top of page

By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Festive Surge

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person and buying local....

Festive Surge

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person and buying local. This reversal owes much to policy. The recent rationalisation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which trimmed rates across categories from garments to home furnishings, has given consumption a timely push. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s September rate cuts, combined with income tax relief and easing interest rates, have strengthened household budgets just as inflation softened. The middle class, long squeezed between rising costs and stagnant wages, has found reason to spend again. Retailers report that shoppers filled their bags with everything from lab-grown diamonds and casual wear to consumer durables and décor, blurring the line between necessity and indulgence. The effect has been broad-based. According to Crisil Ratings, 40 organised apparel retailers, who together generate roughly a third of the sector’s revenue, could see growth of 13–14 percent this financial year, aided by a 200-basis-point bump from GST cuts alone. Small traders too have flourished. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) estimates that 85 percent of total festive trade came from non-corporate and traditional markets, a robust comeback for brick-and-mortar retail that had been under siege from online rivals. This surge signals a subtle but significant cultural shift. The “Vocal for Local” and “Swadeshi Diwali” campaigns struck a patriotic chord, with consumers reportedly preferring Indian-made products to imported ones. Demand for Chinese goods fell sharply, while sales of Indian-manufactured products rose by a quarter over last year. For the first time in years, “buying Indian” has become both an act of economic participation and of national pride. The sectoral spread of this boom underlines its breadth. Groceries and fast-moving consumer goods accounted for 12 percent of the total, gold and jewellery 10 percent, and electronics 8 percent. Even traditionally modest categories like home furnishings, décor and confectionery recorded double-digit growth. In the smaller towns that anchor India’s consumption story, traders say stable prices and improved affordability kept registers ringing late into the festive weekend. Yet, much of this buoyancy rests on a fragile equilibrium. Inflation remains contained, and interest rates have been eased, but both could tighten again. Sustaining this spurt will require continued fiscal prudence and regulatory clarity, especially as digital commerce continues to expand its reach. Yet for now, the signs are auspicious. After years of subdued demand and inflationary unease, India’s shoppers appear to have rediscovered their appetite for consumption and their faith in domestic enterprise. The result is not only a record-breaking Diwali, but a reaffirmation of the local marketplace as the heartbeat of India’s economy.

Desperate Depths

Pakistan’s reckless airstrikes in Afghanistan betray its growing insecurity as India’s quiet courtship of the Taliban exposes the bankruptcy of Islamabad’s old Afghan policy.

 

ree

For decades, Pakistan fancied itself as the gatekeeper of Afghanistan - a self-styled ‘strategic depth’ against India and an indispensable interlocutor for the West. But as Pakistani jets thundered over Kabul on Thursday night, targeting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), it was not strength but desperation that echoed in the skies. The timing of the assault coincided with Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s maiden visit to India. It revealed how thoroughly Pakistan’s Afghan policy has unravelled, leaving Islamabad encircled by the very monsters it once midwifed.

 

Reports suggest the strikes were aimed at killing Noor Wali Mehsud, the TTP chief who has led the group since 2018. Mehsud, who cast Pakistan’s post-9/11 alliance with America as an act of apostasy, has since become Islamabad’s most implacable foe. The TTP’s relentless attacks, like the ambush on October 8 that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, have transformed Pakistan’s western frontier into a bleeding wound. For years, Islamabad sheltered the Afghan Taliban even as it hunted the Pakistani version of the same movement. That schizophrenic policy has come home to roost.

 

Dangerous escalation

The airstrikes mark a dangerous escalation in what has become an undeclared border war. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, long regarded as Pakistan’s ideological protégés, now accuse their former patrons of violating sovereignty and aiding the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), a mutual enemy.

 

Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Asif, thundered in parliament that Islamabad was “paying the price of sixty years of hospitality to six million Afghan refugees with our blood.” The rhetoric conveniently omits who invited the serpent into the tent. Since the 1980s, Pakistan’s generals have used Islamist militancy as a tool of foreign policy. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) cultivated the mujahideen to fight the Soviets, later midwifed the Taliban, and turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda fugitives. It also engineered jihadist outfits against India, from Lashkar-e-Taiba to Jaish-e-Mohammed. The state became so entangled in the jihadist web that it could neither dismantle it nor escape from it.

 

The Taliban’s victory in 2021 briefly seemed to vindicate Pakistan’s long game. As American troops withdrew in disarray, Islamabad celebrated the return of its clients to Kabul. But the rejoicing was short-lived. The Taliban, now masters of their own house, proved unwilling to act as Pakistan’s proxies. They refused to curb the TTP or hand over its leaders. Instead, they asserted Afghan independence in rhetoric and diplomacy, most notably by courting India. That is the deeper sting in Islamabad’s latest tantrum.

 

Strategic overture

Muttaqi’s visit to New Delhi this week, where he met Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, marks the highest-level contact between India and the Taliban since 2021. India, which lost billions in infrastructure projects after the fall of the previous Afghan government, has moved cautiously by offering humanitarian aid, reopening a technical mission in Kabul and quietly exploring security cooperation. The Taliban’s condemnation of a recent terror attack in Pahalgam, which killed 26 people, further signals a pragmatic recalibration. In this new diplomatic choreography, Pakistan is the odd man out.

 

Islamabad’s strategic paranoia is understandable but self-inflicted. For years, it viewed Afghanistan not as a neighbour but as a backyard to be controlled through pliant rulers and extremist proxies. That imperial delusion is now collapsing under its own contradictions.

 

Domestically, Pakistan is in disarray as its economy teeters on bankruptcy and its frontier regions seethe with insurgency.

 

The fallout of the airstrikes bombing will not be contained by borders. Afghanistan may retaliate through proxies or by loosening restraints on the TTP. That could drag both countries deeper into a cycle of insurgency and reprisal, with civilians as the inevitable victims.

 

The irony is bitter but deserved. For decades, Pakistan believed it could manipulate jihadists, control Afghanistan and outmanoeuvre India. Today it is reaping the whirlwind of its own duplicity.

Comments

bottom of page