Tditya Gupta returned to Bhopal after completing his computer science degree in his early twenties but didn’t end up taking the path his credentials suggested. He knew he wanted to enter his family’s agricultural business right out of the college gates, sidestepping the midlife crisis that Indian engineers often face when they realise this was…
In the first decades of the 20th century, affordable bicycles transformed thousands of Indian lives—allowing them an unparalleled mobility. While it has never quite lost its popularity in rural and semi-urban areas, the urban masses have since reposed their faith in mass transport systems, with an aspirational eye out for their first car. But the…
From the sprawling urban landscape of Delhi, where corporate ambitions unfold in glass-walled highrises, Ajay Singh embarked on a road less travelled—one that would lead him from corporate professionalism to the earthy wisdom of running a goat farm with 300 goats. The son of a CRPF sub-inspector from Barsana village in Haryana’s Charkhi Dadri, Ajay…
When India celebrated its 78th anniversary of Independence this August 15, the country stood on the cusp of a transformative economic decade. One that will be shaped not just by sprawling industrial conglomerates or billion-dollar unicorns, but by the quiet and consistent rise of India’s unsung entrepreneurs who work on looms, toil in two-room factories,…
There is no doubt we are at an inflection point. The reason is that AI and automation are integrating into how businesses operate, which has resulted in changes in the demands made on us. Over the next several quarters, we anticipate a major transition as organisations pivot towards a much more product-aligned delivery model, as…
On August 7, at the Congress headquarters in new Delhi, party leader Rahul Gandhi stood in a room filled with cameras and anticipation, holding what he described as proof of India’s gravest democratic crisis. The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha raised a spiral-bound stack of papers, culled from a seven-foot pile of…
Ankit Das (name changed), an employee with a top IT firm in Bengaluru, is losing sleep. In his 30s, he had recently moved his family to the city. He had spent four and a half years at the firm, working on the same project. He had been getting a satisfactory ‘C’ band at employee evaluations,…
It is a sultry August morning in Patna, and the Sadar block office wears the quiet, composed air of a still life portrait. Three officers sit at their desks, a laptop loaded with draft electoral rolls before them, a wall pasted with printed lists…and zero visitors. Not a single elector has walked in to check…
The sound of leather crashing into timber behind him, India’s No. 11 Mohammed Siraj sank to his haunches, inconsolable on the last day of the Lord’s Test. His 30-ball vigil was over, and so too India’s hopes of taking a 2-1 lead in the five-match Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. Needing 192 to win, India had folded up…
“Like the battle of Karbala, this war must be fought till the end,” Reza Ahmadi, a juice vendor in his 30s, told me, as he went about his business on the busy Naser Khosro street in Shiraz, a historical town of gardens, wine and poetry in southwest Iran’s Fars province. It was just two days…
