Smart Glasses in Exam Halls – Make Every Wearable Bright Yellow

 To: Shri Pralhad Joshi, Hon. Union Minister of Education

Subject: Smart glasses cheating has arrived – make every smart wearable sold in India bright yellow

Dear Shri Pralhad Joshiji,

South Korea has just announced that students caught cheating with smart glasses in its national university entrance exam will face criminal charges and a three-year ban from retaking it.

India, with crores of candidates sitting NEET, JEE, CUET and state exams every year, will face the same problem at a far larger scale. And our invigilators cannot be expected to tell a smart glass from an ordinary pair of spectacles.

In my blog below, I propose a simple rule: every smart wearable sold or used in India must be bright yellow. A cheat's best weapon is that the device looks ordinary. Take that away, and any invigilator can spot it from across the hall.

I request that the Ministry examine this with MeitY and the Bureau of Indian Standards, alongside the hall-level checks I suggest.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / 31 Oct 2026

---

Blog: Make Every Wearable Bright Yellow

The news

South Korea will file criminal complaints against students who cheat with smart glasses in the Suneung, its national university entrance exam, and extend the retake ban from one year to three (The Star / AFP). The trigger: three students caught wearing or carrying smart glasses in university essay exams in Seoul.

Korea's main detection plan is telling. It is assigning a "designated staff member" at each exam centre to identify suspicious eyewear, in other words, a human trying to spot a gadget designed not to be spotted.

How hard is that? At Yonsei University, proctors were specially trained to recognise smart glasses. Even so, one candidate wore ordinary glasses through the pre-exam check, then swapped to concealed smart glasses after receiving the paper. A sharp-eyed proctor caught it only because the frames looked slightly different (Herald Corp).

This is a worldwide wave:

• National Taiwan University disqualified an entrance candidate for using AI smart glasses.
• The US College Board banned smart glasses from the SAT from March 2026 (abit.ee).
• In China, students rent AI glasses for exams at a few dollars a day.
• England's regulator Ofqual found phones and smart devices behind 44% of all malpractice cases in summer 2025 (IET).

What I had envisioned

In August 2026, when Maharashtra set up a committee under ADG (Cyber) Shri Yashasvi Yadav to draft an SOP for AI smart glasses and wearable cameras, I wrote him an open letter. My worry then was privacy: a smart glass needs no pointing, so nobody can tell whether it is recording.

My core suggestion was mandatory colour-coding. Every smart glass sold in India should have a bright red front rim and bright yellow side-arms, so it is recognisable at a glance, like a police car or an ambulance. The same rule would extend to smartwatches, rings, pendants and AR/VR headsets, along with an audible chirp while recording.

The Korean news shows the same idea solves a second problem. What protects a stranger's privacy also protects an exam's integrity. A cheat, like a voyeur, depends on the device looking ordinary.

The detection problem

Dozens of smart wearables are flooding the market: glasses with cameras and displays, smartwatches, rings, pendants, earbuds. Many models are deliberately designed to look exactly like ordinary spectacles or jewellery.

Now picture an Indian NEET centre: hundreds of candidates, a handful of invigilators, many of them schoolteachers on exam duty. Asking them to tell a ₹20,000 AI glass from a ₹500 pair of spectacles is asking the impossible. Training and frisking can't keep pace with new models every few months.

My proposal: bright yellow, by law

Mandate that every smart wearable sold or used in India must be bright yellow.

1. One standard colour. BIS notifies a single, unmistakable bright yellow shade. The entire visible frame or casing of any wearable with a camera, display, microphone or wireless link must be in that shade.
2. Enforced at the point of sale. Manufacturers, importers and e-commerce platforms may sell only compliant devices. Customs blocks non-compliant imports.
3. A transition window. Existing devices get a fixed period to be replaced or fitted with a compliant yellow sleeve.
4. Any non-yellow smart device is illegal. Owning or using one becomes an offence in itself, so a disguised device no longer offers deniability.

The beauty is in the rule for the invigilator: anything yellow on a candidate is out; anything not yellow is ordinary. No technical training needed.

It even defeats the Yonsei trick. A candidate who swaps to a bright yellow frame mid-exam is visible from across the hall.

Honest objections, and what to add

No single rule will stop every cheat, so let me answer the obvious objections:

• "Cheats will paint over or cover the yellow." Possibly, but then the device is illegal in itself, and the offence is proven by the object alone. Most people will not risk that.
• "Hidden earpieces and micro-cameras aren't wearables you can colour." True. For these, exam centres should add Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signal scanners, already used by exam bodies abroad.
• "Some candidates need prescription smart glasses." Like the SAT, require them to bring a plain backup pair for the exam.
• "Smart contact lenses will come next." As I admitted in August, colour cannot solve that. It is a problem for the next round of rules.

So the yellow mandate is the first and cheapest line of defence: it removes disguise from the mass market. Signal scanners in the hall and the stiff penalties already in the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 handle the rest.

Closing

Korea is reacting after the fact, with prosecutions and a staff member squinting at spectacles. India can act before the wave arrives, with one simple rule that makes every smart device announce itself.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.HemenParekh.in / 31 Oct 2026

===========================================

Related readings

• Open letter to Shri Yashasvi Yadav, ADG (Cyber), on colour-coding smart glasses – Aug 2026
• 
  
• NEET Leak: Time for Reform – May 2026
• 
  
• CBT and NEET: My View – May 2026
• 
  
• Exams and Public Trust – May 2026

Sources

• The Star / AFP – South Korea to prosecute students cheating with smart glasses
• Herald Corp – Examinee caught using AI glasses at Yonsei University
• IET – Smart glasses and AI pose growing threat to exam integrity, says Ofqual
• abit.ee – Smart glasses for exam cheating in 2026
• Victvs – How wearable technology is putting exam security at risk

India's own GPS is back in orbit. Now put a price on the road.

