Raghav's Take

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the November elections in a uniquely spectacular manner. The fact that it was a COVID-induced ‘virtual event’ was perhaps the least of it. But the parade of Republican heavyweights at a Democratic convention was unprecedented, from Colin Powell, John Kasich to Cindy McCain. I shudder to think what legal convolutions would have gotten triggered if India’s moth-ridden anti-defection law was applied to these worthies! Tune in to the podcast! Music: Big Bang Fuzz

India taxes ESOPs, ie employees stock options, harshly, very harshly. Let me give you a quick history lesson. When I founded TV18 in the early 90s, we had given generous stock options to our critical team members. In that sense, we belonged to a clutch of ESOP pioneers in India. And since we were leaders in business news, we also drilled hard into issues around entrepreneurship, taxation and union budgets. Tune in to Raghav's Take!

It’s a familiar cacophony. Cut taxes. Invert the inverted duty structure. Control the fiscal deficit. Be honest about your arithmetic. Abolish equity taxes. Step up government expenditure, the fisc be damned. Bring back investment allowance. Slap inheritance taxes... And on it goes, a laundry list of standard policy tactics which could revive India’s economy. Frankly, the time for budget quick-fixes is over. If PM Modi genuinely wants to rejuvenate, he’s got to create ‘TRUST’ for India’s private enterprise which accounts for 90% of the economy. India’s bureaucracy has always been deeply suspicious of well-regulated markets. Which is why they love to micro-manage outcomes. But this time, their quest has become maniacal. If you create truly competitive markets, ‘super profits’ will vanish on their own — when will our policy-makers understand that? We should have learned from Ben Bernanke, who authored TARP (Troubled Assets Reconstruction Program) and saved America’s economy in 2008. The ‘criminalisation’ of business has now become quite outrageous. Therefore, it has also had the most harmful impact on India’s economy. Host: Raghav Bahl Editor: Mohammad Ibrahim Producer: Sonal Gupta Read the story on The Quint 

For over five years, I’ve criticised ‘state creep’ on Prime Minister Modi’s watch. This tendency hit a crescendo on 5 July 2019, when the second Modi regime’s first budget was read out in parliament. While that document was riddled with state over-reach, I will remind you only of the most egregious measure: a voluntary contribution under CSR (corporate social responsibility) was converted into a criminal liability! Mercifully, it was quickly aborted, but not before it had betrayed the underlying instinct. Inevitably, the sentiment, markets and financial indicators tanked after the Fifth July Budget. A concerned Modi tried to ‘talk up’ the economy by feting ‘wealth creators’ in his Independence Day speech, but it fell on deaf years. The markets continued to plummet. Tune in to this podcast for the full story!

The Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress coalition in Maharashtra is perhaps the second most ‘unthinkable’ political alliance in India, next only to the most incompatible BJP-PDP coalition in Jammu & Kashmir, that ended with devastating consequences. So, what are the lessons from this most unusual, 80-hour-long Maharashtra political fiasco? Tune in to Raghav's Take!

India’s economy today can be described by a four-letter word. Oh c’mon, it’s not what you are thinking… Even the sarkari (government-owned) State Bank of India says that GDP growth could fall to around four percent when the July-September number is revealed, that’s what! And as usually happens in an acute crisis, everybody and her aunt is offering solutions. Fix this, increase that, cut here… If anything, Prime Minister Modi is getting buried under a million “miracle ideas”. But sadly, too many good fixes also become a bad thing, because only a bit of this and a bit of that gets done, and the problem never goes away. So let’s answer a small quiz. I will throw ten options at you. All of these are critical actions required to pull India’s economy out of its current funk. At the end, I will ask you one final question. Check if you’ve really got it figured out in your head. Listen to the podcast for the rest!

Coal output crashes by over 20 percent. Overall, eight core sectors lose a stunning 5.2 percent year-on-year over September 2018, contracting to an 8-year low. GDP hits a 6-year low. And yet, India’s stock markets hit an all-time high! Why, you ask? To understand this conundrum, let’s dial back a few months, to May 2019. Everybody thought that a struggling economy would dent Prime Minister Modi’s 2014 mandate. But he shocked the whole world by improving upon his tally, crossing a breath-taking 300 seats in Lok Sabha. The markets broke into a euphoric dance of crazy expectations. Surely, he would use his vastly enhanced political capital to finally essay deep, difficult reforms to unshackle the economy, once and for all, right? Full the full story tune in to the podcast!

