The System Holds, Until It Doesn’t

From the Gulf to global markets, events appear to move toward rupture and then stop short. The reason lies not in restraint, but in the invisible architecture of the system itself.

The System China Built, and India Has Yet to Understand

We Passed the Exam. We Failed the Economy

On how India built its education system faster than it built the economy to absorb it

Built to Move, Designed to Stop

Why India’s systems keep interrupting its own momentum

The War in Iran: The Illusion of Decisive Force

One month in, the limits of conventional military power are being laid bare. As a “dual chokehold” on global energy flows emerges, the old security umbrella of the Gulf states is being dismantled. It is forcing a permanent re-pricing of both regional and global risk.

The Economy We Have, Not the One We Imagined

Why the Gulf crisis may be India’s moment for the next phase of reform

How Iran Is Turning the Global Economy Into a Battlefield

As the conflict with the United States and Israel intensifies, Iran’s new leadership is signalling a prolonged confrontation—one that combines conventional warfare with pressure on global energy flows and supply chains.

The US–Israel War on Iran: The Risks to India’s Strategic Hedging

Energy dependence, remittance flows and trade corridors reveal how deeply India’s economy is tied to stability in West Asia. Part II of a two-part series.

The US–Israel War on Iran: Energy, Power and Regional Disruption

Energy chokepoints, proxy escalation and great-power recalibration are reshaping the Gulf and unsettling the global order. Part I of a two-part series.

Tariffs Are the Noise. Realignment Is the Signal

Even if Trump’s tariffs disappear, the forces reshaping global trade—geopolitics, security concerns and reconfigured regional blocs—are here to stay

India’s Trade Deals and the New Meaning of Strategic Autonomy

What India’s agreements with the US and EU reveal about power, policy space, and calibrated accommodation

India Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI

Why India’s AI moment will be decided less by models—and more by how intelligence is applied, governed, and trusted

Trendspotting 2026: India Cannot App Its Way to Prosperity

Another 50 tech IPOs won’t build a middle class

Between Jugaad and Destiny: India’s Missing Medium Term

Why a civilisation that thinks in eternity still struggles to plan in decades

America’s Iran Trap Is Closing

Carrier strike groups, nuclear deadlines and a brittle regime in Tehran are converging on a moment where Washington may discover that every move—strike, sabotage or restraint—ends in escalation

Trade Is the New Geopolitics—and India Must Learn to Play It

Why India’s future power will be shaped less by diplomacy and more by trade architecture

Iran at the Brink: Five Scenarios That Could Reshape the Region

Economic collapse, political revolt and great-power rivalry converge in Iran’s most dangerous moment in decades.

Rivers, Bronzes and the Architecture of Ambition

What the Chola trail reveals about power, systems, memory, and coffee

The Ecology of Engagement: What Madhav Gadgil Taught Us to See

From sacred groves to the Western Ghats, Gadgil’s work rebuilt the bridge between science and lived experience.

A World Without Endgames

What prolonged global conflicts mean for Europe, China—and India’s narrowing strategic space.

Test cricket’s second innings

With the right positioning, Test cricket can become a premium cultural product — and a powerful tourism engine. The BCCI is uniquely placed to lead that shift.

Understanding the Living Will—Clarity, Autonomy, and Care at the End of Life

Why talking about death early may be the most humane act of care we offer our families—and ourselves

When Numbers Lie

Why measurement is never neutral—and why AI forces us to rethink what we trust

The Year the World Learned to Live Without America

How Trump’s tariffs, Europe’s capitulation, China’s counter-moves and India’s narrowing room for manoeuvre reshaped the global order.

2025 in Review | Episode 5: India’s Strategic Tightrope in a Fragmenting World

Ambassador Shyam Saran on a post-American order, a slowing China, and how India must balance room for manoeuvre with hard-headed realism on Russia, the US and China.

