Finished reading the second book that my aged father gifted me in Goa for my birthday this year. I hadn’t heard of the author or any of her books, even though she is supposed to be a Pulitzer Prize winner. Right from the start, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson struck me… Continue reading The Dangers of Supplanting Caste for Race
The ICC ODI Cricket World Cup could not have come to India at a more opportune time. Just when the country’s economy is weathering the global slowdown and actually growing at a decent clip, it could do with a booster dose of high energy sporting action and consumption. Just when beleaguered Disney Star is recovering… Continue reading What a Bonanza of Cricket and Advertising!
Two most dreaded words in economic circles and think-tanks these days is industrial policy. It is frowned upon because it has come to be associated with all the negatives of government intervention. Politics, geo-politics, picking winners, wasteful subsidies and creating distortions in what ought to be a free market economy. It has become a term… Continue reading India in Need of Industrial Policy 4.0
It is corporate earnings season once again! And while we wait for major corporations the world over to declare their earnings, we are also watching India Inc’s earnings report for the September 2023 quarter, which falls just before the festive season in India. In fact, because Diwali is slightly later than usual this year, we… Continue reading India is Bucking the Economic Slowdown, Or Is It?
The last time I wrote about the global economy, I wrote about its fractious state, thanks to the geopolitical tensions all around. This time, I thought I would look at it from the multilateral institutions’ point of view and then share my own thoughts on where the global economy might be headed. As I write… Continue reading Global Economy Still Searching for Direction
As has become commonplace these years, 2023 too has been a year of extreme weather conditions, natural disasters, excessive and unseasonal rainfall in some places, drought in other places. We know that extreme weather conditions and natural calamities are becoming the rule, but it doesn’t conform to any pattern and we are unable to mitigate… Continue reading Greening the Planet Against Climate Change
This August I received two books from my aged father for my 61st birthday and one of them is Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh. He has written this years after writing the Ibis trilogy – a fictional account of India’s opium trade with China – which was well reviewed in the press at the… Continue reading Smoke and Ashes, And Parallels Too Many
In the old days when I was still a cub copywriter in the advertising industry in India – which is around 35-40 years ago – the prevailing marketing wisdom was that the consumer or customer is the one who makes the biggest decisions on brands. “Customer is King” was always heard at meetings, in conference… Continue reading Have Consumers Changed the Way They Make Brand Decisions?
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
This month saw the grand finalé of the G20 2023 summits under India’s presidency. New Delhi, India’s capital was suitably sanitized, beautified and locked down – for a 3-day holiday – so that leaders of the world’s most economically powerful countries as well as heads of multilateral institutions who had descended upon the city could… Continue reading G20 and BRICS, All in Expansion Mode
Peripatetic Perch 