NVS-03 restores NavIC's four-satellite baseline and, commercially more important, adds the L1 signal that ordinary phone chipsets read. This is a status update on the TRANS-Tax mechanism I proposed in April: the positioning layer it needed now exists. Also, why India should not price its roads on a foreign constellation, and what NVS-04 and NVS-05 must still deliver.

Friday's launch was reported as a rocket story. I read it as a plumbing story. GSLV-F18 lifted off from Sriharikota at 11.51 p.m. IST on 30 October and placed the 2,250 kg NVS-03 into a geosynchronous transfer orbit about eighteen minutes later. ISRO chairman V. Narayanan then said the mission had "restored NavIC constellation operation as we need a minimum of four satellites to perform positioning, navigation and timing services" (The Times of India, 31 October 2026).

Restored deserves a pause. In a written reply in the Lok Sabha on 29 July, the Union Minister of State for Space said only three satellites were providing positioning, navigation and timing services, against the minimum of four (TOI). The Hindu reports that the last working atomic clock aboard IRNSS-1F stopped on 13 March, and that NVS-02, launched in January 2025, never reached its intended orbit. For most of this year our own constellation could give us time, but not reliably our position.

Two lines of the specification matter more than the launch. NVS-03 carries an indigenous rubidium atomic clock alongside procured clocks and, in the words of The Hindu, "L1 signal in addition to existing L5/S signals". Moneycontrol notes that L1 "is widely used by consumer navigation devices, including smartphones". Until this weekend NavIC spoke on frequencies that the chip in a truck's telematics box, or the phone in a driver's pocket, was not built to hear. That was the quiet ceiling on every NavIC use case I have argued for.

In April I put the mechanism to Shri Bhupender Yadavji like this:

"Every vehicle on Indian roads is tracked in real time via NaVIC satellites ... A TRANS-TAX is levied in proportion to the harm caused — automatically deducted via FASTag or UPI, without stopping the vehicle." (Shri Bhupender Yadavji: Tans Tax will save Environment - and LIVES, 28 April 2026)

I am not reopening that argument today; I am revising its status. A platform that must locate every vehicle, hour after hour, and price its behaviour from that position cannot stand on a constellation one satellite short of the minimum, broadcasting on a band that mass-market receivers ignore. That was true in April. It is not true this morning. The harm quotient, the dynamic TRANS-SCORE, the FASTag auto-debit were all waiting on exactly this.

What is still owed:

• NVS-03 has a mission life of 12 years (The Hindu, 31 October 2026).
• NVS-04 and NVS-05 are "in an advanced stage of realisation", the Minister said in July (TOI).
• WION reports that basic revival needs three more NVS satellites in quick succession, and six or seven for genuine reliability.

Nor should we wait. Road pricing is enforcement, and I would rather India's enforcement did not run on somebody else's constellation. Moneycontrol recalls that NavIC exists partly because India reportedly could not access US GPS data during the 1999 Kargil conflict. A toll that can be withheld from outside is not a toll — and I believe the same of any vehicle telemetry layer we build this decade.

Position is the visible half of PNT; timing is the half that gets priced. Moneycontrol notes that at 300,000 km per second, one nanosecond of error is about 30 cm of position error. Every road price is, underneath, a time price — and NVS-03 has put India's own clock back into that argument.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
31 October 2026

ONDC taught 1.4 crore kiranas to be buyers. Do the same for 1.4 crore jobseekers.

ONDC's DigiDukaan has reached 21,000 kirana retailers, and the roundtable chaired by Piyush Goyal set out a five-point agenda: a common digital identity, shared logistics, credit linked to procurement, plug-and-play connectors and realigned incentives. The author argues that the same stack, pointed at hiring instead of procurement, is his National Employment Grid and Bharat Job Alert Mission — portable skills identity built on eShram, NCS, Udyam and ITI records, daily AI matching, wage-verified credit for gig workers, and repeat placements as the only number worth publishing.

In March 2022 I set an old S Kumars agreement of April 2000 beside the new ONDC framework and asked whether the seed had been planted twenty-two years earlier (Origin of ONDC ?). I will not argue that again here. Friday's numbers have earned the space.

"When open digital infrastructure is built around the needs of the small retailer, adoption follows," Piyush Goyal said, chairing the Bharat Commerce Chintan Shivir at Vanijya Bhawan with more than 40 FMCG leaders. The Commerce Ministry's release of 30 October 2026 supplies the evidence:

• 21,000+ retailers connected to 450+ brands across Hyderabad, Jaipur and Mumbai as of September 2026, up from 12,000+ in the previous quarter
• 16,000+ onboarded in Hyderabad alone, with monthly repeat ordering of 73–78%
• 40% of surveyed retailers reporting lower inventory on DigiDukaan procurement — sample size not disclosed, Moneycontrol noted

I have claimed a share of that seed since 2000, so let me spend the credit at once and buy something useful. The new thing in the release is not the retailer count. It is the agenda placed before those CEOs: a common digital identity for kiranas, shared logistics and micro-warehousing, formal credit linked to digital procurement, plug-and-play Distributor Management System connectors, and realigned commercial incentives. Fortune India described the push as digitising procurement for India's 1.4 crore kirana stores.

Read that same list against hiring instead of procurement, and you have what I have been proposing for years. Four instruments, for jobseekers:

1. A portable skills identity. DigiDukaan wants one kirana identity that works across brands, distributors and service providers. A worker needs the same: eShram registration, NCS record, ITI or NSDC certificate and a Udyam-verified employer, stitched into one verifiable identity that no single employer owns.
2. Matching, not searching. The retailer does not hunt for schemes; the network brings the order. AI should score every new vacancy against every resume each night and send the result by WhatsApp, SMS and voice in the worker's language.
3. Wage-verified credit. Lenders will finance a shopkeeper against procurement flow. A gig worker has income but no payslip; a verified wage history, built from matched placements and platform payouts, is the equivalent collateral.
4. Repeat placement rate. That 73–78% figure is what made the room sit up. Our headline number should be repeat placements — workers hired a second time through the grid, employers posting a second vacancy.

