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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.

Power Plays: Fortifying India’s Energy Grid for Wartime Resilience

In an age of cyberwarfare and hybrid threats, India must rethink its electricity grid as a strategic defence asset.

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A sprawling, humming web of pylons, substations and cables powers the world’s most populous nation. India’s electricity grid - one of the largest and fastest growing on the planet - is the backbone of its economic ambitions, from the bustling megacities of Mumbai and Bengaluru to the farmsteads of Punjab and the solar parks of Ladakh.


It fuels factories in the ‘Make in India’ initiative, irrigates fields and illuminates over 900 million lives daily. Yet, in a world where warfare has expanded from the battlefield into cyberspace, satellites and servers, this very lifeline is increasingly a liability.


India’s energy grid is as much a target as an asset. In a future war, its sheer scale and centralisation could make it vulnerable to hostile acts. Picture a coordinated cyberattack that shuts down load dispatch centres, or a missile strike that disables a key substation. The result would be blackouts across cities, disruption of military and emergency operations, paralysis of supply chains, and an erosion of public trust. Modern adversaries no longer need to invade; they only need to switch off the lights.


This is not the stuff of fiction. In 2015 and again in 2016, Ukraine suffered blackouts due to cyberattacks widely attributed to Russian state-sponsored hackers. In 2020, Mumbai experienced a massive grid failure, which reports linked to a suspected Chinese cyber incursion. Malware has been found inside Indian nuclear facilities.


The answer lies in fortification. India must begin to treat its energy infrastructure not merely as a civilian utility, but as a strategic, even military, asset. Resilience must become the new doctrine. That will require sweeping reform, substantial investment and an openness to rethink the very architecture of power delivery.


First, decentralisation must become a strategic imperative. Rather than relying predominantly on massive, centralised power plants and long-distance transmission lines, India must embrace a mosaic of distributed generation. Rooftop solar panels on millions of homes, community wind turbines in breezy coastal belts, and microgrids in remote villages can together create a web of redundancy. Distributed systems are also easier to protect and quicker to repair.


Second, India must harness its abundance of renewable energy not just for climate reasons, but for national security. Solar and wind, unlike coal or imported gas, cannot be blockaded or embargoed. Solar photovoltaic systems coupled with advanced battery storage should become standard in critical infrastructure from hospitals and airports to military installations and communication centres. These ‘islandable’ systems must be capable of operating independently when the main grid fails, ensuring continuity of vital services.


Third, key components of the existing grid must be hardened. Substations, transformers and load control centres should be housed in reinforced, blast-resistant structures. Equipment must be duplicated wherever possible. Drawing lessons from countries like Israel and South Korea, India could build ‘energy bunkers’ around its most essential nodes. These physical barriers can buy crucial time in the event of attack, enough to prevent cascading failures.


Fourth, the national grid itself must become more flexible and better interconnected. High-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines, already being deployed, should be expanded to allow power to flow seamlessly across regions. This enables unaffected areas to support those in crisis. Advanced grid management software, powered by artificial intelligence, can optimise load flows in real time, detect anomalies and isolate damaged sections automatically.


Fifth, India needs boots on the ground in form of a dedicated national task force for rapid power restoration. This elite ‘energy SWAT team’ must be trained to deploy at a moment’s notice, with tools and technologies to identify faults, replace damaged components and get electricity flowing again within hours, not days. Their work must be tightly integrated with disaster management agencies, the military and intelligence services.


Most critically, the digital realm must be secured. The grid’s control systems are alarmingly susceptible to cyber infiltration. India must invest in modernising Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, deploying AI-driven threat detection, segmenting networks to prevent lateral movement by attackers, and mandating end-to-end encryption across all grid communications. A centralised Cyber Command, working in tandem with the Ministry of Power and National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), must be empowered to monitor, pre-empt, and neutralise digital threats.


India would also do well to consider electromagnetic pulse (EMP) protection. EMP weapons, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, can disable electronics over wide areas. Shielding critical components and creating EMP-resilient redundancies is a prudent insurance policy in an increasingly unstable world.


A nation that aspires to be a global power cannot afford to be plunged into darkness by a few keystrokes or missiles. The energy system must be seen not just as infrastructure, but as infrastructure for deterrence.


The government has made encouraging noises. Initiatives such as Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) and the Green Energy Corridor are steps in the right direction. But more is needed. A national mission on grid resilience, with clear milestones, multi-sector collaboration and a war-gaming approach to testing vulnerabilities, should be launched without delay.


As India electrifies its economy and digitises its society, it must not forget that power, in every sense of the word, is about control. To lose control of the grid is to lose the nation’s pulse. The next war may not begin with a bang but with a blackout. India must be ready.

(The writer is a digital product leader passionate about energy innovation, manufacturing and driving impact through technology. Views personal)

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