🖋️ From the desk of Abhijeet Rane:
- dhadakkamgarunion0
- Jun 27
- 3 min read
🖋️ From the desk of Abhijeet Rane:
Maharashtra’s proposed Shaktipeeth Expressway—an ambitious 800-km corridor linking coastal Konkan to the temple towns of Vidarbha—has run into a red flag from the state finance department. Officials caution that the ₹60,000-crore project, if executed via conventional borrowing, could push the state’s debt-to-GSDP ratio well past the 25 per cent ceiling agreed with the RBI. They have warned the cabinet that servicing costs alone may swallow up to ₹5,000 crore a year, crowding out allocations for health and rural irrigation. In other words, the political appeal of stitching together pilgrimage hubs might come at the price of fiscal headroom just when rising MSP outlays and pay-revision arrears are already straining the budget.Yet shelving the corridor outright is not the only option. A hybrid model—blending monetisation of existing toll roads, a staggered EPC rollout and viability-gap funding from the Centre—could trim upfront borrowing by a third. The expressway’s alignment passes through mineral belts and agro-clusters that, if properly master-planned, could generate industrial-township revenue to offset debt.
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🖋️ From the desk of Abhijeet Rane:
US President Donald Trump has again dangled the prospect of a “very big” trade agreement with India, telling supporters that negotiations are far enough along that a deal could materialise swiftly if he returns to office. Trump claimed the framework would go beyond tariff trimming to cover digital services, critical minerals and supply-chain security—areas the Biden administration’s IPEF talks have only partially addressed. For New Delhi, the signal is significant: Washington is hinting at reopening the comprehensive pact that stalled in 2020 over agricultural access, data-localisation rules and price caps on medical devices. If the US is prepared to bundle market access with technology transfers and friend-shoring incentives, India’s “Make-in-India for the world” pitch suddenly has a powerful commercial anchor.The political calculus on both sides lines up. Trump needs a marquee economic win to reinforce his “tough but transactional” doctrine, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to lock in fresh export and investment pathways before a slowing global cycle hits Indian manufacturing targets.
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🖋️ From the desk of Abhijeet Rane:
Mumbai’s civic authorities have cleared more than 1,500 unauthorised multi-faith roadside shrines, loudspeaker platforms and makeshift altars in a fortnight-long operation supervised by the Chief Minister’s office. The drive—co-ordinated among the BMC, Mumbai Police and the state urban development department—targeted structures that blocked footpaths, narrowed traffic lanes or had been erected on utility corridors without permission. By treating illegal Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian sites alike, the administration signalled that public-safety regulations trump sectarian considerations and that no religious group can claim immunity from zoning laws or court directives.Politically, the timing is deliberate: local-body elections loom, and Devendra Fadnavis wants to showcase a “governance-first” agenda that contrasts with the previous regime’s piecemeal approach to encroachments. Success here could embolden similar clean-ups in Thane, Pune and Nagpur, where civic bodies face identical challenges.
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🖋️ From the desk of Abhijeet Rane:
Dhaka’s foreign office insists its recent economic-connectivity meeting with China and Pakistan was a pragmatic discussion on transport corridors and power grids, not a geopolitical signal aimed at New Delhi. Bangladeshi officials stress that India remains their “closest development partner” and point to the substantial Indian credit lines, joint power projects and cross-border rail links already under execution. They argue that, as a lower-middle-income economy with a $400-billion export target, Dhaka must keep supply chains open on all flanks—even if that means sitting at the same table as Beijing’s Belt-and-Road planners and Islamabad’s trade envoys.
India, meanwhile, will watch the optics carefully. Strategists in New Delhi note that China routinely leverages trilateral formats to widen strategic space in South Asia, and Pakistan hopes any cooperative veneer will temper its own economic isolation.
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🖋️ From the desk of Abhijeet Rane:
India’s national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued an urgent advisory after global security researchers flagged a staggering leak of 16 billion passwords on hacker forums. Officials warn that the trove—reportedly assembled from multiple previous breaches—will dramatically lower the cost of cyber-crime, fuelling phishing, financial fraud and identity theft. Because Indian users often recycle weak credentials such as “123456” or “admin”, CERT-In is asking every citizen to change passwords across e-mail, banking, social-media and e-commerce accounts, adopt unique 12–15-character passphrases, and enable multi-factor authentication wherever possible.The government has also directed companies to tighten server-side security: enforce strong-password policies, hash and salt credential databases, routinely monitor the dark web for dumps, and notify customers of possible exposure. While the advisory is precautionary—no single domestic platform is confirmed as the source—the scale of the leak means attackers can automate credential-stuffing against Indian services almost overnight.
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