Mishik Sharma

India’s GDP growth numbers continue to surprise on the upside. The Q2FY26 growth figure of 8.2%—a six quarter high—reinforces the idea that India is a high-momentum economy. Yet the very same months have delivered repeated reminders that growth masks deep structural vulnerabilities. The common thread across these vulnerabilities is simple but uncomfortable: India assembles products, but depends on other countries—primarily China—for the components, raw materials, and critical inputs that keep its industrial machine running. In other words, we are a downstream power in industries where all real capability and resilience lie upstream. The current moment offers a rare opportunity to confront this reality, especially as a new technological force—AI—is beginning to reshape manufacturing and materials science. Whether India uses AI to break its structural dependencies, or becomes even more dependent on foreign upstream ecosystems, is the defining industrial question of the next decade. I. In...

The implementation of India’s four Labour Codes is being framed primarily as a worker–firm reform. But this misses a larger and more original implication: the Codes fundamentally alter how banks, NBFCs, private equity funds, and venture capital investors should evaluate Indian businesses. Labour is not just a regulatory variable — it is a cost curve. And once a cost curve becomes predictable, it becomes financeable. This blogpost explores how labour-compliance maturity, wage-structure clarity, and statutory social-security obligations should now influence the logic of capital allocation in India. 1. The Codes Convert Labour Costs Into Predictable Financial Variables For decades, investors faced major uncertainties: Differing wage rules across states Volatile PF/ESIC contributions Unclear status of contract vs. core workers Compliance-driven penalties varying by region Wide variations in “basic pay” due to allowance arbitrage These uncertainties forced lenders and equity investors to pr...

The four Labour Codes—conceptualised between 2019 and 2020 and finally brought into force this week—are being widely discussed, and rightly so. For nearly five years, firms, state governments, HR professionals, and compliance officers have known what is coming. These reforms are not “surprise” regulations suddenly disrupting the market. They are the culmination of a long, public, consultative process designed to bring predictability to one of the most foundational factors of production: labour. In that sense, the Codes mark the end of regulatory ambiguity. Every firm in India—small, mid-sized, large, domestic, multinational—now has a clearer horizon for designing workforce structures, compensation policies, benefits planning, and long-term expansion strategies. Yet most public discussions miss the deeper point: The Labour Codes are not merely compliance reforms; they are institutional infrastructure for labour markets. If used strategically, they can reshape employment quality, workfor...

An Economy Saturated With AI Speculation Over the past year, conversations about artificial intelligence have become inescapable. Financial news outlets, technology commentators, YouTube analysts, and social media influencers frequently return to the same question: “Are we in an AI bubble—and is it about to burst?” Every new investment announcement, every spike in GPU demand, and every high-profile funding round triggers another wave of speculative commentary. Investor actions—such as large, sudden stake sales—are frequently interpreted as signals that the market may have reached unsustainable heights. The comparison to the late-1990s dot-com bubble has become almost reflexive. This atmosphere of speculation has created a narrative cycle: Rising valuations →  Increased public hype →  Investor caution →  Renewed bubble warnings The discourse itself reinforces the perception of fragility. A Rapid Stock-Taking: Market Jolt Amid the Ongoing Speculation While the bubble debate...

Part 1 — The Economists’s Proposal: A Global Panel on Inequality On 14 November 2025, more than 500 economists, sociologists, and activists endorsed an open letter calling for the creation of an International Panel on Inequality (IPI) — a body modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but dedicated to systematically tracking and advising governments on inequality. The signatories urged G20 leaders, meeting today in Johannesburg, South Africa, to place this proposal on the agenda and adopt it as a global governance mechanism. The letter makes several key claims: Inequality is not natural but a political choice, shaped by tax policy, labour institutions, land regimes, global capital flows, and regulatory failures. Inequality at extreme levels threatens democratic institutions, erodes trust, polarizes societies, and destabilizes economies. Proven solutions exist — progressive taxation, universal public services, strong labour protections, and coordinated global acti...

