Taarush Kishore Jain

Senior Consultant at EY | ACCA | ISPP’20 | Columban |

[Tarun Mehta @tarunsmehta]

I have had the opportunity to engage with several policy makers on the topic of Auto PLI excluding startups and I just can’t believe that they would think so!

It cannot be emphasised enough - current framing of Auto PLI needs to stay closely aligned with the moment India is in.

Over the last decade, the electric two wheeler ecosystem in India has evolved through contributions from both incumbents and electric first companies. Many of these startups invested early in product, software, power electronics, and localisation, often without the cushion of legacy scale. In doing so, they have pushed the boundaries and pulled in the competition to together build a competitive but a very vibrant and dynamic EV market.

Today in many many markets it is the ‘new age EV companies’ that are industry leaders in not just innovation and tech, but in absolute volumes and market shares. Aligned with the PLI’s vision, it is these ‘startups and new age EV companies’ that are investing hundred, even thousands of crores in most new manufacturing capacities for EVs. For example at Ather we have already employed more than 4000 people directly and tens of thousands indirectly in our channels and supply chains. We have invested thousands of crores in RnD and direct capex and on top of this we are now investing 2000 crores in our new green field facility in Maharasthra. This is literally what PLI was hoping as an outcome and is being realized by a non-PLI holder, against all odds.

And most crucially, they are doing all this while also investing heavily in R&D and domestic value addition (DVA). DVA benchmarks are similar across PLI and non PLI players so it would be wrong to assume that startups don’t lead DVA requirements. These companies have consistently pushed deeper on indigenous development, building capabilities that are at par with, and in some cases ahead of, the broader industry.

An EV policy architecture that defines champions primarily through legacy scale, not even scale within the EV industry, can create an unintended imbalance. It places emerging EV manufacturers at a 13 to 16 percent cost disadvantage at a stage where they are continuing to invest heavily in capability building. Over time, this will influence how the market evolves, even as the goal is to build both scale and future ready capability.

In this train of EV industry if legacy businesses are the bogeys, startups and new age companies are the engine. You cannot take the engine out of the equation and hope for the bogeys to move forward themselves.

If India’s ambition is to lead in electric mobility, policy needs to recognise where innovation and capability are being built. Much of the work around indigenous platforms, battery systems, software, and domestic value addition is happening within electric first companies, and they will continue to set global benchmarks in design and technology.

What is needed is calibration of PLI, not overhaul. More flexible eligibility, aligned with localisation and R&D intensity, can help ensure we are building long term capability, not just near term scale.

[Taarush Kishore Jain @TaarushJain]

I just removed a photo background in seconds and downloaded it in HD for free with Fotor's background remover. 🤩 It's so easy to use and saved me so much time! Experience fast BG removal and HD images @fotor_com now! 👉
https://t.co/9iHfqtDPVP

[Abhinandan Educational And Welfare Society @Abhinandanedus1]

Every child deserves a joyful, safe, and supportive journey through school—and at AbhikIDS Care Centre, we’re making that vision a reality.

Through our recent baseline study, we identified key challenges like bullying, lack of family support, and missing documentation.

[Dr Amneet P Kumar IAS @amneet_p]

@wcd_haryana celebrated International Women’s Day 2024, the event graced by H.E. @Dattatreya & guest of honour @KamleshDhanda1. Achievers of the year under #BBBP #Poshan #Childprotection were felicitated during the event. @smritiirani @MinistryWCD #IWD2024

[Taranjit Singh Sandhu @SandhuTaranjitS]

Met forward-thinking #farmers in #Manawala, #Amritsar who have diversified their production to cultivating high value crops including #rajma.
An example of increasing agricultural incomes in challenging times!

[Taarush Kishore Jain @TaarushJain]

Big and very important move

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

Delighted to share that our former Prime Minister, Shri PV Narasimha Rao Garu, will be honoured with the Bharat Ratna.

As a distinguished scholar and statesman, Narasimha Rao Garu served India extensively in various capacities. He is equally remembered for the work he did as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Union Minister, and as a Member of Parliament and Legislative Assembly for many years. His visionary leadership was instrumental in making India economically advanced, laying a solid foundation for the country's prosperity and growth.

Narasimha Rao Garu’s tenure as Prime Minister was marked by significant measures that opened India to global markets, fostering a new era of economic development. Furthermore, his contributions to India's foreign policy, language and education sectors underscore his multifaceted legacy as a leader who not only steered India through critical transformations but also enriched its cultural and intellectual heritage.

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

Delighted to share that our former Prime Minister, Shri PV Narasimha Rao Garu, will be honoured with the Bharat Ratna.

As a distinguished scholar and statesman, Narasimha Rao Garu served India extensively in various capacities. He is equally remembered for the work he did as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Union Minister, and as a Member of Parliament and Legislative Assembly for many years. His visionary leadership was instrumental in making India economically advanced, laying a solid foundation for the country's prosperity and growth.

