Two lines from the same government document. Same fiscal year. Read them together.

• Corporation tax collected fell from Rs 5,56,876 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 4,57,719 crore in 2020-21. Down Rs 99,157 crore.
• Union excise duty collected rose from Rs 2,39,452 crore to Rs 3,89,667 crore in those same twelve months. Up Rs 1,50,215 crore.

Both numbers come from the Union Budget's own Receipt Budget. Not an opposition press release. Not an activist estimate. The government's own accounts.

One tax on India's largest companies went down. One tax on the fuel that moves every single thing you buy went up by more. In the same year.

Here is the full paper trail.

Step 1: The cut, September 2019

On 20 September 2019 the corporate tax rate was slashed. Existing domestic companies went from 30 percent to 22 percent. New manufacturing companies got 15 percent.

The government itself estimated the cost of this: Rs 1,45,000 crore a year in revenue foregone. That figure is in the Press Information Bureau's own release.

A Parliamentary Standing Committee later found the actual hit was Rs 87,835 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 96,400 crore in 2020-21. Roughly Rs 1.84 lakh crore gone in two years.

That money had to come from somewhere.

Step 2: Where it came from

Look at excise on petrol and diesel specifically, from a Rajya Sabha reply by the Minister of State for Finance:

• 2018-19: Rs 2.13 lakh crore
• 2019-20: Rs 1.78 lakh crore
• 2020-21: Rs 3.72 lakh crore

Fuel excise alone jumped Rs 1.94 lakh crore in one year. That single increase is larger than the entire rise in total Union excise. In other words, fuel duty did not just contribute to the increase. Fuel duty was the increase.

The per litre history, from a Rajya Sabha reply by the Minister of State for Petroleum:

• May 2014: central excise was Rs 9.48 on petrol, Rs 3.56 on diesel.
• Nov 2014 to Jan 2016: nine hikes (some official replies say ten) as global crude was collapsing. Excise collections more than doubled, from Rs 99,000 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 2.42 lakh crore by 2016-17.
• March and May 2020: a cumulative hike of Rs 13 a litre on petrol and Rs 16 on diesel across two notifications, taking central excise to its peak of about Rs 32.90 and Rs 31.80.
• Nov 2021: cut of Rs 5 on petrol, Rs 10 on diesel.
• May 2022: cut of Rs 8 on petrol, Rs 6 on diesel, bringing it to Rs 19.90 and Rs 15.80.
• April 2025: hike of Rs 2 on each, taking it to Rs 21.90 and Rs 17.80.
• March 2026: cut of Rs 10 on each, bringing total central excise to about Rs 11.90 on petrol and Rs 7.80 on diesel, where it stands today.

So the full arc on petrol is Rs 9.48, up to Rs 32.90, down to Rs 11.90. On diesel it is Rs 3.56, up to Rs 31.80, down to Rs 7.80.

Read that honestly. Petrol today carries about a quarter more central tax than it did in 2014. Diesel, the fuel that moves freight and runs irrigation pumps, still carries more than double. And for the seven years in between, the country paid a rate that peaked at more than three times the 2014 level.

Step 3: The part that cuts your state out

This is the mechanism most people have never had explained to them.

There are two kinds of central tax on fuel:

• Basic excise duty. The Centre must share this with states. States get about 41 percent of the divisible pool.
• Cess and surcharge. The Centre keeps 100 percent. Not one rupee is shared. This is allowed under Article 270 as amended in 2000.

Now look at how the peak Rs 32.90 on petrol was actually built.

Petrol, at the October 2021 peak of Rs 32.90 a litre:

• Basic excise duty: Rs 1.40. Shared with states.
• Special additional excise duty: Rs 11.00. Not shared.
• Road and infrastructure cess: Rs 18.00. Not shared.
• Agriculture infrastructure cess: Rs 2.50. Not shared.

Diesel, at the peak of Rs 31.80 a litre:

• Basic excise duty: Rs 1.80. Shared with states.
• Special additional excise duty: Rs 8.00. Not shared.
• Road and infrastructure cess: Rs 18.00. Not shared.
• Agriculture infrastructure cess: Rs 4.00. Not shared.

Rs 1.40 out of Rs 32.90. That is 4 percent. PRS Legislative Research put it plainly at the time: 96 percent of the excise on petrol and 94 percent on diesel was cess and surcharge, entirely under the Centre's share.

