Tamal Bandyopadhyay is one of the most respected business journalists in India. His weekly column, Banker’s Trust, in India’s second-largest read financial daily Mint, where he is Deputy Managing Editor, is widely read for its deep insights into the world of finance and its unerring ability to anticipate major policy moves.
Tamal has kept a close watch on the financial sector for over fifteen years and has had a ringside view of the enormous changes in Indian finance over this period. He has been a frequent speaker at seminars across India and has hosted a very successful weekly show (by the same name as his weekly column) on television, featuring some of India’s most respected bankers, policy makers, central bankers and regulators.
He has contributed to The Oxford Companion to Economics in India, edited by Kaushik Basu and published by Oxford University Press in 2007. Banker’s Trust, an anthology of his weekly column in Mint, has recently been published.
He is popular for his weekly column on banking and finance called Banker’s Trust which is published every Monday. His frequent blog Banker’s Trust Real Time on www.livemint.com analyses major developments in the financial sector.
Between April and November 2011, he ran a 32 episode series on Bloomberg India TV, called Banker’s Trust, where senior central bankers, commercial bankers and economists were interviewed every week.
His book, A Bank for the Buck is the story of the birth and growth of India’s most valued Bank – HDFC Bank Ltd – against the backdrop of the new bank movement in India that started in 1994 when the Reserve Bank of India opened up the sector to introduce competition and to force banks to be efficient and more productive.
Many books have tried to give meaning to India’s recent history, to put it in the larger context of a complicated and confounding society, but this effort stands out because it does something that has been difficult to attempt – retelling the story of modern India through the lens of business.
Given the author’s familiarity with bankers, policy makers and central bankers, this fast-paced, jargon-free book, written for a wide audience, brings to life an engrossing and sweeping tale of 21st century India, with all its foibles and charms.
Sahara India Pariwar, on which his second book is based, in December 2013 had moved Calcutta High Court, got a stay on the publication of the book and filed a Rs 2 billion defamation suit against the author and its publisher, Jaico Publishing House. In April 2014, both the parties reached an out of court settlement following which the book will carry a disclaimer by Sahara which says, among other things, the book has “defamatory content”. He has also published a book of poems in Bengali Anupam Meenrashi in January 2014. Tamal Bandyopadhyay is also a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Economic in India, edited by Kaushik Basu.
