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By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is...

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is allowed… but not really. This is boundary collapse… when a leader’s good intentions unintentionally blur the limits that protect autonomy and rest. When care quietly turns into control Founders rarely intend to micromanage.   What looks like control from the outside often starts as care from the inside. “Let me help before something breaks.” “Let me stay involved so we don’t lose time.” “Loop me in… I don’t want you stressed.” Supportive tone.   Good intentions.   But one invisible truth defines workplace psychology: When power says “optional,” it never feels optional.
So when a client requested a revision, Rohit gently pinged:   “If you’re free, could you take a look?” Of course she logged in.   Of course she handled it.   And by Monday, the cultural shift was complete: Leave = location change, not a boundary.   A founder’s instinct had quietly become a system. Pattern 1: The Generous Micromanager Modern micromanagement rarely looks aggressive. It looks thoughtful :   “Let me refine this so you’re not stuck.” “I’ll review it quickly.”   “Share drafts so we stay aligned.”   Leaders believe they’re being helpful. Teams hear:   “You don’t fully trust me.” “I should check with you before finishing anything.”   “My decisions aren’t final.” Gentle micromanagement shrinks ownership faster than harsh micromanagement ever did because people can’t challenge kindness. Pattern 2: Cultural conditioning around availability In many Indian workplaces, “time off” has an unspoken footnote: Be reachable. Just in case. No one says it directly.   No one pushes back openly.   The expectation survives through habit: Leave… but monitor messages. Rest… but don’t disconnect. Recover… but stay alert. Contrast this with a global team we worked with: A designer wrote,   “I’ll be off Friday, but available if needed.” Her manager replied:   “If you’re working on your off-day, we mismanaged the workload… not the boundary.”   One conversation.   Two cultural philosophies.   Two completely different emotional outcomes.   Pattern 3: The override reflex Every founder has a version of this reflex.   Whenever Rohit sensed risk, real or imagined, he stepped in: Rewriting copy.   Adjusting a design.   Rescoping a task.   Reframing an email. Always fast.   Always polite.   Always “just helping.” But each override delivered one message:   “Your autonomy is conditional.” You own decisions…   until the founder feels uneasy.   You take initiative…   until instinct replaces delegation.   No confrontation.   No drama.   Just quiet erosion of confidence.   The family-business amplification Boundary collapse becomes extreme in family-managed companies.   We worked with one firm where four family members… founder, spouse, father, cousin… all had informal authority. Everyone cared.   Everyone meant well.   But for employees, decision-making became a maze: Strategy approved by the founder.   Aesthetics by the spouse.   Finance by the father. Tone by the cousin.   They didn’t need leadership.   They needed clarity.   Good intentions without boundaries create internal anarchy. The global contrast A European product team offered a striking counterexample.   There, the founder rarely intervened mid-stream… not because of distance, but because of design:   “If you own the decision, you own the consequences.” Decision rights were clear.   Escalation paths were explicit.   Authority didn’t shift with mood or urgency. No late-night edits.   No surprise rewrites.   No “quick checks.”   No emotional overrides. As one designer put it:   “If my boss wants to intervene, he has to call a decision review. That friction protects my autonomy.” The result:   Faster execution, higher ownership and zero emotional whiplash. Boundaries weren’t personal.   They were structural .   That difference changes everything. Why boundary collapse is so costly Its damage is not dramatic.   It’s cumulative.   People stop resting → you get presence, not energy.   People stop taking initiative → decisions freeze.   People stop trusting empowerment → autonomy becomes theatre.   People start anticipating the boss → performance becomes emotional labour.   People burn out silently → not from work, but from vigilance.   Boundary collapse doesn’t create chaos.   It creates hyper-alertness, the heaviest tax on any team. The real paradox Leaders think they’re being supportive. Teams experience supervision.   Leaders assume boundaries are obvious. Teams see boundaries as fluid. Leaders think autonomy is granted. Teams act as though autonomy can be revoked at any moment. This is the Boundary Collapse → a misunderstanding born not from intent, but from the invisible weight of power. Micromanagement today rarely looks like anger.   More often,   it looks like kindness without limits. (Rahul Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He patterns the human mechanics of scaling where workplace behavior quietly shapes business outcomes. Views personal.)

Scan Nation: How UPI Is Rewiring India’s Economy

India’s UPI juggernaut is remaking finance, trust and the future of money.

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It was a blazing May afternoon when I reached Mumbai Central Station to catch a train for our family vacation. I hired a coolie for Rs. 300, but when I handed him a Rs. 500 note, he smiled and declined, asking for an online payment instead. Just a week earlier, my usual vegetable vendor had done the same, turning down my Rs. 100 note for a Rs. 10 purchase of lemons and asking me to pay digitally. These moments reminded me of an incident during the G20 Summit, when German Minister Volker Wissing paid a Bangalore hawker via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which was proudly shared by the German Embassy on its X handle. A recent study even found that UPI’s rise has dented low-cost candy sales, as exact digital payments eliminate the need for loose change.


