Rajesh Jain

Akash Prakash: “The [Indian] market’s prospective performance will be entirely driven by earnings. The best predictor for market earnings is nominal GDP growth. In the case of India, given that we are not at peak corporate profit share/GDP, and the formalisation of the economy is continuing, the listed equity universe may grow earnings in line with or slightly faster than nominal GDP. Thus, an earnings stream for the market of 12-15 per cent per annum is possible. The fact that we are on the cusp of a private sector capex revival only strengthens the case, as profits get front-loaded in a capex cycle. The issue will be ensuring that we do not dilute the earnings with incessant capital issuance. There should not be a large gap between market earnings growth and the earnings per share (EPS) growth. This is what happened in China and many other emerging market countries. The strong economic growth never translated into EPS growth, largely due to excess dilution. Given the wall of domestic money, there will be serious temptation for corporate India to issue equity. Corporate India and the markets must not lose their focus on return on equity.”

Sudhir Sethi (in newsletter): “India has absorbed $ 280B in past 5 years (excluding 2023) and returned $ 140B. With continued growth of entrepreneurs, I expect India to absorb approximately $ 500B + in next 5 years and return $ 300B + to investors.”

Economist: “No-strings giving may not be for everyone: there will always be donors who want to roll up their sleeves and get involved. But the new generation of donors shows that money can be spent both quickly and wisely. Philanthropy can be as simple as signing on the dotted line.” More: “No-strings giving is, in part, about recognising that non-profit organisations know better than wealthy donors how money is best utilised. Localisation goes one step further, recognising that organisations based in a community and led by locals know best. Both strategies sound warm and fuzzy. In fact, their goal is to make grant-making more effective and more sustainable.”

The Verge: “Google controls around 90 percent of the search market, by some measures, so it’s too valuable a referral source to just leave up to luck. Search engine optimization — or SEO, the practice of tweaking content and websites to get Google to boost your visibility — is everywhere, including on the page you’re reading now….Google’s outsized influence on how we find things has been 25 years in the making, and the people running businesses online have tried countless methods of getting Google to surface their content…An entire SEO industry has sprung up, dedicated to trying to understand (or outsmart) Google Search. The relentless optimizing of pages, words, paragraphs, photos, and hundreds of other variables has led to a wasteland of capital-C Content that is competing for increasingly dwindling Google Search real estate as generative AI rears its head. You’ve seen it before: the awkward subheadings and text that repeats the same phrases a dozen times, the articles that say nothing but which are sprayed with links that in turn direct you to other meaningless pages. Much of the information we find on the web — and much of what’s produced for the web in the first place — is designed to get Google’s attention.”

WSJ: “Addressing a hurt or issue in a friendship can strengthen the bond, therapists say. It allows both people to share their feelings, explain their needs and learn about each other. And we feel better when we stand up for ourselves. We’re also more likely to lose a friendship if we don’t address a problem. Our resentment will grow and we’ll pull away from it. That’s why it’s important to know how to engage in a healthy conflict. Don’t lash out, blame or judge. Frame the issue in a positive way, be open to your friend’s viewpoint and own up to your own role in the situation. Be honest and look for collaboration.”

Business Standard: “So far, AI would be triggered when a smartphone user posted a query. AI on the Cloud would assist the search and offer a reply. Coming up, a mobile device loaded with GenAI would be able to predict and answer queries based on previous history. It will be able to anticipate a user’s need and perform a task even before it is asked to do it. If a user writes a list of groceries on her phone, AI will set itself the task of checking the calendar, plan navigation to a local store or even help in ordering online. Other interesting features would be real-time language translation and AI-based filter and scene recognition for photos. GenAI will convert a phone into an even more powerful computer to generate images, text and videos within the device. “As generative AI becomes more integrated in our lives, our personal devices like our smartphones, PCs (personal computers), vehicles, and even IoT (internet of things) devices will become the hubs for multi-modal generative AI models,” says Durga Malladi, senior vice-president & general manager of technology planning & edge solutions at Qualcomm Technologies’.”

