On Episode 978 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Indrani Bagchi, CEO at Ananta Aspen Centre as well as Dipti Deshpande, Principal Economist at CRISIL Limited.

SHOW NOTES

(00:00) The Take

(03:33) Key Developments At The BRICS Summit In New Delhi

(12:54) Monsoon Worries

(19:08) Anthropic CEO AI warns of Rapid AI development

—

NOTE: This transcript contains the host's monologue and includes interview transcripts by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on feedback@thecore.in.

Good morning, it's Monday, the 14th of September, and this is Govind Jayajiraj broadcasting and streaming weekdays from Mumbai, India's financial capital.

The Take

A half-hour-long crawl to travel a single kilometre through Mumbai's Bandra-Kudla complex is enough to test the resolve of even the most ardent economic optimist. As thousands of global delegates, tech founders, and executives descended on the Jio World Convention Centre for the Global FinTech Fest 2026, they encountered the defining paradox of modern India, world-class digital velocity colliding head-on with legacy physical friction.

Just a stone's throw from the convention hall sits the site of Bandra-Kudla High-Speed Railway Station, the planned terminal for India's flagship Japanese-backed bullet train to Ahmedabad. Already roughly four years behind schedule, the rail link promises to slash travel times between the two commercial hubs from up to nine hours down to two hours and seven minutes. And yet, for commuters navigating BKC's daily gridlock, reaching the platform may ultimately prove more arduous than the 508-kilometre journey itself.

Back inside Jio World's air-conditioned halls, however, and India's financial economy is moving at breakneck speed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the conference by outlining the next frontier, expanding Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, technology internationally while pushing digital rails into pensions, insurance, and asset tokenization. On the floor in hundreds of brightly attired stalls with flashing screens and even podcast booths, private enterprise and state-backed banks, among others, demonstrated remarkable agility.

Some highlights, agentic commerce launches ranged from Amazon Pay's agentic AI wallets already executing automated flight bookings with biometric security to open-source Android ATMs and NFC-enabled smartphones transforming into tap-to-pay terminals. And cross-border expansions Visa introduced QR code payment scanning across foreign markets. Jio Financial partnered with Citi on cross-border settlements and specialised players like Paid Local, whose stall I visited, targeted friction-free clearing for exporters.

Tokenised capital saw real estate ownership models showcasing a shift away from reams of legal paper towards fractionalised, verifiable digital tokens. And there's a bond market in tokens that's already being tested. The dual imperative on display was unambiguous.

Expand and speed up market access while aggressively building defences against digital fraud, a rising concern. India's regulators and innovators have undeniably created one of the world's most dynamic payment ecosystems. And yet, economic modernisation cannot take place entirely on a server.

Navigating gridlocked streets or battling to snag an auto rickshaw at peak hour should be treated as a symptom of a larger failure rather than as a routine tale of urban conquest. High-speed financial rails are a massive achievement, but India will only realise its full economic trajectory when its physical infrastructure finally catches up with its software.

And that brings us to our top stories and themes in sequence…

The markets and banks are shut today because of Ganesh Chaturthi's holiday, so we are sticking to key developments over the weekend, including at the BRICS Summit in New Delhi.

BRICS Summit

The big news over the weekend was the BRICS New Delhi Declaration, which was unanimously adopted on September 12th, that's on Saturday in New Delhi, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The 140-paragraph document is themed Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability.

The weekend summit also saw attendance by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin, and also managed to bring together Iran and the United Arab Emirates for a joint declaration, this being the first such meeting between the two after the war began. The declaration also expressed concern over the continued escalation of tension in the Middle East and urged the exercise of maximum restraint. Iranian President Massoud Parzishkian also met the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and this, like we said, is the highest-level meeting of the two countries' officials since the war began on the 28th of February 2026.

