Before the War

The sky was unusually clear that night. No clouds. No dust. No omen that could be blamed later. The stars stood exposed, like witnesses who had agreed in advance not to intervene.

Across the plain of Kurukshetra, two great camps breathed in uneven sleep. Fires burned low. Armor rested beside men, who pretended to rest beside apocalypse. Horses shifted, chains clinked, conches lay silent waiting to be blown.

The same sky stretched over all of them. It did not choose sides, it waited.

Ashwathama

In the Kaurav camp, Ashwathama was awake. War is the only honest judge left among men, he thought, and he trusted its verdict more than councils and elders and trembling kings.

Ashwathama sat near a dying fire, sharpening a blade that did not need further sharpening. The rhythm soothed him. Stone against steel, like intention against action.

His fingers rose often, almost unconsciously, to his forehead, to the mani. The jewel sat embedded in flesh like destiny – cool and certain. A promise that was carved into bone.

They say I cannot be defeated, he thought. Not by Gods, not by men, not by beasts. I was born with powers, a gift for the good deeds earned over many past lives.

He looked up at the stars and smiled. The constellations were scattered formations. To his eyes they arranged themselves into army formations – celestial battle arrays. That cluster there, a spearhead. That arc, a flanking move. Even the sky, it seemed, respected strategy.

Tomorrow would not be chaos, it would be design. He imagined the songs that would follow. Not the soft songs of lovers, but the fierce songs of warriors. His body was already unconquerable, now his story would be immortal as well. He was the son of Dronacharya – unfallen, unbreakable, everlasting. He would still be alive when others would just be bodies on the ground.

Immortality thrilled him – to remain when others faded, that was victory’s purest form. Let heaven keep its gardens and hell its fires. The true reward was to still be alive when the last piece of embers had turned to ash!

A moth drifted too close to the ember and vanished in a blink. Ashwathama did not notice. He pressed the mani again and whispered, almost playfully, ‘let the others fear death. I have already defeated it.’

The sky did not answer. It had heard this before.

Sahadev

On the other end of the great battlefield lay the Pandav camp, where Sahadev had drawn a small chart in the dust and erased it three times. The calculations did not change. They never did. Planets did not bend for his discomfort. Fate did not soften for grief. The grammar of the sky was exact and humourless.

He had known this war was coming for a long time – before the first insult was thrown, before the palace burned with lacquer and deceit, before the dice was rolled… The patterns had always been there, like a creeper slowly making its climb.

Knowledge, people believed, was power. Surely such people had never been cursed by it. Sahadev looked up at the stars and saw destiny. The bright one near the horizon marked a fall on the tenth day. The red glint above it marked a vow fulfilled with terrible efficiency. A dim cluster to the north, almost invisible, marked a survival worse than death…

He closed his eyes. He knew who would win. That was the smallest part of it. He knew how they would win, and what it would cost them. Victory was not a clean number in his calculations. It was a fraction, with blood in the denominator.

He also knew something else. A quieter thread in the weave. He knew he would not speak. That was the knot. Could he speak and change it? The question returned to him every hour like a hungry wolf. If the future is seen, is it fixed? If it is fixed, why blame man? If choice exists, why does knowledge not alter it?

He tested the thought carefully, like a tongue on a broken tooth. If I tell them everything, will they act differently? He followed the branches forward in his mind. He had done this exercise many times. Each variation bent, twisted, resisted, and returned to the same trunk. Different paths, same forest, same fire.

He laughed softly, without joy. ‘So this is freedom,’ he murmured. ‘To walk willingly into what you cannot avoid,’ freedom to him was indistinguishable from bondage.

A guard passed and saluted. Sahadev nodded back, composed. The guard saw a calm prince. Not a man watching experiencing reality in advance.

There was also the vow. The strange binding condition laid upon his knowledge. That truth, fully spoken, would demand the ultimate price. Some truths are not forbidden by Gods. They are forbidden by structure.

