The Big Story

By The QuintSociety & Culture News

The Big Story episodes

February 04, 2022 With a Decline in Daily Users, Is Facebook Having Its 'MySpace' Moment?
Since its inception in 2004, Facebook's vision of growing its user base has been going steady, despite all the scandals, backlash, US Senate hearings, and regulatory pressure.

But on 3 February, Meta – what the company is now known as – reported a half a million decline globally in its daily user base, a first in the social media giant's 18-year history.

You may think that a half a million drop is negligible when compared to Meta's existing user base, but it nevertheless wreaked havoc in the stock market, with investors fleeing after taking a peek at Meta's quarterly earnings report.

The dip in users, combined with the earnings report, plunged Meta's stock by nearly 26 percent, instantly shaving $250 billion dollars off its market value and $29 billion off Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.

And if you can't compute this fall, imagine the fall of two IBMs, two General Electrics, or McDonald's! This was the single largest one-day dollar drop for a US company in history!

Meta listed out several reasons for the drop - from Apple's new privacy rules to the increase in competition from TikTok. But the fundamental questions that I will try to address in today's episode are: Is Facebook having its 'MySpace' moment? Has it reached its peak? What led to this fall?

To help me unpack this, I speak to Udbhav Tiwari, a policy advisor at Mozilla. Tune in!

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Shorbori Purkayastha, Nitish Rampal

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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16 min
February 03, 2022 Explaining the 'Mega' in Indian Premier League 2022 Auctions
An auction is what kicks off the IPL season each year, and 2022 is no different with the mega IPL auction slated to take place on 12th and 13th of February.

Yes, so you may ask, if the auction happens each year, what’s so ‘mega’ about this one? Well, for starters, upto 217 players can be bought in this auction from the list of 590 that has been shortlisted by the BCCI. Each of the 10 teams need between 21 to 23 players to complete their rosters even though they have already spent a lot of their Rs 90 crore budget on retaining some old players.

Rohit, Virat and Dhoni will continue to play for their old franchises but KL Rahul made it big by switching teams and is now, after Kohli, the highest-earning IPL player with his Rs 17 crore a season pay cheque from Rising Lucknow Supergiant.

Does that sound mega enough?

But that's not all. There’s still players like David Warner, Shreyas Iyer, R Ashwin, Pat Cummins who are set to go under the hammer from the list of 590 of which 370 are Indian and 220 are international players.

Now is THAT big enough?

In today's podcast, I'll try to take you through how this IPL auction will work, with 10 teams in the fray. How competitive can it get and the big question—who the most valuable players going under the hammer are this year?

For this, I spoke to Amrit Mathur, a sports commentator and former COO of the Delhi Daredevils.

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Mendra Dorjey

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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15 min
February 02, 2022 Decoding the Crypto Tax — What Does it Mean for Investors?
While experts are still weighing in on the hits and misses of Budget 2022 that was presented on 1 February, for a lot of India's millennials it's the government's plans for cryptocurrencies that they have waiting for.

India's crypto market, as we know, has been swarming with a lot of young investors and the market seems to be growing. But a few months back, news of the government planning to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in a new bill had left many worried about their investments on digital currencies for the last few months.

However, with a new crypto tax regime the recent budget does offer some clarity on what government intends to do with cryptocurrencies.

While taxing digital currencies doesn't necessarily mean that government has legalised crypto, what is it that the government is indicating? Does it mean that it's warming upto cryptocurrencies? Does it mean that the ban is off the table? And the biggest question of all — what do these new announcements mean for investors?

Explaining the fine print of it all in this episode will be CoinCrunch CEO Naimish Sanghvi. We'll also hear snippets of lawyers Badri Narayanan and Vivek Gupta's conversation with the BloombergQuint where they talk about the gray areas of these announcements.

Host and Producer: Shorbori Purkayastha
Editor: Shelly Walia

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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18 min
February 01, 2022 Budget 2022: Breaking Down the Numbers With Economist Rathin Roy
With a four-point focus – inclusive development, productivity enhancement, energy transition, and climate action – Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Union Budget on 1 February, stating that it was a blueprint for India at 75 to India at 100.

