A six-month committee, a 2047 horizon, and a dashboard that should be public from day one

The Finance Ministry has set up a five-member committee under Suresh N. Patel to reform banking for Viksit Bharat 2047. I accept its terms of reference and hold it to three measurable things: a public work plan and live dashboard from week one; the AI and digital-innovation item treated as load-bearing, with consent architecture fixed before models are procured; and a priority-sector review judged by whether credit reaches the small farmer in a low-credit district, not by the national aggregate. The report itself should be split: changes for Parliament and DFS, suggestions for RBI.

On Friday the Finance Ministry set up the five-member High Level Committee on Banking for Viksit Bharat, chaired by former Central Vigilance Commissioner Suresh N. Patel, with RBI Deputy Governor Shirish Chandra Murmu, former RBI Deputy Governor N. S. Vishwanathan and former Indian Bank MD & CEO Padmaja Chunduru, and the Joint Secretary (Banking), Department of Financial Services, as Member Secretary — an announcement Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had made in the 2026-27 Budget (ANI release, 30 October 2026; Financial Express, 30 October 2026).

The mandate, in the ministry's words, is to recommend "structural, institutional, regulatory and legislative reforms necessary to make it globally competitive, financially inclusive, and resilient for Viksit Bharat, 2047". The tenure is six months, and Financial Express reports the committee will submit its report by March 2027. The Times of India notes that the last reviews of this scale were the Narasimham committee (1998), the Rajan committee (2008) and the Urjit Patel committee (2014).

I accept the terms of reference at face value. They are the right list. What concerns me is the shape of the output, so here are three measurable asks.

1. Publish the work plan and a live public dashboard in week one, not a PDF in March 2027. One line for each ToR item, scored monthly: evidence gathered, consultations held, draft recommendation, dissent recorded. I asked for that discipline across ministries in Ministry Report Cards 2025 (May 2026), and for decisions on file in the Good Faith Decision Recording Protocol (March 2026). A committee that speaks only at the end cannot be argued with while it still matters.
2. Treat the AI item as the load-bearing one. "Prepare a roadmap for AI and digital innovation in banking institutions, while providing for safeguards against cyber risks" is where the next decade of banking sits. A bank that can see all of a customer's recurring mandates across UPI, cards and accounts is the natural unit for AI underwriting — the layer I described in Comprehensive Financial Operating Layer (March 2026). But the consent architecture should be written before the models are procured, on DEPA rails and single, revocable, SARAL-style consents (Inching Closer to "SARAL", July 2025).
3. Judge the priority-sector review by the district, not by the 40 per cent aggregate. The ToR asks whether the PSL framework and the Lead Bank Scheme still deliver inclusive, balanced, data-driven credit. The honest test is narrower: does a small farmer in a low-credit district get a loan this year? Publish district-wise PSL and Lead Bank data with the report, so that the national number stops being the answer.

One procedural point. The Member Secretary is from DFS; the prudential rule-writer is RBI. So split the report: Part A, changes for Parliament and DFS, covering RRB and cooperative-bank law, capital and consolidation; Part B, suggestions for RBI, covering prudential norms, PSL calibration and AI and cyber guardrails. Citizens should see, line by line, who must act.

Six months is short. The members know banking; the risk is not competence but silence. A dashboard opened on day one would make the March 2027 report harder to ignore — and, I believe, better.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
31 Oct 2026