"getting - and holding onto a 'Job' is as basic as 'ROTI / KAPADA/ MAKAAN'"

That line is from my note of 27 February 2003, which proposed carrying job alerts over GPRS and CDMA to the 50 million youth registered with employment exchanges. Twenty-three years on, we still publish registrations, not placements.

The two halves already exist as papers: National Employment Grid and Bharat Job Alert Mission, both July 2025. What they need is a room like Friday's, with Labour and Commerce in it. The kirana was never hard to reach. She was simply never addressed.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
31 October 2026

Yadavji, your PAVAN centre is missing one module: the price of a bad kilometre

CAQM has stopped dust-raising construction across the NCR for sixteen days, and PAVAN can now see every stack, site and hotspot on one screen. This letter to Shri Bhupender Yadav welcomes the platform and asks for the one module it lacks: a vehicle-level HARM QUOTIENT and dynamic TRANS-SCORE, charged through FASTag or UPI, so a bad kilometre carries a price all year. It also asks why the 50% work-from-home order pays nobody, and why the dust left banned is the dust easiest to ban.

Shri Bhupender Yadavji,

Namaskar.

The Hindustan Times of 31 October reports that CAQM has stopped dust-raising construction and demolition across the NCR from 5 to 20 November, a window that "spans Diwali and what is typically the season's worst stubble burning impact". You announced it on Friday, after reviewing the new PAVAN command centre at Janpath.

What is unusual is the sequence. Most years we act after the air has turned. This time the order came first, with dates on it, and a control room behind it. The Hindu of 31 October reports that PAVAN is the Platform for Air Quality Vigilance and Analytics for NCR. The Ministry's note of 30 October lists what it ingests:

• 111 continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations across Delhi-NCR
• more than 2,300 industries, through online stack emission monitoring
• more than 3,200 active construction sites
• more than 30 data streams, including mobility, complaints and compliance

One screen, one truth, on a "Detect, Analyse, Act" loop. My only complaint is the one I have carried since 2018. When the sensor sits on a stack or a site gate, PAVAN can act. When the source is a vehicle, the Act is a line on a calendar: the site falls silent on 5 November and stirs again on 21 November.

In my letter to you of 28 April 2026 I described a vehicle carrying a HARM QUOTIENT built from speed, idling, braking, trip frequency and emission class, and a dynamic TRANS-SCORE, with the charge deducted through FASTag or UPI without anyone being stopped. I will not argue that general case again. I am asking that it be fitted as a module into PAVAN, which already carries mobility and congestion-hotspot feeds. Satellite positioning is a separate conversation. The host platform is here today.

Two things in the package trouble me. First, the exemption list. The order covers flyovers, roads, pipelines and telecom works, but leaves railways, metro, airports, hospitals, water supply and projects of national importance free to pour concrete; the same Hindustan Times report notes metro work along Mehrauli-Badarpur Road continuing through the window. The dust that has been banned is the dust that was easiest to ban. Second, the 50% attendance cap in Delhi and five neighbouring districts. That is a prohibition, not a price. The office that pushes half its staff into diesel buses pays exactly what the office that shifts them to the metro pays, and both lose the output.

Three things I would suggest, none of them needing a new institution:

1. Give PAVAN a vehicle ledger. From 1 November, as Daily Pioneer reported on 30 October, over 10 lakh out-of-state vehicles below BS-VI are barred from Delhi. A border is a wall; a price is a filter.
2. Publish each vehicle's TRANS-SCORE, so a careful driver can see what his restraint has earned him.
3. Ring-fence the proceeds into a Green Mobility Fund, as I urged in April.

The platform, Sir, is genuinely new. The economics inside it are still the old ones, and I believe that is the module worth commissioning next.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
31 Oct 2026

Form 7 has no signature from the person being deleted

The Election Commission has told the Supreme Court that bulk Form 7 objections in Uttar Pradesh were false and were never acted upon. I am less interested in that fight than in a plain feature of the form: it can be filed about you by somebody else, and nothing in it requires you to be told. I suggest a one-time code to the elector before any deletion takes effect, caps on bulk filings per BLO and booth, a public deletion register, and an audit trail the Commission can hand the Court directly.

Form 7 has no signature from the person being deleted. That is not a loophole; it is the design. It is an objection form: a third party tells the Electoral Registration Officer that a name should not be on the roll. The elector need not have signed it, or known.

On Friday (30 October 2026) the Election Commission told a Bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant that it had found such forms and stopped them. Bar & Bench reports D.S. Naidu for the Commission:

“We found that bulk Form 7 applications had been submitted. Our officers checked and cross-checked them. They were false, and we have not acted upon them.”

The petitioners say 32 forms in Hata constituency were aimed at one community, two signed by booth-level officers (The Hindu, 30 October 2026). The Court has asked for a note and a compliance report. The figures on record:

• 4,65,520 deletions through Form 7 in Uttar Pradesh (The Indian Express)
• 252 appeals by electors against ERO orders, including deletions (The Indian Express)
• Over two crore voters removed after the revision, which ended in April with the roll at 13.39 crore (The Hindu)

That second figure is the one I keep returning to. Against 4,65,520 Form 7 deletions, 252 appeals. Either every one of those deletions was correct and undisputed, or most of the people named never learned that a stranger had objected. I do not know which. Neither does the Court.

The row itself has moved to Rajaji Marg. The INDIA bloc’s “public impeachment” of the Chief Election Commissioner, pushed back by rain, is being held today at 2.30 p.m., ahead of Sunday’s march to Ramlila Maidan (Millennium Post, 31 October 2026). Chief Justice, Chief Election Commissioner: I have nothing to add to that. What I want is smaller.

