The Ubiquity and Simplicity of Mobile Phone-Based Money Transfer in India

When you visit a different country, familiar or not, a convenience that cannot be overemphasized is the ability to conduct financial transactions easily. Thanks to the advent of digital economy in India, consumer financial transactions are surprisingly very smooth and easy in townships across India. For a visiting Non-Resident Indian (NRI) like me, this facility is particularly handy if you operate a Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) account with an Indian Bank that helps you deal with local currency (INR, ₹).

The Government of India has facilitated the creation and adoption of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) that seems to have unleashed ubiquity and simplicity in all payment activity in India. The Government has even provided training to street vendors to accept digital payments. (Although the UPI mechanism has been in use since 2016, this is my first serious encounter of its ubiquity). The adoption of UPI has been very rapid, as can be seen by this table:

Nearly every merchant in Bangalore sports a QR code inside the merchant's premises. Some street vendors present the QR code as part of their vending decor, as can be seen in the accompanying photo, captured in Bangalore.

The simplicity has been enabled by UPI Ids, or Virtual Payment Addresses (VPA), with the following general format:

<entity>@<bank>

In general, the <bank> is an Indian Bank and the <entity> is any alphanumeric of your choice; therefore, it helps if you already have a Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) with a local bank. There is some attempt at internationalizing the UPI system, but this post will not address internationalization. 

I hope your next visit to Bangalore will be as pleasant as mine this time😀.

Enrollment for Aadhaar Cards is a Breeze.

nytime you experience good customer support, it is worth acknowledging it. Such was my experience when I went into offices of Karvy, a company that provides enrollment services for Aadhaar and PAN cards (of Government of India). Aadhaar is a popular name for the unique identification for Indian nationals, provided by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

At the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) 2017 in Bengaluru.

Ramesh (L) & Rao (R) at PBD 2017

n January 9, 1915, a 45-year old M. K. Gandhi set foot in India after an extraordinary run-in with the South African government. Through a no less extraordinary journey in the next decades, he would be instrumental in the freeing of India from British rule. Mahatma Gandhi is highly, and deservedly, regarded as the greatest Pravasi — प्रवासी — and, since 2004, the Government of India has been sponsoring a yearly convention of प्रवासी भारतीयs, or non-resident Indians (NRIs).

This year, in 2017, my BE classmate & I had occasion to attend the convention together.

The Problem with Bangalore Molestations during the 2017 New Year Revelry: Wrong Leadership.

n the article titled The beasts that roamed Bangalore, author Ira Trivedi writes:

Such statements from elected leaders are not only deeply disturbing, they place the blame on women.

We cannot but agree with Ira Trivedi. In addition to all the actions the society needs to take to prevent such mistreatment of women, we need to take another action: Get rid of politicians who condone, by omission or by commission, undemocratic behavior.

For Mr. Parameshwara, especially, it is a double disgrace. For one, he has no understanding of what democracy means, and in what manner the citizens in a democracy can conduct themselves. Secondly, rather than condemn that animal behavior of the miscreants, he places the blame on women victims; he has thus committed the additional mistake of condoning such uncivilized behavior.

Surprisingly, none of his cabinet colleagues, including the Chief Minister, have publicly commented Mr. Parameshwara's distorted logic. By being silent, they are condoning Mr. Parameshwara's behavior: मौनं सम्मति लक्षणं!

Why has Mr. Parameshwara not resigned yet? If none of his cabinet colleagues come out soon on Mr. Parameshwara's ignorance, I'd even suggest that the Chief Minister himself must also resign.

We don't need political leaders that do not understand democracy.