So, what’s happening in West Asia?

It is seemingly a clownish behavior of a head of state to do things that have so far been done and given statements against sovereign countries as have been given and acts done as have unfolded in last over three weeks period. So, why did all of these unsavory things happen? Is it because the Americans have given reins of their country to a clown? Well, on the surface, this is exactly how it looks like. However, there far more sinister things at work here than what appears on the surface.

Let’s look at the events that have unfolded over last one year — the said head of state has imposed arbitrary tariffs on every possible country in the world, ally or adversary alike but it did not help the US as he had tom-tommed about to begin with and instead it has impacted the US economy and public negatively. On the other side, the US funding of Ukraine in the never ending Russo-Ukrainian conflict has ballooned the US fiscal deficit over an increasingly unsustainable level of $37 trillion! Over the last one year, from the roller-coaster of tariff policy with every possible trade partner over the one year, to claims of making peace across the world in ensuing wars, to attacking Venezuela and installing its pliable government there, to claiming ownership of sovereign territories of Greenland from Denmark, to getting ready to take over another sovereign country Cuba apparently saying that, “I can do what I want!”, Trump has shown clear and unmistakable signs of a megalomaniac, narcissistic clown who has by providence gotten control of the so-called solo super power of the world! With all this in background, just eight months back US-Israel had attacked Iran and claimed to have destroyed its nuclear capability — so, why was there a need to attack it again over a weekend when negotiations were going on and expected to get positive results when they were to resume on Monday post that fateful weekend?

For this, we need to go over 6 years back — just before the onset of the Covid pandemic — a pandemic that wasn’t an accident but one that was started deliberately. The question that has been asked many times over is who started it and why the it was started? The pandemic as we know it now was employed as a tool to hopefully create mass population reduction and dismantle governments across the globe that didn’t suit the powers that be, aka the deep st@te (DS). It achieved some of its goals partially especially to dismantle un-pliable governments across the globe from Brazil to the UK to Australia and many countries in the middle but it couldn’t remove one ie. Modi government in Bharat. Since then, there have been relentless effort to dismantle the Modi government by the DS — be it attack on the stock market (through the likes of Hindenburg) or be it the caste bogie to divide the Hindus and Muslim vote consolidation behind CONgress to dislodge the Modi government in 2024 general elections and yet Modi government came back, albeit in a coalition and the efforts for dislodging continued even after that under the Biden administration’s last six months or so. So, when in Jan 2025 the Trump administration took office in the White House, Bharat and the Modi government expected a reprieve and revival of Modi-Trump partnership carrying on from the 1st term of the Trump administration albeit it was clear to the Modi government to begin with itself that the Trump administration would focus on MAGA to address it constituency that had voted him to be their President for the second time. So, whilst the tariffs were expected but what was expected was some sanity in its implementation. However, on the contrary, it has been an arbitrary roller coaster of tariff announcements, withdrawals and implementation and again with arbitrary hikes on whims and fancies of Trump! To top it, Trump has had a beeline of world leaders visiting the White House to meet with him to negotiate tariffs but instead he has been heaping insults on them in front of the whole world — the latest in this has been the newly elected Japanese Prime Minister who was insulted in the White House. On the other hand, tariffs continued much of the world submitted to the tariffs imposed by Trump, Bharat and China pushed back and while China pushed back by blocking off critical mineral and rare earth magnet exports to the US and thus got lesser tariffs; Trump imposed arbitrarily high tariffs on Bharat for buying Russian oil. After almost a year Bharat-US agreed on contours of a trade deal only to be further disrupted by the US Supreme Court order of cancelling the tariffs imposed by Trump and now that trade deal’s fate too is uncertain as are his tariffs. To add to this, Trump is looking for ways to reimpose them! 