What made the headlines was the hiking of the capital expenditure by 35.4 percent, which now stands at Rs 7.5 lakh crore, making up nearly 3 percent of the GDP.

This budget also came with a major push for digitisation, with an announcement of a new digital currency to be issued by the RBI. This new coin will be backed by blockchain technology. However, the introduction of the new digital coin also brought in new tax rates for virtual digital assets transfers.

But what does this budget mean for the common man? What are its big hits and misses?

Guest:
Rathin Roy, Economist

Host: Nishtha Gautam
Producer: Himmat Shaligram

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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16 min
January 31, 2022 Pegasus Spyware: How Damning Are The Revelations of the NYT Report?
The Pegasus spyware is under the spotlight again with an investigative report by the NYT published on Friday, 28 January which claims that the Indian government purchased the controversial cyberweapon, as the NYT puts it, in 2017 as part of a larger arms deal with Israel.

The NYT report states that the two countries agreed on the sale of the spyware in part of a weapons and intelligence deal worth roughly $2 billion in July 2017 when PM Modi visited Israel. It also notes that since this visit, India’s stance on some of its policies like commitment to the Palestinian cause changed, citing India’s vote in support of Israel at the UN Economic and Social Council to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organization.

And this development is big because till now, neither the Indian government nor the Israeli government have openly confirmed or denied the sale of the software to India -something which the Israeli Defence Ministy would have had to give a licence for even though it was made by a private entity.

The Centre has to date also refused to take a clear stand in court or the Parliament on whether it has acquired or used the spyware.

The revelations in the NYT are of particular interest after the reports by a consortium of media organisations around the world in July 2021, the Pegasus Project reported its use. These reports were based on a list of potential targets of the spyware, some of which were confirmed by forensic analysis. In India, the list of potential targets included prominent politicians, an Election Commissioner, 40 Indian journalists and several private citizens. Independent forensic analysis has been able to confirm the presence of the spyware on the phones of several of these targets.

The Opposition has lashed out against the Centre, with senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was reportedly one of the targets of the spyware, saying that the government has committed an act of treason.

So how damaging are the revelations of this report? How will it fare in court? And how will this change the probe into the use of the spyware?

Guests: Vakasha Sachdev

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Vakasha Sachdev

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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25 min
January 28, 2022 Ukraine-Russia Conflict: In this Game of Chicken, Who Will Yield First?
The Russia-Ukraine crisis can be explained as a modified version of the conflict game "chicken”, where two players force each other to yield to avoid the worst possible outcome.

And the reason I call this crisis a modified version of “chicken” is because one player- Russia-has suddenly planted over 100,000 troops along the Ukraine border, escalating tensions to unprecedented levels. And the other player, the US and NATO, has been presented with a list of security demands by Russia which include banning Ukraine and other former Soviet states from joining the military alliance. And the worst possible outcome in this case may be war.

The US and other NATO allies have so far made no concessions to the demands, terming it as a non-starter since they go against NATO’s core principles of an open-door membership policy. US President Joe Biden has gone to the extent of warning that “Russia will pay a heavy price” if it chooses to invade Ukraine.

Russia has stated that it does not want war and will not invade Ukraine but the presence of troops and tanks at the border has stoked fears in the West that the Kremlin is ready to start a new war if needed. The present crisis also puts India, a close long-term ally and trade partner of both US and Russia, in a bind if the crisis does translate into a war scenario. The big questing here being- will India remain neutral or choose a side?

But the first issue to understand is why is Russian fielding soldiers at the Ukraine border? What is President Vladimir Putin’s gameplay, and what does this crisis mean for India?

Guest:
Professor Harsh V Pant, Director, Studies and Head of the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation, a global policy think tank.

