Karan Manral

The great Indian oil spill: a cold-pressed-to-refined thriller Indian consumers footed a staggering Rs 1.72 lakh crore bill in FY26 to import cooking oils. This year, the bill may surpass Rs 2 lakh cr. This is way more than the entire annual budget of the agriculture ministry. And unlike imported fertilizers and crude oil, no one shields consumers when global cooking oil prices spike. India imports 60% of its cooking oil needs now. But in the early 1990s, India had achieved a brief period of atmanirbharta. Then it lost the plot to cheap palm. Then to high-yielding GM or transgenic soy- that it imports in large quantities and consumes, but won't allow its farmers to plant. With its atmanirbharta, India is also losing a part of its culinary heritage. Kachhi-ghani desi oils making way for solvent extracted foreign oils. Misery for local mustard, groundnut, sesame, soy growers who switched to other profitable crops like rice, maize, horticulture etc. Yet, there's more to the story which involves the legendary Verghese Kurien of Amul fame. With some arson, deaths and conspiracy theories thrown in. Borrowing Kurien's words, a final question: Who are the "scoundrels" who got us here? @livemint Long Story. Read here: livemint.com/industry/manuf…

🚨 FASTag has a MASSIVE security loophole & nobody is talking about it. Today, literally anyone with access to your car & RC can get a NEW FASTag issued on your vehicle in THEIR name & mobile number. No OTP. No owner authorization. No consent from the actual vehicle owner. The moment that happens? Your existing FASTag gets blacklisted/deactivated instantly under the “One Vehicle One FASTag” policy. That’s exactly what happened to me. I’m currently transporting my car from Mumbai to Delhi & handed over the vehicle to the transporter’s driver on Saturday. He casually asked me if there was balance in the FASTag. Next morning, I received a message from ICICI saying a new FASTag had been activated on my vehicle & my existing FASTag would be deactivated. Within minutes, it was blacklisted/deactivated. Honestly, God knows what the plan even was. Maybe he thought the balance would transfer. Maybe he wanted to misuse it during transit. Maybe something worse. The scary part? The system ALLOWED this without a single authorization from the actual vehicle owner. The NETC FASTag portal was down the entire day. After 4+ hours of calls, ICICI finally told me the new FASTag was issued via Airtel Payments Bank. Later, I checked the Airtel Thanks app & guess what? The FASTag had been registered by the SAME driver who took the car. This is where things become ridiculous. Airtel Payments Bank support told me THEY cannot close the FASTag unless the person who activated it calls them personally. Read that again. The actual vehicle owner has ZERO control over the FASTag - but the person who fraudulently activated it does. The NHAI helpline at 1033 was equally useless. No emergency block. No fraud handling. No owner protection mechanism. So if someone activates a FASTag on your car, you’re basically stranded. How is this acceptable infrastructure for something linked to a vehicle owner’s identity & movement? This is no longer just a scam. It’s a massive security vulnerability in the FASTag ecosystem. NPCI/NETC urgently needs mandatory owner authorization. At the very least, mandate OTP verification from the registered vehicle owner before ANY FASTag change is approved. This needs immediate attention, @NPCI_NPCI @FASTag_NETC. Pathetic support, zero accountability, and absolutely no protection for the actual vehicle owner while someone else fraudulently took control of the FASTag. That should never be possible, @ICICIBank @airtelbank.

@sayantanbera Where do we grow it though? Is there enough land @sayantanbera ?

The idea of using ethanol as a fuel had been pursued for more than two centuries, with limited success. Even Henry Ford tried. Ford, who grew up on a farm, had a deep distrust for big oil, including John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Because of this, the story goes, he designed the early Model T, which was launched in 1908, with an adjustable engine that could run on gasoline (petrol in India), ethanol, or a mix of both. Infact, the very first automobile that Ford built, the Quadricycle of 1896, ran entirely on ethanol. Ford’s vision was radical for the time: farmers could grow their own corn and potatoes, ferment them and brew their own fuel to run tractors and cars. No dependence on oil. But the idea did not materialize, for a number of reasons, including the wide availability of gasoline following the discovery of huge oil reserves in the US, as well as the formal introduction of prohibition in 1920, which dealt a blow to production of industrial ethanol. By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the prospects of ethanol were effectively dead. For decades, cheap oil ruled the world. Until the Arab embargo of 1973 sparked a change in Brazil, ultimately leading to cars that can be fueled entirely by ethanol. Nearly half a century later, India is attempting something similar. One can debate if ethanol is a technology of the past and whether, instead of biofuels, India should double down on raising penetration of electric vehicles as China is doing. But, as the world grapples with another energy crisis, sparked by the ongoing war in West Asia, what if India were to follow in Brazil’s footsteps? @livemint Long Story: livemint.com/news/india-eth…