1. No Form 7 that survives ERO scrutiny should become a deletion until a one-time code has gone to the elector’s own registered mobile and been acknowledged against the EPIC. No acknowledgement, no deletion.
2. Rate caps on bulk filings, per BLO and per booth, with anything above the cap held for ERO review.
3. A public, searchable deletion register: who objected, on what ground, which officer signed.
4. A real-time audit trail, so the compliance report the Court wants is generated from the Commission’s system and signed by an officer, not assembled by affidavit.

The Commission will say the checks exist already: its affidavit describes BLOs being directed not to digitise a form without proper checking, and hearings before speaking orders under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 (Indian Express, 30 October 2026). Fine. Then the code costs almost nothing — and a Commission that catches false bulk forms can surely warn the person named in them.

In April, writing about the SIR appeal portal, I asked for acknowledgement receipts and a route a voter could track (SIR Portal: Who’s Left Out?, 10 April 2026). This is the same request one step earlier: not the appeal after the name is gone, but the notice before it goes.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
31 Oct 2026

A six-month committee, a 2047 horizon, and a dashboard that should be public from day one

The Finance Ministry has set up a five-member committee under Suresh N. Patel to reform banking for Viksit Bharat 2047. I accept its terms of reference and hold it to three measurable things: a public work plan and live dashboard from week one; the AI and digital-innovation item treated as load-bearing, with consent architecture fixed before models are procured; and a priority-sector review judged by whether credit reaches the small farmer in a low-credit district, not by the national aggregate. The report itself should be split: changes for Parliament and DFS, suggestions for RBI.

On Friday the Finance Ministry set up the five-member High Level Committee on Banking for Viksit Bharat, chaired by former Central Vigilance Commissioner Suresh N. Patel, with RBI Deputy Governor Shirish Chandra Murmu, former RBI Deputy Governor N. S. Vishwanathan and former Indian Bank MD & CEO Padmaja Chunduru, and the Joint Secretary (Banking), Department of Financial Services, as Member Secretary — an announcement Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had made in the 2026-27 Budget (ANI release, 30 October 2026; Financial Express, 30 October 2026).

The mandate, in the ministry's words, is to recommend "structural, institutional, regulatory and legislative reforms necessary to make it globally competitive, financially inclusive, and resilient for Viksit Bharat, 2047". The tenure is six months, and Financial Express reports the committee will submit its report by March 2027. The Times of India notes that the last reviews of this scale were the Narasimham committee (1998), the Rajan committee (2008) and the Urjit Patel committee (2014).

I accept the terms of reference at face value. They are the right list. What concerns me is the shape of the output, so here are three measurable asks.

1. Publish the work plan and a live public dashboard in week one, not a PDF in March 2027. One line for each ToR item, scored monthly: evidence gathered, consultations held, draft recommendation, dissent recorded. I asked for that discipline across ministries in Ministry Report Cards 2025 (May 2026), and for decisions on file in the Good Faith Decision Recording Protocol (March 2026). A committee that speaks only at the end cannot be argued with while it still matters.
2. Treat the AI item as the load-bearing one. "Prepare a roadmap for AI and digital innovation in banking institutions, while providing for safeguards against cyber risks" is where the next decade of banking sits. A bank that can see all of a customer's recurring mandates across UPI, cards and accounts is the natural unit for AI underwriting — the layer I described in Comprehensive Financial Operating Layer (March 2026). But the consent architecture should be written before the models are procured, on DEPA rails and single, revocable, SARAL-style consents (Inching Closer to "SARAL", July 2025).
3. Judge the priority-sector review by the district, not by the 40 per cent aggregate. The ToR asks whether the PSL framework and the Lead Bank Scheme still deliver inclusive, balanced, data-driven credit. The honest test is narrower: does a small farmer in a low-credit district get a loan this year? Publish district-wise PSL and Lead Bank data with the report, so that the national number stops being the answer.

One procedural point. The Member Secretary is from DFS; the prudential rule-writer is RBI. So split the report: Part A, changes for Parliament and DFS, covering RRB and cooperative-bank law, capital and consolidation; Part B, suggestions for RBI, covering prudential norms, PSL calibration and AI and cyber guardrails. Citizens should see, line by line, who must act.

Six months is short. The members know banking; the risk is not competence but silence. A dashboard opened on day one would make the March 2027 report harder to ignore — and, I believe, better.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
31 Oct 2026

Digital Rupee for Transparent Welfare – A Convergence of Views

 To: 

Shri Sanjeev Chopra - Secretary of the Department of Food and Public Distribution

[  secy-food@nic.in  ] 

Subject: Congratulations on your digital rupee article – a convergence of views

Dear Shri Chopraji,

Congratulations on your Hindustan Times article, 

Towards transparent welfare spending with digital rupee.

You have put your finger on the exact weakness of ordinary DBT: once cash leaves the government's books, nobody can tell what it was spent on. Your account of how purpose-bound CBDC tokens, Just-in-Time settlement and feature-phone wallets fix this in Chandigarh, Puducherry, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Gujarat is the clearest I have read.

I was delighted to see this, because in October 2022, the day after RBI released

 its CBDC concept note, I had written a blog arguing for :

#   a sovereign digital rupee with a complete transaction trail, 

#   programmable end use and 

#   an offline mode for the unbanked. 

My blog below sets out where our views converge.

I hope your article helps speed up the rollout in the ten states now entering the next phase.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / 31 Oct 2026

---

Digital Rupee for Transparent Welfare – A Convergence of Views

What Shri Chopra says

In his Hindustan Times article, Shri Sanjeev Chopra explains how the Digital Rupee is fixing the blind spot in India's largest food security programme, PMGKAY, which serves over 800 million people.

