Mishik Sharma

India's informal economy has been approached, almost always, from one direction at a time. On one side, the worker: enumerated, registered, provided social protection, linked to food security. On the other, the enterprise: supported through credit schemes, market linkages, and technology adoption programs. Both directions are legitimate. Neither is sufficient. What has never been attempted — institutionally or conceptually — is treating these two populations as two sides of one system, and designing accordingly. This is the coordination gap at the heart of India's informal economy. And closing it requires not another scheme, but an architecture . The Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) 2025 (released by MoSPI on 6 May) makes the urgency concrete. India's unincorporated non-agricultural sector now comprises 7.92 crore establishments, up from 7.34 crore — a growth of nearly 8% — and employs 12.81 crore workers, adding 74.52 lakh jobs in a single survey ...

On 24 April, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the term ‘agro-forestry’ will soon be renamed as ‘tree-based farming’, to spread the adoption of integrated farming, particularly for small farmers so that they are able to increase their income. At one level, this may seem like a simple terminological adjustment. But underneath the change lies an important recognition: trees cannot remain peripheral to India’s agricultural future. The Minister’s remarks were accompanied by concerns regarding excessive fertiliser usage, deteriorating soil health, and the need for integrated farming systems that move beyond cereal-centric agriculture. The underlying message was clear: Rural sustainability and rural income cannot depend solely on annual crop cycles forever. Yet the discussion around tree farming in India remains incomplete. Most existing conversations operate within two narrow frameworks: commercial timber plantations, or  environmentally motivated afforestation ...

Every year in early May, India enters a familiar cycle.  Preliminary monsoon forecasts are released. Economists predict agricultural output, inflation, rural demand, etc. Journalists amplify these estimates and predictions spiking them with concerns about climate change, droughts, floods, etc.  These estimates, predictions, and concerns are important. India's agriculture and rural economy remain deeply connected to monsoon variations. Yet the annual anxiety cycle also reveals something more structural: India still lacks sufficient distributed capacity to systematically capture, store, recharge, and redeploy monsoon water. The issue is not simply whether rainfall will fluctuate. Monsoon variability is a permanent feature of the subcontinent’s climate system. The deeper issue is that India continues to experience a paradoxical water cycle: - floods during the monsoon, - water stress months later, - and repeated fears regarding agricultural production. This is not merely a climat...

For the past four days, Uttarakhand's weather has been quietly repeating itself.  The pattern has been consistent. Mornings pass without urgency. By afternoon, clouds begin to gather with a kind of patient intent. And by evening, the sky resolves the matter with rain: Sometimes steady, sometimes accompanied by thunder, and sometimes with gusts of wind. Each day has followed this rhythm with minor variations. Enough to be noticed, not enough to be called unusual. And yet, over these same four days, another pattern has been unfolding—one not in the sky, but in the language used to describe it. Foreign media like Bloomberg have been loudly writing about "intensifying heat" and "grid stress" in India. The implication is not merely that heat may come, but that its consequences are already beginning to unfold. Which is how one arrives at a mildly absurd situation:  watching rain fall for the fourth consecutive afternoon, while reading about an unfolding heat crisis. T...

A recent BBC article (published on 19 April) claimed that India's metro systems are struggling to attract passengers. The article attracted immediate backlash on Indian social media — commuters from Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai etc narrated experiences of travelling in trains so packed that finding standing space was difficult. The BBC piece was rightly criticised for being high on narrative and low on data. But buried within it was a signal worth extracting: at certain stations, ridership is genuinely thin. Not because the metro is unwanted, but because many stations — even in megapolitan cities — have no reliable first or last mile connectivity. The metro arrives. But nothing is waiting on the other side. This is not an anecdote. It is a structural deficiency, and it is replicated across India's public transport systems — at small-town railway stations, at hill-town bus stations, and at newly opened metro stations in urban peripheries where the surrounding neighbourhood has no or...

A Familiar Pump, An Unfamiliar Future The Indian fuel pump is beginning to look like a quiet site of transition. The nozzle is the same, the queue is the same—but the story around it is changing. Targets are sharper, alternatives are multiplying, and the idea of a “future without petrol” is no longer abstract. It is being signalled, incentivised, and—crucially—pre-built. And yet, for all the certainty in rhetoric, there is a gap in reality. The future is being announced faster than it is being assembled. The Push: Ethanol as Policy Workhorse India has already reached E20—20% ethanol blending in petrol—a milestone that would have seemed ambitious not long ago. The next horizon being invoked is far more dramatic: E85, even E100, supported by flex-fuel vehicles and a broader multi-fuel ecosystem. The rationale is compelling. India imports most of its crude oil, exposing itself to volatile prices and geopolitical risk. Ethanol, by contrast, is domestic, renewable, and politically attractiv...