Rome was not built in a day

The below article is an excerpt from one of the newsletters I send to my subscribers every Sunday. You can subscribe and read the rest of these newsletters in the archive section here - reallyonlyharmessaboutnothing.

As of this email, I am crossing roughly 20,000 words I have dumped on you since my email #1. For anyone wondering what compounding look like, read the last line again. These are 20,000 words, including hundreds of hyperlinks - each containing links to another dozen websites, on dozens of topics from around the world - that you would have never read otherwise (and to put it bluntly, even I would not have. Often I end up reading a lot more that I would have otherwise, to think of topics and make up stuff to put in this weekly newsletter for you). Multiply each of these figures, and you would reach quite a large sum. And what's more remarkable is that the sum will still not truly reflect what you might have gained even if you clicked on each link and read each word in each newsletter - because the beauty about knowledge is that it's one thing that is never REALLY the sum total of all the parts - but quite always more than that. You might have stumbled upon some other link in one of these webpages and followed it to somewhere entirely else. You might have discussed one of the topics I wrote ABOUT with someone (do encourage your friends to subscribe!) and might have got some terrific insight, which I may have totally missed out on (do tell me those!). And that's the beauty of compounding. And even if you haven't religiously read everything I wrote or clicked on all those links I sent (I agree some of those are really nerdy and may seem too academic), begin today! Start compounding your knowledge today, and together we might reach the 30,000 figure before you even realise it. Rome was not built in a day, but someone sure as hell started building it one day. 

This week I ONLY have 2 stories for you. Each of these are quite long reads - best for you to unwind with on a lazy Sunday. They are both wildly different from the other, but with one underlying theme running through these - the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. These times that we are living in are truly unique, as I have stressed many times in past newsletters. And the staggering infections and death toll numbers that we see and hear everyday does not truly capture what all this pandemic has changed. Let's jump right into these stories - 

 GST - a dream long gone?

The Goods and Services Tax (often simply called GST) started out as a remarkable idea: reducing hundreds of varying (and often conflicting) central and state taxes into 3 bundles with simple slab rates based on the nature of the good or service being provided. You would note need a chartered accountancy certification or a law degree to appreciate the significance of GST - because even if you move away from these specifics, the act itself is admirable. It's still one of the best examples of "cooperative federalism" in the world - a previously unthinkable idea that provincial and central government of a country can come together for a better business environment, even if that would involve some sacrifices by someone (usually the states). The GST even had another remarkable thing in place for this situation - that for a period of 4 years since it is launched, the Central Government would compensate the States in case of any tax shortfall in their kitty. It's hard to turn down such a proposal - which is why almost all states unanimously agreed to GST (including those states which did not share a same party with the Central Government). Despite initial glitches in the GST roll-out across the country, and several policy flip-flops later, the underlying unity of the centre and state governments over the broad strokes was still an example to the world. 

Then came along the global COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, the State Governments were faced with little to no tax collection for months. But did the Central Government not promise to make them whole? That's where things get interesting. The Central Government has clearly stated that they do not intend to do this, claiming that the pandemic is an "act of God" (a HARMLESS standard clause that we lawyers never used to focus on, before 2020 that is), conveniently forgetting that the laws around GST do not have any such clause. Think of this as a UNO card game, where the states threw a draw 4 card, and the Centre just threw a reverse card. Now whether you can a reverse card on a draw four is something that people are still fighting on (apparently you and I have been playing it wrong all along - gotta love the internet). Read this fascinating LiveMint article on this entire GST drama that's been playing out, not on your TV screens though, because frankly, it won't get you the TRPs.

 Goodbye Fashion?

The pandemic has hurt people, businesses, and entire economies. We all can agree on that by now. Some sectors crawling back from a well, some are doing okay and finding their feet again, some are doing as King Pin used to say: boomin'! But some sectors are not just troubled, they are in existential threat. Hospitality and aviation used to be those - and are quietly coming back slowly. But it's fashion which is looking at a long unwinding road, if any at all. 

Ever since we were all locked down in our homes, fashion took a backseat and people began to choose comfort over style - pyjamas and sweats quickly replaced skirts and suits. And for an industry that's built on glamour and vanity more than what they claim as an expression of "creativity", the pandemic truly forced them to accept this truth once and for all. "As it happened, it was the giants who would fall first. Over the next few months, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers and J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcy. Gap Inc. couldn’t pay rent on its 2,785 North American stores. By July, Diane von Furstenberg announced she would lay off 300 employees and close 18 of her 19 stores." Harper's Bazaar India has closed down. Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Tarun Tahiliani, and Manish Malhotra have closed their respective flagship stores and some have even shut down factories. It's a bloodbath for the fashion industry, with no IV drip in sight.

My close friends know of my constant derision of the fashion industry. For an industry which is famous for being filled with snobbish people (where all the stereotypes are almost too close to being true), an industry which had to half-heartedly change its attitude about people's colour and bodies after successfully blindsiding them for decades and which is almost entirely built on vanity - though it tries pretty hard to pass it off as "individual expression" - it's almost too easy for someone like me to lambast it. Yes, fashion has its apologists. Yes I have seen the famous scene from "blue-sweater" scene from The Devil Wears Prada - simply one of the most extraordinary monologue scenes I have ever come across. And I have had lots of problems with the justification that Meryl Streep offers in that scene. As Andrea Sachs said of the God-complex in the movie - "people there do act as if they are curing cancer". And there's no better time than the current one for people of my kind to be finally proved right. (On a funny note: people don't really like when you deride something they hold as close to themselves as fashion. I am often hit back with a good argument - my choice not to care about fashion is in itself like making a fashion statement. Something similar to what people have also also hit at Mark Zuckerberg - who famously wears the same kind of T-shirt everyday. Maybe they are right.)

Read this lovely NYT article on the uncertain future of the fashion industry. Sneaker pages on instagram often feature a common popular meme: "Remove instagram for a day and boom, suddenly you're not a sneakerhead anymore." Turns out that there's NOTHING like a pandemic to make them literally see the mirror (pun intended).

Miranda Priestly got one thing right in the scene though, when she sarcastically said "Yes this is what this multi-billion dollar industry is about: inner beauty."