Gray Smoke

On May 29th, our esteemed opposition leader attacked the govt and particularly PM Modi for the failed demonetization. [ India Today ] They were based on widely circulated report that the fake notes of 2000 and 500 had increase 50% and 100% respectively. Some of the headlines were eye catching ·        Cash you hold could be fake. ·        Banking Central | Counterfeit notes are back in full swing and that’s worrying ·        This denomination saw the highest increase in counterfeit notes in FY22 This could be bad news for the Indian economy and as I am interested in numbers, I decided to dig deeper.  One thing which struck me as I looked at other new reports was none of them reported about the magnitude of the problem. For example during demonetization in Nov 8 th 2016, the estimated amount of notes in circulation was Rs 15,44,000 Crs. [ PTI news ]. The top 5 pages of google...

When researching for the Indian market, I have been trying to find out how many urban household are there and the income level. On 13th September a very interesting article by Indicus Analytics was published in the Mint newspaper. Using data from that, we can see that there are 7 Million households above the income of Rs. 5L rupees out of which 2.1 Million households are there in the 5 Metros alone. Population Cities Notable city Households (M) Total Population (M) Households with > Rs 5L Income Metro >5 M  5 Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore 12.1 49.2 17.9% Mini-Metro > 3 M 5 Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Pune, Coimbatore, Chandigarh 3.8 15.9 18.6% Tier I > 1 Million 33 Allahabad, Jodhpur, Vishakapatam 10.5 48.2 13.8% Tier II Between 0.6-1M 28 Bhuvaneshwar, Thiruvanantapuram, Ranc...

Over drinks last weekend, we had a interesting argument that Indian lived in the self-belief that they are smarter than Americans. A friend of mine sent this video as a followup: Loved the video and found it extremely funny but it does not prove the point. 1. This is edited excerpts of the most funny answers. 2. Let us interview some random people in India for example, the taxi cab driver, the roadside vendor etc and see the answers they have for the same. I remember seeing a video about Indians not even knowing the name of the president of their country. Indian masses are equally uneducated and maybe more so..