Best of the Week: ‘Baby on board’, and other lies they tell you

Dear reader,

If you drive, you may have gotten stuck behind a car sporting a “Baby on Board” sticker. They drive slowly, but not meticulously. They're somehow always hurriedly trying to drive.

This is also a growing reflection on our urban upper middle class, who are finally at a personal and financial intersection to have a kid as well as buy a car.

Seeing the rise of these stickers made me curious about their purpose. An inexperienced driver usually puts an ‘L’ sticker on the front and back to warn other drivers. So, I did some digging.

As I had suspected, the primary reason for this sticker is to warn other drivers about a possible infant or baby in the car. That signals you to drive slower or at least be a little compassionate. The other reason is that in case of a mishap, the authorities would first search the car for a baby.

Common sense dictates that any capable person—either a bystander or an emergency professional—would look for a baby first, sticker or not.

While I was busy getting frustrated behind errant drivers, our newsroom was on its toes to bring you the biggest news from the world of business and finance in India. Here is a selection:

We have a new man helming the country's monetary policy decisions: Sanjay Malhotra will be taking over as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

👋 Gopika Gopakumar writes a brilliant recap of outgoing governor Shaktikanta Das's tenure that began in 2019. Das held the fort steady and has not budged on reducing interest rates, despite multiple outcries from the central government. Perhaps the biggest project that Das undertook was sensing and trying to thwart the huge rise in the disbursal of unsecured loans, Gopika writes.

🪑 This is a huge transitional phase for those steering India's economy: Five of the six members of the Monetary Policy Committee (which decides the rate of interest, among other important decisions) will now be new. Malhotra, the new governor, already has a mammoth task in controlling and stabilizing India's financial progress— Puja Mehra writes that he now has to do it without the benefit of continuity.

💭 Our newsroom's main opinion-editorial piece around this decision is pretty clear: to continue building on the template that Das utilised. Das steered clear of challenges from both within (inflation) as well as external (covid, wars). As outlined above, Das also took on the central government's people-pleasing initiatives head-on. Malhotra would do well to form the policies from his tenure, keeping the country's long-term stability in mind.

📉 After Donald Trump's re-election, the rupee keeps hitting new record lows against the dollar. However, there is some anticipation of a rate cut by the new governor. That would narrow this widening gulf between the dollar and the rupee, writes Abhinaba Saha. Against other peers, the rupee has held its ground. However, experts anticipate that the rupee could continue falling in the long run due to a potential tariff war.

💻 If you've been given a work laptop, chances are that it's made by Lenovo. Its flagship B2B offering, the Thinkpad, is the most popular choice across the world. Not that the name gives anything away, but Lenovo is a Chinese company. It's rare for any Chinese company to enjoy a healthy business in India after the cross-border skirmish at Galwan in 2020. Gulveen Aulakh writes that the company did one thing right: compliance. This applies not just to India but the world, too: federal governments buy Lenovo laptops in bulk, too. Lenovo also has a huge local manufacturing facility in Pondicherry, allowing it to escape the scrutiny its fellow compatriots endured.

🎢 India's equities markets have been on a roller coaster this year. After starting off on a belligerent note, markets fell—and fell hard—in September. Mayur Bhalerao takes a retrospective look at the stock markets in 2024. Retail investors really came into their own this year, competing with heavy-handed institutional and high-net-worth players. Despite increasing participation from retail investors, India Inc.'s weak quarterly results dampened spirits in the second half of the year.

🏗️ The government wants to kick-start infrastructure projects in Prime Minister Modi's third term. To that end, it is charting a huge blueprint that would require spending of around ₹100 trillion, report Gireesh Chandra Prasad and Subhash Narayan. The money will come from a mix of central, state and private sources. It will be put towards three main avenues: highways, ports and railways. 

🤬 You probably need really thick skin to be a celebrity. Where there's fame, there are detractors. In the age of social media, it's easy for such people to hide behind the mask of anonymity and send hate to famous people they don't like. Take, for example, the recent split between composer A.R. Rahman and his wife. While some would render any comments to this incident as “trolling”, they are real words, and they have real consequences. So, Lata Jha's story from this week came as no surprise to me. Celebrities are now pursuing legal action against social media commenters as well as media outlets. Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar have pursued similar avenues as well to deal with hateful content. 

♟ India is on top of the chessing (is that a word?) world. Dommaraju Gukesh, just 18, is the world chess champion. For Mint Lounge, Arun Janardhan writes an eloquent story of Gukesh's fascinating journey as well as his victory this past week. 

🦮 A few months ago, my partner and I decided to adopt a pet (more on that in a future edition!). After the adoption, our bills shot up—mostly to spoil our newest addition to the family. Like me, millions of households in India today house a pet. Soumya Gupta writes that Godrej Consumer has an eye on this growing segment, too. Godrej already has a meat processing arm that will supply the raw products for it. A giant like Godrej entering the field will in turn develop the entire segment, taking it from strength to strength. My pet will be looking forward to their offerings, even if my wallet might not.

While this mail reaches your inbox, I'll be on some extended leave. Please be kind to my teammate Siddharth, as he handles a lot of the end-of-the-year workload alone.

That's all I have for you this week. If you have any feedback, please write to shashwat.mohanty@htdigital.in.

Best,

Shashwat Mohanty

Assistant Editor