Praveen Chakravarty writes about approval voting: “Given India’s inherent deep identity cleavages, its electoral system must encourage and incentivise political parties to woo every section of society and not reward them for shunning certain sections. Indulge in a thought experiment. Let us suppose that when given a ballot of choices of candidates/parties to vote for, you are allowed to choose more than one candidate. That is, you no longer have to force yourself to make just one choice (most preferred or least non-preferred) but you can choose many candidates or parties that represent your interests. India’s electoral ballot currently has a NOTA (None Of The Above) button. Think of this new method as having a MOTA (Many Of The Above) button. The candidate or party that has the most ‘tick marks’ then wins. Would this change how you vote? Would this change how we choose winners? Would this produce different incentives for our politics?”
WSJ: “Expected acceleration in M&A deals in the IT sector has brought worries among customers about having to adapt to new—and sometimes unwanted—tech tools…Sameer Dholakia, a partner in the growth investment practice at venture-capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, said a big risk of M&A integrations is the buyer’s inability to iron out differences in technology, such as programming languages or underlying cloud support. Mr. Dholakia—a former chief executive of email startup SendGrid who oversaw its roughly $3 billion acquisition in 2019 by cloud communications firm Twilio Inc. —said acquirers that ignore these kinds of differences typically end up offering a “Frankenstein-like” bundle of tech tools, rather than a single, unified solution…“M&A can often make sense on a product strategy whiteboard, but may not work in practice,” Mr. Dholakia said.”
Mint: “The United Nations, on India’s insistence, declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets. Millets are not just climate smart crops—requiring less of water and chemical inputs—they are healthier too. Due to low glycaemic index, a measure of how fast carbs turn into glucose in the bloodstream, they are suited for diabetics. Millets are gluten-free and rich in fibre, iron, calcium and other micronutrients, which explains a resurgence of millets in the diets of the urban rich even though the masses tend to prefer cheap calorie dense cereals. Today, urban consumers are spoilt for choice with scores of brands selling millets in packaged and ready-to-eat variants. These include cookies, health bars, breakfast cereals, pancakes, dosa-Idli premixes, and milk substitutes made from sprouted millets for the lactose intolerant. Fine dining restaurants and premium hotels are serving an array of millet dishes to the discerning customer.”
A quiz on India. I did quite badly — just 3/10.
Ray Dalio: “The mechanics [of debt] are pretty simple because the finances of countries’ governments work the same as the finances of individuals and organizations, except governments have the abilities to 1) print money and 2) take money from some people and give it to others. How this works is particularly important now because the US government (and people) are deeply in debt and need to spend on many things such as taking care of those who don’t have enough to pay for the basics, like supports for children in poverty, education, infrastructure, defense, climate remediation initiatives, mental and physical health initiatives, supports for other countries, etc. Because money and debt are not limited, those who make the decisions on how much to spend on what don’t look at how much money they have to spend and then prioritize what they should spend it on. They instead decide how much they want to spend and then decide whether they will get it from taxes (which is hard because people fight to keep their money) or borrow it, and if they borrow it, they have to decide whether they sell it to lender-creditors who want it or sell it to central banks who print the money to buy it.”
Gulzar: “I have long argued that despite its massive population, India’s economic foundations are built on an extremely narrow base. This means that the country needs to focus on broadening its economic base across all dimensions, and in its absence the limits to economic growth will become apparent very soon. The digital economy, which has been the basis for a good part of the high growth enthusiasm about India, may not be as large as is being imagined. No matter how disruptive the technology, the net addressable market of customers who are meaningful enough consumers may be far smaller than is believed. This can expand only with broad-based economic growth…The point to be made is the small size or base of India’s consumer class, digitally addressable market, and skilled engineering work-force. This is far smaller than widely believed.”
