Seasonal Magazine - Rising Rajasthan 2024 - Cover Story by John Antony

Seasonal

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John Antony

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John Antony

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Jason D Pavorattikaran

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HOW TO MAKE ALL INDIANS BENEFIT FROM THE INDIAN EQUITY MARKET

This July 24, India marks the 33rd anniversary of the economic liberalisation program that changed India’s growth trajectory forever. It was on July 24, 1991, that Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister, presented the landmark budget that ended the licence raj and ushered in the fresh air of economic growth through a never before attempted liberalised framework.

In the months running up to this budget, the BSE Sensex was hovering around 770 levels, and today it is over 77,000. This translates to 100X wealth creation within these last 33 years, just on the basis of this large cap index. But the real total wealth creation by India Inc has been much higher.

To understand this, we just have to look at listed Indian companies’ market capitalization then, and now. Before 1991’s liberalisation launch, India’s total market cap was just around Rs 1 lakh crore. Today it stands in excess of $5 trillion, or more than Rs 400 lakh crore, which translates to at least a 400X wealth creation by Indian listed companies during these 33 years.

In fact, India has become one among the only five nations or markets in the world that have surpassed this $5 trillion mark. Previously, only the US, China, Japan & Hong Kong have achieved this feat. But when it comes to per capita incomes and living standards, India still has a long way to go compared with these other nations / regions.

But this is something that shouldn’t discourage us, as India’s socioeconomic challenges are much bigger than any of these nations or regions. India has a much bigger population than Japan or Hong Kong and far fewer natural resources than the US or China. Besides this, India has to

work things out in the framework of a democracy unlike autocratic China or a two-party democracy like the US. However, our world-beating population as well as our vibrant democratic norms can be put to good use, if only we start thinking innovatively - maybe like how no nation has ever done before - for uplifting the living standards of all Indians, or at least for all Indians who are in dire need of it, by leveraging the wealth creation potential of our own equity market.

Even with the dramatic rise in indices like Sensex and Nifty, and the even higher rise in Midcap and Smallcap indices, only around 10% of Indians have a demat account to invest directly into stocks. Mutual Funds in India have been on a high growth trajectory since the 2009 World Economic Crisis and the stock market rout, but still there are only a little over 3% of Indians who have invested in mutual funds.

Interestingly, India is perhaps the only country in the world where there are more demat account holders than mutual fund holders! This is attributed to two aspects - one, the relative immaturity and under penetration of the mutual fund industry, and two, the affinity for India’s upper class segments to invest directly into stocks.

But this will change eventually as more and more Indians realise that equity investing is best left to professional investment firms like mutual funds. But whether this happens or not shouldn’t concern us, as the pressing need of the hour is to bring the benefits of equity market investing to more and more people who need it the most.

As a first step towards this, just like how Jan Dhan bank accounts were started for over 50 crore Indians for direct benefits transfer and other facilities, there needs to be a mechanism whereby crores of needy Indians are gifted with mutual fund accounts. These can be zero-cost demat accounts, provided there is enough depth and variety in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and/or if more fund houses support storing mutual funds in demat accounts.

Since both these scenarios are not yet here on a sensible scale, the more popular mode of mutual fund investing, that is through folios, can be relied upon for this purpose. All mutual fund houses, especially those MFs promoted by public sector entities like SBI, other PSU banks, LIC etc can be asked to take the lead in this exercise.

If you are still wondering where the actual investments would come, the answer is simple. The Central Government has been paying Rs 6000 per year to each landholding farming family in India, since 2018 as income support under the PM-Kisan scheme. Similarly, many state governments have been paying various kinds of pensions to economically weaker sections of the people, like senior citizens, widows, disabled people etc, which are often much higher or comparable to the farmer payouts.

If the central and state governments can come together to provide at least Rs 500 as a monthly assistance to needy families for their savings by investing into mutual fund SIPs, that alone can elevate the Indian living standards into developed nation territory, as a monthly Rs 500 investment into an average performing mutual fund SIP of 15% CAGR would create a corpus of over 1.5 crore rupees for each family within a 40 year period, which is the most crucial

time frame for families as a young couple moves from their 20s to their 60s.

The beneficiaries of such a savings payout can be limited by the same mechanisms used to limit the farmer payouts, like limiting it to non income-tax payees, non-employees of government & public sector, non-holders of constitutional posts etc. But at the same time, all citizens should be encouraged to take part in such a scheme, from their own pockets.

Such a move would also bring in unprecedented inflows into the Indian corporates, which would be flush with capital for not only competing effectively with global majors, but for lessening our dependence on overseas capital and for scaling up our production and service capabilities for the whole world, and in the process creating higher paying jobs for the next generations of Indians.

While the Indian market may appear overvalued for now with the market-cap to GDP ratio crossing the 100% mark, two things offer comfort for the long term growth prospects of our equity markets - one, there are equity markets like that of the US that is trading at over 155%, and two, we are the nation that is growing the denominator of this ratio, that is the GDP, faster than any other, for now.

John Antony

‘RISING RAJASTHAN 2024’ TO TRANSFORM THE STATE FOREVER

Rising Rajasthan Global Summit 2024 is being designed as not just an investment summit but a transformative opportunity for the state. With Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma’s dynamic leadership and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s powerful support, the summit aims to unlock Rajasthan’s full potential. By blending tradition with modernity, the event is set to propel Rajasthan to new heights on the global stage, establishing it as a beacon of sustainable growth and development in India.

WHY MAZDOCK IS AN ACE UP INDIA’S SLEEVE?

Wars are often not won just on gallantry, but also on superior engineering. The most well-known example of this phenomenon is the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine that powered the numerous planes of the Allied Forces in World War II, which helped them outclass the unmatched belligerence of

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VINEGAR CAN HELP COMBAT DEPRESSION, STUDY FINDS

Researchers have discovered that a daily dose of vinegar could improve symptoms of depression, pointing to the possibility that future treatments might come with a few spoonfuls of sour.

PERMA+, A

PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR HEALTH, HAPPINESS & WELLBEING

The pursuit of happiness is one that humans have been working toward since the beginning of time. Yet the concept of “happiness” is often hard to accurately define.

PRODUCT & GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSIFICATIONS TO STABILISE SKM EGG PRODUCTS’ GROWTH

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resultant surge in maize prices during much of FY24 might have thrown a spanner in SKM Egg

THE ULTRA PROCESSED FOOD THAT CAN KILL YOU EARLY

I’m Eliza Cheng and come from a Blue Zone where people often live 10 years longer than average. This is the No. 1 ultra-processed food I always avoid.

WORK NEEDS REST, AND REST TAKES WORK

Modern life can be exhausting. Psychologist, author and fatigue expert Vincent Deary says the answer is to learn how to rest.

WHY HAVE LONG TERM INVESTORS IN CUB LARGELY MISSED INDIA’S GREATEST BULL MARKET?

As City Union Bank delivers yet another quarter of modest yearon-year growth and flat sequential growth in Q1, the banking sector itself is coming out from a five year boom period in income, profits & stock market growth, that City Union Bank has largely missed. Now, when the

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HOW KERALA LEADS INDIA IN ACCESS TO EQUITABLE & INCLUSIVE HEALTHCARE

Did you know that all children under the age of 18 receive free healthcare from Kerala’s public hospitals? Did you know that Kerala has the highest female life expectancy in India at 77.8 years, way above the national average of 71.4 years? Did you know that the state has one of the lowest infant and maternal mortality

WHY SOCIAL LEARNING IS THE BEST WAY TO LEARN ANYTHING NEW

Brain science called it: This is the best way to learn anything new. When done right, social learning activates crucial networks of the brain that deepen understanding and ease of recall, and enable the development of new behaviors.

GARDEN REACH TRIPLES IN VALUE, STILL MARKET CAP ONLY 70% OF ORDER BOOK

Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers’ (GRSE) recent achievements, financial performance, and strategic

THE ULTRA PROCESSED FOOD THAT CAN KILL YOU EARLY

I’M

ELIZA CHENG AND COME FROM A BLUE ZONE WHERE PEOPLE OFTEN LIVE 10 YEARS LONGER THAN AVERAGE. THIS IS THE NO. 1 ULTRA-PROCESSED FOOD I ALWAYS AVOID.

’m from Loma Linda, California, a small city known as the only Blue Zone in America. Studies have shown that residents live up to around a decade longer than the rest of the United States.

Today, much of my work is informed by my upbringing, and the strong emphasis my community in Loma Linda put on on health and nutrition.

Based on principles of longevity and research from Blue Zones, I encourage my clients to focus on balanced nutrition, regular joyful movement, developing healthy coping mechanisms for stress management and adequate sleep.

My ultimate goal is to encourage my clients to pay attention to the foods that give them energy — and help them avoid foods that are ultraprocessed and lack key nutrients.

Now on to why I never consume energy drinks. Energy drinks have become popularized through social media over the years. They’re often marketed as quick solutions for boosting energy, fueling during a preworkout and enhancing alertness.

As a dietitian, though, here’s why I advise caution:

1. Energy drinks can disrupt your sleep and your appetite

One of the main ingredients in many energy drinks is caffeine. While it can improve alertness and concentration, excessive consumption of it can lead to adverse effects such as increased heart rate, high blood pressure and anxiety. It can disrupt sleep patterns, which can lead to fatigue and further reliance on these beverages. Caffeine is known to have appetite-suppressing properties. Many of my clients have reported a reduced desire for meals

after consuming caffeinated drinks. While an energy drink may provide temporary fullness, it is not a meal and should not be used as a replacement for one.

2. Energy drinks can spike blood sugar and increase inflammation

A typical can of an energy drink often contains up to 30 grams of sugar per serving. Too much sugar can contribute to various health issues, including increased inflammation and dental problems. In addition to caffeine and sugar, energy drinks may include other stimulants such as guarana and taurine. While these ingredients are generally recognized as safe, their combined effects with caffeine are not as well-researched and may pose additional health risks.

3. Energy drinks can affect your physical and mental health

Frequent consumption of energy drinks is associated with increased symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress, studies have shown, and with a substantial increase in norepinephrine, a stress hormone that could potentially lead to increased heart rate and blood pressure. Individual responses to energy drinks can vary significantly. Factors such as age, medication use and underlying health conditions can influence how your body reacts to these beverages.

Knowing that, it is important to consult with a physician before consuming energy drinks regularly, especially if you have any pre-existing health concerns. For my clients, I always recommend water, green tea, herbal teas, coconut water and kombucha as great alternatives for energy drinks.

If you find yourself constantly needing energy boosts, my best advice is to consider discussing your lifestyle and eating patterns with a registered dietitian. That can help you identify a healthier and more sustainable relationship with food and your body.

BREAKTHROUGH

VINEGAR CAN HELP COMBAT DEPRESSION, STUDY FINDS

team led by Arizona State University not only tested the effects of regular vinegar consumption but also looked at metabolic activity – the chemical processes that convert food into energy and other biological materials – to look for reasons for the benefits seen with vinegar.

A significant 86 percent boost in the levels of nicotinamide (a form of vitamin B3) was noticed across the study participants who took liquid vinegar each day. The nutrient has previously been linked to anti-inflammatory effects.

“This data provides additional support that daily vinegar ingestion over four weeks can improve self-reported depression symptomology in generally healthy adults and that alterations in [vitamin B3] metabolism may factor into this improvement,” write Arizona State University dietician Haley Barrong and colleagues in their published paper.

The trial was completed by a total of 28 overweight but otherwise healthy adults, who were split into two groups: one group taking two tablespoons of red wine vinegar twice daily, and the other group taking a daily pill with a very small amount of vinegar in it.

Across the course of the four-week experiment, the participants were asked to answer questions across two standard mental health surveys: the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) questionnaire, and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).

Although there was no significant difference between the groups on the CES-D, on the PH9-Q, there was an

RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT A DAILY DOSE OF VINEGAR COULD IMPROVE SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION, POINTING TO THE POSSIBILITY THAT FUTURE TREATMENTS MIGHT COME WITH A FEW SPOONFULS OF SOUR.

average drop of 42 percent in depressive symptoms for the high vinegar level group compared with 18 percent for the control group taking the vinegar pill.

There are some limitations: it was a small sample size, the patients had low-level depression to begin with, and the improvements in PHQ-9 symptoms were not significant in a secondary analysis that adjusted for baseline survey scores. But Barrong and her team say the findings warrant a closer look at the relationship.

“Depressive disorders are the most prevalent mental health conditions in the world,” write the researchers.

“The commonly prescribed antidepressant medications can have serious side effects, and their efficacy varies widely. Thus, simple, effective adjunct therapies are needed.”

Studies continue to make progress in better understanding what depression is and all the different factors that can potentially play into it – from sleep quality to body temperature.

What’s clear is that depression varies a lot between individuals, and that’s where having a wider range of potential treatments can be so useful.

“Future research examining the effects of vinegar administration in clinically depressed or at-risk populations, and those on antidepressant medications, is warranted,” write the authors. “A focus on mechanisms and large patient samples will strengthen the science and provide the evidence to more firmly demonstrate vinegar’s role in health promotion.”

‘RISING RAJASTHAN 2024’ TO TRANSFORM THE STATE FOREVER

Scheduled to begin on December 9, 2024, in Jaipur, the Rising Rajasthan Global Summit 2024 is set to be a landmark event showcasing the economic potential of Rajasthan. With an impressive agenda focused on investment, innovation, and international collaboration, the summit promises to strengthen the state’s position as a hub for sustainable development and global business.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma has played a pivotal role in orchestrating this event, which aims to attract domestic and international investments across sectors such as renewable energy, tourism, agriculture,

infrastructure, and technology . Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the summit, underscoring its national significance.

Under the leadership of CM Bhajanlal Sharma, Rajasthan has emerged as a dynamic player in India’s growth story. Known for its people’s unparalleled entrepreneurial acumen, rich cultural heritage and strategic geographic location, the state has been actively pursuing policies to foster industrialization and economic diversification. The summit is a culmination of CM Sharma’s vision to transform Rajasthan into an attractive destination for global investors while maintaining its environmental and social balance.

Rajasthan has several aces up its sleeve, while getting ready to attract the next round of massive global investments. It is a leader in solar energy production and has significant

potential in wind energy too. With significant arable land, the state is also focusing on agroprocessing and food technology. A unique tourist destination, home to iconic landmarks like the Thar Desert, Jaipur, Udaipur, and the Ranthambore National Park, tourism also continues to be a cornerstone of the state’s economy. The Rising Rajasthan Summit serves as a platform to present these opportunities to a global audience .

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence at the event adds weight to Rajasthan’s efforts, highlighting the central government’s commitment to state-led initiatives that align with India’s broader economic goals. PM Modi has consistently championed reforms and initiatives aimed at enhancing India’s business climate, such as Make in India, Startup India, and Atmanirbhar Bharat (SelfReliant India).

By inaugurating the summit, PM Modi will be underscoring the union government’s support for Rajasthan’s vision for development. Key projects in Rajasthan of national importance include the DelhiMumbai Industrial Corridor, which benefits Rajasthan immensely. The state is also playing a key role in achieving India’s renewable energy goals. The summit also comes at a time when in a post-Biden world, PM Modi will be accelerating attempts to position India as a global economic powerhouse .

Rising Rajasthan 2024 will feature both Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-toGovernment (B2G) interactions. Thus companies will have a unique opportunity to explore partnerships and investments in the state, with both Indian businesses and the state.

The Summit will showcase plans for urban development, including Jaipur’s smart city initiatives. On the tourism front, strategies to boost tourism, such as luxury heritage tourism and eco-tourism, will feature prominently. CM Bhajanlal Sharma is expected to also unveil new policies, offering tax incentives, subsidies, and streamlined

processes to attract investors. Delegates from over 50 countries, including industry leaders, diplomats, and representatives of multilateral organizations, are expected to attend the event.

Rajasthan has been ranking high in terms of ease of doing business, thanks to reforms in labor laws, land acquisition, and digitization of government services. The state has witnessed an 8.5% increase in industrial output in FY24, driven by sectors such as cement, mining, and textiles. Major initiatives, such as the development of industrial corridors, logistics hubs, and renewable energy parks, are set to be key

Ajitabh Sharma, IAS Principal Secretary Industries

talking points at the summit. Rajasthan’s Barmer refinery, a joint venture with Hindustan Petroleum, will also feature as an example of successful public-private collaboration .

The summit will also emphasize innovation and startups, with a special pavilion dedicated to Startup Rajasthan. This initiative seeks to nurture entrepreneurial talent, focusing on sectors like agritech, fintech, and green technology. The state government has pledged seed funding and incubation support for startups, with the goal of making Rajasthan a national leader in innovation .

WHY SOCIAL LEARNING IS THE BEST WAY TO LEARN ANYTHING NEW

BRAIN SCIENCE CALLED IT: THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO LEARN ANYTHING NEW. WHEN DONE RIGHT, SOCIAL LEARNING ACTIVATES CRUCIAL NETWORKS OF THE BRAIN THAT DEEPEN UNDERSTANDING AND EASE OF RECALL, AND ENABLE THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW BEHAVIORS.

The social side of work is in short supply these days. Postpandemic, many organizations have turned to some form of a hybrid approach: employees splitting their time between remote work and commuting into the office. Instead of everyone interacting together in person, people largely work in isolation, through virtual meetings with their cameras off. What’s gotten lost in this new world of work is how companies upskill their employees. Most leaders now feel their current learning and development efforts are a waste of time, perhaps because those efforts aren’t as effective as leaders would hope. They rely mostly on content libraries or selfguided courses, even if those approaches have known limitations for long-term retention and behavior change.

In reality, leaders who want to rapidly develop their employees should harness the benefits of social learning, regardless of whether their culture is mostly virtual or in person. When done right, social learning activates crucial networks of the brain that deepen understanding and ease of recall, and enable the development of new behaviors.

Social learning is the practice of learning material in the company of others. It can be in person or a rich virtual environment, but the core insight is that when we learn something with other people—be it a college study group, a cooking class, or workplace learning— we encode the information more robustly in the brain and feel more motivated to act.

One explanation for this is that humans

and emotion. (The fourth component, spacing— that is, putting time between learning sessions—is a separate condition that must be met regardless of the learning approach.)

Attention involves focusing closely on the material without distraction. Generation involves linking new information to existing knowledge and sparking insights. Emotion involves having slightly positive or negative feelings that enhance recall. Social learning enhances these three elements, like turning up the volume dial on a

have evolved to encode social information automatically because it’s always been essential to our survival. The more we feel connected to the group, the greater our chances of staying safe— and so over time, our brains have become more responsive to what we learn in the presence of a group.

With social learning, we remember how we felt during the lesson and how others felt, which creates a more robust web of memories. We remember more information with less effort because the social network is the default network used for memory storage. Interestingly, when individuals learn together, their brain activity becomes more synchronized, increasing overall understanding and ultimately predicting better learning.

Social learning heightens three of the four components of learning in The AGES Model™: attention, generation,

stereo. Without a social component, learners won’t pay as much attention, generate connections to past learning, or feel emotions around the material as deeply.

An important area of future research is how much social interaction is needed for optimal learning. It stands to reason that some interaction is better than none and that different kinds are stronger than others: in-person being the strongest, followed by virtual with cameras on (live video enhances social cues), then virtual with cameras off, and lastly, in writing.

In addition to creating high AGES, social learning helps to embed the information into more networks in the brain, which essentially means there are more hooks for the memories and learning to hang onto. When we recall one part of the network—say, a memory of a joke someone made during the lesson—we can more easily recall the whole network.

CENTRAL BANK OF INDIA SCORES ON ALL FRONTS

CENTRAL BANK OF INDIA, A MID-TO-LARGE SIZED PUBLIC SECTOR BANK, HAS DELIVERED A SOLID PERFORMANCE IN THE SECOND QUARTER OF FISCAL YEAR 2025, SHOWCASING ROBUST GROWTH IN PROFITABILITY, IMPROVED ASSET QUALITY, AND STRENGTHENED FINANCIAL METRICS. THE BANK’S ACHIEVEMENTS REFLECT ITS STRATEGIC FOCUS, UNDER ITS MD & CEO MV RAO, ON OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY AND PRUDENT RISK MANAGEMENT, REINFORCING ITS POSITION AS A HIGH-GROWTH PUBLIC SECTOR LENDER.

M. V. Rao, MD & CEO

Central Bank of India’s strong performance was driven by economic recovery in the country, emerging credit demand, and advancements in digital banking. The bank’s results underscore its commitment to supporting national economic objectives even while maintaining a focus on financial sustainability. The Mumbai headquartered Central Bank’s net profit rose by 50.91% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 913 crore in Q2 FY25, compared to Rs 605 crore in the same quarter last year. This growth was supported by higher net interest income (NII) and recoveries from written-off accounts . Operating profit increased by 41.5% YoY to Rs 2,165 crore, highlighting its efficiency in cost management and income generation . The bank has been on a steady turnaround path since March 2021, when banking sector veteran MV Rao was given the reins of this crucial lender in the Union Government’s portfolio of banks. CEO Rao was given an extension, and he can be proud that he will be leaving Central Bank in a robust state when he superannuates next year. Its Q2 total income increased by 17.08% YoY to Rs 9,849 crore, driven by higher interest income and a sharp rise in non-interest income. NII grew 12.62% YoY to Rs 3,410 crore, while the crucial profitability metric of net interest margin (NIM) improved to 3.44% from 3.29% in Q2 FY24 . On the asset quality front, gross non-performing assets (NPAs) declined marginally to 4.59% of total advances compared to 4.62% a year ago, which leaves room for significant improvement going forward. Net NPAs fared much better,

witnessing a significant improvement, dropping to 0.69% from 1.64% YoY, reflecting effective credit monitoring and recovery strategies . Provisions for bad loans declined sharply, and the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) improved to 16.27%, with Tier I capital at 14.01% , making any immediate capital raise unnecessary. The bank has emphasized strengthening its retail and small business segments, contributing to a 15.48% YoY growth in retail advances. Its focus on recoveries has also yielded results, with recoveries from written-off accounts growing significantly. Additionally, treasury income surged by 240.8% YoY, indicating efficient portfolio management . Despite these achievements, as a prudent public sector bank, it has guided the market about potential challenges, including rising deposit costs and slower credit growth, which may impact net interest margins in the coming quarters . As the banking sector navigates evolving economic dynamics, Central Bank of India stands as a testament to the resilience and adaptability of India’s PSBs. Its continued emphasis on innovation, operational efficiency, and customercentric strategies will likely sustain its growth momentum in the years to come.

Mahendra Dohare, ED

Vivek Wahi, ED

Malladi Venkat

Murali Krishna, ED

IOB’S Q2 STRONG, BEFITTING ITS LONG TERM GROWTH

AMBITIONS

Chennai headquartered mid-sized public sector lender, Indian Overseas Bank, has set itself an ambitious target of achieving a quarterly profit run rate of Rs 1000 crore. Under MD & CEO Ajay Kumar Srivastava, the bank is racing towards that goal, as is evident from its recent Q2 performance and its plan to raise Rs 2000 crore by March 2025.