Now, there is a marked difference in the way Trump conducted his business in his 1st term versus how he is doing it now — this time around, he’s acting as a brash bully, insulting world leaders after inviting them to the White House and throwing diplomacy to the trash can! While his actions can be called clownish but it has become increasingly so as his 2nd term has progressed. Why has this change in Trump’s behavior come about to become a clownish brash bully? Today, the US faces its biggest challenge as a country as its fiscal deficit reaches unsustainable levels; the economy is teetering; its global hegemony being challenged; US dollar’s standing as reserve currency of the world being challenged; and in the stock market one always keeps hearing of a big AI bubble ready to burst — not a happy situation to be in for the so-called sole super power of the world! Even after imposing 50% tariffs on Bharat, it did not create any significant impact on Bharat’s exports which only grew (including to the US) and so did the economy that grew over 7% in all of 2025 and expected to continue at the same pace going in 2026! On the other hand, China too continues to grow around 5% even after high tariffs imposed by the US with very limited economic impact, at least visibly so. 

So, the DS’ objective to effect regime change not having worked out for Bharat and continued rise of China despite all efforts wasn’t seemingly happening under the scenarios that were visible clearly to them in the last 6-7 years and on the other hand world order seems to be changing from uni-polar to a multi-polar one with the US hegemony as well as US dollar’s dominance as a reserve currency getting challenged especially by China and Bharat. Therefore, the DS had to come up with something ingenious. And, Trump was perhaps the best candidate that could pull off what the DS wanted to accomplish — that is to stop the rise of Bharat and ditto with China. So, the ‘clown’ in Trump was ‘unleashed’ and given the job to clown around while delivering tariffs along with insults to the visiting head of states! This way post his term apologies can be sought for his misdemeanors as that of a ‘senile clown’ and the US can have an easy reset of ties with all the bruised partner countries including NATO. So, why attack Iran again and then go on to make the ‘clownish’ statements he keeps posting on X — in one such latest statement, he’s talking about ultimatums of impending destruction to power infrastructure in Iran and then in the next moment, stoppage of all hostilities for next 5 days! Why? These two statements and responses to them by Iran has left stock markets across the globe crash and oil prices touch $120 per barrel and then bounce back the next day! In the last one week, Israel attacked the oil and gas fields and infrastructure in Iran and Iran carried out devastating attacks on GCC countries from Kuwait, to Bahrain, to Qatar, to Saudi and the UAE. These attacks have ensured that a significant portion of oil and gas flows from the gulf will remain unavailable for a few years at the very least, if not more. On the other side, in the last few days Ukraine has attacked oil infrastructure in Russia as well and there has been fire in a major refinery in Texas, US. The impact of all these events will result in oil prices firming up and they will remain firm for the foreseeable future impacting the global South and both Bharat and China the most! At the same time, the FIIs are selling stocks in Bharat relentlessly since Sep-24 leading to a continuous slide of the Rupee as well as the stock markets in Bharat — this will further make oil and gas imports expensive, increasing demand for US dollar and thus leading to further slide of the Rupee. Both these, higher oil and gas prices and their depleted supplies and devalued Rupee will impact Bharat’s economy very adversely: fiscal shock, balance of payment issue, scarcity/ increase in prices of fertilizers, higher prices of oil and gas for domestic consumers, rise in inflation, decreased consumer demand and thus reduced tax collection for government or in effect, a stunted growth of Bharat’s economy and thus lesser resource availability with Modi government for social sector leading to making it unpopular. This will impact China too albeit to a lesser degree. So, the DS achieves its objective of containing Bharat while impacting China too significantly and after 3 years when the new administration takes office in the White House, it will blame it all on the ‘clown’ Trump and ask for a reset in relationship with all countries but by then they would have delayed Bharat’s rise, managed China’s power and ensured US dollar’s dominance as reserve currency and that the US still remains the global hegemon! 

 

While the DS is hoping for this outcome — but just as after the man-made pandemic where it failed, it will in all likelihood fail here too, yet again! 

 

Humanity in the age of AI!

AI is here! 

We’ve heard this hundreds of times till this moment and almost have a nauseous feeling about it now! While AI is here and I will go on to say that it is here to stay perhaps longer than humans themselves in the form as humans exist today. 

So, what can we expect the future to hold for us humans? 

