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| Celebrating the Selfless Contributions of Individuals Associated with Moneylife |
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| Dear Moneylifers, |
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| This month, we are celebrate the selfless contributions of three remarkable individuals who have been associated with Moneylife Foundation for a long time, generously sharing their vast knowledge or guiding and supporting us in our many battles. |
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| Virendra Jain, Midas Touch Investors Association |
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| Many of you attended our zoom celebration on 31st July, to mark the 75th birthday of Mr Virendra Jain, founder of Midas Touch Investors Association and to mark decades of yeoman service to the investors' cause for over three decades. He does it mostly on his own and with his own resources. It is thanks to his public interest litigation (PIL) that those who fell for the 'assured returns' offered by public sector mutual funds in the 1990s actually got their promised money. It also led to SEBI barring the fund industry from assuring returns. |
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| He also went to court over thousands of companies raising public funds through Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the early 1990s and scooting with the money. His case in the Allahabad High Court on the 'vanishing companies' problem led to a path-breaking judgement, which was sadly never properly implemented. His effort led the Court ordering the formation of a co-ordination and monitoring committee (CMC). Over the years Mr Jain has been tirelessly fighting the apathy of SEBI and the MCA in tracing companies which vanished with investors' money in the primary market mania of the early 1990s. Do take a look at our conversation with Mr Jain here |
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| Advocate Shirish Shanbhag |
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| We are absolutely delighted to tell you that our very own Shirish Shanbhag, with mastery over everything to do with cooperative housing societies and a keen interest in law, can now be called Advocate Shanbhag. He has just completed his LL.B. from Mumbai University, at the age of 67 without ever missing on the guidance he has continued to provide Moneylifers even after the pandemic. Interestingly, his daughter also appeared for her law exams with him and passed out successfully! A former lecturer and already an M.Sc in Chemistry, Mr Shanbhag had an insatiable hunger for the law and has always been a curious learner. In fact, he had such a vast collection of law books that he has donated several a whole shelf of law books Moneylife Foundation on everything from Medical law, Aviation law, real estate, finance, maritime laws, laws governing nursing, crime and civic issues. All these were part of his enormous personal collection of books. |
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 Since agreeing to volunteer with Moneylife Foundation as a counselor in 2013, he has worked tirelessly both online and offline to provide extremely detailed guidance on all property related matters like redevelopment, deemed conveyance, parking, maintenance etc. He has resolved problems concerning deemed conveyance of more than 25 housing societies in Mumbai and has answered over 800 queries on our Legal Helpline. He also answers queries received from the newspaper Free Press Journal on a weekly basis. |
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| He has been anchoring a packed and popular Daily Clinic every Tuesday between 4-7pm at our Knowledge Centre before the pandemic and continues to do it online through our Legal Helpline. His untiring demeanour when it comes to helping people with property related issues is truly remarkable and we are extremely proud to have him associated with Moneylife Foundation! |
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| R Bhuvaneshwari |
 Ms R Bhuvaneswari, former chief manager at Bank of Baroda, has provided valuable guidance to our members on issues of banking and credit after her retirement. We are proud to tell you that she has also completed her Bachelor’s in General Law from Annamalai University this year! Ms Bhavaneshwari also takes a keen interest in music and has been working with several NGOs on public causes after her retirement. We are so proud of being one of the entities to which she devotes time and are all admiration for her desire to keep growing and learning. |
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| Join Moneylife Foundation |
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 We urge you to encourage people to explore Moneylife Foundation and connect with us through our helplines. Our helplines as well as our membership, as you know, is free. Unless we have details of issues, it is not possible for us to understand your case and provide guidance. So do use our Free Helplines and encourage others to write to us. Here is a link to become a member —do share it. |
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| You may also notice that answers to a range of issues that are important to you – succession, filing consumer complaints, grievance redress or housing society related matters are available at www.moneylife.in especially in our 'How to…' series. Please explore those and our YouTube videos at MoneylifeTV, you may find the answers to your queries are already there! |
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| Counseling on Helplines & Zoom Meetings |
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| With the lockdown still in effect in Mumbai, our counseling sessions on various issues have continued to remain online through our Legal & Credit Helplines, as well as occasional Zoom counseling meetings. If you have a query on housing society, insurance, banking, credit or any other issue, please do become a member ofMoneylife Foundation and take advantage of the knowledge imparted by our experts who guide through our helplines. |
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| Forthcoming Webinars: |
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| Allow me to remind you that you can always catch up on our past financial literacy programmes on our YouTube and Facebook channels, so you can also watch us live. |
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| Do sign up for a free membership to receive information about our activities and initiatives. As always, we look forward to your active feedback on issues that you would like us to discuss, and we will do our best to make it happen. Please do write to us at [email protected] |
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| Programmes in July |
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| This month we had organised a special session felicitating Mr Virendra Jain on his 75th Birthday for nearly 30 years of yeoman service to investors. The session was well attended with over 80 people on Zoom and 130 watching live on YouTube. Many luminaries such as journalists Andy Mukherjee, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and R Balakrishnan, Kaza Sudhakar, former General Manager at RBI, activists Subhash Agarwal and Abhay Datar were present at the event to honor and felicitate Mr Jain for his selfless contributions over the years. If you could not attend the session, you can still watch it on our YouTube Channel here. |
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| Moneylife TV & Helplines |
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| With the outbreak of Covid, our physical events and daily clinics for this month continue to remain suspended for the safety and benefit of all those involved. However, in this lockdown period you can still take advantage of our numerous videos of past seminars and workshops which are always available on our YouTube Channel – Moneylife TV and Moneylife News Bites. |
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| Although counselling on various issues from our experts is not possible in-person, you are welcome to email on [email protected] with your details. We shall forward your mail to the expert for guidance and do our best to get your query resolved. |
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| You also have the option of posting your query on either our Legal Helpline or Credit Helpline. |
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| Also, Moneylife Foundation is now on Telegram and Instagram, so do follow us on these channels to stay updated on our activities and events. |
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| Best regards, |
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| Sucheta Dalal |
| Founder-Trustee, Moneylife Foundation |
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| Trustees: TS Krishnamurthy, Walter Vieira, Sucheta Dalal, Debashis Basu. | | | | Moneylife Foundation is registered with the Charity Commissioner of Mumbai, is an Affiliate member of OECD's International Network on Financial Education, is a Supporter Member of Consumers International, Development Partner of Advocates for International Development (A4ID), and is a winner of the 10th MR Pai Memorial Award. | | |  | | | | Donations are eligible for tax benefits under Sec 80G of the Income Tax 1961 (50% tax exemption) and MLF is registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010. 80(G) Reg No: DIT(E)/MC/80G/685/2010-11 dated 7.2.11 effective 8.+9.2010 | FCRA Registration No: 08378138  | | | |
