Much of January was given over to handwringing in American tech circles, as China appeared to run circles around the former’s claims of AI superiority. For those too busy following stories about the Bombay police arresting innocent men, the noise was generated by a startup called DeepSeek, which prompted American investors to question bloated valuations of companies. A massive fall in stock prices followed, along with a thousand columns on whether America was losing a battle few other countries seemed to care about.

I was bored by the whole thing because I already knew who would win that fight: MITRA—The Maharashtra Institution for Transformation. I had never heard of it until recently but, then again, I am only human, and everyone knows our state government works faster than the average mind can comprehend. Apparently, MITRA was established along the lines of that other world-beating organisation, NITI Aayog. It may be hard to find a single person in India who can accurately describe what NITI Aayog does, but that shouldn’t stop us from being excited about MITRA. I admit not knowing what it does either, but its plans seem solid, along with its goal of a one trillion-dollar economy for Maharashtra by 2028. This means everyone’s life is set to change a mere three years from now.