A small journal, written slowly, about Indian financial regulation.
Founded May 2026. Edited by Balaji Rajendran. Posted, ideally, on Sundays.
Opulentdominion is a one-person publication of long-form essays on Indian financial regulation, written for the curious general reader. Each essay sets out to do one thing well: to take a circular, a master direction, or a single regulation, and explain it without the textbook's accumulated dust.
The pieces are not legal advice. They are not investment advice. They are not "five things to know about fintech this week." They are arguments, written in sentences, by someone who has spent more time in master directions than is good for them.
If a piece changes your mind about something — or, better, makes you change mine — write back. The journal is small enough that every letter is read.
Seven regulators, one journal.
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RBI
Reserve Bank of India
Banking, payments, digital lending, NBFCs, foreign exchange, prepaid instruments, the master directions on every one of these.
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SEBI
Securities & Exchange Board
Capital markets, listing obligations, mutual fund regulations, investment advisers, portfolio managers, the LODR.
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IRDAI
Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority
Life, general, and health insurance. Surrender value, lapsation, the long quiet argument over Bima Sugam.
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PFRDA
Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority
The National Pension System, Atal Pension Yojana, the curious math of NPS Tier-II, and the slow growth of the pension corpus.
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AMFI
Association of Mutual Funds in India
Distributor regulation, expense ratios, scheme categorisation, the SID and the KIM, and the math behind the SIP.
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NPCI
National Payments Corporation
UPI, IMPS, NACH, RuPay, and the unusual position of a not-for-profit company at the centre of the country's payment rails.
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FIU
Cross-regulator notes
PMLA and KYC, the inter-regulatory committees, the FIU-IND, the FSDC, and the rare moments at which the regulators speak with one voice.
Balaji Rajendran.
Writes about Indian financial regulation. Reads master directions in the way other people read novels — slowly, with a pencil, and with frequent stops to argue with the paragraph just finished.
Reachable, slowly, at balaji@opulentdominion.in. Will respond, usually, by the following Sunday.