EcoPolitical

There is a not well understood competitive dynamic called ‘counter-positioning’, primarily because it is so contrarian that most people do not think of it as a natural course. It involves doing something that is very far away/ and often opposite of the strategies that have delivered incredible success to the incumbents. As such, this strategy is seen in action most often when the incumbents appear invincible by conventional metrics. How many of us remember someone or the other saying “BJP will never, ever win a majority!”. To create something new is beset with several challenges, and often happens when circumstances are in a flux, technological change, changing demographics, changing aspirations, changing geopolitics etc. To leverage this and successfully counter-position, requires three characteristics: 1) An upstart (Modi), who develops a superior, heterodox model (development + Hindutva)  2) The model has the ability to challenge entrenched players (Congress+, i.e., appeasement,

The Sun runs on hydrogen (H2), so why can’t Earth (with electrolysis)? Hydrogen is one of the cleanest, 0 carbon fuels on burning, and has 140x more energy storage capacity than a lithium iron battery, per some estimates. Current global carbon emissions are over 40-45 billion tons per annum, over 50% of which come from three regions: USA, China, and EU. These three have committed to becoming net zero CO2 by 2050-2060, a feat that would be nigh impossible without exploiting the H2 opportunity. Current hydrogen production is 70 million tons per annum (MTPA), and is expected to rise to 545-560 MTPA by 2050. Almost all of current H2 is produced using fossil fuels and is referred to as grey H2 (if there is no carbon capture) or blue H2 (if there is carbon capture). By 2050 most of it will be green H2, i.e., derived using renewable power sources like solar/ wind etc. Unlike current H2 usage which is mostly in the chemicals space, it is likely to become a clean fuel source used by Power &

   'If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.' - Quote sometimes attributed to Theodore Roosevelt Semiconductors are the unsung heroes of today’s tech revolution. Whether it is end products such as smartphones, tablets, phablets, PCs, Macs, etc., or applications such as search engines, operating systems,the workhorse remains the semiconductor. Semiconductors are the heart of civilian and military applications alike, and thus in my view a key (albeit relatively ignored) strategic resource. See below chart for estimated use mix per Gartner, Deloitte: For a product that is so embedded in our day-to-day life, and likewise critical to military applications, including high performance computing, AI, and IoT, the entire semiconductor ecosystem is rather tightly controlled by a small group of companies.  For example, only two companies manufacture the most advanced semiconductors at scale: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and Samsung.

It is not far fetched to believe that films reflect the 'mood' of the nation. In this post I attempt to analyse the Indian film landscape and break it down into bite sized pieces. To represent Indian films, I have used the Bollywood as the narrow definition. While this is unfair to thriving film industries in every state I have done so only for the convenience, and not out of disrespect. Bollywood also offers the additional benefit that Hindi films are consumed without subtitles in large parts of India where Hindi is not the primary language.  To represent the 'mood' I have taken the top netting film of each year since 1940 (80 years). One can safely assume that the earnings of each film is representative of its acceptance across the country. There has been a stupendous growth in how much the top film each year makes. If one were to make an index of the earnings of the top grossing films with 100 as the value in 1940, the value in 2019 of such an hypothetical

As the world faces the brunt of the Chinese Coronavirus caused Covid19 disease there are calls for indiscriminate testing to be carried out by each country to detect cases. While I am not a epidemiologist or statistician, I ventured an amateur look into whether indiscriminate testing makes sense. I had carried out these workings based on data of about 10 days back but believe that it may still hold true. Readers are of course encouraged to update the data and even the methodology to share newer insights into this question. I plotted data for 55 countries on two parameters: a) Number of tests carried out b) Number of cases detected and plotted the result on a regression line below: The number of interest in the above chart is the R2 (aka R-squared) data point. R2 in simple terms tells us what % of the data is explained by the regression equation (y=0.1623x+377.4). Basically if rise in tests had a strong relation to the number of cases being detected, the

With the Indian markets having a spectacular meltdown over the last few days (Nifty down 13% over the past five days), there are calls on the government to intervene. This intervention is sought in the form of either the government shutting down the stock markets, or at least banning short selling. Neither proposal finds favour with this author due to the inherent weakness of this approach. Market is simply a mechanism of price discovery. It is well known that it acts as a voting machine in the near term, and a weighing machine in the long term. Greed & fear responses of investors find expression in near term stock price movements. The risks of investing in equity is also well known to its participants. As such, shutting down the market due to adverse price conditions, or banning short selling run actually contra to the ethos of investing. While it is true that shutting down the market will freeze stock prices at a higher level, this would not be price discovery. Also, wh