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From One-Person Firms to Expertise Engines: Building India's Distributed Expertise Economy

Introduction India may be witnessing the emergence of a new layer of economic infrastructure—one built not from factories, highways, ports, data centres, or universities, but from expertise itself. Recent data from independent consulting platform Flexing It offers a glimpse into this transformation. Registrations of independent consultants on the platform have reportedly grown by nearly 290 percent since 2022. Monthly additions have increased from around 1,500 in FY24 to 3,000 in FY25 and more than 5,000 in FY26. The platform's network now exceeds 120,000 independent consultants, while demand for their services grew by approximately 60 percent year-on-year in FY26. At first glance, these numbers may appear to describe the expansion of consulting, freelancing, or portfolio careers. Yet they point toward something potentially more significant. Across India, experienced professionals are increasingly choosing to operate as independent expertise enterprises rather than remaining within...
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Beyond the Ceasefire: Can Economic Integration and Security Guarantees Reshape West Asia?

The extension of the US-Iran peace meeting in Switzerland — from a planned one-day ceremony to multi-day talks at the Bürgenstock resort — serves as a vivid reminder of diplomacy’s inherent fragility and complexity. The two brokers, Qatar and Pakistan, today jointly announced that "senior-level" discussions have concluded and that "technical-level" discussions will continue into the next few days to negotiate the details of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. The brokers emphasized that the talks happened in a “positive and constructive atmosphere” and “encouraging progress” has been achieved.  The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, remotely signed and electronically exchanged in mid-June, is not just an agreement to pause hostilities. Considered broadly, it is an attempt to address two interconnected but fundamentally different conflicts that have shaped the region for decades. The first is the US-Iran confrontation, centred on nuclear concerns, sanctions, e...
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From Fresher to Supervisor: Why India's IT Sector Must Reinvent Apprenticeship Before the Pipeline Runs Dry

The Vanishing Entry Point Something structural is happening to entry-level hiring in India's IT sector, and it is being misread as a cyclical correction. IT majors like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL have all signalled reduced fresher intake over the past two years. The general explanation has been cautious client demand, global headwinds, and post-pandemic normalisation. That explanation is partially true and largely misleading. The deeper driver is AI absorbing the cognitive work that entry-level IT roles were built around — basic coding, data processing, initial testing, routine documentation, first-pass debugging. These tasks have not disappeared; they have been reassigned. The machine now does them faster, cheaper, and without the onboarding costs. From a company's quarterly perspective, this looks like efficiency. From the sector's five-year perspective, it is the beginning of a pipeline problem. Why This Is Not Just a Jobs Problem The instinct is to frame vanishing ent...
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Beyond Certification: Why India Needs a National Talent Management Architecture

India's Employment Paradox India's employment debate is increasingly defined by contradictions. Employers across construction, manufacturing, green energy, EV, and home services report persistent talent shortages even as millions of young people struggle to find stable employment. Apprenticeship enrolments are rising, yet internship programs continue to face low uptake. Industrial sectors are expanding, but many employers complain that graduates are not industry-ready. At the same time, coaching centres and libraries across India's cities and towns are filled with young people preparing for government examinations. These developments are often discussed as separate problems. They are not.  They are symptoms of a deeper structural issue: India has invested heavily in creating talent but insufficiently in mobilising, matching, and deploying it. The 11th Niti Aayog Governing Council Meeting, held on 11 June, focussed on the theme "Inclusive Human Development for Viksit Bh...
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Beyond Monsoon Forecasts: Building India's National Ecological Intelligence Framework

Introduction: The Limits of Monsoon-Centric Planning Every year, as the Indian Ocean monsoon nears the Indian subcontinent, India enters a familiar cycle. Economists release economic growth and inflation projections, agricultural experts estimate crop output, industry executives forecast rural demand, energy planners prepare for changing electricity consumption patterns, and journalists report these estimates and predictions spiking them with concerns about climate change and economic deceleration. At the centre of this annual exercise stands a single institution: the India Meteorological Department (IMD). This reliance on monsoon forecasts is understandable. India's agriculture, food prices, rural incomes, hydropower generation, water availability, and consumer demand remain deeply connected to rainfall patterns. Yet this annual ritual also reveals a deeper structural problem. India's economic planning remains disproportionately dependent on a narrow ecological information bas...
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Beyond Protectionism: A National Framework for Kirana 2.0 in an Era of Expanding Organized Retail

Recent months have witnessed a striking development in India's retail sector. According to an Economic Times report, published on 9 May, India's major organized retailers have accelerated store expansion across the country. Companies like  Reliance Retail, DMart, Trent, V-Mart, V2 Retail, Kalyan Jewellers, Titan, and others  opened the highest number of stores in three years, in FY26 — seeking to capitalise on a demand recovery and a clean-up of unviable outlets added during the post-Covid "revenge-spending" period. The report said that India's top ten retailers net-added 2,182 (+7%) stores in FY26, equivalent to six new stores a day. In comparison, they net-added 1,745 (+6%) stores in FY25. Retail leasing activity has also strengthened, and high streets are outperforming malls in several markets, and retailers are increasingly targeting Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Simultaneously, chains such as V-Bazaar are betting heavily on small-town India through hiring and exp...
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