Narasimha Rao Garu’s tenure as Prime Minister was marked by significant measures that opened India to global markets, fostering a new era of economic development. Furthermore, his contributions to India's foreign policy, language and education sectors underscore his multifaceted legacy as a leader who not only steered India through critical transformations but also enriched its cultural and intellectual heritage.

[Shashank Mattoo @MattooShashank]

India has become controversial in one of the world's most important elections

China's use of disinformation to create hostility towards India may be responsible

🧵

[Gokul Sahni @Gokul_Sahni]

.⁦@horror06⁩: “Pannun issue.. will remain a niggling political.. irritant.. 5 Indian-American Congressmen.. raised red flags & pious denizens of the Beltway have tut-tutted about “reputational damage” & hinted darkly at sanctions against India.” 1/6 https://t.co/3NYurH9Loc

[Megh Updates 🚨™ @MeghUpdates]

BIG ⚡️ Tata Group has submitted an application to set up a semiconductor processing plant in Assam with an investment of ₹40,000 crore- Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

I love your optimism and will add- the people of India are trendsetters and trailblazers when it comes to innovation.

We welcome the world to invest in our nation. India won’t disappoint.

[Nirmalya Dutta @NonsensicalNemo]

Goodbye Chandler Bing: Could Matthew Perry’s death feel any more personal?

Sitcoms have a way of bringing people together in this divided world, even if it’s to hate on them. For example, there are people – the kind who are always listening and learning – that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a cop propaganda show. Or that The Big Bang Theory runs with a leitmotif of white supremacy as does Ted Lasso. That How I Met Your Mother was deeply problematic for its portrayal of sex, and the only correct way to make a sitcom these days is its sequel, the ponderous How I Met Your Father, which truly explains why Gen Z is so insufferable and boring.

But before all those, the OG sitcom that everyone hates now in 2023, is Friends, a leitmotif of generic white mediocrity conning us into laughing based on some familiar relatability.

Friends had every single red flag that one could ask for from a problematic sitcom.
Homophobia? Check.
Lack of diversity? Check.
Mocking intellectuals? Check.
Pissing off Andre Agassi? Check.
Making the lives of its POC writers miserable? Check.
In fact, the show’s creator listened and learned so much from the accusations that to whitewash the “taint of systemic racism”, Marta Kaufmaan, the show’s co-runner actually pledged $4 million for African-American studies at Brandeis University.
In fact, Friends was probably a precursor to the universal rule that once you go woke, you go broke, or its corollary: intersectionality is inversely proportional to a show’s humour and quality. One’d assume that Chandler Bing – with his sardonic wit and sarcastic takes – would’ve found the entire state of affairs eminently laughable and mockable. Could we be any more stupid?
Well, that’s actually a moo point right now, but it was a tad shocking to wake up to the news that Matthew Perry had Sridevied. For the uninitiated, that refers to the act of being offed in a bathtub, a reenactment of which by an Aaj Tak anchor lives long in our memory.

But Chandler-like jokes aside, the first question that came to anyone’s mind – especially those who know Perry’s long history of drug and alcohol abuse – is whether drugs were involved. As per the reports that we’ve right now, there were no drugs found on the scene. For those who don’t know, Perry has struggled with opioids and alcohol his entire life, starting with a Vicodin phase, which will remind folks of another sardonically sarcastic TV character.
But this is not about the struggles of life but the imaginary world that Perry and his castmates created for us.

Friends was an indelible part of our growing-up years when we – slightly anglicised non-elites – binged on the show that was so alien, and yet so familiar. The show started in 1994 but has been playing forever. Now, there are sitcom elites who’d argue that Friends lacked the humour quotient of The Office or the comedic chops of Seinfeld, that it was a tad too vanilla, but for many of us growing up in Indian households – functional or dysfunctional – Friends was a promise of a Camelot we’d never seen.

The greatest artists like Bob Dylan, always manage to transcend the barriers of space-time, and Friends was a show that certainly managed that. To a generation facing a Hobson Choice between the monotonic rebellion of Shanti or the boisterous cussedness of Roadies, Friends was a show one started watching through peer pressure (as my best friend pointed out) and then became something we went back to again and again. Of course, our famously plagiarising industry, which didn’t even spare the Israeli national anthem, even tried to create a desi version of Friends starring future Roadies star Nikhil Chinapa and a bunch of others I can’t bother to Google right now that was so downright horrible and that its entire review can be summed up by one pithy YouTube comment:

Chandler: Could it be more CRINGEIR
Janice: Oh My God
Rachel: Noooo
Phoebe: My eyes, My eyes

I can’t quite explain what made Friends so appealing to us at that age. Perhaps it was an unabashed celebration of life in New York – where the show papered over the more uncomfortable bits like traffic or paying one’s bills – and instead showed only the happy bits. It was the unabashed consumerism, the idea of having pizza with beer or unlimited porn on your TV. Or, playing foosball with your friends. Dating strangers and trying to find your soulmate. For most of us in middle-class India (the imagined middle class we think we are part of as opposed to the actual one that exists), moving from the rigmarole of studying all day to pass Class X to the rigmarole of studying all day to get into IIT or crack the UPSC, Friends was a promise of an adulthood beyond anything we ever imagined. A world where we were surrounded, not by judgemental family, but by peers who understood our hopes and dreams. Friends became the prototype for young people’s relationships with each other.