Economic Times: “India’s largely unskilled labour force makes a push for high-value services & manufacturing futile…India is a labour-abundant economy. This abundance is in low-skilled labour, given that almost 80% of its working-age population does not have even a higher secondary education, with only an eighth of the working-age population having studied beyond high school. While India adds 8-10 million people to its labour force annually, roughly 2 million are college-educated or beyond. There is also a wide variation in the quality of degree programmes across India, most of which cannot impart marketable skills. Thus, high-skilled workers are scarce.”

Andy Kessler: “Life is about change and surprises. Humans are endowed with often conflicting attributes well beyond reasoning: empathy, pleasure, ambition, creativity, emotion, love, loyalty, humor, responsibility, faith, trust, delight, despair, intuition, stubbornness. Add Freudian id and ego, inner voice, self-awareness, soul. True AGI requires emulating all that. AI’s trajectory is amazing and will outpace humans in many areas, but only those within 2D boundaries. Today’s AI is a pattern-matching megamachine. Sentient? Thinking? It may fool some, but I don’t think we get there. In the movie “Blade Runner,” a Voight-Kampff test that checked pulse and pupil dilation distinguished humans from robot replicants. We need that, a foolproof modern Turing or Lovelace test—hint: AI can be bad at puns and paradoxes—before outlandish sentient claims overtake reality.”

NYTimes: “The A.I. industry this year is set to be defined by one main characteristic: a remarkably rapid improvement of the technology as advancements build upon one another, enabling A.I. to generate new kinds of media, mimic human reasoning in new ways and seep into the physical world through a new breed of robot. In the coming months, A.I.-powered image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney will instantly deliver videos as well as still images. And they will gradually merge with chatbots like ChatGPT. That means chatbots will expand well beyond digital text by handling photos, videos, diagrams, charts and other media. They will exhibit behavior that looks more like human reasoning, tackling increasingly complex tasks in fields like math and science. As the technology moves into robots, it will also help to solve problems beyond the digital world.”

Raghu Raman: “Most youngsters stop reading as soon as they graduate, partly because our education system is oriented more towards the passing of exams than absorption of knowledge. However, reading is possibly the most powerful force multiplier for a budding leader. The ability to consume knowledge at a high rate accelerates mental and professional maturity, and that ever-increasing knowledge base enables better opportunity spotting, inter-disciplinary dot connections and superior decision-shaping. While ‘reading’ online news, editorials and long-format articles is good, that’s incomparable to reading books that cover the subject with far more depth and nuance than an opinion piece, which by definition can only be the opinion of an individual and not the complete picture. One of the best investments young leaders can make is to master speed-reading as a skill, and more importantly implement the discipline of reading every single day. Reading also forms the bedrock of the second essential skill, which is the ability to write well.”

David Henderson: “When there’s a current account deficit, there’s necessarily an offsetting capital account surplus. When foreigners sell us goods and services, they have basically five things to do with the money that they don’t spend on our goods and services: (1) buy U.S. dollar-denominated debt, typically U.S. government Treasury bills and bonds; (2) buy stock in U.S. companies; (3) buy land in the United States; (4) directly invest in the United States; and (5) hold on to the actual currency because it’s still the world’s leading currency. In only one of those cases, case (1), does the current account deficit translate into debt…By the way, to the extent (5) applies, the U.S. Federal Reserve makes out well. It costs the U.S. government under 30 cents to print a $100 bill. And in return for that $100, we get actual goods.”

TechCrunch: “MVNOs aren’t new — they’ve been around since the 1990s — but the business model is having a moment. Tapping advances in network and cloud technologies, brands are becoming MVNOs to build direct relationships with their customers and fans through businesses that promise significant recurring revenues and a larger share of wallet than a mere app might get. “The march of technology has facilitated growth,” James Gray, managing director at telecom industry consultancy Graystone Strategy, told TechCrunch. “The movement towards 100% digital MVNOs and the launch of eSIM has made it much easier and cost-effective to have an all-digital distribution strategy. That’s why we are now seeing growth in new forms of MVNOs.” Indeed, the global MVNO industry is pegged as an $84 billion market today and its growth is accelerating, with an increase of nearly 40% expected in the next five years to $116.8 billion.”

