Category Economy and Infrastructure

Energy

India’s Renewable Energy Push Needs Storage to Last

India continues to add renewable power generation capacity without any coherent strategy for its full utilisation, often ordering RE generation to back down to maintain grid stability. A vital deficit is a policy for storing renewable power, which is intermittent and missing from action for much of the day, forcing reliance on thermal power as India's mainstay.

Trump

Trump, AI and the Global Growth Test of 2026

Earlier this month, Sam Altman of OpenAI declared Code Red at the company: the latest version of its chatbot was underperforming Google’s latest offering, Gemini 3. That panic had one simple explanation: he believes artificial intelligence (AI) to be yet another technology service in which the winner takes all.

Commercial

Who Should Pay to Preserve Urban Commercial Heritage?

When a sudden rent increase forces a thriving commercial establishment — that has a century-old legacy and is a hallmark of a historic locality — to shut shop, is there any sensible alternative to the mournful death of a chunk of the city’s living tradition? 

Vajpayee

Vajpayee: The Gentle Architect of Modern India

I have a vivid memory of a gleeful and beaming laugh of the great statesman and leader, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was born on this day in 1924 in Gwalior. An affable personality, Vajpayee would express his love for Mithila’s Rohu and his appreciation for Maithili language.

e-commerce

FDI in E-commerce Inventory Can Work—If It’s Export-Focused

The government is considering allowing e-commerce companies with foreign direct investment to hold inventory, strictly for the purpose of exports. This is welcome. The government should go ahead and convert the proposal into policy action.

Macaulay

Macaulay and English Education: Where PM Modi’s Account Falls Short

Prime Minister Narendra Modi gets it wrong on Macaulay. Give the devil his due. His introduction of English language education in India is one of the good things colonialism did for India. It paved the way for Indians to enter the world of modern knowledge, to savour the fruits of the scientific revolution that swept across Europe and turned the world of scholarship upside down in the 16th and 17th centuries, and for the oppressed castes of India to enter the world of learning, from which Indian tradition had excluded them, and for the enrichment and growth of India’s regional languages and cultures. English education introduced Indians to the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity, totally alien to monarchy and the caste system.

NDA

Bihar Boost for NDA, Cautious Optimism on US Trade Deal

Bihar has presented the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in charge at the Centre a sterling electoral victory. Nitish Kumar has been sworn in as chief minister for the 10th time.

The fact that the NDA has won all, save two, state assembly elections held since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections serves, in the eyes of many, to shake off doubts about the stability of the ruling coalition created by the BJP’s failure to secure a simple majority, leave alone the two-thirds majority it had been seeking.

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