The Yen carry trade unravelling is some scary stuff. It's a cycle that might be very hard to contain, and a TINY .25% hike in interest rates in Japan is taking down many markets. I explored why and finally got it. And it's quite something!🧵 Japan had zero interest rates, so people borrowed money there and put it in any kind of asset for a potential for yield, all over the world. In global stocks, crypto, real estate... Literally anything that can yield over zero.

Everyone telling you you're not middle class because earning 10-15 Lakh in India means you in the top 5% is wrong. You're most definitely middle class!

Even earning 30 Lakhs, you're middle class!

The middle class isn't economically in the middle. That's a misconception. 🧵 The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, defined by occupation, income, education, or social status.

There's the poor and below middle class - defined by a social profile of having to do labour to live, and struggling for the basics.

A thread on what's coming next for the nation!

How to Win an Indian Election (Penguin, '19) is an intro to politics and how it works. How parties, citizens, and other stakeholders operate in the political realm.

The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities (HarperCollins, '21) explains how parties and nation states shape your information environment, and in effect shape your reality.

Anything you "know" and who you are is a product of the information you consume... shaping that shapes your thoughts. The book explains how that is done.

Looking into city planning and real estate in Delhi is a different sort of hellhole!

So much of Delhi is illegal. Even legal areas have all sorts of illegal construction. Municipality sends notice, people get court stays for decades! So bad, most builders just build illegally!

Even more crazy... people advise other to encroach! And people are like itna toh chalta hai while building totally illegally extended structures.

Areas with crores of people living don't have proper water and sanitation! No trash collection is super common. This is the capital!

I now have a working theory on ECI reluctance to disclose form 17C and voter turnout data.

There will be no mismatch. If there are more votes in EVMs than votes polled, all hell would break lose. It'd be the end of India's democracy tag and no one would risk losing the tag... Instead, what we would see is voting is down in very specific, targeted booths.

Granular turnout data would have told us how opposition votes are being suppressed!

This'll still come out, but now after results, and no one would be able to do anything or care as much.

The amount of voter suppression going on in this election is ridiculous. Just no words for the world's largest democracy.

https://twitter.com/Nher_who/status/1789951669381296377?t=JtqoS2Vac824ZT3gRGH3xA&s=19

Everything about EVMs is a secret. But what's out is super worrying.

1 - ECI lies about it. EVM are not standalone, all get connected to computers.

2 - Experts giving certificates of them being safe are same people who invented VVPAT...🧵

@NeelMadhav_ and @parthpunter report. 3 - ECI has no technical capabilities. It relied on a Technical Expert Committee to ensure EVMs are safe.

This committee was 4 IIT Professors. All 4 are also listed as inventors of the VVPAT. So they certify their own invention as safe.

This is where the weirdness starts...

Listened to arguments in the Supreme Court over #EVM #VVPAT, people were terrible at explaining the issues.

We know for a fact the EVM is not standalone. Each one gets connected to a computer! It's a windows software to load candidate names and symbols! A thread. ECI keeps saying standalone as a reason for it being unhackable, except it isn't. It's connected to computers - all EVMs have to be, for them to have the candidate name and symbol to print.

Then claim EVM has had the same glass, and it's not been made black and totally opaque...

There has been only one justification of Electoral Bonds - that otherwise money was moving in cash. It's surprising how little people understand about political money flows!

Political funding is not even 20% in EBs. It's still mostly all black! Then why bring EBs? A 🧵... Cost of elections and even running a political party's organization is MUCH higher that the amount in EBs. Covered this in my first book.

So the businesses that generate a huge amount of black money are still giving black money to parties! That's still most of political funding.

Think EVM - VVPAT hacking is a conspiracy theory? Found out one part of it is 100% true.

Earlier VVPAT screens used to be transparent, they changed it to translucent, and now it's completely opaque. You can't see the slips being printed or cut now. Just light on and light off. Video above is how it used to be - you could clearly see slip being printed and cut. Then they changed it to where light only turned on after slip printing, and turned off before slip cutting. You could still see the process from the right angle though...

#AdaniExposed Few weeks ago, Deloitte resigned as auditors to Adani. They stated Adani wasn't willing to provide details of suspicious transactions.

The new auditor reported on in the media, BDO Global, isn't even an audit firm! It's a network of independent auditors... 🧵 The actual auditor is a tiny little Bangalore firm called MSKA & Associates, with a 2.3 star rating on Google with 9 reviews. From Deloitte to this? Why?

Today we found out!

