🌊 Water wars edition

Good morning. Happy July, and welcome to H2.

If the first half of 2025 felt like a treadmill on max incline (and zero music), don’t worry - the second half just dropped its own plot twists: India’s planting trees by the crore, CA aspirants are getting motivational texts from the PM, and Delhi just told 15-year-old cars to go cry in the scrapyard.

Also, it’s International Joke Day, so yes - investors are already bracing for the July IPO lineup 🤹‍♀️ 

Ruchirr Sharma & Shatakshi Sharmaa  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 🌊 Water wars edition

• 🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

  • 🇺🇸 Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill squeezes through senate

  • 🪷 RBI taps veteran

• 🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

MARKETS

🇮🇳 India

• Indian stock markets ended with marginal gains after a rangebound session. The Sensex rose 91 points and the Nifty added 25 points, as select PSU bank and metal stocks outperformed. Broader market sentiment was mixed, with advances and declines nearly balanced, while investors remained cautious ahead of key global trade developments.

HEALTH

🌊 Water wars edition

India is gearing up to squeeze Pakistan’s water tap again - and this time it’s more than just talk. New Delhi is advancing multiple projects on the Indus, Chenab, and Jhelum rivers expanding canals, fast‑tracking dams like Pakal Dul, and tweaking reservoir operations to throttle flows into Punjab and across Pakistan’s breadbasket.

Why now? India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty in April after the Pahalgam attack, turning water into a geopolitical weapon. The goal: boost India’s hydropower in J&K, divert water into dry-state networks (like Rajasthan), and use resource leverage to counter perceived Pakistani support of terrorism.

Pakistan’s response? Not happy. Dam levels are dipping - some provinces are seeing 20 % shorter water flows - hurting crops, electricity output, and even urban water supply. Former Pakistani ministers are warning this could amount to an “act of war,” and experts fear “water wars” could spiral into real ones.

On paper, India still controls only hydropower rights on western rivers but infrastructure upgrades like longer canals (ran from 40 → 150 m³/s diversion) and dam expansions are quietly redrawing the line.

So here’s your upstream-downstream lowdown:

• 💧 India is weaponizing water amid elevated tensions.

• 🌾 Pakistan is watching crops, cities, and power grids get hit.

• 🌍 And the treaty? It’s alive but frozen - with global spoons stirring a potential crisis.

Bottom line: Water is becoming a frontline in South Asia and this isn’t just about rivers, it’s about power.

Read more: Economic Times

GENERAL OVERVIEW

🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

🇺🇸 Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill squeezes through senate - In a dramatic 50-50 Senate vote, VP JD Vance broke the tie to pass Trump’s mega tax-and-spending bill-the 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The $4.5T package extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, adds new breaks (think: no taxes on tips), and imposes $1.2T in spending cuts, mostly to Medicaid and food stamps. It also raises the debt ceiling by $5T, drawing flak even from within the GOP. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - a nonpartisan federal agency that crunches the numbers-warned the bill could leave 11.8M Americans uninsured and increase the deficit by $3.3T over a decade. Senate Republicans pushed it through after all night negotiations, despite defections from moderates and conservatives alike. Democrats fought it tooth and nail, and even Elon Musk piled on, calling the GOP the “PORKY PIG PARTY.” The bill now heads back to the House, where more fireworks await ahead of Trump’s July 4th deadline.

🪷 RBI taps veteran - The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) just made a power move, appointing Kesavan Ramachandran as its new Executive Director effective July 1, 2025. A 30-year RBI veteran, Ramachandran was previously Principal Chief General Manager in the Risk Monitoring Department and has worn many hats - from overseeing currency management to supervising banks and NBFCs. He’s also done stints as Principal of the RBI Staff College and represented the central bank on Canara Bank’s board and ICAI’s auditing standards board. As ED, Ramachandran will now steer the Prudential Regulation Division under the Department of Regulation - essentially the command center for safeguarding India’s banking stability. With global markets jittery and fintech disruption rising, his role will be key to ensuring Indian banks stay solvent and stress-tested. For the RBI, it’s a bet on deep institutional memory and steady regulatory hands.

HEADLINES

🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

What’s happening in India (and around the world 🌍️)

• Scale AI's bigger rival Surge AI seeks up to $1 billion capital raise.

• Govt issues advisory allowing use of personal two-wheelers as bike taxis; states to take final call.

• Lancet study projects US foreign aid cuts could result in over 1.4 crore preventable deaths globally.

• NASA astronaut Anil Menon assigned mission to International Space Station.

• The beast that lurks in Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill.'