It was special because when we saw it, we imagined a life beyond the ones we lived, a utopia surrounded by loved ones of our own choice, not the ones thrust on us by our relatives’ mating habits. It wasn’t just a TV show, but a glimpse of a life that could be.
Each character also came to resemble a different sort of hope.

Phoebe taught everyone it was fine to be weird in your own way. Ross taught nerds – long before The Big Bang Theory – that the nerd can get the hot girl. Rachel showed that even brats can grow up. Monica’s story showed us that love can be found in the strangest places. Joey and Chandler showed the beauty of male friendship that was built on the edifice of Budweiser, Baywatch, and free porn. The Joey-Chandler Bromance was one of the most endearing male friendships seen on TV, the likes of which we’ve seldom seen onscreen.

As for Chandler Bing, he was the star of the show, a symbol of hope for those of us who weren’t good-looking or athletic. He taught us that we too could be lucky with the ladies, and all we needed to do was develop a sardonic wit. The death feels deeply personal because along the way many of us based our personalities on Chandler Bing or had a friend who did it for us. Could we be any more upset? We doubt it. Goodbye, Miss Chanandler Bong.

[Mufaddal Vohra @mufaddal_vohra]

Glenn Maxwell said, "lightshow is a horrible idea. It takes a while for eyes to readjust and it's the dumbest idea for cricketers. Definitely it's great for the fans, but horrible for the players".

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani @sbikh]

https://t.co/aQNthFtOuH

“No matter how much Ashoka boasts about its left liberal values, but at the end of the day it is a capitalist institute…It cannot produce Bhagat Singhs or Umar Khalids.”

While I admire Bhagat Singh, as a parent do I want my son to go to the gallows at the age of 22? I think most Ashoka parents will be relieved with this assessment of the University. Ashoka is boring - thank God.

The article also laments that it is only a vocal few at Ashoka who are activists. That is substantially correct.

Your parents don’t pay the fees they do for you to do aandolans. Most students realise that.

Ashoka does not boast of left liberal values. Some individuals at Ashoka might be. And they might want to paint all of Ashoka in that fashion becuase that is what they believe.

Ashoka is merely a liberal arts and sciences university. It values openness and a spirit of inquiry. And it must guard against becoming an ideological ghetto and therefore not very open.

Left liberal values and studying subjects that constitute liberal arts are very different. You can be right of centre and still study liberal arts

[Shiv Aroor @ShivAroor]

💔 Farewell, Valarmathi Ma’am. It was her voice you heard doing the countdowns to all ISRO rocket launches in the last few years. Her final act was counting down to the Chandrayaan-3 launch in July. Passed away after brief illness. Travel well, ma’am, in the great yonder 🙏🏽🚀💫

[News Arena India @NewsArenaIndia]

American state Georgia declares October as ‘Hindu Heritage Month’.

[Hardik Rajgor @Hardism]

Kishore Jena's visa was cancelled by the Hungary Embassy in Delhi.

He would not have been able to participate in the World Athletics Championship.

Neeraj Chopra publicly expressed his concern for Jena, after which the visa issue got sorted immediately.

Kishore Jena threw his personal best of 84.77m, and finished 5th in the WORLD!

Neeraj Chopra is a champion, both on and off the field. ❤️

[Taarush Kishore Jain @TaarushJain]

What a guy! Absolute Champ. An inspiration to Millions!

[jonathan selvaraj @jon_selvaraj]

Neeraj Chopra- I want to thank the people of India for staying up late. This medal is for all of India. I'm Olympic champion now I'm world champion. Keep working hard in different fields. We have to make a name in the world.

[Indian Tech & Infra @IndianTechGuide]

🚨 India's men 4x400 relay team created a new Asian record and progressed to the final of World Athletics Championship 2023 in Budapest.
https://t.co/N2jaD6d3qb

[Taarush Kishore Jain @TaarushJain]

@NewsArenaIndia Master class from Shoojit Sircar. He has immortalised Jallianwala Bagh for posterity in the most heart-wrenchlingly realistic manner, Should have received more theatric viewers. But nonetheless everyone should watch it on Prime