Finance Forward

रात भर का मेहमान हूँ, ऐ चाँद जानता हूँ मैं  एक उम्र से हूँ बाहर, घर का रास्ता जानता हूँ मैं — गुलज़ार 〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰 Salem की आख़िरी रात - थोड़ी देर और, फिर वो रास्ता जो हमेशा याद रहता है।

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫ਼ਤਿਹ। Some verses of Gurbani carry you quietly for years before you notice they have been doing the work. This is one of them. Two lines from Japji Sahib that I find myself returning to on difficult days, in difficult meetings, and in quiet evenings with my children. The Shabad Gurmukhi ਜੋ ਤੁਧੁ ਭਾਵੈ ਸਾਈ ਭਲੀ ਕਾਰ ॥ ਤੂ ਸਦਾ ਸਲਾਮਤਿ ਨਿਰੰਕਾਰ ॥ Hindi जो तुझे अच्छा लगे, वही कार्य भला है। तू सदा सलामत है, हे निरंकार। English Transliteration Jo tudh bhaavai saa-ee bhalee kaar. Too sadaa salaamat Nirankaar. Source: Ang 3, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Japji Sahib, Pauri 16. Composed by Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Understanding the Verse Word by word: whatever pleases You, that alone is the good work. You, Formless One, are forever whole. The word salaamat is worth pausing on. It is an Arabic-rooted word, the same root as Islam and salaam , meaning peace, wholeness, being untouched by harm. Guru Nanak Dev Ji, writing in the heart of Punjab...

There is a particular kind of satisfaction — quiet, almost private — that comes from watching something you crafted at your own desk travel all the way up and enter the public domain at the highest level. On 20th March 2026, the Hon'ble Finance Minister of India, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, released Kar Setu — the eBook and booklet on Interplay and Transition FAQs from the Income Tax Act, 1961 to the Income Tax Act, 2025. What Kar Setu Is India is undergoing one of the most significant legislative transitions in its fiscal history. The Income Tax Act, 1961 — a statute that governed the tax lives of every Indian for over six decades — is being replaced by the Income Tax Act, 2025. This is not a cosmetic rewrite. It is a restructuring of 536 sections, affecting over 700 field offices, tens of thousands of tax officers, and millions of taxpayers and practitioners across the country. The question that every officer in the field, every chartered accountant advising a client, every taxp...

The alarm goes off at 4:30 AM in Girnar Guest House in Kaushambi. It is the 18th of March 2026. I have packed the night before. Three copies of my appointment letter. Six passport-size photographs. A hardbound diary. Blue pen, black pen, red pen. The red one, I suspect, will see the most use. On my laptop, my phone, and a pen drive, there is a PDF I have been reading for two days. The Compendium of Instructions on Election Expenditure Monitoring, December 2024 edition. Five hundred and some pages. It is going to be my reference manual for the next forty-five days. I have been following money trail in Income Tax. Today, I am going to follow money in a different place. The Election Commission of India has appointed me as Expenditure Observer for the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Elections, 2026. My constituency is 86-Edappadi, Salem District.  My job is straightforward. Every candidate contesting this seat can spend a maximum of Rs. 40 lakh under Rule 90 of the Conduct of Election ...

The first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South just kicked off in Delhi. And I was there on the expo floor yesterday. Bharat Mandapam was buzzing — 300+ exhibitors from over 110 countries, 20+ Heads of State converging later this week, and Sundar Pichai landing in Delhi for a keynote. The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is massive by any measure. Which of these AI tools can actually survive contact with Indian government reality? Not the pitch deck reality. The ground reality. The 10,000-user, legacy-system, compliance-heavy, can't-afford-downtime reality. With that lens, I walked the expo floor for hours. And seven solutions stood out — not because they had the flashiest booths, but because they addressed problems I deal with every single day. Here's what I found. 1. Deloitte PRAGYA — When Consulting Meets AI at Scale Deloitte's PRAGYA platform wasn't just another enterprise AI dashboard. What caught my attention was how it bridges the gap between strate...

NADT had invited me to deliver two sessions as part of their ITEC programme on "Innovations in Tax Administration: Building Capacity for the Future." The morning session was about opportunity — how generative AI is reshaping everything from taxpayer services to complex cross-border investigations. The afternoon was about the guardrails — data privacy, algorithmic bias, ethical governance, and the cautionary tales of what happens when governments deploy AI without asking the right questions first. On paper, these are two separate topics. In practice, they're inseparable. You can't talk about the transformative potential of AI in tax administration without immediately confronting the question: at what cost, and to whom? That tension — between innovation and protection, between speed and fairness — became the throughline of my entire day in Nagpur. The Room That Changed My Perspective Here's what I wasn't fully prepared for: the quality of the questions. I w...