Saikat Lahiri

@krishashok @baxiabhishek And, apropos of nothing, Iodex becomes root beer when dissolved in sugar + soda.

@baxiabhishek We do have zandu balm, which when dissolved in sugar + soda becomes Dr Pepper

In a country where jeera drinks and masala sodas are so popular, I can't believe we still don't have Dr. Pepper.

@Vtxt21 Who would ever need more than 3 cars or at most 5 (1 principal, 2 ends, 2 flanks) in case of a very high value/risk target. And why special right of way for anyone ? Unless we stop this VIP nonsense, we will never get anywhere as a country.

Yesterday Suvendu Adhikari came to Delhi from Kolkata on a Private Jet People criticised him mentioning Modi's call to save fuel So today, they have recorded a scripted video along with ANI in which he came to meet President Murmu in only 3 car convoy 🤡

@poeticlieshensh Oh I understood alright. Just said happy to bring mishti. Ar kichu dite parbo na. 🙂

@essayl Oh you said won't give cash? I dint even understand that mishti meant bribe

Me. Didnt pay bribe any time. But then also I mistook their coded hint for for cha-pani as actual tea-biscuit and immediately gave them that Next time i said yes yes definitely will bring misht next time without realising that that was a coded request for some briberies.

@ananyashasau On my 5th passport book currently. Paid 10 Rs in 1995 as a college student. Nothing since. Last one was renewed Nov 2025. No bribe.

Is there even a single person in India whose passport was made without paying a bribe? 😭 Are any of you here that lucky? And if not, how much did you have to pay?

@RURALINDIA I object ... To your calling him useful.

Mohandas Pai for you, folks. Truly a legend. 🙏 Whenever in future, they write about Useful Idiots, Mohandas will be there as a legend.

@patralekha2011 You may like this paper if you haven't seen it before. researchgate.net/publication/39…

No rage/ outrage about this. Families with five cars, 50 pots and huge dollops of entitlement treating public spaces as private. And yet it’s only street vendors who seem to make so many lose their cool.

@bhaumikgowande There is an interesting paper on this. researchgate.net/publication/39…

Anybody notice how the Delhi elites blatantly encroach sidewalks and public land after illegally expanding their houses in setbacks and garage spaces faulting all Bylaws

In Andhra Pradesh’s Vizianagaram district, tribal children from Rayapalem village walk nearly 10 km daily through forest paths due to lack of road access. Hey @ncbn, instead of offering ₹30,000–₹40,000 for the 3rd and 4th child, why not build proper roads and provide bus services for these children? Poor kids are holding Dy CM @PawanKalyan’s photo, demanding safe roads and better connectivity to their village.

Despite schemes like Jal Jeevan Mission, places such as Maharashtra's Dapurmal village still struggle to get water. Women and young girls are still walking for hours through difficult and dangerous hilly terrain just to bring water home.

@jhasincere Per IMF, the PPP factor between Ger & Ind is 3.88, i.e. 1 lakh in Ind purchases an equivalent lifestyle to 3.88 la INR in Ger ~ 3.5k EUR. Earning EUR 25k (< 1/2 the national average) in Ger affords an equivalent lifestyle of earning 7.2 lakhs (> 3X our national avg) in Ind.

DD did not know the term PPP? Generally, ₹1 lakh in India provides a lifestyle similar to earning over €25,000 in German cities like Munich or Berlin.

The real reason Modi wants you to stop buying gold My essay in @newslaundry @MnshaP Read. Share. Subscribe. Gold is not the story. Dollars are. That’s the real point behind Narendra Modi asking Indians to stop buying gold for a year. In my latest essay for Newslaundry, I argue that this appeal is really about India’s growing dollar problem, pressure on the rupee, and an economic stress that official narratives are still trying to underplay. India imports almost all the gold it consumes. It also imports nearly 90 percent of its crude oil, large quantities of natural gas, edible oil, fertilisers, electronics and industrial inputs. All of this has to be paid for in dollars, including more than $112 billion of trade deficit that we run with China. Now add a prolonged West Asia war, rising oil prices, a disrupted Strait of Hormuz, foreign investors pulling money out of Indian markets, slowing FDI inflows, slowing sales growth of IT companies and weaker remittance prospects. The result? Demand for dollars is surging at exactly the moment dollar inflows are becoming uncertain. That’s why the rupee is under pressure. That’s why the RBI is burning foreign exchange reserves defending the currency. And that’s why suddenly we are being told: Don’t buy gold. Avoid foreign holidays. Use public transport. Cut edible oil consumption. Carpool. Reduce fuel use. This is not random advice. It is an attempt to conserve dollars. The irony, of course, is that Indians buy gold precisely because they don’t fully trust the rupee, inflation management, or the long-term stability of the economy. Gold is not merely ornamentation in India. It is insurance, emergency savings, social security and psychological comfort rolled into one. The larger problem is that India’s economic model remains deeply import-dependent despite years of self-reliance rhetoric. We still depend heavily on imported energy, imported fertilisers and imported Chinese goods. And when the global environment turns hostile, that dependence shows up very quickly in the value of the rupee, inflation, subsidies, petrol prices, EMIs and fiscal deficits. The essay also explains why: 1) Petrol and diesel prices are likely to rise. 2) Inflation may stay elevated. 3) Interest rates and EMIs could go up. 4) Economic growth may slow. 5) The government’s fiscal math could worsen. 6) Moral suasion can only work for so long before economics overwhelms rhetoric. The government’s problem ultimately isn’t India’s love for gold. It is India’s dependence on dollars. newslaundry.com/2026/05/13/the…

