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China may dominate BRICS, but India is better inside it than outside

The BRICS summit, held in India in the midst of a massive global reset of economic and geopolitical power equations, has led some commentators to question the very utility of India remaining inside the organisation. BRICS is an accidental grouping of diverse countries with diverse (even conflicting) interests. The term was coined by a Goldman Sachs report of 2001 which suggested that global economic growth could come from Brazil, Russia, India and China (the countries that together constituted BRICs). Today, BRICS has 11 members, including South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Egypt. The criticism is partially valid, for BRICS countries do not subscribe to any particular set of values or seek economic convergence. The main criticism, though, is that the organisation would amount to little without China. Economist Surjit Bhalla says that BRICS’ economic performance is largely China’s. Take China out of it, and BRICS does not look anywhere like a growth engine...
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Why Tata Sons should stop dragging its feet over a stock market listing

Some corporate developments are the result more of regulatory pressures than enlightened internal thinking. A case in point is the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) decision last week (11 September) to reiterate its view that Tata Sons, the most important Tata group holding company, is an upper layer non-bank financial company. Thus, it would have to list itself on the stock exchanges. While the Tata Trusts, which hold two-thirds (66 percent) of the shares in Tata Sons, have been reluctant to list the company, other minority shareholders like the Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry (SP) group are keen on it, since this is the only way for the group to unlock value from its 18.4 percent holdings in Tata Sons. The fact that some companies in the SP group have been facing serious debt repayment problems has added a degree of urgency to the need to leverage their Tata Sons holdings. While the RBI has filed a caveat in the Bombay High Court to ensure that it is heard before Tata Sons is given any...
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Q1 GDP pow-wow: Why we need to "double-deflate" both the ra-ra comments and the Cassandras

It is a pity that national accounts statistics (NAS) have become a political football and subject to biased commentary. If the government side would like to put the best interpretation on the latest numbers, the opposition would like to do the opposite. This cannot but be demotivating for those who actually work very hard to compile these statistics painstakingly year after year. The latest data print on first quarter GDP (April-June 2026), which showed that GDP grew by a healthy 7.8 percent in real terms (10.3 percent in current terms), has been celebrated by the government as a huge achievement in the face of global headwinds. The opposition and ideologically inclined economists would like to pretend that this is a fake story, since the new numbers are based on a deflated 2025-26 first quarter base in the new GDP series, which uses new methods to estimate GDP, including double deflation. Double deflation means that output/revenue numbers are deflated twice to remove the effects ...
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Rahul Gandhi's cheap shot: Using a verse from Manusmriti does not reinforce anti-patriarchy message

The other day, at a party-organised Chhatron ki Goonj event in Pune, Rahul Gandhi fired a cheap shot to indirectly put Hindus on the defensive. His point was about women fighting patriarchy, but he chose a verse from the Manusmriti to make his point. The verse, number 9(3), says that a female must be subject to her father’s rule in childhood, in youth to her husband’s, and in old age to her sons”. It’s a cheap shot because he knows that no Hindu can easily defend this statement in the smriti , and if one does so, one can easily be labelled as upholding patriarchy. In the past, several anti-caste activists have burnt copies of Manusmriti without reading it, and one can bet that Rahul Gandhi too is unlikely to have read the smriti in any depth. Nobody has to defend what the Manusmriti claims as a moral code, but one does expect more nuance in criticism of the smriti , which was written in a different era, for a different set of circumstances. If Rahul Gandhi wanted to suggest th...
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Saudi-Pak-Turkiye axis: A partial vindication of Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations' thesis

The signing of a mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan, all Sunni Islamic countries, is a small signal that there is something to Samual Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations thesis. The defence pact, while not clear on when one country will go to war if another is attacked, is probably driven by a sense of common threat from Shia Iran and the Jewish state of Israel – both mortal enemies to each other themselves. Sunni religious identity is the basis of this pact for none of the three shares any common enemy that is existential in nature for all of them. Each one has a different enemy – Iran for the Saudis, India for the Pakistanis, and possibly Greece and Armenia for Turkiye, though both are minnows compared to Turkiye. In 1993, Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilisations in Foreign Affairs magazine, where he hypothesised that future conflicts and wars would be fought not only between countries but on the edges of “civilisations”. Huntington, a pro...
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A Govt on probation: Why Modi should prepare for a Million Mutinies now

By letting Dharmendra Pradhan go, albeit reluctantly, the Modi government may have bought itself some time to recoup political capital and rework its political calculations. But the time it has bought may be weeks, not months. For, once triggered, the chances are every major citizen’s dissatisfaction will now be aired in public. Some could also lead to Jantar Mantar. Already there is an E20 Janta Party in the making, comprising vehicle owners miffed about what E20 - ethanol mixed petrol - may be doing to their vehicles. Soon you could have farmers and other groups vying to get into the action. The Prime Minister, realising that the Jantar Mantar protests were driven by Gen Z - those in the 15-29 age group - and their instagram posts, has himself gone on Instagram. While there is no harm in this, he should not assume that his presence on this platform will change perceptions about this government. Reason: the Prime Minister is himself showing his age, and putting his own age on view for...
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Egg-protein in midday meals: Why less hypocrisy will serve both sides better

Eggs are back again on the national menu of heated public debates, this time because the new BJP government in West Bengal plans to give the job of providing mid-day meals to Akshaya Patra, an Iskcon affiliate, which does not serve eggs. This wasn’t the case when Mamata Banerjee was Chief Minister. The new BJP government wants to hand over the job to the Iskcon affiliate, which adopts dietary rules that are vegetarian and Vaishnavite. Akshaya Patra has a proven track record of providing clean and nutritious mid-day meals to millions of school children in various states, but it faces objections in some quarters because of its Hindu credentials. The issue is more political than just about raising the protein content in a child’s diet. Protein can be given in multiple forms, including through the use of soya and paneer in the food prepared. We need honesty in how we debate issues, but unfortunately this is lacking. People take hypocritical positions based on which political party or NGO t...
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