In the rush of big-ticket announcements at investment summits, some of the most strategic signals often get buried. The $12-billion investment proposal that Brookfield Asset Management announced at the recent CII–Andhra Pradesh summit in Visakhapatnam is one such example. It briefly made headlines before being overshadowed by Reliance, Adani, Google and others. But structurally, Brookfield’s announcement could herald a deeper shift in India’s investment landscape — one that policy-makers and analysts should pay close attention to. This is not a routine commitment by a single company. It is a portfolio commitment by a global investment firm that controls or significantly influences dozens of companies across sectors: data centres, green energy, warehousing, hospitality, infrastructure and more. Earlier this year, Brookfield made a similar cluster-style announcement for Maharashtra.  Large investment firms announcing multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment plans is not new. Over ...

Every few weeks, a new doomsday headline ripples across tech and mainstream media: "AI will destroy jobs", "AI will eat the planet", "AI will collapse societies", "AI will consume all electricity on Earth". The latest entry in this genre is the dramatic claim that OpenAI’s future compute targets would require as much electricity as that of entire India. The story, that began with a speculative report by a leftist media platform called "Truthdig", was turned into a sensational article by another loud media platform called "Tom’s Hardware", and was then echoed across platforms like Yahoo News, tech forums, and the usual commentary bubbles. (Confession: I came across the first two platforms for the first time only a few hours back,  via Google Go.) Their narrative is simple and emotionally appealing: frontier AI → endless GPU farms → planetary resource crisis. Except, like many dystopian tech narratives, it crumbles under basic s...

The coming decade will not just be about artificial intelligence reshaping economies — it will also be about how AI and digital platforms reshape governance, social programs, and feedback systems. The old world of survey firms — full of field enumerators, thick questionnaires, and costly data rounds — is quietly giving way to a new reality: evaluation powered by technology, not manpower. The Rise of the Digital Survey State AI companies and digital platforms are increasingly capable of performing tasks that once defined the evaluation industry. By integrating with social-media or messaging platforms, AI systems can directly engage citizens — asking questions, collecting feedback, and generating insights at unprecedented speed and scale. Imagine consent-based surveys on WhatsApp, X, or YouTube, intelligently managed by AI, like:  “Too busy to answer right now? How about three hours later?” What used to take hundreds of surveyors and weeks of fieldwork could be accomplished digitally...

In just a few years, global AI companies have achieved something extraordinary. From large language models to multi-modal reasoning systems, they now operate with global reach and distributed presence. Much of this comes from their reliance on globally distributed cloud networks like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, giving them both the reach and the space to operate at planetary scale. So far, these companies have expanded vertically — rolling out tiered models, premium versions, enterprise editions, and specialized APIs. This “model ladder” strategy resembles what we’ve seen in hardware or automobile industries: keep moving upward in sophistication and price. Yet, that ladder only reaches higher, not wider. It’s time, therefore, for the next logical phase: horizontal expansion. The Untapped Power of Horizontal Intelligence If vertical expansion builds better models, horizontal expansion builds ecosystems .  An AI company that already commands hundreds of millions of users...

The global business media has lately been abuzz with reports of Elon Musk’s potential one-trillion-dollar pay package, which can materialise within the next five years. The Tesla board, while approving this plausibility, has laid out aggressive sales and valuation targets for the next five years — targets that hinge on exponential increases in both vehicle and robot sales. At first glance, it may appear like a bold reaffirmation of faith in exponential growth. Yet, upon closer inspection, the logic seems dangerously circular: valuation drives expectations, and expectations drive valuation. In this loop, the real economy — the economy of product diversification, affordability, and industrial democratisation — risks being left behind. Valuation-Led Governance vs Product-Led Governance What Tesla’s board has effectively done is shift the company’s internal compass toward valuation-led governance — the idea that the firm’s mission and metrics should primarily serve market capitalisation gr...

India’s welfare state today faces a paradox. Its vast in-kind schemes — especially the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) — have succeeded in ensuring food security, yet they have also unintentionally stifled the growth of free and competitive retail markets. With over 80 crore beneficiaries receiving free staples every month, large sections of the population have effectively exited the basic groceries market. At the same time, many state governments distribute bicycles, sanitary pads, school bags, uniforms, and medicines free of cost to target specific groups — again locking those consumers out of corresponding retail markets. These programs are well-intentioned, even though politically entrenched, and will not (and perhaps should not) be withdrawn. The real question, therefore, is: How can India preserve the welfare promise while ensuring consumer choice and market empowerment? The Problem: Welfare Without Markets In-kind delivery of welfare — distributing goods instead...