Insurance Promoters Must Share Cost of Customer Harm

IRDAI’s proposal to link executive compensation with customer outcomes acknowledges the widening trust deficit within India’s insurance sector. But durable reform will need more.

Srinath Sridharan

IStock.com

Opinion

Is India’s Energy Shock the Same as the Pandemic Shock?

The RBI appears willing to look through the oil shock, but inflation risks are structurally different from the COVID-era disruptions that justified prolonged accommodation.

Kalyan Ram

India Telecom’s Pricing Power Story Is Starting to Fray

Telecom companies’ pricing power may not be as strong as investors think, with slowing ARPU momentum exposing limits to tariff-led growth.

Krishnadevan V

The Two-Year Yield Is Starting to Challenge the Fed

The two-year Treasury yield is beginning to price a world where the next Fed move may no longer be a cut.

V Thiagarajan

MGNREGA Repeal: A Reset for Rural Employment Guarantee

MGNREGA’s repeal marks a shift from demand-driven work guarantee to fixed-budget rural support, raising concerns over funding, access and worker security.

Sharmila Kantha

Private Credit’s Shadow Banking Boom Carries Familiar Risks

As private credit swells into a multi-trillion-dollar market, regulators may be underestimating the systemic risks lurking beneath its opaque structure.

Rahul Ghosh

The RBI’s Overnight Triumph and India’s Term Market Problem

RBI may have largely stabilised overnight rates, but fragmented term funding markets continue to weaken monetary transmission across India’s broader financial system.

R. Gurumurthy

Columnists

Michael Debabrata Patra

Michael Patra is an economist and former RBI Deputy Governor.

TK Arun

Arun is a seasoned writer on economic and policy matters.

Abheek Barua

Abheek is an Independent Economist and the Former Chief Economist at HDFC Bank.

Ajay Srivastava

Ajay Srivastava is the founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative.

Vijay Chauhan

Vijay Singh Chauhan, a former IRS official, is a Senior Visiting Fellow at ICPP, Ashoka University

Dhananjay Sinha

Dhananjay, a D-School alum, is CEO and Co-Head of Equities at Systematix Group.

Kirti Tarang Pande

Kriti is a psychologist specialising in mental health, org behaviour, and brand strategy

Srinath Sridharan

Srinath is an author, corporate advisor, and independent director on corporate boards.

Sharmila Chavaly

Ex-civil servant Chavaly held key Railways, Finance roles; specialises in infra & PPPs

Nilanjan Banik

Nilanjan Banik, Professor at Mahindra University, specialises in trade and development economics.

Rahul Ghosh

Rahul Ghosh is a banking and risk expert.

Rajesh Mahapatra

Rajesh Mahapatra is the former Editor of The Press Trust of India

Krishnadevan V

Krishnadevan is Editorial Director at BasisPoint Insight.

Dev Chandrasekhar

Chandra advises companies on big-picture narratives on strategy and markets.

Kalyan Ram

Kalyan Ram co-founded Cogencis. He now leads BasisPoint Insight.

R. Gurumurthy

Gurumurthy is an ex-central banker who handled markets, and later, financial stability for RBI.

Arvind Mayaram

Arvind Mayaram, former Finance Secretary, is Chairman of the Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur.

The Bureau

Asian Markets Turn Risk-Off as Iran Fears and Rising Yields Weigh

Fuel Prices Raised Again by 90 Paise/Litre Amid Higher Global Crude Costs

Asian Markets Cautiously Risk-On as Trump Delays Iran Strike

RBI Discontinues Investment Fluctuation Reserve Requirement for Banks

India’s Silver Import Curbs Aim to Plug UAE Duty Arbitrage

India Trade Deficit Widens in April, Drags Rupee to Record Low

India's Precious Metals Duty Hike Widens Dubai Arbitrage

Govt Imposes Fresh Curbs on Gold Imports Under Advance Authorisation Scheme

Deficient Monsoon, Iran War: A Double Shock to India’s Rural Economy

Learning to Shoot: I Tried to Fly Before I Could Walk

BasisPoint Groupthink

India May Need an Outside-In Economic Reset

As the global economy changes shape, India may benefit from an independent economic rethink led by a credible outsider with institutional gravitas.

