New Delhi: The Indian rupee’s slide against the dollar has made it “Asia’s worst performing currency”, Veena Venugopal writes in the Financial Times’ India Business Briefing. She says an India-US trade deal may have helped arrest the free fall, but that deal has remained “elusive”.
“The rupee has now breached the psychologically significant threshold of 90 to the US dollar, its lowest level ever, and is likely to weaken even further,” she writes.
“The primary culprit, however, is the Indian stock market, which has underperformed other emerging markets by the widest margin since 1993. The MSCI India index’s dollar return this year was 2.5 per cent, while the larger emerging markets index returned 27.7 percent. As a result, foreign portfolio investors have moved $16bn out of the country and into better performing markets.”
The MSCI India Index measures the performance of large and mid-cap segments of the Indian market.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-day visit has attracted significant global media attention, with Pranshu Verma and Catherine Bolton reporting in The Washington Post that the trip presents Prime Minister Modi with a delicate diplomatic challenge—reassuring Moscow without angering Trump.
In his first visit to India since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, President Putin arrived Thursday evening and was warmly welcomed by PM Modi at the airport.
The visit comes two days after Putin held “lengthy and inconclusive talks with American negotiators in Moscow about winding down the conflict”, writes the Post.
“Modi has avoided condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine while expressing sympathy for Kyiv and support for international peace efforts,” says the report, explaining the geopolitical state of affairs.
“Modi must walk a political tightrope,” the report quotes Krea University’s comparative political science professor Sumantra Bose as saying, “Signaling an ongoing commitment to Moscow without alienating the U.S. president.”
“It’s a fine balancing act,” Bose adds. “He has to factor Trump’s unpredictable and unstable personality into his personal calculations.”
However, India is “unlikely” to turn away from Russia. “There are no reliable partners around” and, under Trump, India can no longer “rely on a steady bond with the U.S,” says the report.
Amid the chaos at Indian airports due to mass cancellations by Indigo, the Financial Times newsletter also writes about Adani group’s expansion plan in the aviation sector.
“The Adani group is putting more eggs in its airports basket. The conglomerate is committing $15bn to expanding its operations in the aviation sector, according to local media, including upgrading capacity at its airports in smaller Indian cities such as Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Lucknow,” it says.
The Adani group is also proposing an additional runway at the new airport in a suburb of Mumbai, which is scheduled to open later this month, the newsletter mentions. “This will be the group’s eighth airport in India.”
The BBC’s Noor Nanji interviews Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, as the duo are in London to unveil a statue to commemorate 30 years since the release of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.
“Charming and funny, the actor is often described as Bollywood’s “most important cultural export”, with fans also endearingly referring to him as King Khan or the King of Bollywood,” says the report.
“Fans queued up to try to catch a glimpse of him and Kajol at the statue unveiling, with many screaming and taking photos as they arrived. Speaking afterwards to BBC News, Khan said the statue was like having “a life-size doll.”
Khan also said that it was “befitting” for the statue to be in London.
“England’s audience has been very responsible for Indian cinema’s takeoff globally in modern times,” he has been quoted as saying. He also tells the BBC that he is dying to show it to his children.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
Also Read: Global media’s predictions on what to expect from Putin’s India visit & his meeting with Modi