VITARKKA.COM - FORMING OPINIONS

https://vitarkka.com/2018/12/13/great-cities-are-built-keeping-taxpayers-in-mind/ Taxpayers in India need to wake up!!! How many times in a day do you  encounter  bad roads, power cuts, poor quality water or the lack of it, unresponsive police stations, lack of  fire stations close by, poor public transport and the list can go on for miles. Why do we vote  politicians into office??? (Or do the taxpayers really???) In India today there are three kinds of people: 1. The Invincibles: The Super rich or the  top 0.01%  who lobby to create laws to suit them and they are invincible. Their games are both local and global and what drives them is sheer passion of numbers of net-worth and their ratings on the  Forbes  list. Most of our economy is controlled by these giants and its true for any country. For these people, infrastructure of any kind is a great marketing tool to grow their companies. (Imagine…the top 100 global companies control 4...

https://vitarkka.com/2018/12/10/election-obsessed-india/ India  has always been a country obsessed with Elections as it feeds into the speculative nature of Indians and the fanfare which ensues is a delight for all. To exercise their vote amongst other fringe benefits is an added attraction and hence the famous saying  ‘The Dance of Democracy’ ! The 140 Crore country lives mostly in rural and underserved pockets and if CBDT’s recent tax stats put out is believable, then of this 140 Crore people, Over 130 Crore live below an income which is below the government prescribed taxable income.  The whole country goes through some election or the other throughout the year. Once every 5 years there is the  big boy  Lok Sabha Elections which ushers in a new Prime Minister.  543 seats  are up for grabs and money is spent lavishly to buy votes. After all this is really the big boy as the party which comes to power controls lakhs of crores of  tax payer...

Disruption  scares the living daylights out of people as the name itself conjures up images of destruction and mayhem. And this word coined especially for the use of  start-ups  all over the world and them being encouraged to state what they are or intend to ‘disrupt’ as it were the prerequisite for funding, this word promises a  world a pain . Now the question begs, is disruption really required or is it a euphemism for something more  sinister . Let’s examine….. Firstly, let me tell you … LIFE ISN’T FAIR. So with that … business is business. So one has to live with this. We shall exclusively focus on India’s stint with ‘Disruption’ and 45 years ago, a  new kid on the block , Reliance, created all kinds of disruption to shake up leaders like Bombay Dyeing and several others to becoming a  giant in business . Those days, people did not term it disruption nor was the business practices which caused disruption looked upon as a fair business practice....

Traditionally , Indians have always favoured holding on to some cash and gold as a rainy day investment. Be it for a medical emergency or a wedding in the family. Demonetisation appears to be an experiment to change the habits Indians have cultivated from time immemorial. This experiment along with higher tariffs to decrease gold imports (essentially to reign in the out of control Current Account Deficit) and the final nail in the coffin being the clamping of banks where a majority of lending was to the property sector, be it housing loans, building loans or land loans, has pushed the economy to a corner with few investment options clearly directed by the government. Gold after oil is the second largest imported item and the real estate sector was erstwhile the largest employer (both direct and indirect) in the country and both these being the go-to investment products earlier. With the traditional investment products, gold and property both solid and tangible assets were being mad...