The Firm's Journal
The Pritiraj Review.
Politics is the promise. Governance is the delivery.
The Pritiraj Review is the journal of Pritiraj & Partners — long-form, evidence-led analysis of how India is governed, how it delivers, and what its next decades demand. Written in the gap between what the state announces and what reaches its people, for those who carry responsibility rather than only opinion. Evidence over assertion, the structural over the sensational, a practitioner's eye for what actually works. Written by Pritiraj Brahma. Published weekly. The aim is not to be first, but to be worth reading a year later.
01Institutions & ReformEight Hundred and Fifty Seats — What Delimitation Actually DecidesThe Delimitation Bill, 2026 proposes a 850-member Lok Sabha with 272 seats reserved for women. The seat count is the least consequential thing about it.8 AUGUST 202602Political EconomyThe Arithmetic of Absence — Why Air India Is Losing a Market It Was Built to LeadAir India's FY26 loss hit ₹22,238 crore as domestic share fell to 23.9%. A structured analysis of why the turnaround is stalling — and the correction required.6 AUGUST 202603Governance & DeliveryThe Arithmetic That Should Alarm Us — India's Learning Crisis as a Solvency ProblemIndia enrols nearly every child and half leave unable to do grade-level mathematics. Why the learning crisis is now a fiscal question — and the five structural corrections it requires.30 JULY 202604Institutions & ReformThe Quiet Part of a Loud Victory — Symbol, Substance and the Exam ReformThe street took a scalp; the State had already rebuilt the system. Why the resignation of the Union Education Minister matters less than the five corrections that preceded it.26 JULY 202605Governance & DeliveryThe Dashboard Problem — When Measurement Replaces DeliveryIndia has more real-time government dashboards than any comparable state. Pendency, learning outcomes and delivery gaps have not moved with them. Visibility is not accountability.23 JULY 202606State CapacityThe District Is Where the State Lives — The Tier India Refuses to StaffIndia debates the Centre and the states endlessly and ignores the tier where governance actually succeeds or fails. The district runs at 19% IAS vacancy against a mandate that expands every year.16 JULY 202607Institutions & ReformThe CJP Protest — Ten Million Followers, One Unwinnable DemandTen million followers in five days, and no institutional outcome. A strategist's diagnosis of five design errors — and the pivot that could still convert pressure into text.9 JULY 202608Political EconomyThe Forty-One Percent Illusion — State Finances After the Sixteenth CommissionThe 16th Finance Commission held devolution at 41% and discontinued revenue deficit grants. Why a headline of continuity conceals the tightest state fiscal settlement in a decade.2 JULY 202609Governance & DeliveryThe Certificate Is Not the Job — Why India Skills Millions and Employs FewPMKVY trained 13.7 million people in seven years and placed 18 per cent of them. The failure is not effort; it is a system built to count certificates instead of livelihoods.25 JUNE 202610Political EconomyThe Campus Economy — India's Quietest Special Economic ZonesRoughly 37% of notified SEZ land is in use. Meanwhile four university gates have built the concentrated capital, talent and IP pools that SEZ policy spent twenty years trying to engineer.18 JUNE 202611Political EconomyIndia's Demographic Clock — The Deadline Beneath Every Other DebateA median age of 28 in an ageing world is India's greatest advantage and its deadline. The working-age share peaks in the 2040s; everything else is a question of what gets delivered before then.11 JUNE 202612Governance & DeliveryFour Codes, Thirty-Six Rulebooks — The Labour Reform That Is Not Yet a ReformTwenty-nine central labour laws were repealed on 21 November 2025. The central rules arrived on 8 May 2026. The states are where the reform is now decided.4 JUNE 202613Federalism & the NortheastThe Northeast Is Not the Periphery — A Gateway That Is Not Yet OpenOver ₹6 lakh crore committed in a decade, and the region's exports fell from $50.8m to $47.6m. The gateway framing is right; the execution gap is the whole problem.28 MAY 202614Governance & DeliveryThe Last Mile Is the Whole Journey — What Seventy-One Farms Taught MeMeghalaya imports 18,000 tonnes of pork a year while almost