School of Management Studies

Regional Rural Banks are established under the provisions of an ordinance promulgated on the 26 th September, 1975 and the RRB Act, 1976 with an objective to ensure sufficient institutional credit for agriculture and other rural sectors. Reforms and mergers introduced by the Government of India in consultation with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in the years 1994-95 to 2005-06 have yielded positive results in respect of key performance indicators such as number of banks and branches, capital composition, deposits, loans, loans and the trend of investments. The objective of this paper is to investigate whether the merger/amalgamation of Regional Rural Banks in India, undertaken in 2005-06 has helped improve their performance. Several committees have emphasized the need to improve the performance of these banks which play an important role in the rural credit market in India. The study is diagnostic and exploratory in nature and makes use of secondary data. The study finds and concludes that performance of rural banks in India has significantly improved after amalgamation process which has been initiated by the Government of India.

The Banking industry is one of the basic instruments of economic growth. It must be on a sound footing as it constitutes an important link in various socio-economic activities. A strong banking sector is important for flourishing economy. The failure of the banking sector in any country may have an adverse impact on other sectors. Non-performing Assets (NPAs) are one of the major concerns for banking sector in India. Non-performing Assets also called NPAs is the term used in banking and finance sector. Basically this term (NPAs) is used in loan department of the bank. The assets of bank which do not perform any role in getting profit to the organisation, such assets are called Non-performing Assets. NPAs reflect the performance of banks in any country. The more the NPAs the lower the performance of bank. The issue of NPAs has been discussed at length of financial system all over the world. The problem of NPAs is not only affecting the banks but also the entire economy of any country. In this paper, an effort has been made to analyze the concept of NPAs, components of loan assets the commercial banks in India with especial reference to the public sector, private sector and the foreign bank. The study is diagnostic and exploratory in nature and makes use of secondary data. The study finds and concludes that the commercial banks have significantly improved their working performance in the areas of NPAs.

The paper argues that the media narratives of the transgender often
end up mainstreaming them, by constructing their transgender identity along the familiar lines of
patriarchy and heteronormativity. Despite their best intentions to help the transgenders emerge
from the margins of the society, the essay claims, media representations of the community
end up representing them as yet another, if somewhat intriguing, version of the same.

This paper critically analyses the images of the self and the "othering" of the transgender identity in the public sphere of Kerala in the context of gender visibility. The performance of queer sexuality and gender identity is contested in Kerala where transgenders are forced to displace themselves from their homeland in search of identity and solace. However the religious space in Kottankulangara temple in Kerala offers the transient realm of transvestism. The cross-dressed males here commemorate the annual chamaya-vilakku festival, which is considered as an offering to the Goddess Bhagavati. Those gender non-conforming people who live as men due to social pressures get the chance to flaunt their gender identities at this occasion. In this sense, transgenders, "the other" who take their legitimization from various religious myths, achieve a temporary space of acceptance in the public sphere. It is noted that besides the normalization of the subversive gender performances, the religious ritualistic site, and the worship system is transformed to commercial space as the temple premises are filled with make-up stalls, ironically endorsing the gender idealization in terms of the patriarchal binary norms.

This paper attempts to read the transformation in the cultural sphere of Kerala in connection with the emergent queer political space. The cultural construction of the homo-normative social space as parallel to the hetero-normative public sphere in Kerala is critically analyzed while discussing the trends of queer pride parades and allied cultural festivities in the heart of the cities of Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi from 2015 to 2017. Through participant observation and analysis of the media reports as primary and secondary texts, it is argued that the location of these events marks the shift in perspective in cultural activism. The possibilities of the cultural and political articulation of queer identity in contemporary Kerala are constructed through the space of queer pride parades. The parades shake the naturalized construction of hetero-normativity by the celebration of queer bodies. However, the transgender beauty pageants allied to these parades redeploy the deep rooted endorsements for gender binaries. The paper also re-looks critically the commercialization of entertainment in these queer cultural spaces.

The article critically looks at the traditional concepts of ‘marriage’ and ‘family,’ the recent marriages of transgender people in the public sphere of Kerala, and its representational politics in selected Malayalam films. She argues that though the public visibility of marriages between transgender people is a historically significant phenomenon, it continues to reify cisheteronormative notions of socially accepted heterosexual conjugality and patriarchal familial codes.

This paper analyses Mallikavasantham, the autobiography of transgender poet Vijayarajamallika, published in 2019 in Malayalam
language. Mallika, who had an intersex condition at birth presents her
autobiography as a narrative and as an archive of her genderqueer
experience and this paper examines the ways in which the embodiment
of her transgender self is mapped in her autobiography

This article critically examines selected Malayalam films about transgender people, for their depiction of transphobia, and the representational politics in visualising violence against trans characters on screen. Transphobia is expressed through negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards trans people or transness which include fear, aversion, and hatred, and it usually leads to violence. Trans people experience various forms of violence; verbal, physical, and sexual violence from society due to their gender nonconformity. In Kerala, though the state acclaims itself as progressive through solidarities extended by the government and various community-based organizations, activists, and allies, transgender people continue to receive negative responses and violence in the public sphere. In the selected films, transfeminine people are depicted as quiet and helpless in resisting violence, as they are lynched and disrobed in public places by mobs. Whereas, the trans man in a film resists sexual violence and cinema typecasts the courage for it stems from the underpinned masculinity of the character. The article uses visual and thematic analysis of seven films released from 2005 to 2018 in the Malayalam industry and observes that cinema fetiches the body of the trans character as ‘unnatural’ and violates their dignity through molestation, and public lynching.

Keywords: Kerala, Malayalam Cinema, Transgender People, Transphobia, Violence, Visuals.