Top of the Morning

India could be headed for one of its driest monsoons in years in 2026 with Skymet predicting rainfall at 94% of the long-period average, below the normal 96-104% range. The India Meteorological Department has pegged it at at 92% of the 50-year average. The El Niño effect raises the odds of poor rainfall, with 70% probability of below-normal or drought-like conditions—higher than that in 2023. Both IMD and Skymet see a high chance of below-normal or deficient rainfall in 2026.

AI systems today can finish in minutes what would take humans months. That’s not just acceleration but a shift toward capabilities that could surpass even the smartest humans, with or without AI assistance. Some call this “super-intelligence”. This month, two reports—one from OpenAI and another from the Center for Humane Technology (CHT)—outline how to keep humans from being sidelined in this speedy race by meaningfully keeping them in the loop.

India’s equity markets wrapped up FY26 with their weakest performance since the covid-19 pandemic, as global shocks rattled sentiment. The Nifty 50 fell 5% and the BSE Sensex dropped 7%, dragged by the West Asia war, a weakening rupee, and heavy foreign outflows. A sharp selloff on the final trading day deepened losses, with broader markets and all sectors ending in the red. Foreign investors pulled out ₹1.12 trillion in March, even as domestic institutions cushioned the fall with record buying.

India’s manufacturing story lost some steam in March. The HSBC Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) slipped from 56.9 to 53.9—its weakest since June 2022—signalling slower but still positive growth. What’s behind the dip? A mix of softer demand and rising uncertainty. The Iran war is beginning to ripple through supply chains, pushing up input costs for metals, chemicals and fuel. Companies, however, aren’t fully passing this on yet, keeping price hikes modest.

When Jensen Huang speaks, the tech world listens, especially on AI. So, when he told Lex Fridman that “We’ve achieved AGI”, it inevitably turned heads. Context first. Fridman asked the Nvidia Corp. CEO if Agentic AI can build and run a billion-dollar business. The reference point was OpenClaw, an open-source agent framework that was recently acquired by OpenAI.

Dear reader, Noel Tata is pushing for a shorter, two-year extension for Natarajan Chandrasekaran as chairman of Tata Sons, instead of the usual five-year term, as the group weighs a broader leadership overhaul. Trustees are expected to discuss a new structure that separates the roles of chairman, CEO and managing director, along with a possible deputy CEO. The idea is to use a truncated extension to firm up succession plans before Chandrasekaran’s current term ends in February 2027.

It was hardly surprising that this week’s headlines were dominated by announcements from Nvidia GTC. After all, Nvidia Corp. is the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation hovering at $4.4 trillion. Taking the stage in his trademark black leather jacket, co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang laid out an audacious vision: Nvidia could generate as much as $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2027 from AI chip sales alone, doubling his earlier $500 billion forecast for 2026.

Noel Tata is pushing for a shorter, two-year extension for Natarajan Chandrasekaran as chairman of Tata Sons, instead of the usual five-year term, as the group weighs a broader leadership overhaul. Trustees are expected to discuss a new structure that separates the roles of chairman, CEO and managing director, along with a possible deputy CEO. The idea is to use a truncated extension to firm up succession plans before Chandrasekaran’s current term ends in February 2027.

Last week, we wrote about Anthropic’s emergence as the poster child of AI. That was short-lived. The US Department of War (formerly, Pentagon) chose the more pliable OpenAI to do business with, even as it threatened to label Claude AI as a “supply-chain risk”, due to Anthropic’s reluctance to allow use of its models without the couple of extra guardrails.

India and the UAE are exploring linking their central bank digital currencies for near-instant cross-border money transfers, potentially reshaping one of the largest remittance corridors. If implemented, the system would allow funds to move directly between digital currency accounts, bypassing traditional bank-led settlement and sharply reducing transfer times. The effort involves connecting the RBI’s e-rupee with the UAE’s digital dirham.