 | India will continue to rise as an economic force, regardless of its politics
India is an important country. It will soon be the world's most populous. It has the world's fastest growing large economy. Not least, it remains a vibrant democracy. What happens in India is going to affect everybody on the planet. What, then, are its economic prospects? Has Narendra Modi, its prime minister, made a big difference? How important are the general elections due in the next few months?
The decisive change in India's economic trajectory came in 1991, when a foreign currency crisis caused a fundamental shift away from the "license Raj" towards a market-led economy, but one with a strong role for public ownership, and constant government interference. This is today's broad Indian consensus. Mr Modi has operated largely within it, albeit introducing significant further reforms, most of them uncontroversial - at least in principle, if less so in practice. The exception has been demonetisation - a shocking decision, taken on Mr Modi's whim.
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|  | 673,000 unsold homes hold the key to India's next shadow-banking crisis
Just a year ago, India's third-largest mortgage lender was bragging about how it had shrunk its financing costs by replacing bank loans with market borrowings. Now, Dewan Housing Finance Corp. is confronting the fallout of that seemingly clever strategy, one that many of its peers face as well: a dangerously high exposure to India's struggling developers.
At the end of March 2018, Dewan had brought its cost of funds down to 8.4 per cent, a reduction of almost 2 percentage points in three years. Like other Indian shadow banks, Dewan had ratcheted up sales of bonds and commercial paper to yield-hungry mutual funds, taking the share of debt-market financing to 40 percent from 28 per cent. With their market shares slipping, banks, too, had no choice but to offer better terms. After all, this was an established, highly rated borrower expanding its liabilities by a compounded annual rate of 24 percent when there was very little demand for credit to put up new factories.
Then, after sudden defaults by infrastructure operator-financier IL&FS Group last September, Dewan's share price went into a tailspin.
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|  | Kumbh: Holiest marketing carnivals for big and small brands
Figure this: 15 crore people, 5,000 camps, 2,000 changing rooms, 1,22,000 toilets. If business is all about numbers, Kumbh 2019, where a tenth of India is expected to land over seven weeks, is turning out to be the holiest of marketing carnivals for brands big and small.
As Kumbh 2019 gets bigger in terms of number of visitors and investment and better in terms of amenities, brands' engagement, too, has increased manifold. Pilgrim amenity points such as mobile charging zones, lost and found centres, selfie zones, changing rooms, hand washing areas, disaster management centres, to name a few, have doubled up as brand-building zones where marketers are going in for the kill.
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|  | Uri director Aditya Dhar explains the origin of 'How's the Josh?'
Uri: The Surgical Strike director Aditya Dhar says its popular dialogue 'How's the josh?', which has been invoked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers, comes from a childhood memory.
The film is based on the 2016 Indian Army's surgical strikes on terror launch pads in Pakistan as a retaliation for the Uri attack that claimed the lives of 17 army personnel. The film features Vicky Kaushal in the lead role.
Recalling the story behind the catch-phrase, Aditya told PTI, "I had some friends from defence background, so with them, I used to go to a lot of Army clubs."
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