Arvind's Newsletter

1.How overt religiosity became cool in India: The Economist

The Maha Kumbh Mela shows how tradition has become trendy

“Next month I’m planning to spend a couple of weeks in London.” It is commonplace for such declarations to be made in Delhi’s posh clubs and cafés. Banyan, however, overheard this plan on a packed flight from Delhi to Prayagraj. His fellow passengers, adorned with designer jewellery and carrying Louis Vuitton bags, were heading to the city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for the Maha Kumbh Mela, a massive Hindu gathering (before, presumably, travelling to London).

The festival marks an auspicious alignment of the planets every 12 years, during which taking a dip at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers is believed to wash away one’s sins. The prospect of salvation has always drawn millions of pilgrims from across India. But the latest edition of the Maha Kumbh, which came to a close on February 26th, captured the country’s imagination in new and interesting ways.

The journey, which has traditionally been perceived as the preserve of India’s poor, is now embraced by elites. Where once they may have balked at dipping in polluted waters (Indian regulators said there was faecal matter in it) and jostling alongside millions (a stampede on January 29th claimed dozens of lives), this time they delighted in it. Actors, cricketers and business honchos all took the plunge. Tour operators offered luxury packages, promising a “seamless fusion of opulence and cultural richness”. Faith has never been so fashionable.

Some of the zeitgeist reflects enduring belief mixing with increasing wealth. According to one survey, around 80% of Indians consider religion an important part of their daily lives—a share that has hardly wavered even as the country has modernised. Indeed economic growth has opened up new ways for Indians to practise their faith.

Religious travel, for instance, has surged in recent years, propelled by a boom in civil aviation. All India’s big airlines laid out special daily flights for the Maha Kumbh. Similarly, rising car ownership allowed thousands to drive to Prayagraj (and clog up its roads). On his boat to the confluence, Banyan met a family of eight who had driven 1,200km in an SUV from the western city of Surat to take part in the mela.

But while growth has helped make Hindu celebrations grander, other factors have made them aspirational. The confluence in Prayagraj had the air of both temple and theme park. Some devotees performed the dip in solemn reverence, a few splashed about in revelry, and, inevitably, nearly everyone recorded the moment on their phones. The family from Surat said they felt compelled to make the pilgrimage after seeing images on social media.

The ultimate influencers, though, are India’s political leaders. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has assumed the role of Hinduism’s custodian. Promoting Hindu causes is a public-policy priority. Living in this era, many Indians believe that piety is no longer merely a sign of faith, but a symbol of patriotism and progress. In 2021 nearly two-thirds of Hindus, who make up around 80% of the population, said they believed that being truly Indian means being Hindu, according to a survey by Pew Research Centre, an international pollster.

For a party that champions Hindu nationalism, the Maha Kumbh Mela was the perfect stage to flex muscle. Politicians have always used the festival to demonstrate their Hindu credentials to voters, but this time the BJP co-opted the event. Throughout Prayagraj, and indeed India, posters extolling the virtues of the mela featured towering images of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and Yogi Adityanath, the monk-turned-leader of Uttar Pradesh.

The government fuelled the hype by boasting of an estimated attendance of 400m; that projection has since been bumped up to 700m, implying implausibly that half of all Indians made the pilgrimage. In other Kumbh-related matters, however, counting has remained more conservative. Officials said 30 people had died in the stampede last month; other sources suggest the real number was much higher. The cordoning-off of huge areas for elites did not help with managing the crowds.

Despite the tragedy, the BJP is trumpeting the event as a triumph. And by one measure it will be. After taking the dip, Banyan’s fellow boat-riders were basking in positive vibes. Credit for some of that joy, they said, must go to Mr Modi and Yogi for organising such a wonderful event. For the BJP that, perhaps, is what salvation looks like.

2.Top European Commission leaders headed to India in a bid to strengthen trade ties, in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s punitive approach of ramping up tariffs worldwide. 