This question too have been answered by many and the body of answers to this question too keeps on growing by the day. Some broad predictions include the following: in the next one year, majority of computer programmers will be replaced by AI programmers or agents as they term them; in the next two years we all will have in our pockets, intelligence that’s equivalent to the smartest mathematician or a physicist et al or what they call Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); and in the next 3-5 years or maybe 6 years we will have AI that’s more intelligent than intelligence of all the humans put together or what they call Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)! And this is only on the software side! On the hardware and computing  side, we’d have quantum computing getting advanced and applied; and also married to AI and that will perhaps speed up the evolution from AI to AGI to ASI and well beyond! It’s not going to stop at that - the hardware will also mean robotics coming of age…the age of androids is well and truly ushering in!

With AI getting married to robotics and getting sophisticated and better and better with each passing day and ubiquitous, what will all this mean for us humans? So, with androids and robots abound with intelligence and mobility equal or better than humans, one clear result will be that humans won’t have jobs as we have come to know them over the last few hundred years! Most jobs and I’d stick my neck out and say 99% of jobs in services and manufacturing as we know today will not be existing in 10 to 15 years from now. 

So, what is human race going to be doing to keep itself engaged meaningfully? What has happened so far? The Industrial Revolution that started about 300 years ago led to creation of today’s education system that kept humans busy with this education system for nearly 25% of their lifespan and then the jobs as we have known them kept us busy for another 30-40 years and then once we were in our sunset years, we were inconsequential to powers that be and hence majority of the productive and energetic population was kept meaningfully or perhaps meaninglessly kept engaged! 

But all this is going to be turned on its head in the next 10-15 years - so, what can be expected? Chaos for one in the human society! Can this impending chaos be avoided? 

What’s touted as a solution is UBI or Universal Basic Income - but, is it really a solution? I think it’s more of a consequence of the cataclysmic changes that will dawn on us as human race in the next decade or so. And, the challenge of governments across the globe will be on how to keep people engaged meaningfully (not the meaningless job engagements humans had over the last 300 years!) with UBI just providing sustenance, not engagement! 

The survivability of human race depends on finding the new age jobs that will keep humans meaningfully engaged employing all their faculties aka physical, mental and creative ones in this upcoming age of absolute automation!

Modinomics unleashed: A new economic model taking root!

Not very long ago, only some 6-7years back when there was a lot of debate on social media, print, and electronic media and on the ground among common people on the street as to what should be done at Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi when the dispute was simmering and there were a significant number of people who were of the opinion that the best way to put the dispute to rest was to build a hospital or an educational institution there! In hindsight, those opinions albeit well-meaning then, sound hollow and apologist today – it was not just a historical wrong that was corrected on that fateful day in November 2019, but a much bigger era dawned upon India that is in fact Bharat – an era of Sanatan Economics. 

Let me get into explaining it right away – it has been well over eventful 4 years of the second term of Modi Sarkar. Whilst there has been a lot of action on the ground with infrastructure building (roads, expressways, airports, ports, metro rail, dedicated freight corridors, rail electrification, semi-highspeed Vande Bharat and the upcoming Bullet Train and the train to Kashmir valley and Leh, all the traditional areas of the economy have seen multi-fold growth over the last 9 years); technology leapfrogging (indigenous 5G network and now plan for leading development in 6G, space and defence production and booming exports); domestic defence industry growth and export; digital infrastructure and digitalization of economy; et al – the list is very long. All of these will help grow India as an economy with solid infrastructure and booming manufacturing and exports that will feed into the global supply chain as a reliable partner. All of this is evident now to all and we can see it unfold before our eyes – but these are the traditional economic engines the world has come to see over the last 200 years, country after country – from Europe to America to Asia and now in India. This model of economic progress is time tested and we are seeing its results already in India and they will become pronounced more and more in the coming decades. 

