Capital Calculus: India On The Rise | Replug |

India To Grow At 7.3%
Central Statistical Office (CSO) forecast that India would close the current fiscal year with a very impressive growth of 7.3%. This was just weeks after RBI surprise everyone by raising its forecast for the current fiscal year from 6.5 to 7%. A forecast by Axis Bank made an even more dramatic claim: India was on a new growth path of 7%. All this just 3 years after the economy witnessed a contraction of 24% in the first quarter after COVID-19 struck. Indeed, if this is true then India is on a growth turnpike.
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New India’s New Inflation Metric
The people of Karnataka handed the Congress party a comprehensive mandate few months ago. The subtext of this election was equally fascinating, especially as it identified a new touch point of inflation: cooking gas. In fact, the exit poll conducted by Axis My India revealed that inflation was the second most important reason for the electorate to vote for the Congress. Karnataka is among the few states in the country that have achieved saturation in LPG connections. However, with gas prices surging in the last two years, the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party was at the receiving end of electoral ire. Interestingly, both the political parties took cognizance of the electoral concern and offered sops in their respective election manifesto. In this episode, we explore the consequences of the material trading- up of India and the challenges it poses to political parties vying for power.
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Reforms @ Central: In Conversation With Sanjeev Sanyal
In his address to the concluding session of the 17th Lok Sabha last month Prime Minister Narendra Modi unabashedly embraced economic reforms: “Reform, Perform and Transform.” Further, he claimed that his government was able to target welfare benefits by deploying these process reforms like Direct Benefits Transfer. Indeed, this is a first. Previous governments, fearful of the political backlash, preferred to covertly support economic reforms. Has India normalised economic reforms? Has it managed a mindset reset? In this episode, Anil Padmanabhan spoke to Sanjeev Sanyal, economist, and member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC).
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India’s Crude Oil Heist
India’s imports of cheaper crude oil from Russia now account for 40% of its total oil imports. In fact, Russia has replaced Saudi Arabia and Iraq as the primary source of crude oil imports.
All of this while Russia continues to face sanctions imposed by block of Western nations. Even better, India is importing crude oil a rates lower than international prices and then exporting the value added products like diesel at prevailing market rates - providing Indian refineries a healthy mark-up. How did India pull off what some describe as India’s oil heist?
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Vande Bharat Hitting Reset On Train Travel?
4 years ago, India launched its first homegrown semi-high-speed train it connected New Delhi and Varanasi via Kanpur, Allahabad. Officially, it is called Vande Bharat. But at the Integral Coach Factor in Chennai, where the ambitious project to create a modern state-of-the-art train, it was christened Train-18 - so that the staff working on the project remembered that the project had to be concluded in 18 months. Not only did they deliver on deadline, but the train has also been embraced by India. By the government as well as the people. Last year’s Union Budget promised to roll out 400 new Vande Bharat’s in 2025-six more are already operational. Clearly, Vande Bharat is poised to rewrite train travel in India. To understand why and more we spoke to Sudhanshu Mani, the former head of the Vande Bharat project.