Some things to Reconsider

  The transformation of the Indian state under Narendra Modi has often been narrated in terms of strong leadership, decisive governance, and an unrelenting emphasis on development. Development being a synonym for civil engineering projects, showcased in glossy WhatsApp forwards and jarring emotional endorsements by nobodies. Yet what has emerged over the past decade is less a model of sustainable development than what can be described as the “Contractor State”: a polity where monumental construction projects, executed with little public scrutiny, have replaced democratic debate as the primary mode of statecraft. In Modi’s vision, the nation’s destiny is equated with the building of imposing physical structures, even as institutional and ecological foundations are steadily weakened. The Central Vista redevelopment project and the construction of a new Parliament epitomize this logic. The official justification—that the old Parliament was structurally inadequate and technologica...

 https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/fiis-vs-diis-reversing-roles-in-india-s-equity-market-after-25-years-125081402018_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/economy/news/net-fdi-falls-to-40-million-in-may-2025-on-higher-outflows-125072301466_1.html Let’s stitch together three reports and an opinion piece from Business Standard all recent—and read the tea leaves. In 1992, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) dipped their toes into Indian equity with a modest investment of ₹13 crore. Domestic players (DIIs) then sat fat with ₹45,000 crore. Fast forward to 2014: the equations flipped. FIIs had ballooned to ₹6.6 trillion, while DIIs were crawling at ₹42,000 crore. In 2025, they’ve switched again: FIIs at ₹10 trillion, DIIs overtaking them at ₹14 trillion. Janak Raj of the Centre for Social and Economic Progress hails this as resilience. But let’s not dress up this as a symbol of “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. Capital has no hews of colour. Now to the horror story: net FD...

  https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/debunking-the-myth-of-job-creation/article69924144.ece “Minimum Government and Maximum Governance” was the English couplet that powered the Modi juggernaut in 2014. Another line from the same sonnet was, “Government has no business to be in business.” Those lines weren’t policy; they were poetry. In Amit Shah’s own vocabulary, they were jumlas . And like most poetry in politics, they have aged into parody. Common sense tells us: when schemes multiply, so does discretion . Eligibility thresholds, definitions, continuity tests, pay-out schedules—each becomes a lever in the hands of the bureaucracy. Markets stop being a free actor, ingenuity is replaced by compliance, talent becomes a footnote, and entrepreneurship is reduced to a function of a bureaucrat’s enthusiasm or whim. Even with the best intentions and the clearest rules, someone in an office still decides who qualifies and who doesn’t. That someone is not “the market” —it is the Ba...