Brussels is aiming to revive dormant free-trade negotiations, though New Delhi is expected to voice concerns about an EU carbon import tariff. Their talks come a day after Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on goods from the EU, the latest antagonistic remarks to spur debate within the bloc over whether the White House’s “real goal is to destroy” the EU, The New York Times reported. “We’re ready to partner,” a bloc spokesman said, “if you play by the rules.”

3.India's top 4 business families anchor for a fifth of CSR contributions

India’s top four business families — Tatas, Ambanis, Adanis, and the Birlas — accounted for 20 per cent of the total corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributions made by family-owned or family-run companies, according to the data for 2023-24 (FY24). These companies contributed an average of Rs 800 crore to Rs 1,000 crore per family group (ranging from  Rs 200 crore to Rs 1,500 crore) to CSR, according to the latest India Philanthropy Report 2025 by Bain & Company in collaboration with Dasra, released on Wednesday. 

The report also brings into focus the outsized role of the top 2 per cent of business families (who run around 350 firms), as they accounted for over 50-55 per cent of the total CSR contributions made by family-owned or family-run businesses.

4.More than 1 billion people are now watching podcasts on YouTube every month

YouTube isn’t a podcast app, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the number one place people who want to consume online radio shows now turn to. According to the company, a staggering 1 billion people are tuning into podcasts every month on YouTube. That’s not just more than either Apple or Spotify can claim — it utterly lays them to waste.

In 2023, Spotify reported it had 100 million regular podcast listeners, and touted that half a billion people had listened to a podcast on its platform since 2019 when it started its push into the world of online radio shows. Apple tends to come out behind Spotify in third-party measurements. If a full eighth of the world’s population uses YouTube for podcasts, it seems like that’s probably where the action is.

5.Ukraine Minerals Deal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to visit the White House as early as tomorrow to finalize and sign an economic deal that grants the US access to revenues from Ukraine's natural resources while helping Ukraine rebuild its war-torn economy.

Ukraine is home to roughly 5% of the world's critical raw materials—which include about 17 elements essential to a wide range of products, including medical equipment, military applications, and consumer technology such as cellphones and electric vehicles. However, an estimated 40% of Ukraine’s mineral resources are inaccessible because of Russian-occupied regions. Analysts say the US seeks to reduce its dependence on China, the world's largest producer of rare earth minerals, which controls roughly 75% of the global supply.

The preliminary agreement between the US and Ukraine currently does not include explicit security guarantees for Ukraine, which Kyiv has sought in negotiations. The deal follows earlier drafts that were rejected due to insufficient security guarantees and a US demand for $500B in mineral profits.

6.Can Friedrich Merz be the leader Germany – and Europe – needs?

As expected, Friedrich Merz is set to become the next German chancellor after his conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) won one of the tightest and highest-turnout elections in the country’s postwar history.

But the 28.5% earned by Merz’s CDU/CSU was the party’s second-lowest tally ever – hardly a mandate. Not to be outdone, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) came third with just 16.4% – their worst defeat in 137 years. The moderate Greens led by economy minister Robert Habeck lost ground, too, scoring a disappointing 12.5%.

By contrast, extremist parties had a great night on Sunday. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second place, doubling its vote share since the 2021 elections to 20.8% on the back of large gains with previous nonvoters, in the poorest districts, and across eastern Germany. The former communist Left Party (Die Linke), meanwhile, secured 8.8% of the vote by mobilizing younger women.

7.The world’s Super-Billionaires: Wall Street Journal

"As the ranks of global billionaires have swelled dramatically in recent years, a new category of ultrarich has emerged—the superbillionaire. Musk is one of just 24 people worldwide who qualify for that distinction, which is defined as individuals worth $50 billion or more."

"The concentration of wealth among a small number of tech entrepreneurs gives these individuals unprecedented influence over policy, media, and society. Musk controls SpaceX, Tesla, and X, influencing everything from space exploration to online discourse, as well as more recently having the ear of President Trump. Bezos owns the Washington Post. Zuckerberg heads Instagram, Facebook and Threads, platforms used by billions. These super-billionaires operate in a largely deregulated digital landscape where oversight is limited." 