Ajay Kumar Srivastava Managing Director & CEO

Indian Overseas Bank (IOB), one of India’s prominent public-sector banks, has achieved robust numbers for the second quarter of FY25, showcasing strong financial performance on the back of improved asset quality. Under MD & CEO Ajay Kumar Srivastava’s strategic guidance, the bank is now planning to raise Rs 2000 crore by March 2025 to bolster its capital base and pursue further growth opportunities. IOB recorded a net profit of Rs 777 crore in Q2, marking a 24% increase from the Rs 625 crore it had achieved in Q2 of FY24. This impressive growth was driven by both improved operational efficiencies and reduced provisioning for bad loans . IOB’s total income surged over 22% to Rs 8,484 crore compared to the Rs 6,935 crore it achieved in the same quarter last year. Interest Income also rose significantly by over 17%, from Rs 5,821 crore in Q2 FY24 to Rs 6,851 crore in Q2 FY25 . The bank’s focus on strengthening its corporate lending portfolio has evidently yielded results, with increased disbursements to infrastructure and SME sectors. The Chennai headquartered lender also achieved significant asset quality improvements with its Gross NonPerforming Assets (GNPA) ratio reducing to 2.72% from the 4.74% a year earlier. Net NPA (NNPA) ratio too improved to 0.47% from 0.68% last fiscal. IOB has achieved these by effective recovery efforts and prudent risk management . In loan provisioning, IOB achieved significant strides with provisions for bad loans dropping significantly to Rs 71 crore from the Rs 1,121 crore it was in Q2 FY24, even while its Provision Coverage Ratio (PCR) increased to 97.06%, indicating strong

financial reserves. On the capital adequacy front, IOB is in a well capitalized situation, improving by 17% to 17.45%. However, the bank is enlarging its war chest by Rs 2000 crore, in preparation of the widely expected advent of private capex and resultant credit demand. The bank is also well prepared for the growing digitalization in banking, with enhanced online services, mobile banking, ewallets, and AI-driven customer support. On the brick-n-mortar front, IOB has announced plans to expand its branch network selectively, with an emphasis on underserved regions, thereby bolstering financial inclusion, even while it contributes to steady growth. As a public sector bank, IOB has also been proactive in implementing government-driven financial schemes, such as PM Jan Dhan Yojana and Mudra loans, contributing to the country’s socio-economic development. Such initiatives and its Q2 FY25 results highlight IOB’s commitment to maintaining robust financial health even while driving innovation and inclusivity. The bank is poised to continue leveraging technology, diversify its revenue streams, and strengthen customer engagement. As the Indian banking sector undergoes rapid transformation, IOB’s strategic initiatives and consistent performance make it a key player in shaping the industry’s future.

Joydeep Dutta Roy Executive Director

T. Dhanaraj Executive Director

BOB’S PERFORMANCE ON TRACK FOR ITS AIM TO DOUBLE BUSINESS BY 5 YEARS BOB’S PERFORMANCE ON TRACK FOR ITS AIM TO DOUBLE BUSINESS BY

5 YEARS

In the second quarter as well as the first half of this fiscal, the only saving grace for India Inc. was its public sector banks. And among them, Bank of Baroda stands tall with its sharply improved performance in both Q2 and H1. Under the strategic leadership of its MD & CEO, Debadatta Chand, the bank is reaping the benefits of its retailisation drive, its significant international business, its branch expansions, and its efforts at moderating its credit-deposit ratio. The bank now comes across as on track to achieve its aim of doubling its total business by the next 5 years.

Public sector lender, Bank of Baroda (BoB), has reported robust results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2024-25, reflecting the bank’s consistent growth in profitability, asset quality, and loan advancements. The growth was visible both on a yearon-year and sequential basis, and thus the bank’s fiscal first half (H1) too has achieved impressive growth, which stands in great contrast to the cyclical downturn seen in Q2 & H1 across many corporate companies in the country.

The Vadodara, Gujarat, headquartered bank achieved a 23.2% year-on-year increase in standalone net profit, reaching Rs 5,238 crore, compared to the Rs 4,253 crore achieved in the same period last year. This growth was fueled by a combination of higher net interest income (NII) and improved asset quality metrics. Specifically, NII rose by 7.3% year-on-year to Rs 11,622 crore, and the global net interest margin (Global NIM) stood at 3.10%. BoB is one of the rare public sector banks in the country with a large international business, especially a large lending book.

The bank’s overall advances displayed strong performance, with global advances increasing by 11.6% to Rs 11.43 lakh crore, and domestic advances experiencing a 12.5% rise to reach Rs 9.39 lakh crore. While the large international business is one reason BoB weathered the cyclical downturn seen across Indian corporates, another reason was the retailisation strategy which has accelerated under the visionary leadership of its Managing Director & CEO, Debadatta Chand, who took over the reins of the bank from July 1 2023.

The results of this move was evident in this Q2. Retail loans were a major driver of this quarter’s growth, with a remarkable 20% year-on-year increase, highlighting strong growth in segments like auto loans (up 22.9%), home loans (up 16.2%), and education loans (up 17.2%). These advancements align with BoB’s focus

Lalit Tyagi, ED

on expanding its retail banking portfolio while addressing demand in key sectors .

In fact, the bank has a stated objective to double its total business volume, consisting of deposits plus advances, from the current level to Rs 48 lakh crore by the next five years, and retailisation of its loan book is a major strategy in achieving this objective. Towards this, Bank of Baroda aims to add 600 more branches in the next two to three years that will further increase the momentum of the ‘RAM’ component (Retail, Agriculture and MSME) of its loan portfolio.

Over 107 branches have been already opened, with this fiscal slated to witness the launch of overall 300 branches. On such an expansion momentum, BoB’s RAM portfolio has

Sanjay Vinayak Mudaliar, ED

grown by almost 100 basis points since March 2024, and now accounts for about 58% of its domestic loan book. The bank’s further aim is to grow the RAM component to 65% by the next three years. BoB believes that this is achievable as it has one of the largest branch networks in the country with over 8200 branches, apart from its touch points and business correspondents.

The target to double total business within the next five years would require Bank of Baroda to grow its business at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 14.87%. Currently, the bank is growing at a CAGR of 11.6%, and if private capex and deposit momentum picks up in the country, the bank is confident of improving its growth rate and achieving this doubling target

within the stated five years itself. However, if such conducive factors take time to emerge, the bank may take some more quarters to achieve this target.

By pursuing retailisation, the bank plans to achieve at least two objectives. Firstly, with private capex yet to kick in on a substantial scale, retail loan growth would be at a higher clip than corporate loan growth in India for the foreseeable future. The bank needs such a high growth rate activity to achieve its objective of doubling its total business within the next five years. Secondly, unlike a predominantly corporate loan book, a retail loan book would lead to lower pressure on margins and therefore reduced volatility in profits.

Over the last two fiscals, retail loans have been growing at about 23-24% at Bank of Baroda. Even in this challenging second quarter, the retail asset growth is almost 20%. On the deposit front too, BoB has been pushing for more savings and term deposits from retail customers. The bank’s growth on this front has clearly outpaced the growth of most peer banks.

BoB has also improved its asset quality metrics in Q2, with gross nonperforming assets (NPA) falling by 15.9% year-on-year to Rs 28,551 crore. This decline resulted in a better gross NPA ratio, which now stands at 2.50%, down from 3.32% in the prior year’s corresponding period. The net NPA ratio also showed improvement, falling to 0.60% from

0.76% year-on-year, indicating a more stable and resilient loan book . Its international business has again come to its rescue, on the deposit front too. Most lenders in the country, including both public and private banks, have been struggling on the deposit side, from the beginning of this fiscal. Despite this, BoB’s domestic deposits, in particular, saw a 7.1% rise, underscoring the bank’s ability to attract and retain customer deposits in a competitive market environment.

However, the bank’s overall deposit base grew even more healthily, as its global deposits increased by 9.1% year-on-year to Rs 13.63 lakh crore. This overall robust growth in deposits has further strengthened BoB’s financial position, allowing the bank to continue expanding its lending activities while maintaining adequate liquidity .

However, BoB’s international business is also creating some challenges in the near term for the bank. For instance, the international business had a peak credit-to-deposit (CD) ratio of 120%, which means that its credit growth in international markets is much ahead of its deposit growth there. With diligent management of this challenge, the bank has now brought it down to 96%, but which the bank desires to bring down further to its domestic CD ratio levels.

Bank of Baroda’s domestic CD ratio now stands at a healthy 81.58%. The bank is now trying to bring its

international CD ratio significantly, so that its global or overall credit-todeposit ratio moderates to 82% from the current 83.8%. While this seems achievable, it will also entail moderating its credit growth to match with its deposit growth.

In fact, the bank recently did this by guiding the market with new lower projections for both credit and deposit growth. While the FY25 credit growth target was brought down to 11-13% from the earlier 12-14%, its deposit growth target for this fiscal has been moderated to 9-11% from the earlier guidance of 10-12% given during the beginning of the year.

Interestingly, due to its high credit rating stature in the market, Bank of Baroda can borrow directly from the market at attractive rates, instead of attracting higher cost deposits, and manage the growth gap between deposits and advances. While the bank has done this to an extent, it doesn’t want to rely on that route further, which will create a seemingly unhealthy CD ratio which would be uncomfortable to the market and the regulator.

In addition to financial growth, Bank of Baroda has been making strides in digital transformation and operational efficiency. The bank has rolled out various digital banking initiatives aimed at enhancing customer experience and streamlining its operational processes. This focus on technology and digital banking has not only increased customer convenience but has also reduced operational costs, thereby contributing to the bank’s improved profitability.

The large-sized public sector bank also has some non-core triggers coming up within the next couple of years. As the largest and major promoter of IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, with a 65% stake, the bank is encouraging the life insurer to go for its IPO, which may happen within the next 9 to 12 months. The other promoters of IndiaFirst Life are the noted US based PE fund Warburg Pincus at 26% and Union Bank at 9%. BoB may also benefit from the upcoming disinvestment of Nainital Bank in which it holds 98.57% stake.

Beena Vaheed, ED

Lal Singh, ED

In addition to these two benefits— encoding more deeply and recalling more easily—social learning also helps us do something with that knowledge. It lets us act more often.

The networks in the brain responsible for storing the information also prompt us to pursue a new and better course of action, often influenced by the social pressure of knowing what others expect of us and not wanting to look bad in front of the group. In other words, social learning doesn’t just help us know better; it helps us do better.

For example, let’s say your team is going through a social learning experience around unconscious bias. If done properly, the learning will: 1) help people encode the information on how bias works more deeply; 2) allow them to recall that information more easily in the moment when they need it; and 3) prompt them to act more often, in real time, in ways that lead to less-biased decision-making.

If each person had learned this material on their own, research suggests they’d be less likely to unconsciously monitor the presence of bias and do something about it. Social learning, by contrast, is an animating presence for teams. It doesn’t just deepen understanding; it enables new behaviors.

Teams of any size and function can use social learning to support culture You Will Live Longer If You Are Flexible

The more flexible you are as you age, the longer you’re likely to live. That’s the conclusion of a new study that associated increased flexibility in middle age with a lower odds of

THE NETWORKS IN THE BRAIN RESPONSIBLE FOR STORING THE INFORMATION ALSO PROMPT US TO PURSUE A NEW AND BETTER COURSE OF ACTION, OFTEN INFLUENCED BY THE SOCIAL PRESSURE OF KNOWING WHAT OTHERS EXPECT OF US AND NOT WANTING TO LOOK BAD IN FRONT OF THE GROUP.

mortality over the next dozen or so years.

The prospective cohort study, which evaluated the flexibility of more than 3100 men and women in Brazil, found body flexibility was strongly and inversely associated with mortality risk over a 13-year follow-up period.

Claudio Gil Araújo, MD, PhD, the research director of the Exercise Medicine Clinic-CLINIMEX in Rio de Janeiro, who led the study, said his group was not surprised by the results. “We found what we expected. Reduced flexibility was related to poor survival,” he said.

The findings, published recently in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, used data from 2087 men and 1052 women who underwent a medical-functional evaluation at CLINIMEX. They received a body flexibility score, called the Flexindex, based on range of motion in 20 movements in seven joints, with a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 80.

Among the 3139 participants, there were 302 deaths (9.6%) during a mean follow-up of 12.9 years with

cardiovascular diseases and cancer the most common underlying causes in men and women, respectively.

“The probability of death during nearly 13 years of follow-up was close to 1% when Flexindex scores exceed 49 for men and 56 for women,” Araújo told Medscape Medical News. “On the other hand, for men and women placed in the lower 10th percent of Flexindex scores, death rates were, respectively, 26.9% and 18.2%.”

Barry Franklin, PhD, director of preventive cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, and a coauthor of the new study, said men with the poorest flexibility were nearly twice as likely to die over the follow-up period than men with high flexibility. Women with the poorest flexibility were almost five times more likely to die than those with high flexibility.

Araújo opened CLINIMEX in 1994, and since then, its staff of five physicians have evaluated more than 10,000 individuals using the Flexitest. Araújo has published two previous studies on flexibility. The first showed that the ability to rise from a sitting position on the floor is a strong predictor of longevity, and the second demonstrated that the inability to stand on one leg for at least 10 seconds is linked to an increased risk for death over 7 years.

Araújo and his colleagues believe the current study is the first to assess the association between levels of body flexibility and mortality. But the observational analysis was unable to establish causality, and therefore, they could not show a definitive mechanism to explain the association between low levels of flexibility and premature mortality.

The authors noted several limitations of their study. The participants were primarily affluent Whites, and the researchers did not control for the time of day flexibility was measured or for variables such as diet and physical activity. They also acknowledged reduced flexibility may be a consequence of poor lifestyle habits rather than a causal risk factor for mortality.

Jonathan Bonnet, MD, MPH, an exercise

expert at the Stanford Center on Longevity Lifestyle Medicine in California, said the researchers used a more robust evaluation of flexibility than a traditional sit-and-reach test. However, he expressed concern that the primary comparisons were of the upper and lower 10% of performers and that the average differences in Flexindex scores between people who died and those who survived were only a handful of points in an 80-point test.

“People who are not flexible probably have other health-related issues that limit their mobility and those who are very flexible are either genetically different from inflexible individuals or are doing something to maintain or increase their flexibility to a high level,” Bonnet said. “Not knowing how active or inactive people are at baseline when flexibility was assessed or over the duration of the study limits how confident we can be that flexibility is the cause of mortality.”

Bonnet, a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, noted that the latest guidelines on physical activity from the US Department of Health and Human Services do not include recommendations on stretching, given the lack of data demonstrating its specific health benefits. While maintaining mobility and range of motion in joints is important for long-term health, he said the new study does not provide sufficient evidence to recommend stretching as a way to reduce mortality.

“Until there are more data that can show a cause-and-effect relationship with stretching and health outcomes, time is better spent doing aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities,” Bonnet said.

Franklin said future studies could better account for missing potential confounders like physical activity and whether individuals were taking protective medications, such as aspirin, cholesterol-lowering drugs, or beta-blockers. Studies also are needed to assess whether traininginduced gains in flexibility are specifically related to increases in survival and whether their findings apply to people over the age of 65, he said.

CAN SINGING A SONG IMPROVE HEART DISEASE?

Singing ‘Amazing Grace’ for just ten minutes a day could help reverse the effects of heart disease, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin investigated how singing various songs impacted the blood vessels of older individuals with heart disease.

The findings revealed that those who regularly sang ‘Amazing Grace,’ a hymn penned by clergyman and poet John Newton in 1772, experienced the most significant improvements in endothelial function—a key indicator of the health of blood vessels surrounding the heart.

The 1968 release ‘Hey Jude’ brought about smaller improvements, as did Dolly Parton’s 1976 hit ‘Jolene’. However, the US folk classic ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ recorded by Woody Guthrie in 1940, showed little impact.

The group recruited 65 participants, mostly in their 60s, who were being treated for heart issues or had previously had a heart attack. Under a

singing coach’s guidance, they sang four songs while researchers measured changes in blood flow, an important indicator of heart vessel health.

The study found that 22 per cent of volunteers improved blood flow while singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ compared to just ten per cent when singing ‘This Land Is Your Land’.

The research concluded: “Singing along to a pre-recorded instructional video for 30 minutes improved microvascular, but not macrovascular, endothelial function, in older patients with known CAD. Singing should be considered as an accessible and safe therapeutic intervention in an older population who otherwise may have physical or orthopaedic limitations hindering participation in traditional exercise. Future studies should explore the sustained vascular response to singing over weeks to months and explore the potential for “earworm” effects between visits.”

JGU is Bettering the Bes

stFor many years now, OP Jindal Global University (JGU), based in Sonipat, Haryana, has been a benchmark in India’s private higher education space. But not resting on such laurels, its Chancellor Naveen Jindal and Vice Chancellor Prof. (Dr.) C Raj Kumar have been equipping the university to rapidly emerge as one among the world’s best universities, by setting new milestones in academic excellence, global exposure, and interdisciplinary education. Established in 2009, JGU has grown into a world-class institution known for its commitment to quality education, offering over 45 undergraduate and postgraduate programs across disciplines like law, business, international affairs, liberal arts, and more. The university has recently announced over 2,000 scholarships across various disciplines, aimed at attracting talented students from diverse backgrounds, to foster inclusivity.

In 2024, JGU once again solidified its position as a top-ranking university in India. Notably, Jindal Global Law School has retained its place as the No. 1 Law School in India according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024. Earlier, JGU had broken into the QS Asia University Rankings 2023, ranking among the top 300 universities in Asia. JGU has also been accredited with A++ grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), recognizing its academic excellence and research output. It is also recognized as an Institution of Eminence by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

Founded in 2009 by the visionary industrialist, philanthropist and Member of Parliament Naveen Jindal, who is also the Chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL), JGU has been set up in memory and inspiration of his father, OP Jindal, a pioneering industrialist of India. Under the unique leadership of the multifaceted scholar and Oxford alumni, Prof. (Dr.) C Raj Kumar, who has been its Founding Vice

Chancellor, JGU from day one has aimed to be an institution that would foster academic rigour, interdisciplinary research, and global perspectives.

Under the leadership of Prof. Raj Kumar, JGU has also been a vocal advocate for the reform of India’s higher education system. Prof. Kumar regularly engages in dialogues about the regulatory architecture of higher education and emphasises the need for an inclusive and innovative approach to learning. His leadership, combined with JGU’s strategic initiatives, has placed the university at the forefront of educational transformation in India .

JGU has also walked this talk, by making education accessible to a broader demographic. In a recent move, the university had announced over 2,000 scholarships across various disciplines, aimed at attracting talented students from diverse backgrounds. This is part of the university’s mission to foster inclusivity and provide opportunities for students who may not otherwise have access to high-quality education.

JGU is known for offering extensive global exposure to its students. It has partnerships with over 250 prestigious institutions worldwide, allowing students to study abroad, participate in exchange programs, and gain invaluable international perspectives. The university’s interdisciplinary approach to education also ensures that students are well-equipped to tackle realworld challenges, blending subjects such as law, business, and social sciences. No wonder then that students from over 75 countries have so far enrolled in JGU.

In 2024, JGU expanded its global footprint further by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations University. This collaboration aims to boost academic exchange, joint research, and the sharing of expertise across borders, further reinforcing the institution’s commitment to addressing global challenges through education. Thanks to such continuing initiatives, JGU is today recognized as one of India’s top-ranked private universities, with a strong focus on liberal arts, law, business, and international relations.

JGU stands out among its peers for its hands-on, experiential learning approach. Students are encouraged to engage in internships, community service, and research projects, which allow them to apply theoretical knowledge in practical settings. The campus itself is designed to be a hub of creativity and innovation, with facilities that support arts, culture, and sports. From drama and dance to competitive sports, students are offered a holistic environment where they can nurture both their academic and personal interests. Over 50 student clubs and organisations promote cultural, artistic, and sporting pursuits.

Like all great universities, JGU’s constituent schools also excel in their own domains. Jindal Global Law

School (JGLS) is consistently ranked among India’s top law schools, and offers a range of programs, including LL.B, LL.M, and Ph.D. Renowned for its rigorous academic curriculum and emphasis on practical skills, JGLS attracts students from around the world. The school offers programs in law, international law, business law, and legal studies.

Jindal Global Business School (JGBS) offers MBA, BBA, and executive education programs, focusing on entrepreneurship, sustainability, and business analytics. JGBS provides a comprehensive education in business administration, equipping students with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in today’s competitive global market.

Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA) is one of India’s leading institutions for international relations, offering MA and Ph.D. programs. JSIA focuses on the study of international relations, diplomacy, and global governance. Students gain a deep understanding of complex geopolitical issues and develop the skills to become effective global leaders.

Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities offers a unique interdisciplinary curriculum that fosters critical thinking, creativity, and a global perspective. Programs include English, history, philosophy, psychology, and international studies.

JGU is also a powerhouse when it comes to impactful research. Its

Naveen Jindal, Founding Chancellor, O P Jindal Global University

research agenda is driven by societal relevance and global significance.

The Jindal Institute of Behavioral Sciences (JIBS) conducts interdisciplinary research on human behaviour, policy, and social change. Another research and practice leader, the Jindal Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship (JSIE) fosters social entrepreneurship, incubating startups and promoting sustainable development.

The university’s faculty members have published extensively in leading international journals, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in their respective fields.

JGU’s research centres and institutes have also been instrumental in conducting groundbreaking studies and addressing pressing global challenges.

Chancellor Naveen Jindal and the Jindal Steel & Power Foundation that runs the university has left no stone unturned to provide the very best in sustainable infrastructure for JGU students and faculty. JGU’s 80-acre custom-built campus is designed to inspire learning, creativity, and community engagement. The stateof-the-art Infrastructure includes the most modern classrooms, libraries, and research facilities that provide students with a world-class learning environment.

JGU’s campus has also witnessed significant expansion and development in recent years. New academic buildings, state-of-the-art facilities, and modern infrastructure have been added to enhance the learning and living experience of students. The university’s commitment to sustainability is evident in its eco-friendly initiatives and green campus design.

Any university’s success is measured also by how far its alumni soar. JGU’s alumni network spans the

whole globe, with graduates making their mark in various fields, and emerging as leaders in various governments, policy making institutions, think tanks, NGOs, and international organisations, apart from being corporate leaders in top multinational companies and startups.

Looking ahead, JGU continues to expand its influence both nationally and globally, under the leadership of

its Chancellor Naveen Jindal and Vice Chancellor Prof. (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar. The university has ambitious plans, aiming to increase its academic offerings, deepen its international collaborations, and continue fostering a diverse and vibrant learning environment. As JGU grows, it remains committed to being a catalyst for positive change, equipping students with the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in an ever-evolving global landscape.

