M. S. Sriram
Visiting Faculty
Website
Expertise
Economics
Bio
Professor M S Sriram is currently Visiting Faculty at IIM Bangalore. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Development of Research in Banking Technology – an institute set up by the Reserve Bank of India and a Visiting Professor at IIM Udaipur. Prior to this he was the ICICI Bank Lalita D Gupte Chair professor in Microfinance and the Chairperson of Finance and Accounting Area at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has been Visiting Faculty at SPJain Center for Management Dubai-Singapore, and is a Visiting Professor, at Centre Emile Bernheim, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium. He is a graduate from Institute of Rural Management Anand and completed his doctoral studies at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Sriram started his career as a Development Officer with the Co-operative Development Foundation, working with primary agricultural co-operatives helping them to draw business plans, streamline accounting systems and participating as a resource person in their training programmes. His later work spanned both academics and practice, first as faculty member at the Institute of Rural Management Anand where he taught co-operative theory, accounting and credit rating and undertook research in the field of co-operatives, examining the relation between member financial stakes and member control in agricultural and dairy cooperatives.
In 1997 he was appointed as the first Vice President of Finance and Information at BASIX where he was responsible for articulating the business plan, getting in investments from both commercial and developmental investors and also for setting up the initial accounting and information systems.
In 2000 he returned back to academics by joining the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad [IIMA]. At IIMA he taught Accounting, Finance, Microfinance and a course on Social Entrepreneurship. His research work is largely in the area of agricultural and rural finance, co-operatives and microfinance. He has published three books Beyond Microcredit: Putting Development Back into Microfinance [one of the earliest books on Indian Microfinance] and two volumes on Flow of Credit to Small and Marginal Farmers in India.
Sriram joined IIMB in 2012 as Visiting Faculty. At IIMB he is in the Centre for Public Policy – teaching a diverse set of courses – a compulsory course titled Business Government and Society, an advanced elective Accounting Policy, an elective course on Rural Banking and Financial Inclusion and a course titled Business Unusual. His current research is on organizational forms in Social Enterprises.
Sriram has served on several expert committees appointed by the Indian Government, Reserve Bank and NABARD, including on the Task Force on revival of Rural Cooperative Credit Institutions [Vaidyanathan Committee]. He is currently on the external advisory committee of the RBI that is evaluating the licences for the proposed Small Finance Banks. He is also on the board of NDDB Dairy Services, NABARD Financial Services, Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, and is a Trustee of Pratham Books and Dastkar Andhra.
In addition to the above, Sriram has been a writer in Kannada. He has five books of fiction and four books of essays to his credit. He won the Masti Kannada Seva Nidhi Award for his first manuscript Mayadarpana and the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award for 2014 for his work of fiction Salman Khanana DifficultiesU and in 2015 for his collection of essays Arthartha. His latest book “Talking Financial Inclusion in Liberalised India: Conversations with Governors of the Reserve Bank of India” captures the evolution and approach of the central bank in addressing a variety of questions pertaining to financial inclusion through conversations with five former Governors of Reserve Bank of India.
