We Passed the Exam. We Failed the Economy

On how India built its education system faster than it built the economy to absorb it

When AI Writes the Code, Who Guards the System?

As AI-assisted coding accelerates software development, enterprises face a new challenge: ensuring governance, accountability, and safety keep pace with machine-speed innovation

Built to Move, Designed to Stop

Why India’s systems keep interrupting its own momentum

The War in Iran: The Illusion of Decisive Force

One month in, the limits of conventional military power are being laid bare. As a “dual chokehold” on global energy flows emerges, the old security umbrella of the Gulf states is being dismantled. It is forcing a permanent re-pricing of both regional and global risk.

Attraversiamo: Crossing Over in Italy

A journey through Pompeii, Tuscany, Florence and Rome becomes a meditation on art, memory, and the fragile permanence of human endeavour

The Economy We Have, Not the One We Imagined

Why the Gulf crisis may be India’s moment for the next phase of reform

A War India Didn’t Choose—and a Market It Can’t Escape

From Hormuz to Dalal Street, a distant conflict is quietly reshaping risk for Indian investors—and exposing the limits of “India-only” portfolios

The Knowledge Divide: How AI Will Reorganise Work, Margins, and Power

As AI agents embed intelligence into systems, the real shift is not automation—but how knowledge is owned, shared, and scaled across organisations

Designing for Signal

A conversation between Charles Assisi and Shrinath V on rebuilding Founding Fuel

The Hallucination in the Room

When producing things is mistaken for thinking: AI hasn’t created this habit—it has simply made it faster and harder to spot. Revealing the gap between output and judgement inside organisations

Editor’s Note | Sharpening the Signal

Oscar 2026: A Study in Extremes

Chaos, craft and the return of the auteur

Oscar Predictions 2026: Who Will Win—and Why

My annual curtain-raiser: the likely winners, the dark horses, and the one film you should actually watch.

How Iran Is Turning the Global Economy Into a Battlefield

As the conflict with the United States and Israel intensifies, Iran’s new leadership is signalling a prolonged confrontation—one that combines conventional warfare with pressure on global energy flows and supply chains.

Beyond the Headlines: The Human Complexity of the Middle East

Books, films and cultural works that help us see the Middle East beyond the noise of geopolitics

The US–Israel War on Iran: The Risks to India’s Strategic Hedging

Energy dependence, remittance flows and trade corridors reveal how deeply India’s economy is tied to stability in West Asia. Part II of a two-part series.

The US–Israel War on Iran: Energy, Power and Regional Disruption

Energy chokepoints, proxy escalation and great-power recalibration are reshaping the Gulf and unsettling the global order. Part I of a two-part series.

Your Life Is Already Long India. Your Portfolio Shouldn’t Be

Why global diversification is less about chasing returns and more about protecting your financial future from a single-country risk

Tariffs Are the Noise. Realignment Is the Signal

Even if Trump’s tariffs disappear, the forces reshaping global trade—geopolitics, security concerns and reconfigured regional blocs—are here to stay

When Data Is Right but Decisions Go Wrong

Strategy fails not from lack of information, but from outdated assumptions about what it implies

The Happiness We Keep Postponing

A reflection on joy, and why the ordinary day may be enough

The Blind Spots of India Inc

Disability inclusion, leadership imagination, and the limits of intent

India’s AI Moment

As major powers turn artificial intelligence towards science and national security, India must widen its AI vision beyond inclusion and productivity

Redesigning Work—or Retreating to Control

Why the real risk in the return-to-office debate isn’t resistance, but the quiet erosion of judgement and capability

India’s AI Gambit: The Choices That Will Define Power

Speed is not strategy. The real battle is over sovereignty, science and state capacity

India’s Trade Deals and the New Meaning of Strategic Autonomy

What India’s agreements with the US and EU reveal about power, policy space, and calibrated accommodation

India Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI

Why India’s AI moment will be decided less by models—and more by how intelligence is applied, governed, and trusted

Anatomy of a Prompt

On prompting, intent, and the discipline of asking well

Trendspotting 2026: India Cannot App Its Way to Prosperity

Another 50 tech IPOs won’t build a middle class

Between Jugaad and Destiny: India’s Missing Medium Term

Why a civilisation that thinks in eternity still struggles to plan in decades

Relearning the Craft of Teaching

An eight-week teaching programme unsettles long-held assumptions about rigour, expertise, and what it truly means to help students learn

America’s Iran Trap Is Closing

Carrier strike groups, nuclear deadlines and a brittle regime in Tehran are converging on a moment where Washington may discover that every move—strike, sabotage or restraint—ends in escalation

When AI Raises the Average, Who Protects the Breakthrough?

Artificial intelligence is superb at optimisation. But transformation still comes from the deviations leaders choose to back.

A Merger Is Not an Idea

Why the Omnicom - Interpublic deal reveals a deeper failure of imagination in advertising

The Light and the Lotus

What the return of the Piprahwa relics asks of us—about restraint, remembrance, and how we practice attention today

Trade Is the New Geopolitics—and India Must Learn to Play It

Why India’s future power will be shaped less by diplomacy and more by trade architecture

Inside Chennai’s Enduring Enterprises

A field report on family ownership, continuity, and the craft of building for the long term

A Journey Back to Myself

Armed with a diary and pen, I set out on a solo two-and-a-half-month ‘journalling adventure’ through Malaysia and Indonesia. Every little self-musing helped me remember my old self and awaken a new one

The Quiet Work of Branding

Five shifts shaping how organisations build clarity, continuity and trust in 2025

Iran at the Brink: Five Scenarios That Could Reshape the Region

Economic collapse, political revolt and great-power rivalry converge in Iran’s most dangerous moment in decades.

When We Stopped Taking Things Apart

How abstraction, AI, and frictionless systems may be reshaping confidence, cognition, and first-principles thinking

Rivers, Bronzes and the Architecture of Ambition

What the Chola trail reveals about power, systems, memory, and coffee

The Ecology of Engagement: What Madhav Gadgil Taught Us to See

From sacred groves to the Western Ghats, Gadgil’s work rebuilt the bridge between science and lived experience.

A World Without Endgames

What prolonged global conflicts mean for Europe, China—and India’s narrowing strategic space.

Test cricket’s second innings

With the right positioning, Test cricket can become a premium cultural product — and a powerful tourism engine. The BCCI is uniquely placed to lead that shift.

When Stories Move Faster Than Systems

Why AI-accelerated narratives are exposing leadership and capability gaps across organisations

Revolution Inside AI

As the world fixates on large language models, a quieter shift toward world models, scientific AI and safety is reshaping global power

The Best of FF Life 2025

11 stories that asked us to slow down, look closer, and feel more deeply

The Best Stories of 2025

Ten of our best work through the year—on business, leadership, and geopolitical trends

The Year the World Learned to Live Without America

How Trump’s tariffs, Europe’s capitulation, China’s counter-moves and India’s narrowing room for manoeuvre reshaped the global order.