Raghav's Take

By The QuintNews

Raghav's Take episodes

October 27, 2019 PMC Scam: Shameful to Promise Just Rs 1 Lakh Insurance to Victims
The PMC Bank scam was more audacious than any Bonnie and Clyde heist. A high-living father-son duo, Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan, had 44 bank accounts in a loosely regulated outfit in Mumbai called Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank.

They used these accounts to suck out nearly Rs 6500 crore, a mind-boggling 73% of the total loan book of the ill-fated bank.

This robbery took place right under the noses of RBI and the auditors. How?

The 44 Wadhawan accounts were “masked” by 21,000 – yes, get this, twenty-one thousand – fictitious accounts, many in the names of dead depositors. Allegedly, the bank allowed overdraft draw downs, with the cash travelling via hawala (laundering) channels to Dubai.

The tainted money was “washed back” clean into PMC accounts as deposits.

While loans were given to the Wadhawans in the hidden-but-real ledgers, the fake loan accounts of 21,000 depositors were sent in the Advanced Master Indent to RBI. That’s “masking”, got it?

Now listen to the podcast for the rest of the story!

Host: Raghav Bahl

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8 min
September 22, 2019 Dear FM, Here Are 3 Tax Cuts the Common People Would Welcome More
Finally. Finally! The Modi government has acknowledged the futility of trying to pump prime India’s GDP by ever-escalating government expenditure, which increased by an astonishing double-digit CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) over six years of impotent growth. Remember, Indian governments drive only 10 percent of our economy – worse, they do so inefficiently and bluntly.

Finally, the Modi government has acknowledged that the budget presented on 5 July 2019 was a failed, vapid policy document.

Finally, it has realised that India’s private enterprise is the most potent engine of economic growth, accounting for over 90 percent of GDP.

And finally, after six excruciating years, it has shed its “I am the government and I can fix everything” stance and adopted the mantra of “I will free your animal spirits by empowering, trusting and enriching you.”

Finally!

The fiscal giveaway is an awe-inspiring 0.6 percent+ of GDP. Absolutely, it’s a generous Rs 1.45 lakh crore of additional cash created on corporate balance sheets. Optically, it’s a humongous 10 percentage points’ hack of the corporate tax rate by one swing of the axe (reminiscent of P Chidambaram’s audacious move in the “dream budget” of 1997/98 – ouch!).

Yes, I am delighted. But no, I am not ecstatic. Why? Listen to the podcast for the reasons.

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8 min
September 12, 2019 India’s Best Post-Brexit Bet is the “Zombie” Commonwealth!
As tensions mount in sadda, aapro, aamchi (ie, “our” in what the Brits would have once called “three dialects of the natives”) London, how should India respond to this flurry of will-or-won’t-Britain-do-a-Brexit?

As a nation, our feelings toward our former colonisers are complicated at best. For better and worse, the British profoundly shaped modern India, breeding insecurity and sectarianism while imparting some of their most enlightened institutions: Parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary, rule of law, the English language (and accent), the university system, a robust free press, the civil bureaucracy and military architecture. Because of the British, we play cricket, drink tea and drive on the left side of the road.

Despite Delhi’s efforts to change colonial place names, we still visit McCluskiegunj in Jharkhand, for example, which was once home to a large Anglo-Indian community, and fly into Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun. We couldn’t erase the impact of British colonialism even if we wanted to!

Listen to the podcast for the rest of the story!

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7 min
August 24, 2019 RIP Dear Arun Jaitley Ji, My Tribute to an Exceptional Schoolmate
Raghav Bahl pays tribute to former finance minister Arun Jaitley, recalling his meetings with his exceptional Xaverian schoolmate, who always greeted with a smile.

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12 min
August 24, 2019 A Navratri (Nine-Point) Economic Re-Boot for a ‘Puritan’ Modi
In Prime Minister Modi’s unexpected, stirring commendation of “wealth creators” – most tellingly, by using popular English terminology, instead of conjuring up a Hindi equivalent like poonji utpadak (as he is wont to do) – he was signaling a reach-out to new-gen entrepreneurs and elite business-people who have gotten estranged from him.

