General / Banking Awareness
General and Banking Awareness in the BoM Generalist Officer exam rewards a dated, structural knowledge of Indian banking rather than scattered headlines. Expect RBI functions and monetary policy, the banking regulatory architecture, government financial inclusion schemes, deposit insurance, payment systems and a handful of recent banking developments.
Regulatory map
- RBI: established 1935, nationalised 1949, headquartered in Mumbai; banker to government and lender of last resort.
- FSCD: chaired by the Union Finance Minister; coordinates RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA.
- Monetary Policy Committee: six members, chaired by the RBI Governor; flexible inflation target of 4% with a +/-2% band.
- DICGC: deposit insurance up to Rs 5 lakh per depositor per bank.
Policy tools
Repo is the rate at which RBI lends to banks against government securities; reverse repo and the Standing Deposit Facility absorb liquidity; CRR and SLR are reserve requirements; open market operations buy or sell G-secs to alter durable liquidity.
Schemes to know
PMJDY (zero-balance accounts, RuPay card, overdraft), Mudra (Shishu, Kishor, Tarun), Stand-Up India, PM Vishwakarma, and Payments Banks with a Rs 2 lakh deposit cap and no lending.
Worked example. If the question asks which step drains rupee liquidity, reason through the transmission: raising CRR locks more deposits with RBI; selling G-secs in OMO takes cash from banks; raising the repo rate makes borrowing costlier. All three are contractionary, so a question listing 'reduction in CRR' as the odd option is testing direction of action, not definition.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing repo with reverse repo, treating bank rate and MSF as unrelated (RBI aligns them), mixing fiscal measures (tax, subsidy) with monetary ones, and placing a scheme under the wrong ministry.