This will remain one of those hard to decipher phenomena.
While India's UPI has recently crossed $100 billion in digital transactions a month, the amount of banknotes in circulation in India has reached an all-time high as well.
This from the DNA newspaper: RBI data revealed that the currency amount with the public stood at a record high of Rs 28.30 lakh crores for the fortnight ending October 8, 2021. This is up 57.48% or Rs 10.33 lakh crores from a level of Rs 17.97 lakh crores on November 4, 2016. Cash with the public has shot up 211% from Rs 9.11 lakh crore, recorded on November 25, 2016.
So, a surge in digital transactions does not seem to be cutting into the cash economy. They are both galloping.
In case you thought this was curiously Indian, it's global.
The Economist article about $75 billion in pound sterling floating around in the global economy out of which the central bank only has a clear view into about $25 billion.
The rest? No one has a clue.
While the local paan and tea shops are now accepting UPI, cash is finding new friends. But no one knows who they are.
And curiously enough, central bankers don't seem unduly worried or concerned with the amount of money being printed or the notes in circulation.
Like smiles, the value of money only seems to increase, no matter whether it is exchanged in digital bits or little pieces of paper.
How lazy is your file saving method?
It should be simple.
A file name should accurately describe the contents of the file, so that it can be easily retrieved later. That's the theory.
The practice is something else altogether. People have their own individual logic that makes no sense to anyone else. For example, save file names by date, and put it in a folder pertaining to a subject.
That's as good as not having a file name at all because a few days later, everyone has forgotten the date on which it was created and opening up several files to check is frustrating.
Maybe the old systems of physical files were better. Since retrieval was physical, you could quickly go back years (provided the people managing the system were organised) and find what you wanted.
But now that you can save files without thinking, that is exactly what happens. It is absolute chaos when you have to find anything at all.
In the digital world, we're far less organised than we are in the real one. And we are under the mistaken impression that 'Search' will find everything we need at short notice.
There should be a logic that applies - and a system. But trying to get everyone in line to follow is a losing battle.
In physical archives like newsrooms and libraries, you can easily go back decades. That's because a few trained people managed the filing system.
It seems to be a trivial problem. But if everyone decides to follow their own conventions, which is the case, it is a recipe for chaos.
And there's little chance of good sense prevailing anytime soon.
The forlorn daily newspaper
It was one of the early casualties of Covid.
From March 2020 onwards, anything that came from outside was viewed with suspicion, disinfected and sanitised before being brought in.
The pile of newspapers collected outside the front door during the lockdown.
We asked our delivery guy to stop, but he didn't. A habit formed over decades can't come to a screeching halt. And newspapers themselves were trying to navigate the fog. TV and digital sources became the favoured dispensers for those with access.
Every single newspaper knew that this was going to be an existential crisis. They had to figure out a way to survive. And the end of a habit would mean the end of long-held relationships.
They knew that if people stopped reading newspapers, they would not return to the daily routine.
Too many distractions were already available. Perhaps the local aspect of the news was the only thing that kept some of the big names going.
But the cuts were deep in terms of people who lost jobs, news agents who had to find new ways to get from one day to another. A system that had braved and beaten floods and the weather had found a hard to defeat foe.
We still get the newspaper. But it goes into a rarely read stack that gets weighed and sold to the friendly neighborhood recycler every few months.
He confirmed that his own business was now down because people had stopped buying newspapers altogether.
The advertisers on the front page now include crypto exchanges promising heady returns. And like the currency, the returns too will be ephemeral.
Covid didn't just hit people. It infected long-standing business models and left them gasping.
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