There was a great awakening in India around the second half of the 1990s. Internet access was becoming easily available, even if via VSNL shell accounts (if you know what they are, welcome fellow veteran). […]
Stick in the mud
words in brownian motion
Don’t look inside yourself!
I have always heard from friends, life coaches and, most often, from WhatsApp Wellwishers that it is important to Look Inside. These pithy messages have grown more virulent in recent times, urging people to use […]
Real Price Index – The Method
The clarity of having a personalized index crystallized all the steps needed. It was a matter of hours to create a list of our own regular purchases with specific quantities of each that we consumed […]
What can a govt disclaim? literally.
The world, it feels, is on self-destruct mode with everything crashing and burning all around. Matters of great import are being debated on every social media. It is almost sacrilegious to write about this frivolous […]
Calculating inflation
With the quest begun, it was now a matter of trying to connect the dots. I read all about inflation from my daughter’s economics books, read many results that Google presented and ended up no […]
In The Beginning … there was inflation
I am not talking about the Big Bang or the Inflationary Theory of Cosmology but the prosaic, far more mundane, almost boring inflation that Economists talk about. In 2018 the RBI, in its bi-monthly meeting, […]
Libra Cryptocurrency – Understanding by Implementing a Wallet
Libra has caused quite a stir since it was announced, about a month ago. This cryptocurrency led by Facebook (formally by the Libra Association, but it is Facebook’s presence which generates all the attention) is scheduled […]
Digital payments for the disconnected majority
Last week two companies announced the availability of IVR based payments for their wallet offerings. PayTM lets users with a wallet initiate a payment by making a call to a toll free number. So does ToneTag. To most […]
The Age of Offers
An elderly person I know sells honey that he picks from village groups. He buys pre-bottled honey for Rs.260 (just under $4) and the bottle has a retail price of Rs.310 (about $5) which he […]
First impressions of UPI, as an user
Much has been said and written about the impact UPI will have on everything. I am a strong believer and, therefore, when UPI was launched last week and the first apps became available it was but natural […]
2 billion merchants are waiting
There are two billion unbanked adults in the world, according to this CGAP report. I think these are really 2 billion unserved merchants. Want to know why? Read on. To understand this we have to go all the way back […]