| Dear Subscriber, Welcome to the second edition of this new newsletter. This is where we chew over the biggest news and views of the week with you. Tuck in.
Story of the week There are ways and there are ways of looking at the GDP — gross domestic product — which is the value of all goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific period. Right now, though, a lot of people are looking at India’s GDP in one particular way: through the prism of consumption. That is what the most recent release of economic numbers, on 28 February, has done. This is in line with the other major economies. The US, Japan, Germany, and the UK grew less than 1% in the quarter, with China being the exception. However, when Arup Roychoudhury, who roams the corridors of the finance ministry for fun, dived deeper, he found that the country’s household consumption decelerated as a contributor to the GDP, and that growth continues to be uneven. Some see it as the sign of a K-shaped recovery, one in which those already doing well continue to do so and the ones not doing well… you get the drift. V Anantha Nageswaran, the Chief Economic Advisor, disagrees. “The notion of using the letter ‘K’ to denote urban and rural is somewhat wrong because it is almost as if one is growing and one is contracting. I would say one segment’s slope is more positive, and the other slope is less positive, but it is positive,” Nageswaran said while speaking to reporters at the finance ministry on Thursday. He believes economic activity is robust enough to achieve 7% growth in the current financial year. Observers of the Indian economy were keenly waiting for the October-December numbers for divining the real strength of the economy. The previous two quarters were influenced by a weak base because the economy was ravaged by the second wave of Covid-19 in the same period of 2021-22. If the country is to achieve higher growth next year, it will require policy work, said our edit. Not to miss out on the big story of the week, The Morning Show, our audio-visual serving, dived right into it.
In other news… The Adani saga continues to hold us in thrall. The Supreme Court formed an expert committee headed by a former SC judge, Abhay Manohar Sapre, to investigate if there was a regulatory failure leading to investor losses after the Hindenburg report came out. The Reserve Bank of India sought details of the total credit facilities sanctioned and dispensed by shadow banks to the Adani group. The G20 meeting in India has put the rising debt burden of poorer countries in focus. The amount of loans taken by emerging markets and developing countries relative to their economic heft, as measured by the ratio of their debt to GDP, is above the levels seen before the pandemic, and it is expected to remain elevated even into 2024. If you are the kind that like to sink their teeth into data, our Statsguru of the week offers a sumptuous meal. What would you do if your favourite comic strip is in danger of completely going off the pages? It is a real possibility, thanks to Scott Adams losing it on his YouTube channel. Dilbert might have been able to make a hysterically pithy quip on it, but we won’t know about it, would we!
Tech-talk: Word from the world of technology and start-ups Much-needed relief: We are not talking job cuts this week. Apple has become the single largest creator of blue-collar jobs in India’s electronics sector, having generated 100,000 new direct jobs in the 19 months since the government’s smartphone Production Linked Incentive scheme came into effect in August 2021. Adani may not be the only highly leveraged Indian business group facing rough weather. Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta has not been ‘Hindenburged’, but its debt mountain is weighing it down, and its attempts to reduce this debt appear to have hit roadblocks. This is about Vedanta’s plan to…. Wait, why read about it if you can watch it here! What is Suveen obsessed with these days?
Online pharmacies. At present, these have a tiny 3% share of India’s pharmaceutical sales of Rs 1.7 trillion a year. But they are growing rapidly. Between 2014-15 and 2020-21, online pharmacies grew at a compound annual rate of 96%. By comparison, traditional pharmacies had a CAGR of 8% and organised retail chains 18%. At this rate, e-pharmacies can double their market share to 6% in a couple of years. This has set the alarm bells ringing. Offline retailers are up in arms, raising all sorts of flags. There does seem to be a bit of regulatory and legal haze. On February 8, the DCGI, asked online pharmacies to explain why action should not be taken against them for sale and distribution in contravention of the law. In 2019, the DCGI had sent notices for action and compliance to state drug controllers quoting a 2018 Delhi High Court order that barred e-pharmacies from selling medicines without licences. This created confusion, because in January 2019 a division Bench of the Madras High Court had stayed a single-judge order banning online sale of drugs. Sohini Das tells you more about it here. Have a fun weekend and a productive week ahead. See you next Saturday. Please send any comments – odd or even – to suveen.sinha@bsmail.in. | 