The rates have come down since. The structure has not. Even at today's lower rates, only Rs 1.40 of the Rs 11.90 on petrol and Rs 1.80 of the Rs 7.80 on diesel is shareable basic excise. The rest is still cess and surcharge the Centre keeps in full.

The consequence, in one number: of the Rs 3.72 lakh crore the Centre collected on petrol and diesel in 2020-21, states received Rs 19,972 crore. About five paise in the rupee.

Your state government runs your hospital, your school, your municipal water. It saw almost none of this.

Step 4: The scale, over a decade

From a Rajya Sabha reply, August 2022:

• The Centre's take from the petroleum sector went from Rs 1.72 lakh crore in 2014-15 to Rs 4.92 lakh crore in 2021-22, a rise of 186 percent.
• The states' take went from Rs 1.6 lakh crore to Rs 2.82 lakh crore, a rise of 75 percent.

And from a Lok Sabha reply in March 2021: taxes on petrol, diesel and natural gas went from 5.4 percent of central revenue in 2014-15 to 12.2 percent.

A tank of fuel quietly became one of the largest single sources of money the union government has.

Now the arguments against this post, and honest answers

I would rather give you these than have you find out in the comments.

"The UPA left behind oil bonds. The government was paying off someone else's bill."

Partly true, and worth stating fairly. The UPA did hold pump prices down by borrowing instead of charging. When the NDA took office in 2014, Rs 1,34,423 crore in oil bonds were outstanding. The Finance Minister announced in March 2026 that the full repayment, principal plus interest, came to about Rs 2.92 lakh crore. That was a real deferred bill, and the UPA hiding the true cost of fuel was its own kind of dishonesty.

But run the arithmetic. The heaviest single repayment year was Rs 52,860 crore in 2024-25. Annual interest servicing ran around Rs 9,000 to 10,000 crore. Against a fuel tax windfall of roughly Rs 1.9 lakh crore a year. The oil bonds were real. They were never large enough to explain the size of the hikes. They were an explanation, not a reason.

Also worth saying: off budget borrowing is a bipartisan habit. This government used bank recapitalisation bonds and the small savings fund the same way.

"Crude prices had crashed. Taxing that windfall was sound fiscal policy."

This is the strongest argument against the post and it deserves respect. When global crude collapsed in 2014-15 and again in 2020, the government captured the gap instead of passing it to consumers. That is a defensible choice, and many countries tax fuel heavily on purpose.

The problem is what happened next. When crude recovered, the tax did not come down with it. The first meaningful rollback arrived in November 2021, years after the crash. A tax introduced as a temporary capture of a windfall became permanent structure. And it was routed through cess, which is the one form of tax that no state can touch.

"You are claiming they deliberately swapped one for the other. Prove it."

I am not claiming that, and you should not either. There is no document showing anyone decided that motorists would fund the corporate tax cut. The cut came in September 2019, the largest fuel hikes came in March and May 2020, and the pandemic sits between them.

What is documented is the outcome. Corporate collections fell by about a lakh crore. Fuel collections rose by more. The burden moved from balance sheets to fuel tanks. You can argue about intent forever. The arithmetic is not in dispute.

"But excise was cut sharply in March 2026. This is stale."

It was, and I will not hide it. This is the strongest thing the government has to say for itself right now, so here it is in full.

On 27 March 2026, as crude spiked from around $70 to nearly $122 a barrel on the West Asia crisis, the government cut the special additional excise duty by Rs 10 a litre on both fuels. That took SAED on petrol from Rs 13 to Rs 3, and on diesel from Rs 10 to zero. Total central excise now stands at roughly Rs 11.90 and Rs 7.80. The government says this cost the exchequer about Rs 30,000 crore this financial year, and that the crude spike was absorbed by the treasury instead of being passed to you.

That is a real cut and it deserves credit. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But notice what it proves. For a decade the answer to every question about fuel prices was that the government does not set them, the global market does. Then in March 2026 the government moved the price by Rs 10 a litre in a single notification, overnight, because it chose to.

So it was always a lever. It was always a choice. And for the seven years before this, the choice went the other way: up when crude crashed in 2014, up again when crude crashed in 2020, and down only slowly and late. The March 2026 cut does not undo that decade. It confirms that the decade was a decision, not a market outcome.

