But first, what was the Bommai case? SR Bommai was the Chief Minister of Karnataka. His party had recently undergone a merger, leading to political instability. A few legislators were said to have withdrawn support. The governor quickly concluded that Bommai no longer enjoyed a majority and advised the President to dismiss the government. Crucially, Bommai was not allowed to prove his majority in the Assembly — there was no floor test.

But this wasn’t an isolated case. By then, Article 356 of the Constitution — which allows the Centre to dismiss a state government if it fails to function according to constitutional norms — had been used 95 times. Sometimes legitimately, but often as a political tool to unseat opposition governments.

The Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 caused serious political unrest, prompting the dismissal of four more state governments. Three states challenged the dismissals alongside Bommai. The stage was set for a nine-judge Supreme Court bench to hear these petitions together and draw red lines around the constitutional limitations of Article 356.

The bench concluded that a floor test is mandatory to prove majority and the power to impose President’s Rule under Article 356 is not absolute — it is subject to judicial review. Secularism was held to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution, and any state government violating secular principles could be dismissed — a point powerfully expanded on in a separate 37-page concurring opinion by Justice AM Ahmadi — grandfather to one of the authors here, Insiyah Vahanvaty. And so, the Court struck down Bommai’s dismissal. The other three, rooted in principles of secularism, were upheld.

These principles of federalism in centre-state relations have returned to the limelight in recent times with the Maharashtra political crisis. In 2022, the Shiv Sena was hit by internal turmoil. One group of legislators remained loyal to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray; the other to Eknath Shinde who had joined hands with the BJP. Both claimed to be the “real” Shiv Sena. Amid this turmoil, the Governor asked Thackeray to prove his majority through a floor test. But before this could happen, Thackeray resigned. Shinde was sworn in as Chief Minister, but serious constitutional questions lingered. Was the governor justified in calling for a floor test without any formal claim that Thackeray had lost the majority?

In 2023, a five judge bench answered. The governor’s decision to call a floor test was unjustified as it was based on internal party dissent, not a constitutional crisis. Mere expressions of discontent by a few legislators do not amount to a formal withdrawal of support. Yet, for all the constitutional clarity offered by the Court, the political outcome remained unchanged. Because Thackeray had voluntarily resigned – without facing a floor test – the court could not reinstate him as chief minister. The Election Commission of India (ECI) allotted the name and symbol of Shiv Sena to Eknath Shinde. The Supreme Court will hear Thackeray’s appeal against ECI’s decision next month.

In Bommai, the governor had relied on letters and speculation instead of a floor test. In Shiv Sena, the governor misapplied the floor test. In both, a sitting CM was pushed out without due process.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in the Maharashtra case proved that the historic judgment (Bommai) is far from history — it’s very much alive in India’s political and legal landscape. Over the years, the Court has turned to this landmark verdict in several crucial moments. In 1999, the Rabri Devi government was reinstated in Bihar. In 2016, status quo ante was restored in Arunachal Pradesh citing governor’s decisions to be “unconstitutional”. That same year, a dismissed Uttarakhand government was reinstated. More recently in Karnataka, the Court reaffirmed that intra-party rebellion alone doesn’t justify a floor test. Three decades on, Bommai is still doing what it was meant to: holding the line. As political turmoil challenges and tests Indian democracy, Bommai stands as a critical reminder: in a democracy, power must shift through process — not politicking.

Ashish Bharadwaj is professor & dean of BITS Pilani’s Law School in Mumbai and Insiyah Vahanvaty is the author of The Fearless Judge. The views expressed are personal.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has threatened 10% additional tariffs on Brics countries for what he labels “anti-American” policies. (And, on Monday, when the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was meeting in Beijing, he threatened 100% tariffs on Russia and secondary sanctions on countries buying oil from Russia, among them India.) His frustration is not unfounded. The Brics effort to reduce reliance on the dollar directly challenges American economic dominance. The dollar’s centrality in global finance gives the US a structural advantage. As the world’s primary reserve currency, the dollar allows America to borrow more cheaply in global markets. The world’s demand for dollar assets effectively provides the US with an endless supply of low-cost credit. For example, if you carry $100 in your pocket, you are in effect giving America an interest-free loan of $100. That is the essence of what former French finance minister (and later president) Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously called America’s “exorbitant privilege”.

That privilege goes beyond economics. It gives the US the unique power to weaponise the dollar, using financial systems like Swift and dollar-clearing banks to impose sanctions and exert political pressure. Brics’s move toward de-dollarisation is, in part, a pushback against this power.

Still, for all the motivation, a Brics common currency remains a difficult project. Unlike the eurozone whose members are geographically contiguous and share broadly similar political and economic institutions, Brics countries are scattered across continents, with stark differences in governance, development levels, GDP sizes, and strategic interests.

Even assuming political will, formidable technical and institutional hurdles remain.

A common currency requires a common interest rate. But how do you calibrate monetary policy that works at the same time for China and South Africa, or Brazil and India, given their vastly different growth and inflation dynamics? More critically, are these countries ready to cede monetary sovereignty and expose themselves to the risk that economic instability anywhere in the bloc could mean economic instability everywhere?

An even more complex issue is the China factor. With China contributing roughly 70% of the bloc’s combined GDP, any common currency arrangement will inevitably be dominated by Beijing. In trying to escape the hegemony of the dollar, would Brics willingly embrace the hegemony of China, an authoritarian state with questionable transparency, weak institutional checks, and limited commitment to the rule of law?

