Author: Sanjay Shah

There is a quiet revolution unfolding not in parliament halls or on stock exchange floors, but in the living rooms of ordinary families. From the narrow lanes of Mumbai’s Dadar neighbourhood to the paper-screen stillness of a Tokyo apartment, the world’s two most demographically significant Asian nations are grappling with the same fundamental question: How do we care for those who once cared for us? In 2026, India stands at the edge of a demographic transformation that few are truly prepared for. The country’s elderly population, those aged 60 and above, is projected to swell to nearly 230 million by…

For thirty years, India ran one of the most successful economic models any developing nation has ever constructed, and also one of the most dangerous. It built a $283 billion information technology industry by renting out its brain. It took the world’s most demanding technical universities, produced hundreds of thousands of engineers every year, pointed them westward, and said: here, use this talent, bill these hours, do this work. The West did. And with that talent, it built Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, IBM’s research divisions, and half the software stack that runs the modern global economy. The products, the…

There is a quiet violence occurring inside Indian kitchens, and it arrives not through the door but through the shopping bag. It comes in colourful pouches bearing familiar logos, endorsed by celebrity chefs, stacked neatly on supermarket shelves, and purchased by millions who have been trained to believe that if something is sealed, labelled, and legally sold, it must be safe. On 1 March 2026, a YouTube channel called Trustified published laboratory results that shattered that belief. Four products from Everest, the country’s most trusted spice brand, purchased from a D-Mart store and tested independently, revealed contamination across multiple dimensions.…

On 10 March 2026, the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved a decision that the people of southern Tamil Nadu had been waiting for with the particular, patient frustration of those who have been asking for something reasonable for a very long time. Madurai Airport was formally declared an International Airport. The announcement, made by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, took less than two minutes to deliver. The journey to that moment had taken the better part of sixteen years. That gap between the dream and the declaration is not unique to Madurai. It is the story of…

If you walked past a premium multiplex in Mumbai or Delhi this week, you might have noticed something unusual. It is not just the “Housefull” boards. It is the price of admission. With preview tickets touching an unprecedented Rs 2,400, the sheer audacity of the Dhurandhar 2 mania suggests we are no longer looking at a standard film release. We are witnessing a seismic shift in the Indian cinematic landscape. As the March 19 release approaches, the frenzy surrounding Aditya Dhar’s spy epic tells a story far deeper than advance booking numbers. Here is what this Dhurandhar Mania actually indicates…

How London’s and New York’s Suburban Rails Outpaced Mumbai’s, Exposing a Century of Institutional Indifference The Statistic That No One Flinches At Every day, roughly ten people die on Mumbai’s suburban rail network. Not in crashes. Not from mechanical failure. They fall from open doorways, are struck on unprotected tracks, crushed in stampedes, or electrocuted on infrastructure that was already ageing when India gained independence. Over twenty years, this accumulates to fifty thousand lives, a figure greater than many wars, recorded in annual reports as a line item under untoward incidents. The word for this is not tragedy. Tragedy implies…

A policy examination of three cities, one shared inheritance, and two very different destinies Mumbai’s suburban railway began in 1853. It is not merely old – it is foundational. One of the earliest commuter corridors in the world and still among the busiest, it is operated by Indian Railways and carries a weight of history that few transit systems anywhere can claim. Only a handful of cities share comparable antiquity. Two matter most in any serious structural comparison: London and New York City. All three cities inherited Victorian-era alignments. All three faced explosive urbanisation. All three ran trains at crush…

Why India’s Ambitions for the 21st Century Are Entangled in a Monetary System It Did Not Build, and What It Must Do to Break Free Special Report | Strategic Affairs | 11-minute read Picture this: March 2022, a Tuesday morning. Trading desks at Mumbai’s state-run refineries are in turmoil. Russian crude, purchased legally, with no Indian law broken, suddenly cannot be paid for. Not because Delhi made a decision. Because every bank, insurer, and payment channel runs through the US dollar. Washington pulled a lever, and the tremors reached Mumbai within 48 hours. That moment crystallised what Indian policymakers had…

At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is just 39 kilometres wide – roughly the distance between South Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. Yet through this slender corridor passes nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. In the architecture of global energy, few geographies matter more. The Strait of Hormuz links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It is the sole maritime exit for the hydrocarbon heartland of West Asia. When tensions rise here – whether through sanctions, seizures, missile exchanges or naval brinkmanship – energy markets tremble from Mumbai to Milan. For India,…

The Economics Behind Israel’s Permanent War Readiness Imagine a state roughly the size of Haryana sustaining defence expenditure close to 9 per cent of its GDP. That is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the fiscal reality of Israel in 2024. With a population under ten million and limited natural resources, Israel has, during the latest phase of conflict, allocated a share of national output to defence that far exceeds what even large powers sustain in peacetime. For comparison, India spends roughly 2-2.5 per cent of GDP on defence. Most European economies remain below 2 per cent. How does a…