WaPo: “Copyright law distinguishes between ripping off someone else’s work verbatim — which is generally illegal — and “remixing” or putting it to a new, creative use. What is confounding about AI systems, said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University, is that in this case they seem to be doing both. Generative AI represents “this big technological transformation that can make a remixed version of anything,” Grimmelmann said. “The challenge is that these models can also blatantly memorize works they were trained on, and often produce near-exact copies,” which, he said, is “traditionally the heart of what copyright law prohibits.” From the first VCRs, which could be used to record TV shows and movies, to Google Books, which digitized millions of books, U.S. companies have convinced courts that their technological tools amounted to fair use of copyrighted works. OpenAI and Microsoft are already mounting a similar defense.”

IEEE Spectrum: “Pedagogical and education researchers are discovering that there are many ways to teach, including blended learning. The newest focus is on adaptive learning, which leverages advanced technology and data analytics to deliver personalized education, revolutionizing learning. Traditional pedagogical methods typically entail one teacher instructing an average of 30 learners. It’s a system that can easily overlook the needs of some students. Although the model has served many students well, a significant number of learners require a more personalized approach. Unfortunately, the number of available educators and providers is a fraction of what is needed. AI might seem intimidating, but if faculty at educational institutions use the technology appropriately, the benefits will allow for a classroom where all children are cognitively stimulated regardless of where they are in their learning journey. They will learn in a way that works for them, getting answers to questions without fear of judgment. Teachers will be able to spend their time not only helping all their students understand what they are studying but also helping them to cultivate a love for learning.” More from Economist.

WaPo: “It’s a common misconception to view rest as an entirely passive experience. True rest, say experts, is not just about being sedentary or in the prone position — it’s also about giving your brain the restorative breaks it needs to function at an optimal level. While adequate sleep is essential to brain health, many forms of rest involve activity, not slumber. “The most restorative kinds of rest — the things that recharge our mental and physical batteries most effectively — are the things that are active rather than passive,” said Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of the book “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.” “Going for a long walk or hike or working out can give us more rather than less energy and leave us feeling mentally more rejuvenated.””

WSJ: “Sleep (7 to 9 hours x 2 + ≤ 20 to 60 minutes napping) + Hobbies (~ 2 hours) + Socializing (0 to 2 events) + Exercise (≥ 45 minutes) + Work (≤ 2 hours) + Unplanned time (~ 3 to 4 hours) = A Great Weekend”

Greg Ip: “To be sure, beyond AI and medicine, technological advancement was less breathtaking last year. For example, progress on electric vehicles and renewable electricity stalled. And yet breakthroughs are a game of probabilities, and the range and magnitude of bets on energy keep growing—in wind, solar, batteries, hydrogen, geothermal, carbon capture and storage, small modular nuclear reactors, and even fusion. Van Reenen said new ideas can still be found—it just takes a lot of researchers and money, as the Covid-19 vaccine demonstrated. Similarly, “We have been putting a lot of resources into trying to deal with the problem of climate change. That creates the opportunity to make a difference.””

WSJ: “Reframe bedtime as the beginning of the next day. Julie Morgenstern, a productivity consultant and the author of “Time Management from the Inside Out,” said that when we consider sleep to be the last thing we do at night, we’re more likely to push it off — staying up to scroll TikTok or finish our to-do lists. Instead, she suggests thinking of a prompt bedtime as a way to get a head start on the upcoming day. Reframing rest as a new beginning rather than the tail end of the day can inspire better sleep habits, she said.”

