Goutam Prusty
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Essays and articles across technology, business, ideas, and learning.

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  1. September 14, 2026business strategy

    Structure, Not Conspiracy

    Regulatory compliance, protest movements, and poverty data all point to the same conclusion about India's political economy since 1991.

    Structure, Not Conspiracy
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  2. September 7, 2026business strategy

    The Billionaire Raj

    India's top 1% holds 40.1% of national wealth. A data-first look at wealth concentration, tax incidence, and household debt.

    Data visualization representing wealth concentration in India
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  3. August 24, 2026business strategy

    The Asset Trap

    77-90% of Indian household wealth sits in real estate and gold, not financial assets that beat inflation—access, not literacy, is the real barrier.

    Illustration representing Indian household wealth allocation across real estate, gold, and financial assets
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  4. August 10, 2026business strategy

    Why Your Central Bank Wants Some Inflation

    The RBI targets 4% inflation, not zero. Why that target exists, who bears the cost, and what CPI vs CFPI reveals.

    Why Your Central Bank Wants Some Inflation
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  5. July 29, 2026business strategy

    The Jobs That Aren't Jobs

    India's unemployment rate fell from 6.0% to 3.2% between 2017–18 and 2023–24. Real wages barely moved. A data-first look at why.

    The Jobs That Aren't Jobs
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  6. July 14, 2026technology

    The Agentic Inflection Point

    A strategic analysis of where autonomous AI systems actually are, the capability gaps that remain, and what the trajectory implies for organizations.

    Abstract illustration representing autonomous AI agents and workflow automation
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  7. July 14, 2026technology

    AI's Physical Limits

    Semiconductor concentration, energy constraints, and water scarcity are physical limits on AI progress that most analysis overlooks.

    Abstract illustration of semiconductor chips, power grids, and water representing AI's physical constraints
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  8. June 12, 2026business strategy

    What I Actually Think About India's Next Decade

    Closing a 10-week series on Indian institutions, I drop the hedging and say plainly what I believe about reform, timing, and the decade ahead.

    Scatter plot comparing political difficulty and cross-domain leverage of six Indian institutional reforms, sized by estimated economic return
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  9. May 22, 2026business strategy

    The Billionaire Raj: What India's Inequality Actually Costs

    India's top 1% income share now exceeds colonial-era levels. This essay examines the specific economic costs of that concentration.

    Illustration contrasting modern skyscrapers with dense informal housing, connected by a rising line graph
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  10. May 16, 2026philosophy psychology

    Money Is a Story. Here's Why That Matters.

    Money has no inherent value—it's a collectively maintained story. Here's what makes some monetary stories durable and others collapse.

    Historical currency including a banknote, cowrie shell, and gold coins next to a modern smartphone wallet app
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  11. May 16, 2026philosophy psychology

    The Question That Explains Everything About Modern Economies

    Modern economies run mostly on symbolic value, not survival. A look at what the numbers reveal about status, belief, and coordination.

    New York Stock Exchange trading floor with illuminated data screens
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  12. May 8, 2026business strategy

    Trust as Infrastructure: Why India's Low Social Capital Is an Economic Problem

    Trust functions like infrastructure, not just culture. Why India's low generalized trust raises transaction costs, and how institutions—not culture—can fix it.

    Diagram of the Low-Trust Economic Loop showing how low generalized trust leads to high transaction costs, informal firms, low tax base, poor public institutions, low contract enforcement, and back to low trust
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  13. May 5, 2026business strategy

    Baliyatra and the Arithmetic of Disappearing Craft

    Baliyatra draws record crowds and revenue, yet traditional Odia crafts are vanishing from its stalls. Here's the economic logic behind why.

    An artisan crafting silver filigree jewelry at a fair stall in the evening, with a ferris wheel lit up in the background
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  14. April 10, 2026business strategy

    Six Months, Twelve Domains, One Uncomfortable Conclusion

    Six months of deep research into India's institutions reveals interconnected systemic failures, real successes, and six high-leverage reforms.

    Aerial view of a dense Indian city at dusk with a lit highway cutting through the skyline
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  15. March 28, 2026technology

    I Used AI to Find the Ceiling

    I used Claude to run an honest capability assessment on my last project before planning my next SaaS build — and let the findings shape the spec.

    A concrete room corner lit by a single beam of light
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  16. March 25, 2026technology

    I Built My WordPress Theme to Be Read by Machines

    Why designing a WordPress theme for AI agents instead of humans produced a cleaner, faster, more honest architecture.

    Diagram showing theme.json connected to templates, parts, and patterns folders in a WordPress file system
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  17. March 21, 2026business strategy

    Bitcoin Didn't Change. The World Caught Up.

    What the numbers actually say about Bitcoin's shift from experiment to global store of value.

    Bitcoin: The Macroeconomic Case for Digital Gold - gold bar transforming into a Bitcoin symbol over a circuit board background
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  18. March 21, 2026business strategy

    India Is Borrowing China's Playbook

    A structural comparison of India and China's economies from 2000-2025, examining inequality, surveillance, and industrial policy.

    A split image showing a surveillance-covered tower on one side and a crumbling classical building on the other, joined by a large eye
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  19. March 21, 2026technology

    I Wasted Months Before I Figured Out What I Was Actually Building

    Not because the tools were bad — because I kept skipping the step where you decide what you're actually building.

    A notebook with handwritten notes next to an open laptop showing a research and implementation checklist
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Goutam Prusty

Learning in public. Building with intention.

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