Year-end Quiz 2022
A short quiz on the Reserve Bank of India and central banking.
My last post
Before introducing the quiz, which was delayed by a couple of weeks, let me add a few words about my last post on pedestrian rights. I suspect that some consider the longer post a more elaborate version of my personal experience. But on the other hand, the main post is an overview of what I think is the current thinking on urban design from the point of view of pedestrians. The following two quotes from my longer post will give an idea:
When people say that a city, or a part of it, is dangerous or is a jungle, what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks. – Jane Jacobs
A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation. - Gustavo Petro, Mayor of Bogota, capital of Colombia.
So, if you want to know why Anne Hidalgo, the Paris Mayor, was reelected on the strength of her eco-friendly and pedestrian-oriented measures and how Amsterdam’s streets transitioned from a metal jungle to a biker’s walker’s delight, check out the link below.
RBI Quiz 2022
I started quizzes on central banking in the mid-1990s while teaching at the Reserve Bank of India’s Zonal Training Centre at its Byculla Office in Mumbai. It was then located opposite the Mumbai Central Station. Subsequently, in around 2000, it moved to Belapur. When I was handling sessions on currency management, my audience was mostly staff who had spent at least two decades working in the area. Lecturing them on the Reserve Bank of India Act and the fundamental aspects of currency management made no sense. I, therefore, changed the content of my lectures into two-hour quizzes. Depending on the size of the audience, the classes were divided into two to four teams. The highest I had was six teams.
The level of participation was high, the competition intense, and the camaraderie infectious. While the trainees enjoyed the fun, I achieved my objective of conveying whatever I had to through my answers and interjectory comments. I also used the opportunity to share exciting trivia about significant currency and central banking developments. I believe that getting the participants to admit their ignorance also helped instil humility.
The quizzes became quite popular. I continued such quizzes even for my lectures on central banking. These were continued during my tenure at the Reserve Bank Staff College, Chennai. Some of these questions, which were widely circulated, have come back to me in different ways. I have, therefore, tried to be different. The questions are also limited to ten.
Let me add a caveat to quizzes in general. My first introduction to quizzes was in my 4th standard when my then school (I studied in half a dozen) had one hour devoted to it. In reply to a question on who wrote Anna Karenina, I gave the correct answer as we had a copy of the book at home. My teacher gave me an extra mark for answering that. But I got to read Anna Karenina only a few decades later. Quizzes, in my view, tended to test superficial knowledge. In recent years, quizzes have tried to overcome this drawback by cleverly structuring the questions in various innovative ways. Nevertheless, I have always felt that one should not take knowing or not knowing answers too seriously.
Nevertheless, like last year, there is a prize this year too. The first person answering all the questions correctly will receive the Kindle edition of a recent book on finance/central banking. I am yet to decide which. Please reply to this email with the answers and indicate the email address with which your Kindle is linked. If you prefer a hard copy, let me know.
You can access the quiz here:
The last date for sending answers is 31 January 2023. I will post the answers soon after that.
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