Arvind's Newsletter

1.The air quality struggles of Delhi and Mumbai, explained in charts by Mint

As temperatures plummet and the air gets dense, air pollution is back on everyone’s mind in India’s two biggest metros. While Delhi is by now used to welcoming the winter with dystopian smoggy scenes, Mumbai is seeing its worst October air in the past few years.

An episode of slow wind conditions in the national capital has triggered a decline in air quality over the past week, while in the financial capital an increase in construction activity has resulted in high PM2.5 levels, making it one of the most polluted months in the city's recent history.

2.The global shift to clean energy is “unstoppable,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said, although the phaseout of fossil fuels needs to happen faster. 

The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook report noted that the “phenomenal” rise of green technologies is reshaping the economy, forecasting that electric vehicle numbers would rise 10-fold and that solar would generate more electricity worldwide than the entire U.S. power system.
And the bad news- it said fossil-fuel demand would peak this decade, although remains too high to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target. A new study in Nature, though, warned that whatever happens, West Antartica’s ice sheets would melt over the coming century, leading to sea-level rises that could put hundreds of millions of people at risk.

3.From Adani to Torrent, India Inc taps overseas funds for local M&As, reports Business Standard

Foreign banks and private credit funds are queuing up to fund acquisitions by Indian companies who are buying out their local rivals. The Adani Group, Torrent Group, and the Hindujas have approached several foreign banks and private equity (PE) firms to fund their acquisitions.

Global investors have about $2 trillion of funds to invest, and about $100 to $150 billion is set aside for India, according to an estimate by JP Morgan.

Corporate executives said Indian companies raising money overseas for acquisitions would be better off raising equity rather than raising debt.

Last week, the Adani Group refinanced their overseas debt worth $3.5 billion taken in 2022 to fund the acquisition of Ambuja Cements and its subsidiary ACC.It saved $300 million in its finance costs with the refinancing and extending the tenure of the loan. The Hindujas is raising $850 million for the acquisition of Reliance Capital. Torrent is in talks with global banks to raise $5 billion to acquire its bigger rival, Cipla.

4.Migration to the world’s richest countries hit an all-time high in 2022. The OECD, a group of 38 of the world’s wealthiest countries, said that 6.1 million new permanent migrants moved to its member states last year, 26% more than in 2021 and 14% higher than in 2019, before the pandemic brought an enforced pause to much cross-border movement reported the Financial Times. The increase is driven by push factors — humanitarian crises — as well as pull factors, such as a growing demand for labor as rich countries age.

This total did not include a further 4.7 mn displaced Ukrainians who were living in OECD countries as of June this year; an increase in temporary migration for work; or a record 1.9 mn permits issued to international students — with the greatest number of new students going to the UK.

“Most OECD countries are experiencing labour shortages,” José Luis Escrivá, Spain’s minister responsible for migration, said at the launch of the OECD’s report. “The situation can only get worse in future.” Simply to stabilise its population, given demographic trends, the EU would need at least 50mn people to come from abroad in the next 25 years, Escrivá said.

5.At the same time, EU raises security concerns as it reveals five Caribbean states have sold 88,000 ‘golden passports’ reports the Guardian.

The EU has raised security concerns about the trade in “golden passports” and vowed to tighten visa controls after revealing five Caribbean states have sold citizenship to 88,000 individuals from countries including Iran, Russia and China.

A report published by the European Commission sets out for the first time the true scale of the Caribbean passport trade. A number of countries sell citizenship to foreign nationals, with prices starting at $100,000 (£82,326) a head.

Dominica, an island with a population of just over 70,000, has issued 34,500 passports, the report claimed. The number is more than four times the total previously disclosed by Dominica’s government. St Kitts and Nevis, with a population of 48,000, has issued 36,700 passports, twice as many as estimated up to 2018.

6.A movie I am looking forward to seeing is Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”. It is expected in Indian theatres next week. Here is a review from the New York Times. The critic Manohla Dargis, refers to the movie as, “an unsettling masterpiece”.

Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is a romance, a western, a whodunit and a lesson in the bloody history of the Osage murders of the 1920s. And here is the trailer of the movie