The Best Stories of Summer 2026

Ideas that help make sense of a changing world

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Founding Fuel

Burgenstock and the New Reality of Power in the Middle East

The US-Iran talks in Switzerland may have reduced the immediate risk of war. But they did little to alter the Middle East's underlying balance of power. Iran remains central to the region's strategic calculations, Israel's concerns remain unresolved, and American leverage appears more limited than many assumed.

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

Democratising Capacity Creation

Why India’s next manufacturing push may require trusting entrepreneurs more than planners

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Ajay Chacko

Director | Keya Foods International

The Age of Connected Crises

From rail corridors and energy markets to missile inventories and military alliances, the world's major crises are becoming increasingly interconnected

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

Reform 3.0: What Has to Change

India doesn’t need another reform agenda. It needs an economy that makes building, hiring, and growing easier.

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Haresh Chawla

Investor | Entrepreneur

Reform 3.0: Why India Keeps Missing the Mountain

India didn’t falter for lack of ideas or ambition. It faltered because too many parts of its economy were never aligned toward the outcome that mattered most—productive work at scale.

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Haresh Chawla

Investor | Entrepreneur

Breaking Ranks: The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the Unravelling of Gulf Consensus

As the UAE exits OPEC, long-simmering economic and strategic divergences with Saudi Arabia begin to reshape Gulf politics and energy markets

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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.

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Debajit Ghosh

Author

The System China Built, and India Has Yet to Understand

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G Venkat Raman

Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences | Indian Institute of Management, Indore

We Passed the Exam. We Failed the Economy

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

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Haresh Chawla

Investor | Entrepreneur

Built to Move, Designed to Stop

Why India’s systems keep interrupting its own momentum

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Ajay Chacko

Director | Keya Foods International

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.

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

The Economy We Have, Not the One We Imagined

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

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Haresh Chawla

Investor | Entrepreneur

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.

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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.

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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.

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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

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Haresh Chawla

Investor | Entrepreneur

Trendspotting 2026: India Cannot App Its Way to Prosperity

Another 50 tech IPOs won’t build a middle class

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Haresh Chawla

Investor | Entrepreneur

Between Jugaad and Destiny: India’s Missing Medium Term

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

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Ajay Chacko

Director | Keya Foods International

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

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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.

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

Rivers, Bronzes and the Architecture of Ambition

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

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Vijay Bhat

Founder-Director | Roots & Wings Consulting Services

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.

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Founding Fuel

A World Without Endgames

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

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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.

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Shravan Bhat

Journalist | Power Finance & Risk

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

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Founding Fuel

When Numbers Lie

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

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Founding Fuel

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.

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Dinesh Narayanan

Independent journalist | Author of The RSS and The Making of The Deep Nation

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.

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Founding Fuel

The Broken Windows of Our Moral Life

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

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Kavi Arasu

Leadership and Talent Development Professional

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

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Founding Fuel

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

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Devangshu Dutta

Founder | Third Eyesight

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

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Vineet Kaul, Vivek Patwardhan & Satish Pradhan

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

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Founding Fuel

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

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Sundeep Waslekar

President | Strategic Foresight Group

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.

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Founding Fuel

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

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Founding Fuel

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

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Founding Fuel

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

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Founding Fuel

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

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Shishir Prasad

Senior Business Journalist

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

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

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Sachin Garg

Independent Public Policy Consultant

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?

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Founding Fuel

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

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Vivek Y. Kelkar

Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability

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.

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Vineet Kaul

HR Advisor and Mentor

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

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Shrinath V

Founder, The Salient Advisory | Product & AI Strategy Advisor

12 Places That Helped Shape Post-Independence India

They tell the story of modern India’s evolution

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Founding Fuel

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

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Anmol Shrivastava & Indrajit Gupta