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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

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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When a giant goes on a eating spree

There are a few crown makers in the current start-up world who have honed the art of finding startups with an industry-defining idea at their seed stage and nurturing it to realise a product market fit. But needless to mention, even in their shining armours, there are a few clicks to spot. This only explains why business is an art and not a science. While gaps in the market, consumer behaviour, technology adoption or, for that matter, a blueprint of the strategy today can be readily developed, the challenge is to get the process on the field. I would refrain from taking names, but even the biggest VC and PE out there have had their share of mistakes and have been highly humble in accepting them. What is of greater concern, however, is that most of the analysis of a bad investment can only be made post-ante. This implies that the investors carried out the same processes yet landed at two contrasting star-ups. Oversight, one of the most cited criteria for the failure of venture capital i...
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Consulting Constulting

Consultants are the most rampant, yet the most sushed topic in corporate. There are enough consulting firms today, to make one wonder if we need so many of them. And if the conundrum of needing to hire consultants was not big enough, here comes the issue of what they actually do. Over the last few years, many in the media have reported consulting firms to have held too much power for far too long to have become corrupted. Firms have relied on shady practices to keep their business afloat and, on many occasions, have walked out without much consequences. However, I find the above conclusion misrepresenting, if not incorrect.  The need for consultants doesn't arise from corporate's need to implement change or resolve issues. Corporations today are locked in an environment of constant change, be it in business models, products or even markets. The law forbids two companies from coming together and promising on a "happy ever-after". The consequence of this is action and r...
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