Manipur won't recover for decades, but it's worse than that. The insurgency across India's Northeast, mostly ended after decades of work by the govt and local leaders in the 2000s.

Now, with its actions, the govt has told many communities it'll not only not protect them... It can become an active participant in helping spread a genocide.

All the leaders from Modi to N. Biren Singh and all of BJPs office bearers... no one has even mentioned making things normal in Manipur. They instead talk of West Bengal, do whataboutery and suppress information.

Talked to BJP folks to understand how they're justifying getting the police to beat up athletes who are protesting against sexual harassment.

The story spun is now surprisingly more complicated.

Initially it was just, politically motivated protest to defame India. As usual. The athletes now seem to have public sympathy though, as per their assessment. So the defaming needs to be more robust. With a backstory that explains it all away as a conspiracy.

New message is that this all started because Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is from UP...

A very interesting phenomenon I've been trying to explain to people for a while...

The poor and uneducated aren't the ones who fall for and support Hindu-Muslim, Sengol, Vishwaguru because took foreign trips narratives.

It's the middle class and rich! This bears out in surveys and election results, and even conversations time and again!

The poor 60% of India will vote on welfare, law and order. It's a clear calculation of who is more beneficial to my interests. Then the narratives are secondary.

India now has a supremely young population with 50% of its people under the age of 30 years. Indian population will continue to climb until at least 2050.

This phase that India is reaching in its population patterns is commonly referred to as a “demographic dividend”.

🧵🧵 In the initial stages, fertility rates fall, leading to a labor force that is temporarily growing faster than the population dependent on it.

This means more workers, less children and old people (dependents). Usually per capita incomes grow too during this time.

I hate commenting on what @INCIndia is doing wrong, but the party has ZERO idea on how to do politics.

Everyone knows the media won’t showcase INC. What is the party doing about this?

A thread on strategy - how they could have used the President election brilliantly!!

https://twitter.com/atti_cus/status/1575713881569099776

Individual spokespersons and people in the party are doing phenomenal work!

@Pawankhera, @SupriyaShrinate etc. clearly know what they’re doing, but the party lacks strategy!

If I was designing the party’s presidential elections, this is what I’d do:

I am pro vaccines and I also want government to release important data surrounding it. That’s not hesitancy, it’s common sense.

What data do I want?

- Covaxin Phase 3 trial, peer reviewed.

- How many got COVID after 1st, 2nd dose. With what variant. (We need genome sequencing) - How many had to get hospitalised, died after vaccines (1st and 2nd dose breakup. Covaxin / Covishield breakup, state and region wise.

- Status of variant identification in India. Because with these many cases, virus has a much higher chance of mutating. Must be tracked.

I think I’ve figured out COVID death discrepancy. Was looking at how states are compiling the death data that they release, and it’s crazier than one could imagine. [Thread]

Looked at 3 large states, but the figures they release of deaths are collected from hospitals! The death figures you hear only counts people who died while COVID positive when admitted in a hospital!

Someone never admitted to hospital - not counted.

Someone released after being negative and dying due to post COVID complications - not counted.

Why is the PM missing? Why are they campaigning in Bengal? Here’s the likely answer:

In any event, the first question he asks is what’s best for his image. It’s never what’s best for people or nation, it’s always the image.

In the current crisis, they took a concerted call... And they reached the conclusion that staying out of reach and away from the crisis was a better bet for his image.

Thought process: Nothing to be done, we’ve already exported vaccines, not allowed foreign ones or prepared hospitals and oxygen, so people will die.

Many are asking how the iPhone, crypto and jobs scammer Neel that @zoo_bear has been tweeting about is RW’s fault. It’s one individual scammer.

Well, the over 50 crores in scams happened under the guise of nationalist, pro-BJP, Hindutwawadi credentials! [Thread] The scammer used these for credibility and reach. No one would trust a random account, but many fell for it because IT Cell ecosystem amplified Neel’s hateful content, building him up!

For every 1 person who believes BJP’s hateful rhetoric, there are 10+ in it for personal gain!

Lots of people wonder how this AAP strategy makes any sense. Strategically, it makes a lot of sense... It’s brilliant!

By attacking Congress, they position themselves as an opposition to INC - a space that BJP occupies. Then voters unhappy with INC have a choice: (Thread)

https://twitter.com/rohini_sgh/status/1329109768066121750

That anti INC vote can go to BJP or to AAP.

Next step in the AAP journey will be to present it’s Delhi model of schools, mohalla clinics and water+electricity to these states to show they’re better than BJP. But for now, they’ll embed in people’s minds that they’re anti INC.