Was his silence selfish? The accusation sometimes rose within him. Or was it obedience to a design larger than impulse? If he shouted the ending into the night, would dharma strengthen?

He looked again at the sky. It was not cruel. It was precise.

‘I know,’ he said to it quietly. ‘And still I will stand in line with the others, surprised on schedule.’

A breeze passed, erasing the last of his dust chart. He did not redraw it.

‘The sky has already decreed,’ he thought.

Krishn

Between the two camps, where the ground gently sloped and the grass had been flattened by chariot wheels, Krishn walked alone.

No guard. No banner. In the half-light he could have been mistaken for a common soldier who had lost his way. Or perhaps a musician searching for a quiet place to play his instrument…

He paused, looked around, and sat on a low rock.

Tomorrow, he thought, this stretch would be thunder. Wheels screaming, bows singing, men shouting the names of Gods they remembered only in danger. Tonight, it was only earth and air.

He picked up a blade of grass and turned it between his fingers, studying it with attention. The place did not need choosing. It had already been chosen when the world was first created. Some locations are less geography and more inevitability. A question waits there until an answer sits down.

He looked up at the stars. He did not calculate them. He did not map them to outcomes. His work was not prediction. His work was alignment. Men often confused the two.

He knew what would unfold. It was a necessity of balance. When weight shifts too far, correction must appear. Not always gently. He felt no excitement for victory, no dread of loss. Emotion, for him, was not absent. It was transparent. It did not block vision.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said softly, as if speaking to the field itself, ‘many will think they are fighting a battle. Few will realize that death was inevitable anyway.’

A night bird called and fell silent. Choice did not mean control over result. It meant clarity of intent at the moment of action. That was enough. More than enough.

He smiled slightly, imagining the hesitation that would seize the great archer at the edge of duty. Compassion would collide with duty. Love would argue with responsibility. A necessary fracture before understanding can appear. Words would be needed then, to reveal what action looks like when it is free from desire.

He lay back on the grass, hands behind his head, as if idling. As if nothing in particular was about to occur. The posture of a man with no appointment and no purpose. Very similar to a man with an appointment with time and infinite purpose.

To one camp, the sky was a promise of survival. To another, it was a ledger of loss. To him, it was a ceiling under which the world would hear Dharm speak.

 

The same sky covered them all.

By morning, men would swear the war began with a conch. They would be wrong. It began with how each of them read the night.

RBI CIC Regulations

“Brutus is an honorable man.” – Mark Antony, Julius Ceaser Act III Scene II, William Shakespeare

In January 2015, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made it mandatory for all Credit Institutions (CIs) of India to become members of all Credit Information Companies (CICs).

A Credit Institution is any entity in the business of lending money to customers. This ranges from large banks like HDFC Bank to village-level formal peer-lending systems. This article focuses on Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), particularly, small NBFCs.

An NBFC is any company that is engaged in the business of lending money, acquisition of securities, hire-purchase insurance business, or chit-fund business which, as the name suggests, does not have a banking license. Hence, an NBFC cannot borrow from the RBI at low rates of interest. Most NBFCs are not allowed to accept public deposits either. This leads to scaling issues and hence NBFCs do not grow as big as banks. Of course, being an NBFC is the route of becoming a bank for most companies. This also means a less-strict regulatory regime on NBFCs compared to banks. As of April 2026, there were 9075 NBFCs in India. Due to their higher cost structure, NBFCs operate in a riskier segment of the market – small businessmen, household women, gold loans, small corporates, farmers etc.

A CIC is a company registered with the RBI that is in the business of collecting and disseminating credit information. There are four CICs in India. The most famous CIC is TransUnion CIBIL having a 70% market share in the Indian market. Others are Experian India (16%), CRIF High Mark (10%), and Equifax India (4%). Together with the RBI, the four CICs create the credit information infrastructure for India.