However, this isn’t the focus of my piece – it’s what’s happening in the hinterland as well as the cultural renaissance that is silently sweeping the nation across its length and breadth. Bharat as we have known this nation as for many a millennium is slowly rising and will be unleashing its potential for the world to see and embrace in the coming millennia. We have all known that Bharat lives in her villages – over 60% of her people live there. The cultural renaissance is slowly not just sweeping Bharat but India today – you know what I mean, right? Apart from all the known metrics of economic developments as mentioned above, there is a new economic metric taking shape and deepening its roots again in Bharat – it’s her cultural heritage that’s centered around her Sanatan past, her temples that have been her centers of faith, spirituality, education, culture, festivals, and livelihood –in other words, the entire human lifecycle in all its manifestations – this new economic metric is Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure, her raison d'être. In the last 9 years, Modi Sarkar has invested nearly Rs 13,000 crores in this new economic metric. Places such as the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, Mahakaal Corridor, upcoming Ayodhya Sri Ram Mandir, Sri Krishn Janmasthali and Vrindavan, Pandharpur Corridor, development of Char Dham circuit, Hemkunt Sahib, Kushinagar and Sarnath, the Ramayan circuit, just to name a few and the infrastructure around these places are some of the examples of this new economic metric. Do remember, these are the infrastructure around the temples and not the investment in the temples that have been made by the community. If you are wondering why I call it the new economic metric, then, I will say we are on the cusp of something spectacular that we will witness in the coming decade and far-far beyond which will put the economic growth model as we know it to flip on its head. We are already seeing some green shoots which I will talk about – in 2022, Varanasi witnessed 70 million visitors, Mathura saw 60 million visitors and Ayodhya 26 million of them – in comparison, the very popular tourist destination Goa saw only 8.5 million visitors! To give an idea about the boom we are witnessing consider these figures: Varanasi saw a mere 6.4 million visitors in 2019 and Goa saw 8 million in the same year. In 4 years and a global pandemic in between, we are seeing an 11+ fold growth in visitors to Varanasi but Goa’s tourism growth remains flat. Also, to put these figures in perspective – it will be interesting to see the statistics in some of the globally popular religious places: in 2019, the Vatican saw 6.9 million visitors and Mecca saw 2.5 million visitors – these figures have remained flat post-pandemic in 2022. 

The scale of the tourism boom we are witnessing in and around the temple towns of Bharat is phenomenal, to say the least. And do note that it is just the beginning – for instance, the Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi temple is yet to open to the public – expected in early 2024 – but booking for the hotels in Ayodhya are running full for the foreseeable future and these are not just budget hotels but even luxury ones! There are over 700 districts in Bharat and around 650,000 villages i.e., almost 1,000 villages to a district – a temple town will have the power to impact the economy of 5-10districts around it or 5000-10,000 villages as people living here would get a source of livelihood from the tourists that will throng these temples. Now for some numbers: there are over 6,50,000 temples across Bharat of which 800+ are major temples across the length and breadth of Bharat i.e., more than one major temple per district – for an idea of scale, there are 33,000 ancient temples in Tamil Nadu alone – yes, you heard right 33,000 ancient temples!  

As is evident from visitor figures in Varanasi, Mathura, and Ayodhya in 2022 – if on average a tourist spends Rs5,000 per visit, between these three cities, they earned Rs 80,000 crores which is only going to grow – that’s an addition of Rs 150,000 per capita p.a. for these three districts or Rs 30,000 per capita p.a. if we consider the economic impact to be to 5 surrounding districts too – this is just the direct impact and not considering the multiplier effect this will have on the local economy. Further, this growth in just three temple towns alone will add nearly 4% points to Uttar Pradesh’s GDP this year! Now, imagine Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure getting unleashed at all the 800+ major temple towns across the length and breadth of Bharat. This will have a huge impact on the local economy at the district level and especially the village economy making villages sustainable, thereby arresting migration to urban centres. And then there are things like the Kumbh Melas – four in all – all of them can be huge tourism drivers. So, the success of Uttar Pradesh in developing the temple towns along with its culture& heritage infrastructure will spur other states to act in doing the same and thus ushering in a sustainable economic model that will not just be dependent on an economic model that the world has seen over the last 200 years, but one that complements it and, in many ways, exceeds it.  

