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India and the Oil Shock: How Energy Security Held Up and the Risks That Remain
Opinion: India imports the overwhelming majority of its crude, and half of it once transited the Strait of Hormuz. That it weathered the 2026 Iran crisis without rationing is a vindication of a decade of diversification and reserve-building. But complacency now would be dangerous — with the rupee near 96 to the dollar, Brent restless, and a weak monsoon emerging as a rival macro threat, India must press harder on reserves, renewables, domestic output and diversified routes.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 18, 2026
Delimitation 2026: Why Redrawing Lok Sabha Seats by Population Threatens South India
Opinion: The proposal to redraw and expand the Lok Sabha on the basis of the 2021 Census treats representation as a simple headcount. It is nothing of the sort. Delimitation on population alone would penalise the southern states that curbed their fertility and reward those that did not — breaking a decades-old constitutional bargain. It must be negotiated, with seat floors and compensatory mechanisms, not simply imposed.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 18, 2026
Why the RBI Is Right to Hold Its Nerve on Rates
June inflation breached the RBI's 4% target and oil risks are rising, but with core demand soft and growth strong, a supply-driven spike is not the moment for the central bank to reverse course. Patience, not a knee-jerk hike, is the disciplined call.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 16, 2026
Delimitation: Representation Versus the Federal Bargain
Redrawing Lok Sabha seats by population is democratically intuitive, but pushing delimitation through without a fresh federal understanding risks deepening a north-south divide. The process needs consensus as much as arithmetic.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 16, 2026
AI Will Rewrite, Not End, India's IT Story
The 'deal-rich, job-light' fear misreads Indian IT's moment. TCS's hiring rebound alongside a fast-scaling AI business shows automation and jobs can coexist, but only if the sector reskills its workforce quickly and moves up the value chain.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 15, 2026
India's Water Security Is the Defining Challenge Ahead
India's per capita freshwater availability has fallen 70% since independence, yet water policy stays fragmented across dozens of bodies. A coherent national framework — constitutional, institutional and economic — is now a strategic necessity, not a choice.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 12, 2025
The Growth vs Climate Trade-Off Is a False Choice
The claim that climate action imposes prohibitive development costs on India is undercut by the country's own renewable-energy trajectory. The real choice is not growth versus climate, but a managed transition versus a disruptive crisis.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 10, 2025
Why India's Universities Underperform on Research
India runs the world's largest higher-education system yet produces a fraction of the globally impactful research its scale implies. The causes are structural — the affiliation model and risk-averse grant funding — and need systemic reform, not cosmetic fixes.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 8, 2025
ONDC Is Working. Now It Needs the Right Safeguards.
The Open Network for Digital Commerce has cut transaction costs for small sellers by 30-60%. But as it scales, the absence of independent grievance and arbitration mechanisms threatens the trust that gives the open-protocol model its value.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 6, 2025
India's FPO Model Needs Capital and Market Access
India has registered over 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations, but most are structurally weak from inadequate working capital, poor market access and thin governance. Fixing the model is among the highest-return rural-development investments available.
Abhijit Chowdhury·Jul 4, 2025