Professor (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar, Founding Vice-Chancellor, O P Jindal Global University

MAHABANK IN PEAK FORM

MAHABANK IN PEAK FORM AFTER ROBUST

Q2 AND RS 3500

CRORE QIP

AFTER ROBUST Q2 AND RS 3500 CRORE QIP

Bank of Maharashtra’s stellar performance in Q2 reflects its strong fundamentals and strategic execution. This was the second full quarter under its new MD & CEO Nidhu Saxena, and the acceleration and finetuning of strategies under this new leader were visible in the combination of improved profitability, better asset quality, and strong capital adequacy which was augmented by a Rs 3500 crore QIP recently. This puts the bank in a favourable position to continue its growth momentum while effectively managing its risks. As it moves forward with digital initiatives and an expanding retail portfolio, BoM is set to strengthen its market presence even further.

In the second quarter of this ongoing fiscal, Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) has achieved an impressive financial performance, maintaining its consistent growth trajectory and strong operational efficiencies. The state-owned lender’s net profit surged by 44.24% year-onyear (YoY) to Rs 1,327 crore, compared to the Rs 920 crore it achieved in the same quarter of the previous year. This significant jump can be attributed to a combination of robust net interest

income (NII) growth and careful cost management .

The bank’s Net Interest Income (NII), which is the core driver of its profitability, grew by 15.41% YoY to Rs 2,807 crore. This rise was supported by an improved net interest margin (NIM) of 3.98%, slightly higher than the 3.89% recorded in the Q2 of FY24. The midsized PSU bank managed to achieve this despite concerns over increasing costs of funds across the banking industry

In addition to its core interest income, Mahabank’s non-interest income saw a healthy growth of 19% YoY to Rs 792 crore. This is indicative of the bank’s efforts to diversify its revenue streams, especially in areas like fee income from retail products, treasury operations, and other services .

The Pune headquartered Mahabank’s loan book continued to expand, with advances increasing by 18.78% YoY to Rs 2,17,000 crore.

Notably, retail advances grew even faster, rising by 22.53% to Rs 56,914 crore, reflecting the bank’s focus on catering to individual customers alongside its corporate clientele. On the deposits side, total deposits rose by 15.46% to Rs 2,76,000 lakh crore, overcoming the stiff competition among banks for garnering deposits .

The bank showed significant improvements in its asset quality too, with its gross nonperforming assets (GNPA) ratio dropping to 1.84% in September 2024, down from 2.19% a year earlier. Net NPA ratio also declined marginally from 0.23% to 0.20%, indicating a tighter control over credit risk. The provision coverage ratio (PCR) remained strong at over 98%, reflecting the bank’s prudent provisioning strategy .

Bank of Maharashtra’s capital adequacy ratio (CAR) stood at a healthy 17.26% by the end of Q2, supported by a tier-1 capital ratio of 13.13%. Recently, the bank raised an additional Rs 3,500 crore in equity through a Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP), further bolstering its capital position to over 19% now. This capital infusion provides the bank with sufficient cushion for future growth while maintaining regulatory capital requirements .

Mahabank’s Rs 3,500 QIP was a key milestone, enabling the bank

to strengthen its balance sheet and fund future growth. It was backed by key investors like LIC, whose stake in Mahabank went up from 4.05% to 7.1%. This capital raise led to a dilution of the government’s stake in the bank, which fell from 86.46% at the end of September to 79.6% now, but this reduction signals the bank’s strategic move towards increasing market participation

Mahabank has also been actively focusing on digital innovation and enhancing its service delivery through technology. This has allowed the bank to streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve customer engagement, contributing to its profitability. The emphasis on digital banking is also reflected in the bank’s growing retail advances , and all these factors are reflected powerfully in the Q2 numbers.

The Mahabank management remains optimistic about the bank’s performance for the rest of the fiscal year. The lender is on track to surpass Rs 5,000 crore in net profit for FY25, having already crossed Rs 2,600 crore in the first half. With its well-capitalized position, growing loan book, and improving asset quality, the bank is poised to further solidify its standing in the public sector banking space .

ARE BILL GATES & WARREN BUFFETT FINALLY MOVING APART?

Their ages are 25 years apart, but that didn’t deter them from building up one of the largest philanthropic foundations this planet has ever seen - the Gates Foundation - whose annual budget is above the World Health Organization’s budget. Ace New York Times journalist Anupreeta Das is the author of the upcoming book on Bill Gates titled ‘Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King’. Here is an adaptation from the book that appeared in NYT that sheds light on the unique friendship of Gates and the legendary investor and the largest contributor to Gates Foundation, Warren Buffett, and why this 33 year old friendship might be unwinding now.

n the summer of 1991, Mary Gates, the mother of the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, convinced her workaholic 35year-old son to spend the July 4 holiday at Hood Canal, a scenic, outdoorsy location about two hours from Seattle that had long been the family getaway.

The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, was among the guests. When Mrs. Gates tried to introduce her son to Mr. Buffett, however, he brushed her off, saying that he didn’t want to meet a “stockbroker.”

But the two men hit it off immediately. Settling into a patterned couch, Mr. Buffett, dressed in a red polo shirt and dark trousers, his left foot propped up against the coffee table, and Mr. Gates in a tennis outfit — shorts and a white shirt, his white socks coming up to midcalf, his mop of hair tousled — talked for 11 hours straight. The other guests had to pull them apart. Mr. Gates was surprised by the penetrating questions

Mr. Buffett directed at him about the software business, and found himself warming to the avuncular Midwestern billionaire.

The two have been close friends ever since. Once, recounting the story of their meeting to students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Mr. Gates called it an “unbelievable friendship.” Mr. Buffett quipped, “The moral of that is, listen to your mother.”

Theirs has been an unusual friendship. Mr. Buffett is folksy and outgoing, and never passes up an opportunity to crack a joke. He likes to speak in aphorisms. He enjoys breaking down complex investing principles into simple nuggets that anyone could understand. When he meets new people, Mr. Buffett is genuinely curious about their backgrounds. He asks them questions and listens intently, eyebrows furrowed, to the answers. Banter comes to him easily.

Mr. Gates, 25 years his junior, has a far different public persona. Almost everyone who interacts with him — whether at a gathering, in the office, in small group settings or during interviews — says he can be charming and engaging in the moment, but small talk and repartee are not his forte. He isn’t immediately interested in the person in front of him, but if you asked him a question, he might go on for minutes. Courtesies are lost on him.

Over the next few decades, the two billionaires forged a bond based on freeflowing conversation and a mutual love of bridge, business, problem solving and philanthropy. It was not unusual to see them golfing together at the annual Sun Valley conference, a gathering of luminaries from the worlds of technology, media and business, informally called the “summer camp for billionaires.” A few times a year, Mr. Gates would fly into Omaha on his private jet to spend a few hours with his

friend, who sometimes drove to the airport to pick him up.

The essence of their friendship, for Mr. Gates, was captured in a black-andwhite photograph that sat in his office at his private firm Gates Ventures, a person who worked there recalled. In the photo, Mr. Buffett is clearly in the middle of delivering a joke, and Mr.

Gates has his head thrown back in laughter. Not an especially emotive person, his “laugh out loud” moments were often when he reacted to a joke by Mr. Buffett, shrieking with joy.

In 2004, Mr. Gates joined the board of directors of Mr. Buffett’s giant conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, which Mr. Buffett described as an “act

of friendship.” To do so, he had to step down from the board of Icos, the biotechnology company that developed Cialis and the only company other than Microsoft whose board he had been on. By then, Mr. Gates had stepped down as chief executive of Microsoft, although he remained its chairman. (In March 2020, Mr. Gates said he would step down from the boards of both Berkshire and Microsoft to focus more on his philanthropy.)

As Berkshire global shareholders made their pilgrimage to Omaha for the conglomerate’s annual meeting, they were delighted by the public displays of the pair’s friendship. One year, the duo handed out soft-serve ice cream from Dairy Queen — another Berkshire company — to shareholders. Sometimes, they played Ping-Pong or drove around in a golf cart. As attendees thronged Mr. Buffett, asking for selfies and autographs, Mr. Gates could often be seen standing off to the side, hands tucked under his armpits, happy to let the spotlight shine on his friend.

But the cheery snapshots masked a more complicated tale of friendship, one that, in recent years, has shown signs of cracks. Even as their relationship blossomed, there remained some striking differences, most notably in how they displayed the trappings of their enormous wealth.

In addition to his modest home in Omaha, Mr. Buffett owned only a single vacation property, in Laguna Beach, Calif., that he bought for $175,000 in the early 1970s and has since sold. He has a 6.25 percent interest in a Falcon 2000 operated by NetJets (a Berkshire company), he once told me, adding, “And that’s about it.”

By contrast, Mr. Gates lives a more traditional billionaire’s lifestyle, with multiple homes, planes, expensive art and a big personal staff to oversee it all. Among his possessions: an oil painting by Winslow Homer that he bought for a reported $30 million. A lover of fast cars, Mr. Gates has indulged in luxury wheels over the years, including several Porsches.

And as the years progressed, certain aspects of his behavior, including his

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stewardship of his foundation, have upset Mr. Buffett, according to four people with insight into their relationship. For more than a decade, Mr. Buffett — known for his love of lean and efficient operations free of bureaucracy — had been bothered by what he saw as the bloat and inflated operating costs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the entity started in 2000 by Mr. Gates and his former wife, which is now known as the Gates Foundation.

In 2023, Mr. Buffett, whose donations to the foundation supercharged its philanthropy for decades, decided that upon his death, the remainder of his fortune — worth more than $100 billion — wouldn’t continue to go to the organization. It proved to be a telling sign.

The New York Public Library’s flagship building stands in Midtown Manhattan, a national landmark in front of which tourists linger, awe-struck, even as office workers scurry by, inured to its majesty. Built in the Beaux-Arts style, with its tall columns and iconic lions sculpted out of gray and pink Tennessee marble, the library opened in 1911. But on the

morning of June 26, 2006, an unremarkable summer day in New York, the 200 or so philanthropy executives, reporters and others gathered inside the marble-lined main hall of the library were riveted less by the building’s quiet magnificence than by the moment they were about to witness.

For days leading up to the event, the media had been buzzing. Invitations sent by Gates Foundation staffers had been cryptic, saying only that Mr. Buffett, along with Mr. Gates and his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, would be making an announcement. Shortly after 11 a.m., Mr. Buffett, who had flown in from Omaha for the news conference, got straight to the point. He had always intended to give 99 percent of his fortune, then estimated at $44 billion, to philanthropy. Now, he had identified the Gates Foundation as the biggest recipient of his generosity during his lifetime.

The world’s second-richest man at the time was handing over his money to the world’s richest man, entrusting Mr. Gates with the challenging, fraught and

complicated work of finding the right causes to give to. The symbolism of the location they had chosen for the announcement could hardly be overlooked. The New York Public Library has long stood as a testament to the harnessing of private dollars for the public good.

Its flagship was built with contributions from the Astor, Tilden and Lenox foundations. Later, the nineteenthcentury steel magnate Andrew Carnegie would donate $5 million to set up a branch system around the main library. Today, the building is named after Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of the private equity behemoth Blackstone, who gave $100 million to the institution in 2008.

Years before their announcement, Mr. Buffett had presented his younger friend with a copy of Mr. Carnegie’s article “The Gospel of Wealth.” In the essay, Mr. Carnegie explained that it was the duty of a wealthy man to give back to society — not through taxes, not by making less, but through personal philanthropy.

In the text, he provided a moral defense

of the wealth created by capitalism by arguing that everyone was better off under a market-based economy. A society in which individualism, private property, wealth accumulation and competition are preserved is the “condition of affairs under which the best interests of the race are promoted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few,” he wrote.

Mr. Carnegie argued that to leave a fortune to one’s children would be to “leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar,” because it would destroy them, and to leave it to public use upon death would be just a means of disposal and not an active use of the funds by the generator of the fortune.

Instead, he wrote, the “true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor — a reign of harmony” is for the wealthy man to disburse his fortune.

“They have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage, and thus dignify their own lives,” he wrote.

Although Mr. Buffett had long believed in the ideas of Mr. Carnegie, he had little interest in overseeing the disbursement of his own wealth. He liked to stay within what he called his “circle of competence,” arguing that a person shouldn’t assume that because they’re good at one thing, they are good at everything.

Rather, Mr. Buffett had hoped to leave the Berkshire fortune to his first wife, Susan, an abortion rights activist who ran their foundation, to give away, expecting that she would outlive him. But when Mrs. Buffett, who had been diagnosed with cancer, died suddenly of a stroke in July 2004 at the age of 72, Mr. Buffett, bereft and blindsided, was forced to revisit his philanthropic plans.

His three children, Susan (known informally as Susie Jr.), Howard and Peter, each had a foundation, but the entities were fledglings. The foundation that his deceased wife had run — called the Buffett Foundation before he renamed it the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation in her honor — was bigger,

but not prepared to handle the billions of dollars he was ready to give away.

At the same time, Mr. Gates had been paying more attention to the shape and structure of his philanthropy after quitting his job as chief executive of Microsoft in 2000. Mr. Buffett watched as his friend built an organization that had already begun to reshape global philanthropy. By 2005, when he reflected on his own mortality in his annual letter to shareholders and told them about his intention to give every Berkshire share that he owned to philanthropies, the solution to his conundrum was obvious, even if his decision was impulsive, according to several people who witnessed the events at the time.

Once he had made up his mind, Mr. Buffett held multiple conversations with both Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates about their ambitions for the foundation, and whether they would be able to build the infrastructure necessary to support the billions they would have to give away because of his annual gifts. It was only after he was satisfied with their long-term goals that Mr. Buffett took the momentous step. In doing so, he was repurposing his business strategy to his philanthropy: Just as he picked businesses and investments for Berkshire based on the quality of the managers running them, Mr. Buffett was picking Mr. Gates to run his philanthropy for him.

“What Warren has always done is find out who is the best at doing this, that and the other, and get them to do it,”

said Larry Cunningham, a Berkshire shareholder and a professor emeritus at George Washington University. “When it came to philanthropy, that’s what he did, too.”

Mr. Buffett’s gift to the Gates Foundation came with three conditions: One, that either Mr. Gates or Ms. French Gates would remain an active participant in the foundation. (Ms. French Gates, who divorced Mr. Gates in 2021, left the foundation in May.) Two, that the funds that came from Mr. Buffett each year had to qualify as charitable dollars rather than gifts, which are taxed differently. And three, that the value of his annual contributions had to be given away within the year, rather than sitting in the foundation’s endowment, in addition to the 5 percent of net assets that foundations are required to give away under tax law.

Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates further cemented their philanthropic partnership when they, along with Ms. French Gates, announced the Giving Pledge campaign in 2010. It was designed to encourage fellow billionaires to commit at least half their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or upon their deaths.

Between 2006 and 2023, Mr. Buffett had given more than $39 billion to the Gates Foundation. By comparison, Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates gave $39 billion between 1994 and 2022, including $22 billion to get the foundation going in 2000. In some years, the former couple gave less than half a billion. In 2021, they pledged $15

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billion to the foundation’s endowment, and the following year, they transferred that money, as well as another $5 billion Mr. Gates had contributed.

“There is one not-very-well-known but incredibly important reason why the foundation has been able to be so ambitious,” Mr. Gates wrote on his blog in 2022. “Although it is named the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, basically half of our resources to date have come from Warren Buffett’s gifts.”

In the hoopla surrounding Mr. Buffett’s announcement in 2006, an important detail of his plan escaped attention: Although the investor had pledged 99 percent of his wealth to philanthropy, his commitment to the Gates Foundation and the four Buffett family foundations would stand only as long as he lived.

Mr. Buffett, then 75, said he would make separate plans for how to distribute the shares that remained after his death. Some months later, he told Berkshire shareholders in his annual letter that he had stipulated in his will that all Berkshire shares that remained in his pocket when he died would have to be used for philanthropy within a decade of his death. (In 2021, two months shy of his 91st birthday, Mr. Buffett said he had reached only the midpoint of giving away all his shares.)

Only decades later would the broader implications of that lifetime pledge become an issue of significance for future funding at the five foundations and the responsibilities of his three children.

When the Gates Foundation got its start in 2000, even Mr. Gates would probably not have predicted that he and Ms. French Gates would have created an entity that can claim to have saved millions of lives, shaped the global public health agenda and propelled the Microsoft co-founder to a level of renown and respect typically reserved for Nobel Peace Prize winners.

By 2005, the year before Mr. Buffett’s announcement, the foundation was already the world’s largest philanthropic organization of its kind. In the years following the Buffett gift, the foundation scrambled to build a far bigger framework that could accommodate the giant waves of money that were about to hit its shores annually and effectively give away many more billions of dollars.

In 2006, it gave away about $1.6 billion; by 2009, it projected it would have to make $3.2 billion worth of grants per year. Today, the foundation’s resources dwarf those of the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and

other big global foundations. The Gates Foundation’s annual budget exceeds that of the World Health Organization.

Not unlike an undulating octopus, the foundation has its tentacles in a variety of global issues, including vaccines, public health, agricultural development, food security, poverty alleviation, sanitation, gender equality and creating digital accounts for the unbanked. With offices scattered across the globe, it has built an enormous — and sometimes invisible — network of ties with governments, multilateral institutions, corporations, countries, universities and nonprofits.

Its way of doing things has cemented “big” or institutionalized philanthropy as distinct from the passive, ad hoc charitable giving long practiced by individual wealthy donors.

In 2019, the foundation — whose influence, size and practices had already invited criticism about its approach being neocolonial, antidemocratic and too reliant on the idea that technology can solve all problems, reflecting Mr. Gates’s views — took an even bigger hit to its reputation. Just weeks after Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and pedophile, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell, news emerged that

Mr. Gates had met with him several times. Mr. Gates said that he had met Mr. Epstein purely to discuss philanthropy, and that he was sorry for his poor judgment.

Less than two years later, in May 2021, Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates announced their divorce. The following month, Mr. Buffett said he would step down as the third co-trustee of the Gates Foundation, adding that there was no reason for him to stay in the role but that his pledged gifts would continue. “My goals are 100 percent in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve those goals,” he said in a statement.

In January 2022, the foundation created a new board of trustees to improve its corporate governance practices, and to bring fresh perspectives that would inform the next phase of its growth. In a blog post that year announcing that the foundation would spend $9 billion a year by 2026, Mr. Gates expressed his gratitude to his friend. “Warren, I can never adequately express how much I appreciate your friendship and guidance as well as your generosity,” he wrote. More recently, he told The New York Times that Mr. Buffett’s ongoing gifts are “record breaking” and based on his belief in the foundation’s work.

Although civil, the public statements, taken together, contained a sense of an ending, as though viewers of the long theater of a friendship and a worldchanging philanthropic partnership were witnessing the final act. And Mr. Buffett was, in fact, making clear to the employees and new trustees of the Gates Foundation that the lifetime pledges he had made in 2006 could come to an end any time given his age and that they shouldn’t count on Berkshire billions when making long-term funding plans, according to several people with knowledge of Mr. Buffett’s motives. Soon afterward, Berkshire put out a regulatory filing disclosing that Mr. Buffett would donate more shares to his four family foundations. He had already increased his gifts to his children’s foundations once before, in 2012. Mr. Buffett put out a news release in 2023

announcing another round of gifts to the four entities. “They supplement certain of the lifetime pledges I made in 2006 and that continue until my death (at 93, I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings),” he wrote.

He also detailed the plan for the Berkshire shares that would be impossible to give away during his lifetime, given that he had hit only the midpoint in 2021. Valued at around $100 billion in 2023, those shares would be placed into a trust. His three children would be the co-trustees, and they would have a decade after their father’s death to disburse those funds to charity. There was no mention of the Gates Foundation.

Mr. Buffett’s children are in unanimous agreement that none of the remaining shares will go to the Gates Foundation, according to people aware of their thinking. Always deliberate with his language, Mr. Buffett emphasized the word “lifetime” to avoid any miscommunication or confusion about which philanthropies stood to get his money, partly because there was a longstanding assumption within the Gates Foundation that it would always get Mr. Buffett’s money, those people said.

In a footnote to its combined financial statements for 2021 and 2022 that was released in May 2023, the Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the endowment for the foundation, noted for the first time that the Buffett money would no longer come in after his death. “As this gift is conditional and applies only during his lifetime, its receipt cannot be assured in advance of each year’s installment of the gift,” the note said. “After his death, Mr. Buffett’s executors will direct the disposition of his assets.”

In June, Mr. Buffett told The Wall Street Journal that the Gates Foundation would not receive any more money after his death.

Other factors further strained the friendship between Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffett. The Gates Foundation had settled into a groove and even become complacent, Mr. Buffett told staffers, which reduced its appetite for taking the kinds of risks that could lead to more

effective philanthropy, and that he had hoped his donations would be used for. He was also upset by comments relayed to him by others who had found Mr. Gates rude and condescending, according to multiple accounts. Mr. Buffett had long offered Mr. Gates advice on how to be a friend: Be aware of how your closest friends think of you, Mr. Buffett would tell Mr. Gates, and be good to them.

When this reporter suggested to Mr. Buffett in April that Mr. Gates’s “genuine ‘laugh out loud’ moments are when he’s around you,” he replied, “We have had a huge number of laughs together, and he has a keen sense of humor.”

Nearly every year since starting his GatesNotes blog in 2010, Mr. Gates has posted at least one goofy video of him and Mr. Buffett together or written a brief essay celebrating an aspect of their friendship. But he did not write a single entry solely about his friend in 2021, 2022 or 2023.

In his last GatesNotes post dedicated to Mr. Buffett, in 2020 during the pandemic, Mr. Gates filmed himself in an apron baking an Oreo cookie cake for his friend’s 90th birthday.

Alex Reid, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gates, said the pair didn’t film any videos together because of the pandemic, and they continued not to do so in order to be “mindful of Warren’s age and energy levels.” But Ms. Reid pointed to a slide show of old photographs that Mr. Gates’s team posted on Instagram for Mr. Buffett’s birthday last year.

In a statement that he issued to The Times in May, Mr. Gates said: “I am incredibly lucky to have Warren as a friend and mentor, and our friendship is stronger than ever. I continue to learn from him, and always look forward to my regular calls and visits with him.” Mr. Buffett typically does not initiate the outreach, two of the people familiar with the friendship said, although they added that he has minimized all his interactions given his advanced age.

Speaking of the friendship between the two, a person with knowledge of their relationship said, “All tea leaves point to disturbance in the mythology.”