I know that adjectives like “milestone”, “game changer” and “watershed” are frequently used after polls that throw up contrarian, unexpected results. But even adjusting for this caveat, I would call the October 2019 mini national elections a “juggernaut stopper”. Tune in to this podcast for my six takeaways from the recent state elections.

The PMC Bank scam was more audacious than any Bonnie and Clyde heist. A high-living father-son duo, Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan, had 44 bank accounts in a loosely regulated outfit in Mumbai called Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank.  They used these accounts to suck out nearly Rs 6500 crore, a mind-boggling 73% of the total loan book of the ill-fated bank. This robbery took place right under the noses of RBI and the auditors. How? The 44 Wadhawan accounts were “masked” by 21,000 – yes, get this, twenty-one thousand – fictitious accounts, many in the names of dead depositors. Allegedly, the bank allowed overdraft draw downs, with the cash travelling via hawala (laundering) channels to Dubai.  The tainted money was “washed back” clean into PMC accounts as deposits. While loans were given to the Wadhawans in the hidden-but-real ledgers, the fake loan accounts of 21,000 depositors were sent in the Advanced Master Indent to RBI. That’s “masking”, got it? Now listen to the podcast for the rest of the story! Host: Raghav Bahl

Finally. Finally! The Modi government has acknowledged the futility of trying to pump prime India’s GDP by ever-escalating government expenditure, which increased by an astonishing double-digit CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) over six years of impotent growth. Remember, Indian governments drive only 10 percent of our economy – worse, they do so inefficiently and bluntly. Finally, the Modi government has acknowledged that the budget presented on 5 July 2019 was a failed, vapid policy document. Finally, it has realised that India’s private enterprise is the most potent engine of economic growth, accounting for over 90 percent of GDP. And finally, after six excruciating years, it has shed its “I am the government and I can fix everything” stance and adopted the mantra of “I will free your animal spirits by empowering, trusting and enriching you.” Finally! The fiscal giveaway is an awe-inspiring 0.6 percent+ of GDP. Absolutely, it’s a generous Rs 1.45 lakh crore of additional cash created on corporate balance sheets. Optically, it’s a humongous 10 percentage points’ hack of the corporate tax rate by one swing of the axe (reminiscent of P Chidambaram’s audacious move in the “dream budget” of 1997/98 – ouch!). Yes, I am delighted. But no, I am not ecstatic. Why? Listen to the podcast for the reasons.

As tensions mount in sadda, aapro, aamchi (ie, “our” in what the Brits would have once called “three dialects of the natives”) London, how should India respond to this flurry of will-or-won’t-Britain-do-a-Brexit? As a nation, our feelings toward our former colonisers are complicated at best. For better and worse, the British profoundly shaped modern India, breeding insecurity and sectarianism while imparting some of their most enlightened institutions: Parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary, rule of law, the English language (and accent), the university system, a robust free press, the civil bureaucracy and military architecture. Because of the British, we play cricket, drink tea and drive on the left side of the road. Despite Delhi’s efforts to change colonial place names, we still visit McCluskiegunj in Jharkhand, for example, which was once home to a large Anglo-Indian community, and fly into Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun. We couldn’t erase the impact of British colonialism even if we wanted to! Listen to the podcast for the rest of the story!

Raghav Bahl pays tribute to former finance minister Arun Jaitley, recalling his meetings with his exceptional Xaverian schoolmate, who always greeted with a smile.

In Prime Minister Modi’s unexpected, stirring commendation of “wealth creators” – most tellingly, by using popular English terminology, instead of conjuring up a Hindi equivalent like poonji utpadak (as he is wont to do) – he was signaling a reach-out to new-gen entrepreneurs and elite business-people who have gotten estranged from him. And by obliquely acknowledging that his regime may have treated them with contempt/suspicion – mark his cutting words in Hindi, heen bhavna – he was being as contrite as Modi can ever be on a public platform. After finishing an energetic 94-minute speech from the Ramparts of the Red Fort, Modi is understood to have driven straight into a brainstorming session with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her band of policy-men on how to fix the economy. Read the rest of the story here.

