Global Policy Watch: Accident Ho Gaya Insights on global policy issues relevant to India — RSJ I must admit there are times when I have made a big deal about writing this newsletter. Not about the content, mind you. I’m not that vain yet. But the regularity of it all. Getting about 4000 words out between the two of us every week isn’t trivial stuff. But then there are weeks I ask myself if it is really a big deal. I mean, there are weeks when there’s so much happening in policy, politics and macro spheres that things just write themselves. I have been in what could be called writing self-help groups where people bemoan their writer’s blocks and the soul-crushing experience of staring at a blank word document with the cursor blinking. To them, I have two pieces of advice. Switch to writing on public policy. And don’t bother much about quality (speaking for me here, not what Pranay produces).  Voila! You get something like 50% of this newsletter. Anyway, coming back to this week. Sometime midweek, I thought it might be a good idea to write about the state of opposition in India in the light of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and his media engagements in Oxford. There’s always space for the opposition in India despite the brutal electoral majority of the party in power, as we have seen in the past. This was evident during the yatra. What is also evident now is that there’s a complete lack of understanding on the part of Rahul Gandhi on issues that can animate the electorate. So, he can only hope for the party in power to hit self-destruct mode to score an electoral victory. What’s worse is he has terrible ideas of his own and a tin ear for good advice. His acolytes defend him saying he’s sincere. I can only say when you combine sincerity with bad ideas, you get demonetisation and instant lockdowns. Back to the point. As I was thinking of writing about this, news came in of Manish Sisodia, the deputy CM of Delhi, being taken into custody by ED for what’s being called the liquor scam. Liquor policy in various Indian states is a gift that keeps giving. We love talking about it. What I also thought was admirable is the agile way the ED functions these days. Like some start-up in Koramangala. It is always hustling.  These were the ideas I was toying with till a bank with a balance sheet size of US$ 200 billion (a tad smaller than HDFC Bank) collapsed in the US. And, so, served on a platter was another possible post on what could go wrong in the global economy. I’m afraid Rahul Gandhi, Sisodia, and liquor will have to wait for another day. I would like to discuss the aptly named Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) that has gone from boom to bust in less than two years. Here’s what has happened since Thursday. WSJ reports: “On Wednesday SVB said it had sold a large chunk of its securities, worth $21 billion at the time of sale, at a loss of about $1.8 billion after tax. The bank’s aim was to help it reset its interest earnings at today’s higher yields, and provide it with the balance-sheet flexibility to meet potential outflows and still fund new lending. It also set out to raise about $2.25 billion in capital. Following that announcement on Wednesday evening, things seemed to get even worse for the bank. The share-sale announcement led the stock to crater in price, making it harder to raise capital and leading the bank to scuttle its share-sale plans, The Wall Street Journal has reported. And venture-capital firms reportedly began advising their portfolio companies to withdraw deposits from SVB. On Thursday, customers tried to withdraw $42 billion of deposits—about a quarter of the bank’s total—according to a filing by California regulators. It ran out of cash.” Looks like a good old run on the bank. The regulators had to step in. Again from WSJ: “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it has taken control of the bank via a new entity it created called the Deposit Insurance National Bank of San