RBI Grade B Current Affairs — 7 August 2026

An SBI research report recommends comprehensive Priority Sector Lending reforms aligned with Viksit Bharat 2047. Key proposals include expanding PSL to cover infrastructure and green finance, revising sub-sector ceilings, and creating separate targets for climate-resilient agriculture. The report argues current PSL guidelines, last substantially revised in 2020, fail to capture India's evolving credit needs. It suggests integrating renewable energy projects and logistics infrastructure into PSL categories to redirect formal bank credit toward development-critical sectors currently starved of affordable financing.

Priority Sector Lending (PSL) is the RBI-mandated framework requiring banks to direct a minimum percentage of their Adjusted Net Bank Credit (ANBC) or Credit Equivalent of Off-Balance Sheet Exposure (CEOBE), whichever is higher, toward specified economically vulnerable or development-critical sectors. Currently, domestic commercial banks must lend 40% of ANBC to priority sectors; foreign banks with 20+ branches face the same 40% target, while those with fewer branches target 32%.

The eight broad PSL categories are: Agriculture (18% of ANBC, with 10% to Small & Marginal Farmers), Micro Enterprises, Education, Housing, Social Infrastructure, Renewable Energy, Export Credit, and Others. Shortfalls must be deposited in government-specified funds — Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) at NABARD or similar funds at NHB, SIDBI, and MUDRA — at below-market interest rates, creating a penalty mechanism.

The SBI report's proposal to include infrastructure and green finance represents a structural shift. Currently, large infrastructure projects are not PSL-eligible. Including them would allow banks to meet PSL targets while financing Viksit Bharat's capital-intensive needs. The green finance angle connects to RBI's sustainable finance taxonomy and global ESG frameworks. For examiners, the key tension is whether PSL expansion dilutes its original financial inclusion mandate or broadens its developmental impact — a classic policy design debate tested across all three exams.

A Parliamentary Standing Committee has declared the current ₹1,000 minimum monthly pension under the Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 wholly inadequate, urging urgent revision. Pensioners and trade unions are demanding ₹7,500 per month, citing rising costs of living. The panel flagged constitutional concerns under Articles 21 and 41, arguing that dignity in old age requires a meaningful pension. The EPS-95 scheme, administered by EPFO, covers organised sector workers but has not seen a substantive pension revision in years.

The Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 (EPS-95) operates under the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952. It is a defined-benefit social security scheme where both employer (8.33% of wages) and the Central Government (1.16%) contribute to create a pension corpus for organised-sector workers. The current minimum pension of ₹1,000/month was last fixed in 2014.

The constitutional angle is critical for CLAT PG. Article 21 (right to life with dignity) and Article 41 (directive to secure right to work and public assistance in old age) together form the basis for arguing that an inadequate pension violates constitutional guarantees. While Article 41 is a Directive Principle and not directly enforceable, the Supreme Court in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation and Consumer Education & Research Centre v. Union of India has held that DPSPs must inform the interpretation of Part III rights. Thus, a pension so inadequate as to deny dignified existence can be challenged under Article 21.

Article 300A (right to property) is peripherally relevant — compulsory deductions from wages for a scheme that yields negligible returns can be examined as a property rights issue. For RBI Grade B and UPSC, the scheme's static parameters — contribution rates, eligibility (10 years of service), pensionable age (58 years), and the 1952 parent Act — are the primary test anchors.