Former MLA (Madurai Central ('16-'26); TN Minister (Finance & HR '21-'23; IT & Digital Service '23-'26). Lovedale, Vikaasa, NITT, UB, MIT Sloan; Lehman, SCB

Madurai, India
𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿: The entire Kumbabishegam ceremony today, has been directed by the current TVK Government through its Officers without considering any inputs from the Trustees. This has been done in direct contravention of both the relevant Tamil Nadu Acts & Statutes and of multiple rulings of the Madras High Court. I have been forwarded multiple social media posts this morning from devotees complaining of the lack of access to the event. While some of this may have happened under any government, the incumbent government must take full responsibility for today’s shortcomings, given their complete exclusion of the Trustees (who had experience with prior events)from the planning process, and decision to conduct the proceedings with Officers that had no prior experience of similar events. I am also duty-bound to note that over 95% of the massive efforts undertaken over the past three years to perform this unique renovation – which included the restoration of the fire-damaged Veera Vasantha Rayar Mandapam – were undertaken during the previous DMK Government’s tenure of 2021 to 2026.
142
1,283
3,590
287,476
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
Q3 is the first quarter that $AMZN, $GOOGL, $META and $ORCL all had negative free cash flow at the same time. In 2024 they mostly paid for the AI buildout with their own cash. In 2025 they added debt. This year Alphabet, Meta and Oracle started selling stock. And free cash flow doesn’t show everything they have agreed to spend. Many of the data centers they plan to use in the coming years aren’t being bought at all. Other companies are borrowing to build them and will rent them out, and that rent doesn’t show up in free cash flow until it starts being paid. Depending on how the lease is set up some of that rent never shows up there at all. $MSFT is the only one still positive, so they can keep paying for AI with the cash their business makes. But they rent data centers the same way, so that positive FCF doesn’t show all the rent they have signed for either. Which one would you rather own while they pay for all this?
10
9
53
5,828
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
The future of #ArtificialIntelligence is not pre-determined. As a technology developed by human beings, its future depends on the choices we make. We therefore have the responsibility to guide, change and, when necessary, reject its applications. A reliable system that serves the human person is of greater value than one that is exceptionally powerful but whose consequences cannot be adequately foreseen or controlled.
810
7,995
50,882
1,256,597
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
A quick reminder of the beauty of circular financing.... I doubt there has ever been this level of dependence in the US market, as we're seeing among the AI companies today. Bloomberg does a great job with this chart.
97
595
2,302
102,451
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
Doordarshan pays Sudhir Chaudhary ₹15 crore per year (plus GST) for a 1 hour news show aired 5 days a week Army Chief gets paid ₹59 lakh per year Delhi AIIMS chief gets ₹52 lakh per year Senior most Scientist at ISRO gets paid ₹43 Lakh per year
152
1,528
7,003
219,778
In my experience & analysis, elections are won (or lost) - above all else - by which voters are motivated enough to come to the booth Apathy is more likely the cause of a loss than vote-switching Mobilizing turnout is more often the reason for victory than vote-switching
How did Lula come from behind to crush Bolsonaro? In short, turnout. Bolsonaro's vote share barely moved. Lula banked millions of votes from those who didn't vote in 1st round and won eliminated candidates' votes. A remarkable mobilisation. 2nd round turnout usually below 1st.
10
50
313
27,926
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
The EDF (Export Declaration Form) rules are now in effect, and it seems like RBI and banks have conspired to create a new hell. Or actually 5 hells. I consult for an American company. Raised October invoice. Received the Inward remittance. And bang! Mail from @HDFC_Bank detailing everything needed before the payment can be processed. Let me tell you what the 5 hells are: 1. The hell of confusion – RBI clarified last month that the EDF rules do not apply to individuals. But looks like they haven’t told the banks. And CAs also don’t seem to know. There’s no official communication on who is exempt. Last I checked, I was an individual. No company, no LLP. But HDFC still wants me to file the EDF to credit my payment. 2. The hell of complexity – See the attached pic of the form the bank has sent in excel. It has 5 sheets. To be filled and submitted. Some abstruse acronyms like “AD” - no clue what it means. Some fields are mandatory. Some fields are to be filled by the bank. No idea which is what. And it needs a physical signature. Which leads to... 3. The hell of paperwork - They also sent a pdf with a bunch of request letters. I’m supposed to choose the right letter, print, sign, scan and submit. Creating more paper today is incredibly silly. And, I suppose, someone in the bank will have to upload all this somewhere. Reminds me of those hand-filled immigration forms. Pointless. 4. The hell of repetition – At least for me, most of the details are constant. One client, one payment. If it’s a one-time exercise, fine. I’ll grit my teeth and get it done. But no. These details have to be given month after month. Else… no payment will be credited. 5. The hell of unpreparedness – It would have been simple enough for RBI or HDFC to create an online portal for this. With dropdowns, saved formats, contextual help, etc. to at least make this easy. But that would be too convenient, no? So, they’ve chosen to dump the entire burden on the taxpayer. I have no opinion or understanding of why this is needed. Maybe it is critical information. Okay! But why make the process so confusing and painful? And poor communication has meant that the banks have just passed on the pain to the exporter, and even CAs can’t help. Basically RBI & HDFC feel I should consult less, and comply more. Maybe my client will also agree :)
273
679
2,190
324,826
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
BREAKING: "Speculative data center debt is being repackaged and sold to pension and retirement funds, university endowments, and other institutional investors in a manner eerily reminiscent of the subprime bubble," per AFR
693
4,674
32,725
2,088,916
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
How many protestors can this government detain? How many young voices can the BJP silence? The more young people they jail, the more ordinary citizens, with no political affiliation, will take to the streets and show them the true power of the people! Solidarity with @AshutoshRanka and @SauravDassss! The DMK stands ready to provide them with all necessary legal representation and support. ✊🏾 #CJP #GyaneshKumarMustGo
Ashu and Saurav have been sent to 5 days judicial custody. Their fault? Unfurling tricolour at Jantar Mantar. Show some guts, @narendramodi. If you’re so determined to crush dissent, have the courage to officially declare an Emergency instead of hiding behind these cowardly tactics.
