Long read: Some UPSC aspirants don’t quit Mukherjee Nagar even after failing. They become the bhaiyas
Many of you would have heard about Kota, the place where IIT aspirants go to spend the best years of their lives swotting for IIT entrance exams. Mukherjee Nagar, a suburb in the northern part of Delhi, is the equivalent of Kota for the UPSC (Union Public Service) exams which determine the identities of the […]
Long read: Lindy Effect in Investing
One of the most common fallacies in business life and in investing is that change is all around us and that everything is changing and therefore, by deduction, all of us need to hyperventilate about whether our investments are on the bleeding edge of change. A decade ago, in his book ‘Antifragile’, Nassim Taleb popularized […]
The phrase that ruled the Indian internet in 2023
Barkha Dutt explains in this piece how the phrase “Looking like a wow” came to rule India, why the rise of this phrase captures much of the change that is taking place in India. The phrase itself comes from an unlikely source: “At its heart, this is a story of how technology and social media — […]
How Will Equity Markets Perform in 2024?
It is that time of the year when reports such as ‘Market Outlook for 2024’ show up in our inboxes. Joe Wiggins of Behavioural Investment reminds us of the futility of making such forecasts about entities such as the market which are inherently in the short term (yes, one year is by any measure a […]
Why you age slower on a plane (and other incredibly strange effects of relativity)
Chris Lintott is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a lecturer at Gresham College. He Chris Lintott informs us that “a core principle of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is that time is not universal. The faster you travel, the slower time will pass for you”. He then says that scientists have proven […]
The Revenge Of The Ottoman Empire
Amidst the slew of reports in the Western media about how the Chinese economy is unravelling, Louis-Vincent Gave of Gavekal research, a China focused research outfit has been putting out contrarian arguments. Here’s another piece on how China is holding up with rising trade surplus offsetting the decline with the west with rapid rise in […]
The Rise And Fall Of The ‘IBM Way’
Deborah Cohen, a professor of history at Northwestern University reviews the book ‘The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived’, a biography of Thomas Watson Jr, the CEO of IBM in the middle of the 20th century. Under Watson Jr, IBM rose to being a computing giant in the post war era, before succumbing to the innovator’s dilemma […]
DDA turned into Delhi Destruction Authority & why we applaud the market taking revenge
This piece by Shekhar Gupta is a story of change we can believe. Those of us in Marcellus who grew up in Delhi, grew up for the most part in the shabby gentile confines of DDA flats (DDA stands for Delhi Development Authority). As we grew up, we became acutely of whether lived in HIG […]
Marcellus Christmas Special: How India Changed Its Master Narrative
‘Master narratives’ are culturally shared stories that guide the thoughts and behaviours of the citizens of a country. After surviving the dark, desperate decades immediately following Independence, India has reinvented its master narrative over the past 20 years. The world-beating performance of the Nifty50 over the last 20 years, the widely hailed Mangalyaan mission that […]
Short read: Pro Kabaddi League at 10: The improbable league that captured hearts
The Indian cricket team has been consistently at the top of world rankings over the past decade or so and a lot of its success has been attributed to the Indian Premier League which allowed the professionalisation of the sport as well as for talent to be discovered and developed. On the back of the […]
Short read: Meet The Private Equity Investor at the Intersection of Finance and Self-Help
Every now and then we come across people who are very thoughtful about every aspect of their lives. A few of them are articulate enough to share their clarity of thought with us. One of them is Graham Weaver, a private equity investor as the subject says. A couple of months ago, we did feature […]
Short read: ‘Red gold’: Why saffron production is dwindling in India
Pampore in Kashmir is India’s centre of saffron production. Saffron costs $1500/kg and 90% of India’s saffron is grown in Kashmir. The problem is Kashmir’s saffron production is plummeting. Monis Mir, a local farmer interviewed by Priti Gupta of the BBC, explains what is happening. “Mr Mir says his fields have become less productive over the […]
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