Journal Press India^®

                This issue of MUDRA covers a range of contemporary and diverse topics that are of importance in the areas of Finance and Accounting. The articles in this issue include studies on stock markets, performance of banks, microfinance, shareholder value creation and the move towards cashless economy. The first paper by Harish Kumar and Mridul Dawar examines the interesting aspect of seasonality in the Indian stock markets through the existence of calendar effects The study concludes that the observed patterns are useful in timing the deals by exploiting the observed irregularities in the Indian stock market returns. Another paper on stock markets is by Vanitha Chawla and Shweta that use regression analysis and Granger Causality test to establish the relationship between the stock market and macroeconomic variables like interest rate, exchange rate and Index of Industrial Production. They find that only exchange rate has a significant impact on stock returns.          An interesting aspect of financial management is examined by Dr. Radhagobinda Basak in his paper entitled ‘Shareholders’ Value Creation and Market Price of Share: A Study in Indian Context’. He measures shareholders’ value creation by five different approaches selecting a few sample companies and also quantifies the degree of association that exists between shareholders’ value creation and market price of share. His analysis reveals that shareholders’ value per share and market value per share are positively correlated to a considerable extent.

                   This issue covers some significant aspects of financial inclusion which is an integral and important part of financial development of developing countries like India. An interesting aspect of financial inclusion is examined by Megha Jain and Aishwarya Nagpal through their paper ‘From Cash to Cashless Economy: Catalytic Agent for Financial Inclusion?’. They discuss if the move towards demonetisation and migration towards digital payments will contribute to improved financial inclusion and digital financial literacy. The paper by Dr. R. Rupa compares the MFIs of India and Bangladesh based on the classification of their age as new, young and mature. The findings show that on the basis of age groups, mature MFIs have shown better performance in terms of breadth of outreach, return on assets, operational self-sufficiency, profit margin, total expense to assets, financial expense to assets, operating expense to loan portfolio, cost per borrower, loan per staff member, and risk coverage. Another paper by Dr. Rajesh Tripathi and Swati Gupta on ‘Financial Inclusion: A Correlational Study of Factors in Rural Uttarakhand’ examines the current status of financial services in rural regions of Uttarakhand to recognise factors impacting interest of financial services in this area. The study suggests that though access to financial services in rural territorial areas is reasonable, there is still room for improvement in financial infrastructure. The findings confirm the relationship among ancillary, support systems, financial apparatus and intended financial inclusive measures, and recommends greater improvement in financial infrastructure.  

             Two papers in this issue look at the performance aspect of banks operating in India. The paper by Rajveer S. Rawlin, Muddam Mounika, and Dr. Ramaswamy Shanmugam conducts a comparative analysis of top private sector banks in India based on CAMEL parameters. The bank with the best overall CAMEL rank was found to be IndusInd bank. Another paper by Dr. Lovleen Gupta and Dr. Mridul Dharwal entitled ‘A Comparative Evaluation of NPAs Recovery Mechanisms by Public Sector Banks in India’ examines the growth of NPAs during the period 2001-02 to 2012-13 in public sector banks in India and the effectiveness of Lok Adalats, Debt Recovery Tribunals and SARFAESI Act, 2002 in solving the problems of NPAs.    A case study by Dr. Bhaskar Biswas evaluates the relation between working capital management and profitability of five selected auto ancillary companies in India.

             We hope that our readers find this issue of MUDRA interesting and insightful, and continue to provide us their support and patronage for constant improvement in our endeavours.

Prof. Muralidhar A. Lokhande

Dr. Jitendra Janardan Ahirrao

Editors