TheJaggi

It is just over a month since the last round of state assembly elections ended, but we are already back in election mode. The two-and-a-half years left before the next round of general elections are announced will be intensely political and confrontational. There may be no respite. In 2027, we have the big contest in Uttar Pradesh, not to speak of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, followed later in the year by Himachal and Gujarat. In 2028, we will have Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and, towards the end of the year, Telangana. Most of these are big states, and then there are the smaller north-eastern states of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. The stakes are sky-high for all parties, especially the BJP and Congress. And we cannot forget the presidential elections, for which the BJP seems reasonably well-placed right now. The election that will determine the immediate mood is Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP has to retain its majority for the third time and ...

By most non-political assessments, the 21 June National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), which is the entry point for a course in medicine, went off more or less without incident. Sure, some candidates were denied entry as they arrived late, one candidate was shown to have registered from Abu Dhabi when he wanted to write the exam in India, some others complained (after taking the exam) how hard some subjects were, but the exam went off without a major snafu. This “success” should worry us more than the failure of the previous one in May, when question-papers were leaked and the whole exercise had to be cancelled, leading to major tensions for the student community. Too many of our successes depend on a multi-stakeholder national effort, with even the armed forces being conscripted to pitch in this time, when such things ought to happen in the natural course through inherent institutional strengths.  Why should an entrance exam take Prime MInisterial supervision to work flawle...

One has said this before, and one must say it again: there is no rogue state more roguish than the United States of America. No global laws or rules apply to it, but all laws and rules it seeks to impose on the rest of the world will apply to everybody, unless the other party happens to have the power to say no. At this point, only China and Russia seem to have this ability. India’s first focus must be to achieve this degree of sovereignty based on underlying national economic and political power. India found out, again to its discomfiture, that the US will impose its will without even feigning to be diplomatic about it. After killing three Indians on a vessel that apparently did not comply with the US blockade on Iran, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not so much as express regret over the loss of lives. India’s relatively poor power position vis-à-vis the US is primarily the result of a few weaknesses and dependencies: One, our dependence on the vast US goods and service...

If you are an investor in shares or equity mutual funds, there are basically two approaches. One is the safety-first rule, where you spread your risks over a diversified list of shares or funds. In short, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But if you have a higher risk appetite, there is Andrew Carnegie’s maxim: put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket. The simple takeout is that diversification reduces risk, but also returns. Concentration increases risk, but offers higher rewards. None of this is about investment alone, but about every individual, state or organisation understanding the tradeoffs between risk and reward. If you are going to take huge risks, you must watch the basket very closely. Now, coming to the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), which is the gateway to a course in medicine, the central premise about the concentration of risk in one examination is that the rewards in terms of reduced student stress are high: lakhs of students ...

Indians demonstrate the correctness of Murphy’s law repeatedly: if something can go wrong, it will. If it, miraculously doesn’t, we will find new ways to screw things up. While this is an unflattering view of the average Indian’s (and officialdom’s) chalta-hai attitude, let us step back and ask a different question: what is the single thread (apart from our own follies) that may (or may not) connect the NEET paper leaks, the CBSE exam paper mess (and denial-of-service attacks on the portal), the sudden appearance of the Cockroach Janta Party a few weeks ago, the Bangladesh and Nepal street protests of 2024 and 2025 that sent two incumbent governments packing, the crash of a Tejas aircraft during an airshow in Dubai last year and the endless delays in the delivery of engines for the Tejas programme by GE, the death of India’s first Chief of Defence Staff in a helicopter crash in 2021, and the failure of two PSLV launches - both carrying critical security and surveillance satellites -...