The Broken Windows of Our Moral Life

How small everyday choices shape cultures, organisations, and the societies we become

2025 in Review | Episode 4: Europe’s Year of Hard Choices

Europe entered 2025 already strained by war, fractured politics, and economic anxiety. As Philippe Le Corre explains, this was the year when three pressures collided—an unending war in Ukraine, a drastically altered transatlantic dynamic under Trump 2.0, and a more openly competitive China

Toxic Greed: How a $12.5 Billion Crisis Exposed a Global Corporate Failure

When innovation icons turn into liability machines, it’s not chemistry that fails—it’s governance, incentives, and courage

India’s Labour Codes: The Shift from Protecting Jobs to Formalising Work

The Codes rewrite the architecture of wages, flexibility, digital compliance, gig work and industrial relations. But the real transformation depends on how states implement them—and how leaders rebuild trust, dignity and fairness inside workplaces

2025 in Review | Episode 3: America’s Year of Disruption

Justin Logan of the Cato Institute on how Trump’s second term reshaped global trade, defense alignments, and America’s domestic equilibrium—and why the turbulence may be far from over

Who Will Win the MAGA Crown?

Three competing visions inside the MAGA movement—over AI, immigration and national sovereignty—may determine America’s technological doctrine for the next decade

2025 in Review | Episode 2: The Erosion of Global Norms & Accelerating AI

Sundeep Waslekar, president of Strategic Foresight Group, on a West in turmoil, an international order in free fall, and an AI race racing ahead of rules.

2025 in Review | Episode 1: China and the Trumpian Reset

How does China see the Trumpian reset of the global order? What's really happening inside its domestic economy? And are we seeing signs of a thaw with India? A conversation with Chinese economist Prof. Yao Yang

The Age of Individualism—and Its Unseen Costs

John Kay—one of the world’s leading thinkers on economics, corporate purpose, and capitalism—explores why individualism remains so deeply entrenched, even as it fuels inequality, populism, and institutional decay. Part 1 of a two-part conversation

The Government Works—Just Not How You Think

The government is not as a machine to fix, but a living system to serve: a conversation with Subroto Bagchi, entrepreneur, author, and public servant

The Tariff Trap: Why Economic Weapons Misfire in the Age of Silicon

Tariffs were designed for a world of steel and sugar. They’re hopelessly out of sync with the quantum-entangled world of semiconductors

US Shutdown Theater: Starring US Congress, Directed by US Constitution?

Britain and India survive budget battles. The US turns them into a national pastime

The $100K H-1B Shock & India’s Innovation Moment

The visa fee has sent shockwaves through the global talent ecosystem. What does this mean for U.S. startups, Indian engineers, and the future of innovation?

From Gaza to Doha:How Israel’s Strike on Qatar Shook the Middle East

Israel’s strike on Qatar has triggered a dangerous new phase in the Middle East — exposing Washington’s conflicting roles as ally and broker

The Quiet Drift Toward Precarity

What the rise of contract labour reveals about the health of India’s factories — and the future of India Inc.

Inside India’s Real-Money Gaming Ban: Design, Addiction, & the Business of Play

What India’s ban on real-money gaming reveals about design, addiction, and opinion

12 Places That Helped Shape Post-Independence India

They tell the story of modern India’s evolution

Part 2: How Experts Are Reconstructing the AI 171 Tragedy

Why the media frenzy around the air crash is starting to look like six blind men and the elephant. The second in a three part series

AI 171: The Investigation That Could Redefine Aviation Safety: Part 1

A modern Boeing Dreamliner fell from the sky seconds after takeoff—now, the race is on to uncover whether this was a tragic outlier or a signal that something deeper is broken. The first in a three part series

Trump's Tariff Gambit and the Global Trade Dilemma

In the Indo-Pacific, America’s transactionalism collides with its strategic incoherence—posing hard choices for its partners

Who owns your data—you, the creator, or the platform?

The Kunal Kamra-BookMyShow face-off is more than a dust-up between a performer and a ticketing platform. It is a snapshot of a larger issue that will only become more pressing. And it impacts all of us

The Billion-User Bet

Nandan Nilekani’s key to unlock the Indian market opportunity and galvanise growth: reforms in the four key areas of technology, capital, entrepreneurship and formalization

The mental model every investor should learn (but most don't)

Why understanding market fluctuations is your best defense against costly mistakes

Trump’s hardball tactics to extract minerals & peace in Ukraine

Ukraine’s critical minerals deal with the US hangs on the edge of a precipice. Will it be a harbinger of peace with Russia? Or a deal too complex for even Trump to swing?

Masterclass: The World in 2025 - Part 2

15 takeaways from Part 2 of the two-part Masterclass series with former foreign secretary Shyam Saran