Bharatvaarta

The Bharatvaarta Weekly is our reaction to the news headlines of the week that was.    This week (November 22nd - 29th), we speak about the anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Cyclone Nivar, and FII inflows crossing over 50k crore in November.   If you liked this episode, then don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and share this content. You can stay updated with everything at Bharatvaarta by following us on social media: we're @bharatvaarta on Twitter, facebook.com/bharatvaarta.in on Facebook, and @bharatvaarta on Instagram).

The internal working group of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come up with a slew of recommendations around letting NBFCs above a certain size acquire a banking license, letting Payments Banks and Small Finance Banks become full-fledged banks and letting certain large corporates set up banks   In this episode, Srivatsa Subbanna hosts Nirav Kanodra (Investment Banker) and Karan Bhasin (Economist & Researcher) as they walk us through these recommendations. We start off by analysing these recommendations and what is the potential impact of these regulations. They then discuss the need for these regulations and how changes in technology will shape regulation in the coming years. They then talk about some of the challenges when it comes to letting corporates run banks and how some of these challenges can be addressed through regulation. Finally they talk about corporate owned NBFCs, how they can be converted to banks and what can we learn from other countries. Finally, they share their views on the safeguards that the RBI should set up in order to make this move a success.   This is an insightful deep dive into the structure of banking, supervisory oversight and how a credit starved nation like India should proceed towards building strong banks that work towards democratizing credit while ensuring that systemic risks are handled to ensure that depositors and small savers are protected.   The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you liked this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share!

In this episode, we discuss the Indian Agriculture sector with Mr. Sivakumar Surampudi, Group Head – Agri & IT Business at ITC Limited, which is one India’s best-known conglomerates. Mr. Surampudi is a renowned thought leader with interests in agribusiness, rural marketing, retailing, infrastructure, and poverty alleviation. He led the World’s largest rural digital infrastructure program, ITC eChoupal, which empowers over 4 million farmers across the country. In this discussion, he discussed the challenges facing the Agriculture sector, the impact of recent reforms, technology interventions to enable personalization at scale, ITC’s journey of building the eChoupal platform, and how India can move up the value chain to become a strong Agricultural exporter. This episode is a fascinating deep dive into a sector that employs about 60% of the country and is in the throes of revolution. The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you like this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share! For more information, do check out www.bharatvaarta.in.

The Bharatvaarta Weekly is our reaction to the news headlines of the week that was.    This week (November 15th - 22nd), we analyse the collapse of Laxmi Vilas Bank, Twitter's apology on the India map, BPCL divestment, growth of Parler and more.   If you liked this episode, then don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and share this content. You can stay updated with everything at Bharatvaarta by following us on social media: we're @bharatvaarta on Twitter, facebook.com/bharatvaarta.in on Facebook, and @bharatvaarta on Instagram).

It has been a busy couple of weeks, with elections in Bihar and Bypolls in 56 Assembly seats across 11 states.    In this episode, our resident political commentators, Aashish Chandorkar, Rohit Jayaraman, and Vivek Khaitan, discuss how these elections have panned out and their political significance. We cover the various political parties’ performance in Bihar and the future for Nitish Kumar and the NDA. We move on to BJP’s performance in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, and other important results in Dubbakka (Telangana), Baroda (Haryana), and RR Nagar/Sira  (Karnataka) constituencies.    We end by discussing what the future holds for the Indian National Congress after yet another poor showing in stark contrast to the continued popularity the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the rise of All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen or AIMIM and their consolidation of the Muslim vote bank. This is a fantastic deep dive that colors the results with rich, insightful perspectives on what these results actually mean beyond just the numbers.    The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you like this episode, then don’t forget to rate, subscribe and share! For more information, check out www.bharatvaarta.in.