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

WHY JSSAHER IS A UNIVERSITY TO WATCH OUT FOR, NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY

When this year’s NIRF rankings came up recently, it was yet another year of outstanding performance by the Mysuru headquartered deemed-to-be university JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research (JSS AHER). This national level ranking bestowed by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), an initiative of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), was established in 2015 and has since then emerged as the most respected and widely followed national level ranking. JSSAHER, which has always come within the Top 50 Universities category in NIRF since 2016, jumped its rank in the University Category by 10 ranks, from 34 to 24 this year. And its constituent colleges in medicine, dental and pharmacy more or less stood their ground, whereas in the overall institutional category it made a spectacular jump from 55th rank last year to 36th rank now. And it is not only in national level ranks that JSS AHER is coming up with flying colours. The deemed university is spreading its wings globally, and it was most markedly visible recently when it won the global first rank in the UK based Times Higher Education’s (THE) Impact Rankings for UN’s Sustainable Development Goal - 3 (SDG-3) of ‘Good Health & Well Being’. Also on display in the SDG rankings was JSS AHER’s emerging leadership in other domains like renewable energy, environmental sciences, water conservation, sanitation, humanities, economics, poverty alleviation and more. The university promoted by JSS Mahavidyapeetha, also achieved ranks within the Top 100 for 6 out of the 9 SDGs that they participated in. JSS AHER is collaborating with the renowned Yale School of Public Health of the US for furthering its public health research initiatives and is also improving its lead in pharmacy education and research through various programs including a recent three-day international conference. Such world-class efforts will achieve full fruition in 2027 when JSS AHER will also move to its upcoming 101-acres world-class campus at Varuna, near Mysuru, which is being built at a cost of Rs 1200 crores. JSS AHER is led by JSS Mahavidyapeetha’s Head Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Swamiji of Suttur Mutt, JSS Mahavidyapeetha’s Executive Secretary C.G. Betsurmath, JSS AHER’s Pro-Chancellor Dr. B. Suresh and its Vice-chancellor Dr. Surinder Singh.

Jagadguru Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji Chancellor

As the world races to the 10th anniversary of the United Nations promoted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) coming into force, one thing is becoming painfully clear. Worldwide governments, non governmental organisations, corporate companies, and higher educational institutions which were expected to further the 17 SDGs, are falling short by a big margin.

This is no surprise really, as for all these entities, the introduction of SDGs on January 1st 2016, was an additional challenge to overcome in the way of doing their business. The unprecedented Covid-19 made the pursuit of these 17 SDGs all the more difficult, even while the pandemic proved that the health related SDGs needed to be even more aggressive.

It is on this backdrop that the London based educational ranking service provider Times Higher Education (THE) embarked on their initiative of Impact Rankings under Sustainable Development and Social Impact. THE set out to rank universities across the world on each of the 17 SDGs as formulated by the UN in 2015-16. It was expected to be a tough fight, as only the world’s best universities could be the winners.

For this year’s rankings, JSS AHER, the Mysuru

headquartered deemed university participated in 9 out of the 17 SDGs. And surprising most domestic and international observers, JSS AHER has achieved ranks within the Top 100 for 6 out of those 9 SDGs that they participated, and came within the overall rank band of 100-200 in a ranking exercise that saw thousands of the world’s best institutions pitted against each other.

JSS AHER won the global 78th rank for SDG-12 which is about ‘Responsible Production & Consumption’, and in SDG-6 pertaining to ‘Access to Clean Water & Sanitation’ it fared even higher at the global 60th rank. This Indian university also came within the Top 50 ranks in SDG-15 related to ‘Life on Land’ with a 49th global rank. However, it was on SDG-1 on ‘Ending Poverty’ and SDG-7 on ‘Affordable & Clean Energy’ that JSS AHER delivered even better performances with Top 25 positions. While on ‘Ending Poverty’ it won the 21st global rank, for ‘Affordable & Clean Energy’ the university won the 12th rank worldwide.

Still, the real stunner achievement was in JSS AHER’s core competence domain of SDG-3 dealing with ‘Good Health & Well Being’, where the university scaled to the very top of the world with the global first rank! While JSS AHER’s portfolio of

C.G. Betsurmath,

Executive Secretary

JSS Maha Vidya Peeth

courses have been spreading to more and more domains with each passing year, it is still regarded more as a health sciences leader. Now this will change, as JSS AHER is proving beyond doubt that it is not just a leader in health sciences, but in other core domains like renewable energy, environmental sciences, water conservation, sanitation, humanities, economics, poverty alleviation and more.

The credit for the world beating performance from JSS AHER in SDGs across six core domains directly goes to JSS Mahavidyapeetha’s Head Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Swamiji of Suttur Mutt, JSS Mahavidyapeetha’s Executive Secretary C.G. Betsurmath,

JSSAHER’s Pro-Chancellor Dr. B. Suresh, its Vice-chancellor Dr. Surinder Singh and its Registrar Dr. B. Manjunatha. This committed team of leaders have guided the JSS AHER family to continually excel and to always shoot for the moon.

One most important fact that many may miss in JSS AHER’s world class rankings in SDGs is that these ranks are not just about the quality of their courses in these domains. For instance, their global No.1 rank in SDG-3, ‘Good Health & Well Being’ is based on parameters like translational research, tribal health outreach programmes and affordable health services for the needy, apart from high quality health education.

Similarly, in their global 12th rank in SDG-7 pertaining to ‘Affordable and Clean Energy’, JSS AHER was recognized for its efforts to promote affordable and clean energy solutions, energy efficiency drive, and sustainable practices in this domain. And for its global 49th rank in SDG15 dealing with ‘Life on Land’, it was ranked based on its initiatives in environmental conservation, biodiversity preservation, and sustainable land management, which highlighted its efforts to safeguard terrestrial ecosystems and to promote sustainable development.

This kind of community outreach and development activities that the university undertakes is what

Dr.B.Suresh, Pro Chancellor JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research

differentiates the exposure a JSS AHER student gets vis-a-vis from many peer institutions. Faculty, research scholars and students are proactively encouraged by the institution to participate in such activities, with the pleasant side effect that students graduate from JSS AHER with not just classroom knowledge but practical, socially relevant and industry ready knowledge in their respective domains.

Rather than resting on its laurels of winning across six core SDGs, especially the first rank win in its core domain of health sciences, JSS AHER is moving fast to widen and improve its courses in health and allied sciences. The deemed university’s

School of Public Health (SPH) has started offering the Master of Public Health (MPH) program to create Public Health professionals, which is one of the most widely recognized emerging roles in healthcare.

JSS AHER’s MPH program caters to the increasing demand for Public Health professionals in Indian and overseas governments, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), the public & private sectors, and various health research institutes. This MPH program aims to provide highquality education to empower and enable all students to apply their acquired competencies to be worldclass leaders in public health by transforming the health and wellbeing of people locally and globally.

This is not just a lofty aim, but backed by JSS AHER’s impressive and global initiatives in public health education, research and practice. The university has recently tied up with the renowned Yale School of Public Health and the University of Arizona’s Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health to launch a program to build leadership among public health scholars from India’s underrepresented groups. The Public Health Research Institute of India (PHRII) has also contributed much to introduce this Research Leadership Program.

The program is modelled on similar successful programs by Yale School of Public Health in South Africa, Sudan and Chad. It seeks to empower researchers and foster a more equitable global health research landscape. Its aim is to prepare scholars to become effective research mentors within a nurtured leadership network.

In addition to building a first cohort of research scientists from underrepresented minority groups in India, the goal is to establish a programmatic infrastructure for mentoring and leadership-skill development to promote career advancement of scientists from

underrepresented communities of the country, well into the future.

This program creates opportunities for scholars from historically marginalised groups to become the ones generating the scientific evidence, to become the ones taking on leadership roles, and the ones fostering the next generation of scholars. Towards this, 15 junior-tomid-career scholars from JSS AHER were selected for the certificate program, which so far has included two in-person sessions in January & March, a virtual session in February, and practical career development assignments to build mentorship and leadership capacity.

The curriculum is designed around four pillars: one, building skills for mentorship, coaching, and professional development; two, building skills for effective leadership in research teams and organisations; three, fostering an understanding of global and national health system research priorities; and four, developing a professional network for sustained research leadership.

India is the world leader in population with 1.4 billion people, and its minorities and women are still greatly underrepresented in higher education and research. The program cohort from JSS AHER comprises 13 women and two men, with 11 participants identifying as being from a scheduled caste, other backward class, or from a rural aspirational district.

Beyond the four core partners of this program, panel discussions by thought leaders from across India have challenged and encouraged the course participants to take risks and learn from failure to accelerate their research careers. The program is funded by the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the Global Health Equity Scholars program.

Apart from its Master of Public Health (MPH) program, JSS AHER also has an MBA program in Hospital Administration. This is an MBA

program that is AICTE-approved and NAAC-accredited and equips candidates to master the art of hospital and health system management, for a dynamic and fast growing career in the buzzing field of healthcare management.

Other specialised programs from JSS AHER include two post-doctoral oneyear fellowship programs in Pain Medicine. Of these, the Fellowship in Interventional Pain Management (FIPM) is awarded by JSS AHER, while the Fellow of Indian Academy of Pain Medicine (FIAPM) is awarded by the Indian Academy of Pain Medicine (IAPM). The duration of these courses are 1 year, eligibility is Post MD / DA / DNB in Anesthesiology, and admission is based on an entrance examination.

JSS AHER faculty, research scholars and students continue to prove their mettle in national level selections.

The Department of Health Research (DHR), under the Ministry of Health

& Family Welfare, Government of India, had recently selected 19 candidates for a funded training course on ‘Human Disease Models: Approaches, Advances and Applications’. Among them were Dr Ranjitha Shankaregowda of JSS Medical College and Hospital, JSS AHER, who rubbed shoulders with stalwarts from premier public sector medical colleges AIIMS, AFMC etc, and various leading government and private sector medical colleges.

The JSS AHER community also benefits greatly from the frequent industry interactions, professional workshops and national and international level conferences. Recently, there was a three-day International Conference on ‘Global Collaboration in Pharmaceuticals, Bridging Borders, Breaking Barriers’ (ICGCP4B-2024) at the JSS College of Pharmacy at Ootacamund (Ootty) in Tamil Nadu. The conference was organised by the JSS College of Pharmacy in cooperation with JSS AHER, along with the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Biotechnology under the Union Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

The three-day scientific conference reviewed the progress and development of pharmacy education in India after the introduction of the Pharm D programme in 2008, which was an initiative spearheaded by Dr. B Suresh. While there were keynote speeches by Pro Chancellor Dr. B

Dr. Surinder Singh, Vice Chancellor JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research

Dr. Manjunatha B, Registrar JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research

Suresh and Vice Chancellor Dr. Surinder Singh, the inaugural session was presided over by Dr. CG Betsurmath, Executive Secretary of JSS

Maha Vidya Peeth (JSS MVP), with Prof. SP Manjunath, Secretary of JSS MVP and Dr. B Manjunatha, Registrar of JSS AHER as special invitees.

The international conference also witnessed speeches of globally accredited academic experts, pedagogues of pharmacy, institutional heads and educators in different areas of pharmacy and allied sciences. The chief guest of the inaugural function was the vice-president of the Vellore Institute of Technology, Dr. Sekhar Viswanathan, while the guests of honour included the district collector of Nilgiris, M Aruna, and the former cricketer, Javagal Srinath.

The conference also had a special event - an Indo-Australian symposium on ‘Pharmacy Practice for Improved Patient Care - Global Perspectives for Regional Practices’. This symposium addressed the Pharm D graduates who had passed out from various Indian pharmacy institutions. More than 30 international and Indian speakers and over 1,000 Pharm D graduates and aspirants participated in this symposium.

Across its seven scientific plenary sessions, nine keynote addresses and five panel discussions, the conference discussed several pressing topics including Global Collaboration in Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacy Education in the Changing World, Pharma Industry - Institution Interface, Next Generation Therapeutics, Challenges and

Opportunities of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs, Digital Influence on Pharma Value Chain, Pharmaceutical Regulatory Challenges, Bridging Borders and Breaking Barriers in Pharmaceutical Research, Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery and Development, and Natural Products and Traditional Medicines in Modern Healthcare.

While such initiatives of JSS AHER are attracting global eyeballs, the university is also rapidly building its new global campus at Varuna, which is less than 15 kms and half an hour drive, from Mysuru. This new global campus that spans 101 acres is being built at an estimated cost of Rs 1,200 crore, and will be completed in 2026, with its functioning expected to commence from 2027.

The new JSS AHER campus will integrate studies, research, and development in engineering, and health care sector including medical education with focus on future health technologies. Towards this, the campus will have an integrated research centre, an incubation centre, and infrastructural facilities for startups in various health technologies.

On the academic front, the new campus will offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in health and technologies including digital health technologies, hospital management technologies, integration of clinical research and technologies etc. JSS AHER is planning big to attract global talents to the campus, especially research scholars. The campus will house over 15,000 students, 2,000 teaching faculty and 4,000 research scholars.

The new global campus is being developed in line with the world’s best universities, and is coming up under the visionary guidance of JSS Mahavidyapeetha’s Head Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Swamiji, JSS Mahavidyapeetha’s Executive Secretary C.G. Betsurmath, Prof. SP Manjunath, Secretary of JSS MVP, and JSS AHER’s Pro-Chancellor Dr. B. Suresh.

HOW COCHIN SHIPYARD LTD HAS EMERGED AS A NATIONAL TREASURE HOW COCHIN SHIPYARD LTD HAS EMERGED AS A NATIONAL

TREASURE

IF THE WORLD KNOWS COCHIN SHIPYARD LTD BEST FOR BUILDING INDIA’S FIRST EVER INDIGENOUS AIRCRAFT CARRIER, INS VIKRANT, THE INVESTING WORLD KNOWS IT BEST FOR ONE MORE FEATFOR MULTIPLYING INVESTOR WEALTH BY OVER 10X DURING THE LAST 12 MONTHS! TO PUT THIS FEAT IN PERSPECTIVE, IT MADE COCHIN SHIPYARD (CSL), THE KOCHI, KERALA BASED CENTRAL PUBLIC SECTOR UNDERTAKING IN SHIP BUILDING AND MAINTENANCE, RACE PAST 99% OF LISTED COMPANIES AND ENTER THE TOP 1% OF WEALTH CREATORS IN THE COUNTRY DURING THE PAST 12 MONTHS. WHAT IS DRIVING THIS UNPARALLELED MOMENTUM IN COCHIN SHIPYARD? IS IT THE NEW DRY DOCK, WHICH IS INDIA’S LARGEST AND THE WORLD’S LARGEST STEPPED DRY DOCK? OR IS IT THE NEW INTERNATIONAL SHIP REPAIR FACILITY (ISRF)? OR IS IT THE PROSPECT OF WINNING A SECOND MAMMOTH ORDER FOR BUILDING INDIA’S SECOND INDIGENOUS AIRCRAFT CARRIER? IN ANY CASE, UNDER CHAIRMAN & MANAGING DIRECTOR MADHU S NAIR’S STRATEGIC VISION, AND THE EFFORTS OF THE WHOLE CSL TEAM, THE COMPANY HAS EMERGED AS A NATIONAL TREASURE.

To put Cochin Shipyard Ltd’s (CSL) stock market performance during the past 12 months in absolute terms, barely 50 companies out of the 5000 odd companies listed in India fared better than CSL. Many of them are penny stocks that have surged senselessly, and there is not even one more PSU company in this Top 50 list of gainers. Even more impressively, Cochin Shipyard with its current market capitalization at around Rs 75,000 crore is the largest among these 50 companies by market cap - by a huge difference - which implies that most probably CSL is the largest wealth creator among these 50 firms in absolute terms.

What was the miracle behind this amazing turnaround in a public sector enterprise that was listed in 2017 and traded flat to negative to its IPO price till mid 2022? Was it a case of fundamental improvement in its business, or a rerating by way of price-multiples, or both? It was clearly a case of both. Cochin Shipyard, which had a quarterly profit run rate of Rs 39 crore in the March 2023 quarter, steadily improved it across the next four quarters to clock a profit run rate of Rs 258 crore - a 6.61 times surge - by the March 2024 quarter.

The whole Cochin Shipyard team led by its visionary Chairman & Managing Director, Madhu S Nair, can be proud of this remarkable turnaround and steady acceleration in its performance. Madhu S Nair, a veteran of Cochin Shipyard with a 36 year old stint behind him, had taken over as CMD in 2016 beginning, had led its IPO and listing in 2017, and now this remarkable turnaround. The CMD has been helped in this daunting responsibility by his core executive team led by Director (Technical) Bijoy Bhasker, Director (Finance) Jose VJ, and Director (Operations) Sreejith K Narayanan.

Market never fails to note such turnaround fundamental performances, and that is what happened to the Cochin Shipyard stock during the last 12 months. From 52-Week Lows of sub Rs 300 levels to recent 52-Week Highs near Rs 3000 levels, the Cochin Shipyard stock has done a more than 10X surge within the past 12 months. Obviously, this surge was due to the soaring earnings-per-share (EPS), but it was not all. The market steadily rerated the CSL stock over the past 12 months from a P/E ratio of just around 12 times to an unbelievable 96 times now, both

being on a Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) basis.

In other words, as institutional and public investors made a beeline for the stock, Cochin Shipyard’s price-earnings multiple moved from PSU or heavy manufacturing territory to blue-chip or high-growth private sector territory. Why are the Indian market participants, that includes foreign institutional investors, so gung-ho about this PSU player, awarding its top-of-the-line valuations? Before finding answers to this question, one clarification is warranted.

A cursory look at Cochin Shipyard’s shareholding patterns during these past 12 months, indeed reveals that many institutions including domestic mutual funds and FIIs have made wrong calls in the counter, often selling a couple of quarters earlier and now coming back at higher levels. In contrast, the ‘public’ category of investors, comprising noninstitutional and retail investors, seems to have made better calls in the Cochin Shipyard counter, staying on for the full might of the rally.

Coming back to our core question of why investors are now collectively and superlatively bullish about Cochin

Madhu S Nair Chairman & Managing Director

Shipyard, another note too is warranted. Is Cochin Shipyard really overrated? It is a fact that high growth stocks often appear overrated in TTM terms. For instance, the world’s largest company by market cap now, the fast growing AI chipmaker Nvidia now trades at a TTM P/E of 79 times. So going by that standard, we will have to admit that Cochin Shipyard is overrated, at least for argument’s sake.

The reason why such high-growth companies trade at lofty valuations is simple - the market is just forecasting higher earnings for the next couple of fiscals and pricing it in. Taking Nvidia’s

case itself, its forward P/E for the next 12 months is a much more digestible 51 times only. But in the case of Cochin Shipyard, forward P/Es and price targets are hard to come by. Not because there aren’t enough analysts covering the stock - there are around four to five research houses covering it on a fundamental basis - but because all of their targets have been broken long back. What remains is only technical analysts, who continue to see great promise in the stock based on its momentum.

What has made Cochin Shipyard enter into such an unchartered territory? Let

us first look at the well defined factors, and then move on to the not so well defined factors. Firstly, Cochin Shipyard is sitting on an order book of around Rs 22,000 crore, which is quite robust given that its annual revenue for FY24 is Rs 3,830 crore, making the order book enough for the next 5 to 6 years, even with execution not being linear across the years.

However, while such an order book position is strong, in comparison with

its current market cap, it is relatively small, which means the stock has run up way too fast, compared with peers like GRSE and Mazagon Dock. But there is more to Cochin Shipyard’s order book than meets the eye. For instance, it has an additional pipeline of highly probable projects amounting to Rs 10,000 crore. And in addition to even this highly probable pipeline, Cochin Shipyard is competing for Rs 50,000 crore of projects

that are under various tendering stages now like RFI, mid stage etc.

The quality of Cochin Shipyard’s order book is also telling. It arises from the nature of its promoter, and also how CMD Madhu S Nair and team have cultivated this pedigree over the years. Though many investors and analysts mention Cochin Shipyard as a defence company or defence stock, it is technically incorrect, as its promoter is not India’s Ministry of Defence, but its Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways. This has always made Cochin Shipyard look beyond defence orders for growing its business. At the same time, such an approach didn’t deter this civilian shipyard from bagging the biggest defence order of them allfor building INS Vikrant, India’s first indigenously built aircraft carrier.

This is readily reflected in its current core order book of Rs 22,000 crore, where around 27% is made up by the commercial shipbuilding segment, with the rest 73% being its mainstay of defence. Even this significant commercial segment is diversified with over 73% of it being export orders, with the rest 27% being domestic commercial orders. Cochin Shipyard’s commercial segment - especially its export sub-segment - is also gathering pace, going forward. For instance, in its Rs 10,000 crore of projects in pipeline, around 85% is commercial, of which over 76% is for manufacturing commercial vessels to overseas clients. This not only makes Cochin Shipyard enjoy better margins than its peers, but also gives it a second engine for growth, even if defence orders were to slow down in the future.

Cochin Shipyard is also a very technologically advanced facility, with proven abilities and leadership in the newly emerging green vessels that use environment friendly energy sources. CSL’s leadership in this regard is evident from the fact that out of its current order book for commercial vessels, around 59% is for green vessels like electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vessels. In fact, India’s first indigenously built Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vessel is from Cochin Shipyard, which was completed in February 2024.

Orders have been flowing in for Cochin Shipyard from India and overseas. In January, CSL had signed a contract with a European Client for the design and construction of a Hybrid Service Operation Vessel (Hybrid SOV). In May, CSL also bagged another order from the same client for the design and construction of a second Hybrid SOV with an option for two more such vessels. All these orders are expected to be completed by the end of 2026. In February, CSL also entered into a contract with the Indian Navy for undertaking Medium Refits of Two Indian Naval Vessels. Cochin Shipyard’s execution also continues to be strong with work on nearly 28 vessels in various stages now. These include 8 numbers of ASW SWC Corvette for Indian Navy; 9 more numbers of Hybrid Electric Catamaran Hull Vessels for KMRL (after delivering 14 such vessels already); 8 numbers of Multipurpose Vessels for European Clients; Commissioning of 2 Service Operation Vessels; and 1 number of 12000 Cu. M. Trailer Suction Hopper Dredger.

Cochin Shipyard is geographically diversified too, with its two subsidiaries - Hooghly Cochin Shipyard Limited (HCSL) at Howrah, West Bengal, and Udupi Cochin Shipyard Limited (UCSL) at Malpe, Karnataka. Both the Hooghly and Udupi units have been winning notable orders from Indian and overseas clients and carrying out impressive shipbuilding works. In March 2024, HCSL had secured an order for construction of 2 numbers of 40T Bollard Pull ASD Tugs for Industrial Handling Pvt. Ltd, while in April and May, UCSL had secured orders for 1 number of 70T Bollard Pull Tugs for Polestar Maritime Limited and 3 numbers of 70T Bollard Pull Tugs for Ocean Sparkle Limited. April 2024 also witnessed at UCSL the keel laying of 1 number of New Generation Diesel Electric 3800 DWT General Cargo vessel being built for Wilson Shipowning AS, Norway.

Apart from such order book and execution strengths, Cochin Shipyard is currently undertaking a major capex in

both ship building and repair facilities, which is a prime reason why the stock has been booming without limits. There are two projects basically - a new Dry Dock at its core Ravipuram campus in Kochi and an International Ship Repair Facility (ISRF) at Willingdon Island near Kochi, which will complement each other. The new Dry Dock, which will be Cochin Shipyard’s third dry dock and India’s largest dry dock till date, is the larger of these two projects, and is being built at a cost of Rs 1,799 crore. This is suitable for both building and repairing large ships like LNG vessels, Aircraft Carriers, Jack-up Rigs, Drill Ships, Large Tankers & Merchant Vessels. It was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January of this year, and is expected to be operational by August. It is also the world’s first stepped dry dock enabling it to repair vessels of various sizes simultaneously. The new dry dock can also function as an important strategic asset for India, which can handle critical naval assets and commercial ships in the event of an emergency.

