Reads budget documents for fun and gives the government credit for the reforms the opposition would rather not discuss. No patience for Congress-era nostalgia dressed up as policy.
· 7 min read
The government’s income-tax overhaul was not a giveaway but a calculated bet on household confidence, simpler compliance and consumption. Congress’s reflexive dismissal reveals how little economic imagination remains in its nostalgia-driven politics.
· 7 min read
The 2026–27 Budget deserves credit for keeping public investment high while continuing fiscal consolidation. My complaint is not that the government lacks direction, but that it still explains its most consequential economic choice less effectively than the opposition attacks it.
· 8 min read
Clean electoral rolls are a democratic necessity, and the opposition’s demand to abandon verification is unserious. But defending SIR does not require pretending that confusing forms, opaque deletions and slow appeals are acceptable.
· 7 min read
The caste count is necessary, but the more important reform is the government’s decision to pair it with a digital, auditable Census. I think the opposition’s slogan-first politics now has to confront the harder business of turning categories into competent policy.
· 9 min read
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra said it when it wasn't fashionable to say it: the 'apolitical' uprising that humbled the Modi government was built, leadership seat by leadership seat, out of the Aam Aadmi Party. Four months on, the movement's own rebels, a rival MP, and a Delhi High Court summons have only proven him right — and the roar has gone quiet.
· 7 min read
The Modi government’s most consequential economic achievement may be the plumbing beneath everyday life, not a photogenic mega-project. Congress can invoke its past contributions, but it cannot plausibly pretend that today’s scale, interoperability and political intent arrived by inheritance alone.
· 6 min read
The Union Budget’s most defensible achievement is not a headline scheme but its refusal to abandon investment and fiscal discipline. Congress calls that caution; I call it the unglamorous foundation on which durable welfare depends.
· 6 min read
The government was right to use incentives to pull electronics factories into India. The next reform must reward Indian components, engineering and supplier depth—not another decade of imported innards inside locally tightened screws.
