1.Israel-Gaza Conflict: The day that stunned Israel

It was a day that stunned Israel. Early on Saturday, as much of the country slept, Hamas militants launched a devastating multi-faceted attack from the Gaza Strip, firing thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities while hundreds of its fighters stormed into the country by land, air and sea.

So deep was the disbelief that the Middle East’s most powerful security apparatus had been caught off-guard that, within hours, Israeli analysts were comparing the events to the biggest intelligence failure in the country’s history: the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Egypt and Syria shocked the Jewish state with a co-ordinated attack from the north and the south.

The scale of the failure was underscored by the casualties: by Sunday at least 600 Israelis had been confirmed dead with more than two thousand injured, and 100 had been taken hostage by Hamas militants. Israeli forces were still fighting Palestinian militants at eight locations in the south of the country.

2.Ashwagandha: the new gold rush for Indian farmers

Ashwgandha is India’s version of ginseng and is said to help the body cope with stress i.e. consuming this root crop can help lower your stress levels and improve your immunity.

The Print’s Sagrika Kissu visited Amlikheda village in Neemuh to write this excellent story. Some excerpts:

“Almost every farmer in Madhya Pradesh’s Amlikheda village has a secure, locked room in the discreet corners of their homes. It’s not the family gold they are guarding. It’s sackfuls of the new global wonder herb ashwagandha….

There was even an ashwagandha heist in Neemuch last year. Twenty quintals of the herb, stored in a trader’s godown, were stolen. Headlines announcing “11 arrested for stealing Ashwagandha worth Rs 12 lakh; 4 accused still on the run,” spread in the villages.”

“In the Neemuch district, a new mini-green revolution has taken root since the Covid-19 pandemic spooked the world and immunity boosters became a buzzword in India and abroad.

Since the pandemic started, about a thousand farmers here have moved away from their traditional soybean and garlic crops and switched to ashwagandha.

From Organic India to Himalaya to Natural Remedies, there is a race between brands to acquire more ashwagandha. Even Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali used the herb procured from Neemuch mandi for Coronil…

3.How India's UPI is now travelling places, in charts

Last month, when delegates of the Group of 20 (G20) nations arrived in New Delhi, they were given the taste of one of India’s most successful creations: the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Travellers could make a one-time payment in their own currency to load a digital wallet, which could be used throughout their visit to pay merchants in rupees using the ubiquitous UPI QR codes. That was just one of the various ways UPI has gone global in recent years: the system is already accessible in some form or the other in close to two dozen countries. Read on in a great report in Mint

4.Food companies are making big bets on snacking, but the rise of Wegovy, Ozempic and similar drugs could pose a threat to future sales growth, reports CNBC News.

For more than a century, frosted cornflakes have been the backbone of Kellogg’s business. That changes Monday, when the company will spin off its stable cereal business in favor of its faster-growing snack unit and rename itself Kellanova.

But food companies’ major bets on snacking come as investors fear the looming danger of Big Pharma’s blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic. Many investors have high hopes for the pharmaceuticals’ future, but their success could mean slower sales for snackfood companies.

At the same time, Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy have taken off, fueled by prescriptions to help patients lose weight. The drugs, known as GLP-1 agonists, suppress appetites by mimicking a gut hormone. Some patients even report developing aversions to foods with higher sugar and fat content — a category that includes many big snack brands.

If so, consumption of baked goods and salty snacks could fall 3% — or even more if the new eating habits of the people using the treatments extend to their broader households and friends, according to Morgan Stanley’s research. That puts companies like Hershey, Mondelez, PepsiCo, General Mills and Kellogg’s successor Kellanova at risk.

But not everyone in the industry agrees with that assessment. Lets watch this space.

5.Are free markets history? The rise of homeland economics, debates a leader in Economist.

Sometimes, in wars and revolutions, fundamental change arrives with a bang. More often, it creeps up on you. That is the way with what we are calling “homeland economics”, a protectionist, high-subsidy, intervention-heavy ideology administered by an ambitious state. Fragile supply chains, growing threats to national security, the energy transition and the cost-of-living crisis have each demanded action by governments—and for good reason. But when you lump them all together, it becomes clear just how systematically the presumption of open markets and limited government has been left in the dust.

