| | | Good morning! | | Hindustan Times picked its India 15 for the T20 World Cup in Australia later this year purely on the performance of players in the ongoing Indian Premier League (with all players having played 9 or 10 matches), and the results are surprising. Based on current form, India will need a new captain, and a team that's very different from one that played the last T20 World Cup. The team we picked: KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Abhishek Sharma, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya, Yuzvendra Chahal, Umesh Yadav, Ravichandran Ashwin, T Natarajan, Kuldeep Yadav, Umran Malik, and Mohammed Shami. It's unlikely the selectors will want to do this, although there is nothing wrong in picking a team purely on recent form. My only problem with this team? It's not exactly a great fielding unit. You can read more about HT's picks here. Staying with numbers, WHO released its Covid-19 death toll numbers and, as expected, they are higher than the official numbers, and also higher than expected. At the global level, the agency estimates that the real death toll is three times the reported number; and in India's case, it estimates the number at nine times the reported one. _1651844767859.jpg) (Click to expand) That these numbers were coming was known — and may have perhaps pushed the government to release the Civil Registry System data for births and deaths for 2020, showing relatively more benign numbers. To be sure, these numbers are always released around this time of the year — the 2019 numbers came out in June 2021 — but if the objective was to show that multiple modelling studies, and WHO's own report, that put India's death toll much higher than the reported number were untrue, then that remained unmet. Hours before the release, the health ministry even organised an informal briefing to explain why it thinks WHO's methodology is flawed, and soon after the data came out, the government issued a strong official rebuttal of the numbers. So, who's right? And who's wrong? I've written extensively on Covid-19 death numbers over the past two years, most recently in this newsletter two weeks back. For what it's worth, I think both WHO and the Indian government are wrong, although the debate is unlikely to be settled till infection fatality rate numbers for Covid-19, across geographies, are estimated through rigorous studies and modelling. We will continue with numbers because the Reserve Bank of India's Monetary Policy Committee, in an unscheduled meeting, raised the policy rate as well as the quantum of their deposits banks need to keep as cash with the central bank, both efforts to tighten liquidity and reduce inflation. While this may be difficult to achieve through monetary intervention — the cause of the inflation is not overheating of the economy in this case — the move does send out a signal that could reduce inflationary expectations. Still, it's not going to be easy. | | THINK There was more data that came out this week, or over the course of last weekend. On Sunday, the government released details of the GST collection in April (for the month of March). At ₹1.68 lakh crore, the number was the highest ever. But as HT pointed out in an editorial, "Does the role of seasonality and inflation mean that the latest GST number does not hold any message of the state of the macroeconomy at large? This is a more difficult question to answer at the moment." Perhaps that's why, the editorial surmised, the finance ministry did not use the numbers to make triumphalist statements about the economy. | | THINK MORE Another number everyone has been tracking this week is the temperature — although some rain early in the week bought respite to at least the National Capital Region.
In many parts of the country, this was the hottest April in 121 years. That number is worrying because, as HT's Roshan Kishore and Abhishek Jha pointed out, almost half of Indian workers spend most of their workday outside — in the heat. The heat, the consequent demand for power, the sharp rise in the demand for coal (which is still India's primary source of electricity), the spike in global coal prices, and higher passenger train traffic together created a mini power crisis in India — and the worst may still not be over. It's another reminder why India needs to give coal the "attention and effort" it needs, Rahul Tongia wrote in HT. | | KNOW Delhi University turned 100 (yes, that's some number), and HT's metro section chronicled the journey in a five-part special series through the week that created more buzz than I thought it would (with pictures of pages even doing the rounds on WhatsApp groups and finding their way back to me). Part 1: The origin
Delhi University came into being in 1922, just 11 years after the country's capital was shifted to Delhi from Calcutta. Read more Part 2: The four that started it
The first four colleges of Delhi University, St Stephen's, Hindu, Zakir Husain Delhi College and Ramjas, and their journey shows why the story of DU is, in some ways, the story of Delhi. Read more Part 3: Institutes of excellence
DU's institutions for specialised studies in economics, law and management (among others), did their bid to help a budding nation grow. Read more Part 4: How DU closed the gender gap
Starting with just one women's-only college (Indraprastha College) in 1924, Delhi University has come a long way in educating and empowering women. Read more Part 5: A petri dish for political futures
Delhi University and its students' union have always been a nursery for politics. Many of its students have, over the decades, become some of the country's tallest political figures. Read more | | LEARN The Supreme Court of India is revisiting the issue of sedition and, while the government is yet to articulate its stance on the matter, the Attorney General (who was not speaking for the government in this case) has said that the law is needed to safeguard the nation. But the law has a complicated history, as my colleague and HT's legal edition Utkarsh Anand explained last year. If you have the time, here are four very interesting reads 1. Why the neta-politician nexus has to go 2. Can a consultant save the Congress? (One of the installments of Roshan Kishore's very cerebral Terms of Trade column). 3. Centre-state ties: why a new federal compact is needed. 4. The truth about feral cats and dogs (This week's installment of Anirban Mahapatra's Scientifically Speaking column). | | | | OUTSIDE Last week, Nature published a study that went largely unnoticed, but which I think, should have dominated headlines and homepages. The study spoke of how tens of thousands of species that have never met will now do as they migrate on account of the climate crisis, setting the stage for viruses to jump from host species to new ones. The researchers estimate 15,000 new viral transmissions by 2070 in the worst-case scenario of a 2-degree Celsius rise in Earth's temperature. I have a feeling it may come a lot sooner than 2070. _1651844636737.jpg) (Click to expand) | | WHAT I'M READING AS Panneerselvan's biography of M Karunanidhi, simply titled Karunanidhi: A Life. Partly because it is the story of the state I plan to retire to, and also the history of the Dravidian movement, but mostly because of the glimpses and insights it offers into the mind of a politician who was always far more than the regional satrap many consider him to be. | | WHAT I'M LISTENING TO In the 1950s, saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi was part of a band with Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim. If he isn't as well known as the other two, it is perhaps he chose to stay in South Africa. I'd rate Moeketsi among the saxophone greats — and through this week (in addition to the Grateful Dead's Europe 72 tour that I may or may not have written about here, Roxy Music, and the new Arcade Fire album) I have been listening to Tshona!, a collaboration between Moeketsi, pianist Pat Matshikiza (another great who didn't get his due) and tenor saxophonist (Moeketsi plays alto) Basil Coetzee recorded in 1975. | Please share your feedback with us What do you think about this newsletter? | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
