Sudharsan Pandiyan’s Blog

In 2009, while living in Paris, I experienced a moment of clarity that has shaped my view of money and value ever since. That was the year Apple launched the iPhone 3GS. It was a symbol of status, rarity, and prestige. I had managed to secure one through a pre-booking at an Apple Store in Paris, and when I flew back home to Chennai for Christmas, I carried it with pride. At that time, the phone had barely entered the Indian market and was seen only in the hands of celebrities. On the bus journey to my hometown, the iPhone died midway, its battery drained. I sat there, holding the most sought-after device in the world, now reduced to a useless object. Next to me was a daily-wage worker, holding a cheap Chinese-made phone worth perhaps one-fiftieth of my iPhone’s price. His phone had six loudspeakers, and he spent the journey playing music cheerfully, filling the bus with sound and life. The contrast struck me with unusual force. My expensive, globally coveted phone was of no use, while ...

Every generation wrestles with its own struggle of adoption. Not adoption in the sense of children, but adoption of the new — electricity, machines, medicines, ideas, networks. Each wave of innovation arrives with promises of progress but also the invisible tax of human hesitation. Looking back, the arc is clear: Electric Age (Gen 6) — the fear was safety. People doubted the invisible current, mistrusted cars, called them “devil wagons.” Appliances Age (Gen 5) — the hurdle was cost. Refrigerators, washing machines, radios transformed homes, but at first they were unreachable luxuries. Nuclear Age (Gen 4) — the dread was existential. Energy and annihilation were fused together in one atom. Space Age (Gen 3) — the anxiety was irrelevance. Why go to the moon when poverty persisted on Earth? PC Age (Gen 2) — the challenge was learning. Clunky machines demanded new literacies, leaving many intimidated. Internet Age (Gen 1) — the barrier was trust. Parents, teachers, governments worr...

The world is once again in the grip of tariffs. Washington is playing its old tune — punitive duties on steel, textiles, copper, autos, and now even on countries like India. The justification is simple: protect American industry, punish foreign exporters, and win political points at home. But here’s the truth: tariffs almost never revive dying industries. America is not going to rebuild its towel factories or garment lines. Compliance costs, wages, and environmental safeguards make that impossible. At best, tariffs shift supply chains away from one country to another — from China to Vietnam, from India to Mexico — without creating new factories in Ohio. So why do tariffs keep coming back? Politics. They are visible, blunt, and emotionally powerful. Tariffs make governments look tough, generate revenue for the treasury, and give leaders a simple slogan: “We are protecting our people.” The costs — higher consumer prices, squeezed importers, lost exports — are scattered and invisible. ...

Being an Indian, Gandhi was introduced to me at a very young age. Gandhi: the Father of our Nation As a boy, I wondered what this man must have done to deserve that title. The textbooks, the stories, the faces on every note from ₹2 to ₹2000 — they all said the same thing: he fought the British and brought us independence. So, in the literal sense, I left him in my mind as a hero who fought for us. Later, I came to know about his methods—Satyagraha. At first, it felt completely alien to me. Counterintuitive. I tried to understand it, even to practice it in my own small ways, and failed miserably. I had no patience, no consistency. So I began to hate him. Such a useless fellow, I thought. Maybe independence was even delayed because of this man. When I read about Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose, and how Gandhi could have possibly saved Bhagat Singh but didn’t, my hatred grew stronger. Years later, when I went to Europe for higher studies, I was surprised by the reverence Eu...

I believe it was around the mid-2000s that Donald Trump, still known more as a media personality than a politician, began making strong remarks about Barack Obama. He didn’t let the whole “birth certificate” controversy slide. Later, after Obama’s re-election in 2012, there came that famous White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Obama, with his characteristic humor, took a sharp jibe at Trump. He teased that if Trump ever ran for president and won, he might turn the White House into a casino and the state dinner into a beauty pageant. Trump’s face that night revealed how little he enjoyed the mockery. Many believe that incident sowed the seed of his eventual candidacy. When he launched his campaign in 2015, even Trump himself didn’t seem entirely serious at first. But he was genuinely surprised by the traction he got. He leaned on his reality-TV instincts and stage presence, and it worked. In the debates, Hillary Clinton and others underestimated him, while he kept scoring in the backgrou...

AI is definitely disrupting our way of life and will continue to influence it in ways we can’t yet imagine. But beneath the noise, there’s a practical truth: the compute resources and energy required to keep these engines running at peak level for the masses is immense. End of the day, the power button is still in our hands. Pull the plug on the data centers, and AI ceases to exist. For now, there is no realistic scenario where AI decentralizes itself across our devices and operates independently, like some sci-fi hive mind. Even in stories where machines take control, they need the physical world to cooperate. At present, AI cannot exist without us keeping it alive. So when people talk about AI domination, I find it hard to understand. What AI can do, at this point or in the near future, is play a supporting role — a vizier to kings who are humans. Not a master, not a slave, but an advisor. The more likely risk is not AI itself seizing power, but humans using AI to dominate othe...