Veteran banker Uday Kotak on Tuesday made a case for India to lean harder into creation and disruption — the domains of "Brahma and Mahesh" — and step back from an over-reliance on preservation, or excessive "Vishnu energy", if the country is serious about becoming an economic powerhouse in a fractured and increasingly transactional world order.
Addressing the CII Annual Business Summit 2026, Kotak observed that most people still hold out hope the world will snap back to how it was, despite the turmoil playing out across geopolitical and economic fronts. "Every time there is a crisis, our mind says things will get back to normal. That's our basic mindset," he said, adding that foundational shifts across large parts of the world were already well under way.
In Kotak's reading, the global order is reverting to something resembling the pre-1945 era — a "tribal" dynamic driven by territorial ambition, asset ownership and the concentration of economic power. "We are seeing raw power becoming the rule of life and that is back to tribalism," he said.
He flagged the growing concentration of both tangible and intangible assets in a handful of global players, and pointed to geopolitical fault lines — including the disruption of shipping lanes around the Strait of Hormuz — as a reminder of just how exposed supply chains and energy security remain.
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Kotak's prescription for India was unambiguous: neither panic nor complacency, but clear-eyed strategy. "We need to be real, we need to be strategic and we need to be smart," he said.
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Kotak also backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent remarks on austerity and moderated consumption, saying India must steel itself for a prolonged period of global uncertainty and guard against "living beyond its means".
Referring to the ongoing conflict in West Asia, Kotak described it as "a much more bigger, much more complex problem than it sounds," underlining the need for India to brace for external shocks. He said the Prime Minister's call to rein in unnecessary consumption should be read as part of a broader effort to strengthen India's economic balance sheet.
Kotak also urged Indian businesses not to look solely to the government for answers, but to reflect on their own contribution to nation-building. "Let's not depend on what the country can do for us. What can we do for the country?" he asked, calling on industry leaders to become "tougher within ourselves".
The remarks came against the backdrop of significant stress on India's energy imports. Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been largely blocked since late February 2026, when the United States and Israel launched joint air strikes against Iran. The strait normally handles around a fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade and a similar share of global liquefied natural gas.
Analysts at Kotak Securities have cautioned that with no immediate resolution to the West Asia stalemate in sight, the outlook remains guarded, and that India's best course for now is to "hunker down" and wait for, what they describe as, an artificial supply disruption to pass.
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