Extirpator

Neither do I agree, or disagree, with all that is there in this thread. But I feel this have gems of points on #Religion, #Culture, #Belief, #Society - something which I possibly used to think in parts at best.

Indian oligarchs, as Raghuram Rajan said back in 2010, make their wealth via state discretion from real estate, natural resources & exclusive licenses. Real 'strategic threat' is this oligarch class which refuses to invest in industrial tech, which is imported wholesale frm China

@nongratadesi @shyampsunder I think many of the international funds are shut for fresh investments as RBI has not yet increased the limit on what funds in India can invest abroad for multiple years now.

@shyampsunder Every new investment needs a fresh A2. If you don't file it, it means that your setup has automated it. My counter-argument: When you can use an international Fund of Funds and get the same benefit for 50 bps in management fee and 0 additional paperwork, is it worth using LRS?

Compliance nightmare. 1. Every single time you make an investment, you file an A2 and an LRS declaration (every single tranche of a SIP) 2. 20% TCS i.e. money held ransom by the govt 3. Every year- Fill ITR Schedule FA with painful reporting and claiming credit via Form 67

China has maintained massive crude inventories despite Middle East supply disruptions: Chinese crude inventories have fallen by less than 1 million barrels since the Iran War began on February 28th. As a result, total Chinese crude oil inventories still stand at ~1.8 billion barrels, including strategic reserves. Since March 2025, inventories have risen +400 million barrels, or +29%. This comes as cheap Iranian and Russian crude continues to flow into China, while the country also introduced measures to suspend fuel exports to keep domestic supplies stable. Chinese purchases of Iranian crude are set to rise to a record ~1.9 million barrels per day this month. China has the world’s largest oil buffer and is using it carefully.

Drinking beverages above 65°C is a Group 2A carcinogen. The mechanism is thermal injury to the esophageal lining, repeated over years, driving chronic inflammation and cell turnover. Islami 2019 prospectively followed 50,045 adults in Iran for 10 years and measured tea drinking temperature objectively. People who drank tea at 60°C or higher had 41% higher risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. People who preferred "very hot" tea had 141% higher risk. People who drank within 2 minutes of pouring had 51% higher risk than people who waited 6+ minutes. A separate cohort in Kenya (Middleton 2019) found 3.7 times the risk for "very hot" drinkers vs warm. Tea cools below 65°C in roughly 4 to 5 minutes in a standard mug. The threshold is the temperature, not the drink. Islami, Int J Cancer 2019: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30891750/ Middleton, Int J Cancer 2019: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30496610/

Average conflict-site economy losses are larger, and more persistent, than those from banking crisis, currency crisis etc! - IMF

@IamRajat_Pandit actually "we continue to trade"

The heat is on, and it will only get worse. It’s criminal how we’ve traded our forests, environment and future for corruption and crony capitalism in the name of development!

@Ahlurahul @fedev_india @APanagariya @srajagopalan @ajay_shah Violence, on either side, is a challenge. & in that respect my question stays whether govt has actually moving towards any setup where violence or rather coercion which deters agency & rights on either side is severely deterred?

@_Extirpator @fedev_india @APanagariya @srajagopalan @ajay_shah The 'institutional setup' required to prevent exploitation is simply one where you cannot use violence to dictate the terms of agreement. Whether that's employers forcibly preventing workers from leaving or threatening the competition, or workers doing the same thing via force.

New report @fedev_india! 'Minimum wages hurt the most vulnerable workers'. The craziest fact? 47% of India's workers cannot be legally hired even if you give them a 30% raise. Lots more important messages and data points in this thread. 1/n @APanagariya @srajagopalan @ajay_shah

@Ahlurahul @fedev_india @APanagariya @srajagopalan @ajay_shah +can be discontinued? I am not sidestepping the political aspect, and talking specifically about the rest of the institutional setup required to ensure workers are not exploited in an environment where the employers are not bound by any min wages floor.

