World On Edge

JANUS VIEW

This Week Was A World In Conflict — In India, Gaza And Over Trade

The week in review has been explosive, literally. India used air-to-surface missiles and heavy-duty artillery to blow up nine targets that India’s intelligence agencies had identified as terror infrastructure used by three Pakistan-based outfits, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Lashkar-e-Tayaba.

Operation Sindoor was designed to punish Pakistan for the terror attack at Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22 that had killed 26. Neither the army nor the Air Force, which carried out the attack, crossed over into Pak-controlled territory.

Pakistan targeted military stations at Jammu, Pathankot and Udhampur with drones and missiles along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir, prompting Indian authorities to implement blackouts in several areas. While India’s stock markets discounted any major escalation till Thursday, staying steady, refusing to react in shock and fear, Pakistan’s stock market has taken the threat of retaliation more seriously, and crashed, forcing the cessation of trade on Thursday.

A World In Conflict

The tariff conflict between the US and China continued.

Representatives of the two countries will hold talks on the trade standoff in Switzerland. US president Donald Trump is coming under increasing pressure to retreat, as his approval ratings drop, the US dollar weakens and yields jump, even as the US Fed stalls any rate action, not knowing whether to raise rates to combat the clear prospect of inflation or to lower rates, in order to ward off the possibility of negative first quarter GDP growth developing into a trend.

The Gaza war has turned into a euphemism for a process that should realistically be called slaughter. Israel has been bombing hospitals, aid convoys and whatever else takes its fancy.

Acute shortage of food, medicines, power and water is smothering life out of the Palestinian population that remains on the Gaza Strip. Israel would, of course, be shocked if anyone suggested that what it is doing to the Palestinians resembles, in essence, if not in every gory detail, what the Nazis did to the Jews.

A Trade Deal

The only piece of good news from this week was perhaps the India-UK trade deal that will greatly reduce tariffs on Indian exports to the US, and of British exports to India on a wide range of goods.

An important success has been in Indian professionals working in the UK for short-term onshore stints of up to three years, not having to pay social security taxes while they work. Such taxes are a free gift to the UK treasury, as the workers who pay them would not be around to receive the social security benefits in their old age.

Even better news is that the duty on alcoholic beverages imported from Britain is slated to come down sharply.

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CORE NUMBER

11% 

This is how much India's fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector grew in value in the March quarter, with rural consumption rising faster than urban for the fifth straight quarter, NielsenIQ said in a report. Rural volumes grew 8.4% year-on-year, versus 2.6% in urban areas. Godrej Consumer MD Sudhir Sitapati also said that a broader sector recovery could take 12–18 months, with easing inflation, stable pricing, and revised tax slabs helping sustain rural demand and support a fuller rebound. The Core recently reported how FMCG majors in India were grappling with shrinking margins, distributor unrest, and shifting consumer behaviour.

— 🛃 Heightened Security! The government heightened security across all Indian airports amid the escalation of tensions with Pakistan. Reports suggest that the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has ordered that all passengers at all airports will now have to go through another layer of checks before boarding, known as the ladder point security check. Airline including Air India and IndiGo issued statements asking passengers to reach the airport at least three hours in advance in light of increased security.

—🎖️ Trademark Misfire! Reliance Industries has withdrawn its trademark application that it ‘inadvertently’ filed for Operation Sindoor — the name of the Indian Army’s counter-terror mission launched after the deadly Pahalgam terror attack. The company said that the application, filed on May 7 under Class 41 (education and entertainment services), was made by a junior employee without authorisation. “We have no intention of trademarking Operation Sindoor,” Reliance said in a media statement. Three other individuals have also filed applications for the same name, despite its association with a military operation.

—🚧 Trouble At Tesla? Even as India waits to buy its first Teslas, the car maker's India country head has resigned. According to Bloomberg, Prashanth Menon has stepped down as Tesla India's board after working in the company for nine years. Tesla's China team will reportedly oversee India operations. This comes as Tesla's launch in India has remained in the pipeline for months, making people wonder whether it is serious about its India entry. Tesla’s sales woes, meanwhile, also continued with sharp drops seen globally.

—🧳 WFH No More? Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has made it clear: employees who aren’t on board with the company’s new workplace policies are free to leave. Speaking to CNBC, he said, “These changes may push some employees away… People who work at Uber, they have lots of opportunities everywhere.” Starting June, Uber will require corporate employees to work from office at least three days a week. The move mirrors global trends—Amazon, Meta, and Goldman Sachs have all dialled back work-from-home flexibility in favour of in-person collaboration.

NASSCOM CONVERSATIONS

AI Will Help Leverage Human Capital, Says HCLTech’s C Vijayakumar

We’ve seen the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in multiple forms, be it through images or writing poetry. But as we know, the potential of AI is far beyond. Not only can it complement human functions but also reduce the time taken to do certain jobs.

C Vijayakumar, CEO & MD of HCLTech, explained to The Core, how the company is already using the power of AI to speed things up.

“We built a platform called AI Force, which uses some of the traditional available language models. But it really covers the end-to-end life cycle of software development. It's just not coding, it's design, it's deployment, it's support, all of that,” Vijayakumar said.

The platform also helps make changes to existing software. “Depending on what the change is, sometimes it might take three, four weeks for an engineer to come up with, or a team to come up with these other changes,” he said.

Now, the fact that AI can do faster what humans take time to do has also triggered worries about AI taking over human jobs. But Vijayakumar believes that AI will only amplify human potential and that’s the way we should perceive the technology.

“If you can become more productive, it just frees up a lot of your time and your cognitive capacity to do something which is much more valuable. I think if you kind of approach all this with that paradigm, first recognise that it is going to increase productivity significantly. Then say that the increased productivity, how can I leverage that human capital that is getting released to create new value?” Vijayakumar said.

What are some examples of use cases?

PODCAST

On Episode 576 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Anuj Choudhary, Research Analyst at Mirae Asset Sharekhan as well as Rakesh Bhatnagar, Director General at Voice of Indian Communication Technology Enterprises (VoICE).

• Markets fall towards end of trading day on heightened border tensions

• Rupee falls as currency markets reflect more fears than equities

• Are India’s cyber defenses strong and prepared for attacks?

• Good news, inflation is still coming down

👥 THE TEAM

✍️ Zinal Dedhia, Salman SH, Kudrat Wadhwa | ✂️ Rohini Chatterji | 🎧 Joshua Thomas