We, the People of India

When the BJP took over in Karnataka in 2019, after 6 years of CONgress rule, there were major floods & a huge deficit From that situation, despite COVID, they brought us back to a surplus & we voted them out Now, 3 years later, we have CONgis, & a huge deficit again! 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️

#WATCH | Delhi | On Uniform Civil Code, Former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice Sanjay Karol says, "If you want to see secularism and Article 44 in practice, you must visit Bihar, where people from different communities and religions come together to worship during Chhath Puja... When it comes to Article 44, my view, it is the need of the hour..."

The entire Indian system is geared towards *prevention*. *Prevent* all the bad things from happening, because recourse to cure is so poor. Why is there no cure? Courts and police are total failures - for instance, if somebody commits a financial fraud, it can take decades to prosecute them. Hence prevent the fraud - throw multiple OTPs at the user for a Rs 5000 fund transfer. Banks make you do KYC like fanatics because they are trying to *prevent* the last bad actor from getting away - if millions are to be tortured for it, so be it. This prevention-first mindset throws sand in the wheels for everything. It makes life hell for consumers and small businesses. Just imagine what the accumulated cost is of preventing all the bad things from happening - surely it shaves off many basis points from GDP growth when you stack up all of it. And yet the cheats, criminals, troublemakers and frauds all find ways to do what they do anyway. Those who are just trying to run their business and get through life are burdened with this mountain of compliance and paperwork. None of this moves babus and ministers - they live in a parallel reality where somebody else works (at taxpayer expense of course) to remove these frictions from their existence. Then they blithely bark at poor consumers and business operators: “ek form hi to hai, bhar do”. But of course it is never one form - every leech in the system demands a form and a submission. Stacked up, it goes into hundreds of pages of documents and dozens of tasks. The associated parasite lobby of lawyers, consultants, company secretaries and chartered accountants makes merry. They lobby the government for more regulations and offer compliance services to hapless people. In exchange, they place the government elite’s nepo kids in jobs. This parasite gang has a field day because more documents means more business for them. They are joined by economists and intellectuals, who want to join the leeching and bloodsucking bacchanalia. This intellectual cabal wants to snag a coveted role in the “world’s best” prize winner central bank or other sarkaari gig. Productivity dies in India, businesses slow down and overall it is a slow-motion economic disaster. In isolation we feel happy to have 6-7% economic growth. Decades go on then somebody says - oh, how did Singapore, Vietnam and China do so well? We look at the delta and feel awkward. We justify it saying “we have democracy”. The super-cabal didn’t just prevent accidents or disasters like they claimed - they killed off and prevented growth and progress with it. Mega accidents and disasters happened anyway. Enjoy the democracy. Praise the cockroaches and jholachhaps. Celebrate the thugs, parasites, leeches and bureaucrat-goons all around you. Mera Bharat Mahaan!

I have a good story on Tryptomer. If you are curious about how doctors make decisions and how it can affect you, read on. In the late 1990s, I had a bout of malaria that would not respond to standard treatments. It was some form of quinine-resistant strain. Doctors put me on a high dosage of mefloquine. Malaria went away but I got hit with something inexplicable at that time. Once I got off mefloquine, I developed severe symptoms. Dizziness. Tinnitus. Migraines. Neck pain. Balance issues. And the worst of all: panic attacks. I had always thought of myself as a stable person. These attacks came out of nowhere. No trigger. No warning. No understanding. I did not even have the tight words to describe. I went to emergency once believing that I was having a heart attack. This was the late 90s. There was not a lot of information online. I went to doctor after doctor (about 10) Every single one dismissed the mefloquine connection. This is something else. Malaria does not cause this. Tell me about your job, you are probably stressed. The migraines and neck pain were getting unbearable. A neurologist prescribed Tryptomer without telling me what it was. I started taking it. Within days, I was sleeping constantly. Groggy all the time. But my mood was strangely elevated. I was feeling inexplicably happy while being unable to function properly. When I went back, the doctor casually mentioned it was an antidepressant that could double as a pain reliever at low dosages. I could not tolerate it. And weaning off took weeks. And I kept going from one doctor to the next, becoming a hypochondriac in the process, which only made the dismissals worse. A patient who has seen 10 doctors is no longer a patient. He is a “difficult case.” Finally, a doctor at Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai saw the connection. He put me on a treatment plan that helped to some extent. Several years later, out of curiosity, I looked up mefloquine again. The FDA had by then issued a black box warning for it. The highest level of warning FDA gives. It listed side effects including panic attacks, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, and suicidal thoughts. This gave me useful insights about how doctors make decisions. As part of my job, I have interviewed hundreds of doctors and it checks out. Doctors are trained to trust published studies over patient stories. This is generally a good thing. You do not want a doctor who changes treatment based on every patient story. Evidence-based medicine exists for a reason. But there is a catch. When the studies have not caught up to reality, or when a doctor has not caught up to the studies, the patient’s lived experience gets dismissed as paranoia. Many doctors are rather poor at statistics. They may not understand relative risk, base rates, or the difference between absence of evidence and evidence of absence. “No published study links mefloquine to panic attacks” became “mefloquine does not cause panic attacks” in the view of my doctors. You have to listen to your body but a story without data or evidence will be disimissed. This is where AI can help. Not as a replacement for your doctor. But as an advocate that gives you data and language I bet many doctors don't see the mefloquine connection even today. The doctor remains essential. AI cannot examine you. It cannot feel your neck. It cannot clinically correlate your blood work. But it surely can help you have a more meaningful conversation with your doctor.

