New Delhi: From a telecom giant’s much-awaited stock market debut to a Himalayan frontier where mobile networks can slip into Beijing time, global media’s India coverage this week offers a lens to look at India’s ambitions and the underlying challenges.
Financial Times reports on the stakes of Mukesh Ambani’s telecom gamble, The Economist looks at India’s race to build along its border with China, while the BBC reports on the death of a ‘finfluencer’ amid allegations of cyberbullying, and Global Times asks whether India’s manufacturing thrust can manufacture jobs.
Chris Kay, Mumbai bureau chief of Financial Times, describes Jio’s long-awaited stock market debut as a potential “pop or flop,” and refers to Fitch-owned CreditSights dubbing it as “jumbo Jio IPO”. The expected $3.2 billion offering comes after seven years of delays, but the FT report warns that “the timing is still not perfect”.
“Indian equities are struggling, foreign investors are heading for the exits and the war in Iran is squeezing Reliance Industries,” the broadsheet writes, pointing to pressure on the group’s petrochemicals business.
Reliance shares have fallen 23 percent this year, while Jio has pegged its targeted valuation at $107 billion, against initial market expectations of more than $150 billion.
The FT also notes that “India has not been a welcoming market for blockbuster listings.” It cites the example of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the country’s biggest listing this year, which it says “has floundered since going public,” with its stock down 4.8 percent.
It adds that the Ambanis are “pulling out all the stops to avoid an early flop,” even encouraging Reliance’s 400,000 employees to buy shares. But the broadsheet’s focus extends beyond the spectacle of the listing. Jio, with 533 million domestic subscribers, is central to Reliance’s future as the conglomerate expands into new technology ventures.
The FT places the IPO between two competing pressures: the Ambanis’ ambitions for Jio, and the limits of how much more its customers can pay.
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Just 10 km from India’s border with China, the village of Zemithang offers a glimpse into “unwanted Chinese presence”.
Speaking to The Economist, a local official describes an everyday reminder of how close they are to the frontier: “My phone keeps changing to Beijing time [two and a half hours ahead], because I lose my Indian network and pick up the Chinese one.”
In its report, the magazine says India is pouring money into Arunachal Pradesh to “strengthen its hold” over the state, which China claims as its own. It adds that the region was also “the main theatre of the only war between the two countries” in 1962.
Despite decades of relative calm, the magazine describes the current situation as “an ugly stability,” a phrase used by Delhi-based security analyst Ajai Shukla.
For The Economist, its spotlight is infrastructure building along the Indo-China border. It writes: “The fiercest contest is over infrastructure. For decades Indian officials eschewed building roads in AP, fearing it would give an invading Chinese army an easier route south. That is now considered a mistake: poor connectivity hindered India’s ability to supply its own troops and kept its citizens isolated.”
China, meanwhile, has built extensive roads and hundreds of “dual-use” villages combining civilian settlements with military infrastructure. The 2020 Galwan clashes prompted India to rethink its assumptions about ties with Beijing, says The Economist.
Jabin Jacob of Shiv Nadar University tells the magazine: “Until the clashes in Galwan, India assumed that the relationship with China would improve in a linear fashion. That incident was a real wake-up call.”
The report adds that India now sees connectivity as “essential to deterrence”.
It also notes that Arunachal Pradesh’s rivers have significant hydropower potential, with India planning several dams, including its biggest-ever on the Upper Siang river. It also reports growing alarm among Indian officials over satellite images showing the rapid expansion of Chinese border villages.
The report closes on the disparity between the two countries’ ability to develop their border regions. “China enjoys greater economic and military resources and also the advantage of unfettered state capacity. It is said to have forcibly relocated people to border villages. The Indians, meanwhile, must contend with local concerns—such as opposition to the construction of dams.”
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The BBC reports on the death by suicide of V. Harish, a 27-year-old finance influencer with more than 1.3 million followers on Instagram. He described himself as a financial adviser to “millionaires” and “high-net-worth individuals”.
According to the report by Geeta Pandey and Mohan, his videos, which broke down financial issues in simple terms, “became hugely popular as they coincided with a rapid expansion in India’s retail investor base, especially since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.”
But Meta took down his account in September after complaints that he lacked the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registration required to offer investment advice.
His father, J Vinayagam, has blamed “cyberbullying, defamatory social media posts and repeated blocking of his channels” for his son’s death and named YouTuber Jason Samuel in a police complaint. The complaint demands that “a proper investigation be conducted and legal action be taken against Jason Samuel and his accomplices, who spread defamation on social media and caused mental distress through cyberbullying”.
Police registered the complaint under “abetment to suicide” and said preliminary investigations found Samuel had a “role in this case”. Samuel has denied cyberbullying Harish. In a statement on X, he said he was “deeply saddened, heavily grieving, shocked and frozen at what has happened and I mourn the loss of life”.
“I have not cyber-bullied him. I pointed out his lack of licence and authority, misrepresentation of licence and fraud… his illegal activity. I literally asked him in the video to come back and do this with a proper Sebi licence. I never intended or expected this drastic measure to happen and I mourn the loss,” he wrote.
Against this backdrop, BBC report highlights the tension between the growing popularity of online financial advice and the question of whether those offering it have the required credentials.
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Hu Weijia, writing for China’s state-run Global Times, argues that India should judge manufacturing growth not just by the value it adds domestically, but by how many jobs it creates for its expanding workforce.
The column highlights the phrase “employment-intensive growth”, citing former RBI governor D. Subbarao’s argument that the challenge is “not merely to grow fast, but to make growth productive, employment-intensive and resilient”.
It points to India’s large and young population, writing: “Given the country’s sheer population size, this represents a vast pool of potential workers in the years ahead. For Indian manufacturing, this is both an advantage and a responsibility.”
The column draws on China’s processing-trade model, in which manufacturers imported components, assembled or processed them domestically and exported finished goods. The model grew from less than $1.7 billion to more than $1.4 trillion in 2014, with about 100,000 enterprises directly employing 40 million people. It argues that India need not replicate China’s model but can learn from its integration into global production networks. Access to imported components, it says, can help manufacturers lower costs, scale up production and create jobs while building domestic capacity for critical components.
Its central argument lands thus: “Expanding production is not just about building industrial capacity; it is also about creating jobs for young Indians entering the labor market.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)