Mishik Sharma

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...

The Wrong Question The national debate over delimitation has acquired a new dimension. A recent EAC-PM working paper (published on 11 June) proposes a significant expansion of the Lok Sabha while attempting to sidestep the political tensions that a straightforward population-based redistribution of seats would create.  The paper, titled “Constituency Size, Composition and the Case for Delimitation in India’s Lok Sabha (2009-2024)”, argues that a future delimitation exercise should not rely only on uniform seat division but identify constituencies where restructuring would have the greatest impact on representation and voter access. The advisory paper comes at a time when the central government has indicated that it plans to re-introduce the three bills in Parliament to carry out nationwide delimitation, increase the Lok Sabha’s sanctioned seat strength from 550 to 850, and reserve one-third seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures. Predictably, the discussion has set...

Introduction: An Important Warning, But An Incomplete Debate India's export ambitions have entered an increasingly ambitious phase. After recording goods & services exports worth USD 863 billion in FY26, the government has set its sights on the USD 1 trillion milestone. Simultaneously, India has accelerated trade negotiations and concluded several important agreements, reflecting growing confidence that deeper market integration can support industrial expansion. Against this backdrop, a recent report by Global Trade Research Initiative ("FTA Report Card", released on 9 June) highlighed India's widening trade deficits with several FTA partners, low utilisation rates among exporters, and questions about whether trade agreements are translating into the manufacturing gains that policy-makers expect. These concerns deserve serious attention. But the debate risks becoming trapped in a binary: are FTAs beneficial or harmful? Should India embrace trade integration or bec...

Introduction: The AI Paradox The global artificial intelligence industry is passing through one of the most extraordinary expansions in modern economic history. Frontier AI companies are approaching trillion-dollar valuations. Chipmakers have become among the world's most valuable corporations. Data-centre investment is reaching unprecedented scale. Across the ecosystem, new architectures of collaboration are emerging: AI software companies developing custom silicon with semiconductor partners; chip companies deploying edge systems directly into industrial enterprises; cloud providers expanding compute infrastructure at pace; and enterprise-service companies embedding intelligence across sectors. Yet despite this momentum, a recurring anxiety surfaces whenever sentiment shifts. Whenever a major AI company disappoints investors, whenever a large infrastructure commitment proves difficult to monetise, whenever technology equities correct sharply — the same questions return: Is the in...