- Arvind's Newsletter
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- Arvind's Newsletter
1.IndiGo to launch first commercial flights from Navi Mumbai airport: Business Standard
IndiGo is set to become the first airline to commence commercial operations from the much-anticipated Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), developed by Adani Airport Holdings Ltd (AAHL).
The airline will start with 18 daily departures — totalling 36 Air Traffic Movements (ATMs) — to over 15 cities from the first day of operations.
IndiGo plans to ramp up services in phases. By November 2025, it will operate 79 daily departures (158 ATMs), including 14 international flights. This is expected to grow to over 100 daily departures (200 ATMs) by March 2026. By November 2026, IndiGo aims to operate 140 daily departures (280 ATMs), including 30 international routes.
2.Technology workforce in Bengaluru crosses one-million mark; IT city among 12 global tech hubs: Economic Times
Bengaluru has earned a coveted spot among the world’s top 12 tech powerhouse cities, alongside San Francisco, New York, Shanghai and London, according to real estate services firm CBRE’s 2025 Global Tech Talent Guidebook.
With over one million tech workers and a 12% job growth since 2018, it now rivals global hubs in AI development. Bengaluru also led India with $3.3B in VC funding across 140 deals in 2024. CBRE lauds its deep talent pool, cost edge, and innovation-ready ecosystem, while cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur emerge as strong contenders.
3.President Donald Trump’s agenda threatens to dent Indians’ perceptions of the US: Financial Times
Trump’s sweeping budget bill proposes a 3.5% levy on money sent home by visa and green card-holders, posing a particular dilemma for India, the world’s top recipient of remittances — the plurality of which come from the US. “This tax adds to the souring of the American dream for many Indians,” the Financial Times wrote.
Some Indians are reconsidering plans to study in the US amid Trump’s efforts to bar international students from enrolling at Harvard. And his recent comments on the India-Pakistan conflict, along with his lambasting of Apple for increased Indian production, ratcheted up diplomatic and economic tensions between New Delhi and Washington amid trade talks.
4.India Industrial Activity: IIP Growth Slows To 2.7% In April:NDTV Profit
India's industrial output growth slowed to 2.7% in April, as against the revised growth of 3.9% in the preceding month of March, according to the data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. The slowdown comes amid the turbulence caused by the now-revoked reciprocal tariffs announced by the United States last month, which raised a cloud over global exports.
The IIP growth rate of 2.7% has beaten the Bloomberg estimate, which projected India's factory activity to rise by 0.9%. Although, it is the slowest expansion in eight months. Manufacturing activity, which comprises the largest component of the index, expanded on an annual basis by 3.4%, compared to 4% in the preceding month. Within the manufacturing sector, 16 out of 23 industry groups recorded.
5.After UPI & Aadhaar, Centre plans digital IDs for homes, places: Economic Times
After Aadhaar-based digital identification and UPI-based digital payments, the Centre is now set to embark on bringing the 'digital address' into India's Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) matrix.
At the centre of the move is recognising "address information management" as "core public infrastructure" which is currently an unregulated space in India, despite increasing digitalisation.
The aim is two-fold: One is setting up protocols to ensure citizen consent and secure address sharing across public-private sector digital entities; two is to ensure targeted, last-mile service delivery of government services to the correct address and in the quickest way possible.
6.Should Everyone Be Taking Ozempic? Doctors Say More People Could Benefit: Wall Street Journal
“Should Ozempic be added to the water supply? That is the kind of half-joking question that doctors kick around when a new class of drugs begins to help a big chunk of the population. Cardiologists used to quip about spiking water systems with cholesterol-reducing statins because of their ability to prevent heart attacks.
Now, Ozempic and others in the 'GLP-1' category of drugs are approaching that critical mass. They are showing promise for an ever-expanding list of diseases, beyond today’s most common uses of weight loss and treating diabetes. Heart, kidney and liver diseases. Sleep apnea. Arthritis. Alzheimer’s disease. Alcohol addiction. Even aging. Some of these are potential benefits that need further study."
7.McKinsey sheds 10% of staff in 2-year profitability drive: Financial Times
McKinsey has cut more than 10 per cent of its staff in the past 18 months, reversing a big expansion plan that peaked during the coronavirus pandemic when consulting services were in high demand and the firm increased its workforce by almost two-thirds.
The consulting firm has about 40,000 employees, according to people familiar with the matter, compared with more than 45,000 at the end of 2023, when it most recently published a figure.
The job cuts, which are among the largest in McKinsey’s nearly 100-year history, reflect the sharp slowdown in revenue growth across the consulting market. The group has also been hit with $1.6bn in legal settlements from its work for US opioid manufacturers.