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Shorbori Purkayastha

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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19 min
January 27, 2022 Why Are Railway Job Aspirants in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh Protesting?
1.25 crore. That’s the number of applications received for little over 35,000 vacancies in the highly competitive Railway Recruitment Board’s Non-Technical Popular Category (NTPC) recruitment exam.

However, a recent notification by the RRB of conducting a second qualifying exam to confirm the selection of candidates led to thousands of aspirants taking the street across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for three consecutive days, blocking the movement of around 25 trains. The protest also turned violent on 26 January, with railways tracks set ablaze in UP’s Prayagraj and a train coach set on fire in Bihar’s Gaya.

Aspirants state that this second stage for final selection amounted to “cheating” those who appeared for the first stage of the exam, results for which were released on 14 January. They say that the 2019 notification only mentioned one exam and accused the recruitment board of “playing with the future of students”.

So are the claims of these students correct? What is the controversy exactly, and what action has the railway ministry taken so far? Tune in!

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Shorbori Purkayastha

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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9 min
January 25, 2022 Why is the Indian Stock Market Crashing And What Should Investors Do?
In this episode, we break down the sharp fall that the Indian equity benchmarks-Sensex and Nifty-saw on 24 January, logging in their worst decline in two months.

Sensex crashed over 2,000 points to 56,984 while Nifty 50 plunged over 500 points to 16,998. This is the sixth continuous day of this downward spiral, wiping more than Rs 17.54 trillion of investors' wealth.

And some of the biggest losers in the dip are actually the new stock listings like Paytm, Nykaa and Zomato. Zomato plunged 20 percent, while Nykaa lost 13 percent. And stocks of Paytm have already plunged more than 50 percent since its IPO.

So what is causing this crash? And what should you as a retail investor do?

Joining me today is

Guest:
Niraj Shah, Markets Editor at Bloomberg Quint.

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Shorbori Purkayastha

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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11 min
January 24, 2022 Why Are The Proposed Amendments to IAS Cadre Rules Drawing Criticisms?
States and the centre are headed for a clash over the Union government's proposed amendments to the IAS cadre rules that would give them a greater control in the central deputation of IAS officers without requiring any consent from the states.

The proposal to amend Rule 6 (deputation of cadre officers) of the Indian Administrative Service (Cadre) Rules 1954, was sent to the states recently on 12 January, by the Department of Personnel and Training or DoPT which is the controlling authority of IAS officers.

Expectedly, the new proposals have riled up the opposition ruled states like West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, etc who have labelled these new rules to be "draconian" and against the principle of federalism.

As per reports, at least six state governments have already written to the DoPT opposing any such move, which also includes the states governed by the BJP and NDA allies.

But what do these proposed alterations to Rule 6 entail exactly? What could these changes lead to? And why are the proposed amendments drawing flak?

Host and Producer: Shorbori Purkayastha
Guests:
Arvind Mayaram, IAS officer from the 1978 batch of the Rajasthan cadre who's also been the former Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of the Government of India
Jawhar Sircar, Retired IAS officer and former CEO of Prasar Bharti who is currently a Rajya Sabha MP from the TMC
Editor: Shelly Walia

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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22 min
January 21, 2022 Podcast | Understanding the Debate Over Marital Rape
“Can India turn a blind eye towards marital rape?”

This question is being argued in the Delhi High Court, where a two-judge bench of Justices Rajiv Shakder and C Hari Shankar are hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the exception to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code that deals with rape.

Now, while this section has undergone a series of amendments over the years where it emphasises on the importance of consent, this pre-colonial exception of marital rape has continued to tag along into the 21st century.

Essentially, this exception allows marital right to a husband who can, with legal sanction, exercise his right to consensual or non-consensual sex with his wife.

This provision has been struck down in others countries like the UK, Canada and Australia. But the big question—Why does India continue to have this exception?

In today’s episode, we will discuss how this exception came about, the arguments being heard in Delhi High Court, and will striking down this exception amount to creating a new offence?

Guests: Vakasha Sachdev

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram
Editor: Vakasha Sachdev

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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28 min