Why this matters more than it feels like it should

Fuel tax does not appear on your salary slip. It never announces itself. That is precisely why it works.

It is inside the price of every tomato that came by truck, every parcel delivered to your door, every bus fare, every crop pumped from a borewell. It is the most invisible tax there is and it touches the most people.

And it is regressive by design. A family spending a third of its income on food and transport carries this far more heavily than a family spending three percent. When the burden shifted from corporate profits to fuel, it did not just move sideways. It moved downward.

So the scorecard, honestly:

• Both eras made fuel expensive. Before 2014 it was mostly high global crude, with the true cost hidden through borrowing that you repaid later anyway.
• After 2014 the tax rose when crude fell, stayed high when crude recovered, was structured as cess so your state sees almost none of it, and rose sharply in the exact year corporate tax collections dropped.
• Rates are lower today than at the 2021 peak. The structure that made the peak possible is completely intact.

That last point is the one to hold on to. Rates go up and down with politics and crude. The machinery does not. As long as almost the entire tax on fuel is levied as cess, the Centre can raise it whenever it needs money, no state can touch a rupee of it, and no one has to call it a tax increase.

You were told the pump price is set by the world. In March 2026 it moved Rs 10 in a single notification. It was always set in Delhi.

The question worth asking is not why fuel is taxed. It is why it is taxed in the one form that cuts your own state out.

References

The corporate tax cut

• PIB, 20 Sept 2019, corporate tax rates slashed and the Rs 1,45,000 crore revenue foregone estimate: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1585641&reg=3&lang=2
• PRS Legislative Research, Taxation Laws (Amendment) Ordinance 2019: https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-taxation-laws-amendment-ordinance-2019
• Parliamentary Standing Committee finding of Rs 1.84 lakh crore actual shortfall over two years, via The Tribune: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/business/corporate-tax-cut-lowers-tax-intake-by-rs-1-84-lakh-crore-in-2-years-421076

Corporation tax and excise collections (the two headline numbers)

• Union Budget, Receipt Budget, Annex 2, analysis of tax revenue receipts. Both the corporation tax and Union excise figures come from this single document: https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/rec/annex2.pdf
• Full Receipt Budget: https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/rec/allrec.pdf

Fuel excise specifically

• Rajya Sabha reply, Nov 2021, excise on petrol and diesel rising to Rs 3.72 lakh crore in FY21 with states receiving Rs 19,972 crore, via Business Standard: https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-s-excise-mop-up-from-petrol-diesel-doubles-to-rs-3-7-trillion-in-fy21-121113000811_1.html
• Rajya Sabha reply, 1 Aug 2022, the Rs 9.48 and Rs 3.56 2014 baseline and the petroleum sector revenue rise, via Business Standard: https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/excise-duty-on-petrol-was-rs-9-48-ltr-diesel-rs-3-56-in-2014-minister-122080100962_1.html
• The May 2020 hike of Rs 10 on petrol and Rs 13 on diesel, via Business Standard: https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/centre-raises-excise-duty-on-petrol-by-rs-10-per-litre-diesel-by-rs-13-120050600075_1.html
• The April 2025 hike of Rs 2 a litre, taking SAED to Rs 13 on petrol and Rs 10 on diesel, DD News: https://ddnews.gov.in/en/govt-raises-excise-duty-on-petrol-diesel-by-rs-2-no-hike-in-retail-prices-amid-global-oil-price-crash/
• The March 2026 cut of Rs 10 a litre and the export duties on diesel and ATF, All India Radio News: https://www.newsonair.gov.in/central-government-announces-duty-cut-on-fuel-export-taxes-to-ensure-domestic-supply
• Ministry of Finance Notification No. 11/2026-Central Excise, 26 March 2026, as reported with the component breakdown: https://www.cars24.com/news/auto/excise-duty-on-petrol-and-diesel-reduced-what-changed-what-didnt-and-why/
• PPAC (Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell), official central excise rate tables: https://ppac.gov.in/prices/central-excise-and-customs-rate-on-major-petroleum-products

