How do see Sustainability and Financial Inclusion intersect with each other?
The very word sustainably has three pillars – the economy, society, and the environment. It is all about preserving, maintaining, and improving the resources that help current living and the future generation, and financial inclusion is nothing but providing the opportunity for sustainable income for the underbanked and unbanked population. Financial inclusion helps people to move away from high-cost informal borrowing for their business requirements to formal borrowing that not only improves earnings but also records financial footprints which helps them to expand their business further and create more opportunity within the community. So, in a way sustainability and financial inclusion intersect each other for the current sustainable livelihood and create enhanced opportunity for the next generation through financial stability and better resource management.
Executive Vice Chairman
Shriram Finance
Your view on green financing for decarbonizing the Indian transport sector.
Green financing is a vision for the future where we move from high carbon dioxide emission vehicles to zero-emission to improve the environment. However, depending on one technology for giving permanent solutions is not only challenging and very expensive for a resource-starved country like India. We should continuously look for a better option with alternate fuel/technology options. The evolvement of technology is always dynamic, we have lots of innovation and progress in alternative fuels like biodiesel and biofuel, CNG, and LNG, in the emerging technology of hydrogen fuel cells that generates electricity and already existing lithium-ion batteries and the host of the combination of hybrids among all these alternative options. I believe we should move to alternative fuels/technology or hybrids judiciously to keep the acquisition cost of the vehicle down so that the common man can afford the change and must keep the cost of fuel down. At the same time, the source of fuel should be clean and environmentally friendly. Jumping into electric batteries straight away when electricity is generated through coal does not serve the primary purpose of reducing emissions.