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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A kilo of apples at Nature’s Basket, a retail chain associated with well-off shoppers, costs ₹499. At a modest local vendor, these would cost ₹200-250 per kg. Admittedly, their quality and source of origin may differ.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Across Europe, voters are fed up and taking it out on their leaders.This week, Britain’s ruling Labour Party had its worst result ever in local elections as voters angry about a persistently weak economy and high immigration punished Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is backed by just 20% of voters.Last month, Europe’s longest-serving leader, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, was swept out of office by a wave of discontent over the sluggish economy and a government that many saw as corrupt.Elsewhere in Europe, the picture is similarly bleak for those now in power. In Germany, a left-right government that is breaking public spending records is also plumbing uncharted popularity lows.The diminished incumbents can do little to placate an angry electorate, as they contend with melting parliamentary majorities, internal divisions and empty public coffers.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s statistics ministry recently proposed an Index of Services Production (ISP), the need for which may seem self-evident, given how this sector’s prominence has grown. “The service sector is the dominant force in the Indian economy, contributing over 50% of the Gross Value Added [GVA],” as a discussion paper on the idea released by the ministry notes, “It has long been central to economic transformation, consistently driving growth, generating employment, and attracting investment across decades.” That’s the good part of our services story. The not-so-good part is the absence of accurate, disaggregated and timely data on the services sector along the lines of India’s monthly Index of Industrial Production (IIP).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Until recently, artificial intelligence was a welcome tailwind for U.S. growth.We’re beyond that now. AI is more like a hurricane-strength weather system making itself felt across the entire economy.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Shares of Polycab India jumped over 7% on Thursday, also hitting a 52-week high of ₹8,991.50 despite 160 basis points year-on-year drop in its March quarter (Q4FY26) Ebitda margin to 13.1%.While a sharp increase in input prices and higher logistics costs hurt margin, price hikes taken last quarter helped Polycab beat analysts’ estimates. Plus, the company’s market share improved by four percentage points in FY26 to about 30-31%, which should benefit Polycab as demand stabilizes.Despite the near-term disruption, the domestic demand outlook remains strong, primarily led by the power sector.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 2019, Arvind Subramanian, India’s former chief economic advisor, argued in a Harvard working paper that Indian GDP had been overestimated by 2.5 percentage points a year from 2011-12 to 2016-17. His central exhibit was a chart of 17 economic indicators, 11 of which had turned negatively correlated with GDP after 2011. The starkest case was the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for manufacturing, at minus 0.78.Extend the data by seven years using the same method.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The weak performance of Indian shares hasn’t just dampened wealth creation, it has also put India’s stock market at risk of being overtaken in terms of capitalization by the bourses of smaller economies. Catching up fast are Taiwan and South Korea; the former’s market cap is now about $4.6 trillion, within sniffing distance of India’s $4.9 trillion, and South Korea’s is at about $4.2 trillion.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Kevin Warsh, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate later this month as the next Federal Reserve chair, will inherit a central bank that appears to be stuck in policy limbo due to concerns about escalating inflation. But Warsh may have more options than investors think.Bond traders no longer expect the Fed to cut interest rates this year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Recently, I attended a lecture on ‘Long-term missions in a short-term world’ by S. Gurumurthy. To me, the biggest example has been China.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: For India, the fallout from West Asia conflict, while negative for the macro-economy, would remain manageable if a final peace deal is reached by mid-May.Any extension beyond that could push up oil price expectations and have a more severe impact, not just on the macro, but also on earnings for the current fiscal, which are otherwise expected to hold up better than the economy in the context of the war, according to Sanjeev Prasad, managing director and co-head, Kotak Institutional Equities.In an interview to Mint, he also explained why foreign investors continue to pull out despite valuations correcting.Edited excerpts:It is a little bit of a challenge as of now. The hope was that the West Asia war would end by early April...then mid-April and at the end of last month we were hoping for mid-May.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The emphatic victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in elections to the West Bengal assembly focuses attention on an important aspect of India’s political economy: the role of politics and governance in economic development. The link is hard to quantify, especially in an era where economics is increasingly about mathematical models.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It’s happening. California looks likely to put a ‘one-time’ tax of 5% on wealth above $1 billion on the ballot in November and polls suggest it could pass— despite opposition from some economists (not so surprising) and Democratic politicians (more so). Meanwhile, calls to tax the rich are resounding across the country, from New York’s proposed ‘pied-à-terre tax’ to Washington State’s first-ever income tax, imposed only on millionaires.As someone who has been arguing for more than a decade that these taxes are bad economics, I find all this disheartening.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.During the Tanker War of the 1980s, Iran used missiles, mines and speed boats to assert its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Back then, it took an extensive naval operation, including the destruction of command posts on offshore oil platforms by U.S. Marines, to break Tehran’s hold.This time around, in addition to its earlier playbook, Iran has a legion of attack drones which are serving as a significant force multiplier.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Dennis Robertson was not only one of the finest economic minds of the 20th century, but also an elegant writer who was known for his witticisms. In an essay written in 1956, Robertson quipped: “High-brow opinion is like a hunted hare; if you stand in the same place, or nearly the same place, it can be relied upon to come round to you in a circle.” Those words resonate while reading a new report by the World Bank on industrial policy, or targeted government intervention to shape the economic structure of a country by promoting, protecting or developing specific industries deemed vital to economic growth, export competitiveness, import substitution or geopolitical strategy.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd’s (BHEL) shares have gained about 8% in the past two trading sessions, and also hit an all-time high of ₹399 apiece on Monday, surpassing the previous all-time high of ₹390 seen on 7 November 2007. Not without reason.The state-owned equipment manufacturer’s consolidated Ebitda jumped 111% year-on-year to ₹1,753 crore for the March quarter (Q4FY26).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The theme in Monday’s election results of three of the four major states that went to the latest hustings was the same—anti-incumbency. Incumbents were sent packing in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) holding ground in Assam and likely Puducherry.When the euphoria peters out, the hard part will be in governing for all four major states.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.TOKYO—One of the major surprises about the gravest energy shock since the 1970s is how resilient much of the world has been so far.The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has yanked around 13 million barrels of oil a day from global energy supplies. Blackouts have hit Pakistan, the Philippines has imposed a four-day workweek, and countries including Slovenia and Bangladesh have rationed fuel.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.How soon will the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raise rates and how high will it take them? Those have become urgent questions for bankers in Mumbai after elevated energy-import costs pushed the rupee to a record low last week. RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra has signalled a preference to stay on pause. The central bank would step in, he said in an 18 April speech at Princeton University, “through its influence on inflation expectations rather than through blunt demand compression,” a euphemism for monetary tightening.Still, Malhotra’s cheap-money era is likely drawing to a close, thanks to the pressure from the foreign-exchange market.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.There is a discomforting paradox at the heart of India’s current macroeconomic situation. By almost every conventional measure of sovereign economic health—growth, inflation, fiscal trajectory, external vulnerability and investor confidence in the real economy—India’s fundamentals are among the strongest of any large emerging market. Yet the rupee has depreciated by over 13% against the dollar in the past two years and by more than 15% since January 2023.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Chennai: For years, Tamil Nadu has punched beyond its weight. With just 4% of India’s land area and 6% of its population, the state’s contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024-25 was 9.4%.The state’s economy is growing much faster than India’s 6.5%. Even as foreign direct investment (FDI) into India has slowed, foreign investors continue to bet big on Tamil Nadu.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Chennai: To say the Kerala government’s finances are in a mess is an understatement. The state has a litany of woes which successive governments have failed to take head on. Its ability to raise revenue is impaired.