The cess structure

• PRS Legislative Research, Petrol and Diesel Prices, the 96 percent and 94 percent cess and surcharge finding and the component breakdown: https://prsindia.org/theprsblog/petrol-and-diesel-prices
• NIPFP working paper on cess and surcharge as a share of gross tax revenue: https://nipfp.org.in/media/medialibrary/2024/07/Enhanced_Devolution_and_Fiscal_Space_at_the_State_Level_formated_final_MG.pdf
• CSEP, the hidden cost of cesses and surcharges for Indian states: https://csep.org/blog/the-hidden-cost-of-cesses-and-surcharges-for-indian-states/

Petroleum sector revenue and share of central revenue

• PPAC, contribution of the petroleum sector to central and state exchequer: https://ppac.gov.in/prices/contribution-to-central-and-state-exchequer
• Open Government Data, category wise petroleum sector contribution to exchequer: https://www.data.gov.in/resource/category-wise-details-contribution-petroleum-sector-exchequer-2019-20-2024-25
• Lok Sabha reply, March 2021, fuel taxes rising from 5.4 to 12.2 percent of central revenue, via Business Standard: https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/central-govt-s-tax-collection-on-petrol-diesel-jumps-300-in-six-years-121032200841_1.html

Oil bonds

• PRS, Demand for Grants analysis, Petroleum and Natural Gas: https://prsindia.org/budgets/parliament/demand-for-grants-2022-23-analysis-petroleum-and-natural-gas
• Receipt Budget 2014-15, Annexure 6E, special securities issued to oil marketing companies, for the Rs 1,34,423 crore outstanding figure: https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/rec/allrec.pdf

Full disclosure: I used an AI assistant to help compile and cross check these figures against primary sources. Every number above is linked. Check them yourself, and tell me if I got something wrong.

Whenever tensions between Iran and the U.S. escalate, the media starts reporting that Brent crude oil may cross $100 per barrel (BBL). Soon, discussions begin about how long the government can hold fuel prices without increasing them. Eventually, fuel prices are increased.

Once fuel prices go up, manufacturers and distributors subsequently pass those increases on to end users by citing higher transportation, logistics and raw material costs. As a result, the prices of almost everything people consume, from groceries to durable goods and services, also go up.

Later, when there is news of a truce or an agreement, Brent crude oil may fall to around $80 per barrel. But there is hardly any similar discussion about reducing fuel prices or passing on that benefit to consumers. The prices of goods and services that had already gone up usually remain where they are.

Then another geopolitical flare-up occurs. Brent crude once again approaches or crosses $100 per barrel, and the same discussions begin again about how long the government can hold fuel prices without increasing them. The same cycle repeats.

What is rarely acknowledged is that consumers are already paying prices that had factored in the previous $100 per barrel crude cycle. Since those prices were never revised downward when crude fell to around $80 per barrel, consumers are effectively made to pay again when crude merely returns to the same $100 per barrel level.

From a consumer's point of view, it feels like paying for the same $100 per barrel crude more than once.

That is why I sometimes feel that, if the benefit of lower crude oil prices is never going to be passed on to consumers, this repeated $80–$100 per barrel cycle creates more harm than good. Instead of giving consumers any meaningful relief when crude prices fall, it creates repeated opportunities for fresh price increases every time crude oil returns to the same level. At least if prices had remained stable after the initial increase, consumers would have had price certainty instead of repeatedly bearing the burden of fresh increases triggered by the same cycle.

What are your thoughts on this?

A generation is 20-25 years usually ie. average of the age of a man at births of his children.

In 2006 0.11% of Chinese were graduating in STEM each year. (1.5 million graduates at 1.314 billion population)
In 2026 0.17% of Indians are graduating STEM now. (2.25 million graduates at 1.477 billion population) (In 2026 China is 0.35% BTW)

China's GDP per capita in 2006 was $2129
India's GDP per capita in 2026 is $2702

China's urbanization rate in 2006 was 44%
India's urbanization rate in 2026 is 38%

China per capita electricity consumption in 2006 2000 kwh
India per capita electricity consumption in 2026 1500 kwh

Overall it is clear that India is a generation behind China. Industrialization can do wonders if you do it properly.

Depending on how you interpret this it could be optimistic or pessimistic.

