NABARD briefs · register entry
Part development bank, part supervisor. NABARD refinances rural credit and runs India's farm-infrastructure funds — and, less visibly, carries statutory supervisory duties over cooperative banks and regional rural banks, the weakest links in India's deposit-safety chain.
RegTrac Brief · 2026-09-13 · Statutory regulator · register as of 12 September 2026
What changed
- Chairman: Shaji K V (since 2022-12 — Confirmed in office as of Sep 2026) (appointment source).
- Register position as rebuilt on 12 September 2026; every line above carries its own source.
Why it matters
- Refinance volumes as credit steering — NABARD decides which lending models get cheap money
- Supervisory findings that feed RBI action on weak cooperative banks
- Fund administration for most central-sector rural schemes — budget execution power without budget visibility
- Statute and mandate: NABARD Act, 1981 (established 12 Jul 1982) — NABARD official site · RegTrac register entry.
Who lobbies these decisions, and what consultation comments were filed, is the missing third layer — LobbyWatch (planned) — because regulators here do not systematically publish their comment trails; the accountability gaps are catalogued in the RegTrac register.
Who is affected
- Grievance route: Customers of supervised institutions use RBI Ombudsman route; NABARD itself handles institutional complaints (NABARD site).
- If you bank with a cooperative bank, your deposit insurance comes from DICGC like anyone else's, but supervision is split between NABARD and RBI — when co-op banks fail, both blame the arrangement.
- RIDF and NABARD-funded infrastructure is public money; project lists are published but outcomes rarely are.
- The full route, with the register's own notes on escalation, is in the RegTrac register entry for NABARD.
What to watch
- Cooperative banking supervision is the longest-running accountability muddle in Indian finance — NABARD inspects, RBI licenses, state registrars co-exist; failures (the urban co-op pattern) fall between chairs.
- Appointment and tenure norms for the chairman track the PSU-bank pattern (Centre-decided) rather than an independent process.
- Every watchpoint above is tracked against the RegTrac register entry for NABARD, as rebuilt on 12 September 2026; no line here rests on information the register does not carry.
Evidence
Editorial swarm: tracker ✓ · evidence ✓ · advocate ✓ · institutional ✓ · mapper ✓ · skeptic ✓ · gated by scripts/editorial.py on 2026-11-10 02:17 UTC.