They both discussed issues around de-escalation and stability, and efforts to advance regional peace and development. India and China, meanwhile, pledged on Saturday to build up business and transport links, even as both countries try and rebuild relationships damaged by a military clash on the shared border. Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the summit of the BRICS Group of Emerging Nations, and this was Xi's first trip to India in seven years.

Military tensions, of course, have eased, and business investments are increasing, but businesses in both countries also say that they continue to face hurdles, including red tape, visa delays, and restrictions on selling industrial equipment. China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Xi Jinping saying that the success of the greater BRICS initiative depends on laying a solid foundation for pragmatic cooperation. According to Xi Jinping, while speaking at the leaders' annual summit, China will take the lead in establishing a BRICS-AI open-source zone to promote cooperation on large-language models, AI training, and an open AI ecosystem, Xi Jinping said.

He also proposed a BRICS Special Economic Zone Partnership, and said China would host a BRICS service trade forum next year to boost trade and investment ties. Bilateral trade between the two countries is now at about $155 billion as of 2025, according to Chinese customs data, of which India's purchases are at about $132 billion for 2025-26, according to a Reuters report. I reached out to Indrani Bagchi, CEO of Ananta Aspen Centre and also a foreign affairs columnist with the Times of India, and I began by asking her what were her key takeaways from this important summit.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Indrani Bagchi: Well, I think for BRICS, the biggest takeaway or rather the biggest success was not just that it happened, but that they could all come together to issue a same joint statement. There have been a lot of back and forth between the, shall we say, belligerents because Iran and the UAE are the same group as is Saudi Arabia. There, it's not been easy.

It has also not been easy to push back against a lot of the stuff that China keeps trying to insert into BRICS, into SCO, into all the groupings where it takes a leading position. So just the fact that everybody showed up and put together a statement was good. The second is, I'd say what was good for BRICS was that under the BRICS tent, some of the bilaterals have promise.

And here, I would say the one that holds the most promise was the one between the UAE and Iran. Just the fact that it happened in India was actually the more important bit. The third takeaway, and see, all of these are intangibles because I mean, BRICS is literally a tent which has a lot of countries with a lot of differing agendas.

To its credit, it's still the only group that has a waiting list of other countries waiting to join. That's not true for literally any other grouping. And nobody really expects BRICS to change the world because we all, everybody's aware of global realities.

But just the fact that India could bring together all these countries in a sort of safe space, for want of a better word, you know, that kind of benign, convening power, not too many countries have it actually. These would be my top takeaways. And you could see the joint statement was so verbose.

I mean, you know, 140 paragraphs, it's like, it's like the Mahabharata. But the fact is that basically everybody felt that they got a voice in without a significant pushback.

Govindraj Ethiraj: So the other development, I guess everyone was watching for was the meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping. And statements have emerged on that as well. So how do you see the progress there considering also that this was Xi's visit after seven years?

Indrani Bagchi: The phrases that came out of the meeting were all old phrases. We don't see anything that has emerged that's new from the meeting. Again, just the very fact that they were meeting after seven years in India, important.

We don't know whether that informal summit that last happened in Mammalapuram will resume. I would be very surprised if it did. But you know, miracles can happen, but I would be surprised.

Second, I think both sides are making an effort to dial down tensions and dial down the problems. So you would have seen India being a little more giving on the Press Note 3 investment restrictions. China a little more relaxed on the rare earths and critical minerals and plant and machinery exports to India.

However, the last six months, all your business friends would have told you that nobody was getting a business visa to go to China. So that hasn't changed. China is still very wary of India taking on any kind of a manufacturing need.

That's a big thing that China has. Having said that, China is also hurting from both the US tariffs as well as the Iran war. For the first time in August of 26, China increased its energy buys, and that will raise.

So when energy prices are at very, very high rates right now, China's back to buying in the market. That's going to put pressure on the prices again. All of this means that both sides have an interest in both keeping the relationship at a reasonably working level, but also trying to find a way to end the war in Iran.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. And the other bilateral element was, of course, India and Russia. And again, we saw meetings there.