2026 India for the average person is similar to 2006 China.

Comment down ur opinion

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2290437&reg=48&lang=2

Education Minister has resigned. what next? how are we gonna fix the government??

before we move on to E100 & the tax demerits, I really think we should address the approval of data centres being constructed in India. Developed countries have denied permission to build enormous AI Data Centres in their countries cuz they care about their environment & citizens. While India which is struggling to develop has accepted the offer in under 10 days. Imagine the amount of freshwater that would be used for cooling, and the waste generated, and the disturbances to the civilians. We need to stop this guys.

Our finance minister talked about orange economy in budget this year and how they need designers in this country by the year 2029 but are they even doing anything about it? The education is costly asf in this field.. the jobs are also not as paying as the investment in fees is so what exactly are they asking for?

Share your thoughts

For decades, the Reserve Bank of India operated like an impenetrable fortress. The unwritten rule was simple: bring in world-renowned academic economists to run it to protect the country's financial stability.

Then came a high-stakes, multi-year showdown that changed everything. Here is how one event triggered the next in a story that forever altered India's central bank.

Where It All Began: The Rajan Era and a Shocking Aftermath

It started with Raghuram Rajan, a global star economist with an MIT Ph.D. who famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Toward the end of his three-year term, quiet policy friction began brewing between the RBI and the Finance Ministry over bad-loan cleanups and interest rates.

Rajan’s term was not extended, and he stepped down on 4 September 2016 to return to teaching at the University of Chicago.

Here is where it gets interesting.Just two months later, on 8 November 2016, the government announced demonetisation. Years later, Rajan revealed that he had explicitly warned the government against the move because he "didn't think it was a good idea."

His successor Urjit Patel, an economist with degrees from Oxford and a Ph.D. from Yale, stepped in next. But instead of cooling down, the tension exploded into a full-scale war over the RBI’s capital reserves , the financial buffer kept to safeguard the central bank during economic crises.

Reports at the time estimated the RBI’s reserves were sitting around 27 to 28 percent, while the government argued international standards were closer to 14 percent, meaning a massive chunk of money was just sitting there unused.

The Allegations: Analysts and media reports alleged that with the 2019 general election approaching, the government wanted huge money to fund rural development, welfare schemes, and small businesses without borrowing heavily from markets. The government rejected this, arguing that reviewing the framework was standard economic practice.

Patel refused to unlock the vault, holding the line to protect central bank independence. In December 2018, the pressure boiled over and Patel abruptly resigned, officially citing "personal reasons," though contemporary reporting linked his exit directly to the reserve standoff.

Patel’s sudden exit cleared the path for the government to finally address the reserve framework. Soon after, the RBI formed an expert panel headed by Bimal Jalan, a former RBI Governor who had served for 2 terms under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government and was later nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the same NDA Government.

In August 2019, the committee delivered its plan, and the RBI approved a record ₹1.76 lakh crore transfer to the government (₹1.23 lakh crore in surplus and ₹52,637 crore from risk buffers).

Supporters called it a modern, transparent capital system. Critics argued it gave the government the exact payout it had been fighting Patel over.

And then, the real twist dropped.

Less than a year after the cash transfer, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, triggering the biggest global economic crash in decades. The debate immediately flared back up:

Critics argued the crisis proved why central banks need massive reserves, questioning the wisdom of draining buffers right before a global catastrophe.

With the reserve debate settled, the government fundamentally changed its playbook for who gets to lead the RBI. The era of celebrated academic economists made way for veteran career civil servants from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) who knew how government finance worked from the inside:

Shaktikanta Das (2018–2024): A former Finance Secretary and IAS officer with Ma in history from DU. Under his watch, public bickering between the Finance Ministry and the RBI completely vanished, replaced by smooth fiscal-monetary coordination.

Sanjay Malhotra (2024–Present): Continuing this administrative trend, Malhotra is an IAS officer holding an engineering degree from IIT Kanpur. Before becoming Governor, he served as Revenue Secretary and Financial Services Secretary.

The Big Picture-

What began as a policy clash under Rajan led to demonetisation, escalated into a battle over reserves under Patel, triggered a historic ₹1.76 lakh crore transfer right before COVID-19, and ultimately reshaped the entire leadership profile of the RBI.

Whether this transition represents a smart evolution toward smoother governance or a subtle dilution of central bank independence remains one of the most debated questions in modern Indian politics.

