Crude oil prices just fell down after months of chaos around the Strait of Hormuz. Your petrol pump still charges close to what it did last week. But why? What actually happened The Iran war pushed Brent crude from around 65 dollars a barrel to over 80 within days, once Iran restricted traffic through the

Every April, millions of Indians calculate, file, and pay. Meanwhile, residents of certain countries go through the entire year without owing any money whatsoever on account of personal income tax. They know of no slab rates, no Form 16, nothing! Now this is not a loophole. It is a deliberate economic model, and it works

Every financial year, the vast majority of Indians walk into their tax filing with advice picked up from a colleague at lunch, a relative who files their own returns, or a thread they half-read online. Some of it is harmless. Some of it results in a notice from the Income Tax Department. Here are the

Imagine trying to navigate a city using a map from 1961. Roads have changed, new neighborhoods exist, and landmarks have been renamed. Yet you’re still clutching that outdated paper, hoping to find your way. For decades, Indian taxpayers faced a similar challenge with the Income-tax Act, 1961. After more than six decades and roughly 4,000

Expansion, peak, contraction and recovery… the pattern repeats, though never in exactly the same way. The economic, or business, cycle reflects the recurring shifts in growth, inflation, profits and market sentiment that shape investment outcomes over time. While the visual of a wave rising and falling is simple, what happens beneath the surface is far

Something broke in the last few years. The traditional career playbook of working hard, climbing the ladder, sacrificing your 20s for a corner office in your 40s suddenly stopped making sense to millions of people. First came The Great Resignation. In 2021-2022, people quit jobs in record numbers. Not for better jobs. Just… quit. The

Remember when $1 = ₹50? If you’re in your 30s, you do. Today it’s ₹85. That’s a 70% depreciation in roughly two decades. So what happened? Did India get poorer? Well… not exactly. But three forces have been pushing the rupee down. 1. The Trade Deficit Black Hole India imports way more than it exports.

When we talk about economic cycles, we often reduce complex realities into simple shapes. These “shaped economies” are practical ways to understand how growth, recovery, and inequality play out across countries, industries, and income groups. While the K-shaped economy has become a familiar term in recent years, it is only one of several models economists