There two Indians in this list- Mukesh Ambani (#17 at $90.6bn) and Gautam Adani (#21 at $60.6 bn)

8.Amazon’s Alexa has (finally) been given an AI makeover

Amazon has unveiled Alexa+, an overhauled version of its virtual assistant with which it hopes users will share "just about anything".

Rapid recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have caused huge growth in software capable of natural-sounding conversations, with ChatGPT and DeepSeek among the most-downloaded apps worldwide.

Amazon is attempting to tap into this, with Alexa+ telling a launch event in New York it wanted to be "your new best friend in the digital world".

It will be included for free in Prime subscriptions when it launches from March - but to non-members it will cost $19.99 (£16) per month, with the UK price yet to be announced.

Although more than 600 million devices use the voice assistant, it has cost the company tens of billions of dollars, and has fallen behind modern AI chatbots in what it can do. 

9.A new generation of AIs reviewed: Claude 3.7 and Grok 3; Ethan Mollick in his blog

“I have been experimenting with the first of a new generation AI models, Claude 3.7 and Grok 3, for the last few days. Grok 3 is the first model that we know trained with an order of magnitude more computing power of GPT-4, and Claude includes new coding and reasoning capabilities, so they are not just interesting in their own right but also tell us something important about where AI is going.

Before we get there, a quick review: this new generation of AIs is smarter and the jump in capabilities is striking, particularly in how these models handle complex tasks, math and code. These models often give me the same feeling I had when using ChatGPT-4 for the first time, where I am equally impressed and a little unnerved by what it can do. Take Claude's native coding ability, I can now get working programs through natural conversation or documents, no programming skill needed.

For example, giving Claude a proposal for a new AI educational tool and engaging in conversation where it was asked to “display the proposed system architecture in 3D, make it interactive,” resulted in this interactive visualization of the core design in our paper, with no errors. You can try it yourself here, and edit or change it by asking the AI. The graphics, while neat, are not the impressive part. Instead, it was that Claude decided to turn this into a step-by-step demo to explain the concepts, which wasn’t something that it was asked to do. This anticipation of needs and consideration of new angles of approach is something new in AI.”

10.BP to slash renewables spending in pivot back to oil and gas (yet again): Financial Times

BP has returned to its oil and gas roots, pledging to slash spending on renewable energy as it tries to catch up with rivals, end years of lacklustre shareholder returns and fend off pressure from activist investor Elliott Management.

The changes announced by chief executive Murray Auchincloss killed off a radical five-year-old plan by the oil major to pivot to greener projects. That strategy had established BP as a leader in the energy transition but ultimately failed to win shareholder support.

In what Auchincloss described as a “fundamental reset of BP’s strategy”, the FTSE 100 company abandoned its targets to cut fossil fuel production and develop 50 gigawatts of renewable power.

Under Auchincloss’s plan, it will increase oil and gas spending by a fifth to $10bn a year and cut spending on renewables by 70 per cent. It also plans to raise at least $20bn by 2027 through the sale of assets, potentially including its lubricants arm Castrol and a share of its solar business Lightsource.

11.China’s record-breaking blockbuster film buoyed by patriotic drive

A new Chinese animated film has broken multiple box office records, thanks in part to a growing patriotic fervour as companies across the country subsidise tickets and organise group trips to the cinema to boost sales.

Ne Zha 2, which is based loosely on a 16th century tale of a young outcast endowed with magical, dragon-slaying powers, has raked in more than Rmb$12.4bn ($1.7bn) since its release late last month, according to Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan, making it the world’s highest grossing animated film ever and cracking the all-time global top-10 list.

The film has also sparked an outpouring of nationalist pride from Chinese companies. In eastern Shandong province, snacks maker Weilong Food said it had paused operations to take about 900 of its staff to the cinema. Videos posted by the company on short video platform Douyin showed a line of buses leaving the factory and a banner reading “Global box office number one; Go go go!”