Arvind's Newsletter

1.New Delhi downgraded its ties with Islamabad after gunmen killed 26 people at a resort in Indian-held Kashmir

In one of its first responses to the terror attack at Pahalgam, Kashmir, the govt has decided to suspend the decades old Indus Waters Treaty for an indefinite period until Pakistan stops supporting cross-border terrorism. The Cabinet Committee on Security that met in Delhi also decided to close the Attari-Wagah Integrated Check post, which will lead to disruption in trade and travel. All Pakistani nationals currently in the country have been asked to leave within 48 hours while Defence, Military, Naval, and Air Advisors from the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi have also been expelled. India will also reduce its diplomatic staff in Pakistan from 55 to 30 by May 1.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has closed its airspace to India’s airlines, said it would suspend a 1972 peace treaty with its larger neighbour, and warned that any diversion of shared river waters would be “considered an act of war”.

2.India’s private sector output is off to a good start this financial year.

HSBC’s flash India Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global, showed a rise to 60.0, up from a revised 59.5 in March, the fastest growth seen in the sector in eight months. 

Meanwhile, the HSBC Flash India Manufacturing PMI showed the strongest improvement in a year at 58.4 in April, up from 58.1 in March. Pranjul Bhandari, chief India economist at HSBC, said this growth was triggered by new export orders due to the 90-day tariff pause. “As a result, output and employment grew, for both manufacturers and service providers,” Bhandari said.

3.Mumbai-Goa Highway Completion Date: Just a 6-hour drive? No toll booths, tech-driven tolling on NH 66

In a major development for India’s road infrastructure, Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has revealed that the highly anticipated Mumbai-Goa Highway will be operational by June 2025, following the resolution of several hurdles, including land compensation issues and legal disputes. Once open, the new highway promises to reduce travel time between Mumbai and Goa to just six hours, compared to the current 12-hour journey.

4.India under tariff pressure to give Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart full market access

India has been rushing to crack its bilateral trade deal with the US amid global trade tensions. And one of the demands of the Donald Trump-led US administration is reportedly to reduce restrictions on e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart, giving them full market access in India. According to The Financial Times,  the Trump administration is closely coordinating with Amazon and Walmart, as the US and India work out the details of the agreement. Right now, these companies cannot produce and sell goods directly to consumers, unlike their Indian counterparts. 

5.A Google Gemini model now has a “dial” to adjust how much it reasons

Google DeepMind’s latest update to a top Gemini AI model includes a dial to control how much the system “thinks” through a response. The new feature is ostensibly designed to save money for developers, but it also concedes a problem: Reasoning models, the tech world’s new obsession, are prone to overthinking, burning money and energy in the process. Read on.

Google’s Gemini AI chatbot last fall was lagging rival services run by OpenAI and Meta Platforms but it was ahead of services from Microsoft, Anthropic and Perplexity, according to data shown in court on Wednesday and reported by The Information.

Usage has grown dramatically in the past six months although Gemini continues to lag ChatGPT. As of last month, Gemini worldwide was seeing 35 million daily active users and 350 million monthly active users, according to internal Google analysis. Google analysts estimated that ChatGPT was seeing 160 million daily active users and 600 million monthly active users, according to the slide. In October of last year, Gemini was seeing about 9 million DAUs compared with more than 90 million estimated for ChatGPT.

The slide was shown on the third day of a hearing in a Washington D.C. courtroom considering how Google should be overhauled to remedy its illegal search monopoly. The Justice Department is arguing that Google be constrained from extending its dominance of search into the nascent field of artificial intelligence. The slide was shown during testimony by Sissie Hsiao, a senior Google executive who most recently ran the group responsible for the Gemini chatbot.

6.YouTube Turns 20

YouTube yesterday celebrated the 20th anniversary of its first-ever video: a grainy 19-second clip of cofounder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.

Since 2005, YouTube—bought by Google for $1.65B in 2006—has grown from a simple video-sharing site into a media powerhouse influencing culture and entertainment, with more than 20 billion videos uploaded. YouTube now leads America's TV viewing time, surpassing networks like Paramount, Fox, and Disney. Last year, YouTube was the second-largest media company by revenue ($54.2B) behind Disney and is expected to take the top spot this year. 

YouTube propelled the careers of stars like Justin Bieber, popularized trends like ASMR and unboxing videos, and broke viewership records with music videos like Psy’s “Gangnam Style” (the first to reach 1 billion and 2 billion views) and Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” (the first to hit every billion-view milestone from 3 billion to 8 billion).

YouTube also announced new features, including a personalised radio for Premium and Music users and a TV viewing upgrade. 

7.Trump squeezes Zelenskyy on peace deal as US leaders skip talks in Europe

President Donald Trump lashed out at Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to accept a deal, and said Kyiv’s refusal to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “very harmful” to negotiations, while Vice President JD Vance said the US would “walk away” from the talks unless a deal was reached. Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has ruled out such concessions, and complained that even as he has called for a ceasefire, Moscow has hammered Ukrainian cities. 

Trump echoed Vance on social media. Zelensky “can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country,” Trump said.

This is now a familiar pattern in the American-led peace process: The administration frames its terms as demands for Russia and Ukraine, but only Ukraine has to give up something meaningful.

8.Former EY and PwC bosses launch UK boutique targeting Big Four clients: Financial Times

The former UK head of EY and PwC’s former chief operating officer are launching a rival accounting and consulting firm with backing from private equity, vowing to peel off British clients and partners from the Big Four.

The new venture, Unity Advisory, has quietly begun recruiting for a launch expected by June, under the chairmanship of Steve Varley, who ran EY for nine years until 2020. The boutique advisory firm will be backed by as much as $300mn from Warburg Pincus, the private equity group. Unity’s chief executive will be Marissa Thomas, who was one of the most senior female UK executives at PwC until last year, when she was passed over for the role of senior partner. She left the firm in February.

The pair are pitching their new venture as an alternative to the Big Four that can offer tax and accounting services, technology consulting and mergers and acquisition advice to chief financial officers in the UK, with none of the conflict of interest worries that plague their former firms. Unity will not have an audit business, which Big Four partners often complain triggers heavy regulatory scrutiny and can tie them up with complicated compliance procedures.

“CFOs are open to a new proposition,” Varley told the Financial Times. “The Big Four are a classy bunch of service providers, but people are looking for a proposition that is super client-centric, has really low administrative cost, is AI-led rather than based on legacy infrastructure and, crucially, has no conflicts.”

Warburg Pincus’s backing of up to $300mn to build out the firm underscores the growing influence of financial investors in a professional services sector that used to be dominated by partner-owned business models.

9.‘It’s a new world’: the analysts using AI to psychologically profile elite players: The Guardian

“The players didn’t show enough fight.” Listen to any pundit’s post-match reaction and you will hear variations of that soundbite. But can you analyse an athlete’s state of mind, based on their on-pitch body language?

In an era when football is increasingly leaning on data to demonstrate physical attributes, statistics offering an accurate indication of a player’s psychological qualities, such as emotional control and leadership, are harder to come by. But Premier League clubs are using a technique intended to help in that regard with selection and recruitment.

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