It is logical that lenders regulated under the RBI should report their lending activities on a periodic basis, so that other lenders interacting with a potential borrowers have knowledge of the credit behaviour of the customer. Put simply, whenever a customer walks into a bank for availing a loan, the first thing the bank does is check the CIBIL score of the customer. This is the first step in any lending process. And to increase transparency among lenders, the RBI in January 2015 mandated that all lenders make mandatory reporting to all four CICs in the country.

Which is where the problem begins.

1.      Why not a central repository?

This is the simplest, most obvious, and overlooked solution to the problem. Instead of 9k NBFCs reporting their credit information to all 4 CICs, they could simply report it to one. And the 4 CICs could work with the RBI to create a central repository of such credit data. This would release some unnecessary compliance burden and the corporate could focus on being a corporate.

This has been suggested to the RBI several times who have taken the idea in consideration and rejected it for reasons unknown.

2.      Unequal relationship with NBFCs

By mandating that every NBFC in the country be registered with every CIC, this gave CICs a semi-regulatory power. Now any CIC could threaten any NBFC with mandatory registration. A registration is a contract where terms must be met by both parties. But the terms of registration with a CIC are set by the CIC with NBFCs having no say. This creates an unequal relationship between two private entities mandated by state decree.

For example, the NBFC must set one nodal officer for all communications with the CIC. However, the CIC is allowed to create bureaucratic red tapes for the NBFC to struggle through various functional teams of the CIC. Any lapse that occurs out of this system can be easily blamed on the NBFC while the CIC was just following procedures.

3.      Private for-profit nature of CICs

Contrary to popular belief, CICs are not government bodies. In fact, they aren’t even Indian. 92% of CIBIL is owned by TransUnion, an American multinational group with headquarters in Chicago. Experian India is owned by Experian plc, Ireland; CRIF High Mark is owned by CRIF S.p.A., Italy; and Equifax India is owned by Equifax Inc, USA.

As per RBI mandates, every credit transaction in the country needs to be reported to all four of these CICs. So the next time you apply to a bank for a loan and they check your credit history on CIBIL, do not be surprised if you start getting calls from all kinds of spam callers offering you loans. Your private data is being sold on a real-time basis, not by Indian banks, but by entities far outside the control of the Indian regulatory regime. As per the RBI, this is a necessary cost to promote credit transparency in the country.

4.      Regulatory Powers to CICs

Under the CIC Regulations, 2006, CICs can report members who do not submit the credit information on time. With the January 2015 circular, CICs can now mandate every NBFC in the country to mandatorily report their credit information. This effectively makes NBFCs a hostage to the CICs. Given that CICs are private entities, their concern is not the well-being of the NBFCs, but the pursuit of profits. CICs have cumbersome systems which cannot be navigated by small companies who lack a dedicated reporting department. This allows CICs to sell software and compliance services through third-party agencies to ease the compliance burden on the NBFCs. The classic case of making money by solving a problem that didn’t exist in the first place. All under the garb of RBI regulations. Contrary to Uncle Ben’s wisdom, RBI’s decree of compulsory registration has given CICs inordinate power, but very little responsibility.

5.      Double profiteering

It is the duty of a CIC to collect and disseminate information. It collects information from its members, and it disseminates information to anyone who is willing to pay for such information. The RBI has made it mandatory for banks to check for CIC scores of potential borrowers before proceeding with any credit transaction. The RBI has also made it mandatory for all credit institutions to submit such credit information to the CICs. CICs charge money at both ends of the information stream, for receiving as well as disseminating information. If it is the duty of the CIC to collect information, then why are NBFCs paying money to the CICs to submit information?

This goes back to the unequal relationship where NBFCs must adhere to the terms specified by the CICs to be registered where the CIC mandates NBFCs to pay up to be registered.

6.      Use of Spam Bots

If you’ve ever had the (mis?)fortune of interacting with CIBIL, you would know that they do not use normal Indian numbers. The call would typically come from a foreign number and would be marked spam by whatever CallerID service you use.

If you do pick up the call, you will be told that CIBIL is recording the call. But if you were to ask for that recording in case of a dispute, then CIBIL would somehow lose that recording.

