Arvind’s Newsletter

1.Narendra Modi set to lose parliamentary majority in shock Indian election result

Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party is set to lose its parliamentary majority, forcing the Indian prime minister to rely on smaller allies to secure a historic third term. Share prices slumped in Mumbai on Tuesday after vote counts showed the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance allies performing much worse than expected.

BJP was on course to win 238 seats, significantly short of the 272 seats needed to gain a majority in the Lok Sabha. But it can still form the government because the coalition it leads, the NDA, was heading towards about 290 seats. In the previous elections, BJP alone had won 303 seats, and the NDA, 352.

Meanwhile, the opposition INDIA coalition was on course to win 234 seats in the 543-seat lower house of the Parliament.

“Big-bang reforms will be difficult for some time as the political capital is limited," said a political observer, requesting not to be named. “Also, populism could make a comeback."

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, said Modi had been punished for “overreaching”. “I don’t think it’s a total repudiation, but a certain distaste for his hubris seems to have set in,” said Mehta, adding that if the result was confirmed it would mean a return to the “alliance politics” and negotiated government that characterised India from 1989 to 2014.

2.Sales of Chinese-built electric vehicles in Europe jumped by 23% in the first four months of 2024 compared to the same period a year before. 

A total of 119,300 Chinese EVs were registered in Western Europe, including the UK, between January and April, one in five of all EV imports. The European Union is the market of choice for Chinese manufacturers, the Financial Times reported, because its 10% tariff pales in comparison with the recently imposed 100% tariff in the US. EV prices elsewhere are falling: One salesman told The New York Times that EV buyers used to be well-heeled professionals, but they are now seeing younger and “more blue-collar and entry-level white-collar people” as the sticker price “ has suddenly become in reach.”

3.The top two officials overseeing the building of Indonesia’s new capital unexpectedly resigned, leaving the future of the $32 billion project in doubt.

The relocation of Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to Nusantara, located in the jungles of Borneo, has been touted as President Joko Widodo’s legacy project, with plans to celebrate the city’s launch before he leaves office in October. But it has been plagued by construction delays and has struggled to attract private investment, postponing the relocation of thousands of civil servants to the capital. President-elect Prabowo Subianto “has promised to continue building the capital, but whether he will is anybody’s guess,” reported.

4.Elon Musk’s Starlink has connected an isolated tribe to the outside world — and divided it from within.

Jack Nicas and Victor Moriyama hiked 50 miles into the Amazon to find out how the tribe were adapting to being online. NYT The Internet’s Final Frontier: Remote Amazon Tribes. "After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching p-rnography."

5.A potential vaccine for skin cancer

A clinical trial of a combined mRNA vaccine and cancer immunotherapy treatment significantly improved odds of survival for patients with melanoma, a potentially deadly form of skin cancer. The results, published on Monday, come from a Moderna-Merck trial involving 157 people with mid-stage cancer who were followed over two and a half years; further trials are ongoing. The immunotherapy — Keytruda — has been hailed as a “lightning-in-a-bottle” treatment for cancer that works by boosting the body’s own immune system to fight tumors. But combined treatments with mRNA vaccines could open the door to personalised cancer therapies tailored to a person’s own immune system in the future, researchers said.

6.Sam Altman Admits That OpenAI Doesn't Actually Understand How Its AI Works

OpenAI has raised tens of billions of dollars to develop AI technologies that are changing the world.

But there's one glaring problem: it's still struggling to understand how its tech actually works.