The International Ship Repair Facility (ISRF) being built at a cost of Rs 970 crore at Willingdon Island is also a huge affair spanning a land area of 16.25 hectares and a marine area of 16.15 hectares. This too was inaugurated by PM Modi in January, and is expected to be operationalised in August. CSL is now seeking a global partner who is expected to not only market the facility globally, but establish a supply chain and service provider chain for ISRF like how major repair facilities in Singapore & Middle East operate. This will make Kochi a maritime hub in the years to come. The ISRF and the third dry dock, when fully operational, will boost Cochin Shipyard’s revenue from repair and maintenance works significantly, which will come in handy when shipbuilding orders slow down. The company is already eyeing a big boost in this business, as it has signed a Master Ship Repair Agreement (MSRA) with the United States Navy, in April. This will facilitate the repair of US Naval vessels under their Military Sealift Command in Cochin Shipyard.

Under CMD Madhu S Nair’s strategic vision, Cochin Shipyard has also been moving fast in utilizing its natural and unique advantage as the only shipyard coming under India’s Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways. For instance, Cochin Shipyard had utilised its shared pedigree with the Ports Wing of the Ministry to start the ISRF in land leased from Cochin Port Trust. Similarly, Cochin Shipyard (CSL) has also started three facilities in association with Mumbai Port, Kolkata Port and Port Blair in Andamans. These units are the CSL Mumbai Ship Repair Unit (CMSRU) at Mumbai Port; the CSL Kolkata Ship Repair Unit (CKSRU) at Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata; and the CSL Andaman & Nicobar Ship Repair Unit (CANSRU) at Marine Dockyard, Port Blair. With such facilities, along with its Udupi and Hooghly subsidiaries, Cochin Shipyard has ensured that it has strong ship repairing and maintenance facilities for national and international vessels traversing along India’s west, south and east coasts. While such comprehensive facilities for the upcoming boom in ship repairing business is a major reason why the market is valuing Cochin Shipyard richly, that is not all. An even bigger reason is the prospect of Cochin Shipyard eventually bagging a repeat mammoth order for India’s second indigenous aircraft carrier after INS Vikrant which it had built successfully. In fact, the reason why Cochin Shipyard went in for building India’s largest dry dock and the world’s largest stepped dry dock is speculated to be for better positioning when this tendering comes up.

But does this all mean that Cochin Shipyard’s stock will only move up and up? Of course not, as in all overheated counters, healthy corrections which can go up to 1025% will occur every now and then in CSL stock too. Shipbuilding business is especially prone to such corrections as the complex execution of building a huge vessel is never linear. But as and when its ship repairing facilities gather momentum, Cochin Shipyard is likely to stabilise its earnings across years.

HERE IS SOMEONE WHO LEARNED CODING IN HIS 50s

ANDREW SMITH,A WRITER WITH NO TECHNICAL BACKGROUND RECOUNTS HIS INCREDIBLE JOURNEY INTO THE REALM OF CODING AND THE INVALUABLE LESSON IT TAUGHT HIM ABOUT THE MODERN WORLD.

ne day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer code. And as the trickle of code into my world became a flood, that world seemed to be getting not better but worse in approximate proportion. I began to wonder why.

Two possibilities sprang immediately to mind. One was the people who wrote the code – coders – long depicted in pop culture as a clan of vaguely comic, Tolkien-worshipping misfits. Another was the uber-capitalist system within which many worked, exemplified by the profoundly weird Silicon Valley. Were one or both using code to recast the human environment as something more amenable to them?

There was also a third possibility, one I barely dared contemplate because the prospect of it was so appalling. What if there was something about the way we compute that was at odds with the way humans are? I’d never heard anyone suggest such a possibility, but in theory, at least, it was there. Slowly, it became clear that the only way to find out would be to climb inside the machine by

learning to code myself.

Each language has its own distinct ethos and followers, parlayed into subcultures as passionate and complete as youth subcultures

As a writer in my 50s with no technical background, I knew almost nothing about how code worked. But I had come across – and been intrigued by –coders when writing a magazine feature about bitcoin a few years before. The cryptocurrency’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, had left few clues as to his identity before vanishing. Yet he had left 100,000 lines of code, which I found his peers reading like literature. I learned that there were thousands of programming languages used to communicate with the machines, including a few dozen big ones whose names tended to suggest either roses or unconscionably strong cleaning products (Perl, Ruby, Cobol, Go), and that each had its own distinct ethos and cultish band of followers, parlayed into subcultures as passionate and complete as the youth subcultures – punks, mods, goths, skinheads – I grew up with.

It seemed there could be rivalry, even mild animosity, between these tribes, a

friction coders half-jokingly referred to as “religious wars” on the grounds that no one was ever going to change their mind. Suddenly, the coder’s realm looked rich and intriguing. Later, I spoke to a theoretical physicist who had been studying “high frequency trading” on the stock market, wherein algorithms working outside human control fight to fool one another as to the market’s state. I was aghast but fascinated when he referred to this cosmos of code as “the first truly human-made ecosystem”. His team’s study was published, not in a physics or computing journal, but in Nature.

A residue of curiosity was all I had on my side as I set out to learn in a domain that proved quirkier – and often funnier – than I would have dared imagine. As with all code naifs, my first task was to choose a language. But on what basis?

At length, I found an extraordinary website called freeCodeCamp, where I learned there was a classic trio of languages behind most websites and that many learners started with these. HTML, for Hypertext Markup Language, was created at the dawn of the world wide web by Tim Berners-Lee and is used to define the structure of a webpage, while CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows for the styling of HTML elements. Optionally, JavaScript could be used to animate those elements. I enjoyed the first two, working through my first code crisis and experiencing the joy of seeing the machine do something I’d intended. Until someone pointed out that I probably liked HTML and CSS because they weren’t “algorithmic”: I was just moving stuff around. This was coding, in other words, but not programming.

Some swearing happened then. Yet in my heart I knew my choice hadn’t been random. Algorithms are slippery and hard to control in an essentially binary, alien and unforgiving environment, where a misplaced comma can cause a plane to crash or a satellite to explode. Obviously, part of me had wanted to avoid them. Then I looked at JavaScript, the powerfully algorithmic pillar of the web triad – and hated it.

At root, algorithms are simple things, mostly consisting of “if” statements (if “x” happens, do “y”; else do “z”) and “while loops” (so long as “x” applies, keep doing “y”; when “x” no longer applies, stop doing “y”). So by their nature,

algorithms concentrate and reinforce what they are given. In principle, if those things are good, the world gets better; if they are bad, the world gets worse. In fact, it’s not so simple. My dismay at JavaScript was about more than discomfort with algorithms, though. Strange as it seemed for what I’d always thought of as a hyperrational realm, the primary problem was aesthetic. Emotional. Just looking at JavaScript, with its ugly flights of brackets and braces and unnecessary-seeming reams of semicolons, made me miserable. There also seemed to be 25 different ways to accomplish every task and these were constantly changing, turning the language into a kind of coding wild west. The more time I spent with it, the more I thought: “I can’t do this; coding’s not for me – I don’t have the right kind of mind (and never liked Star Wars).”

My first day at the Python coders’ conference was less like the stiff gathering of my imagining than the first day back at Hogwarts

At this low ebb, I had a stroke of luck when a pro-coder friend of a friend suggested I try another language before giving up. He put me in touch with a man called Nicholas Tollervey, who was prominent within the Python language community. Before calling Tollervey, I looked at Python and instantly felt more at home with it. The first thing I noticed was the spare simplicity of its syntax, which used indentation rather than ugly symbols to delineate instructions to the machine. The language was designed by a naturally collaborative Dutchman named Guido van Rossum, who prized communication, community and concern for how his language would behave in the wild – in other words, empathy – above all else. He named his language Python after Monty Python, a whimsical, human touch that seemed promising. When Tollervey suggested I travel to Cleveland, Ohio, to experience the 4,000-strong PyCon conference, I found myself agreeing, with no idea what I was agreeing to.

The first day was less like the stiff gathering of my imagining than the first day back at Hogwarts. I met up with Tollervey, who graduated from the Royal College of Music as a tuba player before pivoting to code – the kind of backstory I’d hear often at PyCon. I learned that Python first appeared in the early 1990s but took the better part of

two decades to catch on: Van Rossum tells of calling a meet-up at a large computing conference early this century, to find only a handful of enthusiasts turning up. Yet, as programs grew in size and complexity, his priorities for the language began to tell. When I asked the then Python Software Foundation chair Naomi Ceder how Guido – to “Pythonistas”, he is always just Guido – had foreseen the way the coding environment would change, she said he didn’t.

“No one could! This may sound weird coming from a coder, but I think what Guido brings is an aesthetic sense… his strong attention to the aesthetics of the language gave it a form and structure amenable to adaptation and scaling, like a classical building.”

The values and assumptions in programming languages inform the software that’s written with them and change the world accordingly

This may sound unremarkable in the outside world but in code it is not. Larry Wall, the fascinating polymath who created Perl – which seemed to be eclipsing Python and most of its peers in the 1990s – specifically defined his language in opposition to Python. The latter, he said, was a modernist creation, imposing its own aesthetic and limiting freedom of choice or interpretation, deprioritising the individual. Perl, he claimed, was explicitly postmodern, providing the individual with as many options as possible and leaving them to decide what to use. I think Wall is right on both counts, even if this is a discussion I never expected to have in connection with code. There is a serious point, though, which I started to glimpse at PyCon: that the values and assumptions contained in programming languages inform the software that’s written with them and change the world accordingly.

I was surprised how much fun I had with the Pythonistas. Coding has a gender

and race problem, with only about 5% of professionals identifying as women or either Black, African or Caribbean. It would take me several years to get to the bottom of why this is. But strenuous efforts were being made to address the problem within Python communities around the world, notably in Africa. One organisation trying to reverse this imbalance is PyLadies, which traditionally holds a fundraising auction on the Saturday night of conference. I scored a ticket and got a first real sense, in microcosm, of a community that, while still too narrow in terms of gender and race, is easily the most culturally and neurologically diverse group I’ve ever seen.

The auction highlight for me involved a painting by one of the younger PyLadies. The auctioneer explained how, the previous year, Lynn had suffered a severe burnout – common in a field where small actions can have massive effects. She’d retreated from code and started painting watercolours in her search for peace. The other PyLadies had worked hard to persuade her to offer a painting of her cats, but from where I sat I could see she was shaking with anxiety, clinging to a colleague behind the scenes. The painting had meant so much to her, but what could it mean to others?

I watched in wonder as bidding started slowly then accelerated to a peak of $1,410, as the young coder dissolved into tears then floods of tears with the visceral release of a cliff crumbling into the sea, and I went away thinking this was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen; knowing this was a community I wanted to get to know better.

Two years later I would be writing my first nervy Python as a volunteer in the San Francisco brigade of Code for America, the nonprofit coding equivalent of the Peace Corps, working on a pandemic dashboard for the Bay Area and feeling like the world’s unlikeliest convert to code culture.

Even so, as I burrowed deeper into Silicon Valley and what I came to think of as the “microcosmos”, I did find a hidden wrinkle in the way we compute, something intrinsic to the code itself, which is at odds with the way we’ve evolved to be. Something that has been concentrating power, abrading society and casting an algorithmic spell over us as a species – and will continue to do so until we bring it under control. Just when I thought my work was done, it was about to begin in earnest.

(Credit: The Guardian) SEASONAL

ARE YOU BORN TO RUN OR DO YOGA?

ARE ATHLETES BORN OR MADE? A NEW STUDY REVEALS WHICH FITNESS TRAITS ARE PRIMARILY GENETIC. IF YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE IS FALLING SHORT, THIS NEW RESEARCH MIGHT EXPLAIN WHY

Iran elementary school cross country for the first time when I was in third grade. The main thing I remember about our practices was that we spent a lot of time trying to touch our toes, and I was terrible at it. Years later, that would become a reassuring memory, because as a teen and adult runner I spent hours each week stretching and yet remained absurdly inflexible. I even have a kindergarten class photo where all the other kids are sitting happily crosslegged while I’m clearly uncomfortable, my knees nearly touching my chin. This is a fitness affliction shaped by my genetics, not a reflection of my laziness and hate of stretching.

So it’s no shock to me that a new study finds that, of all fitness domains, flexibility is the one most determined by your genes. The study, which is published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, uses data from twin pairs to tease out the respective contributions of genes and environment—talent and training, you might say—for fifteen different fitness tests. Overall, the results support the notion that picking your parents well is a crucial step on the road to athletic stardom, but they also reveal some surprising nuances about how nature and nurture interact.

An international team of researchers led by Karri Silventoinen of the University of Helsinki tested a group of 198 pairs of twins between the ages of 6 and 18 in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira. All the twins completed a battery of 15 fitness tests, and the results were analyzed to figure out how much of the variation between individuals was determined by their genes versus

their environment.

The key point is that 78 of the twin pairs were identical, meaning that they share exactly the same DNA, while the rest were fraternal (or sororal), meaning that they share on average half of their DNA. If the results of a given test are more similar within identical twin pairs than fraternal pairs, that indicates that there’s a genetic influence.

You can split the role of the environment into two components. There are shared environmental factors, like the neighborhood you grow up in, your socioeconomic status, the opportunities available to you to play sports, and so on. And there are unique environmental factors, which reflect your particular path through life: whether you joined a sports team or

broke your ankle or had a great gym teacher. Surprisingly, in contrast to some earlier data, the effects of shared environmental factors appeared to be negligible in the new study, so the analysis focused only on genetic and unique environmental factors. The 15 fitness tests came from two different standardized testing batteries. Eurofit involved the flamingo test (balancing on one leg), plate tapping (moving your hand back and forth between two plates as quickly as possible to test reaction time and quickness), sit-and-reach (touching your toes from a sitting position), standing long jump, handgrip, sit-ups, bent arm hang (holding the top position of a pullup for as long as possible), shuttle run of 10 times 5 meters, and 12-minute run/walk. Fitnessgram involved sit-and-

reach separately on the right and left sides, trunk lift (lying on the floor and lifting your stomach and upper body as high as possible off the ground), curl up (a partial sit-up), push up, and 20-meter shuttle run (better known as the Beep Test, where you have to cover the 20 meters faster and faster until you can no longer keep pace with the beeps).

Overall, genes played a big role in the results, with genetic contributions ranging from a low of 52 percent for the standing long jump to 79 percent for the sit-and-reach flexibility test. According to the researchers, that range of heritability is similar or slightly lower than for height and childhood BMI; on the other hand, it’s higher than the heritability of adult personality and other psychological traits.

One of the most interesting questions is the degree to which performance in one test predicted performance in other tests. After all, why do a ninecomponent fitness test if the same people do well in all of the components? Overall, the correlation between different tests was “modest to moderate”—that is, far from perfect. In fact, they found very little redundancy between tests (other than the three versions of the sit-and-reach test, which were measuring essentially the same thing).

The test that was most uncorrelated with the others was the trunk lift. This seems to be a skill that’s separate from, say,

how fast you can run or how far you can jump. At the other extreme, the three exercises that were most correlated with the rest of the tests were push-ups, standing long jump, and the Beep Test. If you want a simple and quick way of assessing someone’s overall physical fitness, these three tests are your best bet.

If I’d had to guess, I would have said that sprinting and explosive power abilities would be far more heritable than aerobic endurance. We’ve all heard stories about “talentless” grinders who’ve spent years putting in miles until they blossom into great marathoners. Less common, at least as far as I know, are slow, uncoordinated stumblers who put in long hours of plyometrics and weighted-sled pulls and emerge as champion sprinters. The results here don’t back up that assumption, though. Standing long jump is probably the best measure of explosive power among these tests, and it had the lowest genetic contribution.

This may be a function, in part, of the distinction between two facets of talent: untrained performance level, and trainability. This is an idea that David Epstein discussed in his 2013 book, The Sports Gene, and that has been expanded on in long-running debates about the nature of talent. Life in the 21st century being what it is, we can probably assume that the vast majority

of these twin pairs were untrained, at least in a formal sense. Standing long jump performance may reflect the explosive properties of their muscles, along with the degree of coordination that they’ve developed from active (or inactive) childhoods. But it doesn’t reflect a concerted effort to train.

Similarly, the high heritability of the 12minute results don’t reflect the effects of, say, 100-mile weeks. All these estimates of heritability reflect our starting points, but don’t tell us much about where, with sufficient hard work, we might end up. Trainability, too, is partly dictated by our genes—but for the most part, it’s dictated by different genes than your untrained performance level. There’s one final point to make. Digging into the data, you see that flexibility (as measured by the sit-andreach test) and aerobic fitness (as measured by the 12-minute run/walk) have some of the highest genetic contributions. It’s not necessarily the same genes, though! Those who are naturally good at one fitness domain may be terrible at another, and vice versa. And that’s not always a bad thing. In fact, there’s solid evidence that people who are less flexible tend to be more efficient runners. My pathetic inborn flexibility, it turns out, was a superpower all along.

(Credit: Alex Hutchinson for Outside)

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

IN-FOCUS

SKM Shree Shivkumar

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

PRODUCT & GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSIFICATIONS TO STABILISE SKM EGG PRODUCTS’ GROWTH

THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE AND THE RESULTANT SURGE IN MAIZE PRICES DURING MUCH OF FY24 MIGHT HAVE THROWN A SPANNER IN SKM EGG PRODUCTS’ GROWTH MARCH, BUT UNDER ITS FOUNDER, MD & CEO SKM SHREE SHIVKUMAR’S STRATEGIC VISION, THIS LEADING EGG PROCESSOR OF ASIA IS EYEING A TURNOVER OF RS 1000 CRORE EVENTUALLY AND MUCH MORE STABLE MARGINS VIA PRODUCT & GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSIFICATIONS. WITH SKM ALREADY PROCESSING 18 LAKH EGGS A DAY AND WITH ITS PRODUCTS REACHING 23 COUNTRIES, ALL THE WHILE MAINTAINING PRUDENT RETURN RATIOS AND DEBT LEVELS, MARKETS ARE BOUND TO WAIT OUT THE LULL BROUGHT ABOUT BY A SURGE IN INPUT PRICES.

The stock of SKM Egg Products Export (India) Ltd is at crossroads now, after having done a nearly 10X growth in FY23 and then falling by around 60% in FY24. Just like how many investors missed the bus in FY23, many existing investors were caught off guard in FY24 when it dived down.

However, from a fundamental perspective, SKM Egg Products’ performance is much above its historical averages, and this kind of price volatility is not peculiar to SKM, but typical in agro and food processing industries. For instance, most of its peers in the poultry and hatchery businesses experienced this kind of volatility in business, especially in their bottomlines.

SKM Egg Products had achieved a 2.6X surge in its annual revenue run rate from Rs 269 crore in FY21 to Rs 701 crore in FY24. Its bottomline performance was even more impressive due to operational leverage kicking in, with its annual profit run rate expanding from Rs 15 crore in 2021 to Rs 75 crore by FY23 end itself.

But its bottomline growth started faltering from the first quarter of FY24 itself, with sequential or QoQ

Shivkumar with his father SKM Maeilanandhan

performance dipping with each quarter. Still, under the visionary leadership of its dynamic Founder, Managing Director & CEO SKM Shree Shivkumar, the company managed to grow its annual net profit marginally in FY24 too.

SKM Egg Products is a finely run business with its FY24 Return on Equity (RoE) being nearly 31%, much above many of its peers, even though it was a fall from the sky high 39% it was during the previous year. One of Asia’s largest egg processors, SKM is also noted for its prudent debt management with the debt-equity ratio in FY24 showing only a modest rise to 0.53 from the 0.45 it was the previous year.

That is why the market is still largely positive about SKM, and willing to wait out the crisis in the poultry business that started last year. While many factors contributed to this hit on profitability, the main factor was the soaring maize prices due to Russia’s sudden invasion of Ukraine. Maize is the largest input that goes into poultry feed, amounting to around 60% of the input costs of companies like SKM Egg Products.

Market is also appreciative of Shivkumar’s tireless initiatives that has seen SKM acquire unbelievable capacities and capabilities in this

business. SKM’s state-of-the-art egg processing plant at Erode, Tamil Nadu, processes 18 lakh eggs per day to achieve an annual production of 6500 tonnes of egg powder and other processed egg products like liquid eggs in tetra packs and frozen egg white cubes which look and feel like paneer.

The 1300 member strong SKM team which started off with the Japanese market, and made a big move by winning export orders from Russia, now regularly exports to 23 countries across the world including Far East Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Singapore.

While around 80% of the eggs that it processes daily comes from its own farms which includes a 75 acre mega farm in Karur, the rest is sourced from leased farms. The Karur farm is ISO 22000 certified, and maintains high biosecurity measures to comply with the European Union standards, so much so that the eggs are pesticide free, with the six lakh hens being fed a vegetarian diet. These high quality eggs have also hit Indian supermarkets under the SKM Best Eggs brand. Originally a 100% Export Oriented Unit (EOU), SKM today has a Rs 50 crore business in the domestic market too, which it plans to scale up,

as customers get attracted to better produced and better packed ready-touse products that offer high convenience and extra long shelf life.

Shivkumar’s wife Kumutaavalli too is an entrepreneur who leads the group firm SKM Siddha and Ayurveda Company, while their son Sharath Ram has recently joined the Group as Executive Director after completing his post-graduation from King’s College, London.

SKM Group was founded by Shivkumar’s father SKM Maeilanandhan who had set up SKM Animal Feeds and Foods in Erode, decades back. Under Shivkumar’s watchful eyes, SKM Egg Products is now eyeing an annual turnover of Rs 1000 crore, with the various diverse product lines expected to stabilise the bottomline in the coming quarters.

WHY MAZDOCK IS AN ACE UP INDIA’S SLEEVE? WHY MAZDOCK IS AN ACE UP INDIA’S SLEEVE?

WARS ARE OFTEN NOT WON JUST ON GALLANTRY, BUT ALSO ON SUPERIOR ENGINEERING. THE MOST WELL-KNOWN EXAMPLE OF THIS PHENOMENON IS THE ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN ENGINE THAT POWERED THE NUMEROUS PLANES OF THE ALLIED FORCES IN WORLD WAR II, WHICH HELPED THEM OUTCLASS THE UNMATCHED BELLIGERENCE OF LUFTWAFFE, THE NAZI AIR FORCE. ON THIS SIDE OF THE PLANET, WE HAVE AN EQUALLY OUTSTANDING EXAMPLE IN MAZAGON DOCK SHIPBUILDERS LTD, WHOSE SHIPS, SUBMARINES, ATTACK BOATS AND SPECIAL PURPOSE VESSELS HAVE HELPED INDIA WIN BIG IN THE 1999 KARGIL WAR AGAINST PAKISTAN. UNDER ITS VISIONARY CHAIRMAN & MANAGING DIRECTOR, SANJEEV SINGHAL, THE WHOLE MAZDOCK TEAM HAS ALSO WON AN INVESTING WAR FOR INDIAN INVESTORS - BY APPRECIATING OVER 40 TIMES WITHIN 46 MONTHS SINCE ITS IPO.