To facilitate this new growth engine, the Modi government is launching its latest program, PM Vishwakarma Yojana aimed at supporting the traditional artisans and craftsmen while encouraging more people to take up traditional vocations in rural and semi-urban areas with an outlay of Rs 13-15,000 crores. This will encourage learning skills in the Guru-Shishya Parampara and perhaps usher in the setting up of gurukuls across Bharat further bolstering Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure. Not to mention, the previous programs of Modi Sarkar will help act as catalysts for this new economic model – these include the programs such as the Swachh Bharat program which ensured the setting up of millions of toilets in rural areas; Har Ghar Bijli program which ensured every village was connected with the electric grid; Ayushman Yojana program which has ensured providing health cover to over 500 million people with most beneficiaries from the rural and semi-urban areas; Ujjwala Yojana program which has ensured providing cooking gas connection to 50 million women of below poverty line families; Har Ghar Jal program which is on the way to provide potable water to all village households – this has already reached 67% of the 190 million+ rural households. All these programs are going to empower the rural and semi-urban population of Bharat to contribute economically because they will be freed from the daily struggles of existence – all these programs along with the support of Viswakarma Yojana to be launched in September 2023 will empower the rural and semi-urban population to take advantage of the Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure being built around her temple towns. 

Just a millennia ago, Bharat accounted for almost a third of the global economy and it appears that the journey to reclaim that position has well and truly begun, that too with a new, yet old, and time-tested model of sustainable growth!

We forge the chains we wear in life!

 We forge the chains we wear in life!

                                                            - Charles Dickens

This quote by Dickens made me stop and wonder about its applicability or was it merely rhetorical.

Whilst, it is true albeit some of these chains are willingly worn by us as if we like wearing them. As if, they are lovingly forged and worn with a lot of pride. For instance, if I like to write or to sing, I would develop these skills with a lot of dedication and love and spend a lot of time and effort honing them. Thus, these skills become chains forged by me that I wear happily while knowingly or unknowingly they limit me from exploring a new area or skills which perhaps would have given me equal pleasure and fulfilment.

So, are such forged chains desirable or not? 

One can argue that no chain is desirable but then, human excellence stems from such forged chains...Charles Dickens wouldn’t have been a renowned writer if he had not bound himself by such a chain in life. So, the question isn’t if a chain is desirable or not but whether the chain that we forge and wear in life is setting us on a path towards excellence, pleasure and fulfilment or is it pulling us down and limiting our life from its full expression of its potential. 

So, let's go ahead and forge chains and wear them with pride that set us free to express our life uninhibitedly to its full potential.

Idiosyncrasies we nurture as if they were gold dust!

Why do we carefully preserve and nurture our idiosyncrasies as if they were gold dust that had been handed down over generations as family jewels? It is an interesting subject – one that makes me wonder about a few of my own! One of them I was preserving and nurturing even though the decision to do so was making me suffer continuously without any sane reasoning and led me on a path of self-inflicted suffering and embarrassment. But why? It’s a question I don’t have a precise answer to yet!

For a better part of the year, till I decided to act on it and get it sorted, I could barely hear a thing spoken normally and was getting close to being deaf and the embarrassment was palpable as everyone who knew me, knew that I wasn’t. However, in my interactions with them, am sure there were occasions when they came across me be partially deaf or felt something was amiss with one or more of my mental faculties owing to the responses I was giving them – if nothing, some of my responses, verbal or non-verbal would have left them bewildered and asking questions of themselves but they never said anything to me – guess they were being polite! And there were others, whom I told about my condition as they asked me out of concern after they have had their full quota of being polite with me, and yet others whom I told proactively – they I guess were the most bewildered of all as they were people closest to me and they wondered what they did to hear such nonsensical course of action I had chosen for myself when I had more sensible options available. 

At the core of this idiosyncrasy of mine was my skepticism about modern medicine and loathing of visiting a doctor or much less a hospital – I want to clarify here before anyone judges me any more than they have already, that I don’t hold any ill feelings about the profession of modern medicine – just that I strongly feel that people and their bodies are capable of healing on their own and I had over the years instead of letting this belief serving my interests, I had started serving to it to a level that bordered ludicrity. Again, I don't know the reason why. 

