Mishik Sharma

Three recent developments in India’s industrial discourse have quietly pointed towards a deeper shift in the country’s industrial imagination. On 9 May,  Vedanta Group said that India needs to accelerate domestic exploration of natural resources and operationalise such resource assets faster, to reduce import dependence and strengthen long-term resource security. It further said that vulnerabilities in global energy and mineral supply chains are structural, not cyclical, as India remains heavily dependent on imports for crude  -oil and several key resources. On the same day, Deloitte published a report saying India's mining sector has the potential to contribute an additional $500 billion to the economy and create up to 25 million incremental jobs by 2047, but achieving this will require a major shift towards "Mining 5.0" driven by artificial intelligence, integrated digital systems, and sustainable operations. Yesterday, the Union Cabinet approved the Scheme for Promotio...

The Shift in India’s Economic Vocabulary Over the last few years, discussions about India’s economy have often oscillated between two extremes. On one side lies persistent pessimism — concerns about unemployment, inequality, social stress, and geopolitical vulnerability. On the other side lies celebratory optimism built around startup valuations, e-commerce expansion, rising vehicle sales, and headline GDP growth. Yet beneath both these narratives, a quieter but potentially more consequential shift now appears to be underway within sections of India’s political, industrial, and financial establishment. Recent addresses by policymakers and industry leaders, combined with emerging corporate investment and earnings patterns, suggest that India may be slowly transitioning towards a new development imagination — one centered less on short-term growth and more on industrial depth and long-term resilience. The Emerging Resilience Doctrine This transition in Indian thinking is not occurring in...

The Hiring Shift Nobody is Structuring Every placement season, India's engineering colleges open their gates, companies arrive, offers are made, and the cycle closes. For decades, this annual ritual was dominated by a handful of IT majors — TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech — whose bulk recruitment defined the employment horizon for lakhs of engineering graduates. That architecture is changing. According to a recent report by Financial Express (published on 2 May) TCS hired approximately 25,000 freshers for FY27, down from 44,000 in FY26. Overall headcount growth across IT majors has moderated to around 2% in FY25 and FY26, compared to over 10% during the post-pandemic surge.  Into this space, the FE report says, startups are moving. They now account for 25-35% of software engineering offers at leading institutions. At VIT, around 1,500 companies visited campuses this year compared to approximately 1,000 last year. Industry estimates project startups will collectively hire 60,000-80,000...

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...