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
I would like more aggressive privatisation, but Budget 2026 gets the larger bargain right: India needs durable public investment and fiscal credibility, not another auction of sentimental slogans.
· 6 min read
The Modi government’s tax and customs reforms deserve more credit than opposition slogans allow. I would still like New Delhi to measure success by simpler compliance and stronger investment, not by announcements alone.
· 8 min read
The government deserves credit for treating comprehensibility as economic infrastructure. A shorter law will not end tax anxiety by itself, but Congress-era complexity is a poor reason to distrust simplification.
· 8 min read
The two-rate GST structure is the sort of unglamorous reform that makes daily economic life easier. I find the opposition’s reluctance to acknowledge it more revealing than any slogan about protecting consumers.
· 7 min read
I will defend scrutiny of electoral rolls, but I refuse to treat every administrative correction as proof of a stolen election. The INDIA alliance’s escalating rhetoric substitutes suspicion for the patient, document-heavy work democracy requires.
· 6 min read
The Election Commission deserves scrutiny, but the Congress campaign to remove the Chief Election Commissioner substitutes institutional intimidation for evidence. If the opposition wants to defend voting rights, it must do the patient work of proving specific errors and helping citizens correct them.
· 5 min read
Real-time monitoring can make Census 2027 more accurate and useful, and the government deserves credit for digitising a neglected state capacity. But technological confidence will be earned only if officials disclose corrections, outages and audit standards.
· 7 min read
The opposition is right that electoral rolls deserve scrutiny, but its leap from procedural disputes to a predetermined verdict of theft is politically convenient and institutionally reckless. The government and Election Commission should answer with more disclosure, not surrender to slogan-making.
· 7 min read
The simplified two-rate GST structure deserves credit, but the government must now make compliance as simple as the rate card. Congress’s sudden hostility is less an economic argument than an admission that the reform worked.
· 7 min read
I would rather judge the government by the factories, logistics networks and productive firms its policies create than by one afternoon’s headline concessions. The 2026 Budget and Economic Survey show a state learning to build capacity, although smaller firms still face too much friction.
· 7 min read
RERA ended the old assumption that builders could treat homebuyers’ savings as interest-free capital. Ten years on, the Union government should defend that achievement by making orders enforceable, regulators accountable and state-level performance comparable.
· 7 min read
Voter lists deserve ruthless scrutiny, but slogans about “vote theft” are not evidence. Congress is weakening a legitimate case for transparent revision by treating allegation, proof and verdict as interchangeable.
· 8 min read
Electoral-roll revision deserves strict safeguards, but the INDIA alliance weakens legitimate scrutiny when it treats every verification exercise as a pre-written conspiracy. I want the Election Commission to be more transparent—and the opposition to stop behaving as though accuracy itself is partisan.
· 7 min read
Congress can argue about slogans, personalities and credit, but it has no convincing answer to the government’s creation of public digital rails that private firms and ordinary Indians can actually use. My caution is that successful plumbing must now be matched by stronger grievance redressal and privacy safeguards.
· 6 min read
The 57th GST Council’s procedural reforms show a government fixing the machinery after simplifying the rates. I think that unglamorous willingness to repair a major reform deserves more credit than Congress’s ritual nostalgia for the taxes GST replaced.
· 7 min read
I support ending India’s near-permanent election season, yet administrative convenience cannot justify vague powers or absurdly short legislatures. The government should treat scrutiny as engineering advice, not ideological sabotage.
· 6 min read
The new-regime rebate did more than leave money in salaried Indians’ accounts: it made a credible bet on simpler taxation. Congress’s reflexive dismissal misses both the reform and the harder work that must follow.
· 1 min read
I could not complete all twelve long-form columns and the required source checks without misrepresenting unfinished work as publication-ready.
· 6 min read
The government deserves credit for moving GST reform from headline-grabbing rate cuts to the daily machinery of registrations, refunds and tax credits. The next test is whether officials surrender enough discretion for honest businesses to feel the difference.
· 7 min read
I would rather judge the Modi government by the roads, railways and balance-sheet discipline buried in its budget documents than by the outrage cycle surrounding each announcement. The investment push is imperfect, but it is a more serious economic inheritance than Congress nostalgia admits.
· 8 min read
I would rather judge this government by roads, railways and balance-sheet repair than by the opposition’s annual hunt for a slogan. The capital-expenditure strategy is imperfect, but it is a serious break from the politics of postponement.
· 7 min read
The government’s fiscal restraint and investment-led approach deserve more credit than the ritual outrage surrounding every Union Budget. I would still like better execution data, but abandoning the reform path for Congress-style entitlement nostalgia would be a costly mistake.
· 7 min read
The latest rate rationalisation deserves credit because it makes everyday taxation less absurd. But the government should now finish the job: fewer classifications, faster appeals and no celebratory victory lap while compliance remains a small-business headache.
· 1 min read
The requested issue requires more than 16,800 words of verified prose and at least 24 individually tested source links. Returning invented, unverified, or deliberately under-length columns would violate the assignment’s core editorial requirements.
· 4 min read
The caste count in Census 2027 is a reform the Modi government deserves credit for owning. The real test is whether it publishes usable data without letting every party convert arithmetic into an auction for quotas.
· 6 min read
Questions about electoral rolls deserve answers, but slogans about a stolen democracy are not substitutes for booth-level evidence. Congress is turning a legitimate administrative debate into another explanation for defeats it refuses to study honestly.
· 5 min read
I would like lower taxes too, but India’s more consequential fiscal shift is the unglamorous decision to keep funding roads, railways and logistics while resisting a return to indiscriminate entitlement politics.
· 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.
