Pratham Varshney

Buy the most epic game on governance, politics and strategy - Sarkaar: State your power. Power your State. amzn.to/3E4seXm #Governance #politics #freespeech #corruption #strategy #boardgames #India

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In an alternate universe there is a South Asian version of heated rivalry with @imVkohli and @babarazam258

@flyspicejet casually admitting that 33% of their seats are uncomfortable.

@rohanbabu Same story in Bombay

There is an invisible layer that affects many friendships in Bengaluru. That layer is called urban and civic exhaustion. Friendships don’t fade because people don’t care. They fade because the city quietly drains the energy required to sustain them. The traffic takes an hour out of your evening. Work spills into what used to be personal time. Weekends become recovery periods rather than social ones. You start saying things like: “Let’s meet soon.” “Next week for sure.” “Once things settle down.” Things rarely settle down. What earlier required a 10 minute auto ride now requires planning, coordination, and stamina. You have to build stamina to be rejected by drivers on apps, to cross under constructed sites, to take long jumps over open drainages and collect dust on your face. Friendships slowly move from physical spaces to WhatsApp reactions and Instagram replies. The affection is still there. The intent is still there. But the civic friction of the city sits between people. In cities like Bengaluru, maintaining friendships has quietly become an act of effort. And sometimes, effort is the first casualty of urban and civic exhaustion.

It’s absolutely crazy that esignature tokens don’t work on mac @MCA21India @EODB_India_GoI

New ad by the Norwegian Consumer Council: "A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator"

@matt_elevenlabs 11B

We just raised $500M at an 11B valuation 🎉 To celebrate, we’re giving away 1,000 free credits so you can test our platform. For the next 6 hours, comment “11B” below and we’ll DM you the credits (must follow) 👇

Geopolitics is just a fancy word for tel chori

That’s a heartfelt response but the criticism isn’t against gig work. It’s the power asymmetry that’s been created with the current duopoly. Bad policy always create compliance burdens which are mostly absorbable by large companies on the road to a monopoly which further gets encouraged. It’ll be terrible if unionization is encouraged or gig work is forced to be treated as regular employment. I worked in banking collections back in 2014 and the cash pick up agents were all gig workers who got paid per pick up. Some ran a tea stall, some a pan shop and the 60rs per pick up got them 400 rs a day during the lean hours of their shop. If bank A had lesser work, they’d easily switch to bank B or C or an NBFC. The model still thrives. No power asymmetry. Little to no exploitation. The current grudge has gig workers questioning the arbit rules they are governed by with little to no alternatives because of this duopoly. Since Zomato / Swiggy can’t be encouraged to create competition, and hard regulations will just shrink the market, policy actions which do make sense are things like a light arbitration/ ombudsmen system, easier switching , regulate the kind of rules which govern penalties etc.

Last one on this topic, and I have been holding this in myself for a while. For centuries, class divides kept the labor of the poor invisible to the rich. Factory workers toiled behind walls, farmers in distant fields, domestic help in backrooms. The wealthy consumed the fruits of that labor without ever seeing the faces or the fatigue behind it. No direct encounter, no personal guilt. The gig economy shattered that invisibility, at unprecedented scale. Suddenly, the poor aren't hidden away. They're at your doorstep: the delivery partner handing over your ₹1000+ biryani, late-night groceries, or quick-commerce essentials. You see them in the rain, heat, traffic, often on borrowed bikes, working 8–10 hours for earnings that give them sustenance. You see their exhaustion, their polite smile masking frustration with life in general. This is the first time in history at this scale that the working class and consuming class interact face-to-face, transaction after transaction. And that discomfort with our own selves is why we are uncomfortable about the gig economy. We want these people to look our part, so that the guilt we feel while taking orders from them feels less. We aren't just debating economics. We are confronting guilt. That ₹800 order might equal their entire day's earnings after fuel, bike rent, and app cuts. We tip awkwardly, or avoid eye contact, because the inequality is no longer abstract. It's personal. Pre-gig era, the rich could enjoy luxury without moral discomfort. Labor was out of sight. Now, every doorbell ring is a reminder of systemic inequality. That's why debates explode. It's not just policy. It's emotional reckoning. Some defend the system (“they choose it”), others demand change (“this isn't progress, its exploitation”). And here’s the uncomfortable twist: the unsaid ask of clumsy ‘solutions’ isn’t dignity. It is about returning to invisibility. Ban gig work and you don’t solve inequality. You remove livelihoods. These jobs don’t magically reappear as formal, protected employment the next day. They disappear, or they get pushed back into the informal economy where there are even fewer protections and even less accountability. Over-regulate it until the model breaks, and you achieve the same outcome through paperwork instead of slogans: the work evaporates, prices rise, demand collapses, and the people we claim to protect are the first to lose income. And then what happens? The rich get their old comfort back. Convenience returns without faces. Guilt dissolves. We go back to clean abstractions and moral posturing from a distance. The poor don’t become safer, they become invisible again: back in cash economies, back in backrooms, back in shadows where regulation rarely reaches and dignity isn’t even debated. The gig economy just exposed the reality of inequality to the people who previously had the luxury of not seeing it. The doorbell is not the problem. The question is what we do after opening the door. Visibility is the price of progress. We can either use this discomfort to build something better (which we keep doing continuously as delivery partners are our backbone), or we can ban and over-regulate our way back into ignorance. One of those choices improves lives. The other simply helps the consuming class feel virtuous in the dark.

Overheard in a government office "sab kuch hota hai aur kuch bhi nahi hota"

Continuing the bojack series.. this time a leopard 🐆

Starting a 🧵 for things I see in government offices which make no sense

Doesn’t get much better than doggo reactions 🥰

Probably the best depiction of India’s civil infrastructure

@Zephyr_hg Scrape

Competitor research takes me 2 minutes now. Built a scraper that monitors websites, tracks price changes, and extracts product data automatically. Claude AI pulls contact info, pricing, and company details straight into Google Sheets. Used to spend 10-15 hours monthly doing this manually. Now it updates every hour while I focus on closing deals. Comment "SCRAPE" and I'll DM it to you (must be following)

Wow. Most of the footage is just people going to an amusement park, laughing, watching a cricket match.

@Satosh_him @Rainmaker1973 most iconic ballerina scene

@Rainmaker1973 Like a cartoon

Water barrier versus raging flames.

Someone needs to tell @yadavtejashwi that no one is going to vote for sasta crimemaster gogo. Though.. "Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaunga, Khandaani chor hoon main" suits him best. #fodderscam

Same day as ISRO sends the country forward with its indigenous creations, @ianuragthakur makes efforts to send the country back. Loved the strategic positioning by @IndianExpress though.

@AnjaliB_ @the_hindu Genuine questions: 1. SIRs are anyway conducted every few years for updating records. It's an age old process, why critique it like its a new strange step? 2. Folks whose forms haven't been received or have been excluded - DEOs/ BLOs are anyway made to reach out to them.

ECI’s Lack of Transparency is Worrying: By keeping critical information on #BiharSIR2025 under wraps and failing to publicly justify its actions, the Election Commission risks eroding voter trust. Read our piece in @the_hindu

People must really want to migrate out of India. So desperate that the idea of lodonia and Saborga felt like a step up