You must have heard of companies completing 25 years, 50 years, 75 years and even 100 years. But have you ever heard of a company that has completed 250 years? They are difficult to come by, not just in India, but even in the cradles of industrial revolution like the UK and the US.

IBM was founded in 1911, RollsRoyce was founded in 1904, Castrol was founded in 1899, Coca - Cola was founded in 1886, Pfizer was founded in 1849, Procter & Gamble was founded in 1837, Cadbury was founded in 1824, British Gas was founded in 1812 and ColgatePalmolive was founded in 1806.

But 250 years goes beyond all that. It has to be in the 1700s. Venerable UK based newspapers like The Observer was founded in 1791, and The Times was founded in 1785. But 250 years is still behind. The year has to be 1774 to be precise. The year when today’s Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd started its operations as a small dry dock near today’s Mumbai.

That is how 2024 became the 250th year of operation for India’s largest shipyard in the defence sector. Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders didn’t leave this opportunity lying down, but under the leadership of its Chairman & Managing Director Sanjeev Singhal celebrated this anniversary in style with none other than cricket legend Dilip Vengsarkar flagging off 10k and 3k runs to commemorate the event. Apart from Mazagon Dock employees, hundreds of Mumbai citizens enthusiastically joined in the runs and festivities.

After its founding in 1774 in Mazagon, which was one of the original Seven Islands of Bombay, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders remained as a private firm owned by various British entities before being constituted as a company in 1934, while India was still under the British rule. But 13 years after Indian Independence,

in 1960, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders was acquired and nationalised by the Government of India.

As India’s pioneering defence shipyard, Mazdock’s history is full of the firsts it achieved for the Indian Navy. After 12 years of becoming a PSU, Mazdock delivered its first warship or frigate to the Navy, the INS Nilgiri in 1972. The shipyard was working at an accelerated pace, as the wars of 1965 and 1971 with Pakistan had convinced India about the absolute edge naval operations had on winning both wars.

The Indian Navy’s role in winning the 1971 war on both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal was telling, with some observers estimating that the Pakistan Navy lost almost half of its ships, submarines and men during that war. Still, the Pakistan Navy too could inflict a major strike on India

when its French-built submarine PNS Hangor sank India’s INS Khukri in December of 1971.

After this incident, India woke up to the need for accelerating its submarine program and for building its own submarines, rather than depending on Russia, Germany & France. By the next 12 years, Mazdock started doing something impossible by the Indian standards back then. The year was 1984, the tragic year in which Indira Gandhi who won the 1971 war against Pakistan, was assassinated. Mazdock started its submarine manufacturing operations that year.

Eight years later, in 1992, just one year after India’s economic liberalisation program was unleashed, Mazdock could complete building India’s first ever indigenously built submarine, the INS Shalki, with

technology transfer from Germany’s HDW. Two years later, in 1994, Mazdock could complete INS Shankul, India’s second indigenously built submarine.

It took only 3 more years for Mazdock to complete its first guided missile destroyer. The INS Delhi, one of the largest Indian warships, was thus commissioned in 1997. All these and more Mazdock built vessels came in handy when the Indian Navy played a crucial role in the Kargil War with Pakistan between May and July 1999. It was something akin to how RollsRoyce engines played a pivotal role in making Allied aircraft superior, that ensured an eventual victory over the Nazis.

While the roles played by the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force during the Kargil War are often widely celebrated, equally important was the

Indian Navy’s decisive presence in the North Arabian Sea under its Operation Talwar. Even without firing a single shot, the Indian Navy prepared to blockade the Pakistani ports including its main Karachi Port to cut off Pakistan’s supply routes.

The Indian Navy’s western and eastern fleets jointly conducted aggressive patrolling that threatened to cut Pakistan’s vital oil & staples supply if needed, and also seized a North Korean ship carrying weapons and missile components to Pakistan. This mighty show of strength that involved 33 combat ships, submarines, amphibious units, naval planes and Coast Guard vessels sent a clear message to Pakistan that India meant business.

The blockade threat by Indian naval vessels was so effective that Pakistan was left with just six days worth of

fuel to sustain itself, and it contributed much to Pakistan agreeing to withdraw its troops from Kargil. The power, coordination and discipline that the Indian naval vessels displayed in international waters hogged the world’s limelight, and Mazdock naturally became a talking point in international defence circles as the largest indigenous supplier to the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard.

Business started booming for Mazdock in the new millenia, and it was awarded the Mini Ratna Category-1 status in 2006, which now stands upgraded to Navratna status in 2024. In 2015, Mazdock landed a major contract from the Indian Navy to build four frigates, while 2017 witnessed its delivery of the first indigenously built Scorpene class submarine, the INS Kalvari, designed by the Naval Group of France.

Sanjeev Singhal Chairman & Managing Director

In 2019, Mazdock delivered its second Scorpene class submarine, the INS Khanderi to the Indian Navy. India’s plan was to build six Scorpene class submarines, and all these six orders were bagged by Mazdock, making it the nation’s pre-eminent submarine builder. It was on this backdrop that

Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders went for its IPO in 2020.

Despite being offered during the height of the Covid crisis, with market hitting abysmal lows, the Mazdock share which was offered at Rs 145 per share at the upper end of the price band, became a runaway hit, being

oversubscribed 157 times. On the listing day, Mazdock shares went as high as Rs 216 in BSE and closed at Rs 173, up by over 19%. But little did the sellers on that day realise what kind of mistake they had made.

Only 46 months have passed since that seemingly uneventful October of 2020. But Mazdock shares have surged from its IPO price of Rs 145 to its recent All Time High of Rs 5860 - an unbelievable rise of over 40 times. In other words, for an IPO investor, the Mazdock stock added yet another multiple of their IPO investment every 1.15 month or 35 days since its IPO and till now!

There were other factors too that made Mazdock’s IPO and subsequent performance uniquely noteworthy. Unlike most of its IPO peers during those tumultuous times, Mazdock shares have never ever dipped below its IPO price. Even more impressively, its current dividend

Biju George Director (Shipbuilding)

Cdr. Vasudev Puranik, IN (Retd.) Director (Submarine, Heavy Engineering, Corporate Planning & Personnel)

yield is around 0.50%, which translates to an over 17% yearly yield for its IPO investors now, which is nearly triple the yield of what many banks offer for their FDs! What made Mazdock such an outstanding performer during these past four years? The defence shipyard’s annual revenue run rate shot up by 2.33 times from FY21 to FY24, and its profit run rate soared by 4 times within these 4 years. And that awakened the market to what kind of a performer Mazdock really is, which resulted in a rapid and unbelievable rerating to over 55 times TTM price-earnings multiple and over 18 times price-to-book, from very low PSU level multiples during its IPO time.

What drove the fundamental performance at Mazdock is the timely delivery of nothing but ships, ships and more ships. Soon after its IPO, in early 2021, the shipyard delivered its third Scorpene-class submarine, INS Karanj. Towards the end of that year, Mazdock delivered its fourth Scorpene-class submarine INS Vela. And in 2022, the shipyard launched a Frigate and a Destroyer on the same day, displaying awesome capabilities in execution.

Soon into 2023, Mazdock delivered its fifth Scorpene-class submarine, the INS Vagir. And in 2023 itself, the

shipyard launched its 4th Stealth Frigate Mahendragiri and delivered its 3rd Destroyer INS Imphal. The sixth and final Scorpene-class submarine by Mazdock, the INS Vagsheer has already been launched and is undergoing sea trials, with its delivery and commissioning expected to be this year.

The credit for this kind of impeccable planning and execution goes to the entire Mazdock team led by its visionary Chairman & Managing Director Sanjeev Singhal who was handpicked by the Government of India for leading its IPO as Director (Finance) in early 2020, from the PSU firm MIDHANI. A veteran of PSU giant SAIL, Sanjeev Singhal is a meritorious Cost Accountant (CMA) from the Institute of Cost & Management Accountants of India.

Singhal was elevated to the post of CMD from February 1 2023, and has been instrumental to the changing fortunes of Mazdock. He is ably assisted in his duties by the entire Mazdock team led by a 35-member senior executive team and especially its Directors Cdr Vasudev Puranik (IN Retd) who leads its Submarine, Heavy Engineering, Corporate Planning & Personnel Divisions, and Biju George who leads its Shipbuilding activities.

The kind of premium valuations

enjoyed by Mazdock reflects its future prospects and not just its historical achievements. Its total order book as of FY24 end is indeed impressive at Rs 38,561 crore, which is over four times of its FY24 revenue. The order book is noted for its quality too, as it has enough shipbuilding orders, as the manufacturing of the Scorpeneclass submarines are almost over now. And in shipbuilding, Mazdock also has three export orders from Europe, attesting to the quality of its products.

These shipbuilding contracts with a European client are for the construction of three 7500 DWT Multi-Purpose Hybrid Powered Vessels for an approximate value of 42 million USD. Mazdock has also signed a contract with the Acquisition Wing of Ministry of Defence for Construction and Delivery 14 Fast Patrol Vessels for the Indian Coast Guard at a cost of Rs 1070 Crore.

The shipyard is also eyeing expansion and has acquired land and building adjacent to its Mumbai yard measuring 14.55 acres on long term lease basis for a period of 29 years. One of the most prominent defence players now, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders has witnessed both a revenue and profit surge in Q4 with net profit skyrocketing by 101%, to Rs 662.97 crore, compared to Rs

326.19 crore in the same period last year. This was despite the naval player incurring a tax expense that shot up five fold over the previous year.

The PSU major which has recently been upgraded to Navaratna status, is also in a strong financial position with its total income surging by 49% over the previous year’s corresponding period. With the company’s performance exceeding expectations, it is well positioned for future growth too.

Achieving Navratna status is by no means an easy feat, as a PSU company must meet strict financial criteria over three consecutive years for this, which includes a net profit exceeding Rs 5,000 crore annually, an average annual turnover of Rs 25,000 crore, or an average annual net worth exceeding Rs 15,000 crore. There are only 18 PSUs with Navaratna status, and it accords Mazagon Dock with the authority to make investments up to Rs 1,000 crore without requiring prior approval from the central government, as well as invest up to 30% of their net worth within a year, as long as it does not exceed Rs 1,000 crore.

It also gives Mazdock the privilege

to form joint ventures, alliances, and establish subsidiaries abroad, providing them with greater flexibility and autonomy in their business operations. These Navaratna features are sure to elevate Mazdock’s growth to a new orbit.

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

IN-FOCUS

HOW MOIL IS A ZERO DEBT PROXY PLAY IN STEEL INDUSTRY

UNDER ITS VISIONARY CHAIRMAN & MANAGING DIRECTOR, AJIT KUMAR SAXENA, THE ENTIRE TEAM AT MOIL IS MAKING SURE THAT IT IS A HIGH QUALITY PROXY PLAY IN STEEL, WITH ZERO DEBT AND HIGH RETURN ON CAPITAL EMPLOYED, EVEN WHILE DELIVERING ITS IMMENSE RESPONSIBILITIES IN NATION BUILDING BY CONTRIBUTING TO THE CORE INFRASTRUCTURE AND INDUSTRIAL SECTORS.

In the PSU universe where most stocks are already too hot to touch, Nagpur headquartered MOIL Ltd stands as a rare exception. Despite a 3X rally this year, and despite trading within 10% of its All Time High level, this leader in manganese mining and sales is still available at relatively reasonable valuations. Manganese being a critical metal essential in steel production, MOIL is a proxy play in the high growth steel industry. MOIL Ltd. is promoted by the Government of India’s Ministry of Steels. The manganese mined and sold by MOIL finds diverse applications in products like steel, dry batteries, fertilizers etc. MOIL was listed in 2011 through its IPO, and had gone below and stayed below its IPO price for long, but since 2023, has been on a major upswing. Its current price is Rs. 529, while its 52-Week Low is Rs 182 and its recent 52-Week High is Rs 588, which is a wealth multiplication of over 3 times this year. From its All Time Low of Rs 86, its recent All Time High of Rs 588 is a wealth multiplication of nearly 7 times. MOIL’s strengths include a strong promoter and its potential as a proxy play in the vital steel sector. At the same time, unlike large steel firms, it is a zero debt

company. It has a visionary Chairman & Managing Director in Ajit Kumar Saxena, who is a graduate engineer and a postgraduate in business administration, as well as a trained professional with a 36-year stint in metal industries including in steel major SAIL. Last Q4 was a turnaround quarter for MOIL with net profit up by 14% year-on-year and 69% quarter-on-quarter. As per its latest quarterly update for the recent Q1, MOIL has followed this up with record sales which is up by nearly 15% year-on-year and record production that is up by nearly 8% year-on-year. MOIL also excels in its core return ratios with its Return on Capital Employed being 15.27% and Return on Equity being 11.95%. MOIL also has a Dividend Yield of 1.14% as of today’s price. The company stock is in high momentum now, with it being just 10% away from its All Time High of Rs 588. On the valuation front, MOIL is trading at a price-to-earnings multiple of 36.75 times and a price-to-book of 4.41 times, which shows rich valuation, but reasonable in comparison with some of its peers. The MOIL stock has a face value of Rs 10, with a current market cap of Rs 10,767 crores.

GARDEN REACH TRIPLES IN VALUE, STILL MARKET CAP ONLY 70% OF ORDER BOOK

Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers’ (GRSE) recent achievements, financial performance, and strategic partnerships demonstrate its commitment to innovation and growth in the shipbuilding industry. Under the visionary leadership of its Chairman & Managing Director, Cmde PR Hari, IN (Retd.), the GRSE stock has more than tripled in value, but still has a long way to go with its market cap only Rs 15,686 crore, which is only 70% of its current order book of Rs 22,653 crores.

Kolkata based defence sector shipbuilder, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), has crossed the crucial Rs 1000 crore quarterly revenue run rate for the first time in Q4, while its EBITDA has tripled and its net profit has doubled to reach Rs 112 crore on a year-on-year basis. Investors had cheered GRSE’s Q4 results announcement with the stock price soaring over 18% after the results were published, and taking the stock to a new all time high. The GRSE stock has had a stellar run in the bourses during Q4, rising over 70% during the past three months. On a yearly basis too, the stock has seen remarkable growth, having more than tripled in value from its 52-week low which was recorded in May 2023. But going forward, the PSU firm should achieve major order wins for this momentum to continue, which the company is confident of,

at this stage. Reflecting GRSE’s commitment to excellence in shipbuilding and engineering, major manufacturing orders and maintenance works have been pouring in from its main two clients, Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard. Apart from in-house designed warships, such orders have so far included in-house designed AntiSubmarine Warfare Shallow Water Crafts (ASWSWCs), Survey Vessels and Patrol Vessels for the Indian Navy and Coast Guard. However, in recent quarters, GRSE has also been proactively signing MoUs with foreign companies to develop hydrogen fuel cell ferries as well as to provide sales and service of medium-speed engines. As on March 31, 2024, GRSE’s order book stood at Rs 22,653 crores. This order book primarily comprises orders from the shipbuilding sector, including key projects like P-17 Alpha, Survey Vessel Large Project, ASWSWCs, and

Ocean Going Patrol Vessels. The P17 Alpha Project involves the construction of three warships. While all three ships have been launched, the first ship is currently at 70% physical progress, the second ship at 60% progress, and the third ship at 47%. GRSE aims to deliver the first ship by mid-2025 and complete the entire P-17 Alpha Project by August 2026. GRSE’s Survey Vessel Large Project on the other hand is a fourship project, with the first ship already delivered to the Indian Navy. The ship was commissioned during Q4 on February 21, 2024, and is now fully operational. The Anti-Submarine Shallow Water Craft Project has been a key one for GRSE since the past few years and is valued at Rs 4,886 crores. Similarly, the Next Generation Ocean Going Patrol Vessel Project that GRSE is executing is valued at Rs 3,359 crores. The current fiscal of FY’25 is key for GRSE as the firm is expected to complete as many as five major vessels in this year. While the GRSE stock is now richly valued at nearly 44 P/E and 10 P/BV, this is a reflection of the high growth trajectory the company is in. But what most investors may miss is the crucial fact that GRSE has a long way to go with its market cap still in small cap territory at just Rs 15,686 crore, which is only 70% of its current order book of Rs 22,653 crores. The stock also has a reasonable dividend yield of 1.30% which may remain steady or even go up in the future due to its PSU nature.

RUSTOMJEE GETS READY TO TAKEOFF RUSTOMJEE GETS READY TO TAKEOFF

BOOSTED BY AN OVERSUBSCRIBED QIP THAT RAISED RS 800 CRORES FROM MARQUEE INVESTORS LED BY QUANT MF & MORGAN STANLEY, WITH AN IMPRESSIVE PIPELINE OF 22 PROJECTS WITH A GDV OF OVER RS 35,000 CRORE, AND WITH A LASER SHARP FOCUS ON ITS LUCRATIVE HOME TURF OF MUMBAI METROPOLITAN REGION (MMR), RUSTOMJEE IS NOW GETTING READY FOR A TAKEOFF IN THE CAPITAL MARKETS TOO, UNDER THE VISIONARY LEADERSHIP OF ITS YOUNG & DYNAMIC FOUNDER & CMD BOMAN R IRANI.

Rustomjee completes 30 years of conceiving, designing and building impressive real estate projects in Mumbai next year. But in the capital markets, Keystone Realtors, the corporate name of brand Rustomjee, is a young entity, yet to complete two years after its listing in November 2022, just after the devastation brought forth by the pandemic. However, under its young and dynamic Founder, Chairman & Managing Director, Boman R Irani, the company noted for its signature projects in some of the finest localities in and around Mumbai, has managed to traverse these tricky times by sound strategies that has made the stock nearly double during the last 12 months. This is quite impressive, as most real estate developers tend to be late bloomers in the capital markets, often turning into multibaggers only 5 or 10 years after their listing. In that context, Rustomjee would seem to have outperformed, but recent developments hint that markets haven’t seen anything yet, as the saying goes. The first hint came in May this year, when Rustomjee closed its QIP earlier than intended due to strong demand. This Mumbai focused developer raised Rs 800 crore in an issue that saw 2.5X oversubscription. Many things stand out regarding this capital raise. Firstly, it was in the midst of India’s long drawn parliamentary elections, before any kind of clarity had emerged. Secondly, the strong demand was despite a profit fall in Q4 at Rustomjee. But most impressive was the kind of institutional investors who made a beeline for this realty sector QIP during the election imbroglio. The biggest stake of 22.87% was cornered by Quant Mutual Fund for its Quant Small Cap Fund, one of the best performing small cap funds since many years in the Indian market. And close on heels were insurance majors SBI Life Insurance, Birla Sun Life Insurance, SBI General Insurance and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance who all picked up stakes ranging from 15% to 7%. And not to be left behind were the foreign institutional investors including heavyweights like Morgan Stanley India, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and the Quantum State Investment Fund. All in all, the bullishness from these long-only funds in Rustomjee were discernible, and the recently announced Q1 results provide some hints. Q1 revenue is up by 55.23% on a year-on-year basis on the back of a 21.71% year-onyear growth in pre-sales during the first quarter. While the profit growth is yet to stabilize in Q1 too, Rustomjee seems to be on a strong wicket looking at the kind of projects it has launched recently. In Q1 it launched two new projects, the 180 Bayview in Matunga West and the Ocean Vista in Versova. The two projects taken together have a saleable area of 0.63 million sq ft with a possible

Gross Development Value (GDV) of Rs 2,017 crore. Keystone Realtors had earlier guided the market that it would be launching two new projects per quarter and it has followed this up impressively in Q1. Such new projects come from Rustomjee’s impressive lineup of 22 projects in the pipeline with a potential of 37 million sq ft of saleable area with a GDV of around Rs 35,000 crore. Under CMD Boman Irani’s strategic vision, Keystone also has definitive plans to be a key player in Mumbai’s redevelopment opportunity. In Q1, it added a redevelopment project to its portfolio with a saleable area of 0.35 million sq ft and an estimated GDV of Rs 984 crore. Another aspect of Rustomjee that appeals to some of the largest investors in India and abroad is the company’s sharp focus on the lucrative Mumbai Metropolitan Region with no plans to diversify geographically. This laser sharp focus on MMR means Rustomjee would always be one up on the market when it comes to demand, growth and margins.

REC CONTINUES ITS OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE REC CONTINUES ITS OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE

UNDER THE VISIONARY LEADERSHIP OF VIVEK KUMAR DEWANGAN WHO ASSUMED CHARGE AS CMD IN MAY 2022, RURAL ELECTRIFICATION CORPORATION HAS ACCELERATED ITS PACE, WHICH SAW ITS STOCK SURGING BY OVER 6 TIMES SINCE THEN. ABLY ASSISTED BY ITS DIRECTOR (PROJECTS) VIJAY KUMAR SINGH AND DIRECTOR (FINANCE) HARSH BAWEJA, THIS POSTGRADUATE IIT TRAINED ENGINEER AND IAS OFFICER, HAS LED REC TO A POSITION OF STRENGTH WITH A 10,000+ MW RENEWABLES PORTFOLIO AND SUPPORTING THE LIGHTING UP OF EVERY FOURTH BULB IN A VAST COUNTRY LIKE INDIA.

Rural Electrification Corporation, the Navaratna PSU company has delivered yet another quarter of steady performance in Q1 FY25 that continues the outstanding performance the company exhibited throughout FY23 and FY24. While some analysts and investors may feel that growth is starting to slow down at this NBFC focused on lending to rural electrification projects, it should be remembered that REC is no longer a small to mid-sized infra lender it was around four to five years back. Its growth going forward will be against a high

base effect, and hence the Q1 performance is more than robust. Between FY20 and FY24, REC had grown its annual revenue run rate by nearly 1.6 times, and its profit run rate by nearly three times. For Q1 FY25, REC’s revenue has come in at Rs 13,078.66 crore, which is up by a robust 17.96% from the Rs.

11,087.56 crore it was in June 2023. And its Q1 net profit achieved is Rs.