If I were to ask any random person on the street about their thoughts on modern medicine, I am sure that a significant majority would agree with my belief that one should avoid doctors as much as possible. However, if I were to add a caveat that one of their key mental faculties was getting impaired and then ask this question again, then a significant majority will change their stand – but, not me! And, I somehow took pride in my decision, to begin with, and even though I had nearly become deaf, I continued to not consult a medical doctor to sort out my ailment. 

Finally, it was when I had to go to the hospital (not a doctor's clinic) for another matter, I mustered enough courage to consult an ENT specialist who looked at my ears and asked me, “when did I get my ears cleaned of the ear wax?” I knew now that another embarrassment was brewing! I told him, I didn’t know when it was done last even though I knew well enough that I hadn't ever got them cleaned by a doctor! To this, he said, “it appears you have somehow managed to push the ear wax deep inside your ear canal and they have gone in deep and solidified there!” Wow! I seemed to have shoveled and hid for myself a treasure chest of ear wax which now had to be flushed out – he did the needful and within about 10 minutes, I was hearing sounds I had not heard for a long long time! It was as if I had so far been in a soundproof room for the better part of a year barely hearing anything of the outside world and suddenly now I was let out into a fish market with sounds and noises hitting my eardrums from everywhere! It was sudden chaos all around – albeit happy chaos!

The point is that it took all of 10 minutes to rectify my ailment that I had carefully nurtured for the better part of a year! To what end, I still wonder!

Such is the power of our idiosyncrasies – all I can say now is that it would serve us well to be aware of these seemingly trivial matters and stop nurturing them and let sanity prevail at all times. I learned the lesson the hard way and whilst I suffered, I made people around me suffer along with me, which I shouldn’t have! Hope we can overcome such bouts of self-inflicted momentary insanity and stop the long-term suffering we subject ourselves and others to by nipping all such debilitating idiosyncrasies in the bud.

How much division is the limit?

Since time immemorial humans have divided themselves into various factions based on skin color, a piece of land, language, religion, sect, et al. 

Why? What is the limit of these divisions?

Why do we do it? 

It began based on our initial need to be around other humans who look alike and then later became a need to be around people who think alike or had similar thoughts and beliefs. 

What became more pronounced with time is the pathological need for us to narrow the groupings to narrower more restrictive categories and thus came religions, sects, and lastly cults. Till here the smallest unit of the division was a single family comprising an adult male, female, and their children. However, the divisions and the proponents of divisions didn’t stop there - they continued with the divisions to smaller groupings. 

So, where do we go from the limit that was set by the smallest unit i.e. family? 

Herein came the last division which intends to divide the family too - these categories attack the premise that humans are social animals and promote individuality. Therefore, came dividing the biological categories of humans between male, female and neutral genders to now countless sub-categories of sexual orientation. The premise is unless we distinguish between these categories, there will be discrimination - is that the real reason? Or is something more at play here? 

If we look at the argument of discrimination here, then, discrimination happens at so many levels within the same gender based on the looks of the individual. Research has proven many times over that good-looking people of either gender get higher salaries than their not-so-good-looking counterparts. So, does this mean that we should now have another division based on how someone looks?? 

But we don't see such a division based on looks happening - there is a division based on gender and sexual orientation only which have spurred two of large-scale modern-day movements, namely feminism and LGBTQ. Both these movements have impacted what mostly? The family unit! So, the forces behind these movements have an unsaid objective i.e. to disrupt the family unit - but why? A family makes up a cohesive unit of society and just like cells make up the tissue and tissue makes an organ and multiple organs make up the body - similarly, a family makes up a community and multiple communities make up a nation - so, when a family unit is disrupted, the whole chain leading up to the nation is impacted. What will these forces gain from this disruption? Unbridled access to the individual and the market they present for selling their ware. How? Simply put when we had a joint family system - one large house would accommodate multiple families with a single kitchen. They promoted economies of scale in terms of consumption but with the breaking of joint families into a nuclear families, consumption increased. Now with the breaking of family, individuals will spur more consumption in terms of housing (studio apartments), eating out (thriving restaurants and pubs), a multitude of gadgets (instead of one in a family), and so on and so forth. So, movements such as feminism and LGBTQ have led to the breaking up of the family unit and also promoted consumerism around these two concepts themselves with products and services that have sprung up to exclusively cater to these groups. Further, breaking up of a family unit will lead to a weaker social fabric which can further be manipulated by these marketers as there is no support system that a family offers as the individual will be left to fend for themselves.

