'It goes without saying that Air India has now no imaginable reason to exist.'

But Indian information technology workers might do better without the companies that held them back, says Mihir S Sharma.

Don't let people with repugnant ideas abrogate your rights by taking advantage of your commitment to free speech, observes Mihir S Sharma

Mihir S Sharma outlines why this year's Union Budget does not respond to the needs of India's economy, or attempt to frame the economy's future.

Finance minister attempts a clean-up job, keeps projected expenditure growth low.

Overall, the Survey warned that unless shifts in the vision of development were articulated and embraced, the Indian economy would lose the chance to move to a high-growth trajectory.

That US is losing one of its best-read presidents, and will gain one of the least likely to have ever read a book. Does that matter? Mihir S Sharma explains why it should.

'If tempers all over the country are so fragile that they can be lost because a couple of film stars give their child the same name as a 14th-century warlord, exactly what sort of compromises can be palatable,' asks Mihir S Sharma.

The narrative in America after Donald Trump's victory sounds like the questions and debates that took place in India after May 2014. Were both electoral results all about jobs and economic anxiety? Mihir S Sharma doubts it.

'Who would want to be the man nominally in charge of driving the economy when your boss orders you to swerve it into a ditch of unknown depth?'
'Demonetisation demonstrates that this government is simply too amateurish in terms of economic policy-making to properly address India's deep, deep problems,' argues Mihir S Sharma.

'The problems the rest of the world is struggling with -- the future of work, expectations from government and business in a world without jobs -- will be solved in India, by young Indians, before anyone else,' says Mihir S Sharma.

One of the biggest ways in which recent government actions have been seen as investor-unfriendly is New Delhi's decision to unilaterally revisit almost every Bilateral Investment Treaty it has signed with other countries, says Mihir S Sharma.

There are two national political parties in India, but only one of them seems to be any good at politics, says Mihir S Sharma.

As West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry prepare for new administrations, one is reminded of the disparity that runs through the veins of the Indian states, notes Mihir S Sharma.

'There is no difference morally between politicians scoring points amid the rubble and non-politicians who assume that politics and corruption necessarily had something to do with it,' says Mihir S Sharma. 'Both are twisting a tragedy to their own ends.'

Books like Sunil Khilnani's Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, simple and straightforward though they appear, are instead powerful arguments for complexity, for empathy, and for curiosity

Arun Jaitley had a tough fiscal hill to climb.

Outside Diggi Palace's walls, things may be getting darker. Speech may be under threat; writers may be getting murdered for their writing. But, inside, it is possible to feel hope that ideas, nevertheless, may have their own power, says Mihir S Sharma.

Private investment will respond only to sustainable reform.

Only the Indian elite would rather not breathe than be ordinary.