@Ahlurahul @fedev_india @APanagariya @srajagopalan @ajay_shah Thanks for sharing this detailed analysis. Points clearly to how unrealistically high min wages are negatively impacting formal employment. It may also be impacting mfg growth? More importantly though, do u think govt anywhere is actually moving in a direction where min wage+

No wonder Qatar LNG is gong to have 12.8 mtpa (1.7 bcf/d) out for 3 to 5 years. It's "main refrigerant compressor train" was hit. Baker Hughes Q1 release "Received a major LNG equipment award for the main refrigerant compressor train and power generation packages across two LNG "mega trains" from QatarEnergy LNG for the North Field West project. The award includes six Frame 9 gas turbines and 12 centrifugal compressors, as well as integrated power solutions utilizing three Frame 6 gas turbines and three BRUSH™ Power Generation generators." #oott

How India is Outplaying Sanctions Imposers India isn’t retreating from Iran’s Chabahar Port; it is blunting U.S. sanctions threat without losing ground. Faced with the looming April 26, 2026, deadline after the increasingly unpredictable Trump administration revoked India's 2018 Chabahar-specific sanctions waiver, New Delhi is executing a calculated “decoupling” strategy: formally stepping back from ownership while quietly retaining management control. India will transfer its stake in the Chabahar operating entity to a local Iranian partner or restructured vehicle, creating distance between itself and potential U.S. penalties. This is not an exit but a redesign. Through separate management and operations contracts, Indian personnel will continue running the port’s day-to-day functions as technical operators rather than owners. A built-in reversion clause ensures that India can reclaim formal stakes if U.S. sanctions ease. Financially, India has already insulated itself. By front-loading roughly $120 million by January 2026, it ensured that key infrastructure (cranes and other equipment) was fully paid for. These physical assets will effectively be “leased” back to the port’s operations, keeping them under Indian control in all but name. The port is of crucial importance for India. Chabahar is India’s only viable route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan. It is also the “jewel” of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). Walking away would hand China a strategic opening, reinforcing its foothold at Pakistan’s Chinese-built Gwadar Port. So India is threading the needle: shifting from landlord to manager, from owner to operator. The result is a quiet but sophisticated counter to sanctions pressure that maintains strategic access to Chabahar while keeping broader Indian economic interests out of harm’s way.

@maadhyam_engage Also your theoretical point on "political party" would have risen if those defecting had claimed party symbol. In which case even LS strength would have been relevant (looking at the Shiv Sena SC case). Don't think that claim was made here.

@maadhyam_engage You are aptly questioning the enforcement aspect of it (chairman/speaker sitting on petition when they want to). But a mass exodus kind of indicates (at least on a meaningful base) that there is large scale misalignment within the party? That aspect seems fair, no?

No law has failed as spectacularly & completely as the so called Anti-Defection Law! A law made to curb the menace of 'defections', has never prevented defections from happening. And most people avoid disqualifications by using one of the many loopholes in the law. The 2/3rd rule being cited by Raghav Chadha here is Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule which essentially says this - if you defect as an individual, you will be in trouble, defect as a group instead and all will be cool! This paragraph is nothing but an incentive for mass defections. If Chadha, Maliwal or any of them would have defected alone, even then they could have avoided disqualification as the Chairman of #RajyaSabha would just simply sit on their disqualification petition. That is how many defectors have managed to complete their terms without facing disqualification. The only twist that remains to be seen is of word play. Paragraph 4 says that it has to be the 'political party' which merges with another 'political party'. It doesn't say merger of one 'legislature party' with another. While it says that 2/3rd members of 'legislature party' have to agree with the merger, the merger still has to be of 'political party'. 7/10 MPs of AAP in #RajyaSabha agreeing with merger satisfies one requirement, but does it mean merger of 'political party' as well? These might be academic discussions only, but the fact remains that at present politicians can jump from one party to another with little to no consequences! Are we okay with that?

@keet_nashaq @maadhyam_engage Interested aspect on whip. 1. How would you ensure that representatives actually vote according to the voters? Voters wouldn't be able to give a feedback b4 next election cycle 2. Party whip also kind of shields representatives when agencies are misused by the administrators. No?

@maadhyam_engage Yes , first of all this anti difection law itself is bullshit . Voter choose individual as their representative not the party , this law need to be scrapped. MPs and MLAs are under tyranny of whip and cannot vote against a bill which is opposed by their voters.

