TFD Economic Research Desk

52 POSTS
TFD Economic Research Desk covers the latest economic trends and developments, delivering in-depth analysis and reporting to help readers navigate the economic landscape, both Indian and global, with clarity and insight.

Exclusive articles:

India demographic dividend: still powerful, no longer automatic

India still has a rare age-profile advantage. But a demographic dividend is not a gift; it is a conversion problem. Youth jobs, female labour-force participation and skill formation will decide whether the window produces productivity or pressure

Insurance penetration India: why protection stays shallow – and what could finally widen the market

India's insurance market is already large, but protection is still too shallow. The real constraint is not awareness alone; it is trust, cost, distribution and product design

Embedded finance India: how UPI and ONDC could trigger the next banking disruption

UPI turned payments into infrastructure. ONDC wants to do something similar for commerce. The real disruption now is embedded finance: credit, insurance and working-capital products slipping into the apps, platforms and software Indians already use.

Public Capex India: Why Roads and Railways Still Look Like the Best Stimulus

Public capex India works best when it builds roads, rail corridors and logistics capacity that cut freight time, lower embedded costs and crowd in private investment.

Housing affordability: bubble, shortage, or the wrong homes in the wrong places?

India housing affordability now looks less like a simple bubble and more like a structural mismatch: rising prices, stretched household budgets, thin rental logic and the wrong supply in the wrong places.

Breaking

Auditor Independence Gets a Cooling-Off Clause: MCA’s Cross-Selling Squeeze on the Big Four

MCA’s proposed auditor independence reform would extend non-audit service restrictions for three years after audit tenure ends, targeting the cross-selling economics that have long strengthened large multidisciplinary networks.

Audit Quality Maturity Model and the Big Four Question Returns

ICAI has widened the mandatory reach of the Audit Quality Maturity Model to group audits and other public-interest engagements. The move sharpens India's audit-quality architecture, but it also reopens the harder question of whether domestic firms can build credible scale against the Big Four.

NFRA inspection reports put Big Four-linked audit networks on notice

NFRA’s March 2026 inspection reports have turned audit quality into the central governance story around India’s Big Four-linked audit networks, with independence, group controls and evidence quality all under pressure.

IBC Amendment Act 2026 Moves Insolvency Out of the Waiting Room

The IBC Amendment Act 2026 is India’s clearest attempt yet to cut insolvency delays where they actually begin—at admission, in liquidation and in the messy afterlife of resolution-plan implementation.