Saurabh Mukherjea: “We basically invest in a company which goes on to consolidate a large market. If you ask me this is a massive opportunity. There are so many more sectors where the consolidation is yet to happen in our country. That it is quite mouth-watering if you look at the Indian economy and see how much wealth will be created in the next 10 years as you consolidate the sector. In the last ten years, the Indian stock market created a trillion dollars of wealth. I reckon that in the next 10 years, Indian stock market could create two trillion dollars of wealth. So from 2000 to 2010, the market created around 0.5 trillion dollars of wealth, from 2010 to 2020 you had a trillion dollars of wealth and the next 10 years could be potentially two trillion dollars. Plays like the formalisation of consumption and shift from physical assets to financial assets are epic themes as so much wealth is waiting to be created there.”
Jagannathan on the Constitutional changes India needs: “One, the concurrent list must go, and most powers should be devolved downwards to states and very few upwards to the Centre. There must be a third list — a local bodies list — that is not subservient to state power. Local bodies are the best places to exercise democratic rights, but right now this is the most disempowered part of the governance structure. The power allocation between the judiciary and state also needs to be rejigged, with the former being barred from making laws. The higher judiciary needs bifurcation between a final court of appeals and a constitutional court. The power to adjudicate on public interest litigation must be exercised only by the constitutional court, and that too sparingly when real questions of law are involved. They cannot be used to impose a tax on SUVs entering the National Capital because of pollution, or to examine the efficacy of the Centre’s vaccination policies. Real power in the three-tier state structure must be maximised at the local body level, so that people have a greater say in the everyday things that matter to them.”
Atanu Dey on “Eliminate Poverty, not the Rich“: “Nobody reasonably questions the goal of eliminating poverty; our quarrel is about the appropriate means. If you think slowly about that, you realize that people who have the freedom to create and keep wealth, create the most wealth, and that ends up helping everyone, and reducing poverty.”