Main jaanta hoon ki aaj desh ek aarthik mandhi main hai; lekin main 130 crore desh vaasiyon ko yeh vishwaas deta hoon ki hum jald hi isko aarthik josh main badal dengey! (I know that we are currently in the grip of an economic slowdown; but I want to assure my 130 cr fellow Indians that we shall soon convert this gloom into economic optimism!) I was yearning to hear these words from the Ramparts of the Red Fort. I wanted Prime Minister Modi to use his legendary oratory and hope-generating skills to assuage the economy. But alas, he did not even acknowledge that there is a severe slowdown of demand and investment. Instead his prescription was more of the same same, with an additional/unusual invocation to domestic tourists! After hearing today’s speech, I had almost resigned myself to an unchanged Modi-nomics 2.0 until my eyes fell on this quote (from The Economic Times, 12 August 2019). Tune in!

As always, the strapping 40-year-old swept into his corner room in a Gift City high-rise with the practised, breezy “I love Monday morning” air from his early Manhattan days. He was a celebrated first-generation entrepreneur, but in India he never took his Silicon Valley title of Founder-CEO; instead, he was simply PuFf, a dandy acronym for Pradhan (Chief) Foreman of a billion-dollar unicorn. While in Ahmedabad, do as Gujaratis do! Both his executive assistants (EAs) walked in, one carrying a steaming cup of coffee, the other a box of chocolate cake. What happens next? Tune in to Raghav's Take!

11:15 am, 5 August 2019. I stood stunned and immersed in a time-lapse video as Home Minister Amit Shah read out the Resolution abolishing Article 370 and the state of Jammu & Kashmir in Rajya Sabha. If you were a liberal, you castigated, by rote – “the Kashmir Valley will now become India’s Gaza”. If a conservative, you celebrated, almost crudely – “we will make the Kashmir Valley into another Switzerland”. But I stayed quiet – consumed by a deep, viscous silence – as I tried to understand this political whiplash. I did not want to give a quick, adolescent reaction. I wanted to assess the government’s invoking of Article 370 to kill Article 370 on the three touchstones of Mandate, Method and Morality. Listen to the podcast for the full story. Read the story here.

India’s forex reserves are nearly $430 bn and growing. If we can’t muster the stomach to raise $10 billion in the overseas market, let’s just quit. Raghav Bahl backs Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s proposal on sovereign bonds. 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad made a default entry in India’s savagely polarised polls of 2019. Because the irrepressible Shatrughan Sinha made an awful faux pas at an election rally, where he included Jinnah, along with Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Indira and Rajiv, as “respected members of the Congress family who built our nation”.  This gave the BJP very potent grist for its “Congress is pro-Pakistan” propaganda – after all, if the founder of Pakistan was a cherished Congressman, then their allegation was irrefutable, right? Sinha had to beat a hasty retreat, saying it was a “slip of my tongue”. He had mistakenly said Jinnah, when he meant Maulana Azad. But it’s almost impossible to confuse Jinnah with Azad, for they were diametrically opposite politicians. Frankly, I’ve often wondered why Maulana Azad figures so little in contemporary political discourse, while his peers like Nehru, Patel and Bose dominate.  Listen to the podcast for the full story!

I am still reeling from Prime Minister Modi’s iconic, monumental (no, HE is not going to be happy with only two bombastic adjectives, so here goes a third), and “path-breaking” interview to Twinkle’s hubby. While everybody is scratching their heads over the “big why”, I think I’ve got it figured out. It was a clever (synonymously also desperate) ploy to wrest the initiative back from the hotheads in his party. But if the prime minister had read Mary Shelley’s 18th century masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (“I used to read so many books at the village library”, Modi told the star struck Twinkle-hubby), he need not have done this embarrassing cameo. As per Wikipedia, it’s “the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a hideous, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment”; but the monster murders Victor’s wife Elizabeth and brother William. Ever since then, “Frankenstein” has become a noun in English, describing a creature that turns violently upon its own creator. Now to the billion-vote question: when and how did Modi lose the narrative to his political Frankenstein(s)? Let’s begin at the beginning… Listen to the full podcast!

Why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi castigating Rahul Gandhi for “running away from majority-dominated areas” to “take refuge in areas where the majority is in minority” (read Wayanad in Kerala)? The naked implication was that Gandhi had somehow demeaned himself, committed blasphemy, by espousing the cause of minorities. In this podcast the Quint’s Editor-in-Chief talks about how this one angry speech one angry speech,resurrected the binary of “separate electorates” – that Hindus should elect only Hindus, while Muslims do the same for Muslims – that ultimately led to the bloody partition of India in 1947. Tune in!