This article was first published on moneycontrol.com | December, 03, 2023 The 3-1 verdict between BJP and Congress in the state assembly elections set the stage for the road to the national polls in 2024. State and national contests often differ, of course, but several key indicators of the national mood stand out from the results in…
This article was first published on moneycontrol.com | November, 30, 2023 Exit polls have been a critical weathervane in the political theatre that has characterised key poll contests ever since the American pollster Warren Mitofsky conducted the first one in 1967 for the Kentucky governor’s contest. Individual polls may get it wrong sometimes, for sure, but a…
This interview was first published on firstpost.com | October 29, 2023 After India’s economic reforms that were initiated in the early 90s, the biggest revolution that India witnessed in the last few decades is its digital revolution. India’s Techade by journalist and author Nalin Mehta chronicles the trajectory of this revolution. Mehta’s last book was The New BJP: Modi and…
This article was first published on orfonline.org | September, 17, 2023 It takes just over 100 seconds. Lakshmi, a 58-year-old widow, shows her Aadhar card at the government-authorised services centre in Keelara, a village in Mandya in southern Karnataka. She does not have a bank card or a passbook. But once her Aadhar identification number is typed…
This article was first published on The Times of India | September, 10, 2023 UPI services for foreign delegates, a VR cycle depicting India’s digital journey and a showcasing of India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) like Aadhaar, direct-benefit-transfers and DigiLocker formed a key part of India’s diplomacy at the Bharat Mandapam in Delhi. India’s soft power was…
This article was first published on news18.com | September, 08, 2023 In his maiden Independence Day speech as Prime Minister on August 15, 2014, Narendra Modi broke convention by speaking extempore for 65 minutes. Sporting a polka-dotted Gujarati red-and-green turban, Modi played the outsider card, explaining to a national audience how Delhi’s elites looked upon him as…
This article was first published on The Times of India | September, 07, 2023 The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed 10.58bn financial transactions in August, grossing over ₹15.76 lakh crore in total value of money transferred. These staggering numbers, the highest ever, reflect how fast the Indian economy is changing with fintech. What is so unique about…
This article was first published on firstpost.com | September 06, 2023 The PM’s assertion about the democratisation of the G20 and how differently India has organised the event reflects not only a lasting legacy that India’s G20 presidency will leave behind in diplomatic terms but also a nuanced political approach to big events domestically Several key…
This article was first published in moneycontrol.com September, 06, 2023 India has “legitimate bragging rights” on the strides made in the space of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) especially since New Delhi’s digital revolution is led by the public-sector unlike in the West wherein private sector plays a primary role, political scientist Nalin Mehta told Moneycontrol.…
This article was first published in The Print September, 02, 2023 It is not a coincidence that India named its State-run BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app, for easy digital financial transactions using UPI, after the Constitution-maker and visionary for Dalit rights, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. Few may remember today that Ambedkar, besides being an eminent lawyer,…
This article was first published on entrepreneur.com | AUGUST 18, 2023 The story of how UPI changed the digital payments landscape of India is no secret. In just a few years, UPI created a payment revolution in India. Its success can be gauged from the fact that in mere 18 months, more Indians signed up for…
This article was first published in theprint.in| AUGUST 21, 2023 New Delhi, Aug 21 A new book by author Nalin Mehta, pieces together the story of digital revolution and how it transformed India in the past decade. “India’s Techade”, scheduled to release on Wednesday, is touted to be a “crisp yet comprehensive account of the…
https://youtu.be/UAiyFstmxsA?feature=shared This interview was first published on news18.com | AUGUST 18, 2023 Senior Journalist & Author Nalin Mehta opens up on his new book ‘India’s Techade’. The book narrates the story of how UPI changed the digital payments and the rollout of digital direct benefit transfers, digital public infrastructure and inter-linked e-governance systems. He used the digital…
This interview was first published on news18.com | AUGUST 24, 2023 Today is the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic Puttaswamy judgment which made privacy a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution through a unanimous verdict by a 9-member bench. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics, was one of…
This opinion was first published on news18.com | AUGUST 04, 2023 There has been much public debate about a recent research paper by Ashoka University’s Sabyasachi Das which claimed to have found ‘objective evidence’ of ‘democratic backsliding in the world’s largest democracy’. The paper emphatically states this happened ‘in the form of electoral manipulation’ in India by…