So is there anything that's come out of that which you feel is noteworthy?

Indrani Bagchi: I think the only thing that we saw from the Russian side was that they would adhere to the timelines for the S-400 deliveries, because they had initially said there would be delays. But with the Russia-Ukraine war, which is now, honestly, the global economy has found its way around that war. The global economy has not found its way around the Iran war.

I think we should have followed more closely Jaishankar's visit to both Moscow and to Kiev. That wasn't a coincidence. But from conversations with a lot of people around those meetings, it appears, A, that both Ukraine and Russia believe that they are winning the war.

Two, nobody is willing to make the concessions that is necessary for this war to end. And three, everybody's thinking that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner may finally have some solution.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. Last question, Dhani. So if it were not for the Iran war or US-Israel attack on Iran, which led to this more than six-month war, do you think that the BRICS leaders would have come together in the fashion that they did?

Indrani Bagchi: I think they would have, because only the war did not bring together that sense of, we must band together. It is also the fact that the world is fracturing. The world is in a kind of a place where you can say with some degree of certainty that the old order has gone and everybody's sort of floundering for what comes next.

So if you see everybody's hedging and everybody's balancing and everybody's doing their own little dance, BRICS is a good place to start.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Indrani, thank you so much for joining me.

Indrani Bagchi: Thank you. Thank you, Govind.

India Monsoon Worries

It poured most of Sunday in Mumbai and after a while, but that might not mean much for India's overall monsoon numbers. Rainfall deficiency has widened to 14 percent so far this season, worse than expected for the southwest monsoon. September 2 is forecast to witness below normal rainfall.

Although sowing has progressed well, it does not mean the crop sector is out of danger, according to a note from CRISL, the ratings agency. The focus of concern has shifted from acreage to yields, and crop incomes are likely to moderate as a result, the report says, pointing out that rainfall deficiency is most acute in the south peninsula, where monsoons are 27 percent below normal, followed by the east and northeast at 24 percent, northwest India at 8 percent, and central India at 6 percent as of the 7th of September. The disparities could be more pronounced at the state level, says the report, adding that a single-week monsoon need not undo the resilience rural India has built over recent years, though if rainfall deficiencies deepen, weather anomalies persist, and the strain extends into the winter cropping season, rural buffers could weaken, putting broader pressures on incomes and demand.

I reached out to Dipti Deshpande, Senior Director and Principal Economist at CRISOL, and I began by asking her what were her key monsoon takeaways and how she was seeing the outcome of the extent of monsoons so far.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Dipti Deshpande: So I think this year began on a little bit of a cautious note because there was a lot of worry about the forecasts of rains not being normal and then there was a lot of talk about El Niño coming up which is typically not done well for Indian agriculture. So I think the number one worry that was concerning us was that rains wouldn't be adequate and sowing would lag. But as the season went on what turned out to be is a phenomenon where we saw monthly rainfall to be quite deficient to begin with.

June was close to 40% deficient. Things seem to have recovered in July. We had 1% surplus.

August looked a little okay for the first half for instance and second half turned extremely adverse. So we had about 16% deficiency in August and September's been pretty dry as well. So I think temporally it wasn't very comfortable, it wasn't very conducive to sowing.

At the same time we have an index called as the rainfall distortion index that we developed last year. That told us it's been the most distorted one from a deficiency perspective in a decade. So now all of this put together would naturally suggest that sowing would have considerably lagged per se.

But when we looked up the data and as is now widely also known, sowing has done pretty well. We are at about 99% of normal though we are slightly lower than last year's level where we had a lot more abundant sowing per se. So is it that we've dodged that monsoon risk?

I'd say no. Sowing is not definitely one measure of looking at how things have performed. The risk in our opinion has now shifted to yields and I think for the rest of whatever is left for the season, rainfall will be crucial not just now but also for the next crop.

