Dr Arup Roy
(The writer is Associate Professor,
Tezpur University. He can be reached
at arup@tezu.ernet.in)
Prerana Sarma
(The writer is a research scholar, Tezpur University. She can be reached at preranasarma02@gmail.com)
Assam State Action Plan on Climate Change (2015-2020) has stated in the In dia Environmental Portal that Assam lies within the areas of greatest climate sensitivity, maximum vulnerability, and lowest adaptive capacity. One of the studies conducted by IIT Guwahati, IIT Mandi and IIISC, Bangalore, under the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme of the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, has opined that Assam is the most vulnerable state in the Indian Himalayan Region to climate change.
Amidst this scenario, the need to account for the economic and financial costs of climate change has gained importance. Finance has got a pivotal role to play in environmental sustainability. Within the financial system, the banking community takes the prominent position of discharging obligations towards the environment. Banks are indulging themselves in a variety of ways to protect the environment, starting from their daily operations to the fulfillment of legal bindings imposed upon them by regulators like Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Securities Exchange Board of India, etc. Green Banking is a concept that embraces core banking objectives along with the banks' responsibility towards the natural environment. This article tries to discuss the status of Green Banking in Assam. To know the exact scenario of Green Banking in Assam, its adequacy is measured using the initiatives taken up by three different stakeholder groups which are legislators, bankers, academicians.
Many regulatory bodies are related to banks in India. After going through the websites and reports of 9 different such authorities, not a single legislation is found that is specifically directed towards Green Banking of individual states. The different bodies taken under consideration include State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC), Banking Institute of Rural Development (BIRD), Institute of Bank Management (IBM), Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Indian Bank Association (IBA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and NABARD. BIRD is one institute that is active in matters on Green Banking and they have conducted several training programmes on Green Banking, among which one training programme on climate issues was recently conducted at Madurai, Tamil Nadu. No such training programme has been conducted for the bankers of Assam or any other Northeastern state till date. SEBI has mandated the top 500 Indian companies based on market capitalization to report their environmental issues in their annual reports. However, the Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Private sector banks of a state get excluded as they do not have huge market capitalization to come under any such mandatory regulations.
Scrutinizing the development of Green Banking from the bankers' end, it brings us to three banks which are the local banks of Assam. It includes two private sector banks which are The Assam Cooperative Apex Bank Ltd and Langpi Dehangi Rural Bank and one Regional Rural Bank which is Assam Gramin Vikas Bank. The website of Langpi Dehangi Rural Bank mentions Digital Banking and the other two banks have nothing mentioned on their website related to Green Banking. Digital Banking is an important component of Green Banking as digitizing the operations of banks would lead to saving of paper, energy, water, and trees. Analysing the annual reports of two banks (Langpi Dehangi Rural Bank and Assam Gramin Vikas Bank) from 2013-2014 till 2017-2018 it has been found that both the banks have taken initiatives towards protecting the environment through two different kinds of activities. One is that both the banks have adopted various electronic technologies like NEFT, RTGS, ATM and the other one is doing social responsibility activities like Swach Bharat Abhijan, providing drinking water, construction of public toilets, etc. The annual reports of The Assam Cooperative Apex Bank Ltd could not be examined as they are not accessible online.
Lastly, looking at the development of the concept from the academics' point of view, journal articles made available online are traced and found that there are only four people who are working on Green Banking in Assam. The four researchers working on Green Banking in Assam are Dr. Gobinda Deka, Associate Professor, C.K.B Commerce College, Jorhat; Mrs. Karuna Chamaria, Assistant Professor, Women's College, Tinsukia; Mrinal Ghosh, Research Fellow, Department of Commerce, Gauhati University; and Prerana Sarma, Research Scholar, Department of Business Administration, Tezpur University. The number is quite small as compared to the huge scope of research that exists in this niche area.
The above discussion shows the unfortunate situation of Green Banking in Assam. State-specific regulations related to Green Banking need to be framed at the national level and authorities like RBI and SEBI should come up with such an initiative. All the Public and Private sector banks must be aware of their surrounding environment and must volunteer in implementing some green initiatives every year in different states of India.
Also, it is a call to the research community, specifically the research scholars of Assam to take up more studies on Green Banking. A huge gap exists for research in this area and unless the concept is properly investigated by the researchers, it is unlikely to see a proper growth. Green Banking is still at its infancy in Assam and needs a huge push from the regulators' and academicians' end.