Kalyan Ram

India Finally Spoke Honestly About Its External Risks

The CEA’s unusually candid speech acknowledged a reality markets have privately discussed for months: India’s external-sector vulnerabilities are becoming structural.

Kalyan Ram

Above and Beyond Duty

Current macroeconomic stress may mute criticism over the disproportionate increase in cess relative to customs duty in the latest hike in import taxes on gold and silver.

BasisPoint Groupthink

Water Water Everywhere, Not a Drop to Drink

A planet drowning in water yet dying of thirst. India stands on the front lines of a crisis that threatens food, cities, and survival.

Michael Debabrata Patra

India’s Energy Future Cannot Sail Through Hormuz Forever

India’s growing gas pipeline network may not eliminate import dependence, but it could soften future energy shocks in an increasingly unstable world.

Sujit Kumar*

The Trap India Faces Isn’t Just Geopolitical Anymore

Xi invoked Thucydides in Beijing. India, meanwhile, is discovering that the real trap isn’t geopolitical. It’s structural, and it’s already sprung.

Phynix

India’s Big IT Claims “AI-First”, Disclosures Show Otherwise

The Nifty IT P/E sits at around 20 times, well below the 28x-to-30x range the sector traded at through much of 2024. This compression tracks the widening distance between what the Big 6 are claiming on AI, and what they are disclosing.

Dev Chandrasekhar

Goldilocks to Locking in Gold: Misread Signals, Austerity and Market Reactions

A weakening rupee, volatile capital flows and policy mixed signals are reviving questions over India’s external resilience amid a fresh oil-driven macro shock.

Smita Roy Trivedi

Abhiman Das

Is India’s Teacher Knowledge Gap Quietly Undermining Learning?

New research from Odisha reveals that weak teacher subject knowledge, especially in English, may be limiting the effectiveness of classroom learning across India.

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal*

India’s Stagflation Narrative Is Finally Catching Up With Reality

India’s inflation shock is deepening even before fuel, food and currency pressures fully transmit through the economy.

Dhananjay Sinha

Japan’s 1973 Oil Shock Austerity Holds an Uncomfortable Lesson for India

R. Gurumurthy

Gold, the Rupee and India’s External Sector Déjà Vu

Arvind Mayaram

India-UAE Embrace is a Security Handshake

Rajesh Ramachandran

Coal Gasification Gamble May Solve One Crisis While Creating Another

Sharmila Chavaly

What a Cricket Stadium Taught Me About India’s Gold Obsession

What looks rational for individual households can become costly for the economy, making India’s gold obsession a classic fallacy of composition.

Vivek Kaul

India’s Sugar Export Ban May No Longer Be Just About Sugar

Rising oil prices, ethanol demand and tightening sugar balances suggest India’s latest export ban may reflect fuel-security concerns as much as food inflation worries.

G. Chandrashekhar

Has Quick Commerce Changed What Counts as an FMCG Moat?

Henkel’s Pril rethink raises a larger question about whether some FMCG categories still need old-style distribution moats.

Krishnadevan V

If India Has Changed, Why Does Its External-Sector Playbook Look So Familiar?

Delhi’s calls to curb gold buying and foreign travel suggest policymakers remain uneasy about India’s external financing despite years of macroeconomic reform.

Dhananjay Sinha

The War on Billionaires Is Dangerous Nonsense

The left- and right-wing populists calling for targeted taxes on the ultra-wealthy argue that the economic game is rigged against typical workers, allowing the rich to take from the middle class and the poor. But this claim is untrue—and the opposite of what aspiring young people need to hear.

