Drag the dial to "all on apps"
Watch the kirana, tiffin centre and Rythu Bazaar stall while the leak counter races. Then check the delta farmer — he's four hops from your choice, and he still feels it.
The playground · a living micro-economy · Vijayawada
The Society
A miniature Vijayawada on its real map — the Krishna and the Barrage, One Town, Governorpet, Patamata, Autonagar — with wages, rents, fees and pensions calibrated to real survey data (HCES 2023-24, PLFS, notified wage rates). Salaries land monthly, groceries daily, rent on the 5th. Every rupee someone spends becomes someone else's income. Your goal: run the city so its Happiness Index climbs — and discover what it actually takes.
Local deal — stays in town
Money arriving from outside
Money leaking out
—
Happiness index · the goal
₹—
Money in the city
₹0
Kept local (cumulative)
₹0
Leaked out
—
Retention
0
Deals done
BEYOND VIJAYAWADA · బయట
▬ retention ▬ happiness · over time—
Simulation
Where does the city shop?
70%
ALL ON APPSALL LOCAL
Make something happen
The real city · 1,541 places (Google Maps) · zoom in for detail
Neighbourhoods · who keeps their money
collecting deals…
Show off
An honest toy, set in Vijayawada: money is conserved — nothing is created or destroyed, only moved. Characters who stop earning stop spending, and you'll see who feels it next. Prices are realistic (a ~₹550 daily wage, ₹250 grocery runs, ₹280 MGNREGA rate); time is compressed. The structure follows the circular flow of income.
The numbers behind the toy
Calibrated to real India data.
| In the sim | Real anchor | Source (year) |
|---|---|---|
| Household budgets & spending mix | Urban AP MPCE ₹7,182/person/mo; food ≈ 40%, education ≈ 6%, health ≈ 6%, transport ≈ 8.5%, rent ≈ 7% | HCES 2023-24, MoSPI |
| Mill worker's daily wage | AP rice-mill notified minimum ≈ ₹416/day | AP Minimum Wages Act |
| Kooli's daily wage | Urban casual labour ₹516/day | PLFS 2023-24 |
| MGNREGA work | AP notified rate ₹307/day | MoRD, FY 2025-26 |
| Lecturer's salary | AP junior-lecturer average ≈ ₹16.8k/mo (sim: small centre, low end) | Market data, 2025 |
| Delivery rider's earnings | Real gig earnings ≈ ₹12k/mo | NCAER, 2022 |
| Railway pension | ₹15–40k/mo regime (sim: ₹20k) | Railway pension rules |
| Rents | Vijayawada 2BHK ₹10–15k (sim: rooms & small flats ₹1.5–5.5k) | Market listings, 2025 |
| SHG credit | AP SHG avg bank loan ₹8.8L/group — India's highest (≈ ₹60–90k/member) | NABARD, 2023-24 |
| Paddy price | MSP ₹2,369/quintal | CACP, KMS 2025-26 |
Amounts are per-archetype and time-compressed (1 sim-day ≈ 5s, 30-day months); the Happiness Index weights each character by roughly how many working households they stand for. Full source list with URLs lives in the project's research notes.
Things worth trying
Run these experiments.
Shut the rice mill
Press "Rice mill shuts" and follow the cascade: the mill worker and the kooli stop earning, so they stop spending, so the kirana slows, so the Rythu Bazaar slows. One closure, five victims.
Close the kirana
Tap the kirana and close it. Groceries reroute beyond Vijayawada and the city's retention drops — see what one corner shop was silently holding together.
Open the mall, then fight back
Trigger "New mall at Benz Circle" (spending shifts outside for a while), then push the dial to 95% local and see how long the city takes to recover its retention.
Watch the farmer get paid
Tap the delta farmer and let it run at 4×. His money arrives two ways — paddy sold to the mill, produce through the Rythu Bazaar — and every rupee passed through local hands first. That chain is the local economy.
Find the necessary leaks
Even at 95% local, some coral still flows out — medicines, Surat cloth, mill machinery. That's fine. The lesson was never "seal the city"; it's "stop the unnecessary leaks."