These days a banker would be glad just to see his bank and his job see through the worst crisis that has hit the global financial industry in recent memory. But Indian banks, long chastised for being too conservative and regulated, are having a great time, with fantastic jumps in profits. The Indian regulators, too, are for once not at the receiving end of lectures on the importance of letting market forces take charge. As Ranvir Nayar reports from Mumbai and New Delhi, strict regulation is what made the difference.

India's largest bank, the State Bank of India, saw its net profits in the quarter ending December 31, 2008, year rise by 41 percent and the bank expects to increase it further by 75 percent in the next quarter. Its rival, Bank of India, saw an even bigger increase of over 79 percent in the earnings in the same period. These are figures that bankers around the world would not even dream of in the best of the times; leave alone the current crisis where mere survival is being seen as a big achievement.

The Indian financial system seems to have come out rather fine from the economic crisis, with the government not having to rush in to save even one institution or put in even one rupee in the bail out of any bank, public or private, at a time when governments around the world have injected over $1 trillion in saving the biggest and the best of their banks.