every household keeps pigs. The gap between those two facts is where Indian governance is actually decided.21 MAY 202615Political EconomyThe Tariff That Was Never Lawful — What India Conceded, and What It Should LearnIndia negotiated relief from a 50% US tariff in February 2026. Three weeks later the US Supreme Court held the instrument behind it was never authorised. A lesson in negotiating against legal durability.14 MAY 202616State CapacityCities Without Money — The Third Tier and the Capacity It LacksIndia's cities produce roughly 60% of GDP and raise 0.6% of it. The Sixteenth Commission has now sent them ₹3.6 lakh crore against conditions most cannot yet meet.7 MAY 202617Governance & DeliveryThe Thirty-Nine Percent Question — Health Spending and What It BuysOut-of-pocket health spending has fallen from 62.6% to around 39%. Public health spending sits at 1.8% of GDP against a 2.5% target. Both numbers describe the same unfinished settlement.30 APRIL 202618Institutions & ReformWho Regulates the RegulatorsIndia built independent regulators for its most important sectors and then left their appointments, budgets and accountability inside the ministries they were meant to check.23 APRIL 202619Resources & ClimateAirsheds Do Not Respect District LinesIndia measures air pollution by city and manages it by municipality. The pollution arrives from a region several hundred kilometres wide. The mismatch is the whole problem.16 APRIL 202620Political EconomyThe Missing Middle of Indian EnterpriseOnly 14% of India's MSMEs have formal credit, against a gap estimated between ₹25 and ₹30 lakh crore. Indian firms stay small because staying small is the rational response to the system around them.9 APRIL 202621State CapacityThe Discom Turnaround — and What It Does Not Yet ProveIndia's power distributors posted a collective profit of ₹2,701 crore in FY25 against accumulated losses of ₹6.47 lakh crore. A real turnaround, and a small one.2 APRIL 202622Resources & ClimateThe Aquifer Is the Real Budget ConstraintIndia extracts 247.22 BCM of groundwater a year — a quarter of the world's total. 730 assessment units are over-exploited. The binding constraint on Indian agriculture is not credit or price.26 MARCH 202623Institutions & ReformFive Crore Cases and the Arithmetic of DelayIndia's courts carry more than 5 crore pending cases with roughly 14 judges per million people against a recommended 50. The backlog is not a moral failing; it is a capacity equation.19 MARCH 202624Governance & DeliveryCitizens Who Move, Entitlements That Do NotIndia built a portable ration card and stopped there. A migrant worker still cannot vote, see a doctor, enrol a child or claim a pension where they actually live.12 MARCH 202625Work & LivelihoodsThe Half That Does Not Show Up — India's Female Participation ProblemFemale labour force participation has risen to 40%. Urban female participation sits near 25%, and 44.4% of women outside the workforce name care work as the reason. The constraint is not ambition.5 MARCH 202626Political EconomyThe Title Is the Asset — Why Indian Land Cannot Be Used as CapitalIndia's land records are presumptive, not conclusive. A landholding you cannot prove you own is a landholding you cannot borrow against, sell cleanly, or defend in court.26 FEBRUARY 202627State CapacityTwenty Years After Prakash Singh — The Reform That Was Ordered and Never DeliveredThe Supreme Court directed seven police reforms in 2006. Two decades on, forces run at roughly a fifth understrength and 86% of the state police is constabulary with one promotion in a career.19 FEBRUARY 202628Institutions & ReformThe Country That Stopped Counting ItselfIndia's last census was in 2011. Every welfare list, every seat allocation and every per-capita figure in public use rests on a population that no longer exists.12 FEBRUARY 202629Political EconomyThe Capex Budget and the Capacity to Spend It₹12.22 lakh crore of capital expenditure against a 4.3% deficit. The Union Budget 2026-27 makes a coherent bet — and hands the binding constraint to the states.5 FEBRUARY 202630Institutions & ReformThe Largest Thing India Does WellIndia moves 64 crore people through a voting booth in six weeks without serious incident — the most impressive administrative act on earth. Everything surrounding that act is weaker than the act itself.1 FEBRUARY 2026No essays match these filters. Clear all