UPI has swiftly become one of India’s most transformative digital innovations, reshaping its financial landscape.


India’s digital payment journey began in the 1980s with the launch of the country’s first credit card by the Central Bank of India, followed by HSBC introducing the ATM in 1987. The rollout of RTGS and NEFT laid the groundwork for secure electronic fund transfers. In 2008, the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks’ Association established the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which soon became the backbone of the country’s retail payment infrastructure. NPCI launched RuPay in 2012 as a homegrown card network to rival global players like MasterCard and Visa. A joint expert group led by Nandan Nilekani later conceptualised UPI as a real-time, wallet-free payment platform. It was officially launched in April 2016 with 21 partner banks, aiming to expand financial inclusion and minimise reliance on cash.


Demonetisation gave UPI its initial push, forcing people to turn to digital payments for everyday spending. The second phase, launched in 2022, brought enhanced security features. By then, the pandemic had heightened fears of physical contact, further accelerating the adoption of digital transactions.


UPI’s widespread success stems from its unique features. It enables users to link multiple bank accounts through a single app, ensuring seamless interoperability across banks and service providers. Available round the clock, it facilitates instant transfers and supports diverse payment modes—from mobile numbers and VPAs to account numbers and QR codes. Security is bolstered through virtual addresses that conceal actual bank details, along with two-factor authentication and device verification via push SMS. UPI PINs are safely encrypted within the NPCI library. Its zero-transaction fee model has continued to fuel mass adoption.


The JAM Trinity—Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar, and mobile connectivity—is central to India’s digital payments revolution. Since 2014, the Jan Dhan Yojana has integrated nearly 80 percent of the population into the formal banking system, with women holding 66 percent of accounts. Aadhaar, covering 95 percent of Indians, simplified KYC and enabled secure, low-cost verification, while its payment bridge links more than 850 million accounts with 99.9 percent success. Mobile subscriptions surged from 17 to 85 per 100 people between 2007 and 2016, laying the digital foundation. Together, JAM enabled Direct Benefit Transfers worth Rs. 40.81 trillion, saving Rs. 3.5 trillion by reducing leakages. By converging identity, banking, and connectivity, UPI has fostered transparency and improved financial governance.


Building on this foundation, UPI hit a new high in May with Rs. 26 trillion in transaction value, underscoring the global impact of India’s digital infrastructure.


UPI has contributed an estimated 1.5 percent to India’s GDP between 2017 and 2023, bringing over 200 million rural users into the digital fold and narrowing regional disparities. It has empowered women and self-help groups with better access to credit, and helped raise the RBI’s Financial Inclusion Index from 43.4 in 2017 to 64.2 in 2024. By drawing small businesses and vendors into the formal economy, UPI has boosted tax revenues, curbed black money, and expanded financial access. Its open architecture has spurred fintech innovation and drawn major investment.


Yet challenges persist. In FY25 alone, 632,000 fraud cases caused Rs. 485 crore in losses, often due to missing beneficiary verification, enabling fake accounts to flourish. With over 350 million users, UPI remains exposed to low-value attacks. Threats like app cloning, screen-sharing malware, and fake apps compromise security, while the May 2025 outage revealed infrastructure stress. Only 55 percent of users have unique mobile numbers, limiting access for many rural and female users. Feature phone users face further barriers such as SMS failures, low storage, and digital literacy gaps.


To counter these issues, UPI is undergoing major security upgrades. Advanced fraud detection using AI and machine learning is being deployed to monitor real-time transaction patterns. Enhanced encryption, biometric authentication, and improved two-factor verification are also being rolled out.


UPI has emerged as the world’s largest retail real-time payment system, handling 6.5 billion transactions per day—more than Visa’s daily FY24 volume of 6.39 billion. It now processes about 3,729 transactions per second, outpacing many global platforms. India contributes 49 percent of global real-time transactions, with UPI accounting for over 40 percent of domestic digital payments. Growing at 5–7 percent monthly and 40 percent annually, it is expanding nearly four times faster than Visa.


To support this global momentum, NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) was formed in April 2020 to take UPI abroad. The platform is active in seven countries including the UAE, Singapore and France, and plans to enter six more by end-2025. The RBI has laid out ambitious plans to expand UPI to over 20 countries by FY2028–29.


The Economic Survey 2025 underscored UPI’s pivotal role in demonstrating that financial inclusion can lead to greater financial literacy. Driven by necessity, UPI’s mass adoption has brought millions from the informal economy into the formal financial system. Today, as a cornerstone of India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, UPI not only powers economic transformation but also reflects the country’s broader goals of self-reliance and resilience.


(The author is a Chartered Accountant with a leading company in Mumbai. Views personal.)

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