Independent analysis for India's decision-makers
India’s flagship job-training scheme has spent ₹14,450 crore and claims 1.3 crore certifications. A government audit found 94.5% of beneficiary bank accounts invalid, 97% of assessors untraceable, and only 41% ever placed in a job. Parliament’s own watchdog is still demanding answers.
For the first time since 1931, India’s census will count caste — but the open-ended question format has triggered a political fight. Congress wants it scrapped in favor of the Bihar or Telangana model; the government says AI-assisted digital tools can handle it instead.
TCS cut 23,460 jobs in FY26 — the biggest net reduction in global tech this year — citing AI and a shift to leaner delivery models. The same year, India’s Global Capability Centres are set to add over 5 lakh jobs, two-thirds requiring AI skills. India’s tech job market isn’t shrinking, it’s splitting.
For the first time, private medical colleges hold more MBBS seats in India than government ones — 54% of 1.37 lakh total, costing up to 20x more. The NMC opened the door to for-profit medical colleges in July, weeks after a court explicitly warned against it.
India’s Election Commission has deleted over 91 lakh voters in West Bengal and 47 lakh net in Bihar through its Special Intensive Revision. Opposition parties and UN experts say Muslims were disproportionately affected; the Supreme Court upheld the exercise’s legality in May 2026.
India’s RBI held interest rates at 5.25% on August 5 — betting that June’s food-driven inflation spike, fueled by a rough monsoon start, won’t last. Core inflation stayed contained, and rains have since recovered. July’s CPI print, due August 12, will show if that bet was right.
India builds unicorns in months but can’t build a bridge over the Betwa river in years. In Kakraua village, Vidisha, schoolchildren cross nine narrow pillars of a stop dam — fast water on both sides — just to reach school. The video went viral; the bridge is still a proposal.
Emergent, an AI coding startup, became India’s seventh unicorn of 2026 on July 15 — about a year after launch. It joins Juspay, Neysa, KreditBee, Skyroot, Sarvam and Square Yards on a list now led by AI. Unicorn trackers disagree on India’s exact total, but the pace of this one is the real story.
3 of India’s 12 approved semiconductor units are now shipping commercial product — but all three package and test chips made elsewhere. India’s first true fab, the Tata-PSMC plant in Dholera, is delayed to 2028 and will open at 90nm instead of the 28nm originally promised. The data behind India’s semiconductor build-out.
Nandan Nilekani, who built Aadhaar as UIDAI’s founding chairman, has been tapped by PM Modi to lead a 6-member task force reforming India’s exam system — formed a day after the Education Minister resigned over the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak. Here’s who’s on the panel, and what’s at stake.