And by obliquely acknowledging that his regime may have treated them with contempt/suspicion – mark his cutting words in Hindi, heen bhavna – he was being as contrite as Modi can ever be on a public platform.

After finishing an energetic 94-minute speech from the Ramparts of the Red Fort, Modi is understood to have driven straight into a brainstorming session with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her band of policy-men on how to fix the economy.

Read the rest of the story here.

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8 min
August 18, 2019 What I Wish PM Modi Had Said But Didn’t In Independence Day Speech
Main jaanta hoon ki aaj desh ek aarthik mandhi main hai; lekin main 130 crore desh vaasiyon ko yeh vishwaas deta hoon ki hum jald hi isko aarthik josh main badal dengey! (I know that we are currently in the grip of an economic slowdown; but I want to assure my 130 cr fellow Indians that we shall soon convert this gloom into economic optimism!)

I was yearning to hear these words from the Ramparts of the Red Fort. I wanted Prime Minister Modi to use his legendary oratory and hope-generating skills to assuage the economy. But alas, he did not even acknowledge that there is a severe slowdown of demand and investment. Instead his prescription was more of the same same, with an additional/unusual invocation to domestic tourists! After hearing today’s speech, I had almost resigned myself to an unchanged Modi-nomics 2.0 until my eyes fell on this quote (from The Economic Times, 12 August 2019). Tune in!

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8 min
August 16, 2019 The Diary of An Unfortunate Indian Entrepreneur
As always, the strapping 40-year-old swept into his corner room in a Gift City high-rise with the practised, breezy “I love Monday morning” air from his early Manhattan days. He was a celebrated first-generation entrepreneur, but in India he never took his Silicon Valley title of Founder-CEO; instead, he was simply PuFf, a dandy acronym for Pradhan (Chief) Foreman of a billion-dollar unicorn. While in Ahmedabad, do as Gujaratis do!

Both his executive assistants (EAs) walked in, one carrying a steaming cup of coffee, the other a box of chocolate cake.

What happens next? Tune in to Raghav's Take!

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6 min
August 10, 2019 Measuring Modi-Shah’s Kashmir Gamble on Mandate, Method & Morality
11:15 am, 5 August 2019. I stood stunned and immersed in a time-lapse video as Home Minister Amit Shah read out the Resolution abolishing Article 370 and the state of Jammu & Kashmir in Rajya Sabha. If you were a liberal, you castigated, by rote – “the Kashmir Valley will now become India’s Gaza”. If a conservative, you celebrated, almost crudely – “we will make the Kashmir Valley into another Switzerland”.

But I stayed quiet – consumed by a deep, viscous silence – as I tried to understand this political whiplash.

I did not want to give a quick, adolescent reaction. I wanted to assess the government’s invoking of Article 370 to kill Article 370 on the three touchstones of Mandate, Method and Morality.

Listen to the podcast for the full story.

Read the story here.

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6 min
August 02, 2019 India Should Muster the Nerve to Go Ahead & Launch Sovereign Bonds
India’s forex reserves are nearly $430 bn and growing. If we can’t muster the stomach to raise $10 billion in the overseas market, let’s just quit. Raghav Bahl backs Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s proposal on sovereign bonds.

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7 min
May 10, 2019 Maulana Azad, the ‘Default’ Political Visionary of Elections 2019
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad made a default entry in India’s savagely polarised polls of 2019. Because the irrepressible Shatrughan Sinha made an awful faux pas at an election rally, where he included Jinnah, along with Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Indira and Rajiv, as “respected members of the Congress family who built our nation”.
This gave the BJP very potent grist for its “Congress is pro-Pakistan” propaganda – after all, if the founder of Pakistan was a cherished Congressman, then their allegation was irrefutable, right? Sinha had to beat a hasty retreat, saying it was a “slip of my tongue”. He had mistakenly said Jinnah, when he meant Maulana Azad.
But it’s almost impossible to confuse Jinnah with Azad, for they were diametrically opposite politicians. Frankly, I’ve often wondered why Maulana Azad figures so little in contemporary political discourse, while his peers like Nehru, Patel and Bose dominate.
Listen to the podcast for the full story!

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6 min