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.
· 6 min read
The INDIA alliance has turned a complicated electoral-roll dispute into a morality play, but the government cannot answer every legitimate anxiety with partisan counterattack. BJP should defend verification while demanding unusually transparent remedies for wrongful deletion.
· 8 min read
I would rather judge the Modi government by what it builds and how honestly it records the bill than by one afternoon of Budget slogans. The less glamorous shift toward capital creation and cleaner accounts deserves more credit—and stricter execution scrutiny—than it receives.
· 7 min read
Narendra Modi’s greatest political achievement is not electoral longevity but making delivery, scale and national ambition unavoidable tests of government. His admirers should celebrate that shift without pretending every promise has already become an outcome.
· 7 min read
I have spent years complaining that India’s middle class was praised in speeches and punished in tax forms. The government’s widening of the zero-tax threshold is a real reform, even if the unfinished work on compliance is less glamorous and more important.
· 7 min read
I find the government’s patient emphasis on capital formation more convincing than the opposition’s familiar demand for another dramatic giveaway. The real test, however, is whether ministries can turn allocations into completed assets rather than impressive tables.
· 6 min read
The opposition is wrong to treat every deletion as proof of a conspiracy, yet the Election Commission cannot answer legitimate anxiety with institutional hauteur. A credible revision needs relentless correction, transparent records and fewer procedural surprises.
· 7 min read
The Modi government’s most consequential economic achievement is not one dramatic announcement but the steady pairing of public investment, fiscal repair and middle-class tax relief. Congress calls that uninspiring; I call it what grown-up reform looks like.
· 7 min read
The 2026–27 Budget is not a carnival of giveaways, and that is precisely why I find it credible. The Modi government’s preference for capital, manufacturing and fiscal restraint deserves more credit than the opposition’s reheated promise that every problem can be solved by another entitlement.
· 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.