To save 1 litre of imported crude, India is spending 2,860 litres of groundwater. That's the single statistic missing from the entire E85 debate. E20 is done. The government's draft notification for E85 (85% ethanol, 15% petrol) is ready. Most reactions are either "great, energy independence" or "my mileage dropped." Both are shallow. Here is the actual trade India is making. The economic logic is real: India imports 85%+ of its crude. The FY25 import bill was ~$137 billion. Ethanol blending has already saved ₹1.08 lakh crore in forex and put ~₹92,000 crore in farmers' hands since inception. Every 1% of blending = ~$1 billion in annual savings. But ethanol is not a free lunch: 🔹 Ethanol has 33% less energy per litre than petrol. 🔹 US DoE data: FFVs on E85 get 15 to 27% fewer miles per gallon than on petrol. 🔹 The offset is octane. E85 rates ~105 vs petrol's 91. In purpose-built engines (turbo, high-compression, direct injection), higher octane recovers most of the energy loss. The catch. India's fleet is 90% E10-ready at best. You cannot pour E85 into a Swift. Flex-fuel vehicles need stainless fuel lines, upgraded pumps, 30% larger injectors, ethanol content sensors, and recalibrated engine maps. The hidden cost nobody is pricing: 🔸 E20 at today's consumption needs ~1,016 crore litres of ethanol annually. 🔸 At 2,860 litres of water per litre of ethanol, that is ~2.9 trillion litres of water per year. The annual water footprint of 200+ million Indians. 🔸 E85 scales this 4x+. 🔸 60% of India's ethanol now comes from maize and broken rice. India, a net corn exporter, imported 1 million tonnes of corn in 2024 because of ethanol diversion. 🔸 Retail sugar moved from ₹40 to ₹45/kg in two years partly due to cane diversion. The reframe most people miss: The ethanol programme is not an energy policy. It is an agricultural subsidy dressed as an energy policy. The forex savings are real. The farmer income transfer is real. Both are the actual goals. The mileage drop is a tolerated cost. The water and food inflation risk is the hidden tax. E85 will happen anyway. The listed winners sit in three buckets: 🔸 Sugar and distillery players with integrated ethanol capacity 🔸 Auto ancillaries making ethanol-compatible injectors, pumps, fuel lines, sensors 🔸 OEMs going flex-fuel first (Toyota, Maruti and Hyundai are already prototyping) Energy independence is not free. India is trading barrels of oil for billions of litres of water and millions of tonnes of grain. Whether it's worth it depends on which constraint matters more in 2040 — your oil bill, or your aquifer.

@AamAadmiWale @whattalawyer You are right. OP was talking about common court of practice of both lawyer and the judge. I have deleted my post.

@_Extirpator @whattalawyer You haven't got her point.

Justice Sharma ought to have sought a transfer when her children started practicing in Delhi courts, as many judges do.

🎯

@RahulDev718370 @letsblinkit @RockWithboAt Did the OTP that was sent across asked you to provide the same to the delivery agent "after inspecting the package"? If so, you mostly erred and would need to depend on @letsblinkit 's goodwill and efforts. If not, @letsblinkit can't shed its responsibility.

A shocking @letsblinkit experience. I have had a very poor experience with a @letsblinkit delivery today. I had ordered a @RockWithboAt AIRDOPES 301 this morning for delivery at National Media Centre, Gurugram. The package containing two mugs and earphones was delivered by Akram after my daughter gave him the OTP. He handed over the package and left. On opening the two boxes while the mugs were intact the AIRDOPES 301 box turned out to be empty. I called the delivery guy though the @letsblinkit app. Two full rings went unanswered. I lodged the complaint through their automated response system. Sent pictures and a video. An executive Fariha came online on the app chat. I explained everything, shared pics and video. After a long to & fro on the chat she informed me that their investigation had told them that since the delivery was made after giving the delivery person Akram the OTP received and the package had been received by us their responsibility was over. They could not do anything. I explained that my daughter had just received the package from him and we opened it inside the house after he had left promptly. She said that receiving the package after giving OTP meant the package had been opened in the presence of the delivery person and found satisfactory. This we have never done nor were we aware of it. And like most of people like us we have ordered hundreds of things from @letsblinkit. This particular delivery itself was the third Blinkit order this morning. Nothing like this has ever happened with us though we all have heard and read about such things happening The long chat with a very polite and officious Fariha was a waste. She kept saying they had ‘investigated’ the issue and didn’t find any fault with their delivery person or the system. Therefore, she could do nothing. I attach the pictures and parts of the chat. There’s a lesson for everyone here, including us. Never receive a delivery from any company without opening it in the presence of the delivery person. The normal practice of just taking the package and opening it inside the house after the delivery person has left could result in a loss. I am hoping @letsblinkit will respond to my complaint on this platform. We like their service. Mistakes happen even in good systems and organisations. I don’t want this company to get a bad name. Provided they own up and make amends.

@internetfreedom @ActivistSandeep Should a larger part of such cases not be to seek deterrence against such orders where rule of law has not been followed while taking such actions?

The Delhi High Court has ordered the restoration of X account @ActivistSandeep. While certain posts will remain temporarily blocked, this marks an important step for due process and freedom of speech online. (1/7) Read More: internetfreedom.in/delhi-high-cou…

Ain't it easy to understand - How would polling agent be able to take voters on a bike from one state to another state? You can only travel via trains, cars etc from other states to vote in Bengal Elections! /s