412
4,433
15,818
489,980
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
The US stock market has never been this fragmented: The 52-week correlation between the equal-weighted S&P 500 and the S&P 500 index is down to 0.67, its lowest level on record. This measures how closely the performance of the equal-weighted S&P 500 tracks the cap-weighted index, with a lower reading indicating a growing gap between the broader market and mega-cap stocks. The correlation has declined -0.25 points since August 2025. By comparison, before the 2020 pandemic, this figure remained between 0.95 and 0.99 for nearly 15 years. To put this into perspective, during the 2000 Dot-Com Bubble, this metric never declined below 0.85. The S&P 500 is more concentrated than ever.
157
382
2,540
361,955
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
The most hilarious episode of this protest! Delhi Police detained the driver of a bus which Delhi Police had brought to detain protesters! 🤣
91
2,873
10,966
180,736
Procuring at 35/unit after cancelling previous agreements at much lower rates earlier is either staggering incompetence in administration/planning, or massive corruption. Or both...
🚨Breaking Tamil Nadu reportedly floated a tender to procure 4,500 MW of electricity from the open market to meet power demand and manage power cuts. If the reported procurement schedule is fully utilised at ₹35 per unit, the estimated cost would be: ⚡ 3,000 MW for 6 hours: ₹63 crore ⚡ 1,500 MW for 2 hours: ₹10.5 crore 📊 Total: ₹73.5 crore per day • 7 days: ₹514.5 crore • 20 days: ₹1,470 crore That is a massive potential cost for emergency power procurement.
114
2,537
6,427
151,299
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas was brutally attacked by the Delhi Police. He was later dropped by the roadside, visibly injured and in distress. DELHI POLICE HAS CROSSED ALL LIMITS!
518
4,649
12,629
687,583
😁💯
Ah, now I get it. I thought the AI catastrophe meant a model escaping its sandbox, launching nukes or hacking the power grid. Turns out it spots the AI debt bubble, shorts its own creators and crashes the financial system with trading bots. The singularity is a margin call.
3
14
149
32,377
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
14
469
2,070
18,284
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
Don’t miss this editorial page lead article by Srinivasan Ramani & Pon Vasanth B.A. in The Hindu (October 9, 2026). The article explains in clear, precise, and accessible terms what a massive scandal — an exercise fatally flawed in conception and design, and deliberately exclusionary in impact — the Gyanesh Kumar-directed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was. It also draws attention to the Supreme Court of India’s failure in the big test and expresses the hope that it will now act decisively to undo the damage.
74
521
1,037
52,024
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
Your dog spends about 20% of the night awake and its sleep quality doesn't drop at all. In the bed-sharing arrangement, you were always the fragile one. Dogs are polyphasic sleepers. Their sleep comes in short bouts stacked across the whole day, and their brains are built to surface, check the room, and sink back under in seconds. Humans run on 90 minute cycles where a single bad 3am wake-up can cost an hour. Same mattress, two completely different operating systems. A Mayo Clinic study put activity trackers on 40 owner-dog pairs for a week. The dogs hit 85% sleep efficiency whether they slept on the bed or the floor. The humans managed 81%, and their number moved depending on where the dog was. Dog sleep was bulletproof. Human sleep bent around the dog. Then wearables blew up the sample sizes. A 2026 analysis of 11,733 WHOOP users across 1.6 million nights found that on dog-in-the-room nights, people slept about 10 minutes longer, resting heart rate dropped about 1 beat per minute, and heart rate variability rose. There were a few extra micro-wakeups, around 0.4 per night. The nervous system downshifted anyway. It read the dog as safety. A 2025 study ran sleep EEG on family dogs and found the inversion. Dogs sleep measurably worse when their owners aren't in the room. You are your dog's sleep aid, and apparently its main sleep disruption too. The evolutionary read is that this deal is tens of thousands of years old. Humans who slept near dogs could afford deeper, more vulnerable sleep because something with better hearing was handling the night watch. Co-sleeping researchers think dogs literally expanded how much uninterrupted sleep early humans could get. The dog takes the broken sleep so you don't have to. The trade predates agriculture, and your heart rate still drops a beat the moment one curls up at your feet.
A surprising new study finds that people who sleep near their dogs don’t experience disrupted sleep. If anything, the University of Toronto researchers discovered, we humans are the ones disturbing our dogs’ sleep. nbcnews.com/health/health-ne…
140
987
9,917
1,382,765
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
Gems of @ECISVEEP @ceo_karnataka! Two voters reported each other dead just one day apart. 11th June: Mallikarjun reports Viramma dead. 12th June: Viramma reports Mallikarjun dead. Wait! How does someone declared dead file an objection the very next day? This raises serious questions. Was a false death claim made, or was a form filed in someone else's name? And this isn’t an isolated case. There are 334 such pairs (668 voters) with both voters in each pair registered at the same booth and each reporting the other dead.
145
2,565
5,294
124,412
Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) retweeted
May be courts should consider putting up as their motto 'What's The Urgency?'; 'Heavens Won't Fall'; and 'You Can Seek Justice Next Time'.
19
298
1,017
9,749