Arvind's Newsletter

1.India has reclaimed its spot as the world’s fifth largest stock market after losing that status to France in January.

India lost its fifth position after the US-based Hindenburg Research in January, accused the country’s ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group of “brazen stock manipulation” and “accounting fraud,” Bloomberg reported(May 29). The allegations triggered a sell-off in Adani stocks, dragging the indices sharply lower.However, as of May 26, stock market capitalisation stood at $3.3 trillion in India, driven by foreign fund inflows into Indian shares—and a sharp recovery in Adani stocks.

Foreign investors bought shares worth $4.5 billion in May so far, a little more than a two-fold increase from last month, according to India’s National Securities Depository. Adani’s listed entities added around $15 billion to their market value last week, recovering some of their post-Hindenburg losses.

2.Raghuram Rajan Says Mobile Phone Makers Are Only Assembling In India, according to report in BQ Prime.

The surge in India's mobile phone exports masks the full picture, according to former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan.

The sharp rise in exports has been accompanied by imports of inputs that go into making these devices, Rajan said in a LinkedIn post. "...and when we correct for that, it is very hard to maintain that net exports have gone up".

In FY18, mobile phone imports amounted to about $3.6 billion, while exports stood at $334 million. By FY23, inbound shipments in the category fell to $1.6 billion, while exports rose to $11 billion, resulting in net exports of $9.8 billion, according to an analysis by Rahul Chauhan, Rohit Lamba, and Raghuram Rajan.

But the rise in mobile phone exports coincided with higher imports of inputs including semiconductors, printed circuit boards, displays, cameras and batteries, the research note based on the analysis said.

The combined inbound shipments of these inputs reached $32.4 billion in FY23, making India a net importer of components worth $21.3 billion after adjusting for assembled phone exports worth $11 billion, according to Rajan.

The most likely explanation is that rather than importing finished phones as earlier, companies imported knocked-down kits because of government tariffs and production-linked incentives to assemble phones in India, a share of which was then exported, the note said.

The note concludes that "it is entirely possible", that India has "become more dependent on imports during the PLI scheme" for mobile phones.

It turns out that very little value is added, apart from assembly in India, though manufacturers claim they intend to do more in the future, according to the research.

A key question is whether the subsidy India pays on the finished mobile phone, along with state subsidies, actually outweighs the value added, they said. "This is something the government should look into before extending the scheme widely."

Read more at: https://www.bqprime.com/business/raghuram-rajan-says-mobile-phone-makers-are-only-assembling-in-india

3.A New York lawyer admitted to using ChatGPT for legal research, but only after he was found out thanks to mistakes the artificial-intelligence chatbot introduced. 
(We all must have noticed that ChatGPT has a tendency to make up stuff it does not know. So beware and do your due diligence on the results or you may end up with soup like this lawyer.)
Steven Schwartz wrote a legal brief for a client suing an airline for personal injury, citing several prior cases that appeared to favour the plaintiff’s argument. But Schwartz used ChatGPT for legal research, and the chatbot — which offers warnings that the content it produces may “contain inaccurate information” — delivered examples that did not exist, and quotes that had never been uttered. "Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations," the judge in the case said.

4.Saudi Reforms : The Saudi palace, under the leadership of 37-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely referred to as MBS, has embarked on a bold program of social and economic reform, writes Armin Rosen for the Tablet magazine. Long Read.

“MBS is gambling that the fruits of openness and modernity can be reaped on Saudi terms, and that prosperity, stability, and a recharged, secularised sense of national purpose won’t shatter existing norms or generate dangerous civic appetites. The reforms have created a rising class of ambitious executives, entrepreneurs, and artists, and for now almost everyone seems to accept the idea of a national horizon defined by the wisdom and vision of a single family, and perhaps even a single man. His program has created an atmosphere muggy with floating potential, as the palace carries out an uncertain experiment on tens of millions of people. MBS’s subjects could be the engine and the beneficiaries of the only successful 21st-century governance project in any populous Middle Eastern state—or they could mark the disastrous limits of utopia declared from on high.”

5.When do humans become conscious — in the womb or after birth?

There is little consensus about when consciousness begins. Some endorse a "late onset" (well after birth), while others endorse an "early onset" (at or prior to birth).
One line of research suggests that 35-week-old fetuses possess some level of consciousness.
Whenever consciousness first emerges, it surely does so in a form that is radically unlike that with which adults are familiar. The bigger question might be: When does distinctively human consciousness begin?