Bismillah Bee cannot fathom owning a car. She is a 67-year-old widow living in a confined three-room home with a family of 12, subsisting on an income from peeling garlic for a local business. Despite Bee’s family being …
India’s EV Story So Far India’s electric mobility transition has moved from policy ambition to market reality. By the end of FY2025–26, more than 2.55 million electric vehicles (EVs) were sold, representing year-on-year …
Few institutional innovations in Indian development policy have achieved the reach, durability, and cross-scheme ubiquity of the Self-Help Group (SHG). From a quiet pilot in Karnataka in the mid-1980s to a network of ove…
Every year the Income Tax Department of India processes a mammoth number of returns on the final day of filing, despite the window staying open for months. The GST portal reportedly crashed on its deadline in August 2023…
Aaina Saini Climate policy in India has focused primarily on agricultural productivity, household consumption, and infrastructure resilience, but the gendered labour market effects of climate variability remain understud…
In April 2026, Indian parliament found itself embroiled in a furore over women’s political representation. The government introduced three interconnected bills: the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, the Delimita…
Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, creates new rights for every citizen over their personal data. Whether those rights translate into genuine protection depends on three things: enforcement capacity, regulatory …
Technology Is Reshaping National Security The sources of military advantage are shifting. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, satellite communications, advanced semiconductors, and cyber infrastructure, technolo…
Founder of Inflect and LSE-trained political economist, Malvika advises governments, industry, and institutions at the intersection of policy, power, and economic reform. This is Part I of a series auditing Indian foreig…
The gig economy in India is frequently framed as a great equaliser. With its low barriers to entry and the promise of being your own boss, it has become the new frontier of urban employment, projected to reach 23.5 milli…
Radha Malani and Sneha Thomas The Government of India must maintain and publish the Assets Register to supplement Finance Accounts and promote fiscal transparency as mandated by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Manag…
India’s disaster management framework has shifted from a relief-centric approach to one that formally recognises disaster risk reduction (DRR). However, this transition remains uneven in practice. While policies emphasis…
Anaemia in India continues to persist despite more than five decades of targeted public health interventions. Its persistence reflects not a lack of effort, but structural weaknesses in programme design, fragmented imple…
India’s higher education system has expanded rapidly, yet labour market outcomes reveal a widening gap between degrees and employability. As automation and digitalisation reshape workforce demand, the challenge is no lon…
Generative AI is rapidly compressing the structure of creative industries. As production becomes easier, the real constraint in creative work shifts elsewhere: judgment. The question is no longer whether something can be…
Carbon Markets essentially put a price on emissions. Countries can develop Carbon Credit Trading Systems that allow carbon credits to be bought and sold by emitters, depending on actual and expected emissions levels. Cou…
India recently announced a ₹1 Lakh Crore R&D fund. While this could potentially be transformative, sustained progress in strategic and frontier technologies is not only a function of releasing funding or establishing…
ASHA workers are central to India’s last-mile health delivery, now performing far beyond the limited, part-time mandate originally assigned to them. Yet they remain classified as voluntary workers, compensated largely th…
Radha Malani, Sneha Mariam Thomas, and Zoyah Virani Gender Budgeting in India has been positioned as a tool for policymakers to measure the quantum of budgetary resources that have the potential to empower women. Despite…
The biggest influence on what Indian consumers buy is no longer the price tag- it is the order in which options appear on a screen. What appears as choice is increasingly shaped by rankings, recommendations, and defaults…
The debate over the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026 has become a proxy fight over a deeper question: whether Indian higher education will treat …
The Shifting Calculus of “Safe Assets” For three decades, U.S. Treasury securities were the closest thing the world had to a truly risk-free asset. Central banks and sovereign wealth funds held them because they combined…
Greenland used to sit, geopolitically speaking, at the edge of the map: a vast, sparsely populated island whose strategic value was mostly a Cold War memory of bombers and early-warning radar. In the new era, defined by …
Every click, swipe, and search leaves a trace of the user, a digital footprint; and unlike footprints in sand, digital footprints never wash away. As societies digitise, personal data has become both a valuable commodity…
Iran is not on the brink of collapse. And it is no longer operating within its old margins of control. These statements are true together. Beyond the scale of unrest, what distinguishes the current crisis from earlier pr…