Blogs

If children’s folklore has the bogey man, a mythical monster used to frighten them into good behaviour, in real life, we adults have the Gas Man, a living terror who intimidates us into our best behaviour. Ask any Indian woman, and she’ll agree that the gas delivery agent is the most-awaited, most sought-after and also…

The teacher’s role, as we all have been used to, is all set to do a somersault. It has been changing all along, actually – just not so radically. When I was a kid, we had to depend on books for information. And since we neither had access to all books, nor the patience to…

India’s digital public infrastructure initiatives from mobility and payments to taxation, credit and e-commerce, is not executed by ministries or startups. It is by nonprofits. Behind systems like the National Payments Corporation of India, Goods and Services Tax Network, Open Network for Digital Commerce and Digi Yatra Foundation, I observe an institutional choice: the use…

As technology advances with AI to enhance efficiency and cut costs, enterprises deploying virtual assistants seek a competitive edge. The recent launch of US-based Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI model is causing a stir due to its sophisticated capabilities, which might challenge existing enterprise technology pillars and expose them to cyberattacks.  Concerns have intensified with reports…

Something is shifting in Indian banking, and most of the commentary has missed the point. Over the last eighteen months, boardroom tensions at more than one private sector bank have spilled into public view. A chairman has resigned under contested circumstances. Concerns raised internally by a former CFO about derivatives accounting have surfaced more than…

A 15-year-old from North Bihar has done what economists struggle to model and policymakers struggle to engineer. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has walked into the recent edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) and bent the game around him. His numbers are already extraordinary. In IPL 2026 till mid season, he crossed 400 runs at a strike rate…

Results are out, and they reveal a season of discontent. When three of four large states dislodge incumbents with firm mandates, something’s broken on the ground, from east to south, and maybe elsewhere. BJP’s eyed Bengal for years, but cultural and ideological barriers against it were always considered too high. Until they weren’t. Tamil Nadu…

Bengal, a habitual contrarian, has finally succumbed to the attractions of being one of the crowd of BJP-governed states in north India. Apart from Punjab, Himachal and Jharkhand, political geography has changed. Saffron’s sweep now includes the east, northeast, north and west of India, while four southern states hold out – Kerala, TN, Karnataka and…

Vijay has been handed something Tamil Nadu has never given a debutant before: a 100-plus-seat mandate, and a likely shot at CM’s chair. Voters have been more than kind. Question now is what he makes of it. The quietest fact of this verdict is the obliteration of Naam Tamilar Katchi. NTK had spent more than…

Yesterday’s assembly election results are a shot in the arm for BJP. In West Bengal particularly, having thrown everything and the kitchen sink into the fight to oust Mamata Banerjee, it played high-stakes poker and won. A bonus: TVK’s rise and ADMK’s diminution in Tamil Nadu spell the potential decline of Dravidianism after nearly 59…