Author: R Suryamurthy

The Indian political calendar in 2026 may not threaten the stability of the Union government, but it will quietly test something far more consequential: whether the Bharatiya Janata Party can still expand in a country where regional identities, linguistic pride and sub-national politics increasingly resist national homogenisation. Five Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry stand between the BJP and a long-held ambition: breaking into states where power has remained stubbornly local. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, this is not just another electoral cycle. It may well be the last clear…

India’s trade calendar is entering another make-or-break week, but the diplomacy behind it is still weighed down by a decade of defensive policymaking. The arrival of Deputy US Ambassador for Trade Rick Switzer on December 10-11 is meant to give fresh momentum to the long-pending Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA). Instead, it is exposing how deeply India’s negotiations with Washington—and with Brussels, London and others—have been slowed by accumulated mistrust, tariff battles and an investment regime many partners still view as unpredictable. The Ministry of External Affairs called Switzer’s trip a “familiarisation visit”, but in reality it is an attempt to…

India’s map of foreign-student inflows is shifting faster than policymakers care to admit. A new NITI Aayog working paper shows that Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh are rapidly emerging as the country’s strongest magnets for international students, while Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, once the pillars of India’s inbound ecosystem, are watching their dominance crumble. Karnataka’s slump is the clearest measure of this churn. In 2012-13, the state enrolled 13,182 foreign students. By 2021–22, that number had collapsed to 5,954, a staggering 55 per cent fall for what was once India’s default destination for engineering and management aspirants. Tamil…

India’s long-delayed data protection regime finally came into force on Friday with the notification of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 and the operationalisation of the Data Protection Board of India (DPBI). But even as the government set an 18-month countdown for full compliance, lawyers, policy analysts and digital rights groups warned that the heart of the privacy framework remains compromised by sweeping state exemptions and unresolved structural gaps. On paper, the rules deepen requirements around consent, data notices, grievance timelines and safeguards for children. In practice, experts say, the government still retains the power to exempt any…

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has thrown a stark spotlight on the global failure to recover criminal wealth, exposing how only US$12 billion in illicit assets is confiscated each year, barely 1% of the estimated US$2.7 trillion generated through crime. Behind the numbers lies a deeper indictment: decades of anti-money laundering laws have done little to claw back what criminals have stolen. The FATF’s new “Asset Recovery Guidance and Best Practices”, its first major reform in three decades, seeks to turn asset recovery from a bureaucratic afterthought into a central test of enforcement credibility. The report lays out sharper…

Bihar is heading into yet another election that looks less like a contest of ideas and more like an auction of promises. This time, the bidders are chasing the state’s most decisive constituency: its women. In recent years, women in Bihar have quietly altered the state’s political arithmetic. They vote in greater numbers than men, carry the memory of state-backed self-help groups, and weigh the price of everyday essentials far more seriously than the slogans that fill the airwaves. Every major political alliance knows it. The result is an election narrative built almost entirely around the language of subsidies, cash…

Gold is no longer just glittering; it is speaking — and what it says is unsettling for the U.S. dollar. The yellow metal’s record-breaking surge in 2025 has gone far beyond the logic of safe-haven buying. Beneath the rally lies a quieter revolution — a deliberate, methodical rebalancing of the global financial system away from a single-currency anchor. New data from the World Gold Council (WGC) and a parallel analysis by CareEdge Global suggest that the world is witnessing not merely a “gold rush,” but a strategic dedollarisation. In the words of one senior Asian economist, “We are entering a…

There were two bandits in India’s sandalwood story. One carried a rifle in the forests of Sathyamangalam; the other wielded red tape in the corridors of power. Veerappan may have smuggled sandalwood out by the truckload, but the real looter was the system that turned the world’s most prized tree into a bureaucratic hostage. A latest Niti Aayog document, “Sandalwood Development Committee Report” has exposed what every forester already knew and every policymaker ignored: India’s sacred tree has been bled dry not by smugglers alone, but by the state’s own suffocating embrace.The document is nothing short of an autopsy of…

Bihar’s 2025 Assembly election, slated for November 6 and 11, is no ordinary contest. It’s a test of whether India’s politically combustible heartland will continue to reward continuity under Nitish Kumar’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or gamble on change through Tejashwi Yadav’s Mahagathbandhan. With over 7.4 crore voters and multiple crosscurrents—from youth job angst to voter-roll controversies—the outcome may hinge less on caste arithmetic and more on who best channels a new kind of Bihar fatigue: a state tired of slogans, hungry for results. Youth and Jobs: The Defining Fault Line If any single issue can upend Bihar’s entrenched caste…

India’s states closed FY23 with public debt equivalent to nearly 23% of their combined economic output, with several breaching prudential limits set by the Finance Commission, raising concerns over fiscal sustainability. According to the State Finances 2022–23 report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the 28 states together carried a public debt burden of ₹59.6 trillion, equal to 22.96% of their combined GSDP, up more than threefold from FY14. When public account liabilities such as provident funds and deposits are included, total state liabilities rose to ₹72.7 trillion, or 28% of GSDP. Eight states had public debt exceeding 30%…