3,460.19 crore which is up by a healthy 16.58% from the Rs. 2,968.05 crore it was in the corresponding quarter in last fiscal. REC’s Q1 EBITDA

came in at Rs. 12,375.40 crore as against Rs. 10,775.66 crore in June 2023, which is also a healthy increase of 14.85%. Providing much comfort to its existing investors, REC’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) has also proportionately increased as its net profit, at 16.59%, thanks to no dilution happening in its equity during the past year. REC’s robust performance was on the back of a strong growth in loan sanctions and loan disbursements. While Q1 loan sanctions grew by 24.17%, the disbursements more than kept this pace growing by

Vivek Kumar Dewangan Chairman & Managing Director

MEET RECPDCL, A KEY PLAYER IN INDIA’S POWER SECTOR VALUE CHAIN

THIS REC SUBSIDIARY HAS MULTIPLE ROLES IN THE POWER SECTOR ONE OF WHICH IS TO ACT AS THE BID PROCESS COORDINATOR (BPC) FOR INTERSTATE & INTRA-STATE TRANSMISSION & RE-BUNDLING PROJECTS, THAT ARE BID UNDER THE TARIFF BASED COMPETITIVE BIDDING (TBCB) PROCESS AND USUALLY IMPLEMENTED AS PER THE BUILD, OWN, OPERATE & TRANSFER (BOOT) MODEL.

REC Power Development and Consultancy Ltd (RECPDCL) is a wholly owned subsidiary of REC Limited, that has been providing several innovative services across the whole power sector value chain. These include knowledge-based consultancy and expert project implementation services to several State power distribution companies and power departments. Led by its CEO TSC Bosh, RECPDCL has

also been implementing transmission projects in the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. Recently, however, this REC subsidiary has been noted for its initiatives in a third vertical, as it is the Bid Process Coordinator (BPC) for Inter-state as well as Intra-state transmission projects and RE-Bundling projects. Typically, such projects are implemented through the Tariff Based Competitive Bidding (TBCB) mechanism. In this third

vertical, the company recently witnessed a notable transaction when as the Bid Process Coordinator it handed over two key projects to Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL) as it had emerged as the winning bidder to be the Transmission Service Provider for these two projects in Rajasthan. The bid was conducted by RECPDCL under the TBCB process. Structured as project specific Special Purpose Vehicles, these two handed over projects are Rajasthan IV-C Power Transmission Limited and Rajasthan IV-E Power Transmission Limited formed for the evacuation of power from Rajasthan Renewable Energy Zone Ph-IV, called the Jaisalmer / Barmer Complex. These projects are to be executed in two years under the Build, Own, Operate & Transfer (BOOT) model. The SPVs were recently handed over by RECPDCL CEO TSC Bosh, to the officials of PGCIL including Satya Prakash Dash, its Company Secretary, in the presence of Senior Officials of RECPDCL and Central Transmission Utility of India Limited.

27.89%. Loan growth was especially strong in the renewables sector which grew by nearly 250%. All credit for the performance of this unique PSU NBFC company goes to the REC Team led by its Chairman & Managing Director Vivek Kumar Dewangan who is both an IAS officer as well as a postgraduate engineer from IIT Delhi. Vivek Kumar who assumed charge as CMD in May 2022, is ably assisted in managing the complex operations by Director (Projects) Vijay Kumar Singh, Director (Finance) Harsh Baweja and the rest of the

Director (Projects)

top leadership team. Going forward, REC is on solid ground due to its early mover advantage - it was founded in 1969 - and near monopoly status with many of its public sector and private sector

Director (Finance)

clients. For instance, its role in electrifying India is so pervasive that it is estimated that every fourth bulb in India is lit by REC support, while its renewables portfolio has swelled to over 10,000 MW.

Vijay Kumar Singh

Harsh Baweja

HIGHER EDUCATION

WHY HAVE LONG TERM INVESTORS IN CUB LARGELY MISSED INDIA’S GREATEST BULL MARKET?

AS CITY UNION BANK DELIVERS YET ANOTHER QUARTER OF MODEST YEAR-ON-YEAR GROWTH AND FLAT SEQUENTIAL GROWTH IN Q1, THE BANKING SECTOR ITSELF IS COMING OUT FROM A FIVE YEAR BOOM PERIOD IN INCOME, PROFITS & STOCK MARKET GROWTH, THAT CITY UNION BANK HAS LARGELY MISSED. NOW, WHEN THE BANKING SECTOR IS ONCE AGAIN STARTING TO FACE ASSET QUALITY STRESS IN SOME KEY SEGMENTS AS WELL AS MOUNTING STRESS IN ATTRACTING LOW COST DEPOSITS, THE CHALLENGES BEFORE CUB’S MD & CEO DR N KAMAKODI ARE ALSO HIGHER.

India’s key banking index, the Nifty Bank, had fallen sharply in reaction to the unprecedented Covid pandemic in the third quarter of FY20, but had swiftly recuperated all its losses and made a fresh All Time High (ATH) as early as the third quarter of FY21. And ever since then, the Nifty Bank has surged on and on, making All Time Highs again and again, with the latest ATH coming during the last month.

In many ways this has been a nobrainer, as the Nifty Bank couldn’t have done otherwise, as almost all businesses from India’s largest conglomerates to its

MSMEs emerged stronger and hungrier for growth, driving banking sector’s credit growth and its valuations, as what is perhaps India’s largest ever bull market unfolded.

This period also witnessed an additional advantage in that almost all the banks became finally equipped to tackle NPAs in an effective manner, backed by the support of Government and RBI, and using tools like stressed asset sales to Asset Reconstruction Companies, which made their balance sheets clean and sent their profits surging as provisions started reversing.

But long term investors who got into the City Union Bank counter just before Covid struck were in for a rude shock. The stock of this traditional private sector bank has never recovered enough to make an All Time High since then. When December 2024 arrives, just one quarter from now, City Union Bank (CUB) stock would have completed five years of lost opportunity for its investors.

Mind you, it was no ordinary five years, but a period when Nifty Bank surged nearly 3 times from sub 19,000 levels during FY20 end, to over 52,000 levels recently. The lost opportunity for CUB investors is even more striking when compared with another similar-sized traditional private sector bank from Tamil Nadu itself, whose stock went up

THIS KIND OF SLUGGISH GROWTH HAS CONTINUED IN CUB DURING ALMOST ALL OF FY23 AND FY24, TWO OF THE VERY BEST YEARS FOR THE INDIAN STOCK MARKET AND ITS LISTED ENTITIES INCLUDING BANKS.

by 10X during these same 5 years.

This bank’s performance is no anomaly either as three comparable traditional private sector banks in the neighbouring state of Kerala had surged by over 10X, 7X & 4X during this five year period, even when City Union Bank struggled to reach anywhere near to the All Time High it had set in December 2019. In fact, CUB’s current 52-Week High is still over 40% away from this All Time High.

Just a cursory glance at CUB’s balance sheet during these 5 years is enough to understand its market underperformance to a staggering degree vis-a-vis many of its comparable peers. CUB’s annual revenue run rate grew by just over 26% during these five years, while its annual profit run rate just doubled in the same period, whereas for some comparable banks the profit run rate went up by 7 times or more.

This kind of sluggish growth has continued in CUB during almost all of FY23 and FY24, two of the very

best years for the Indian stock market and its listed entities including banks. Even in its latest quarterly numbers, CUB is exhibiting this trend of minimal growth. While its total income and net profit for Q1 has grown by 8% and 16% respectively on a YoY basis, on a sequential or QoQ basis both income and profit growth are nearly flat.

This pattern of modest YoY growth and flat QoQ growth was visible throughout the quarters of FY24, which were among the best for many other comparable banks. Is this a case of CUB being a late bloomer in this post-Covid cycle? Even if this is the case, this may present higher challenges before CUB, going forward.

Because, an overheated stock market that is driven by surging domestic inflows by way of mutual fund SIPs, is presenting a unique problem for banks, as they are struggling to garner enough low cost liabilities like Current Accounts & Savings Accounts

DR N KAMAKODI, MD & CEO

(CASA) deposits. This may squeeze a late bloomer like CUB further.

The Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, headquartered City Union Bank has long been led by its MD & CEO Dr N Kamakodi. A CUB veteran since 2003, Dr Kamakodi was elevated to the post of MD & CEO in 2011. Despite the gross underperformance of the bank since FY20, the Director Board and shareholders of this 120year old bank reaffirmed its faith in Dr Kamakodi’s leadership last year, by recommending him for reappointment as MD & CEO for another 3 years, which the RBI also approved.

Of course, it goes to his credit that from FY12 to FY20, the bank had performed exceedingly well, with its stock surging by 7 times within 9 years. The CUB family is seemingly placing all their bets on this past track record. But only time would be able to tell the outcome, as Indian banking once again enters choppy waters after a five-year boom that CUB seems to have largely missed.

HOW KERALA LEADS INDIA IN ACCESS TO EQUITABLE & INCLUSIVE HEALTHCARE

DID YOU KNOW THAT ALL CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 18 RECEIVE FREE HEALTHCARE FROM KERALA’S PUBLIC HOSPITALS? DID YOU KNOW THAT KERALA HAS THE HIGHEST FEMALE LIFE EXPECTANCY IN INDIA AT 77.8 YEARS, WAY ABOVE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE OF 71.4 YEARS? DID YOU KNOW THAT THE STATE HAS ONE OF THE LOWEST INFANT AND MATERNAL MORTALITY RATES IN THE COUNTRY? DID YOU KNOW THAT THE STATE PROVIDES FREE GLUCOMETERS TO ALL BPL SENIOR CITIZENS WITH DIABETES, FREE TEETH SETS TO BPL SENIORS, AND TREATMENTS & INSULIN TO CHILDREN WITH TYPE 1 DIABETES? DID YOU KNOW THAT MIGRANT WORKERS FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY ARE WELCOME IN KERALA, ARE CALLED GUEST WORKERS, AND TREATED AS SUCH WITH ONE OF THE BEST HEALTHCARE FACILITIES, HEALTH INSURANCE AND ACCIDENT INSURANCE SCHEMES? DID YOU KNOW THAT KERALA WAS THE FIRST EVER STATE IN THE COUNTRY TO HAVE A TRANGENDER POLICY WAY BACK IN 2015, WITH ONE OF THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE AND SUBSIDIZED TREATMENT FOR TRANSGENDER PERSONS? THE STATE ALSO LEADS THE COUNTRY IN PROVIDING FREE HEALTHCARE TO SCHEDULED CASTES AND SCHEDULED TRIBES. NO WONDER THEN THAT THE RECENT SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS) REPORT VALIDATED KERALA’S RAPID ADVANCEMENTS IN HEALTHCARE RELATED SDGS, UNDER THE VISIONARY LEADERSHIP OF ITS CHIEF MINISTER SHRI PINARAYI VIJAYAN.

Kerala, a state in the southwestern region of India, continues to garner praise and recognition for its exemplary healthcare system. Often lauded as a model for other states and countries, Kerala’s healthcare system stands out for its universal coverage, inclusivity, and effectiveness in delivering high-quality care with its limited resources. Kerala’s advancements in health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the state’s unwavering commitment to enhance the health and well-being of its population. The most recent SDG reports validate that Kerala is making substantial progress through its inclusive and equitable health policy and initiatives.

Here are some of the important highlights especially those pertaining to its endeavors to address the health requirements of marginalized and vulnerable sections.

UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE COVERAGEINCLUSIVITY AND EQUITY

Kerala’s healthcare system stands out for its universal coverage, ensuring access to medical services for all residents regardless of socio-economic status. This is supported by a robust network of primary and community health centers and hospitals that provide comprehensive care. Emphasizing primary healthcare enables early disease detection and prevention, alleviating pressure on higher-level healthcare facilities.

In Kerala, conscious policy efforts have helped in extending healthcare access to the most vulnerable and marginalized groups such as women, children, the elderly, disabled individuals, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, migrants, and transgender persons. These initiatives provide affordable healthcare to everyone and free care specifically to these disadvantaged groups, underscoring the state’s commitment to inclusivity and equity. Specialized programmes targeting maternal and child health, alongside initiatives focused on improving nutrition and sanitation, have been pivotal in achieving

Kerala’s impressive health outcomes.

FOCUS ON WOMEN

Kerala has made significant strides in women’s health, setting a benchmark for other Indian states. The state has the highest female life expectancy in the country at 77.8 years, compared to the national female average of 71.4 (SRS, 2022), due to comprehensive healthcare services and targeted programmes. Maternal and child health initiatives have been particularly successful, resulting in one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in India, thanks to widespread access to prenatal and postnatal care and skilled birth attendants. Additionally, Kerala’s focus on women’s education and empowerment has led to increased health awareness and better health outcomes for women across the state.

Kerala’s inclusive health policies have significantly improved women’s health through various targeted programmes, such as reproductive health, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and anemia prevention. Recent initiatives like VIVA (Vilarchayil Ninnu Valarchayilekku) for anemia and special cancer screening programmes exemplify the government’s timely interventions. Public health campaigns and community-based efforts have ensured these services reach even remote areas, promoting equitable access to essential healthcare. This gender-sensitive approach has empowered women to take charge of their health, enhancing individual outcomes and contributing to the state’s socio-economic development.

FREE HEALTH CARE TO THE CHILDREN

The state has achieved internationally comparable lowest infant mortality and child mortality rates through continuous efforts of child care and universal vaccination. Special schemes and interventions in the area of child health are being implemented by Kerala government for ensuring healthy and happy childhood.

All children below 18 years are given free treatment in the government hospitals of Kerala. Apart from this, under Thalolam scheme, free treatment is provided to the children below age of 18, who suffer from Kidney diseases, Cardiovascular diseases, Cerebral Palsy, Hemophilia, Thalassemia, Sickle Cell Anemia, Orthopedic deformities, and other Neuro-Developmental Disabilities. Currently Thalolam scheme is a part of Karunya Arogya Suraksha Padhathi (KASP) which is being implemented as a comprehensive programme focusing on deserving segments of the population. Mittayi is the scheme for providing insulin and other treatment to children who have Type -1 diabetes.

INCLUSION OF THE ELDERLY

The proportion of the aging population in the State has been increasing over the years and it has reached to 16.5 percent in 2021 as per Elderly in India Report, 2021. Apart from giving free treatment to elderly from BPL families in government hospitals, special schemes are being implemented exclusively for 60+ people in the State. Some of the health schemes for elderly were initiated by the Social Justice Department. Sayam Prabha scheme is a comprehensive program intended to address the physical as well as mental health of elderly. Sayam Prabha has components like Mandhahasam which provides free tooth sets for senior citizens, Vayoamrutham which is implemented with the support of the Indian System of Medicine for Ayurveda treatment for persons in Government old age homes, Vayomadhuram which supplies glucometers for old age people under the BPL category free of cost, and Psycho-Social Care in Old Age Homes in association with NIMHANS. Smruthipadham, the Kerala State Initiative on Dementia provides day care facilities to the needy.

VAYOMITHRAM: A SOCIAL SAFETY NET PROGRAMME IMPLEMENTED BY KERALA

Social Security Mission provides health care and support to elderly above the age of 65 years residing in urban areas. The project provides health care and support by conducting free medical

check-ups and treatment through mobile clinics.

Apart from these, geriatric wards function in taluk, district and general hospitals for giving exclusive attention to elderly. Special schemes for elderly are also being implemented by the Ayush department.

HEALTH CARE INTERVENTIONS FOR SCHEDULED CASTES & SCHEDULED TRIBES

Kerala provides free treatment in government hospitals and special health schemes for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The T-Grants site offers treatment assistance, including Rs. 2 lakh relief for the death of a sole income earner. Close to 29 homeo dispensaries function in different SC areas across the state and a dedicated medical college in Palakkad is functioning to pay more attention on the medical education of students from scheduled caste category.

Kerala’s major health care schemes for Scheduled Tribes include the Comprehensive Tribal Health Programme, financial assistance for sickle cell anemia patients, Janani Janmraksha for pregnant women and adolescents, financial support for tribal healers, and mobile medical clinics. In 2022-23, 1,67,912 people received medical assistance, 889 sickle cell anemia patients got Rs. 2500 monthly, 9,601 pregnant and lactating mothers received Rs. 2500 monthly, 261 tribal healers received an annual grant of Rs. 10,000, and 3,900 medical camps were organized. .

PERSONS WITH DISABILITY

The Social Justice Department, the nodal agency for disabled persons, undertakes various activities in collaboration with the Health Department for addressing the health needs of persons with disability. Apart from various programmes for education, livelihood and rehabilitation, the Kerala Social Security Mission provides monthly assistance of ¹ 600 to the caregivers of patients of those categories who need a full-time caregiver like 100 percent

people with visual disability, bedridden patients suffering from cancer, cerebral palsy, autism, mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and also to the bedridden old aged under Aswasakiranam scheme. Anuyatra Programme, an umbrella scheme for disabled, includes District Early Intervention Centres (DEIC) to ensure early screening of disabilities and provide appropriate health services. Child Development Centre (CDC), Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (IMHANS), National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH) and National Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (NIPMR) are the organizations under Government of Kerala which undertake detection, management and rehabilitation of persons with disability. These organizations have various therapeutic departments and units for providing medical and therapeutic services.

ADDRESSING HEALTH NEEDS OF TRANSGENDER PERSONS

Kerala is the first State in India to declare a Transgender (TG) Policy in 2015. The State started to implement a comprehensive programme, Mazhavillu, for transgender persons. The programme includes financial assistance for sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and post-SRS surgeries and insurance. Apart from this, all transgender persons are eligible for cashless treatment under KASP.

HEALTH CARE INTERVENTIONS FOR GUEST WORKERS

Migrant workers, addressed as guest workers, and their families receive special health attention, including general check-ups, medication distribution, health awareness and sanitation maintenance. The services provided by the department remain accessible by the migrants by adopting an innovative approach. A dedicated team, the ‘Mobile Immigrant Screening team’ (MIST) is designated so that services are delivered at places and times of their convenience. This team regularly visits and screens migrants for various diseases, actively detects tuberculosis, HIV, and STDs, conducts awareness campaigns at their rest stops,

work sites, construction sites, etc. They also provide antenatal and postnatal care and immunization services, ensuring comprehensive healthcare for migrants.

HEALTH INSURANCE FOR INTERSTATE MIGRANT WORKERS (AWAAZ):

Government has introduced a Health cum death Insurance scheme for guest workers. Accordingly an insured will get health insurance of ¹ 25,000 and two lakh of accident death insurance claim. A total of 516320 guest workers have taken registration cards under this scheme.

AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE THROUGH KARUNYA AROGYA SURAKSHA PADHATHI

Kerala is implementing a comprehensive health insurance programme called the Karunya Arogya Insurance Programme (KASP) through the State Health Agency (SHA) as an assurance mode. Central scheme of Ayushman Bharat programme is also implemented by SHA as a part of KASP. Apart from the beneficiaries identified by the SocioEconomic Survey for Ayushman Bharat Programme, nearly 22 lakh households were identified by the State as beneficiaries of KASP. Thus, currently 42 lakh beneficiaries are covered by KASP. As the Ayushman Bharat programme is part of KASP, migrant workers are also benefiting out of this. Since last year, provision has also been given for cashless treatment to disabled, and transgender persons.

Kerala’s healthcare system remains a model due to its universal coverage, inclusivity, significant government investment, and effective health policies. While the state’s health indices are often lauded widely, the core part of this achievement is its success in addressing the healthcare requirements of the vulnerable and marginalized sections. As it continues to make strides in public health, it serves as an inspiration and a benchmark for other regions aiming to enhance their healthcare systems and improve health outcomes for their citizens.

PERMA+, A PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR HEALTH, HAPPINESS & WELLBEING

The pursuit of happiness is one that humans have been working toward since the beginning of time. Yet the concept of “happiness” is often hard to accurately define. Living the good life, flourishing, self-actualization, joy, and purpose are words that come to mind with happiness. Is it possible to experience any of these in the middle of a chaotic world and negative circumstances? Can we learn to grow or find skills that lead to this “good life?”

ccording to Prof. Martin Seligman, renowned professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania, positive psychology takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment, meaning and purpose. This article will outline the Prof. Seligman’s PERMA+ model and the theory of wellbeing, and provide practical ways to apply its components in your private practice or personal life.

Abraham Maslow was one of the first in the field of psychology to describe “wellbeing,” with his characteristics of a self-actualized person. The description of self-actualization is a foreshadowing of the PERMA model, which outlines the characteristics of a flourishing individual and Wellbeing Theory (WBT).

In 1998, Dr. Martin Seligman used his inaugural address as the incoming president of the American Psychological Association to shift the focus from mental illness and pathology to studying what is good and positive in life. From this point in time, theories and research examined positive psychology interventions that help make life worth living and how to define, quantify, and create wellbeing.

In developing a theory to address this, Seligman selected five components that people pursue because they are intrinsically motivating and they contribute to wellbeing. These elements are pursued for their own sake and are defined and measured independently of each other. Additionally, the five components include both eudaimonic and hedonic components, setting WBT apart from other theories of wellbeing.

These five elements or components are Positive emotion, Engagement Relationships, Meaning &

Accomplishments. The PERMA model makes up WBT, where each dimension works in concert to give rise to a higher order construct that predicts the flourishing of groups, communities, organizations, and nations.

Research has shown significant positive associations between each of the PERMA components and physical health, vitality, job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and commitment within organizations.

PERMA is also a better predictor of psychological distress than previous reports of distress. This means that proactively working on the components of PERMA not only increases aspects of wellbeing, but also decreases psychological distress.

P – Positive Emotion

Positive emotion is much more than mere ‘happiness.’ Positive emotions include hope, interest, joy, love, compassion, pride, amusement, and gratitude. Positive emotions are a prime indicator of flourishing, and they can be cultivated or learned to improve wellbeing. When individuals can explore, savor, and integrate positive emotions into daily life (and visualizations of future life), it improves habitual thinking and acting. Positive emotions can undo the harmful effects of negative emotions and promote resilience. Increasing positive emotions helps individuals build physical, intellectual, psychological, and social resources that lead to this resilience and overall wellbeing. Ways to build positive emotion may include: Spend time with people you care about, Do hobbies and creative activities that you enjoy, Listen to uplifting or inspirational music, Reflect on things you are grateful for and what is going well in your life.

E – Engagement

According to Seligman, engagement is “being one with the music.” It is in line with Prof. Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow.” Flow includes the loss of selfconsciousness and complete absorption in an activity. In other words, it is living in the present moment and focusing entirely on the task at hand. Flow, or this

concept of engagement, occurs when the perfect combination of challenge and skill/strength is found. People are more likely to experience flow when they use their top character strengths. Research on engagement has found that individuals who try to use their strengths in new ways each day for a week were happier and less depressed after six months. The concept of engagement is something much more powerful than simply “being happy,” but happiness is one of the many byproducts of engagement. Ways to increase engagement: Participate in activities that you really love, where you lose track of time when you do them, Practice living in the moment, even during daily activities or mundane tasks, Spend time in nature, watching, listening, and observing what happens around you, Identify and learn about your character strengths, and do things that you excel at.