For this newspaper, this is an alarming trend. We were founded in 1843 to campaign for, among other things, free trade and a modest role for government. Today these classical liberal values are not only unpopular, they are increasingly absent from political debate. Less than eight years ago President Barack Obama was trying to sign America up to a giant Pacific trade pact. Today if you argue for free trade in Washington, you will be scoffed at as hopelessly naive. In the emerging world, you will be painted as a neocolonial relic from the era when the West knew best.

The Economist this week argues that homeland economics will ultimately prove to be a disappointment. It misdiagnoses what has gone wrong, it overburdens the state with unmeetable responsibilities and it will botch a period of rapid social and technological change. The good news is that eventually it will bring about its own demise.

Central to the new regime is the idea that protectionism is the way to cope with the buffeting of open markets. China’s success convinced working-class Westerners that they had a lot to lose from the free movement of goods across borders. The covid-19 pandemic left elites thinking that global supply chains had to be “derisked”, often by moving production closer to home. China’s rise under “state capitalism”, with its disregard for rules-based trade and challenge to American power, was seized on in rich and emerging economies as a justification for intervention.

This protectionism goes along with extra government spending. Industry is gobbling up subsidies to boost the energy transition and guarantee the supply of strategic goods. Vast handouts to households during the pandemic have raised expectations of the state as a bulwark against life’s misfortunes. The Spanish and Italian governments are even bailing out borrowers who cannot afford the rising cost of mortgages.

And, inevitably, state handouts go along with extra regulation. Antitrust has become activist. Regulators are eyeing nascent markets, from cloud gaming to artificial intelligence. Because carbon prices are still too low, governments end up micro-managing the energy transition by decree.

This mix of protection, spending and regulation comes at a heavy cost. For a start, it is a misdiagnosis. The pooling of risks is indeed an essential function of governments. But not all risks: for markets to work, actions must have consequences.

In contrast to the accepted view, covid and the Ukraine war have shown that markets deal with shocks better than planners do. Globalised trade coped with huge swings in consumer demand: throughput at America’s ports in 2021 was 11% higher than in 2019. In 2022 Germany’s economy repeated the trick, suffering no calamity as it switched rapidly from Russian gas to other sources of energy. By contrast, state-dominated markets like the supply of shells for Ukraine are still struggling. Just like the old complaints about trade with China—which has boosted Americans’ real incomes—gripes about globalisation’s supposed fragility have built a cathedral of fear over a grain of truth.

Another flaw in homeland economics is to overburden the state. Governments are losing all restraint just when they need to curtail welfare spending. Ageing populations weigh down budgets with extra bills for pensions and health care. Rising interest rates make everything worse. After a bond-market crisis in 2022, Britain’s right-wing government is raising taxes, as a share of gdp, by more than in any parliamentary term in the country’s history. As yields rise on long-dated bonds, indebted Italy looks wobbly again. America’s rising debt-service bill will probably match its all-time high before the end of the decade—testimony to the fiscal fragility of the new era.

The least visible, but potentially most costly flaw is that homeland economics is a blunt instrument in a time of rapid change. The energy and ai transitions are too big for any government to plan. Nobody knows the cheapest ways to decarbonise or the best uses of new technology. Ideas need to be tested and channelled by markets, not governed by checklists from the centre. Excessive regulation will inhibit innovation and, by raising costs, make change slower and more painful.

Despite its flaws, homeland economics will be tough to restrain. People enjoy spending other people’s money. As government budgets get bigger, the special interests that feed on them will grow in size and influence. It is harder to withdraw protection and handouts than to grant them—particularly with more elderly voters, who have less of a stake in economic growth. Anyone doe-eyed about the arc of history bending towards progress should remember that a century ago Argentina was about as rich as Switzerland.

Yet disillusionment will eventually set in. That may be because fiscal extravagance catches up with indebted governments. Perhaps the rent-seekers’ greed will become too hard to conceal. Or a stagnating, repressive China may no longer hold out the promise of state-directed prosperity.

When change comes, it can be surprisingly swift—in democracies, at least. In the 1970s the tide turned in favour of free markets almost as fast as it has turned against them today, leading to the election of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The task for classical liberals is to prepare for that moment by defining a new consensus that adapts their ideas to a more dangerous, interconnected and fractious world. That will not be easy, especially in the face of the rivalry between America and China. But it has been done in the past. And think of the prize.