The Latest: Top stories of the day
1. An activist tried to throw ink at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday, prompting complaints from the Aam Aadmi Party about inadequate security.
2. India lost the third One Day International against Australia by three wickets, giving the latter a 3-0 lead in the five-match series.
3. Most of the international sanctions against Iran have now been lifted, and the country also took part in a prisoner swap with the United States.
The Big Story: Stand down
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced that he wanted to "unobstacle" the process of setting up start-up companies in India. He announced the government's new plan to further this end, which includes a series of tax breaks, a Rs 10,000-crore government fund, waiving of a number of compliance norms and simplification of many processes.
The event brought focus on the entrepreneurial community, which has become the Indian media's darling over the last few years, taking the place that the Information Technology giants once held. Indian start-ups are all the rage, generating their own lingo ("unicorns, e-tailers") and some are even hoping that they represent the next stage in India's economic maturing, even though by their very nature many will fail.
But the end of 2015 also gave us some problematic indicators. A few analysts have said for some time now that the Indian start-up industry is littered with overvaluations and unreasonable expectations. In short, it's a bubble. Hundreds of layoffs in the latter part of last year also suggested that the industry may not be in a comfortable space.
Surprisingly, some from the industry welcomed the bursting of a bubble at the Start Up event on Saturday, saying it would improve the market. With the new set of sops from the government looking to make it easier for entry into the startup world, it now remains to be seen whether Modi's action plan will help the industry mature, or simply feed this bubble.
Here is your handy guide to the exotic creatures of Indian start-up jargon. And here is some proof that something is rotten in India's food start-ups. Politicking & Policying
1. The Trinamool Congress leader's son accused of mowing down an Indian Air Force office in a hit-and-run case has been charged with murder. All indications suggest that the People's Democratic Party will continue its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu & Kashmir. were killing children.
Punditry
1. Mihir Sharma in the Business Standard explains why much current thinking about economic growth in India is off-base. giving up the inflation target or veering off the fiscal plan, writes Ila Patnaik in the Indian Express. a conservative era depends on Narendra Modi's ability to do in Uttar Pradesh what he failed to do in Bihar, writes Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph.
Don't Miss
Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri writes about an anonymous American photographer who documented the Indian countryside in 1945.
While the pictures have been in their possession for 28 years, it was only about a decade ago that they began actively exploring Bengal in search of the story behind them. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the show, Zbiral said: “There is something so magical about the fact that a person held these photographs, prints in their hands 70 years ago. It had the power to bring us halfway across the world to find out who this person was.”
