2008 compared to 1.4 m users in 1998.
• The number of mobile phone users has grown to 246 million in 2008 from 1.0 million users in 1998
• There has been a great increase in sales of passenger cars. The sale has increased by 96% in the last ten years
• Monthly pocket money of 10-17 years old has risen by 500% from Rs 300 in the year 1998

Acknowledgement: Most of the figures (Statistics) presented in this article have been gathered from the 10th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE of OUTLOOK Money published on July 30, 2008.