Circulation
Money that keeps moving between local hands. Each time it changes hands nearby, it pays another person — the same rupee doing work again and again.
Green · the goalA field guide to the local & micro economy
See how money actually moves.
Money is not a thing you have. It is a thing that moves — from hand to hand, shop to shop, street to street. Follow a single rupee and you learn everything about why some neighbourhoods thrive and others quietly drain.
Money circulating locally
Stored value
Money leaking out
01 The one idea
A local economy is just money going round.
The faster it circles, and the fewer holes it leaks through, the richer a place becomes — without a single extra rupee entering.
02 Follow one rupee
Watch a single ₹100 travel.
Scroll slowly. One note enters a neighbourhood — and instead of stopping, it keeps paying people, one after another.
₹0
just earned — not yet spent
Step 01 / 07
You earn ₹100.
A wage, a sale, a remittance from a relative in the city. It lands in your hand. Right now, it has done no work yet.
Step 02 / 07
You spend it at the kirana.
The week's groceries. The shopkeeper — your neighbour — now holds your ₹100. Your note has paid its first household.
Step 03 / 07
The kirana restocks at the mandi.
She re-spends about ₹68 at the wholesale mandi. The same note is now feeding a second household — the farmer's.
Step 04 / 07
The mandi pays a farm labourer.
Around ₹46 goes to the person who loaded the sacks. Third pair of hands. The note still hasn't left the area.
Step 05 / 07
The labourer buys chai and sabzi.
Another ₹31, spent on the street. Chai, vegetables, a haircut. A fourth household is paid from your single note.
Step 06 / 07
One note. Four neighbours. Still here.
Your single ₹100 has already financed nearly ₹250 of local activity — and it hasn't left the lane. That is the local multiplier.
Step 07 / 07 · the other path
Now imagine you'd used an app.
The ₹100 leaves in one hop — to a warehouse in another city. It pays a distant company once, and the lane sees nothing more. Same note. Opposite ending.
03 The flow map
One neighbourhood, two futures.
Watch the same ₹100 move through a small Indian neighbourhood. Toggle between spending it at local hands and spending it at a distant chain or app — and watch how much stays home.
The two-town test
Same ₹10. Two towns.
Give each town the same ₹10 and let it change hands six times. One keeps 80% local each round; the other leaks most of it away. Watch the gap open.
Localton vs Leakyville · after the New Economics Foundation
Localton
keeps 80% local each round
₹0
total local activity from ₹10
★ The same ₹10 did ₹0 of local work
Leakyville
leaks 75% out each round
₹0
total local activity from ₹10
Nearly gone by round six — just ₹0
The New Economics Foundation's classic illustration: a plugged local economy can make the same money worth up to five times more than a leaky one.
04 How to read this guide
Three forces. Three colours.
Across every chapter, colour carries meaning. Learn these three and you can read any money-flow on the site at a glance.
Stored value
Money held still — as savings, stock, property or a shopfront. Not moving today, but the foundation that lets a household or business take the next step.
Gold · the baseLeakage
Money that leaves the neighbourhood on its first trip — to a distant chain's head office, an overseas warehouse, or an app. It does its work somewhere else.
Coral · the loss05 The field guide
Six chapters, one flow.
Each chapter opens its own deep-dive page with a working, playable model. Read in order, or jump anywhere.
▶ PLAYGROUND
The Society — a living miniature Vijayawada
Twenty-two characters exchanging real rupees, live: a rice-mill worker, the Rythu Bazaar, an Autonagar mechanic, a Krishna-delta farmer, the VMC — and the world beyond. Turn the city's shopping dial, shut the mill, close a shop, and watch who feels it. The whole guide, playable.
Enter the society01
The Local Multiplier Effect
Why one rupee spent locally is worth far more than one rupee. Play the recirculation simulator.
Open chapter02
Money Leakage
The holes in the bucket. Toggle chains, imports and apps and watch a town drain in real time.
Open chapter03
Local vs Chain vs Online
Follow the same ₹1,000 into three different tills and see where each rupee actually ends up.
Open chapter04
The Micro Economy
Kirana, mandi, street vendor, MSME — the informal engine that quietly runs India. In real numbers.
Open chapter05
The Velocity of Money
The same note, spent again and again. Pass a ₹100 note through many hands and watch activity compound.
Open chapter06
A Resilient Local Economy
Plug the leaks and keep value home. Run the policy lab — from local procurement to self-help groups.
Open chapter06 The numbers that matter
India's real economy is small, local, and enormous.
₹0 lakh cr
India's total retail market (2024) — most of it not on any app.
IBEF / BCG–RAI
0 million
Kirana & neighbourhood stores — the world's densest retail web.
Invest India
0%
Share of India's GDP produced by MSMEs — a third of everything.
Economic Survey 2025–26
0%
Of India's workforce is in the informal, mostly local economy.
ILO / IHD, 2024
0%
Of a rupee stays local at an independent shop — vs 43% at a chain.
Civic Economics, Chicago
0×
More local impact from an in-person indie buy than the same spend online.
Civic Economics, UNFulfilled
Why we built this
A rupee that stays on the street builds the street.
This guide exists to make one idea visible: value belongs to a place, and keeping money circulating locally is not charity — it is the stronger economics. Understand the flow first. Then run a whole city yourself.