Now that the Strait of Hormuz is open, and a tenuous agreement holds, it is clear India handled the energy crisis better than other import-dependent peers, I write for @firstpost
https://t.co/3gMEXeXlq1
Kunal Shah targeted the affluent, the top 1% (by his own admission), through Cred. Now, as he heads WhatsApp, and as Meta seeks to capture market share from the likes of PhonePe and GPay, can he win over your neighbourhood paanwaala?
My latest for @firstpost
https://t.co/hptV1Uw31X
USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
My personal observations. Some similarities and differences between then (IAC, Nirbhaya protests) and now (CJP protests).
Similarities:
These are largely non-political. Yes there were thousands of BJP, RSS folks at Ramlila Ground in 2011 and at India Gate in 2012. There are many Congress and AAP people at CJP protests. But the bulk of protestors then and now were not affiliated to any party. They are regular people like students, lawyers, corporate employees, farmers etc etc. The critical mass of non-party protesters is enough to deem these movements as largely organic, born out of immense frustration with the government.
Differences:
Media was not seen as bikau then. Protestors used to happily speak to us. Those of us covering were not made to feel unsafe. Now I am hearing that many reporters are not even identifying themselves and are removing all company branding from their mics. Many are being heckled and verbally attacked.
The UPA govt and its supporters did not make the mistake of labelling those protesters as ‘anti-national’ or ‘Pakistani’. That is probably because senior Congress leaders from that time remembered the emergency and how labelling people as ‘anti-national’ largely backfired over the longer term. Labelling these students and protestors now will also backfire I feel. That narrative does not work any more.
Again, these are all strictly my personal opinions.
India’s energy transition in mobility will follow multiple pathways and flex-fuel will be an extremely important way forward.
In the current crude oil crisis we shouldn’t forget that happened last year when China virtually stopped exporting rare earth magnets. Additionally, without a local manufacturing base and no intellectual property, imports of EV components and technologies have the potential to raise foreign exchange outflow faster than just importing crude. We should not not replace one dependency for another, although I still believe EVs will play a major role.
It should be remembered that on a lifecycle basis, biofuels are low carbon emission (CBG is actually negative) and a shift to flex-fuel will leverage India’s agricultural capabilities and biomass while supporting rural incomes.