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Ideas and beliefs are abstract terms. In fact, the triumph of humans in the race of the intellectual has been attributed to our understanding of the abstract. No other animal in this world builds a society because it understands society as a concept. They merely do so to enhance their food and livelihood security. But for humans, some reasons arise out of understanding the abstract. If our knowledge is to be stripped down to bones, we might find that we are slaves to our abstraction. We revere value in paper notes, honour in metal medals and fear in stone statues. Ideas are what have made this imaginative creature the ruler of the planet. Our success as a species rests on the coherence and usefulness of the ideas we bear. So, the concepts passed upon to us or occur to us in episodes of creative hallucination can change the face of this earth. So, it is the most remarkable creation of humans and, thus, the origin of property. This blog aims to capture some of such thoughts. Believe, or ...
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Recent posts

Goliaths on the fall

Russia's silent nod to withdrawal from Ukraine , can only be the painful submission of a haughty wrestler after dozens of unsuccessful bids to win. The only face-saver in this context, is that it was given cover of the US-Iran deadly war , to quickly cut its wartime losses, and somehow make a case for pull back. The US however lacks this option. Iran has been a failure of its grandeur, especially after years of chiding its own allies on their lack of military spend. US has proven, that in spite of a large military with advanced technology, its never a 'easy win' in the 21st century. US war exploits since Vietnam, have drawn more and more and more unpopularity, but like a rusty army unwilling to relinquish its chainmail armors, the US army keep walking into the same track over and over again. Much detailed analysis has been made on how Iran had prepared itself for this war for decades now, and what US has proven to itself is that Middle east is no Venezuela.  To look back a...
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The "Bazaar" of Democracy: Why Your Vote is Basically a Coupon

Let’s be honest: we’ve all been taught that politics is a "sacred duty." We imagine silver-haired statesmen sitting in mahogany rooms, pondering the "Greater Good" while a sitar plays softly in the background. But Nobel laureate James Buchanan called BS on that decades ago, famously describing his theory as " Politics without Romance ." In the real world—and especially in India—politics functions less like a temple and more like a Bazaar . Everything is up for negotiation: support, laws, and loyalty. If you want to understand why India works the way it does, stop reading civics textbooks and start thinking like a day-trader. The Art of the Deal Remember the 2024 Election results? When the BJP realized they needed partners to cross the finish line, the "Politics-as-Exchange" paradigm went into overdrive. Suddenly, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar weren't just states; they were shareholders. The 2024-25 Union Budget reflected this perfectly. It wasn...
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On the nature of money, and conflit with nature

As with all treatises on economics, one commences with the nature of money and the three purposes it serves: exchange, guarantee, and investment (as Keynes elucidated in his three motives). However, there is nothing quite like it in the natural order. The closest analogue is food . It serves as a medium of exchange (of energy to survive or procreate) and as a means of storage. But food is not an investment; calories do not spontaneously multiply. In fact, food is bound by entropy ; its essence and value diminish with time . This victory over temporal decay is the greatest asset of money. It is a refusal to wither. Perhaps it is our ultimate pursuit of immortality, with power and fame being the earlier, more fragile candidates. However, this presents a metastasizing issue. If money only grows over time through interest and accumulation, it requires infinite space (or at least infinite resources) to occupy. But the physical world is finite. The earth’s carrying capacity is f...
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What women want - a YouTube dive for the bored.

On a leading podcast, Palki Sharma (ex- WION , now FirstPost ), a leading face of the new age digital indian media, claimed that over 80% of other viewers of indian infostories and news were men. Her next question was more pressing, and rightly so, coming from a lady who loved journalism so much, "Please help me understand what the women of India are watching?" This question is neither new nor unsolved. The television media at the dawn of the millennium had a similar question for itself. As TVs had penetrated homes, broadcasters had realised that a massive half of the population was simply missing out form the audience. The answer to it came from Ekta Kapoor , who revolutionised the soap opera scene in India. When the "serials", as they were referred to, took over, it brought the broadcasters a new mass of viewers, neatly segmented as the daytime audience and evening shows. This move not only altered the course of media, but also advertising and consumer behaviour...
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Dragging into Wars - were the global wards triggered by a pandemic?

When the COVID-19 pandemic cast its shadow on the global arena, the fuss was about healthcare, crisis-mobility and supply chains . Each among them held a threat to the existing polit-bureau of international politics , from international organisations coming under fire to the rise of right-wing politics over the globe, could be seen as a precursor to the summer of 2025 , which has seen 5 countries go into a direct war with one another. And the cursed thing about wars is they breed quickly like a festering infection. While the theory is that the pandemic might have been the trigger for these global skirmishes, I posit that it was only a catalyst in the larger political cycle .  While the 2000s had seen massive army deployments around the globe, the 2010s were a calmer decade. Led by the democrats in the US , and the rise of liberal politics around the EU. And as we have now been made more aware of, those were a decade of political correctness, DEI and more so of anti-inequality. ...
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Turning back from pull to push

Two recent campaigns deserve attention from marketing enthusiasts, one of Campa Cola (reenergised by the Reliance Group) and of Tata Sampann's species. The challenges these two brands face are too distinct from one another. Campa, on the one hand, aims to fight the global brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, whereas Sampann looks to create a market in indian spices that has been dominated by local players like MDH and Everest. However, their strategies have something in common: getting the distributors to stock more of their products on the shelves. Campa is offering the distributors twice the margins, while Sampann is leveraging its vast portfolio to make stocking only Tata products a win for the distributors. Image credit: Economic Times To understand why this is happening, and what makes this interesting, one has to look back on the history of marketing, more specifically the shift from a push to a pull-based marketing, where the focus of the brands shifted from pushing their produc...
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