Small story to explain why India is stuck in a limbo since the last 10yrs.

1992. India was undergoing an economic boom after liberalisation & investing in stocks & bonds had become a household thing.

Mom-in-law brought a IDBI deep discount bond with a face value of 1lakh. +

After it's maturity, we approached the bank who adviced us to fill some forms with a lot of identification documents & send it to their merchant bankers. After collecting everything & getting her signatures we sent it. +

Meanwhile I searched in the net & found out that the company wasn't paying the investors the promised sum with some technical explanations. They weren't giving even 20% of the face value. Some investors had gone to court & gotten favorable judgements, individually. +

Yesterday the merchant banker sent back all the documents saying the beneficiary needs to have a pan card & a certificate from her bank to authenticate her account & identity. +

The company is making a senior citizen, based in a small village run around to get a fraction of the money she was promised. She has never had an income & doesn't have a pan card. They are forcing her to get one. She now is wondering if it's worth all this trouble. +

Thousands of investors like her have been running from pillar to post to get back their hard earned money from the company. The system doesn't care, cos they are poor & can't afford to sue them.

And you wonder why most Indians don't invest in stocks, bonds & insurance. This is the reason: Companies, banks & the government do not take the small investors seriously. The whole ecosystem favours the companies & banks. They make rules, amend them anytime & fuck the public.