Thus, these divisions are going on to the level of absurdity and we need to pause and reflect on where we are headed with these mindless divisions and ask, "what is the limit?"

What’s happening in the Indian economy & stock markets?

So, the doomsday sayers are prophesying that recession is coming and markets will deeply correct themselves in the coming months and quarters that follow. Is this true? Well, the indications of this are evident across the world with inflation skyrocketing, rising energy and food prices, and shortages, combined with a decline or stagnating economic activity globally. All these trends are running in parallel across the globe. Not quite! There are exceptions to this and India is one of the largest economies that is ducking this trend with the exception of energy costs. Whilst energy costs have spiraled in India since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, her granaries are overflowing and she’s well cushioned when compared to the rest of the world as far as food reserves are concerned. Further, the Indian economy is growing at the fastest tick and we are seeing a truly V-shaped recovery and it is expected to continue with good monsoons prediction for the current year. So, why are the Indian markets tanking? Two reasons: one, the FIIs are pulling out their investments because of the increase in rates by the respective federal banks across the globe which makes the treasury bills a safer bet, and two, the fear of rising inflation in India which is nearly at 8%, highest in many years! With the RBI tightening money supply by raising rates, local money too has dried up from the markets. So, under the double whammy of FIIs pulling out and RBI tightening money supply because of rising inflation, markets had only one way to head - southwards! 

But is this going to be the trend through 2022?

I don’t think so. Let me explain: since the Russia-Ukraine conflict India has upped its purchases of Russian oil from less than 1% to almost 20% today and its expected to touch 30% by end of July. What this means is that cost of petroleum in India would drop by nearly 10% vis-a-vis say a few months back by end of July and it will continue the downward trend either because India will keep increasing purchases of Russian oil or the Russia-Ukraine conflict will get over or the sanctions against Russia will fizzle away as it's biting the west and the U.S. badly. So, either way, energy costs in India are slated to come down in the coming months. Further, recently the Modi government has reduced taxes on fuel (with this, diesel cost in June 2022 is now at par with what it was in June 2021! And my guess is that the government cut the taxes on fuel to the extent to bring the prices to last year's levels to tackle inflationary pressure) which will have an impact on prices and also the government has acted to reduce the prices of cooking oil in a bid to tackle food inflation that’s mainly driven by cooking oil and fresh produce. With good monsoons predicted, we’d see food inflation too dropping in the coming months. This along with overflowing granaries, we will see food inflation too tapering in the coming months. Mainly, with the further easing out of energy prices in the coming months, we’d see inflation dropping as energy has a cascading effect on inflation across the economy. With inflation easing in the coming months, we’d see RBI give up on its hawkish monetary policy in the next quarter or so. Come September, we will see RBI dropping interest rates - something none of the other major central banks doing for some time to come. In addition, when compared, India’s Sensex has fallen around 16% from its all-time peak and on the other hand, Nasdaq has fallen over 30%! What explains this? One of the reasons for this is that the Indian DIIs and retail investors are filling in the place vacated by FIIs and with valuations looking attractive again, we’d see buying interest gaining momentum in a month or so when the next inflation data comes in - already, the last tick of inflation in India (about a week back) was downwards and I expect it to continue its downward trend with fuel already at par with prices of 2021. 

So, my outlook for the Indian economy and for the Indian markets is extremely bullish as I believe India will be the outlier performer on all economic metrics in 2022 and beyond!