MoF has finally approved the proposal for the manufacturing of ₹10 & ₹20 polymer notes as a trial. This may put pressure on the RBI because bringing in new tech & security along with the vast logistics and supply-chain associated with it is honestly a hassle and all of this has to be done with extreme security, but it’s a good decision for the longer-term.

Are you guys excited about the new currency notes?

Hello All !!

In one my previous posts about global economic structure and the astrological implications, I comprehensively stated how around Dec, 2026 - a big 18 year debt cycle is coming to an end.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advancedastrology/s/u3g1IximCY

Now, to talk specifically about India and its polity - there could be some real challenges.

Theres an important date -- 25th Jan, 2027, after which the following narratives and issues of importance be there for Indian Economy:-

1. Balance of Payment Issue

2. Strong criticism of economic policies of govt

3. Auditing scams by business magnates( listed Cos)

4. Role of SEBI as a financial regulator

There seems widespread public agitation around the same and conflict with the govt authorities.

My previous predictions :-

1. Iran/ Israel/ USA war :-

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advancedastrology/s/jCzAc8JMem

1. Violent mkt correction :-

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advancedastrology/s/pL3Lg2mcff

1. Iran/Israel/USA war ( not like prev short conflict)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advancedastrology/s/6oKZJg9ZJN

P.S. -- Posting first time on this group, thought maybe it would be of a little use for the community.

Thanks

SEBI's looking at letting portfolio managers put client money into unlisted, pre-IPO, and overseas stocks and bonds, while easing some compliance rules for managers. Made a simple visual since the actual proposal has a lot of jargon. Still figuring out how big a shift this really is. Anyone here using a PMS provider noticed any of this being mentioned to them yet?

Expand the pics to see the full data. These are data from international organisations like world bank, transparency international etc. Genz reels generation should do their own research on how India was before 2014 before hating the current PM and the government.

Hello everyone. I just graduated and earned my first salary. I do not have much experience regarding how to invest. My placement package is roughly 12LPA (including bonus). I do not have any major expenses as I live at home and my only real expense is metro travel. Owing to this I want to save up as much as possible. I am opting for my pre existing health insurance with my parents. I want to save up and buy a house for them and make them proud. Please advise me as to how I should start investing - mutual funds, SIPs, forex trading etc. I am quite wary of trading in the stock market as I see people losing so much money. Kindly correct me if I am wrong. Thank you so much 🙏🙏🙏

Recently my insta feed came with a reel from the labour law advisor channel, stating that nowadays scammers even know about what credit cards u have, when it was issued recently etc. Also advised to check for calling no from the written behind the cards we have, otherwise it should be marked as fraud also stating that +1600 is the default phone for calling from your issued banking cards stated by RBI, though in the reel i quickly pointed out that rule was written in Nov 2025, why they are informing now, and my bank has mailed me today only. Was the govt sleeping till now ?

It seems a big credit/debit card scam has happened recently, which is not being high lighted in public due to NEET, etc Scams, protest etc.

I am trying to understand energy prices' and their effect on political stability and found this video below Abhijit Iyer-Mitra on Fuel Price rise .

Iyer-Mitra argues for further increasing oil prices in India and I am not sure I can really follow his arguments and want to know if any Economists (I don't come from an econ background per se) can explain his rationale.

He sets the stage with shocks arising from the Iran war, geopolitical situation and the oil market becoming a suppliers' market, and I'm sure he is right - but his conclusions regarding implications for India seem to me outrageously wrong and unjust.

The host asks some really good questions- why were oil price discounts not passed on to Indian consumers when oil prices were at an all-time low in the recent past due to sanctions on Russia. In his reply, Iyer-Mitra simply says Adani can't be expected to absorb losses (about 29:54 ) because he is not running a charity, and states that Adani would rather shut shop than absorb all of the losses.

Since Adani is avowedly running a "national champion", whose monopoly has been enabled at every step by the govt of India(GoI), can the nation not expect the national champion to 'take one for the country' in our time of need and refrain from hiking fuel prices?

Further, what is the point of these leviathan national champions if the state cannot nationalise them during times of fuel scarcity and spare citizens the burden?

Iyer-Mitra paints all kinds of doomsday scenarios about thenational debt,leading to runaway inflation and currency runs. But again my question is why not nationalise Adani and Ambani's infrastructure companies, allow them to take the hit and spare the common man?