• The problem with DBT. Since 2015-16, Chandigarh, Puducherry and urban Dadra & Nagar Haveli have paid the food entitlement as cash into bank accounts. Once that cash leaves the government's books, there is no way to confirm it was used for food.
• 
  
• Programmable tokens. A CBDC token can be restricted to food grains, given a validity window, and credited only to a wallet linked to an Aadhaar-verified household.
• 
  
• A continuous audit trail. Every rupee can be traced from the Consolidated Fund of India to the point of redemption, credited in real time.
• 
  
• Reach for the poorest. Wallets work on basic feature phones through SMS and USSD.
• 
  
• The Gujarat pilot for in-kind grain. Subsidy is issued as a purpose-bound token that exists only for one transaction, and is settled with the ration-shop dealer Just-in-Time, matched to grain actually sold. Beneficiaries get an instant receipt showing their entitlement and the Centre's subsidy.
• 
  
• Savings on hardware. At full coverage, the token itself carries authentication and audit, so separate ePoS machines become redundant.

Ten more states have begun the next phase of rollout.

What I wrote in October 2022

In e-Rupee or IndiaBit: a Rose by Any Other Name? (8 Oct 2022), written the day

 after RBI released its concept note on the Central Bank Digital Currency, I

 thanked then-Governor Shri Shaktikanta Das for taking up some of my earlier

 suggestions, and urged him to consider the rest.

Those suggestions came from my June 2020 blog 

Crypto : Corruption : Corona : China:

• A sovereign digital currency. 
• 
  
• Ban private crypto and introduce IndiaBit, a government virtual currency, still denominated in rupees.
• 
  
• All transactions digital. 
• 
  
• Over time, every purchase of goods or services moves to mobile-app digital payments.
• 
  
• A complete trail. 
• 
  
• The government would hold a full log of every transaction: who bought what, when, from whom, at what price, and where.
• 
  
• Data for policy. 
• 
  
• Automatic compilation of consumption data for the whole economy would be a game changer for policy-making.
• 
  

In the same blog I highlighted three features of RBI's 2022 concept note:

• Programmable money. 
• 
  
• CBDC could be programmed for its end use; for example, farm credit spendable only at agricultural input stores.

• An offline mode. 
• 
  
• Payments without network or power, creating a digital footprint for the unbanked.
• 
  
• Privacy for small transactions. 
• 
  
• Trails of low-value transactions would be erased.
• 
  

Where our views converge

What I argued for in 2020 and 2022 is now running on the ground, in exactly the

 shape Shri Chopra describes.

Idea	My blogs (2020, 2022)	Shri Chopra (2026)
Sovereign digital rupee instead of cash	IndiaBit: a government digital currency, still called the rupee	Digital Rupee replaces cash DBT in three UTs
Complete transaction trail	A full log of who bought what, when, from whom, at what price	A continuous, auditable trail from the Consolidated Fund to redemption
Programmable end use	Flagged RBI's example: farm credit spendable only at input stores	Tokens redeemable only for food grains, within a validity window
Reaching the unbanked	Flagged RBI's offline mode to give the unbanked a digital footprint	Wallets on basic feature phones via SMS and USSD
Data for policy and accountability	Automatic consumption data as a game changer for policy	Instant receipts and transaction-linked settlement hold ration dealers accountable

Two honest differences remain:

1. Scope. 
2. 
   
3. In 2020 I proposed going all the way: withdrawing paper currency and moving every transaction to digital. Shri Chopra's approach is narrower and wiser for now: purpose-bound tokens for welfare, with ordinary money untouched.
4. 
   
5. Privacy. 
6. 
   
7. A full log of every citizen's purchases raises real privacy concerns. RBI's own design answers this sensibly, with high transparency for welfare money and privacy protection for low-value retail transactions.
8. 
   

What Shri Chopra's article adds, which I had not foreseen, is Just-in-Time settlement. Paying the dealer only at the moment of sale, for the exact grain sold, removes the advance cash float that has always been a source of leakage.

Closing

In 2022 I asked whether we should call it e-Rupee or IndiaBit. Shri Chopra's article shows the name never mattered; the trail did. Money that can prove where it went is money that cannot quietly leak.

Congratulations, Shri Chopraji, 

for explaining so clearly what this means for 800 million PMGKAY beneficiaries. I hope the ten states now joining will move quickly.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.HemenParekh.in / 31 Oct 2026

========================================

Related readings

• Virtual Currency? Time to Get Real – Aug 2017
• Time to Un-Block the Blockchain Technology – Jan 2020
• Crypto : Corruption : Corona : China – Jun 2020
• Thank You, Smt Sitharamanji – Nov 2021
• Crypto Rupee: Elephant in the Room? – Feb 2022
• CBDC: Slow and Steady – Jul 2022
• e-Rupee or IndiaBit: a Rose by Any Other Name? – Oct 2022

Sources

• Hindustan Times – Towards transparent welfare spending with digital rupee
• Digital Watch – India launches Digital Rupee food subsidy transfers in two territories
• MarketScreener – India's digital currency push targets its leaky welfare system

Poverty Falls, Inequality Stays – The Ghost of Bhoothalingam Returns

 

The news

India has cut extreme poverty to 2.6%, but the top 10% of workers still earn 13 times what the bottom 10% earn. Both numbers come from the World Bank's October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief, as reported by BusinessLine.

The good news is genuinely big:

• Extreme poverty (below $3.00 a day, 2021 PPP) fell from 27.1% in 2011 to 2.6% in 2023, lifting about 496 million people (ANI).
• 
  
• Those below the $4.20 lower-middle-income line fell from 57.7% to 16.1%.
• 
  
• Employment grew by about 134 million between 2017 and 2023, nearly twice the growth in working-age population.
• 
  

But three warnings sit inside the same report:

• Flat real earnings. Real earnings stayed broadly unchanged, with new jobs mostly in low-productivity work (ANI).
• 
  
• Rising youth unemployment. It rose from 14.6% to 15.9% between the first quarters of FY26 and FY27.
• 
  
• The rich are undercounted. The Bank cautions that household consumption surveys may understate spending by the ultra-wealthy, so true concentration at the top is likely higher than measured (News Orbiter).

