Rajiv Shah

Democracy guarantees every citizen the right to protest. It also places an equally important obligation upon governments to listen, negotiate and, where justified, resolve genuine public grievances. But democratic negotiations become extraordinarily complex when a protest movement evolves into a political campaign whose objectives continue to expand even after its original demands are addressed. The recent agitation led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has become a striking case study in...

The scenes witnessed in Delhi this week are not significant merely because another political protest has reached the national capital. Democracies are expected to witness demonstrations, disagreements and public dissent. What deserves closer attention, however, is the striking similarity in the way many modern protests evolve. A localized grievance suddenly expands into a nationwide political campaign. Student groups become the moral face of the movement. Social media explodes with...

India’s economic future may not be decided by its billion-dollar technology companies alone. It may well be determined by the ability of millions of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to embrace artificial intelligence. The recent World Economic Forum report, Transforming Small Businesses: An AI Playbook for India’s SMEs, serves as a timely reminder that the next industrial revolution will not be fought in corporate boardrooms alone but in thousands of workshops, factories, retail stores and...