Jemina Kelly on non-voters: “if we want a representative democracy, we need to find a way to encourage people to start engaging more with what is going on. Some people, like former Labour spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, argue that the way forward is compulsory voting, as countries like Australia already have. I disagree: apart from anything else, there is no evidence that compulsory voting leads to more knowledgeable or engaged citizens.  My decision not to vote was a conscious one. But many of those who don’t vote are simply not engaging at all, and most — in both the US and UK — tend to be significantly poorer and more disadvantaged than the average. Britain’s Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that the wealth gap between those who do and don’t vote in this year’s general election will be the biggest in 60 years.”

WSJ: “The ranks of India’s farmworkers have swelled by some 60 million over the past four years, a shift fueled in part by a food-welfare program that feeds hundreds of millions of people. Even last year, when much of the country had put the pandemic behind them, India’s farms added 13 million workers, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the food program would remain for another five years. Meanwhile, jobs in manufacturing nationwide haven’t budged, and factories say they are struggling to hire. “This is catastrophic: You see millions going back to agriculture,” said Santosh Mehrotra, a development economist and visiting professor at the University of Bath whose analysis of government employment data shows the farm workforce growing since 2019. “This is the reversal of the structural change happening in our economy.”…Instead of seeing the masses move onto factory floors—a shift that helped raise the standard of living for millions of Chinese—India appears to be deindustrializing prematurely. That puts India at risk of missing out on the benefits of a huge labor force, while much of its population struggles with chronic unemployment or underemployment.”

David Brooks: “Sometimes social revolutions emerge from ordinary ideas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers like William Petty, David Hume and Adam Smith popularized a concept called “division of labor.” It’s a simple notion. If I specialize in doing what I’m good at, and you specialize in what you’re good at, and we exchange what we’ve each made, then we’ll both be more productive and better off than if we tried to be self-sufficient. It seems banal, but division of labor was part of a constellation of ideas that liberated our civilization from the savage grip of zero-sum thinking. For millenniums before that, economic growth had been basically stagnant. Many people simply assumed that the supply of wealth was finite. If I’m going to get more of it, it will be the result of conquering you and stealing what you have. In a zero-sum mind-set, the basic logic of life is dog-eat-dog, conquer or be conquered. Property is theft. Predators win…Populism thrives on a zero-sum mind-set. The central story that populists tell is: They are out to destroy us. Populist leaders invariably inflame ethnic bigotry to mobilize their own supporters.”

FT: “Ruxandra Teslo, one of a growing community of progress-focused writers at the nexus of science, economics and policy, argues that the growing scepticism around technology and the rise in zero-sum thinking in modern society is one of the defining ideological challenges of our time. Some may counter that a rebalancing of priorities from perpetual advancement to caution is a good thing, but this could be a catastrophic mistake. As well as economic growth, the drive for progress brought us modern medicine, significantly longer and healthier lives, plentiful food supplies, dramatic reductions in poverty, and ever more and ever cheaper renewable energy. The challenges facing the modern world will be solved by more focus on progress, not less. The pre-industrial world was one of mass conflict, exploitation and suffering. If we are to avoid backsliding, advocates for innovation, growth and abundance must defeat the doomers.”

Giuliano da Empoli: “In Russia, power is a big beast. In Switzerland power is a kitten, and it’s been domesticated. Through history, it’s been diluted, distributed, at local level and through referendums. Swiss politicians are boring. That’s quite a good thing. The more spectacular a political system, the worse it is, in many ways.”

NYTimes: “A flow state [is] a period of intense focus that comes from being completely absorbed in an activity. Flow states occur when you’re doing something challenging, but not so difficult that it’s stressful, according to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the positive psychology pioneer who coined the term. When you’re in flow, time and self-consciousness melt away. Dr. Sue Varma, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine, said this occurs for her when she’s salsa dancing. “It’s not a matter of whether I’m good at it or not,” she said. “In that moment, I’m transported.” When you enter flow, she explained, “you are being flooded with neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which make you feel alert, engaged and motivated.””