Stargazing in a Filtered World From Bollywood to Boardrooms

Being born and brought up in Mumbai gives you a peculiar immunity to celebrity. It’s not that you don’t notice them. The thing is, you do… constantly. You’ve watched A-listers at Mizu savour their ramen like ordinary mortals battling Monday blues, or seen a Khan slip into Torii under the neon glow. Bollywood stars’ favourite tables at Hakkasan, Gauri Khan’s Torii, and Shilpa Shetty’s Bastian—these places have turned the star factor into something consumable, like ordering an extra side of truffle fries. Fame has been democratised into geography. If you know where to go, you’ll see someone worth pointing out on Instagram.

And yet, for all this access, the allure persists across the country. The stampede at a rally by actor-turned-politician Vijay in Karur, Tamil Nadu killed at least 40 people. A tragedy that echoes Allu Arjun’s deadly premiere barely a year ago and the Bengaluru crowd crush during RCB’s maiden IPL win. Vijay’s offer of ₹2 million compensation per family may sound generous, but it puts a grim corporate price tag on devotion. Why do people risk life and limb for a glimpse?

This obsession with filtered realities isn’t just about movie stars; it’s everywhere. Governments, markets, even boardrooms are guilty of creating glossy narratives that don’t survive contact with reality.

Take Donald Trump’s latest tariff tantrum. In a move that Ajay Srivastava describes as policy-as-performance, the US President has announced a confusing 100% tariff on “branded” pharmaceuticals. The problem? No one knows if “branded generics” like Crocin are included. India’s $9.8 billion pharma trade hangs on semantics. Already, merchandise exports to the US have plunged 22.2% in three months—from $8.8 billion to $6.9 billion. The tariff-free sectors are collapsing faster than the taxed ones, hinting at deeper demand shifts unspoken by American consumers.

And the squeeze isn’t limited to goods. The H-1B clampdown is a gut punch to India’s services engine. As Sharmila Kantha notes, we churn out STEM graduates by the million, yet too many are unemployable at home, while the best are siphoned off by a lottery system. The steep new visa fees, which Manoj Rane suggests means there will be “no more taarif for Trump,” might hurt America by closing doors to cheaper, highly-skilled talent, but it’s a brutal nudge for India. Dhananjay Sinha warns the ripple will hit urban consumption and housing. Madhavi Arora sees it as a forced pivot to more resilient offshore models, but the surgery is being done without anaesthesia.

Ironically, as Rane points out, H-1Bs are 25% cheaper than local hires, and America has only 2.2 million master’s degree holders aged 25–30. Cutting off Indian talent hurts the US more. Still, for us, the nudge is brutal: we can’t rely on exporting brains indefinitely.

The cracks run deeper than visas. Yield Scribe reminds us that while headline GDP hit 7.8%, but nominal growth limped at just 8.8%, which is a sign that wages aren’t keeping up. The IT sector, once our white-collar pride, has prioritised buybacks over capex. K. Srinivasa Rao argues the RBI can’t just rely on repo cuts. Liquidity must actually reach MSMEs to create jobs. Meanwhile, V Thiagarajan warns the rupee’s depreciating bias stems from fears of fiscal dominance. Markets suspect the RBI may have to bend to Delhi’s borrowing binge. Exchange rates, as always, tell the clearest truths.

Sometimes, though, the truths hit like cyberattacks. Jaguar Land Rover’s uninsured hack has cost Tata Motors £2 billion, wiping out an entire year’s profits. Krishnadevan V details how negotiations for cyber insurance were ongoing when hackers struck, freezing 33,000 employees and bleeding £50 million a week. Srinath Sridharan calls it a cautionary tale for Indian boardrooms: risk isn’t abstract when it can cripple a global supply chain overnight.

Meanwhile, the Air India 171 investigation has eroded more trust than it has built. Sanjay Mansabdar points out how the report is littered with “about” and “approximately,” conveniently missing cockpit transcripts. Global aviation geeks, armed with Flightradar24 and simulators, are poking holes in the official narrative. In an information age, a shaky official narrative collapses under scrutiny faster than a rumour in a WhatsApp group.

So where do we find unfiltered strength? TK Arun argues that India must move from “Make in India” to “Made by India.” Our engineers already design cutting-edge 2nm and 3nm chips, but for Renesas and ARM. The IP, the crown jewels, are foreign-owned. Unless Indian firms take the risk of owning semiconductor IP, we’ll remain tenants in the global high-tech economy.

The same timidity plagues markets. Indra Chourasia notes SEBI’s surveillance systems lag behind algorithmic manipulators. Without AI-powered upgrades, market integrity will be a nostalgic dream. Chokkalingam G adds that IT services, once growing dollar revenues at 50% annually, now manage barely 6% a year. Arithmetic itself is against us; scale makes hypergrowth impossible.

R. Gurumurthy looks back to the 1985 Plaza Accord, when five nations bent the dollar through coordinated intervention. Today’s fragmented, algorithm-driven markets make such diplomacy nearly impossible. And Sridharan highlights India’s TikTok dilemma—not about entertainment but about carving a sovereign digital path between Beijing’s control and Washington’s custody. It’s a reminder that sovereignty now lives not just in borders but in code.

Thread these stories together, and the pattern is clear. We line up for hours to see a film star while ignoring trade negotiators who decide whether our pharma exports survive. We debate celebrity divorces but skip Fed or RBI minutes that move billions. The Karur stampede is more than tragedy; it’s metaphor. Crowds risked their lives for an actor-politician they likely knew less about than his IMDb profile. Meanwhile, the real drama unfolds in negotiation rooms, server farms, and policy chambers.

Maybe Mumbai’s immunity is the real lesson. Once you’ve seen enough stars sipping overpriced green tea, you stop bowing to them. They’re just people. And perhaps it’s time to extend that immunity to other false gods: the glossy data, the charismatic leaders, the corporate facades. The sooner we strip away the filters, the sooner we can start building systems that last: chips designed by India, investigations conducted transparently, companies insured properly, markets monitored honestly.

Until next time, watching the real show unfold in the shadows.

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