While the common currency vision stalls, the motivation to break free from dollar dominance remains strong, and is growing. The biggest driver is trade. A large proportion of intra-Brics trade is still settled in dollars, adding avoidable transaction costs. Eliminating these costs by using local currencies could boost intra-Brics trade.

There are also deeper concerns. Brics countries see dollar dependence as a source of systemic risk to their financial stability. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 was triggered by reckless risk-taking in the US housing and banking sector. Had this happened in an emerging economy, its currency would have collapsed. But the dollar, paradoxically, gained value during the crisis. Global capital, in search of safety, fled emerging markets and rushed into US assets, a phenomenon economists call the “safe haven effect”. Ironically, it was emerging markets that paid the price for America’s excesses.

The GFC wasn’t a one-off. The taper tantrum of 2013, the Covid-19 shock of 2020, and even recent US interest rate hikes have repeatedly exposed emerging economies to capital flight, currency volatility, and inflation — all collateral damage of an American centric global finance.

Against this backdrop, Brics’s pivot towards trade in local currencies seems pragmatic. While less radical than a common currency, it is a tangible step towards financial autonomy. For instance, if India and Bangladesh settle their bilateral trade in rupees and takas, both benefit by cutting out the dollar intermediation costs. However, local currency trade works best when bilateral trade is roughly balanced. But if the trade is lopsided, the arrangement falters.

That’s what happened with India-Russia trade. When Russia agreed to accept rupee payments for its oil exports, it quickly began accumulating rupee balances far beyond what it could spend on Indian goods. With no outlet for those rupees, Russia backed away from the deal.

Can Brics still push ahead with local currency trade, especially under threat of punitive US tariffs? It’s worth remembering that the dollar’s status as a global reserve currency is not backed by any formal treaty. There’s no international law obliging nations to use it. So under what legal basis can Trump, or indeed any American president, mandate Brics countries to stay within the dollar-based system?

Yet, as we have seen over the last few months of Trump 2.0, US tariffs, no matter how whimsical, are hard to defy.

This puts India in a delicate spot. As the US prepares to assume the presidency of the G20 next year, India will need to carefully navigate between supporting the Global South’s push for a more multipolar financial system and maintaining stable relations with America, its most important strategic partner.

Duvvuri Subbarao is a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The views expressed are personal.

From contract review in law firms to radiology scans in hospitals, from coding assistants to synthetic voiceovers, AI is automating tasks we thought were safe for decades. We are entering an era where knowledge work itself is under threat. And the frightening part is: AI won’t just replace jobs, it will hollow them out, change their nature, and widen inequalities between the AI-haves and have-nots. What can India do to prepare its workforce for an AI-driven future? And how do we ensure that this transformation becomes a force for inclusion, not exclusion?

The first mindset shift is to stop thinking only in terms of job creation. AI doesn’t just eliminate entire jobs, it reshapes them. A software developer using AI assistants can be 10 times more productive. A teacher with AI tools can personalise lessons for every student. But for this, the workforce must learn to work with AI. This calls for large-scale upskilling in digital literacy, prompt engineering, data fluency and critical thinking skills. Most Indian universities are still preparing students for yesterday’s jobs. AI must be integrated across disciplines. A commerce graduate should understand how AI transforms auditing. A biology student should grasp what AI means for drug discovery. This calls for a fundamental overhaul of curricula, to embed AI’s applications across domains. Industry-academia collaboration is essential here, especially in areas like health care, agriculture, manufacturing and finance, where AI deployment will be rapid and widespread.

What we need now is a coordinated National Mission on AI-readiness. This should go beyond elite institutions. We need AI skills to reach ITIs, polytechnics, and tier-2 and tier-3 colleges. Online platforms can play a key role, but content must be in regional languages and tailored to practical use-cases. The AI era demands a National GenAI Skills Mission, with clear goals, timelines and accountability.

Manufacturing, agriculture and services will all see AI-driven productivity gains. But without planning, this will also mean job losses at the bottom. We must ensure that technology adoption in these sectors is inclusive. In agriculture, AI-based crop forecasting or precision farming should empower the farmer, not replace them. In manufacturing, we need to upskill machine operators to work with smart machines. In services, we must build digital service clusters in smaller towns, enabling remote AI-supported roles in logistics, health care, customer support and beyond. As the country pushes for self-reliance in defence and semiconductor manufacturing, we are seeing a demand for skilled manpower in areas such as drones, sensors, secure communication and advanced electronics. With the right policy support and industry-academia partnerships, this can generate high-quality jobs. It can also build long-term capabilities in AI, robotics and materials while addressing both strategic and employment goals.

India must become a hotbed for AI entrepreneurship, especially in areas like education, health, sustainability and rural development. Startups that solve Indian problems using GenAI must be actively supported through funding, regulatory clarity and market access.

The AI onslaught is not a challenge that government policy alone can address. Academic institutions and industry must take the lead. Universities should be evaluated by the employability they ensure over a graduate’s lifetime. Institutions must track how resilient their graduates are to technological change, what skills they are acquiring, and how they grow through their careers.

We need AI centres of excellence across states, industry-backed fellowships for teaching AI and related subjects, and more research into the societal impact of these technologies. Every educational institution should have a clear roadmap to become AI-ready. The shift from counting jobs to enabling lifelong employability is the transition India now needs to make. It is not just a technological shift, it is a societal reset. How we prepare for AI will define the kind of society we become.

India has shown that when it puts its mind to a mission, it can deliver at scale. Now, we need that same clarity and urgency to prepare for the age of AI.

V Ramgopal Rao is vice-chancellor, BITS Pilani group of institutions, and former director, IIT Delhi. The views expressed are personal.