Michael R. Strain

India Just Made Gold More Valuable at a Pawnshop Than a Jewellery Store

The import-duty increase from 6% to 15% is being sold as a balance-of-payments measure. It is also a transfer instrument, from jewellers to gold-loan lenders.

Dev Chandrasekhar

Turmoil at the Fed Won't End Anytime Soon

It may be tempting to regard US President Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve as a personal vendetta against outgoing Chair Jerome Powell. But Trump’s hostility reflects a broader trend: the erosion of conservative support for independent central banks worldwide.

Nicolas Jabko

India's GCC Moment: Turning Global Turbulence Into Advantage

As war and energy shocks darken the global outlook, India’s global capability centres could emerge as the country’s most resilient economic buffer.

Nilanjan Banik

Why Resilience Is Becoming the New Currency of Energy

As wars, climate shocks and fractured trade reshape energy markets, countries are discovering that efficiency alone can no longer guarantee energy security.

Anshuman Gupta

India’s Municipal Bond Market May Finally Be Ready for Lift-Off

Urban infrastructure financing needs and evolving investor appetite may finally push municipal bonds into India’s debt-market mainstream.

Venkatakrishnan Srinivasan

Week in Numbers: Tracking India’s Economic Pulse

The war in West Asia and the sharp increase in crude oil prices notwithstanding, demand for automobiles has continued to remain largely unscathed.

Datametricx

Capital Flows Cloud India's Growth Story Despite Sound Fundamentals

India’s economy remains resilient on paper, but persistent capital outflows and rising overseas investments are adding fresh pressure on the rupee and external balances.

Yashveer Singh

Yield Volatility Slows Bond Issuances, But Themes for 2026-27 Are Emerging

Yield volatility, crude oil pressures and shifting funding preferences have slowed bond issuances, though the borrowing pipeline across sectors remains structurally strong.

Venkatakrishnan Srinivasan

Oil Firms’ Borrowing Surge May Become Bond Market’s Next Stress Test

Elevated crude prices and delayed fuel price revisions may push OMCs into aggressive bond and CP borrowings, tightening liquidity conditions.

Venkatakrishnan Srinivasan

The Hidden Cost of Staying Too Long in a Changing Order

From middle-aged exit strategies to fragile macro narratives, India confronts a period where discipline, timing, and strategic restraint mattered more than spectacle.

Phynix

Bribes, Bureaucracy and the Case for a Universal Basic Income

New research suggests a UBI may work better in India because universal transfers eliminate the corruption and rent-seeking built into targeted welfare schemes.

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal*

India Has a Financial Centre in GIFT City But Not Yet a Market

Making GIFT City cheap to be in is not the same as making it worth being in. India has confused the two.

Chandrika Soyantar

US Court Blocks Section 122 Tariffs, Relief for Indian Firms Not Immediate

The decision currently applies only to the parties that filed the case — the state of Washington, spice importer Burlap & Barrel, and toy maker Basic Fun!

Ajay Srivastava

Why India Inc Isn’t Investing in the Growth Story

India Inc is earning more than ever, yet remains reluctant to build, expand or take manufacturing risks as the country’s consumption story looks weaker than advertised.

Vivek Kaul

How India Drifted From Edible Oil Self-Sufficiency to Dependence

India once met nearly all its edible oil demand domestically. Policy drift, cheap palm oil imports and weak farm incentives changed that.

Prasanna Mohanty

Briefing

Borrowed Dollars Won’t Fix India’s External Pressures

RBI risks confusing reserve accumulation with resilience as quasi-sovereign FX mobilisation threatens to create future liabilities instead of lasting stability.

V Thiagarajan

Petroyuan’s Rise May Matter More Than Dollar’s Decline

The bigger story is not the fall of the dollar, but the emergence of parallel trade and energy settlement systems centred around China.

Saibal Dasgupta

India’s Financial Digitalisation Has Scaled; Regulation Must Keep Pace

India’s digital finance ecosystem has expanded rapidly, but evolving risks around credit, data, and security now require regulation to adapt in step with scale.

