If you are an early-riser, you must have noticed that the mornings now arrive wrapped in confidence. Big type, bold claims, decisive verbs to accompany your morning tea. You skim through the contents while the kettle boils, feeling briefly assured that something, somewhere, is finally moving. But it is only later, when you slow down and read thoroughly, that the mood shifts. The timelines start appearing blurry and the exceptions multiply. The real story is not in what is announced, but in what is carefully hedged, deferred, or quietly negotiated away. Today’s writeups carry the tension between what is declared and what is deferred. Let’s dive in.
Take the United States’ overhaul of the H-1B visa system. Framed as an economically rational reset, the move also carries a sharp message for Indian IT-enabled services firms. Our first editorial argues that the sector relied for too long on volume-driven arbitrage, even as the lottery system was visibly breaking down under multiple filings and staffing-led distortions. The politics around H-1B visas may be new, but the warning signs were not. Adaptation is no longer optional, it is overdue.
A parallel unease runs through India’s higher education ambitions. A Niti Aayog report calls for urgent internationalisation as traditional study destinations tighten visas and raise costs, highlights our second editorial. Yet the imbalance is stark. About 47,000 foreign students hosted versus more than 1.3 million Indians studying abroad, taking nearly $3.4 billion with them in 2023-24. The proposed Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 and projections cited from Deloitte India and Knight Frank India suggest large long-term gains, but only if deeper constraints of research funding, regulatory fragmentation and weak post-study pathways are addressed.
Meanwhile, global trade, Amita Batra writes, has entered a phase where unpredictability is no longer an anomaly but a feature. The US’ embrace of reciprocal tariffs, fragile executive-order deals and selective enforcement has weakened expectations of stability. China’s use of export controls on rare earths has accelerated supply-chain realignment, while Asean’s role as both market and trans-shipment route exposes enforcement gaps. As WTO relevance fades, cooperative frameworks such as the CPTPP begin to look less like alternatives and more like necessities.
On jobs and technology, Nishant Sahdev flips the narrative. Drawing on the IEA’s World Energy Employment 2025 report, he shows that AI adoption has coincided with rising employment, not decline, particularly in the electricity and solar sectors. India’s energy workforce expanded sharply in 2024. The risk, he argues, is not displacement but a skills shortage, especially in coal-dependent regions.
Finally, Ajay Vir Jakhar’s review of The Battle of Narnaul reminds us that history itself is written this way. The headline celebrates the rebellion of 1857, while the story records collaboration with the Brits of the compliant Indian rulers. Rao Tula Ram fought, lost, and slipped into obscurity, while compliant princes were preserved in memory. The book forces us to read what we have long skipped, the uncomfortable notes at the bottom of the page, where truth often waits.
Stay tuned!