@sandeep_PT E.g. 80% of intnl travel to/from India is leisure/family. If Indians actually stopped traveling abroad for a year, intnl airlines, including Indian ones, would have to cease India operations, intnl airport terminals would shut. Huge economic damage and employment hit.

Extraordinary times. The PM is himself calling for massive demand destruction via individual austerity across a spectrum of economic actions. Reason is the country cannot earn enough dollars to sustain basic consumer economic processes, without putting the rupee in peril. The loop of demand destruction will intensify further and deeper. How will you revive that, once all demand is gone? Iran isn't slowing. Will not surrender. Hormuz isn't opening anytime soon. What are our secondary plans? What were they anyway all along? Do we realize the kind of pain we are about to launch via such drastic austerity measures? This is PM's 13th year in power. So much should have happened by now. So much. India should have - could have - been a real AI power by now. Anyway. Instead of punishing hundreds of millions, can the PM not think of imposing a Super-rich tax on top 1 % wealthiest Indians? Tax their wealth heavily, and create a support fund for the bottom 50% of India? You are all powerful. Can do anything. Unstoppable. BTW, ideally, before Modi made these drastic announcements, he should have first taken the Parliament into confidence, and a long, thorough discussion should have happened across Party lines. But nothing at all. One way decisions. Sudden shocks. Expectation of deshbhakti from everyone. One-upmanship. I am still trying to wrap my head around the strangeness unfolding around us. Geopolitically, we are firmly in the Israeli-American camp, even as Iran rises as a regional hegemon in the middle-eastern region. Our loyalties are publicly with the Zionists. Wrong choices will have generational effects. And strange unanticipated consequences. All comments welcome.

@cneuralnetwork The new lines (post 2000) have public toilets in most stations. The original NS line didn't, but some stations have been modified to add toilets. I agree more of them should be added.

One change I'd love to have in Kolkata Metro is installation of toilets All other cities have toilets in metro, but Kolkata doesn't have it in a single station! The story behind it is funny as well. The first time Metro was built the journey was 10 minutes, and making toilets was expensive as the sewer was above the metro line. They thought since it's 10 min, no one will use the loo. But now the journey from one end to another end is easily 1.5hr +- 10 min and need of toilet in station is there!

@maitreesh Thank you for your response, Prof. Aware of your time frame, and your recent articles in HT inspired my amateur data analysis across macro parameters for the shorter period! Keenly look forward to the full paper. Best.

@essayl @CNBCTV18Live Thanks for your comment & post. We are finalizing our research article and will share in here when it is done. The time frame for our analysis is 1960-61 to 2023-24 but will take a look at your specific question about inflation in the last 15 years.

I was interviewed by Latha Venkatesh of @CNBCTV18Live on the West Bengal economy including causes for its decline and the challenges facing a new government.

@swatiatrest Precisely. Bizarre that a state transport minister does that instead of supporting public mass transit. Some say they wanted to deny "credit" to the union government for the metro. Perhaps partly. But that doesn't explain the bus situation.

@essayl Snehashish just went around flagging off app cab fleets

One of the weirdest developments in the past year and a half was the WB govt's refusal to let this linkage work happen. I am yet to comprehend WHY.

These findings are unlikely to satisfy partisans on either side. Because this is not an attempt to explain why BJP won or why TMC lost. A revision can be administratively legitimate and electorally consequential, removing ghost voters in one constituency and real voters in the next. What was unfortunate is the opaque way the ECI carried out this exercise. @newslaundry has done several ground reports showing why SIR made this an abnormal election. And while this analysis is built on numbers, the real cost lies in the uncertainty of losing our most basic democratic right—the right to vote. You can read the full analysis here: newslaundry.com/2026/05/07/4-t… 11/n

@bhaumikgowande @OmkarKuchekar1 You're not wrong. But the issue is structural. The centre keeps a lions share of revenue, then launches "schemes" for buses etc. and city level metro projects using that. Ideally, centre/state/local should have balanced revenue share and then each should stick to their job.

@OmkarKuchekar1 GST reduced state fiscal autonomy, yes. But India’s urban transport crisis is also a political choice. States still spend where they see electoral value and buses, walkability, street reform just rarely make that list.