Michael Debabrata Patra

Operation Sindoor

Restraint as Strength: India’s Strategic Message to the World

India’s message to the world was both simple and profound. Strength lies not only in the capacity to fight, but in the ability to choose when and how to fight — and when to stop.

Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd)

Op Sindoor and the Resetting of India’s Engagement with the West

Pakistan is protecting Anglo-Saxon interests in West Asia, for which it was created by the British Empire, and the US, in turn, is offering it security, while a Russia-India-China huddle promises greater multilateralism and sovereignty

Rajesh Ramachandran

West Bengal Shift Raises Stakes For India–Bangladesh Ties

Political change in West Bengal could reshape cross-border dynamics, with migration, water sharing, and strategic alignment emerging as key pressure points in bilateral relations

Saibal Dasgupta

Anti-Incumbency Poll Outcomes Signal Need for Governance Recalibration

Election outcomes across key states highlight voter demand for improved governance, stronger policy execution, and greater accountability in economic and administrative delivery.

Rajesh Ramachandran

The Business Holding Blinkit's Margins Together Is Amazon's Home Turf

Blinkit's path to 5-6% EBITDA margins depends on advertising income. Amazon Now is quietly making that the most contested number in Indian internet commerce.

Krishnadevan V

From Firepower to Fragility

A pause in US-Iran hostilities calms markets briefly, but unresolved tensions, energy risks, and shifting power dynamics keep the geopolitical fault lines active.

Dhananjay Sinha

Jerome Powell’s Finest Hour

Just as Winston Churchill is primarily remembered for facing down the Nazi onslaught in World War II, outgoing US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell is likely to be remembered for his courageous defense of the Fed’s independence against President Donald Trump’s attacks. Like Churchill, he will be forgiven his major policy errors.

Desmond Lachman

Jerome Powell’s Mixed Legacy

By remaining on the US Federal Reserve board of governors after the end of his term as chair, Jerome Powell can keep the focus on his widely celebrated role as the “defender of the Fed.” But if that allows him to sideline substantive criticism of Fed policy during his tenure, the institution may suffer for it.

Mohamed A. El-Erian

Gaming Ban Pushes India’s Traders Offshore

India bans real-money gaming, but offshore prediction markets surge, exposing gaps between regulation, investor protection and financial innovation.

Indra Chourasia

Is India's Trade Credit System Approaching a Tipping Point?

A hidden slowdown in trade credit flows is tightening liquidity at the base of India’s economy, subtle today but potentially systemic if ignored for long.

BL Chandak

Is Cotton Mission a Strategic Sovereignty or a Statistical Chimera

India’s cotton revival plan aims to reclaim self-sufficiency, but low yields, weak R&D and climate risks may test its ambitions.

G. Chandrashekhar

From Data to Intelligence: India’s Missing Link in the AI Economy

India’s AI future will be determined not by models or compute alone, but by whether it can convert abundant data into usable intelligence for governance.

Arvind Mayaram

The ECL Framework Can Foster Sustainable Asset Quality

ECL shifts Indian banking to forward-looking provisioning, strengthening resilience and risk pricing, but hinges on data depth, governance rigour, and model discipline.

K. Srinivasa Rao

Expected Credit Loss Framework: Reform or Reckoning for Banks?

RBI’s shift to Expected Credit Loss norms pushes banks toward forward-looking risk assessment, aligning with global standards but demanding stronger models, supervision, and a deep cultural shift.

Rahul Ghosh

When Institutions Choose Rhetoric Over Reality, Markets Keep Score

History shows that confidence narratives cannot mask fragility. When rhetoric diverges from reality, markets punish with lost trust and slower recovery.

V Thiagarajan

Week in Numbers: Tracking India’s Economic Pulse

High-frequency data suggest that the Indian economy has slowed in March due to the war in West Asia, though less than feared.

