Bengal is finally open for (central) business

The ink on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s historic Bengal win is barely dry, and New Delhi is moving fast. The Centre has launched a comprehensive review of centrally sponsored schemes that were stalled, under-implemented, or simply ignored under the Trinamool Congress’s 15-year rule.

The list is long and telling. Ayushman Bharat never launched in Bengal, one of only a handful of states that refused it. MGNREGA funds were frozen since March 2022 over corruption allegations. PM Awaas Yojana, Jal Jeevan Mission, PM Kisan—scheme after scheme had implementation gaps.

Now, all line ministries have been asked to map what’s stuck, what’s pending, and what needs urgent unlocking. The scale is significant—314 central government schemes with a ₹28 trillion corpus are now under scrutiny specifically for Bengal.

But unlocking welfare schemes is the easy part. Can the new BJP government tackle Bengal’s deeper challenges like industrial revival, law and order, border trade, and a political culture shaped by decades of Left and TMC rule? Read the full story by Dhirendra Kumar and Vijay C. Roy.

THE MAIN STUFF

AI data centres in space sound cool

Elon Musk loves the idea. Eric Schmidt bought a rocket company for it. Now four Indian startups want in on space-based data centres, orbiting satellites running GPU workloads instead of energy-hungry ground facilities.

The concept isn’t crazy. Space offers unlimited solar power and natural cooling. But the uncomfortable reality is, one Indian partner has under $1 million in revenue, another hasn’t completed a single orbital launch yet. Decades of R&D, billions in capital, and unsolved latency problems stand between the hype and reality. Read on.

The small-cap rally is back. So is the caution.

April was extraordinary. BSE Smallcap surged 20%, Midcap gained 14%—their best monthly performance in over a decade. But caution is creeping back in, and for good reason.

Over 57% of India’s small-cap stocks now trade above their five-year average valuations. Nearly one in five trades at three times historical multiples. That’s not a recovery rally anymore, that’s speculation.

Mid-caps look steadier, with broader earnings support. Small-caps? Gains are concentrated in narrow pockets, with fundamentals yet to catch up. The easy money from the bounce-back has been made. What’s next is stock-picking. Read more.

Tata Motors’s $4.4-billion Iveco deal is delayed

Tata Motors Ltd.’s biggest acquisition since Jaguar Land Rover is stuck in regulatory waiting rooms. The European Central Bank and Competition Commission approvals, expected by February-March, are still pending, pushing the deal closure to September.

The timing isn’t ideal. Iveco just reported a quarterly loss of €75 million, a reversal from profit a year ago. The quality issues and sluggish volumes are hurting the Italian truckmaker right when Tata Motors needs the numbers to look good. Read on.

India’s wealthy are redecorating lavishly

Post-pandemic, India’s affluent class transformed their homes. And global luxury brands have noticed. Baccarat, Thomas Goode, Ligne Roset, Pottery Barn—they are all here now, chasing a market growing in double digits.

The trigger is a luxury housing boom where homes priced above ₹1.5 crore account for nearly 30% of sales, up 40% in price since 2022. When you spend crores on an apartment, ₹7 lakh dinner plates suddenly feel reasonable. Is India finally becoming a serious luxury home market? Read more.

Star kids find a smarter way into the spotlight

Riddhima Kapoor, Krishna Shroff, Navya Naveli Nanda—celebrity relatives aren’t waiting for a film offer anymore. They are building audiences first, then monetising.

The strategy makes cold commercial sense. A ready-made, engaged following reduces producers’ risk and replaces instinct-based casting with measurable data. For brands, a famous surname still does “10 times the work of traditional content”. But does a million followers translate into acting talent? Not really. And increasingly, many aren’t even chasing films. Entrepreneurship, podcasts, and D2C brands are becoming the real destination. Read on.

🔢 NEWS IN NUMBERS

• 9.99%: The maximum aggregate stake the RBI has approved Kotak Mahindra Bank and its group entities to acquire in AU Small Finance Bank
• ₹232.57 crore: The consolidated net profit reported by Bharat Forge in Q4 FY26, down 17% year-on-year from ₹282.62 crore, impacted by an exceptional loss of ₹98.73 crore.
• $60 million: The funding raised by Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace at a $1.1 billion valuation, co-led by Singapore’s GIC and Sherpalo Ventures, making it India’s first spacetech unicorn.
• ₹648 crore: The total declared assets of Tamil actor-politician C. Joseph Vijay, including ₹426 crore in movable assets and ₹330 crore in bank deposits.
• $10.3 billion: The revenue reported by Advanced Micro Devices in Q1 2026 revenue, up 38% from $7.44 billion a year ago, driven by demand for its CPUs.
• ₹10 lakh: The penalty deposited by Meta Platforms while appealing India’s consumer protection agency’s January order classifying Facebook as an e-commerce platform.
• ₹1400 crore: The total value of ‘illicit inducements’ seized by the Election Commission of India during assembly elections in Puducherry, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal.

AROUND THE WORLD

• The ChatGPT-ification of American business
• Trump’s latest tariff threat is a wake-up call for US trade partners
• How the Trump administration became an activist investor
• How worried should you be about the hantavirus?
• Not all oil giants are prospering from the Iran war

CHART OF THE DAY

LOUNGE RECOMMENDS

Poetry, public transport and slow travel in Iran

Iran had just opened up e-visas for Indian travellers, but ours quickly got rejected. I read on forums that it was common to get an e-visa rejection, no reasons given. So we set about charting the archaic, long-winded route to get a physical visa at the embassy: get a visa code through an Iranian travel agency, file an application with travel documents at the Iranian consulate in Mumbai, and submit medical test results for TB and HIV.

The good news, considering the tense relations between Iran and the West, was that the visa wasn’t stamped on our passports. It was issued as a separate physical document and instead of the passport, that paper was stamped upon entry into Iran. Read more.

WHAT THE FACT

The eradication of Smallpox

On this day in 1980, the World Health Organizatideclared smallpox eradicated, the only human disease ever wiped off the face of the earth. A global vaccination campaign launched in 1967 had done the impossible in just over a decade. After three years of vigilant monitoring, victory was official. It remains the greatest achievement in the history of public health.

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