RBI Policy Challenge: A Voyage to Remember
Our journey and learnings from participating in RBI Policy Challenge 2018–19
On one fine evening in October 2018, after our Principles of Economics class, we were sitting in the campus cafeteria. Out of the blue, Nishchay Mehta came and told me about an email on the competition by RBI, the apex institution of India’s Financial System. I was quite excited on hearing this, as we had been cramming the JEE PCM stuff for 2 years and then studying the same during our first year at BITS. So, studying economics in our 2nd year and participating in competitions was quite exciting and a much-needed change for us. (We all have a dual degree — B.E in Engineering along with MSc in Economics at BITS Pilani Goa and were in the second year at the time of the competition).
To give a brief context about the competition:
“RBI Policy Challenge is a national-level competition held by the Reserve Bank of India which was started in 2016 by Former RBI governor, Dr. Raghuram Rajan to spread knowledge about the framework of the monetary policy, banking issues & financial matters among the undergraduate as well as postgraduate students. The competition is held in three-tiers: Regional, Zonal & National level — with all rounds being judged by top RBI officials & Economists and held in the RBI offices”.
Team Formation:
In our 2nd year, I (Yash) and Shivang used to participate in a lot of case competitions and had a common-friend circle — so we knew each other well. We had known Nishchay since he had won a few E-Cell Business plan competitions and also introduced us to Tina, who was also studying economics with us. RBI Policy Challenge mandates a Faculty Advisor, who mentors the team & forms a crucial part of the team — and we had to find one!
In our quest to find the faculty advisor, we talked to several professors — but most of them were already associated with a team — which also gave us hindsight to the fierce competition within our campus only. Finally, we came across Dr. Arafat Sofi, who taught us Development Economics. After our first conversation only, he agreed to mentor us and was equally excited, and to our luck, he already knew about the challenge deeply, from his IIT & IIM professor friends!
We were now all set for it :)
Regional Round:
The Regional Round is held across 50+ Engineering & Management colleges covered under the supervision of RBI Goa. We knew that our major competition was from — Goa Institute of Management(GIM), IIT & NIT Goa, and of course, BITS Goa. From our campus, many of our seniors had also registered, and this motivated us even further to push ourselves. In this round, we had to prepare an essay on “Indian Banking: Challenges & Opportunities” — sounds like a very broad topic right? It was!
We were pretty confused at first on how we shall approach such a vast topic — and our major concern was the word limit of 2500, but we had a good 25 days to figure out before the deadline. We engaged our first 1 week in just surfing through the news articles, reports and talking to our faculty advisor and after much discussion, we finally came up with two major challenges in the Banking sector — NPAs & Financial Inclusion. Now, the next obstacle was to find a solution to these challenges. We had in our mind that we are just in our 2nd year and we didn’t have very deep knowledge about the banking sector and we were just getting started up. So, we bet on technology & distribution as the major core of our solution along with a concept flow map and we had a perspective that, it can potentially be a major differentiator among other submissions.
In our last 5–6 days, we focussed more on polishing our essay, proofreading 100 times at least, and making sure, the language & references are perfect. We posted the essay to the RBI Panjim office along with the seal & signature of the Dean of our campus and just waited for the results. Almost 2 months passed by, and the 10th of January was the day of the results. We didn’t have many expectations due to a lot of competition around us, but we knew that we did try our best.
The circular was sent to us by our Student Union Dean and yes, we were the Regional winners!
Zonal Round preparation:
We were quite overwhelmed by the results, but soon realized, that we just had 15 days for the Zonal finals! We quickly looked upon the topic and it was the “Analysis of RBI Financial Stability Report 18–19”. Yes, probably like you, we were also hearing about this report for the first time, and for the context, the Financial Stability Report is published by the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) of RBI on risks to financial stability and the resilience of the financial system in the context of contemporaneous issues relating to development and regulation of the Indian financial sector. In short, it was a 112-page document, with a hell lot of complex charts, graphs, statistics, and full of financial jargon about the ‘Risks in the banking Sector’. The complexity of this report was the reason that pushed us beyond our capabilities to not only understand those thorny concepts in this short span but also to learn, how to actually work as a team.
For efficient utilization of time and resources, we divided the report into 4 parts. We decided that everyone will be reading the whole report at least once, and each person will master a topic — this strategy worked fairly well. We were done by reading the complex report and researching in the first 7 days and we were confident on the parts assigned to each one of us.
Through numerous all-night discussions and brainstorming sessions, we were finally able to put together a 15-slide deck and a 30-page report and we were all set for the Zonals!
RBI Pune — The day!
The venue for the West Zonal Finals was the RBI College of Agricultural Banking (CAB), Pune, which serves as a Banking seminar and training college for RBI with a rich history of 50+ years. We arrived in the morning, a day before the competition, and the entire day we spent practicing our pitch and exploring the small but beautiful campus with a monetary museum!
We woke up early in the morning on the competition day as we needed to get our breakfast done, get ready with our formals, and report to our RBI group manager by 9:15 AM. For the next 30 mins, we explored the main hall where all other participants & judges had already been assembled. At 9:45 AM, the program began with conventional lighting of lamps and an opening note by an RBI Economist. We were quite excited to know our competitors and finally, they announced the teams for the day: IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Raipur, IIM Indore, IIM Nagpur, SPJIMR, and BITS Goa.
We were then invited to pick a chit and based on that, we were allotted the 5th slot for presentation. Being the second last in the turn, we were already anxious about how time will pass, and then we were asked to move to separate halls so that we can’t witness others’ presentations. Finally, we were asked to present and it was the first time, we were presenting in a very formal setting with 200+ audience. We were probably the youngest in the entire hall. It was a surreal experience!
Although we didn’t win the competition, we had some key takeaways and this was the first sole event that had set the stage for us to achieve further during the course of our degree. We believe that this competition not only shaped us to understand the critical banking sector of India but also motivated us to further study this subject matter in its totality. Beyond the technical knowledge that we were able to capture, the competition also made us come together on a personal level and get the emotional psychic of working closely in tough situations. Special thanks to the Economics & Finance Department of BITS Goa for supporting us throughout and RBI for the amazing hospitality & prizes!
Through various all-nighters, library discussion room meetings, night canteen meetups to catch up with the missed mess dinners, and our bus travel journey, exploring Pune, we were able to make so many memories that we will cherish forever!
That’s all folks :)
