Free trade, free pads, and other inconvenient truths
Hello DoorDesi,
This week felt like one long exercise in contradiction. India signs the “mother of all deals” with the EU while the rupee continues its slow, anxious slide. The Supreme Court stalls protections against caste-based discrimination, then turns around and delivers a genuinely progressive ruling on menstrual health. It feels wrong to romanticise this but this contradiction is exactly what defines India. But one important thing to note is that the one thing that allows many of us to romanticise these contradictions, monsoon rains, hustle culture, and a depreciated currency is our privilege.
Use your privilege for something good. Anything.
Just the gist
The India-EU Free Trade Agreement is through after nearly two decades of being in an on-and-off negotiation. Both EU and India, besides economic reasons have geopolitical reasons for pushing this through in time. With the U.S. threatening India with tariff after tariffs and pissing off EU with Trump's man-child tantrum over wanting to own Greenland, this was as much an economic move as it was a show of alternate power in geopolitics. The enemy of my enemy...
The EU gave India concessions over 99.5% of products exported to the EU by India while India did the same for 97.5% of the traded value of goods while both chose to protect their respective sensitive sectors such as agriculture, dairy, animal husbandry, and a few crops.
👏 If you wish to understand the implications better, listen to this Al Jazeera interview with Deepanshu Mohan, professor of economics at OP Jindal Global University. I did a double take when I saw this interview yesterday because believe it or not, he was my professor back in my uni days. :D
➡️ Wine is likely to get cheaper on your next visit home as the duty on wine has gone down from 150% (!!!) to 20-30%. Enjoy getting drunk on Sauvignon Blancs over Old Monk and Blender's Pride!
🔗 The cost of the Mother of all deals
Indian Rupee is tumbling and how! On the 27th of Jan, it hit 110 INR against 1 EUR. This is driven by the sustained outflow of foreign investment over the last couple of years.
India usually runs a trade deficit in export of goods (so it buys more goods than it sells). This deficit is only likely to increase with so many tariff concessions coming as a result of the EU-India FTA. It also usually runs a trade surplus in export of services (IT, project management... basically most of Gurgaon and Bengaluru) and in remittances. But this surplus is not sufficient to make up for the trade deficit in goods. What does help balance the books out is foreign investments. However, over the last two years, investors have been leaving India due to underperforming equities, trade and policy uncertainties, and geopolitical instability. This has essentially sent India Rupee into a downward spiral.
The Catch-22 here is that the more it spirals, the fewer foreign investors invest in the market, the less they invest in the market, the worse it spirals. However, it seems, domestic institutional investors (DIIs), particularly mutual funds and insurance companies, have counterbalanced the volatility of foreign investment outflows.
➡️ Send your remittances now! Also, get in touch with your bank in India (do you have an NRE/NRO account yet) to see whether starting SIPs now is a good opportunity. I think it might be, but I am no financial expert. All I know is when I transferred by tuition fees for my Master's program in 2018, it was at INR 78 against a EUR and that today that same INR is INR 109 per EUR.
The Supreme Court is back in the news for staying the latest University Grants Commission's (UGC) regulations to deal with caste-based discrimination in educational institutions.
The 2026 regulations aim to eradicate "discrimination only on the basis of religion, race, gender, place of birth, caste, or disability, particularly against the members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, socially and educationally backward classes, economically weaker sections, persons with disabilities, or any of them".
This is a revised version of the 2012 regulation that was in place. This raised eyebrows because of its heavy focus on caste-based discrimination. The petitioners state that 'discrimination' is already addressed in the 2012 regulations so what is the need for such specific regulations around caste-based discrimination. They point out how discrimination can also take place between members of the same caste but from different regions of the country.
The new regulation also puts forth the creation of committees that will monitor the adherence to these regulations and violation can lead to loss of accreditation and other measures. The 2012 regulations on the other hand, were mostly suggestions.
Our Supreme Court, in what is becoming all too common lately, seemed to take the easy way out and go with "naah, hold on, this might hurt the feelings of some privileged folk for whom equity feels like oppression". Cool. Back to the middle-ages we go.
➡️ This is all too wild. We are fighting a regulation that ensures more of us feel comfortable and safe at an educational institution because apparently that will lead to disharmony. Because inequity does not cause disharmony? Those who consistently fight for and choose status quo are always the ones who are benefitting from the oppression of others. The least we can do, I guess, is not act as if caste-based discrimination and violence is 'not a thing anymore'.
🔗 Menstrual health and basic rights
Like a toxic relationship, just when you think you are done, the Supreme Court love bombs you by passing a judgement in favour of human rights.
The Supreme Court just passed a judgement that states that menstrual health is a part of right to life and therefore, educational institutions have to provide sanitary pads to female students on school premises for free.
Also quoting from Right to Education Act, the Supreme Court states that schools are required to provide barrier free access to education to all and that the lack of accessible sanitary pads on school premises is a barrier to education for female students. If female students cannot access sanitary napkins on school premises, they are less likely to come to school which increases risk of absenteeism and barrier to accessing education.
Furthermore, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and state councils have been directed to incorporate gender-responsive curricula. This will cover menstruation, puberty, and related health concerns such as PCOS and PCOD, with the specific goal of breaking the stigma and taboos historically associated with menstrual health and hygiene.
➡️ By recognising menstrual health as part of the right to life, the Court has said the obvious thing out loud: you can’t talk about access to education while ignoring periods. Free sanitary pads in schools are infrastructure. Ask any menstruating person.
Trending on the internet
Arijit Singh announced he is stepping away from film playback singing and the internet did a collective double-take. India’s most-streamed voice is voluntarily exiting Bollywood with grace. However, he does not seem to be quitting music altogether, just the industrial-scale hit factory, the hamster wheel.
Singh’s move says a lot about where creativity sits in today’s music economy. Between algorithms, label pressure, and the endless chase for the next hit, artists often become productivity units.
This is also coming on the heels of AR Rehman's interview that I covered last week. While unrelated from one another, they are both a reflection of the state of Bollywood today and how it is pushing out creatives.
➡️ Arijit Singh's announcement is also following Zakir Khan's (comedian) announcement of going on a five-year break stating physical and mental health needs. In an industry obsessed with metrics, these announcements are reminding everyone that mental health and creative longevity are not side quests. They go hand-in-hand and do not thrive in a more-is-less society.
Read with me
🔗 India and Pakistan enter a room...
At the Oxford Union Society, debates don’t always follow the script, especially when India and Pakistan enter the room. A November 2025 motion arguing that India’s Pakistan policy is populism dressed up as security quickly escaped the chamber and went viral. Not because of shouting matches, but because student speakers stitched history, memory, and lived experience into their arguments, resisting both jingoism and abstract theory.
Indian debaters spoke of 26/11, terrorism, and international law without theatrics. There was wit, but also restraint. The tone oscillated between moral clarity and almost-fond banter, the kind only possible between people who argue fiercely and then debate whose Coke Studio is better.
➡️ What stood out to me wasn’t who won but how a generation shaped by Kargil, Mumbai, and Pulwama can grieve without demonising the 'other'. The question isn’t whether dialogue is possible. It’s whether our states are ready for it in the same way that our youth is.