Looking back: the Ghost of Bhoothalingam

In May 2026 I wrote The Ghost of Bhoothalingam – 1978 vs 2026, revisiting my

July 2015 blog Median Salary?.

The 1978 Bhoothalingam Committee had said the gap between a company's lowest-paid worker and its highest-paid director should not exceed 10 times. It forgot to cap the bottom: DA kept lifting workers' pay while director salaries stayed frozen. 

At L&T, I once calculated that the lowest-rung worker would eventually overtake the Chairman.

That ceiling was scrapped and the market was set free. By 2025–26, CEO pay had reached hundreds of times the median employee's: about 752× at Infosys, 663× at HCLTech, 534× at L&T (FY24 base) and 330× at TCS. 

Meanwhile a Supreme Court judge earns roughly what a fresh top-B-school MBA does.

I ended with a call for a Bhoothalingam 2.0. 

Not a Soviet-style cap on the top, but a question: if a company cannot pay its

 lowest worker a dignified wage, why should its top executive be entitled to 700×

 that?

Two ratios, one ghost

Here is the surprise: 

across India's workforce as a whole, the gap is only a little above Bhoothalingam's 10×. 

The explosion happens at the very top.

Measure	Ratio
Bhoothalingam cap, lowest worker to top director (1978)	10×
Top 10% vs bottom 10% of workers, median earnings (World Bank, 2023)	13×
TCS CEO vs median employee (FY25)	~330×
L&T CEO vs median employee (FY24)	~534×
HCLTech CEO vs median employee (FY25)	663×
Infosys CEO vs median employee (FY25)	752×

The two kinds of ratio measure different things. 

The World Bank's 13× compares the typical worker in the top tenth with the typical worker in the bottom tenth. 

My CEO ratios compare one person at the summit with the median of one company.

Read together, they tell one story:

1. The broad middle is not the problem. 
2. 
   
3. The decile gap of 13× sits close to the 10× principle the Bhoothalingam Committee thought fair.
4. 
   
5. The summit has detached. 
6. 
   
7. The CEO ratios run 25 to 58 times wider than the whole decile gap, and the very top is exactly the slice the World Bank says its surveys undercount.
8. 
   
9. The bottom is stuck. 
10. 
    
11. With real earnings flat, the floor is not rising. So a ratio like 752× widens from both ends: the top races ahead while the bottom stands still.
12. 
    

In 1978 >  the flaw was no cap at the bottom. 

In 2026 >  the flaw is no principle at the top and no lift at the bottom.

My proposal: Bhoothalingam 2.0

India does not need a salary cap. 

It needs a ratio that companies must explain, a floor that keeps rising, and honest data on the top. 

Five steps:

1. Measure the floor, not just the median. 
2. 
   
3. SEBI already requires CEO-to-median pay disclosure. 
4. 
   
5. Add a second ratio: CEO pay to the lowest-paid worker, including contract workers. 
6. 
   
7. The median hides the contract labourer; the floor reveals him.
8. 
   
9. 
   
10. Tie the top's raise to the bottom's raise. 
11. 
    
12. If the CEO's annual hike exceeds the lowest-paid worker's hike by more than, say, 10 times, the Remuneration Committee must justify it in writing to shareholders. Today CEO pay grows 12–15% a year while employees get about 9% and entry-level staff far less.
13. 
    
14. A Dignity Band, rewarded not forced. 
15. 
    
16. Companies whose CEO-to-floor ratio stays within a published band earn recognition in public procurement and CSR scoring. Those far outside it simply disclose and explain. No cap, only a visible price.
17. 
    
18. 
    
19. Count the top honestly. 
20. 
    
21. Since consumption surveys miss the ultra-rich, the government should publish an annual top-1% income share from income-tax data, alongside the World Bank's poverty numbers. A ghost cannot be laid to rest if we refuse to look at it.
22. 
    
23. 
    
24. Pay the Republic's own executives properly. 
25. 
    
26. In the company called India Inc., citizens are the shareholders. Judges and senior civil servants should not earn less than a fresh MBA.
27. 
    
28. 
    

The floor matters even more than the ceiling. With real earnings flat and youth unemployment rising, the lasting answer is better-paid, more productive work, which is why I have argued for mass self-employment reforms in my white paper

>   Sharing Prosperity, Diminishing Adversity (Sept 2026).

Closing

India deserves full credit for lifting nearly 500 million people out of poverty.

But escaping poverty is not the same as sharing prosperity.

The World Bank's 13× tells us the broad workforce is still within shouting distance of Bhoothalingam's 10×. 

The 752× tells us the summit has left the building. The ghost of Bhoothalingam is not asking us to cap ambition. 

It is asking that the floor rise with the ceiling.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.HemenParekh.in / 31 Oct 2026

Related readings

• Median Salary? – Jul 2015
• The Ghost of Bhoothalingam – 1978 vs 2026 – May 2026

Sources

• BusinessLine – Extreme poverty falls to 2.6%, but top 10% earn 13 times more than bottom 10%
• ANI – India records one of the fastest poverty declines in the world
• News Orbiter – World Bank Reports Extreme Poverty Drop in India
• Storyboard18 – IT CEO pay ratios
• BusinessToday – L&T Chairman enters ₹100-crore club
• EY Future of Pay 2026

One Certificate, Many Lenses – AI Regulation Across Sectors

 To: 

Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hon. Minister for Electronics & IT

Cc: 

Shri Anil Kumar Lahoti, Chairman, TRAI; 

Secretariat, AI Governance & Economic Group (AIGEG)

cp@trai.gov.in /  secretary@meity.gov.in  /  moeit@gov.in  /  moeit@gov.in

=================================================

Subject: 

One Certificate, Many Lenses – avoiding conflicting AI rules across sectoral regulators

===================================================

Dear Shri Ashwini Vaishnawji,

TRAI has just urged telecom operators to test AI models before deployment, log their decisions and keep humans able to intervene. These are sound principles. But they apply equally to RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, CDSCO, DGCA, CERC and every other sectoral regulator.

