
Geopolitics
The Supreme Court's Cash Order Targets Under a Tenth of What Elections Seize
The order forces cash above Rs 10 lakh to the income tax department. But cash was already under a tenth of what election squads seize, and it is a rounding error next to the legal welfare transfers no court order can touch.
By The Signal Editorial
August 18, 2026 · 7 min read
The Latest

Technology
A Law Built for Case-by-Case Review Now Blocks Accounts by the Thousand
Section 69A requires a committee to individually judge each blocking order 'justifiable,' with reasons recorded in writing. In practice, one 2025 order blocked 2,355 accounts inside an hour, and the government has not published an annual count since 2022.
August 18, 2026

Business
RBI's Growth Forecast Assumed an Oil Price the Market Has Already Broken
RBI's FY27 growth and inflation math rests on an $85-a-barrel oil assumption set in April. Brent has already cleared $91, and the central bank's own numbers show it saw the rebound coming.
August 18, 2026

Business
India's Median Firm Got Bigger After Covid, Not Smaller
A new EAC-PM working paper tracked the median Indian firm, not the largest ones, through the pandemic years. Its capital, revenue and profitability all rose, the opposite of what the K-shaped recovery story predicts.
August 18, 2026

Business
Three in Four Indian Space Startups Have Never Raised Equity Capital
A Tracxn count finds three in four Indian spacetech startups have never closed an equity round. The government fund built to fix that has not made a single investment either.
August 17, 2026

Business
The UPI Fee India Said Was False Just Became Law
Parliament just handed the government the power to charge a UPI fee it dismissed as false fourteen months earlier. The survey data and the currency numbers suggest free UPI was never actually beating cash.
August 17, 2026

Markets
India's Recovering Foreign Flows Depend on a Japanese Miss
Japan's economy just posted the kind of soft number that usually worries markets. In India, it is doing the opposite: delaying a Bank of Japan hike that could interrupt a foreign-investor rebound that is still deep underwater for the year.
August 17, 2026
Business & Markets

Business
RBI's Growth Forecast Assumed an Oil Price the Market Has Already Broken
RBI's FY27 growth and inflation math rests on an $85-a-barrel oil assumption set in April. Brent has already cleared $91, and the central bank's own numbers show it saw the rebound coming.
August 18, 2026

Business
India's Median Firm Got Bigger After Covid, Not Smaller
A new EAC-PM working paper tracked the median Indian firm, not the largest ones, through the pandemic years. Its capital, revenue and profitability all rose, the opposite of what the K-shaped recovery story predicts.
August 18, 2026

Business
Three in Four Indian Space Startups Have Never Raised Equity Capital
A Tracxn count finds three in four Indian spacetech startups have never closed an equity round. The government fund built to fix that has not made a single investment either.
August 17, 2026
Technology & Science

Technology
A Law Built for Case-by-Case Review Now Blocks Accounts by the Thousand
Section 69A requires a committee to individually judge each blocking order 'justifiable,' with reasons recorded in writing. In practice, one 2025 order blocked 2,355 accounts inside an hour, and the government has not published an annual count since 2022.
August 18, 2026

Technology
Nvidia Is Now Financing the Data Centers That Buy Its Chips
Nvidia has lined up Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion for the data centers that buy its chips. Wall Street has seen this circularity before, in Cisco and Lucent's dot-com bust.
August 12, 2026

Technology
The Rule That Killed Free Basics Just Let a Paid Fast Lane Through
India's net neutrality rule was built to ban paid fast lanes after the Free Basics fight. A 5G plan just tested it, and the regulator's first read found no violation.
July 31, 2026
Health, Culture & Geopolitics

Health
Congo's Worst Ebola Outbreak Ever Has No Vaccine Behind It
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak just became the deadliest ever recorded there. The virus behind it has never had a licensed vaccine, and the fastest candidate in testing is still months from proving it works.
August 17, 2026

Health
Why Kerala's Dengue Patients Are Twelve Times More Likely to Die Than Tamil Nadu's
Tamil Nadu carries India's biggest dengue caseload and one of its lowest death tolls; Kerala runs the opposite trade, with far fewer cases but far more deaths. The gap is Kerala's population, not its outbreak.
August 1, 2026

Health
India Meets Just 0.2 Percent of Its Own Heart Transplant Need
A new Lancet analysis finds India covers just 0.2 percent of its own heart transplant need and 7.2 percent of kidney need. The shortfall traces to where transplant capacity sits, not to how many people need one.
July 30, 2026