Some food for thought
"To begin, begin."
—William Wordsworth (English poet, 1770-1850)
Word for the day
Aspersion (n)
A damaging or derogatory remark or criticism; slander.
First random thought this morning
Sanjay Nirupam, President Mumbai Congress Committee and former
member of the Parliament, is a classical case study in Indian politics.
He began his journalism career with Indian Express group in
1988, when the conflict between Rajiv Gandhi led Congress government and proponents
of freedom of speech, transparency and anti corruption movement led by the
legendary Ramnath Goenka was peaking. Arun Shorie, Editor of Indian Express and
S. Gurumurthy, Chartered Accountant had exposed the failings of Rajiv Gandhi
government, and V. P. Singh had fallen out with Congress Party and formed Jan
Morcha as an anti corruption political platform.
Nirupam, a Bihari, joined Shiv Sena in early 1990s. He soon
filled the void left by Chhagan Bhujbal, who had joined Shard Pawar's NCP. With
his aggressive styles, he soon became favorite of Sena Chief Bal Thackeray, who
aggressively opposed outsiders coming to Mumabi (primarily people from UP and
Bihar). As editor of Sena mouthpiece "Dopahar ka Samna", he spewed fire
every day.
After Sena nominated him to Rajya Sabha in 1996, his aspirations
grew. Sena was out of power in Maharashtra and his mentor Bal Thackeray was
ailing. Feeling sidelined, he began to look for a larger space in Indian
politics, which the Congress party readily provided. He hopped over to Congress
and immediately got a Rajya Sabha nomination.
As Congress MP, he aggressively took over Vajpayee government,
especially Arun Shorie, who was editor of Indian Express when Nirupam worked with
the group publication, and gained favor of Gandhi family. He was nominated
Chief of Mumbai Congress Party, marginalizing another Bihari, Kripa Shankar
Singh. If you visit the webpage of Nirupam (see here), it has absolutely
no mention about his close association with Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray.
It is more than apparent that the rustic (almost rowdy) aggression
of Nirupam is not congruent with the feudal Congress culture. He is clearly an
outlier. But he perhaps is tolerated, as no one in present day Congress can
match the aggression of Sena and BJP leaders.
No one should be surprised, if he crosses over once again, if
Congress performs poorly in 2019 general and/or Maharashtra elections.
Here I am certainly not criticizing Nirupam, or anyone else for
that matter. I am just highlighting that politics has become like any other
profession. Anyone who stops rising, must fall. It's like 50 people trying to
climb a 100ft ladder. Everyone has to move higher, saving himself from getting crushed
or pushed down by the people above or getting pulled down by the people below;
while simultaneously trying to pull down the people above and crush or push down
the people below.
In this political context—
If you expect politicians to adhere to the concepts like Commitment,
ideology, loyalty, service, ethics etc., that is your problem.
However, if you do not expect this a great deal more from the
politics and politicians, that is Nation's problem.
I'm ain't givin' up yet, for sure!
Notes from my Diary
The stark dichotomy seen in Indian markets, especially since mid
April 2017, when the benchmark Nifty made an intraday low of 9075, has bothered
most market participants.
In these 17months, the benchmark Nifty has gained more than 25%.
But not many portfolios have seen any material growth.
An analysis of 1540 issues most frequently traded shares on NSE,
indicates that almost 57% issues are presently trading below the price at which
traded on 19 April 2017, when Nifty recorded its lowest point in 17months. Only
47% stocks have gained since then.
Almost 16% stocks have lost more than 50% of their value, in
these 17months. Almost identical proportion of stocks have gained more than 50%
in this period.
The make the matter more complicated, the top 50 gainers and
losers in this period are midcap and smallcap stocks. Not a single largecap
stock figures in the list of top 50 gainers and losers.
The worst part perhaps is that there are many names amongst top losers,
which were widely owned by small investors directly. While the top gainers
include many names that are very illiquid and were mostly underowned.
The returns have been highly skewed sectorwise also. IT sector
has outperformed the benchmark by more than 100%. While smallcap, pharma, infra
etc. have underperformed by almost 100%.
Media and PSU have been the worst performers. Considering that
many small investors had been lured into CPSE ETF by the government propaganda,
the pain in that segment is even more severe..
The ugly part of this saga is that the debt funds have also performed
poorly in past one year, starving the investors of yield. The consequence is
that the investors are rushing to riskier debt in search of yield and exposing
themselves even more to volatility in returns.
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