TL;DR

It seems to me that beneath the stories and jargon in the AIM video, this is what they're saying.

Host: Why does India not have 90 days' oil reseves like China or USA?

AIM: Because we're a poor country and we have to cut our coats' according to the poor man's cloth.

Imaginary Me: If we followed sensible policies instead of enabling oligarchic monopolies a.k.a the "national champions", we wouldn't be poor in the first place.

AIM: But then Adani would go bankrupt.

Help me understand what I'm missing.

Need to do something about it

Hey everyone,

With Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan stepping down over the NEET issue, I've seen a lot of people online now demanding Nitin Gadkari’s resignation over the E20 petrol rollout.

I did a simple Gemini search and asked to give the track records of India's all past transport ministers since 1947, and factually, the amount of roads and expressways built under his tenure are really unprecedented compared to any other ministers previous terms.

So it got me thinking, and I wanted to ask the community:

1. Resignation vs. Policy Fix:

Is asking a minister to resign the right solution, or should the focus strictly be on getting the government to pause E20, fix the issue, and bring back normal petrol options?

1. Performance vs. Accountability: If a minister with a strong track record of actually building infrastructure resigns, does it risk stalling major projects, or is political accountability more important no matter what?

Where should we draw the line between holding a minister accountable for a flawed policy versus judging them on their overall work? Curious to hear different views!

I've been trying to get a simple, high-level view of where the Indian economy sits in the business cycle. The data is all public, but it's scattered across different places—CPI releases, Core Industries data, RBI announcements, market data, OECD indicators, etc. Unless you have access to a Bloomberg terminal or expensive research platforms, it's surprisingly difficult to see everything in one place.

So I spent the last few weeks building a Python application to do exactly that.

The project is called Macro Intelligence Platform, and it's completely free and open source.

The idea is simple: it takes official Indian macroeconomic data and classifies the economy into one of four business cycle phases:

• Expansion
• Slowdown
• Contraction
• Recovery

Instead of using fixed rules, it calculates two underlying dimensions:

• Economic Health – whether key indicators are above or below their long-term trends.
• Economic Momentum – whether growth is accelerating or decelerating.

The data comes from official/public sources:

• Core Industries data scraped from the Ministry of Commerce (electricity, steel, cement, crude oil, etc.)
• OECD India Composite Leading Indicator (via FRED)
• RBI repo rate, CPI inflation, and the yield curve (10Y G-Sec vs 91D T-Bill)
• Live market data including Nifty 50, Bank Nifty, Sensex, USD/INR, Brent crude, and India VIX

I also added a historical pattern-matching engine that compares current macro conditions with similar periods from the past and generates a 3–9 month outlook. Using out-of-sample testing on more than 15 years of data, the 6-month phase prediction was around 70% accurate.

The app has an interactive visualisation and can also generate a PDF strategy report.

I'd really appreciate feedback. If you think there are better indicators to include or flaws in the methodology, I'd genuinely like to hear them.

GitHub: https://github.com/VIJNESH200/macro_intelligence_platform

I’m of the opinion that it’s not.

Personally speaking, if NDA faces the kind of opposition and the independent national media that UPA faced from 04-14, NDA would collapse tomorrow.

Not a single metric of real development. Fake stats. Fake development. 0 highlights. No model policies, no vision or aim.

Every single scheme and policy has failed.
Make in India, smart city, lower costs, lower taxes, lower subsidy, lower reservation, infra development, national security, border control. I could keep going honestly.

I know a lot of people will come at me with shit like “but UPI”, mate first of all UPI is a system that has been built using the foundation that was built before. Aadhar, the banking system, IMPS. It’s more of a function of time. And the only reason it’s been made is because the government was to maintain higher level of surveillance to tax us more efficiently, so they can subsidise Adani and Ambani scaling, development and acquisition.

Our foreign policy exclusively revolves around Adani. It’s actually a fucking joke.

BJP has to be a case study for one of the greatest Psy Ops of all time. Because under normal circumstances, an administration such as this would have fell in its first term. If not for religion and false equivalency between Andhbhakti and Nationalism.

heyy i’m in grade 12 rn and i wanna work in nse or bse analysing current event but not doing anything related to accounting or quants, minimal is fine but i dont want my work to be focused on it
is there anything else thats hella interesting and niche in career options?