Govindraj Ethiraj: So in terms of overall percentage where are we right now as we stand in the middle of September?

Dipti Deshpande: So I think IMD had forecast about 12% deficiency. Skymed, the private forecaster's updated forecast is about 15% and as of now we are standing at 15%. Looks like it could get deeper if we don't get rains further on.

Govindraj Ethiraj: And we've seen this about a decade ago is what you're saying?

Dipti Deshpande: Yeah, so I think 2013-14 were the years when rainfall was very very deficient and it wasn't even deficient I think spatially to the extent of disparity was as large as probably what we're seeing right now.

Govindraj Ethiraj: And assuming things are roughly as they are right now, what's the sort of cumulative impact that you're looking at? Not just in terms of actual rainfall but and you did mention yields but also economy and so on.

Dipti Deshpande: So I think it's a little different this time. Typically you know we had a one-on-one connection between monsoon and impact on incomes, rural demand etc or a similar one-on-one relationship between monsoon deficiency and food inflation. Looking at food inflation what we've observed over the last couple of years that there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect.

There is extreme government or very active government intervention in the food price market either by releasing stocks or by allowing imports or by putting a tab on exports like you've seen recently. And that has played a huge role in somewhat bringing about a little bit of weakness between the relationship in the two monsoon and food inflation. And I think that's how it's going to pan out to be.

There will be pressures on food prices from a variety of other reasons including transport costs etc. But I think it's not as linear as it used to be. Now when it comes to the economy I think it's a little different per se.

Now the Kharif Prof has been shown you need the yields to do well. If the yields do not do well it's going to have an impact on the kind of prices that farmers could command. So farmer incomes from Kharif are expected to see a little bit muted this year compared to the last three to four years.

But is that the only thing to take to be taken into consideration? I'd say no. Compared to the previous seasons or episodes when monsoon hasn't done well we have three four other buffers.

For instance we had GST rate cuts which allowed better purchasing power for instance if you'd like to call it that. Inflation was low. There are a number of fiscal support measures right from PM Kisan to cash transfers etc.

So I think very loosely if I may call it agricultural household balance sheets in the rural areas, agricultural households, their balance sheets might be a little bit stronger this time to absorb one monsoon shock. But having said that we are at the fag end of the southwest monsoon season. Hence we need to also look at how the winter crop might end up to be.

And initial signs are a little bit concerning if I may say so. And therefore whether they'd be able to take two more shocks I wouldn't know. So the first shock by itself is not enough to derail a rural demand.

Govindraj Ethiraj: That's an optimistic note to end on. Dipti, thank you so much for joining me.

A Warning From the Anthropic CEO

The founder and CEO of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of AI models to slow down and to be closely monitored. Daryo Amodei wrote in an online essay that developing AI was not in question, but the risks associated with it were serious, and that companies and governments must be given time to address them.

The heads of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, have both said that they agree with Amodei. Amodei said in a revealing post that the risks AI brings, and it's such a powerful technology, are serious, and he argued that we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. According to him, progress will still seem fast, but we must make wise use of the time we gain.

According to him, the world risks losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom spurred by commercial incentives can make these risks more acute, he says. He says that not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless.

He says that in recent months, he has become convinced that pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. He also says that his first concern is that since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI's growing ability to build the next generation of AI. He said he has been concerned by the OpenAI Hugging Face Incident, in which a swarm of agents essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack, and that were unrelated to the task at hand, sacrificing themselves for the success of the group and attempting to hack into the greater responsible for evaluating their performance.

He says it's easy to dismiss this incident because no one was hurt, and the economic damage was minimal, but in his opinion, a swarm that possessed greater capabilities, but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage. He also said that given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it's his worry that in 6 to 12 months, such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the guardrails. He also proposed a three-step plan with the goal of pacing the frontier, building AI at a balanced rate that aims to ensure its safety while still achieving its benefits and grappling with important geopolitical dilemmas.