8.The age of AI layoffs is already here. The reckoning is just beginning: Quartz
When Simplice Fosso opened Slack and saw a green checkmark next to his team’s name, it wasn’t a win, it was a pink slip. His job in security ops had been handed off to a machine. And Fosso isn’t alone. AI is increasingly responsible for layoffs.
While some layoffs make headlines (Microsoft trimming engineers, Duolingo letting bilingual writers go), many happen in quieter corners: deleted calendar invites, silent Slack threads, and supervisors who don’t even know you’re about to be let go.
From AI threat detection to auto-generated lesson plans and finance workflows, jobs once considered bulletproof are vanishing — not with a bang, but with a system update. Automation, once hailed as the future of productivity, is sweeping through office buildings, turning salaried roles into system prompts.
The result is a new kind of fear, one where even the smartest people in the room are replaceable. The future isn’t just automated. It’s ambiguous.
China’s transformation from a lender to a debt collector threatens to reshape developing-world politics, a new report argued. Though China-watchers have long argued that warnings of what Western officials call Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy” are overblown, the country nevertheless faces growing domestic pressure to recover outstanding loans, rather than restructure them. As a result, debt-servicing costs on China’s 2010s-era infrastructure financing now “far outstrip new loan disbursements,” the Sydney-based Lowy Institute noted. That has major implications for the countries themselves, which are already grappling with persistently high interest rates on foreign-currency borrowing and are struggling to fund domestic priorities, as well as the West, which is “squandering any geopolitical advantage” by retrenching on aid.China’s transformation from a lender to a debt collector threatens to reshape developing-world politics, a new report argued. Though China-watchers have long argued that warnings of what Western officials call Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy” are overblown, the country nevertheless faces growing domestic pressure to recover outstanding loans, rather than restructure them. As a result, debt-servicing costs on China’s 2010s-era infrastructure financing now “far outstrip new loan disbursements,” the Sydney-based Lowy Institute noted. That has major implications for the countries themselves, which are already grappling with persistently high interest rates on foreign-currency borrowing and are struggling to fund domestic priorities, as well as the West, which is “squandering any geopolitical advantage” by retrenching on aid.China’s transformation from a lender to a debt collector threatens to reshape developing-world politics, a new report argued. Though China-watchers have long argued that warnings of what Western officials call Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy” are overblown, the country nevertheless faces growing domestic pressure to recover outstanding loans, rather than restructure them. As a result, debt-servicing costs on China’s 2010s-era infrastructure financing now “far outstrip new loan disbursements,” the Sydney-based Lowy Institute noted. That has major implications for the countries themselves, which are already grappling with persistently high interest rates on foreign-currency borrowing and are struggling to fund domestic priorities, as well as the West, which is “squandering any geopolitical advantage” by retrenching on aid.China’s transformation from a lender to a debt collector threatens to reshape developing-world politics, a new report argued. Though China-watchers have long argued that warnings of what Western officials call Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy” are overblown, the country nevertheless faces growing domestic pressure to recover outstanding loans, rather than restructure them. As a result, debt-servicing costs on China’s 2010s-era infrastructure financing now “far outstrip new loan disbursements,” the Sydney-based Lowy Institute noted. That has major implications for the countries themselves, which are already grappling with persistently high interest rates on foreign-currency borrowing and are struggling to fund domestic priorities, as well as the West, which is “squandering any geopolitical advantage” by retrenching on aid. |
9.China’s transformation from a lender to a debt collector threatens to reshape developing-world politics, a new report argued: Lowy Institute
Though China-watchers have long argued that warnings of what Western officials call Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy” are overblown, the country nevertheless faces growing domestic pressure to recover outstanding loans, rather than restructure them.
As a result, debt-servicing costs on China’s 2010s-era infrastructure financing now “far outstrip new loan disbursements,” the Sydney-based Lowy Institute noted.
That has major implications for the countries themselves, which are already grappling with persistently high interest rates on foreign-currency borrowing and are struggling to fund domestic priorities, as well as the West, which is “squandering any geopolitical advantage” by retrenching on aid.
10.Treating mosquito nets with antimalarials could help prevent the disease, Harvard University researchers argued in Nature
Malaria infections spread by mosquitoes kill around 600,000 people every year: Bed nets are considered an effective preventative, alongside administering vaccines in high-risk areas, although some malaria vaccine programs have likely been endangered by US cuts to foreign aid.
In a paper in Nature, the scientists found that instead of coating nets with insecticide to try and kill the bugs when they land, which is typical, nets can be laced with a pharmaceutical cocktail to kill the malaria parasite itself. That’s crucial, one researcher told the BBC, because the insecticides are “no longer cutting it” as the mosquitoes have become more resistant to them over time.
