New Delhi: India’s takeover of the first International Cricket Council tournament in Pakistan in almost 30 years is complete, according to an article in Dawn.
The article, with the headline ‘Cricket integrity has been hit for six but it’s no big deal for players’, talks of the absurdity of the special concession given to India. None of the semi-finalist teams were in Pakistan at the start of the week, which is supposed to be hosting the tournament—they were all in Dubai. “It shouldn’t have been that way, not if the schedule was made on merit. Instead, it was made on India’s whims,” the article says.
“After refusing to travel to Pakistan—and forcing through a hybrid arrangement that will work for both parties in the future—India, as in all ICC tournaments, wanted to play the last round-robin match. It’s a move that allows it to control its destiny and there is an excuse for that too—the broadcasters want it that way,” the op-ed continues.
It’s a blatant display of power, the article says, that shows how skewed the cricketing world is—and the unfair advantage India seems to have.
“Sports—and cricket—couldn’t bring India and Pakistan together. The divide forced South Africa to make a useless day-trip to Dubai before they came back to Lahore on Monday, alongside New Zealand, ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final between the two sides,” says Dawn.
The players seem to be taking it in their stride, but it’s an unnecessarily disruptive and expensive detour that they need to take to accommodate both geopolitics and cricketing politics.
Moving away from cricket, a column in Bloomberg by Mihir Sharma says the Indian government has missed another opportunity to reform income tax.
He writes that both the general public and tax lawyers feel that while parts of the rules have been simplified, the basic structure of India’s tax code remains the same—and does nothing to improve relations with the taxpayer.
“As has happened too often in the decade-plus that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has run India, good intentions have been undermined by half-hearted implementation,” he writes. “The state needed to promise, through a new legal code, that it would take a less adversarial approach. Distrust and confrontation is at the heart of how the Indian tax system works, and it is both nerve-racking and inefficient.”
Sharma writes that the state has a hostile mindset, making compliance costs too high and disputes too frequent as a result.
“Many in government think taxpayers are being ungrateful,” he writes—after all, plenty has been done in the last decade, from digital payments to new procedures to prevent outright extortion. “Yet Indians still feel locked into an antagonistic relationship with authorities. Political rhetoric about tax evasion and constant news about raids and random audits don’t help. They have interpreted this code not as the harbinger of a new age of cooperation between assessee and official, but as a pause to clarify the rules for an eternal battle. The law still centers the revenue needs of the state, not the rights and liberties of the taxpayer.”
Sharma makes another case: the government needs to change its attitude to income tax, not “out of compassion, but necessity”. The system should instead be designed to be even more combative than it already is, he suggests.
The BBC reports that while there has been an increase in Indians channelling their savings into the stock market, the tide seems to have turned amid a jittery economy.
“For six months, India’s markets have slid as foreign investors pulled out, valuations remained high, earnings weakened and global capital shifted to China—wiping out $ 900 bn in investor value since their September peak,” the BBC reports. “While the decline began before US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, they have now become a bigger drag as more details emerge.”
The Nifty 50 share index is on its longest losing streak in 29 years, having been declining for 5 straight months. It’s a significant slump in one of the world’s fastest growing markets.
And it’s at odds with the financial revolution brewing among the middle class.
“The go-to investment route is Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs), where funds collect fixed monthly contributions. The number of Indians investing through SIPs has soared past 100 million, nearly trebling from 34 million five years ago. Many first-time investors, lured by the promise of high returns, enter with limited risk awareness—often influenced by a wave of social media ‘finfluencers’ on platforms like Instagram and YouTube,” the BBC said.
What’s more is that the youth are also looking to diversify from traditional assets: “digital platforms, low-cost brokerages and government-driven financial inclusion” has made investing more accessible, while “smartphones and user-friendly apps have simplified market participation”.
And these aspirations—for the youth and the middle class—stand to lose from this market crash.
“This market crash couldn’t have hit India’s middle class at a worse time. Economic growth is slowing, wages remain stagnant, private investment has been sluggish for years and job creation isn’t keeping pace. Amid these challenges, many new investors, lured by rising markets, are now grappling with unexpected losses,” the BBC reports. “In the end, the market meltdown might serve as a hard lesson for new investors.”
Reuters reports on the north-south divide over the delimitation proposal, with South Indian states arguing that redrawing boundaries of parliamentary constituencies will result in less representation compared to the “poorer, more populous south”.
“India’s five southern states include Karnataka, of which tech hub Bengaluru is the capital, industrial powerhouse Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, one of the fastest growing among the country’s 28 states. Together, these five make up about 30% of India’s GDP,” Reuters reports. “The BJP is in power in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh while an allied party controls neighbouring Bihar. The two states are among the country’s poorest and comprise about 26% of India’s 1.4 billion population, the highest in the world.”
The constitution demands that the government conduct a delimitation exercise after every national census—but India missed the 2021 census, and the Modi government is yet to announce plans to launch the next census. The 2011 census put the population at 1.2 billion, but the number of elected seats in parliament is still 543. The new parliament building, however, has 888 seats.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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