When a Budget Stops Being Just Numbers Budgets are often presented as technical documents—columns of expenditure, lines of allocation, a ritual of governance. But sometimes, a budget reads like something else entirely.A signal. A response. A diagnosis. The 2026–27 budget of Manipur is one such document. Because when more than half of a major expenditure…
On January 27, 2026, Narendra Modi stood beside Ursula von der Leyen at Hyderabad House in New Delhi and announced what both sides described, with little hesitation, as “the mother of all trade deals.” It was a moment designed for scale. Nearly two billion people. A quarter of global GDP. A negotiation that had stretched…
As the first quarter of 2026 closes, something deeper than policy announcements is unfolding across Northeast India. The narrative is no longer about resources alone—bamboo, oil, tea, or handloom. It is about capital. Structured, institutional, and increasingly targeted capital. From the hills of Nagaland to the plains of Tripura and the complex socio-economic fabric of…
When Bhutan unveiled the vision for Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), it was widely seen as one of the most ambitious economic experiments in South Asia — a $100 billion sustainable smart city designed to transform the Himalayan kingdom’s economic future. But the story does not end at Bhutan’s border. Just a few kilometres away from…
India’s latest GDP release delivered a headline that most newsrooms treated as straightforward good news: Q3 FY26 growth printed at 7.8%, beating expectations, with the full-year estimate revised up to 7.6%. But beneath that optimism lies a statistical twist few are unpacking properly. Using a newly revised base year and methodology, the government now estimates…
On 24 November 2025, at a high-level Stakeholders’ Consultation in New Delhi, organised jointly by NITI Aayog and the Government of Mizoram, the state crossed a historic milestone. In the presence of officials from multiple central ministries and more than 60 investors in ginger trading, processing, and value-addition, NITI Aayog formally declared Mizoram as the…
