Nirmalaji, Are You Willing to Take Some Risks?
In the Deccan Chronicle, ahead of the 2026 Union Budget, Pavan K Varma urges the government to take bold risks to boost investment, create jobs, strengthen manufacturing, and support the middle class.
He warns that without addressing structural challenges such as unsafe business environment, unemployment, and persistent inequality, India will miss its chance to harness growth in a volatile global landscape.
A leading corporate magnate recently told me that the government repeatedly asks businessmen to increase their risk appetite. He said that Indians, as born entrepreneurs, thrive on risk. But is the risk worth it in a milieu where failure is conflated with fraud, and even success is threatened with predatory investigative agencies if one is perceived to be not fully towing the government line? According to available statistics, between 2014 and 2024, 43,000 High Net-worth Individuals (HNIs) left India for Singapore, UAE, Australia, Canada and the US, taking with them personal wealth estimated to be in billions of dollars. In 2025 alone, approximately 26.8 billion dollars of personal wealth is estimated to have migrated out of India. Most of those leaving are young, and among the reasons cited by them is an unsafe business environment and arbitrary scrutiny by tax authorities and investigative agencies. Nirmalaji, can you risk dismantling the system that creates these apprehensions, to create greater investor confidence?Pavan K Varma, Deccan Chronicle
Hate Speeches in a Civilised Country Are Deplorable
In her weekly column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh writes that the all-too-familiar tactic of using hate speech and attacks against Muslims for political and electoral gain is eroding India’s social fabric.
She writes, “The irony of what these cynical politicians and violent fanatics are doing is that they seem to believe their hate speeches and violence are making India stronger. The exact opposite is happening…”
When you have been writing a political column for forty years as I have, a hard little core of cynicism settles in your heart. So, I have learned to expect little from our political leaders and to not be shocked by the awful things they are prepared to do just to win elections. Despite this, some things get said and done that still shock me. One of these came last week when I saw a clip of the Chief Minister of Assam ordering Hindus to harass Muslims who might be trying to get listed in electoral rolls. With a sickening, smarmy grin on his face, he told his Hindu audience that if they traveled in rickshaws or taxis driven by Muslims and they asked for five rupees they should be sure to give them four.Tavleen Singh, The Indian Express
When Purges Create a Power Vacuum
Writing for the Deccan Herald, Srikanth Kondapalli argues that the recent purge of senior military leaders under Xi Jinping has weakened China’s military leadership, heightened uncertainty over the country’s future direction, particularly when it comes to Taiwan, and increased risks to regional stability, including along India’s border.
He argues that such shifts in power could have far-reaching implications for geopolitical competition and global security.
The US’s new focus on consolidating influence in the Western Hemisphere leaves China a free hand in the Taiwan Straits and the South and East China Seas. But the CMC has no combatexperienced member, and the PLA is in churn and precariously placed. The Taiwan situation can lead to two possible scenarios: an invasion may be ruled out, given the potential resistance and perceived losses, or a high-risk mission may be initiated, with local commanders complying with no questions asked. The purge of Zhang and the other PLA officers points to severe political and military rifts and a climate of mistrust. For India, a fragile peace prevails on its border with China after disengagement and patrolling agreements were reached in October 2024. Nevertheless, since no forward movement has been made on the de-induction of troops, India needs to watch the evolving China situation closely.Srikanth Kondapalli, Deccan Herald
A Child of India, Voice of Indians
In the Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar pays tribute to the late veteran journalist Mark Tully, reminiscing about his conversations with the man known as “the voice of India” to audiences around the world.
Thapar writes that Tully’s deep understanding of India, its people, and culture earned him respect as a trusted chronicler of the country, even as he was occasionally criticised for being overly sympathetic.