Datametricx

D-Mart’s Store Count Soars, but Returns Slide

D-Mart hits 500 stores with 16% growth, but returns, margins, working capital, and balance sheet trends are all moving the wrong way.

Dev Chandrasekhar

When an India Bull Turns Underweight

A long-standing supporter of India is stepping back, not because the story has broken, but because the world that sustained it is being repriced.

Krishnadevan V

A Regime Shift for India’s BoP

A stronger services surplus masks a quieter shift, as weaker capital inflows reshape India’s BoP and raise new policy and market risks

Shubhada Rao, Vivek Kumar, and Yuvika Singhal

Economic Shocks in 2026-27: What the Forecasts Aren’t Telling Us

Despite upbeat forecasts, India faces oil shocks, climate risks and trade disruptions. The real challenge lies in navigating unseen fault lines.

Sharmila Kantha

UAE’s OPEC Exit Could Erode Cartel's Cohesion

The UAE stayed in OPEC for six decades. It took one strategic pivot and $150 billion in capacity investment to end that relationship. The consequences for global oil supply and pricing could be far-reaching.

G. Chandrashekhar

AI in Banking: From Data Processing to Institutional Thinking

Natural language AI is changing how banks process meaning, not just data, bringing new coherence to credit, compliance, and customer engagement.

Anupam Sonal

The Price of Peace and the Burden of Staying the Course

From rupee stress to AI courts and oil shocks, what gets stabilised often carries hidden costs, while trust, not control, quietly determines what holds together.

Phynix

Powell, Power, and the Cost of Credibility

Jerome Powell’s restraint under sustained political pressure shows that central banking credibility is shaped as much by conduct as by policy.

R. Gurumurthy

Don’t Build Speed Bumps on India’s Digital Expressway

Rajesh Bansal

HUL Spent Two Years Blaming Rural. The Real Margin Story Is Structural

Dev Chandrasekhar

India's Gaming Crackdown Spares the Ones Who Matter Most

Vedika Pandey

A US-India Partnership for the AI Age

Ylli Bajraktari and Dhruva Jaishankar

India’s Bond Yields May Drift to 7.25% as Pressures Build

Comfortable liquidity masks rising risks. Supply, fiscal slippage and term premia could push the 10-year yield towards 7.25% in 2026–27.

Yield Scribe

Policy Denial Meets OIS Pricing in India’s Inflation Reality

Markets price tightening even as policy resists fuel pass-through. This gap risks unanchored inflation expectations and strains fiscal and FX stability.

Yield Scribe

Bigger Sun, Dimmer Returns

Sun Pharma’s $11.75 billion Organon deal adds scale and new markets, but higher debt and lower returns raise questions over its valuation premium.

Krishnadevan V

The UAE Didn’t Quit OPEC Because of the War

The conflict has merely reduced the immediate political cost of doing what MBZ has wanted to for many years.

Bobby Ghosh

The Rupee’s Mauna Kea Problem: What We Don’t See Matters More

The rupee debate fixates on visible costs, ignoring hidden fiscal risks, political compulsions and market psychology that make inaction far riskier.

Vivek Kaul

RBI Affirms Rules over Exceptionalism for Corporate India

The RBI’s clarification on upper-layer NBFCs places principle above pedigree. How Tata Sons responds will define the boundary between legacy privilege and regulatory certainty in India.

Srinath Sridharan

RBI’s Offshore FX Mandate Risks Turning Transparency Into Tension

India’s push to monitor offshore rupee trades may improve visibility but also risk regulatory friction, investor unease, and unintended capital-flow consequences.

V Thiagarajan

Death by KYC: Spare a Thought for Bankers Too

Our hearts may go out to those who struggle with KYC requirements, but we can’t expect bankers to ignore the rules. However, lessons in situational empathy may be appropriate.

Mint Owl

Digitalisation for Inclusive Finance and Sustainability

Digital finance is expanding access, but its impact on inequality, financial health, and climate resilience remains inconsistent across regions and income groups.

Michael Debabrata Patra