#168 The (W)heat Is On

India Policy Watch #1: Silver Linings Playbook<br/><br/><em>Insights on burning policy issues in India</em><br/><br/>- <em>RSJ</em><br/><br/><em>Hello Readers! We are back after a nice, little break.</em>&#160;<br/><br/>Things have changed a bit in the past four weeks; haven&#8217;t they? Stock markets around the world are down by 10 per cent. Central banks have hiked interest rates by 40-50 bps. Inflation in the US is running at a 40-year high of over eight per cent. Retail inflation in India at 7.79 per cent is beyond the zone of comfort for RBI. The Rupee hit an all-time low last week. Technology stocks are down all over the world and the deal pipeline in the digital startup space has all but dried up. Musk is buying Twitter or maybe he isn&#8217;t. NFTs are dead and buried and crypto valuations are in a funk (or in a death spiral as Matt Levine puts it). And no one really knows anything about the Ukraine war. It drags on like a Putin-shaped monster waddling its way through the spring <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa"><em>rasputitsa</em></a> with no hope of getting anywhere. <br/><br/>Such then are the vagaries of the world. <em>&#160;</em><br/><br/>Thankfully, the Indian news channels were debating more important issues during these times. Like loudspeaker bans in religious institutions. Like a videographic survey of a Varanasi mosque by a 52-member team. Or if the Taj Mahal was indeed a Shiva temple called Tejo Mahalaya before Shah Jahan, that undisputed emperor of large tracts of Hindustan in the 17th century, figured he had run out of land to build a mausoleum in memory of his late wife. Or if Sri Lanka was more in the dumps than us in these times. These things matter. So they must be investigated by the intrepid reporters sitting in the studios. We must be forever thankful for the oasis of assurance that Indian news channels offer to us in this volatile and uncertain world.<br/><br/>Anyway, coming back to the point, things have turned for the worse since we last wrote on t