Raghav's Take

The American dollar is at a fatal crossroad. Will it die or will it have an angelic revival? Raghav Bahl answers. For decades, the US dollar ruled global trade like an untouchable monarch—everyone needed it, but only America could print it. But has this so-called privilege become America’s biggest liability? From Alan Greenspan to Donald Trump, from globalisation highs to inflation woes. In this v...

Raghav's Take: Donald Trump loves to talk about taking a tough stance on China. From tariffs to trade wars, the US has tried to mirror Beijing’s economic playbook. But here’s the catch: America might copy China’s policies, but it can’t copy its people. Why? Because China’s system relies on a massive, low-paid, and compliant workforce that the US simply doesn’t have. In this video, we break down wh...

In the 1970s, Richard Nixon paved the way for China’s economic rise by making a strategic alliance with the country. Fast forward to 2025, and now Donald Trump is unknowingly helping China reclaim its global dominance once more. In this episode of Raghav's take, we explore how Trump’s isolationist policies, high tariffs, and withdrawal from global alliances are inadvertently enabling China to fill...

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the November elections in a uniquely spectacular manner. The fact that it was a COVID-induced ‘virtual event’ was perhaps the least of it. But the parade of Republican heavyweights at a Democratic convention was unprecedented, from Colin Powell, John Kasich to Cindy McCain. I shudder to think what legal convolutions...

India taxes ESOPs, ie employees stock options, harshly, very harshly. Let me give you a quick history lesson. When I founded TV18 in the early 90s, we had given generous stock options to our critical team members. In that sense, we belonged to a clutch of ESOP pioneers in India. And since we were leaders in business news, we also drilled hard into issues around entrepreneurship, taxation and union...

It’s a familiar cacophony. Cut taxes. Invert the inverted duty structure. Control the fiscal deficit. Be honest about your arithmetic. Abolish equity taxes. Step up government expenditure, the fisc be damned. Bring back investment allowance. Slap inheritance taxes... And on it goes, a laundry list of standard policy tactics which could revive India’s economy. Frankly, the time for budget quick-fix...

For over five years, I’ve criticised ‘state creep’ on Prime Minister Modi’s watch. This tendency hit a crescendo on 5 July 2019, when the second Modi regime’s first budget was read out in parliament. While that document was riddled with state over-reach, I will remind you only of the most egregious measure: a voluntary contribution under CSR (corporate social responsibility) was converted into a c...

The Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress coalition in Maharashtra is perhaps the second most ‘unthinkable’ political alliance in India, next only to the most incompatible BJP-PDP coalition in Jammu & Kashmir, that ended with devastating consequences. So, what are the lessons from this most unusual, 80-hour-long Maharashtra political fiasco? Tune in to Raghav's Take! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

India’s economy today can be described by a four-letter word. Oh c’mon, it’s not what you are thinking… Even the sarkari (government-owned) State Bank of India says that GDP growth could fall to around four percent when the July-September number is revealed, that’s what! And as usually happens in an acute crisis, everybody and her aunt is offering solutions. Fix this, increase that, cut here… If a...

Coal output crashes by over 20 percent. Overall, eight core sectors lose a stunning 5.2 percent year-on-year over September 2018, contracting to an 8-year low. GDP hits a 6-year low. And yet, India’s stock markets hit an all-time high! Why, you ask? To understand this conundrum, let’s dial back a few months, to May 2019. Everybody thought that a struggling economy would dent Prime Minister Modi’s...

I know that adjectives like “milestone”, “game changer” and “watershed” are frequently used after polls that throw up contrarian, unexpected results. But even adjusting for this caveat, I would call the October 2019 mini national elections a “juggernaut stopper”. Tune in to this podcast for my six takeaways from the recent state elections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...

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...

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 gov...

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 whil...

Raghav Bahl pays tribute to former finance minister Arun Jaitley, recalling his meetings with his exceptional Xaverian schoolmate, who always greeted with a smile. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 treat...

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 o...

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. Whil...

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 Swi...

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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” propa...

I am still reeling from Prime Minister Modi’s iconic, monumental (no, HE is not going to be happy with only two bombastic adjectives, so here goes a third), and “path-breaking” interview to Twinkle’s hubby. While everybody is scratching their heads over the “big why”, I think I’ve got it figured out. It was a clever (synonymously also desperate) ploy to wrest the initiative back from the hotheads...

Why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi castigating Rahul Gandhi for “running away from majority-dominated areas” to “take refuge in areas where the majority is in minority” (read Wayanad in Kerala)? The naked implication was that Gandhi had somehow demeaned himself, committed blasphemy, by espousing the cause of minorities. In this podcast the Quint’s Editor-in-Chief talks about how this one angry sp...

The prequel to this podcast analyses the four economic reforms that this writer is willing to acknowledge under Modi 1.0; towards the end, the article lists three other data points – on FDI, bond and equity issuances – that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been spinning at business summits to fortify his “economic dynamism.” In this sequel, The Quint’s Editor-in-Chief Raghav Bahl highlights Modi’s...

Congress President Rahul Gandhi's NYAY (Nyuntam Aay Yojana, or Minimum Income Plan), which involves giving Rs 72,000 each to five crore poor families, is a big political idea for the 2019 polls that sent BJP political heavyweights into a panic mode. Is the NYAY scheme actually feasible? The Quint's Editor-in-Chief Raghav Bahl explains how it can be done. Tune in! Learn more about your ad choices....