Neo-socialism: State's expanding tech biz

In a country where many state initiatives have been marred by glitches, delays, and corruption, RuPay and the UPI are revolutionary achievements

Reuters reported last week that Visa Inc had complained to the US government about India’s “informal and formal” promotion of domestic payments rival RuPay, hurting the US giant in an important market. Visa’s rival, Mastercard Inc, way back in 2018 had charged Prime Minister Narendra Modi with using nationalism to promote RuPay. In 2018, Mr Modi had declared the use of RuPay patriotic, saying since “everyone cannot go to the border to protect the country, we can use the RuPay card to serve the nation”. Last year, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said RuPay was the only card banks should