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