If you do manage to make it through a call, you would realize its always to sell something. Either it is your own credit score, or a credit score management software, or some third-party who got your number from CIBIL and want to sell you services that will improve your credit score. Ultimately, the data and attention of Indians is for grabs to the highest bidder.

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To conclude, the RBI is overlooking a very pertinent problem having an obvious solution. One can only assume incompetence or corruption to allow such issues to persist. The RBI has already mandated data preservation laws for credit card transactions and central repository laws for large borrowers. The same can be implemented for CICs. It is also strange that such a critical infrastructure which forms a cornerstone of modern Indian banking is left to the regulation of four foreign entities who have been given quasi-regulatory powers by the RBI.

Age of Abundance

“Jungle mein mor nacha, kisne dekha?’ (A peacock danced in the jungle, who saw it?)

The question of the dancing peacock has quietly lived in every Hindi-speaking household. It sounds dismissive. But beneath it sits a discomforting thought - if no one saw it, did it even happen?

The same thought is posed in the English counterpart – “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I ran into this question recently at work. I said that I’m writing, but my blog doesn’t have much reach. In the age of Gen-AI and an explosion of online content, mine was neither famous nor relatable to most people. In fact, I still used a Blogspot domain which has grown redundant in view of the newer platforms like Medium and SubStack. So that question hit me, was I the peacock in the forest that no one was watching?

Why does a peacock dance? Does it dance to show the visiting audience its beautiful feathers? Is it even aware of its own beauty? Or does it dance simply because it is a peacock and that’s what peacocks do. Other birds might dance as well. Other birds might try to paint themselves as peacocks and copy its moves. And might fly on high masts to make themselves more visible to the public eye. But no matter how hard it tries, a crow does not become a peacock. Perhaps because a peacock isn’t trying to be a peacock – it simply is a peacock.

But what happens when the peacock starts measuring its worth by the number of eyeballs it reaches? What happens when the peacock laments that it can’t fly as high as the eagle or swim like the duck. Would it try to fly higher, become more visible? That seems to be a futile question. A peacock doesn’t measure its worth by the likes, comments, and subscriptions of strangers it doesn’t know. The peacock dances for itself. Maybe, it dances for the Creator that has endowed it with feathers. But no more. The world tries to judge the peacock by its views and likes. The peacock simply continues to dance, away from such debates.

In the age of abundance, knowledge is not a scarce resource anymore; it is abundant, almost aggressively so. Neither is meaning or synthesis or any of the traditional indicators of intelligence. With LLMs, one can understand any topic at any level desirable. For example, just the other day I asked ChatGPT to explain thermodynamic entropy using Diogenes’ philosophy; and ChatGPT complied. Knowledge and understanding is available on demand – high in supply. Everyone can learn anything. Everyone can say something. Everyone can publish. Everyone can dance.

The need for public validation runs high and attention has become the commodity that is short in supply. What happens when an explosion of information vies for attention? Attention spans grow shorter. What earlier used to be dopamine rewards have now converted into constant unending streams of dopamine, flushing the mind into overload. That is why you feel exhaustion after scrolling through reels. Not because the information quality is bad – it is in fact the richest humanity has ever had to offer. The human mind has lost the ability to absorb information because it is unable to appreciate anything in depth.

The universe put a lot of effort into creating the potato. First of all, it had to undergo the Big Bang. Then it had to create the Earth. Conditions had to be right for life to emerge underwater. That life had to find a way to breathe air on land. Still clinging to roots, life evolved, adapted, struggled, and survived through possibilities and probabilities – finally to give rise to the potato!

The potato chip is different. First of all, frying the potato alters its chemical composition. It makes for a tastier snack, but does not contain the nutrients built by the efforts of the universe. That is what consumption of information through LLMs and reels is like. It is not food – it is a snack. Getting used to such quick snacks takes away the joy of learning the real thing. The brain is a muscle and like any muscle, it can’t be blown up into strength. It needs to be taught to struggle. To sit with an idea and to think. The age of AI is robbing human brains of the ability to think. Because we do not practice thinking any more. If an AI can do it, why use our own brains?

