Long read: America gifted China its rare-earth monopoly — and India helped too
As China once again turns the screws on the rest of the world using its near-monopoly on large-scale rare-earth production, Praveen Swami’s informative piece tells us something that most of did not know: “The reason China ended up with a de facto monopoly on rare-earth is that the United States gifted it one. Even less known […]
Long read: When Semiconductor Manufacturing Went East and Chip Design Followed
Vik’s newsletter follows a logical stream of thought to reach the conclusion that, “This storm of events has opened the doors to India becoming equivalent to what Southeast Asia was in the 1960s: a place to outsource chip design at low cost – relinquishing America’s last stronghold in chips: design. Today, India is well poised […]
Short read: By treating cricket as war, India and Pakistan do the game a disservice
As the farce of India-Pakistan ‘cricket’ continues into the women’s world cup, Sandeep Dwivedi expresses the anguish of a true sport fan better than most in this op ed for the Indian Express. He begins by sharing the perspective of a cricketer who has actually been in war: “An invaluable all-rounder of Don Bradman’s “Invincible” […]
Short read: ‘There’s a scam in everything’: Cyber frauds in guise of welfare schemes target rural Indians
For the last several years, all of us had become accustomed to becoming scammed online and through phonecalls and via email. In our world view, we – the affluent city folk – were being targeted because the scammers wanted to empty our wallets. However, such is the pervasiveness of cyberfraud now that even low-income rural […]
Short read: Agentic commerce will transform shopping into personalized buying — brands must adapt fast
Jaspreet Bindra is the Founder & MD of a firm called Tech Whisperer. In this piece for ET, he says that AI enabled agents are already doing some of the online purchasing that humans used to do. For example, AI is apparently buying books online on behalf of other people. Mr Bindra says that such […]
Long read: The dawn of the post-literate society
Over the past few months, we featured a couple of pieces on the decline of reading as a habit and its implications based on data from new research. Here’s a more detailed take on the implications for a post literate society – on intelligence, creativity or even democracy. The author begins with this remarkable quote […]
Long read: An AI Addendum
Last week’s announcements of investments in OpenAI by Nvidia and AMD in exchange for buying their chips seemed to bring a sense of Déjà vu. Here’s Harris Kupperman back with his rational approach to showing the impossible economics of the AI boom. This is a follow up to his viral post from about a month ago titled […]
Long read: Partha Chatterjee’s new book will change the way we study Indian politics
Yogendra Yadav is a psephologist turned politician. In this piece, we dwell not on his politics but on his elegant review of a very good book by Partha Chatterjee (no, not the TMC politician but the political scientist and anthropologist who now teaches at Columbia University). For those who don’t know who Partha Chatterjee is, […]
Marcellus Portfolio Snapshot – September 2025
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk White Collar Jobs Growth & Wage Growth: Twin Drivers of India’s Slowdown From Diwali 2023 onwards, Indian companies’ earnings growth has decelerated at a rapid rate. Underpinning this deceleration is a sharp conk-off in consumption growth, long the mainstay of the Indian economy. Key drivers of this consumption downturn […]
Short read: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people
By now, most of us are comfortable using AI to generate our slide decks. Be that as it may, it might still be worth paying heed to this article about the challenges in communication. “We’ve all sat in those presentations. A speaker with a stream of slides full of text, monotonously reading them off as […]
Short read: How China is losing its title as the world’s sneaker factory
Even as Donald Trump’s tariffs & tweets become a daily feature of our lives, the world in general and Asia in particular continues to evolve. In particular, Trump’s tariffs are leading to a realignment of trade flows within Asia. For India the speed with which these trade flows are moving is an object lesson in […]
Short read: With MiG-21’s exit, India’s squadron strength hits 6-decade low. What are IAF’s plans for the Tejas
Even though the Government of India’s capital expenditure on defence has grown at twice the rate of overall Government spending over the past five years, in some areas, India’s preparedness still appears to be inadequate. As Snehesh Alex Philip describes in this article, with the MiG-21, India’s first supersonic fighter, now retired after 62 years […]
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