R – Positive Relationships

Relationships encompass all the various interactions individuals have with partners, friends, family members, colleagues, bosses/mentors/supervisors, and their community at large. Relationships in the PERMA model refer to feeling supported, loved, and valued by others. Relationships are included in the model based on the idea that humans are inherently social creatures. There is evidence of this everywhere, but social connections become

particularly important as we age. The social environment has been found to play a critical role in preventing cognitive decline, and strong social networks contribute to better physical health among older adults. Many people have a goal of improving relationships with those they are closest to. Research has demonstrated that sharing good news or celebrating success fosters strong bonds and better relationships. Additionally, responding enthusiastically to others, particularly in close or intimate relationships, increases intimacy, wellbeing, and satisfaction. How to build relationships: Join a class or group that interests you, Ask questions of the people you don’t know well to find out more about them, Create friendships with people you are acquainted with, Get in touch with people you have not spoken to or connected with in a while.

M – Meaning

Another intrinsic human quality is the search for meaning and the need to have a sense of value and worth. Seligman discussed meaning as belonging and/or serving something greater than ourselves. Having a purpose in life helps individuals focus on what is really important in the face of significant challenge or adversity. Having meaning or purpose in life is different for everyone. Meaning may be pursued through a profession, a social

or political cause, a creative endeavor, or a religious/spiritual belief. It may be found in a career or through extracurricular, volunteer, or community activities. A sense of meaning is guided by personal values, and people who report having purpose in life live longer and have greater life satisfaction and fewer health problems. Ways to build meaning: Get involved in a cause or organization that matters to you, Try new, creative activities to find things you connect with, Think about how you can use your passions to help others, and spend quality time with people you care about.

A – Accomplishments

Accomplishment in PERMA is also known as achievement, mastery, or competence. A sense of accomplishment is a result of working toward and reaching goals, mastering an endeavor, and having self-motivation to finish what you set out to do. This contributes to wellbeing because individuals can look at their lives with a sense of pride. Accomplishment includes the concepts of perseverance and having a passion to attain goals. But flourishing and wellbeing come when accomplishment is tied to striving toward things with an internal motivation or working toward something just for the sake of the pursuit and improvement. Achieving intrinsic goals (such as growth and connection) leads to larger gains in wellbeing than external goals such as money or fame. Ways to build accomplishment: Set goals that are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound, Reflect on past successes, Look for creative ways to celebrate your achievements.

The Plus (+) in PERMA

Since happiness can be influenced by factors beyond these five core elements, the + can include other important areas we well, such as optimism, nutrition, physical activity and sleep. These are areas equally important to mental wellbeing.

Optimism

Optimism is a positive emotion critical to building resilience and wellbeing. Optimism is the belief that life will have

more good outcomes than bad. People who are optimistic are more likely to be resilient to stressful life events. Optimistic people tend to live longer, have better postoperative outcomes and lower levels of depression, and adjust better to college life. Encouraging youth to become more resilient would build help in establishing a more optimistic outlook on life. Our article, How to Build Resilience in Children, as well as Teaching Resilience in Schools, are great starting points to have youth who are optimistic, resilient, and can handle life’s stressful events better.

Physical activity

Physical activity has been linked to wellbeing in numerous ways. Negative emotions are associated with an increased risk of physical disease and poor health habits, and people with mental illness are more likely to be physically inactive. There are obvious physical benefits to being active, but increasing movement or activity also decreases symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness and improves mental focus and clarity.

Nutrition

Poor nutrition leads to physical health problems such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer, but there is significant research demonstrating a relationship between diet and mental health. Eating a balanced diet rich in vegetables and nutrients (and limiting processed or sugary foods) has been associated with wellbeing. High levels of wellbeing were reported by

individuals who ate more fruits and vegetables. A review of research on children and adolescents found that a poor diet (high levels of saturated fat, refined carbohydrates, and processed foods) was linked to poorer mental health. So what should we eat? There are many “super foods” found in nature, such as berries, cruciferous vegetables, avocados, nuts, and seeds. A Mediterranean diet that is high in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, beans, cereals, grains, fish, and unsaturated fats has been shown to reduce depression symptoms and provides an array of physical health benefits.

Sleep

Neuroimaging and neurochemistry research suggests that good sleep hygiene fosters mental and emotional resilience, and sleep deprivation leads to negative thinking and emotional vulnerability. Further, sleep problems are more likely to affect people with psychiatric disorders and may increase the risk of developing mental illness. Particularly, insomnia increases the risk of developing depression. Getting seven to nine hours of quality sleep during the same hours every night is recommended. Lifestyle changes such as avoiding caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol; getting physical activity; decreasing screen time; and using the bedroom only for sleep and sex can improve sleep quality. Relaxation techniques and cognitive behavioral techniques to reduce stress and anxiety can also be effective ways to improve sleep and overall wellbeing.

WORK NEEDS REST, AND REST TAKES WORK

MODERN LIFE CAN BE EXHAUSTING. PSYCHOLOGIST, AUTHOR AND FATIGUE EXPERT VINCENT DEARY SAYS THE ANSWER IS TO LEARN HOW TO REST.

incent Deary, psychologist, fatigue specialist and author, has been telling me what an “anxious creature” he is. He barely slept last night. The hotel room was unfamiliar and noisy. Worse, the prospect of an interview and of meeting someone new made his arrhythmic heart race.

It’s racing now as we sit together in a London hotel. We’re here to discuss his new book, How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living, an exploration of our varying responses to the corrosive pressures of daily life, especially work, and an assertion of the vital necessity of rest, recovery and the lost art of convalescence. The book is the second in a trilogy by Deary, a professor of psychology at Northumbria University and a clinical fatigue specialist at the Cresta Fatigue Clinic, a role from which he has just retired. The NHS clinic, which is closing later this year was unique in the UK for its trans-diagnostic multi-disciplinary approach to disabling fatigue in patients with various diagnoses such as auto-immune conditions, liver disease or post-cancer fatigue. It excluded people with a primary diagnosis of CFS/ME as there were existing clinics for them. Deary goes on to share something else with me: he dreads the intimacy of dinner parties and hates surprises, before adding that his partner of 10 years recently threw a surprise party for his 60th birthday – and he loved it. Proof, it seems, that people can change.

Well yes and no. Deary believes we can make changes, if circumstances allow, and we can adapt, but we can’t

fundamentally change the self we were born with. First, there’s our genetic makeup. Then, he says, there’s our constitution, which is encoded with memories of previous generations and sometimes by intergenerational trauma; the body remembers, it keeps score. Deary offers himself up as a good example of this, and there are three other case histories in the book, including that of his late mother.

When he hit 40, long since amicably divorced, Deary left his job as an NHS therapist, sold up in London, moved back to Scotland, and corralled material for the first book. Five years later, he

became a single parent when his 16year-old daughter came to live with him. The finished book cowered in a drawer, Deary lacking the confidence to seek publication. How to Live, the first book in the trilogy, was finally published when he was 50. Now he was an author, too, an acclaimed one. Lots of changes there then.

But who he is, fundamentally, has not changed, he says. “I still have social anxiety.” What he has managed to change is his relationship with this anxiety: “I recognise that it is part of me, that it’s going to show up, so I now literally bring it along with me as a

companion. And that’s OK. It might mean I am hyper and talk a lot, but that can be quite useful.”

For Deary, arriving at this place of selfacceptance and self-love has been a project, it’s been work and that’s also OK, because we each have to work on the self we are born with in order to survive, or thrive. Some, like Deary, won’t be a good fit for their environment, which means “some of us are harder work for ourselves than others”. We “tremble” as we encounter the turbulence of life, including the changes we have to navigate but, again, some of us tremble more than others. In turn, holding steady in the face of change, what’s known as the allostatic load, becomes too much, “There’s no wriggle room and we break,” as Deary himself did while writing his new book.

As part of his work on himself, Deary has traced the reach and roots of his anxiety, as he does for his patients in the fatigue clinic. Early on, he “meets” an effeminate child growing up in a working-class culture on the west coast of Scotland and sees what “a misfit” he was. He ran with the “rejects and the freaks”.

“I was visibly different from my peers,” he tells me, “very gentle, soft-spoken. I was little and timorous by nature. That’s not necessarily great in a working-class comprehensive in the 70s in Scotland. There was bullying. I was called either snobby or poofy. I was neither.” He had a big nose and was called Concorde. “My body remembers the early threats; I am still easily frightened.”

So was his mother. Gentle and openminded, she had a punitive upbringing and, like her son, had an “anxious constitution”. Deary was an “unexpected pregnancy,” he writes, his mother already dealing with a large family and the wear and tear of poverty and a difficult marriage. “I was born alarmed,” he writes. But home was good. “I had quite an exceptional mother,” he says, “and an exceptional home life. We were enculturated into art, literature, theatre very early on and so that marked us out as different. I did not come from a typical west coast Scottish family.”

He shares his story in the book, not “to say I had a really difficult time, but because I wanted people to find resonance – I wanted them to see that when you don’t fit in, you’re given back to yourself as work because you need to learn to manage that not fitting. You need to learn to manage the difficult feelings coming out of that and you need to learn to manage yourself.”

Key to that self-management is not only understanding and self-love, but rest. Deary has a mantra: work needs rest and rest takes work. We need to take time out to rest in order to heal from extreme exhaustion, chronic illness, or unexpected life events, what Deary terms “biographical disruption”. We also need to take a rest from work and free ourselves from an “audit culture” that pushes us, sometimes to breaking point. But first, we need to learn how to rest. “It’s a skill,” he says, one that nowadays has to be acquired.

“One of the things I noticed in the fatigue clinic is that tired people can often do the things they need to do, but a lot of them really struggle with switching off. We often associate our worth and our value in terms of productivity and output. Both within academia and the NHS there are whole mini-industries dedicated to evaluating your productivity and your output, often telling you that you could do better and, actually, could you do better with less, please. It’s very easy to buy into that narrative that your work equals your productivity. So, for people who are exhausted and can’t be productive, it’s very easy to go, I don’t deserve to rest, I am worthless, I have done nothing to earn this. skip past newsletter promotion

“But we need to allow ourselves to rest, to nap, to enjoy, to deliberately switch on to joy and nourishment and the stuff that actually fills the tank. I wrote this book to understand myself, but also because, in the last few years, I saw friends, family, colleagues, society, to an extent, just become overwhelmed, or exhausted, or hopeless or joyless. Ordinary people going through ordinary suffering. Some of them crossed the clinical line into physical or mental

health systems, but most of them were just struggling to get on with life. Often the first casualty of stress is joy. Deliberately leaning into that joy and finding out the stuff that restores you is really key to recovery.”

Some GPs have started handing out joy as a “social prescription”. But how do we identify what brings us joy? “The clue is in our everyday language: ‘That really lifted my spirits,’ or ‘I got a lot out of that.’ It’s the stuff that cheers us up or energises us.” A meal with loved ones is often high up on the list. Deary’s academic research looks at the challenges faced by head and neck cancer survivors. “It’s not the food they miss,” he says, “it’s the sharing. They were mourning the connection. It’s what we call commensality: that social magic which comes when you’re sharing food. Our research with food and head and neck cancer and other conditions highlighted that pleasure is a necessity; being deprived of it is literally depressing and demoralising.”

One day, halfway through writing How We Break, Deary discovered this for himself. He woke up “in a state of exhaustion. I had no real ability to get out of bed. When I finally took myself for a walk, I was wiped out the next day. I was in a state of hopeless exhaustion. My mood went down as well. I was completely disengaged from life. It was a very difficult time.”

To recover he did “what I help people in the fatigue clinic do, which is, gradually get back into things at my own pace and do a combination of physical and emotional rehab. Incremental engagement with life. I think that is what true convalescence is. It’s not just rest and it’s not just activity, it’s that mixture of both: it’s acknowledging that there is a deep need for rest and recovery. It’s like Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain where they are all sitting about in the sanatorium: there’s the beauty, there’s the connection, there’s the food. There’s the joy” – even in an interview. “A joyful encounter!” was Deary’s verdict, glad that he came, proud of himself and proof that a little self-love goes a long way to ease the wear and tear of life.

(Genevieve Fox for The Guardian)

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

SHOULD YOU MANAGE YOUR TIME OR YOUR ATTENTION?

n today's digital work environment, traditional time management is an inadequate metric for productivity and a path to personal burnout. The blending of work and personal life in our constantly connected world demands more than just managing time. It's in this complex scenario, filled with endless information and distractions, that the ability to focus attention emerges as a vital skill for individuals and organizations.

This need heralds a significant shift: from time management to attention management.

Six Time Management Challenges Six Time Management Challenges

Time Management Gives An Illusion Of Control

In a productivity obsessed world, time management has been viewed as the golden key to efficiency. We've been conditioned to believe that meticulously organizing every hour will lead to greater output and success. However, this conventional wisdom is fundamentally flawed. Time management, as

Curt Steinhorst, the bestselling author of "Can I Have Your Attention?" is the founder and CEO of Focuswise, with a proven track record of success working with industry leaders such as Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase, Nike, and AT&T, among others. Apart from being a highly regarded thought leader, author and keynote speaker, he works as the Head of People & Culture at Venus Aerospace, where he is spearheading the development of a forward-thinking workplace that emphasizes focus, accountability, and productivity, drawing from his extensive experience and proven strategies. Here, he outlines why time management is not the key but attention management.

wired to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. What we perceive as multitasking is actually task-switching, which can reduce productivity by as much as 40%. This constant switching between tasks not only diminishes focus and efficiency but also increases stress and the potential for error.

3. Overscheduling Is A Chronic Trap

traditionally practiced, is an outdated concept that fails to address the complexities of the modern world. It's time we recognize its pitfalls and move towards a more realistic approach to productivity.

2. Multitasking Is A Myth

One of the most significant fallacies promoted by time management is the effectiveness of multitasking. The truth is, multitasking is a myth. Studies have repeatedly shown that our brains are not

Time management often leads to overscheduling — packing every moment of our day with tasks. This approach overlooks the need for mental breaks and the value of downtime and white space. When every minute is accounted for, there’s no room for creative thinking or problem-solving. This relentless scheduling can lead to burnout and lower overall job satisfaction and personal well-being.

4. Choice Overload Causes Fatigue

With an array of time management tools and techniques at our disposal, from digital calendars to productivity apps, we face the paradox of choice. Having too many options can lead to decision fatigue, making it difficult to make any

choice at all. This often results in a counterproductive cycle where more time is spent planning and organizing than actually doing the work.

5. Busy Does Not Equal Productive

Time management creates an illusion of productivity — just because you're busy doesn't mean you're productive. This false sense of achievement can be misleading. Focusing solely on checking off items from a to-do list may lead to neglecting more meaningful, highimpact work that requires deeper thought and creativity.

6. Mental Health Is Neglected

In the pursuit of squeezing productivity out of every second, time management often neglects mental health. Constant pressure to be productive can lead to anxiety and stress. Moreover, the lack of flexibility in traditional time management does not accommodate the natural ebbs and flows of human energy and motivation.

Rethinking Productivity: Rethinking Productivity: The Shift To Attention Management The Shift Attention

Recognizing the limitations of traditional time management in the real world, the

paradigm shift towards attention management offers a more effective, sustainable, and healthier approach to productivity. Amidst constant distractions, the ability to focus on what truly matters is what sets the productive apart from the busy. Attention management acknowledges that time is a limited resource, but how we direct our focus within that time is where true productivity lies.

Attention Management Strategies Attention Strategies Attention Management Strategies Attention Strategies For Boosting Productivity Productivity

1) Prioritize quality over quantity: Instead of trying to do more in less time, focus on doing the right things that add value and meaning to your work. 2) Embrace downtime: Understand that breaks are not a waste of time but a necessary part of maintaining a high level of cognitive functioning. 3) Cultivate mindfulness: Being present and fully engaged in the current task is more effective than scattered attention across multiple tasks. 4) Set boundaries for technology: Use technology as a tool, not a distraction. Designate times to check emails and social media to avoid constant interruptions. 5) Listen to your body: Pay attention to your natural

rhythms. Work on demanding tasks when you feel most alert and take breaks when you need to recharge.

Work Smarter, Not Harder Not Harder Work Smarter, Not Harder Not Harder

Unlike time, attention management isn't just about task completion; it's about managing focus amidst potential disruptions, and valuing engagement and meaningful work over mere hours spent. This shift underscores the importance of directing cognitive resources strategically, aligning efforts with goals, well-being, and professional fulfillment in our modern, multifaceted work landscape.It's time to break free from the outdated shackles of traditional time management and embrace a more holistic, flexible approach to productivity. By shifting our focus from managing time to managing attention, we can work smarter, not harder. This shift is not just about improving efficiency; it's about enhancing our overall quality of life both in and out of the workplace.

(Credit: Curt Steinhorst for Forbes)

THE CASE FOR BEING LAZY AND PROCRASTINATING

WHAT IF LAZINESS AND PROCRASTINATION COULD ACTUALLY HELP YOU GO FURTHER IN LIFE, AND MAKE YOU WILDLY SUCCESSFUL?

s children we were told that we would never amount to anything if we were lazy and that hard work was the key to success. But what if laziness and procrastination could actually help you go further in life? There are a few reasons why being an eager beaver isn't always a good idea. Some problems may end up getting solved without any effort from you. And is a first-mover advantage all it's cracked up to be? It's the second mouse that gets the cheese. The hapless first mouse could end up getting trapped in its efforts to get ahead. Bill Gates once said that he would always "hire a lazy person to do a difficult job" at Microsoft. Why? "Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." Here are some of the ways you can use your laziness to your advantage and turn procrastination into an asset.

1) USING LAZINESS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Sometimes, laziness can be used to protect you from yourself. According to Karthick Venkatesh, who posts advice on question-and-answer network Quora, he has a 29-character password for Facebook and Twitter. "When I have to work, I just log off from these," he says. "So, whenever I feel like taking a break and using Facebook, I am just too lazy to type my password. "Eventually, owing to my laziness, I go back to work and have a really productive day."

2) WHY PROCRASTINATION WORKS

If you wait until the last minute to complete a task, you are forced to focus

Bill Gates once said that he would always "hire a lazy person to do a difficult job" at

Microsoft. Why?

"Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it."

on the project at hand. According to Quora poster Caroline Sin: "There’s nothing like not having enough time to complete a project to make you realise what’s critical, and what isn’t." "If I start early on a project and stick faithfully to my schedule, I almost always do more work than I need to," she explains. "A lot of that work I simply throw away. But if I wait until the last minute to work on something, the stress of it automatically narrows my focus to what’s important, and I quickly jettison the rest. I throw no work away, I work quickly and efficiently, and I get it done." Work will always swell to fill the amount of time allotted to it, argues another Quora user, so limit the space into which it can expand.

3) MAKE THE MACHINE DO IT

Phones, lifts, cars, all these things were invented to avoid or minimise work. Lazy people automate as much as possible. Rather than tweeting throughout the day, for example, they will use a service like TweetDeck to schedule tweets for the whole day in one go. Job done; time for a cup of tea. Human beings were supposed to work less, not more, following the rise of the machines. In his 1930 work Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, legendary British economist John Maynard Keynes who lived in the last century wrote that by 2030 he expected a system of almost total "technological unemployment" in which we'd need to work as few as 15 hours a week. Working less doesn't mean being less effective. Devotees of the "Pareto Principle" believe in the 80-20 rule: basically, just 20pc of your efforts deliver 80pc of the results - there is the "vital few and the trivial many". The idea was originally conceived in 1906 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who created the formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country (20pc of people owned 80pc of the wealth). However, it is now a muchvaunted time-management technique. Of the things you do during your day, only 20 pc really matter - in theory. Lazy people can cut down on 80 pc of their workload by identifying and focusing only on those things.

4) ARE YOU LAZY? OR JUST REALLY GOOD?

You may be lazy because you’re good at your job. Really efficient people will naturally have more downtime than their peers. If you finish a task, and find yourself watching cat videos or liking endless pictures on Facebook, is it because you've finished your work early? Are you twiddling your thumbs because you have nothing else left to do? Take Tobi Lütke, the CEO of the e-commerce platform Shopify, couldn't be bothered to work with difficult customers anymore, so he got rid of them. Lazy? Perhaps. But the result was that he could spend more time focusing on valuable

LAZY ENTREPRENEURS BUILD BUSINESSES THAT GENERATE REVENUE, EVEN WHEN THEY AREN'T ANYWHERE NEAR THEIR DESK. ONLINE PRODUCTS SUCH AS TRAINING VIDEOS, E-BOOKS OR SUBSCRIPTIONS TO ONLINE

CONTENT OR SERVICES COULD ALL MAKE MONEY WHILE YOU SLEEP, AND REQUIRE MINIMAL INPUT FROM THE BUSINESS OWNER.

customers. "If you go into business school and suggest firing a customer, they'll kick you out of the building," he says. "But it's so true in my experience. It allows you to identify the customers you really want to work with." In 2007, Tim Ferriss published his book, The 4Hour Workweek, in which he extolled the virtues of the Pareto Principle and of working as little as possible. The self-help book was a worldwide success, selling 1.35m copies in 35 languages. According to Ferriss, to be truly productive, we must check our email just once a day and outsource every small daily task to virtual assistants, focusing only on those tasks that generate the largest return.

5) YOU CAN ONLY BE LAZY IF YOU'RE CLEVER

Kurt Gebhard Adolf Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord was Germany’s chief of the army before the Second World War. He said that all his officers were two of the following: clever, diligent, stupid or lazy. According to the general, the most dangerous officer was one who was stupid and diligent. He couldn't be trusted with any responsibility because he would always make mischief. However, officers who were both clever and lazy were qualified for the highest leadership duties, because they possessed the intellectual clarity and the "composure" necessary for difficult decisions. They are masters at avoiding “busywork” such as pointless meetings, he claimed, they delegate to others to get things done efficiently, and they focus

on the essentials rather than being distracted by unnecessary extras.

6) MAKE MONEY WHILE YOU SLEEP

Lazy entrepreneurs build businesses that generate revenue, even when they aren't anywhere near their desk. Online products such as training videos, e-books or subscriptions to online content or services could all make money while you sleep, and require minimal input from the business owner. The explosion in peer-to-peer lenders has also offered lazy people the opportunity to make money by effectively doing nothing - just collecting the interest. Caveat: there is always risk involved in issuing loans. But there are even ways of making traditional business models successful while being lazy. If you are selling a product, for example, create a range that is like a McDonald's menu. Produce five things - burgers, fries, chicken, salad and soft drinks - and just package it all differently and sell them in different combinations to cut down on time and effort.

7) HOW TO BUILD A LAZIER SOCIETY

Working just four hours a week might seem ridiculous to many, but how about a four-hour workday? A shorter working week would have interesting theoretical benefits. If everyone worked fewer hours, more people would be required to get the job done, reducing unemployment. Less work would produce slower economic growth but it would also reduce the consequences of that growth, such as pollution. Work, as a commodity, would increase in valuesweat equity is frequently dismissed these days because everyone puts in such long hours. It would also solve the eternal question: how to achieve a work/ life balance. A four-hour workday would leave plenty of time for family and child care. There could also be resulting health benefits. Burn-outs, stress and inactivity would be reduced, which would reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's. So should you be more lazy? We think so.

(Credit:RebeccaBurn-CallanderforThe Telegraph)