Almost every Indian adult now pays for something by scanning a QR code. Almost none of them pay a fee to do it, and neither does the shopkeeper on the other side of the counter. That is not an accident of the market. It is the result of a specific sentence sitting in a specific Act of Parliament since 2019, which makes it illegal for a bank to charge anyone for a UPI transaction. Not anymore.

All any of us really wants from a bottle of rum is that it be rum, and that the label say what’s actually inside. In August 2026, India’s food regulator went to considerable lengths to enforce exactly that. What the episode quietly reveals is how much machinery – how many rulebooks, regulators and laboratories – now stands between a consumer and that very simple expectation.