In this episode, we discuss the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s ubiquitous digital payments system that recently crossed 2 billion transactions in a month.    Joining us in this discussion are Deepak Abbot, Co-founder of indiagold and former head of Product and Growth @ Paytm – India’s most valued payments company, and Nikhil Kumar, Co-founder of Setu and former Head of the Developer Ecosystem for India Stack (iSPIRT Foundation). Nikhil describes the conception of UPI in 2016 and its vision then, Deepak speaks about UPI’s growth on the P2P (People to People) and P2M (People to Merchant) fronts and how UPI impacted the payments industry. Nikhil and Deepak then discuss policy and regulation, how banks have responded to this innovation, and interesting use cases that would expand the scope and impact of UPI. We end the podcast with a vision for the future on how we can spur similar innovation in other important axes to accelerate the country’s progress.    This is a fascinating discussion on perhaps, the most impactful innovation India has produced in the last decade from two people who have had a ringside view of its growth! The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you like this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share! For more information, do check out www.bharatvaarta.in.

Babasaheb Ambedkar, Pandit Nehru, and Sardar Patel are among the foremost architects of modern India. They are also among the most debated personalities for the far-reaching consequences of their actions and ideologies even today.   In this episode, Harsh Gupta (Author, Investor) and Abhinav Prakash Singh (Professor, Columnist) discuss the legacy and significance of these stalwarts and debate the counterfactuals. What would Patel have been like as India’s first Prime Minister? How would Ambedkar reconcile with the contrasting views of their supposed followers? Would we judge Nehru as harshly if his family abstained from Politics? Would the Kashmir conflict exist today if Patel and not Nehru had led reunification? And could the partition of India have been avoided? Along the way, Harsh and Abhinav discuss the contributions of these leaders and they have shaped the country as we know it. This is a fascinating episode that brings alive the history of modern India from the lens of 3 people who had the closest view of how this republic 300 million people would evolve.     The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you like this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share! For more information, do check out www.bharatvaarta.in.

The Bharatvaarta Weekly is our reaction to the news headlines of the week that was.    This week (November 8th - 15th), we analyse the Bihar elections and its implications, Atmanirbhar 3.0 stimulus and how it impacts real estate and other industries, PLI incentive scheme for ten additional industries, Mumbai Indians' dominant IPL victory and more.   If you liked this episode, then don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and share this content. You can stay updated with everything at Bharatvaarta by following us on social media: we're @bharatvaarta on Twitter, facebook.com/bharatvaarta.in on Facebook, and @bharatvaarta on Instagram).

Sandeep Balakrishna is a veteran writer, author, editor, speaker and independent researcher with about 20 years of writing on Indian history, culture, literature and temples. He’s also the Founder and Chief Editor of The Dharma Dispatch, which is to quote: “a unique online platform offering rare, valuable, original, and in-depth content aimed at crafting and promoting a cultural narrative rooted in the Sanatana ethos.”    In this episode, we discuss the intricacies of writing the history of India, how one must view our ‘itihaasa’, and what we can do to correct the narrative of our civilization. This is a fascinating episode, one that will set you on a rabbit hole quest to discover the many different elements that make up this incredibly complex yet fundamental subject.    The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you like this episode, then don’t forget to rate, subscribe and share! For more information, do check out www.bharatvaarta.in.

Shankkar Aiyar is a veteran journalist and author. In a career spanning over three and half decades, Shankkar has worked for leading publications like the Indian Express and India Today. His 1991 story on Indian government pledging the gold reserve highlighted the severe balance of payment crisis faced by India then and shot him to national limelight.    His most recent book - The Gated Republic: India's Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions - talks about areas like healthcare, education, security, power and water. These are basic utilities the provision of which over the years has lagged the demand, despite their essential nature. Due to the failures of government and administrative machinery, private players have intervened to fill gaps, often hurting the marginal sections of the society on pricing.    Shankkar talks about his view on how effective public – private partnerships could have evolved in these areas with government oversight but haven’t. He also describes the meticulous research he has put in to write the book in a few months.   Before The Gated Republic, he wrote Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12-Digit Revolution. Shankkar talks about how this book was received personally by Late President Shri Pranab Mukherjee, ex-Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh and the incumbent Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.    We also cover the content of his very first book Accidental India, where he wrote about governments using moments of crisis for fundamental reforms long before the concept was widely talked about in Delhi. He makes a few suggestions for the government to reimagine governance using technology coming out of the current pandemic.   This discussion is conducted by Aashish Chandorkar, who is a public policy analyst and author based in Pune. Aashish has known Shankkar for about a decade now and Shankkar had bounced some ideas related to The Gated Republic with Aashish while he was writing the book.