@venugovindu LOL! Arent we all 😉

@kmanral13 You back on twitter for the schadenfreude? 😀

Agriculture and economics pundits, wannabees included, who kept picking on Sri Lanka for trying the organic route under pressure from costly imported inputs, are suddenly quiet now Especially when Hormuz pressures have everyone singing about cutting reliance on those inputs 1/2

2/2 Hope you got the memo. Geopolitical complications are going to be the story of our times. So either get behind self-sufficiency for these inputs in India, or find a new tune to sing about why organic cannot even be considered as a parallel path.

The first edition of #VizChitra back in June was probably the most interesting thing I experienced this year. Was great to see an amazing and talented bunch of datavisualsers put together a really great, authentic community event in India. youtube.com/watch?v=LfJLCu…

@ku1deep @Ktens They don't care 🤷‍♂️

@Ktens I have. but it is hard when you have decades with a bank

So imagine you are trying to add a Payee into your hdfc netbanking website. you are midway typing a long account number and if that text box loses focus or you switch to another window the value in the box resets. Some genius at that bank has decided that they will personally ensure people can’t copy paste, or use their website if you cannot remember a long account number. twice. After all why should you be able use their bank if you are stupid. Anyway I am now going to use a pair of nose pliers to pull each of my toe nails. It is light entertainment compared to what hdfc bank subjects me to every time I try to get anything done.

@RockyEatsX Is that the only non-veg joint in town?

After 2 days of meetings over delicious VEGETARIAN food (even the Novotel in Jodhpur is vegetarian so be warned ) … it’s time to eat some meat and one place tha always satisfies is #ontherocks so an awesome Jodhpuri meal it was

Hey Mumbaikars. Doesn't this worry you? If yes, please lend your voice with a click and do please share: End the Monetisation Madness: Public Land Belongs to the People! - Sign the Petition! c.org/RcYVRfzjSD via @ChangeOrg_India

In India, as far as possible, it is best to avoid: • adventure sports • large and crowded gatherings, especially on special occasions • driving on the highways after sunset • arguing with those who break road traffic rules shamelessly

Scuba gear?

Dude just gave up on getting the real thing IMHO 🤷‍♂️

@Indian_Analyzer 🤣

Haryana DGP nails it- "Those who see themselves as badmash love buying THAR."😂 ~ Truth bomb. The car has become less of a vehicle, more of an EGO CHARIOT for wannabe gangsters This is exactly how INSECURITY sells as swag.

This is an outrageous and cruel response to man-animal conflict, in this case leopards in Western Maharashtra. You cannot round up 1500 leopards and send them to a ‘rescue-centre’ ‘zoo’ facility. I sincerely hope it’s not approved. Need more thought on how to best handle the conflict

No doubt stubble burning contributes to ambient air quality of Delhi NCR, in this period. But it’s dishonest to blame that as the cause for the air mess squarely, and disproportionately. So far the contribution share of crop burning is in single digit. Calling out air quality mis-governance and lack of political will and to accept the local sources of pollution should be the priority. Call spade a spade.

@nixxin If it all seems the same to everyone, then perhaps we should just nationalize them 🙂

Given all the trolling I've got for stating the _fact_ that UPI is run by a private company, let me give you another fun _fact_: Digiyatra is run by a private entity and not by the government of India.

My experience with Robotic Vacuum cleaner and what does spying mean today. codetiger.github.io/blog/the-day-m…

@Himalayologist Vknvii8 ki givk mmmmmm

On Mon 1 Sep and Tue 2 Sep, localised rainfall intensities of >50 mm/hour and >120 mm/day are possible in parts of Uttarakhand (Kumaon and Garhwal), esp. the Pithoragarh, Bageshwar, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Uttarkashi Districts, but also in the Shimla and Kinnaur Districts of HP.

Friends, I expect the next batch of destructive monsoon rainstorms to reach the Western/Central Himalaya this weekend, and peak between Mon 1 Sep and Tue 2 Sep, focusing this time on the region between the Rivers Mahakali and Sutlej - Kumaon, Garhwal, and eastern Himachal. ...

Rasagy (@rasagy), who loves tinkering with data, approached VizChitra’s brand identity in a unique way, letting the design take different forms based on data inputs. Watch the video to see how it all came together. His full presentation here: youtube.com/watch?v=F8bxD2…