Jatin Gulati

Associate Director, Auctus Advisors. Focus on Infrastructure / South East Asia. Tweets personal. RTs are typically endorsements, there may be exceptions though.

[Upamanyu Acharya @upamanyuacharya]

"India is overcrowded" is the most successful gaslighting campaign Indian babus ever ran on their own citizens. They underbuilt the country for forty years and convinced 1.4B Indians to blame themselves for it.

Every overcrowded space you've ever queued in is a supply failure the state engineered, not a demographic accident. Five lifts in a hospital, one working. Seven railway counters, one ticketer. Toll plazas, water boards, municipal offices: built once in 1972, patched once in 1996, abandoned ever since. The only exception is airports, and even those lounges are gigafried at peak.

Why did this happen? 4 reasons, none of them are "too many people."

1. Cost of capital. Rupee down 60% against the dollar in two decades. Inflation 5-7% on paper, 8-10% in reality. Risk-free rates above 7%. No rational allocator underwrites a hospital with a 30-year payback under those conditions. Capital flows into software and consumer brands; anything with a 3-5 year ROI window. Parks, ports, metros, dams, schools need multi-decade underwriting that India's macro structurally cannot support.

2. The regulatory stack is engineered to prevent construction. 50+ clearances across municipal, state, and central bodies for any large project, each with its IAS gatekeeper extracting rent. Real builders give up. The only construction happening at scale is therefore illegal, which is exactly why slums mushroom while sanctioned housing projects sit at 15% completion for a decade.

3. The corruption tax. Budget 15-20% of project cost in bakshish before pouring a single slab. Stacked on top of GST, stamp duty, capital gains, property tax, labour cess. Software shops escape it; they ship from a laptop. Anyone touching cement, steel, or land pays the surcharge in cash, off the books, with zero recourse and zero deductibility.

4. State capacity has collapsed into pure friction. GST portal crashes on filing deadlines. MCA21 is a relic. Every regulator (SEBI, RBI, IRDAI, FSSAI, BIS) optimises for CYA, never throughput. Babus paid 1990s salaries to administer 2026 complexity respond rationally by doing nothing.

India's perpetual undercapacity is a capital allocation story the political class would rather you never learn. The 1.4B is a feature. The people running the country are the bug. Until cost of capital drops, the regulatory fat gets gutted, and the corruption surcharge gets squeezed out, the lifts and the counters and the hospitals will stay exactly as broken as they were when your grandfather first complained about them in 1987.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@consultingcmdy What is the video captioned here actually about?

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@healthians think about how repulsive your marketing is that inhad just opened the app to check a test and I got a call from the call centre, which actually ended up disrupting my app experience. What should have taken me 30 seconds to check, took me 2 mins and I logged off.

[Shiv Aroor @ShivAroor]

This isn’t AI.

Get a cup of coffee, sit down, exhale and read these plaques Trump has added to Presidential portraits in the White House Walk of Fame.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

Dil jeet liya by saying this and articulating a very important debate this way. Now waiting for action, from both sides of the aisle to back this with sabrin.

[ANI @ANI]

#WATCH | Delhi: Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, "I think a good idea would be that we frame the discussion not on us saying what you have not done and not on you saying what we have not done, but simply saying that what are we going to do for the people in India in the future, what are the action steps that we need to take. So I would say that it would be an interesting experiment to see if instead of you blaming us and we blaming you, we can try and say on this one issue where we agree, there's no disagreement, there we say, listen, let us just talk about the future of people of India."

(Source: Sansad TV)

[Dr Poornima 🇮🇳 @PoornimaNimo]

Are you aware ???
When Wazir Khan imprisoned Guru Gobind Singh Ji's two youngest sons, Sahibzada Zorawar Singh and Sahibzada Fateh Singh, in the bitterly cold Thanda Burj fortress, he warned that anyone providing them with blankets or food would face severe punishment.
Witnessing their suffering, Motiram Mehra (also known as Baba Moti Ram Mehra), a devoted follower of the Sikh Gurus, secretly delivered a glass of hot milk to the Sahibzades, each night for three nights, bribing guards with his family's possessions.
Upon discovery, Wazir Khan ordered Motiram, his wife Bibi Bholi, his elderly mother, and their seven year old son to be crushed to death in a kohlu (traditional oil or sugarcane press) epitomizing the ultimate price paid by this Hindu for an act of compassion toward the Guru's sons.

Over time, this episode from Sikh history, the sacrifice of Baba Moti Ram Mehra and his familywas deliberately obscured or downplayed by vested interests leading to hatred and political divisions between the Hindus and Sikhs.
I would request my friends to RT this maximum so that it reaches every Hindu and Sikh.

[SLAYER @slayer00kk]

@GabbbarSingh It took just ONE term for Lalu to obliterate Bihar's economy.

Bihar was richer in 1990 when Lalu took power than it was in 2005 when his family was ousted.

Bihar had a PCI of $174 in 2005, half of war torn countries like Somalia/Afghanistan!!!

[Gabbar @GabbbarSingh]

Glad to see Laalu alive to see his family getting decimated at the polls.

Thousands of 90s kids who had to live away from their parents in boarding schools just to avoid getting kidnapped, thousands who had to forfeit their ancestral land as a bribe to get a clerical job, millions who studied hard under a lantern or a petromax to somehow escape the jungle raj. All of them, across the world, doing well, now looking at their phone screens and the numbers, and smiling. This is victory.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

One of the reasons why Modi is the election machine that he is because he understands the power of images. Him in this car, spotlight from within the car on him, confetti around, the overall video is quite powerful. This is one of the reasons that has elevated him above everyone else. Of course, backing this up with a long term roadmap led development delivery helps. Another politician who understands such imagery more than most others is Kejriwal and if only he can start to have a more long term view on his political decisions rather than be indulgent & short termish, he could be a meaningful political as well.