#WATCH | Delhi: On PM Modi's tweet, Congress leader Supriya Shrinate says, "There are two points. PM Modi has acknowledged that elections conducted via ballot are credible, while there is public skepticism regarding EVMs. As the Prime Minister, it is your responsibility to address and resolve this skepticism and conduct elections using ballots. Second, why did the BJP lose in Varanasi? If a Lok Sabha election were to be held using ballots, you could end up losing Varanasi entirely... By acknowledging that ballots are more credible, Prime Minister Modi is effectively admitting that there is an issue with EVMs... Explain how you lost Varanasi when ballots were used..."

LTCG removal for listed equities alone for all investors including Indian residents will be a big blow for domestic venture capital and private equity as well as other real economy assets like InvITs, REITs and real estate: once again, investors will rationally decide not to invest in venture funds, startups and other real assets. They will prefer financial assets which have zero tax. Please think rationally - do you want people to invest in tomorrow’s Zomato, Ather Energy, Paytm and others (including many startups that won’t be home runs, but will create many jobs and drive capital investment), or do you want people to invest with zero tax into Britannia Industries, Tata Power, Reliance and other established companies. This distorted taxation was especially a challenge for strategic, deep tech sectors where foreign investors anyways don’t invest (foreign pensions, endowments and others are usually barred from investing in defence tech and critical tech). Don’t crib tomorrow then, why doesn’t India have venture capital investing in hard tech or why don’t Indian startups innovate more. A few years of volatility and flat returns has entire jamaat of stock market “investors” crying buckets. Grow up, if you can’t stomach this level of turbulence, stick to bank fixed deposits.

मनमोहन किशन कौल सुप्रीम कोर्ट में वकील थे। उनके एक बेटे नीरज किशन कौल हाई कोर्ट के जज बने और दूसरे बेटे संजय किशन कौल भी। बाद में संजय किशन कौल सुप्रीम कोर्ट के भी जज बने। ऐसा कोलेजियम सिस्टम के तहत ही हो सकता है।

NDA MAY CHANGE LTCG TAX RULES SOON. If NDA wants foreign capital it knows that the LTCG TAX is a price it can no longer AFFORD. Decision on LTCG TAX RULES possible in the next few weeks. Money Control reports that currently, 12.5% tax applies on amounts over ₹1.25 lakh. Government has held several meetings on current LTCG rules and their impact. By doing so NDA trying to make Indian markets attractive for FPIs. There is NO LTCG tax on selling shares in US, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE On 13 Oct, Finance Minister had said she would hear views on removing LTCG

#BREAKING on Bar & Bench Election Commission of India files counter affidavit in Supreme Court on plea against CEC's functioning; says petition built entirely on a single news report What ECI says: 🔹 Affidavit approved unanimously by all three members: the CEC and both Election Commissioners 🔹 All three SIR orders (June 2025, October 2025, May 2026) were unanimous decisions of the Commission 🔹 Notes, queries or suggestions by the CEC or ECs while a file moves are not decisions of the Commission 🔹 Files go to one EC, then the other EC, then the CEC. In urgent cases, approval is taken electronically and recorded on file later 🔹 Any officer issuing orders beyond delegated powers will face action 🔹 July 28 work allocation order was issued by an Additional Secretary on deputation. Both ECs wrote to the Cabinet Secretary the next day. The order was never implemented after the ECs' joint direction of July 30 🔹 Form 6 has not been amended. Only the Centre can amend it. The SIR declaration is a separate document 🔹 Admits the online display could be read as an amendment. From October 21, the online application will be split into Form 6 and the declaration, as in the physical form 🔹 Unmapped voters need not attend hearings. BLOs will collect documents from their homes. Hearings only in exceptional cases, preferably online 🔹 ECINet: no name is added or deleted except by order of the ERO. A committee with experts from IIT and IISc has been set up to check compliance 🔹 Goa: of 97 "left out" voters, 88 had already been enrolled, 6 were abroad and 3 held Portuguese passports 🔹 West Bengal appeals against inclusion of voters were filed by officers of the CEO, West Bengal, under Supreme Court orders. "These matters were not brought to the Commission" 🔹 Plea to restrain the CEC is not maintainable. CEC can be removed only like a Supreme Court judge 🔹 Commission never released or authorised the release of any internal note or file to the media 🔹 Repeated challenges to EVMs already rejected by the Supreme Court 🔹 Short reply filed due to Dussehra vacation. ECI seeks liberty to file a detailed para-wise response #ElectionCommission #SupremeCourt #SIR