I remember visiting the Sunderbans. Most people take a river safari in hopes of seeing the Royal Bengal Tiger. I have undertaken many such safaris in my life. There is always that lofty goal of spotting a rare wild beast. Sometimes you’re able to spot it, most times you come back having seen only the marks of it. As I had come back after that trip after seeing the large paw-prints of the tiger on the coasts of islands. I missed seeing the elusive tiger. But the tiger, I suspect, did not feel the same. People came from around the world to watch the Royal Bengal Tiger of the Sunderbans. If only the tiger knew… perhaps he would have been a better host. But I guess that’s the fun of it. You could always see a tiger in your local zoo. But what you want to see is the good fortune of spotting a real tiger in its natural habitat. You wouldn’t want to see a person dressed up in a tiger’s costume running wild in the jungle for your show.

In the age of abundance, we have confused visibility with value. We measure what can be measured – views, likes, reach, engagement. But there are things that resist measurement – thought, stillness, depth, meaning. It is now rare to find the ability to sit with an idea and not rush to resolve it - the ability to not act. The ability to feel something without needing to articulate it. These are things that do not go viral. But they remain, quietly, at the core of what it means to be human.

Our parents grew up in the age of scarcity, where resources were things to be preserved for a rainy day. We grew up in the age of information, where data was gold and knowledge was the real currency. This is the age of abundance, where knowledge is not currency anymore. There is an explosion of content, and we do not know what to do with it. Connection perhaps? Psychologists are repeatedly warning that while we remain infinitely more connected to the world through the internet, humans are lonelier than ever. We don’t relate to others, we don’t relate to ourselves, and we don’t relate to God. The potato has finally abandoned the ground and is now struggling for roots.

So what is the peacock supposed to do – it dances. Because that’s what peacocks do. Perhaps the question was never “who saw it?”, but “would it still dance if no one did?”

PMLA – Delhi Liquor Policy Case 3

The article follows the events described in the author’s previous works being (1) Enforcement Directorate vs. Arvind Kejriwal and (2) PMLA - Delhi Liquor Policy Case. The current article stems from subsequent developments and may be read as an independent piece.

 

BACKGROUND

On 30-Mar-2026, the ED moved to the Delhi High Court challenging the 22-Jan-2026 order of the Rouse Avenue District Court (Trial Court).

As per the original order, the ED had made the allegation that Arvind Kejriwal had deliberately skipped the summons sent by the ED in respect of the investigation in the Delhi Liquor Policy Case. The case had lasted for 22 months 16 days before the trial court finally acquitting Arvind Kejriwal vide a 51-page order. It may be noted that this case was not the trial of the actual money laundering offence, but only restricted to the point of skipping the summons of the ED.

During these 22 months 16 days, Arvind Kejriwal had been arrested, interrogated, arrested again, bailed, interrogated again, bailed again, and discharged in the Delhi Liquor Policy Scam Case.

Now the ED, in its wisdom, has challenged the acquittal of Kejriwal with respect to a summons he did not attend, in a case where the custodial interrogation is over, investigation is already complete, the accused has served jail-time, and has been discharged, with scathing remarks on the conduct of the ED. The remarks of the Trial Court have since been stayed by the Delhi High Court. The ED still believes that it was wrong of the Trial Court to acquit Arvind Kejriwal for not attending the summons.

 

RATIONALE

The purpose of a summons is to question a witness or an accused. The ED has already availed the opportunity of interrogating Kejriwal in custody after arresting him in March 2024. One of the grounds of arrest was also the skipping of the said summons. However, the ED still wants its pound of flesh against Kejriwal for skipping the summons.