[ANI @ANI]

#WATCH | Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets party workers and leaders as he arrives at the party headquarters

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is set to secure a historic win in Bihar

#BiharElection2025

[ANI @ANI]

#WATCH | Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets party workers and leaders as he arrives at the party headquarters

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is set to secure a historic win in Bihar

#BiharElection2025

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@ANI @grok what was the PMs statement that is being referred to here?

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@passportsevamea stuck in loop for daughter's passport. Appointment date on 16/17 September. Passport granted on pre-verification basis but not received yet. Police verification finally done on 15 October but asked for a PVC, which is taking ages. Pls help and guide.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@ShivAroor Most annoying thing to happen in planes, and the cabin crew need to handle this more assertively.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@KartikeyaTanna The most important thing that the Nobel Peace prize committee can do for world peace is to give the prize to Trump and settle him down. You'd gesture itself would make them worthy winners for the next one 😃

[Arnab Ray @greatbong]

Stop writing 5,000-word op-eds dissecting Trump’s policies. There aren’t any. Not in any coherent, ideological sense. What we’re witnessing isn’t governance—it’s raw power as personal gratification, and until we grasp this, we miss the forest for the trees.

Trump enters his second term with something close to an absolute mandate, not because Americans embraced his vision, but because they recoiled from what progressive Democrats tried to do to the country. Their attempts to reimagine institutions—from open borders and replacing equality with equity, to criminalizing majoritarian identities—sparked a backlash so strong Trump now rides it like a tsunami.

The result? He is, for all practical purposes, king. Republicans prostrate themselves before him. Corporate titans arrive bearing gifts like medieval supplicants. Nations debase themselves to curry favor. This isn’t hyperbole—it’s American politics in 2025.

Trump’s “policy” is his pathology: an insatiable hunger for dominance. Born into wealth, luxury lost its thrill early. Money was never the drug—submission was.
In youth and middle age, power came through beautiful women throwing themselves at him or allowing him to grab them. The rush wasn’t sexual—it was the cocaine hit of “look how powerful I am.” When that faded, it became financial schemes. The thrill was fleecing others, knowing his presence could separate them from money.

Reality TV was the next stage. Firing people on camera, watching adults beg for approval, celebrities competing for attention—power distilled and broadcast for millions.

Now comes the final evolution: making nations kneel. Every Republican governor, senator, and media personality speaks the supplicant’s tongue. Tech titans bring golden offerings, praise carefully crafted like medieval court tributes.

Internationally, the full scope emerges. Countries that once dealt with America as equals now calculate how to feed Trump’s ego alongside their interests.

Pakistan is a case study—a nation whose foreign policy is high art in shoe-sniffing American power. Pakistan formally recommended Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize..They sign deals with Trump-backed crypto companies.

This isn’t diplomacy—it’s performance art stroking Trump’s ego while hoping to avoid wrath.

The Pakistan playbook spreads. Nations learn the path to American favor runs through Trump’s validation: recommend him for prizes he craves, publicly praise his wisdom, buy into his businesses. Traditional diplomacy—state departments, embassies, international law—are replaced by one chokepoint: one man’s need to be ubermensch.

Trump’s arsenal isn’t military might or traditional economic leverage. It’s the presidency wielded as a personal instrument of revenge and reward: prosecute rivals who refuse to bend the knee, impose crushing tariffs on those who don’t genuflect, weaponize government to enforce submission.

This is why policy analysts fails. They look for chess when Trump plays a different game—the schoolyard bully.

So here’s the question for every nation, especially India: do you bend the knee?

The temptation is enormous. Pakistan’s rewards show submission’s lure. Play the game, feed the ego, avoid Trump’s wrath.

But this is a test of national character. Some things are worth more than temporary advantage. Some prices are too high—even for peace.

The moment will pass. Presidents change, political movements exhaust themselves, pendulums swing back. But national dignity, once surrendered, is nearly impossible to reclaim. The muscle memory of subservience becomes a permanent disability.

India must resist the parade of supplicants. Not because Trump lacks power—he clearly has it—but because feeding that power’s hunger costs far more than any short-term gain. Better to weather the storm with dignity than kneel for shelter.

The world watches who remembers who they are—and who becomes anyone for the right price.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@sushantsareen If not to recognise what he's done, but to put to rest what all he's trying to do to get the Nobel, I think the Nobel committee should give him the pace prize. Even that is completely well deserved.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@GabbbarSingh Would love to see one of the D2C t-shirt brands bring this on t-shirts & buy them.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@indiametsky Yes. Faced this a few times just now

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

By far the most iconic war-time video ever. "arrey background mein Jai Hind bol do" . Should address any anxiety anyone outside India may have about what's going on in India.

[Abhishek Kumar @akumar2408]

This has to be the best video yday amidst all the noise and psy ops … finding the right frame for insta while surface to air missiles fly over head😀 #OperationSindoor

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@myfrido @ganeshsonawane I've just sent the details needed by DM. I typically avoid calls from unknown numbers or numbers with no business presence on TrueCaller. I'll take the call this time if you call again today, else you bave the DMed details.

[Jatin Gulati @jatingulati1]

@ganeshsonawane escalating an issue here for your attention regarding a @myfrido sock shoe order with order number 1252867. Been working with your team for 3-4 days to get a size exchange but no progress. Expect them to throw the 7-day rule book on me soon. Pls sort this out.