Fortune India Magazine - December 2017- March 2018

In this issue

LAST YEAR, AS we were putting our flagship Fortune India 500 issue together, Prime Minister Narendra Modi got the country queuing at banks to get rid of their Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. At the time, I had said it would take several months before Modi could be seen as an economist or a neophyte. Well, the jury is still out on that, but the country seems to have decided. The Bharatiya Janata Party was voted into power in six of the seven state assembly elections held since November last year. But this is not about politics. This is about the fact that towards the end of last year, the overwhelming sentiment was anti-government, as people lined up for hours to find that ATMs had run out of cash, or that deadlines for exchanging notes had been arbitrarily changed. At the time, the commentariat was sure that the BJP would be punished in the next elections. Then, there was GST, the introduction of which has been a part of the conversation ever since I entered journalism. Implemented in a somewhat clumsy manner, there’s still a lot of confusion over who pays what. Again, the opinion writers thought this would hurt the ruling party at the hustings.Senior editor and Fortune India 500 list editor Rajiv Bhuva says the GST and demonetisation have had an impact on the overall economy and markets, but adds that it looks like the 500 largest companies are strangely immune. Consider this. Despite all the column inches that be moan the fact that non-performing assets are still dragging banks down, six public sector banks on the list turned profit-making this year
This issue is the most awaited issue for our annual list of Fortune India 500 largest corporations of India, must catch it on page 140.