But that is not the entire concern here. The non-attendance of a summons is an offence under section 174 of the erstwhile IPC [section 208 of the BNS]. The punishment for such non-attendance is a maximum of one month of imprisonment, or fine of Rs. 500, or both. By any reasonable stretch of imagination, Arvind Kejriwal has already served such punishment. However, the sheer expense of the appearance of senior counsels before the High Court now shall be borne by the taxpayers of India. For a case which shall serve no purpose even if the ED were to somehow win in its obstinate grudge against Arvind Kejriwal.

The natural question arises, why are the taxpayers of the country paying for the punishment for non-attendance in a summons of a person who has already been arrested, remanded, interrogated, and discharged from the case?

The only reasonable explanation in this unreasonable charade is that there were certain legal lacunae in the order of the Trial Court which may be used by future litigants, and hence need to be dispelled before a higher forum. But this argument does not stand on its own legs. Trial Courts are not constitutional courts and their judgements are not quotable. Any court can disagree with the rationale taken by a trial court.

We fail to find any reasonable logic behind the challenge of the acquittal in summons, while the punishment is already infructuous. But as it often happens, when reasonable logics leave the floor, we can think of unreasonable probabilities that might be the reason. Perhaps the ED is only looking to make a media show of Arvind Kejriwal; perhaps the senior counsel simply desires a new car; or perhaps the ED already knows that the discharge of Arvind Kejriwal shall soon be overturned by the High Court. Arvind Kejriwal has already moved to the Supreme Court for a change in the bench at the Delhi High Court, citing reasons of biasness.

The author is not a fan of Arvind Kejriwal. The author is a fan of Jack Daniels whiskey which was not available in Delhi due to the Delhi Liquor Policy under Arvind Kejriwal. So we bear no sympathy towards the then Chief Minister. But after having gone through what Kejriwal has endured, if he thinks that the ED is banking on the bias of the judges in the High Court, we can hardly blame the man.

PMLA - Delhi Liquor Policy Case

The timeline of the Delhi Liquor Policy Scam Case looks like a game of snakes and ladders. For the purposes of this article, we have refrained from going into the merits of the case and the 598-page judgement of the Delhi trial court in the matter. We simply take a look at the timeline which offers some interesting revelations.

• During August-November 2022, the CBI and the ED registered the corruption and money-laundering cases almost simultaneously. The ED then quickly files a chargesheet where Arvind Kejriwal is not named as an accused.
  
  
• In March 2024, the ED arrested Arvind Kejriwal. For the first time in independent India, a sitting Chief Minister of a state was arrested. The Lok Sabha elections were scheduled after two months.
  
  
• By May 2024, the ED had already filed multiple chargesheets in the case. Only in the 7th chargesheet it named Arvind Kejriwal as an accused, after his arrest. This happened just before the elections 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
  
  
• In June 2024, Kejriwal was granted bail by the Delhi trial court. The next day, the bail was stayed by the Delhi High Court upon oral mentioning by the ED. Subsequently, the bail was cancelled by the High Court.
  
  
• After rejection from the High Court, Kejriwal appealed for bail in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the CBI emerged. Kejriwal was arrested by the CBI while already in custody in the ED case. Kejriwal secured bail in the ED case but had to continue incarceration because of being arrested by the CBI as well now.
  
  
• In July 2024, The Delhi High Court reserved its order in the bail matter in the CBI case. The same day, the CBI filed its 5th and final chargesheet in the case where Kejriwal was named as an accused for the first time. Then the High Court's order came where Kejriwal's bail was rejected.
  
  
• Finally, Kejriwal secured bail in September 2024 from the Supreme Court and discharge in the entire case in February 2026.
  
  
• This is the second time in three months when a high-profile political ED case has fallen flat because the predicate offence has been invalidated - the previous one being National Herald in December 2025.
  
  
• The government had already challenged the closure of a ED case upon closure of the predicate offence in the National Herald case. This goes against the principles established in various Supreme Court judgements including Vijay Madanlal Choudhury. But the matter remains sub-judice for now.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the government had proposed the 130th Constitutional Amendment Bill in August 2025. It may be time to review that.