Went to get a SIM replaced last month. The guy behind the counter told me to stand near the wall, look at the camera, blink twice. I assumed he was taking a photo for the form. You've probably done the same thing. Then it clicked. That wasn't a photo. That was Aadhaar face authentication — my live face being matched against the photo in my enrolment record. He never said the word Aadhaar. He didn't mention verification at all. And I only worked it out because I happened to have read about it. Most people walk out of there believing they got photographed for paperwork. So I went looking, and here's what's actually on record. In February 2025, UIDAI opened Aadhaar face authentication up to private entities — companies can now run it inside their own customer-facing apps. ( source ) Somebody ran a field survey of telecom outlets across Chennai — Mogappair, Korattur, Anna Nagar, Adyar, Ayanavaram. Same pattern at each one. Stand in good light, blink at the pho...

On 3 March 2025, the Nifty closed at 22,119. On 28 September 2026, it closed at 22,780. Nineteen months. A 3% gain. And a lot of sleepless nights in between. Over the same nineteen months, the money Indian investors borrowed from their brokers to buy shares went from ₹68,800 crore to ₹1.51 lakh crore . The market barely moved. The loan more than doubled. That gap is the whole story. And I don't think enough people are asking what it means. Margin loans (left) vs Nifty 50 (right), September 2023 to September 2026. Source: NSE MTF disclosures. First, what is MTF? MTF stands for Margin Trading Facility. Your broker lends you money to buy shares. The shares you buy sit with the broker as collateral. And you pay interest for every day you hold, typically around 12% to 15% a year at the big brokers. There's no expiry date. No option chain. No theta eating your premium. It looks and feels like investing. That's exactly what makes it dangerous. It behaves like leverage. ...