The 5C’s of Cashless
The Reserve Bank of India has unveiled their Vision 2018, an ambitious plan to shove the juggernaut into a cashless future. Here are their pithy yet to the point 5C’s, which focus the framework on a set of objectives. Coverage – by enabling wider access to a variety of electronic payment services Convenience – by […]
Lessons for toilet builders from the history of India’s cookstove development efforts
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar has written a superb critical analysis looking back at the history of India’s development efforts to provide viable, feasible, and desirable solutions to the myriad unmet needs of the common man. Using cookstoves as her narrative theme, she explores the challenges of base of the pyramid product development and marketing, and draws lessons […]
Uber’s problems with women’s safety in India – my 2 rupees worth
In its mindless rush for scale, Uber leapt into the Indian market with their “hassle-free” service of hailing a car with a push of a button on your smartphone. I call this mindless because “will it scale” is an unquestioned imperative for a startup, not something that is thought through. Nobody asks should it scale, […]
Being middle class in India
Are differences within the middle class, in income, education, and cultural and social capital, so wide as to render moot any ideological or behavioural coherence to this group? Over the next two months, The Hindu will release the findings of a new survey on the aspirations and anxieties of ordinary Indians. Here’s a snippet accompanying […]
Empowerment and co-creation – Entering new markets with a long established brand
From personal experience, the biggest frustration with being a cog in the remote outpost of a global behemoth that actually has to implement or execute the marketing, advertising or branding strategy in the field is tussling with the brand’s identity. Clausewitz has said, It may be of interest to future generals to realize that one […]
Part 2: The Observations made during original research on rural economic behaviour
One can roughly consider the relative income (or wealth) across three regions where observations were conducted on a continuum where the Indian village was the ‘wealthiest’ while the Malawians were living closest to the edge. However, on synthesizing the combined data collected across geographies, patterns of financial behaviour emerged that showed similarities of intention and […]
Part 1: Why are we publishing our original research on rural economic behaviour in 5 parts online?
A recent article in The Economist on the economic value of owning cattle in rural India made me to realize just how little is understood about the rural economy. Here’s a snippet: That is because most people find spending easier than saving. Immediate pleasures are easier to grasp than future joys—and so people make spending […]
India recognizes the economic contribution of street vendors
What Indian economic phenomenon is at once marginal, even illegal, and enormously independent and entrepreneurial? That would be the street vendor, the small capitalist of the poor, and reservoir of off-the-books penalties that grease the machine of every municipal authority and police station in urban India. There are an estimated 10 million street vendors (another […]
Book Review: An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen
Photo Credit: India Habitat Centre, New Delhi Just over a month ago, in Kinokuniya bookstore located in Singapore’s Orchard Road, I picked up the hardcover release of Amartya Sen’s latest book – An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions – coauthored with Jean Dreze. Today, I’ve reached the point in my daily few pages of […]
Reflecting on this blog’s genesis after 5 years
I started this blog in late December 2008, in earnest and every day during the first prototype fieldwork for The Prepaid Economy project, one of the iBoP Asia Project’s first batch of Small Grant winners from the ASEAN region. For the first 5 months of 2009, this blog was on the mainpage of my website […]