If each regulator now writes its own AI rulebook, the same AI model will face a dozen different audits, vocabularies and logging formats. Worse, the rules will sometimes pull in opposite directions.

In my blog below, I propose a five-layer architecture called One Certificate, Many Lenses. It builds on my earlier proposals, Parekh's Law of Chatbots (Feb 2023) and UNARAI (May 2023), and on TRAI's own 2023 call for a common AI framework across all sectors.

I request that this be considered as an input to MeitY's forthcoming AI consultation, and that AIGEG take up the idea of an AI Regulators' Council.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / 31 Oct 2026

---

Blog: One Certificate, Many Lenses

The news

TRAI is pushing for responsible use of AI in telecom networks, to make telcos accountable. TRAI Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti has asked operators to invest in responsible AI, carry out risk assessments, keep logs of decisions and test models before deployment (Daily Pioneer). He also wants humans to keep the ability to monitor, audit and intervene as networks become more autonomous (Asia News Network).

The question it raises

Telecom is one industry with one regulator. India has many such industries, each with its own regulator: RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, CDSCO, DGCA, CERC and more. All of them are already using AI.

So shall each regulator issue its own, separate AI guidelines? And if they do, won't they end up working at cross purposes?

There is a further twist. Telecom networks carry the Internet, through which AI travels. But so do WiFi, enterprise LANs and satellites, none of which TRAI fully covers.

Where regulators will collide

TRAI's principles (test before deployment, log decisions, keep a human override) are not telecom-specific at all. That is exactly why a dozen separate rulebooks will clash.

1. One AI system, two regulators. A telco's AI spam filter that wrongly blocks bank OTPs is a TRAI problem and an RBI problem at once. Each may demand a different audit format for the same model.
2. One model, many sectors. A single foundation model running customer service for a bank, a hospital and a telco would need certification three times, under three vocabularies.
3. Conflicting data rules. One regulator's data-retention mandate can collide with DPDP's data-minimisation principle.
4. The pipe is the wrong place to regulate. AI reaches citizens over fibre, WiFi and satellite alike. Regulating it through the carrier creates gaps and duplication at the same time.

The gap is already visible. A July 2026 commentary noted that India's new apex AI body, AIGEG, does not include the sectoral regulators who have done the most detailed AI work (USISPF).

I had flagged this risk earlier this year in Keeping AI Options Open (May 2026): sectoral rules bring precision, but raise complexity and compliance cost for multi-use AI systems.

My solution: One Certificate, Many Lenses

Layer 1 – Certify the AI once, nationally

In Parekh's Law of Chatbots (Feb 2023), I proposed that every chatbot be submitted to an approval authority (IACA) and released only after receiving a certificate: P for public use, R for restricted use. In my 1st Amendment (June 2026), I added N (No Release) and D (Destroy).

Applied to this problem: a single national AI Certification Authority certifies each model once. Pre-deployment testing, decision-log formats and incident reporting become common standards. The certificate travels with the model into every sector.

TRAI itself came close to this in 2023, recommending an independent AI authority, a risk-based framework and a common regulatory framework covering all sectors (Digital Watch).

Layer 2 – Sector regulators write only "use-case annexures"

• TRAI, RBI, SEBI and others add requirements specific to their domain, such as network-autonomy limits for telecom or algorithmic-trading limits for markets.
• They may make the base certificate stricter, never weaker.
• They may not redefine its terms.

This keeps their domain expertise without a dozen parallel rulebooks.

Layer 3 – An AI Regulators' Council, on the GST Council pattern

This follows the federal-council design of my Central Testing Commission proposal.

• Members: all sectoral regulators plus MeitY, sitting under AIGEG.
• Lead-regulator rule: for a cross-sector system (a telco filter blocking bank OTPs), one regulator leads and the others concur.
• Single window: one compliance filing and one shared AI incident registry, reused by every regulator.
• Conflict register: contradictory rules are logged and resolved within a fixed timeline.

Layer 4 – Regulate the driver and the vehicle, not the road

TRAI should govern AI that runs the network itself: routing, fraud detection, spam filtering. It should not govern the AI services travelling over that network. Those fall under the Layer 1 certificate and the relevant sector annexure, whether they arrive over fibre, WiFi or satellite.

Layer 5 – Plug into the world through UNARAI

AI crosses borders as easily as it crosses networks. In United Nations Agency for Regulating AI (UNARAI) (May 2023), I proposed a UN agency of all member states to develop and enforce AI standards. India's national certificate should be built for mutual recognition abroad, the way ISO and CE marks work today.

The other side

Some scholars argue that AI poses very different challenges in different domains, so one regulator cannot fit all of them (Ryan Nabil, NTUF). That concern is fair, and it is exactly why my design keeps sector annexures instead of handing everything to one super-regulator.

Closing

India does not need one AI regulator, nor a dozen competing ones. It needs one certificate, read through many lenses, with a council to settle disputes. Then a model certified once can serve a bank, a hospital and a telco without being re-judged three times.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.HemenParekh.in / 31 Oct 2026

Related readings

• Parekh's Law of Chatbots – Feb 2023
• United Nations Agency for Regulating AI (UNARAI) – May 2023
• UNARAI renamed HLMABAI – Oct 2023
• Congratulations Shri Ashwini Vaishnawji – May 2025
• Vindicated: Parekh's Law of Chatbots – Jun 2025
• India's AI Governance Path – Nov 2025
• Global AI Governance – Nov 2025
• Governing AI: A Pragmatic Moment – Feb 2026
• Keeping AI Options Open – May 2026
• Regulatory Overreach – Jun 2026

Bar Bars the Bench ? Let Justice Go Online !

