June lived up to the promise and then some. It brought in the rains cooling down the sizzling heat. It ended the seemingly long drought of T-20 World Cup. And the stock market, while drawing uncharacteristic political attention and a demand for JPC, ended the month with jaw-dropping returns.
A quick recap of June and like all lists, is more a reflection of my biases rather than an attempt to capture momentous events.
1. Politics – After a decade of single party rule, we reverted to the mean. Coalition politics has been our operating model since 1996 and history has shown that our elected representatives handle the complexities of multi-party governance well.
2. Economy – The encouraging data point came from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) published by the National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation. The report, published after a gap of 11 years, showed that the value of Gini Coefficeint for consumption expenditure declined from 0.283 to 0.266 for rural areas and from 0.363 to 0.314 in urban areas. Time period : 2011-12 to 2022-23. Gini Coefficient, developed by Corrado Gini, measures income inequality in an economy on a scale of 0 to 1 with higher values indicating higher inequality. The reduction in equality was seen in almost all deciles of the data. However, this is not to say income inequality has decreased as there is a belief that the economy posted a K-shaped recovery post Covid. There are numerous government schemes at central and state levels to aid in the recovery.
The report, published after a gap of 11 years, showed that the value of Gini Coefficient for consumption expenditure declined from 0.283 to 0.266 for rural areas and from 0.363 to 0.314 in urban areas. Time period : 2011-12 to 2022-23. Data from Statistica showed that the Gini Coefficient has been steadily decreasing since 2017.3. Sports – We won the T20 World Cup. After 8 editions. Governing body, BCCI announced a performance bonus of Rs 125 crore. This jaw-dropping number accounted for about 0.74% of BCCI’s FY24 revenue of Rs 16,875 cr.
4. Environment – The extreme heat gave way to flash floods – Delhi, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam have all been impacted. A research article published in Dec 2023 in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society said “climate change quadruples flood-causing extreme monsoon rainfall events in North-East India and in Bangladesh”. Meanwhile, The Diplomat reported that climate change may be worsening flooding in Mumbai and Chennai. Happily, enough, the manifestos of the two largest political parties – BJP and INC – had mentioned environment/climate change. However, as a report in Times of India clarified, policy experts find the on-ground approach contradictory to what is proposed. The lack of specific steps in the manifesto leads experts to question the follow-through. We do need to get our act together.
5. Stock Market – Call it what you will – insanity / irrational exuberance – markets lit up in June generating sky high returns. The S&P Broad Market Index showed 10 countries, including India, had given returns of 5% or higher in June. In terms of the more stable YTD performance, India ranked up there with 17.92%.
Sources:
Insightful