1. The Adani Group has won the bid for the 259 Acres (2.5 sq km) Dharavi redevelopment project with an offer of Rs 5069 Cr. The Rs 20000 Cr project would rehabilitate 650,000 people over a period of 7 years. The redevelopment would have an FAR of 4, though there will be height restrictions given the proximity to the airport. The second highest bidder, DLF, could offer only Rs 2025 Cr. The Adani Group will construct the public housing project and subsidise it with commercial and residential developments.
This will be the main challenge for the developer,
"...more than the technical challenges about densities and height restrictions, social rehabilitation of the slum residents shall be the biggest stumbling block and Adani has to handle it delicately to succeed in this redevelopment plan," said Gulam Zia, senior executive director at Knight Frank, a property consultant... Besides supporting the residential needs, Dharavi has thriving small sector units that sustain the needs of the residents and provide for a huge consumer base. Any negative impact on the livelihood of these residents can meet with tremendous resistance like in the past, Zia said. Dharavi is home to the potter community and leather goods makers who have been doing business in the shanty-town for decades... Prashant Thakur, senior director and head of research at Anarock Property Consultants, said that the challenge with the redevelopment of Dharavi is that too many stakeholders are involved and managing them is a big task. This is a key reason why it did not take off in the past. “The key to the success of one of the largest redevelopment projects in the world is to re-align the development scope with a more sensitive rehabilitation programme flexible enough to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach that suits the local socio-economic conditions," said Thakur... there is no template to rehabilitate such large scale tenements, including finding temporary accommodation for the residential, commercial and cottage industry occupiers.
2. Interesting long read about the four-day work week,
Advocates for the four-day week point out that unlike a season or a day, there is nothing natural about the working week. The two-day weekend — dispensing with working on Saturday morning — did not take off in the UK until after the second world war, quashing arguments that too much leisure time could spur political activism among the working classes.
3. Business Standard reports that Adani Electricity Mumbai Ltd (AEML) has been given permission under Section 14 of the Electricity Act 2003 to operate as a distribution licensee. This is the first such approval for distribution licensee, which brings in competition in the electricity supply side. The permission has been given for the Navi Mumbai area which covers nearly 500 sq km with 880,000 households (2011 census) and has a current demand of 1600 MW and 9.5 billion units. The AEML is already one of the discoms in Mumbai where it took over operations from Reliance Infrastructure in 2017.
The area, apart from including the Adani Group owned Navi Mumbai airport, also has the JNPT and Navi Mumbai SEZ, where several large power consuming industries like data centres are being established (AdaniConneX, a JV with EdgeConneX, is developing data centres).
The beginning of supply competition on the distribution side is welcome and an important step in ushering discipline into the sector. The concern though would be that the AEML would end up capturing all the high vale consumers, leaving the incumbent discom with all the smaller and difficult customers. What market design can mitigate such cherry picking?
4. On the drivers of industrial policy,
In China and Taiwan, industrial policy was always a priority: the consequence of the need to survive in an industrialised world with much richer foes. Technological catch-up was a necessity for successful nation-building... In the developed west, industrial policy pushes have come not as a grand crescendo towards modernisation, but in loud and quiet cycles, peaking during periods when one power is afraid of losing out to the others. The US space race against Soviet Russia is a prime example, as well as American consternation over Japan’s ascendancies in the 1980s. Now that we are back in a period of global order-shaking, the discussion is back on loud. Western fear over China’s rise, and concerns over supply-chain security in the wake of pandemic shortages, all spurred the new EU and US chips policies. As a result, governments in the west are abandoning their taboos around talking about industrial policy, or orientalising it as only fit for east Asia. The economist Dani Rodrik remarked that the US Chips Act was significant for being “a sign that we have moved well beyond market fundamentalism and because it shows there is now bipartisan support for industrial policies”.
5. FT reports that an ILO report has found that global wages have fallen in real terms this year for the first time since records began.
The UN agency’s annual report on pay showed that global monthly average wages in the first half of 2022 were 0.9 per cent lower in real terms than a year earlier, marking the first outright fall in worldwide living standards in the 15 years for which the ILO has published data. The drop was steepest in the developed world, where inflation picked up earlier. The ILO said that among G20 economies, which account for about 60 per cent of the world’s waged employees, real wages had fallen 2.2 per cent year on year in advanced economies. Across G20 emerging economies, wage growth slowed but remained positive at 0.8 per cent — but this was in large part due to China’s resilience, with other major countries such as Brazil hit hard.
6. Political polarisation in the US pervades everything. Consider this about jeans
Levi Strauss and Wrangler both got their start as the go-to jeans for cowboys, railroad workers and others who pioneered the American West. Today, they are on opposite sides of a political divide that is affecting not only how people votebut what they buy. Consumer research data show Democrats have become more likely to wear Levi’s than their Republican counterparts. The opposite is true with Wrangler, which is now far more popular with Republicans. There is no simple explanation behind those consumer moves. Some of it is due to social and political stances companies are taking, such as Levi’s embrace of gun control. Some is tied to larger geographic shifts in the political parties themselves, as rural counties become more Republican and urban areas lean more Democratic. Wrangler is popular in the cowboy counties of the West and Midwest while San Francisco-based Levi’s resonates more with city dwellers...
Levi Strauss & Co. has embraced liberal causes such as gun control and support for immigrants. Wrangler has stayed out of politics but has burnished the cowboy aspects of its brand by supporting rodeo... From 2004 to 2018, the partisan split within Levi’s customer base to the Democrats grew by 3 percentage points, while Wrangler’s customer base moved 13 percentage points toward the Republicans... Nearly 60% of 1,000 Americans surveyed by Edelman last year said they would choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues. That is up from 47% in 2017.
And this about cars (HT: Adam Tooze)
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