 

The news

On 29 October 2026, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant admitted from the bench that the Supreme Court's plan to bring retired High Court judges back as ad hoc judges — to clear the backlog — never took off, because Bar associations passed resolutions against it. No Chief Justice, he observed, can afford to annoy the Bar.

The bench also noted that, under new pension rules, some judicial officers are resigning mid-career to return to practice.

So : the Constitution allowed it (Article 224A), the Supreme Court ordered it (January 2025), the Government agreed — and still, not one ad hoc judge.

Sources : PTI via ThePrint, Bar & Bench, Orissa POST (29–30 Oct 2026)

My take : stop adding judges, start multiplying them

The ad hoc judge plan tried to solve the backlog by adding a few hundred more judges to the same old system — the same courtrooms, the same paper files, the same adjournments.

Even if the Bar had agreed, a few hundred judges could not dent crores of pending cases.

The real answer is not more judges but more output per judge. And that answer is already working in India — quietly, in traffic courts.

Proof that it works : the virtual traffic courts

Under the e-Courts project, India has set up 31 virtual courts for traffic challans. As of June 2026 :

• They had received 11.33 crore challans, with fines of over Rs 1,135 crore
• No litigant had to visit a court. No lawyer was needed. A handful of judges handled the lot
• One single virtual traffic court in Srinagar disposed of over 2 lakh challans in 14 months

The wider e-Courts system has also held 4.18 crore hearings by video conference, accepted 1.25 crore e-filed cases, and digitised over 753 crore pages of court records.

Phase III of the project (2023–2027, Rs 7,210 crore) already provides for extending online courts beyond traffic cases. It is time to use that provision — at scale.

What I wrote earlier

In 2021, I urged the engagement of retired judges under Article 224A to clear old cases.

In November 2022 ("E-Court Arrives") and again in March 2025, I argued that retired judges must be paired with e-Courts and digital platforms, so that they work many times faster than the old system ever could.

The Bar has now blocked the first half of that idea. Let us push ahead with the second half — which does not depend on anyone's resolution.

My proposal : thousands of e-Courts, supervised by junior judges

A large part of the backlog is made up of simple, high-volume, document-based cases, where facts are rarely in dispute and the law is settled. These do not need a full courtroom. They need a fair, fast, online process, with a judge in charge.

Cases that can go online first

Type of case	Why it suits an e-Court
Cheque bounce (Section 138, NI Act)	Decided mostly on documents : the cheque, the bank memo, the notice
Traffic and municipal challans	Already proven in 31 virtual courts
Petty and compoundable offences	Most end in a plea or a fine
Small consumer claims	Bills, receipts and messages tell most of the story
Utility and tax-recovery disputes	Records are already digital
Uncontested matters (succession certificates, simple probate)	Mainly verification of papers

How one e-Court would work

1. The complainant files online, uploading documents; court fee is paid digitally
2. The system checks completeness, issues notice by SMS, e-mail and WhatsApp, and tracks delivery
3. The respondent replies online — admits, contests, or offers to settle
4. Admitted and settled cases go straight to a draft order
5. Contested cases get a short video hearing, scheduled by the system — no adjournment without a recorded reason
6. A junior judge reviews every file and signs every order. AI only summarises and drafts; the judge decides

The role of the junior judge

Today, a Civil Judge or Judicial Magistrate sits in one courtroom and hears perhaps 50–100 matters a day, most of them adjourned.

In the new model, each junior judge would supervise a cluster of e-Courts — say 10 to 20 — dealing only with :

• contested points that need a hearing
• orders that need signing
• exceptions flagged by the system

With about 25,000 subordinate judges in India, even if only 2,000 were assigned to supervise e-Courts, we could run 20,000 to 40,000 online courts — without a single new courtroom.

And retired judges could join too — working online, from home, as additional supervisors for the oldest cases, if the system later agrees.

Safeguards — so that speed does not kill fairness

• A human judge decides every case. AI drafts and sorts; it never signs
• Right to a physical hearing for anyone who asks for it, with reasons
• e-Sewa Kendras at every court complex for those without a smartphone or Internet
• Free appeal to a regular court against any e-Court order
• Data privacy under the DPDP Act for all uploaded documents
• Clear the pipe, not just the tank — Online systems can also create new cases faster than they clear them (e-challans already pile up in courts). So every e-Court must track cases filed vs cases disposed, every month

What about the Bar ?

The Bar need not see this as a threat.

• Lawyers can appear by video from their offices, and handle more clients in a day
• The complex, contested cases — where good advocacy matters most — will move faster once the courts are freed from routine files
• Young lawyers can find new work as e-filing and mediation facilitators

And unlike the ad hoc judge plan, this proposal needs no change in anyone's seniority or elevation.

My suggestions to the Supreme Court and the Law Ministry

1. Pilot in 5 states within six months, starting with cheque-bounce cases, which clog many magistrate courts
2. Notify rules under e-Courts Phase III for online courts beyond traffic, with clear timelines for each step
3. Train junior judges as e-Court supervisors at the National and State Judicial Academies
4. Publish a live dashboard : e-Courts running, cases filed, disposed, average days to disposal, appeals filed
5. Fix judicial pensions, so that the very judges we need for this model do not leave mid-career

Closing thought

The Bar could block a few hundred retired judges with a few resolutions.

But it cannot — and should not — block technology that lets every judge do the work of ten.

Our virtual traffic courts have already handled crores of cases without a single crowded courtroom. Let us give the same chance to the lakhs of litigants still waiting in the queue.

Dear CJI Surya Kantji : you could not risk annoying the Bar. But with e-Courts, you won't need to.

---

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai  /  www.YourContentCreator.in 

30 October 2026

Related reading : SC orders reappointment of retired HC judge (9 March 2025) · E-Court Arrives (Nov 2022)

News and data : ThePrint (PTI) · Bar & Bench · e-Courts factsheet, Aug 2026 · Srinagar virtual court · e-Courts Phase III