| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a resurgent revival of recent Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. India's voters supposedly chastised Prime Minister Narendra Modi in national elections in the first half of the year. Anticipating an unassailable legislative majority, his Bharatiya Janata Party was instead forced into coalition. After that embarrassment, the BJP was not expected to win the Oct. 5 elections in Haryana, the state next door to India's capital New Delhi. The opposition, led by the resurgent Rahul Gandhi's Congress Party, hoped to ride to victory on dissatisfaction with the BJP, which dominates the state government. In February, Haryana officials had tried to suppress a massive farmers' protest with tear gas dropped by drones earlier. Furthermore, as Andy Mukherjee noted, "Popular anger against the BJP was supposed to be amplified by high youth unemployment, curtailment of retirement benefits from armed-forces jobs, and the Modi government's shoddy treatment of the state's popular women wrestlers." Instead, the BJP took 48 seats to Congress's 37, denting Gandhi's momentum. The opposition has challenged the results, but already pundits are saying this gives Modi impetus for the next set of state elections — and revitalized hope for retaining power after national elections in 2029. Modi 3.0 is in the offing — with the potential for increased powers for the prime minister. Indeed, Modi may just try to recalibrate India's election schedule to his advantage. Currently, the country's states set their own voting timetable. As Mihir Sharma writes, Modi would like all elections (local and national) to take place at the same time. That will cause national issues to overshadow local ones (which currently can lead to results out of sync with ruling party agendas). In the prime minister's shorthand: "One India, One Election." That's not good for democracy, says Mihir: "Staggered regional votes allow for India's states, many of which have populations larger than any European nation, to have their own political debates with real stakes." The aim is to remake the prime minister's office, giving it more presidential powers. Notes Mihir: "The last time India had an all-powerful prime minister, Indira Gandhi, she pushed for an executive presidency; fortunately she was voted out in 1977 before she could do permanent damage." She was also Rahul Gandhi's grandmother. In any event, there was one result in Haryana that satisfied BJP opponents. The women wrestler controversy revolves around alleged abuse involving a BJP sports official (who has denied the charges of sexual harassment). Says Andy: "A three-time Olympian, who left her awards on a pavement in New Delhi last year as a mark of protest, joined politics and defeated her BJP rival in Haryana." As he wrestled with China's sluggish economy this week, President Xi Jinping of China got some unexpected love. Argentine president Javier Milei (a darling of the global far right but detested by the left and reviled by connoisseurs of cosplay) declared, "The truth is that China is a very interesting trading partner because they don't demand anything." Juan Pablo Spinetto says this was surprising given that Milei told him in August 2023 that, as president, he'd downgrade relations with the Chinese communists. Does this turnaround rank with the stoutly anti-communist UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's change of heart in 1984 about the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev? She said, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together." Xi has a much more vibrant economy than Gorbachev's — but it's not in the best of health. The stimulus Beijing let loose at the end of September has already run its psychological course after momentarily boosting markets by as much as 10% — and it's now wanting. As John Authers
summarized in the headline of one of his newsletters, "China, Whatever It Takes Is a Lot More Than This." (Mohamed A. El-Erian also weighed in on China's damp squib.) The government's perceived hesitancy to provide more led to huge downturns this week. At the very least, refloating the Chinese consumer economy would help Beijing in its negotiations with economic rivals intent on raising tariffs on its products. David Fickling says a hugely expensive Chinese-made car is a symbol of the need to boost local spending power. The Hongqi L5, "the world's only million-dollar car comes with a green-and-purple interior that makes it look less like an economic threat than the vehicle the Joker might drive to take on the Batmobile." But looks are deceiving. Cars are on the frontline of the incipient trade war between the EU and China. European car sales have plummeted in the mainland — except for high-end models. "The halo effect from the ultra-premium L5 may count for something," David says, as Hongqi — a former basket case of a company — is now seeing domestic sales volumes expand dramatically. David has documented how the local markets helped buoy the solar panel industry too. All China needs to do is mint more multi-millionaires who can up the bling quotient of what would otherwise be the Jokermobile. "One of the highlights of Ubisoft Entertainment SA's Assassin's Creed game series is the 'leap of faith,' when the hooded main character takes a stomach-churning dive from the rooftops and always lands safely in a conveniently placed hay bale. That appears to be what Ubisoft's long-suffering shareholders are being promised as the Guillemot founding family and Tencent Holdings Ltd. consider options including a potential buyout, after an 80% share-price meltdown in five years. But a safe exit is far from assured." — Lionel Laurent in "Tencent Bid for Assassin's Creed Demands a Leap of Faith."  "Why is Robinhood Markets Inc. so keen to expand in the UK? ... The trading app that shot to infamy during the meme-stock craze of 2021 offers US stock trading to UK customers and is about to add margin lending against those stocks, followed by US options and, potentially one day, UK equities too. ... For Robinhood, interest income in the US has been a major source of revenue over the past couple of years … [but] Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts will squeeze that income, while payment for order flow in the US is also under threat from rule changes proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission." — Paul J. Davies in "Why Robinhood Is Seeking Merry Traders Overseas." A tribute to Ratan Tata's vision of India. — Mihir Sharma Targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard. — Marc Champion A Nobel prize glow for Google. — Parmy Olson A Napoleonic perspective on Indonesia. — Daniel Moss Taiwan versus the anaconda. — Hal Brands Why Samsung's very bad year is a good thing. — Catherine Thorbecke Netflix's Tokyo Swindlers has some real truths. — Gearoid Reidy Legend has it that The Dakota — perhaps the apartment building most evocative of 20th-century Manhattan — got its name because it was built in such a remote part of the island it might as well have been in the Dakotas. Then, it was the newly incorporated US territory — now North and South — more than 1,500 miles away to the west. Personally, I have always found that funny, if not ironic. That's because I can walk to the Dakota in about ten minutes from my home in the Upper West Side. Except for a farmland echo in the name Sheep Meadow — the enormous lawn in Central Park — New York today is the farthest from rural you can be in America.  A rain puddle reflecting the Dakota as tourists leap onto the sidewalk. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Work began on the Dakota in 1880, just seven years after Central Park across the street was finished. Construction was completed in October 1884, so this month marks its 140th anniversary. I was reminded of this by another birthday. October 9 would have been John Lennon's 84th birthday. He lived and died in the Dakota, murdered at its southern entrance by an obsessed fan in December 1980. The day after he was cremated, his widow, Yoko Ono, requested 10 minutes of silence as a public tribute. I remember how incredibly still the city was. It might as well have been in the Dakotas. Sometimes, there can only be one.  "I'm sorry, sir, but the name Moo Deng is taken." Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send nominative aspirations and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook. | 
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