Mark Tully’s death is truly the passing of an era. In his decades as the BBC’s chief of bureau in our country, he was certainly, as many fondly called him, the voice of India. For the millions of Indians who lived abroad in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, he was usually the only source of credible news and insight into what was happening at home...Mark’s strength was he spoke Hindi and understood India. He was at times criticised for being too sympathetic to this country. “He’s gone native,” his critics would allude. But that was unfair. What they overlooked was that intimacy gave him insights his rivals could not equal. It also gave him access few, if any, foreign correspondents could boast of.Karan Thapar, Hindustan Times
Secular TMC vs Communal BJP — the Bengali Voter Is Trapped in a Political Binary. It's Time to Move On
In his piece for The Indian Express, Abhik Bhattacharya writes that West Bengal’s politics remain stuck in a rigid binary between the TMC and the BJP, trapping voters between regional identity and religious mobilisation.
He argues, "the absence of a credible third space have frozen Bengal’s political imagination. It leaves Bengal without political exits."
"The Left parties, along with the Congress, have miserably failed to transcend this and create an alternative space. As a result, Bengal’s future is caught up in this confusion. Unless Bengalis learn to break free of this binary, the state risks remaining trapped in a political loop that repeats old ideals without offering new futures."Abhik Bhattacharya, The Indian Express
The Great Indian Non-Fiction Reading Cop-Out
In the Hindustan Times, Siddharth Chowdhury unpacks the recent trend of Indian writers and publishers increasingly gravitating toward non‑fiction over fiction pushed by market demands.
He laments the lack of depth in many contemporary novels and warns that this trend could weaken critical thought and cultural imagination.
So, could it be that most novels published in India over the past decade are not literary at all, some perhaps not even novels? I sense a bland sameness in much of this fiction, a smothering of voice in the service of political correctness. The Indian novel in English has ceased to be provocative. The 'personal' has flourished while the 'political' has been banished. Is this because the personal novel is easier to teach in creative writing schools?Siddharth Chowdhury, Hindustan Times
Are You Watching Orry’s ‘Feud’ With the Ali Khan Family? The Joke Isn’t on Him, It’s on Us
"In a society saturated with images, Orry understands that the image is the substance. He has weaponised the anecdote, monetised the cameo and systematised the social climb," writes Aishwarya Khosla in her article for the Indian Express.
Khosla argues that influencer Orry’s public 'feud' with Sara and Ibrahim Ali Khan as a symptom of contemporary celebrity culture, in which celebrities are no longer just individuals but allegories, standing in for larger narratives.
While we argue whether a man whose claim to fame is being famous for his famous friends even counts as a celebrity, he has already transcended the debate to become a “cultural artefact”. He is a case study in what happens when fame detaches from achievement and becomes pure performance. What is startling is that we built this altar of celebrity worship. He is merely performing the rituals we wrote...Consider his feuds, particularly the operatic fallout with the Ali Khan clan. This is social theatre at its finest. Each unfollow, each cryptic reel, each reference to “trauma” is a carefully released narrative pellet, fed to a media ecosystem that runs on conflict. He knows that in the digital agora, cohesion is boring. Fracture is the story, which in turn is currency.Aishwarya Khosla, The Indian Express
India’s Bane of Poor Quality Academic Textbooks
In The New Indian Express, Dinesh Singh writes that India suffers from a chronic problem of shortage of high-quality academic textbooks.
"Compelling students to rely on those shoddy textbooks and such practices have caused much harm to the cause of education in India," writes Singh.
If we were to examine the discipline of mathematics or of economics as taught in most Indian institutions at the level of the first degree, we shall discover two things, and both shall depend on the quality of the institution that we choose to put under the lens. If we look at the books—in the aforementioned disciplines—prescribed at a comparatively good university, we are most likely to find a preponderance of good quality textbooks authored mostly by academics from western nations and particularly from the US. At the same time, we shall find that at these so called ‘better universities’ there will be an acute absence of books authored by Indians. On the other hand, if we turn our spotlight on the not-so-well regarded institutions, we shall find a greater presence of books that bear the names of Indian authors and are in use in these universities and colleges. The unfortunate part of this story is that most of these books—that have been authored indigenously—are of a very abysmal quality. The situation becomes extremely worrying—even alarming—when we look at textbooks in the regional languages.Dinesh Singh, The New Indian Express