Blogs

India’s next infrastructure revolution will not be measured in kilometres built, but in hours of uninterrupted national functioning. Every era leaves behind an institutional legacy. Independent India built dams and steel plants. Liberalisation integrated the economy with the world. The digital revolution transformed governance, finance and public service delivery. Today, an unprecedented expansion of physical…

India surprised the world by building Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) at population scale. Aadhaar transformed identity. UPI transformed payments. DigiLocker transformed access to public documents. Together, they showed that digital infrastructure, designed as a public good, can transform governance. The next governance revolution will come from combining AI with this digital infrastructure to address one…

On March 3, 2026, Stephen Kallarakkal, a native of Angamaly, set off across the length and breadth of Kerala with a single goal: Promoting football among students. Over the next 100 days he covered nearly 13,000km, enough distance, travelled in a straight line, to have reached New Jersey, one of the host cities of the…

“For anyone who leads you to this world has deceived you, and anyone who leads you to works alone makes you weary, and anyone who leads you to God has befriended you,” said Hazrat Ibn Abbād al‑Rundī (1333–1390), a Sufi mystic. The world, al-dunya, with all its trappings of beauty, may seem tempting, but pursuit…

Is race-swapping casting for films based on great stories unfair to cultural memory? About three millennia after Homer sang of the Trojan War, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has sparked a debate over casting Oscar-winning Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. For some, it’s a bold choice that reflects modern world diversity. For others, it’s an…

Why is Bollywood’s retelling of our stories so high on melodramatic mediocrity? Ten years ago, a Bollywood superstar paid me handsomely to narrate Ramayan to him. He wanted to create a blockbuster meant to re-ignite India’s civilisational glory. I gave him structure, symbolism, variations, history, the reason the epic is called the Fifth Veda.At the…

Japan’s way of coping with disruption is a blueprint for other societies There is a popular internet trope that Japan lives in the future. From the Shinkansen to intelligent AI-enabled hospitals, in many aspects Japan indeed feels futuristic. But what if Japan is more? A mirror to the rest of the world, showing what awaits…

In India Corporate Business structure, a small individual can play several parts / roles. These parts could be played – totally distinct and separate or the same individual could play separate parts at the same time. The word ‘small’ reflects the importance of the individual’s part in the entire corporate business structure. It is sad,…

For some time now, a question had been nagging me. Not about Shakespeare, quantum physics or football’s offside rule. About ChatGPT itself. So, the other day, I decided it was time to put the accused on the witness stand. So I asked: “Data security today is a myth. Names, addresses, phone numbers, shopping habits and personal preferences…

To be an English football fan is to suffer. The rest of the world mistakes ‘it’s coming home’ as a battle cry of arrogance, but the song it’s derived from, Three Lions, is about 60-plus years of failure. Yet, make no mistake, England’s 2-1 loss to Argentina in the World Cup semifinal is the single…