Nobody planned for the agenda to change. A board of directors at one of India's largest engineering companies sits down to review quarterly numbers. Standard meeting. Familiar faces. Then someone mentions an enterprise AI licence. Within minutes, the financial review is shelved. The room has moved — to something bigger, faster, and more unsettling than any revenue figure on that slide. This is what AI corporate governance India looks like in 2026. Not a policy document. Not a

Here is a number that should have made more headlines than it did. As of December 2024, 86% of independent director positions across India's Central Public Sector Enterprises were vacant. Not understaffed. Not partially filled. Empty. Out of approximately 750 independent director roles on CPSE boards, 648 were unfilled — a sharp jump from 392 vacancies just three months earlier in September. Think about what that means in practice. Audit committees without quorum. Risk overs

There's a particular kind of energy in a founder's first pitch meeting — the conviction that the future is already decided and it's just a matter of building toward it fast enough. Walk into most boardrooms a decade later and that energy is often gone. What replaces it is something more careful, more procedural, more focused on protecting what already exists than imagining what could exist next. We don't think this is a coincidence and we don't think it's entirely a bad thing

Executive Summary When people hear AI-driven shareholder activism, they picture a robot hedge fund launching campaigns on its own. That's the wrong thing to worry about. The real shift is quieter and far bigger: artificial intelligence is replacing the referee. In January 2026, JPMorgan's asset-management arm, which oversees more than $7 trillion, dropped its proxy advisors entirely and switched to an in-house AI tool to guide its votes. Here's the part boards aren't ready fo

Executive Summary Here's the uncomfortable truth about founder-led companies: they rarely come undone because the founder is too strong. They come undone because everyone around the founder gets too weak. The board stops being a check and slowly turns into a fan club. That's the real governance risk, and it hides behind the most flattering word in business, "visionary." The same fierce conviction that builds a company from nothing is the exact thing that, left unchecked, blin

There's a moment that tends to repeat itself across boardrooms — across companies, sectors and even countries. An independent director asks a fairly simple question — "Who prepared this data and did anyone outside the finance team verify it?" — and the room goes quiet for a second longer than it should. Nobody has a clean answer ready. That pause tells us more about the state of governance risk than any compliance report ever could. This is the thing about governance risk — i

World Development Corporation Directors’ Institute – World Council of Directors today recognised 20 accomplished directors and senior executives who completed its International Corporate Directorship Programme (ICDP) and opted to complete an optional course offered by Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, acknowledging their academic rigour, strategic depth, and demonstrated readiness for senior leadership and governance responsibilities. The recognition highlights prof

Every board looks good on paper. Impressive resumes, recognisable names, the right mix of former CEOs and industry veterans. And yet, plenty of these boards still underperform quietly for years before anyone notices. So what actually separates a high-performing board from one that simply looks the part? This is a question I get asked constantly, usually by promoters building their first formal board, or by CXOs trying to understand what they’re walking into when they take a b

If you sit on a board, advise one, or are hoping to sit on one someday, you’ve probably heard some version of this sentence lately: “There’s a new corporate governance bill, and it’s going to change how boards operate.” True. But most of what’s floating around is either too legal to be useful or too vague to act on. So let’s fix that. This piece walks through what the corporate governance bill amendments actually say, why they exist, and — more importantly — what they mean fo

Executive Summary The IndusInd Bank whistleblower allegations are not really a story about a rogue trade or one bad quarter. They are a story about timing. A bank knew, or had very good reason to know, that something was wrong with its books long before it told anyone. By the time it spoke up, the damage was done and a regulator had to push it into the open. Now, in mid-2026, a fresh whistleblower complaint has landed with the Prime Minister's Office and four regulators, alle

Here's something that doesn't get said often enough in corporate governance circles: the proxy season is no longer a quiet, procedural ritual that the legal team handles in the background while the rest of the company gets on with actual business. It hasn't been that for a while now. But in 2026, the stakes feel different. The room feels different. Shareholders are showing up with sharper questions, better data, and in some cases, a genuine appetite to make noise. Activist in

Directors and Officers Insurance (D&O Insurance) has evolved from being a simple financial safeguard to becoming a fundamental pillar of modern corporate governance. As ESG expectations, BRSR compliance requirements, and sustainability-related risks continue to grow in India, directors and officers are facing greater personal accountability for the decisions they make in the boardroom. For decades, environmental and social challenges were often viewed as operational issues ha

Picture this. You're a shareholder of a listed company. The person who runs the business day to day — sets the strategy, manages the team, controls what information flows to the board — is also the person chairing the very board that is supposed to hold them accountable. Who, exactly, is watching whom? That is the heart of the CEO duality corporate governance debate. It's been running for decades. Not because the governance logic is unclear — it isn't — but because the answer

A new cohort of senior executives is stepping decisively into board-level governance and strategic leadership roles across India, the Middle East, and beyond. Their appointments, spanning independent directorships, vice chairmanships, executive directorships, and advisory mandates, reflect a sustained shift in how India's boardrooms are being constituted. Through its Director's Institute Data Bank and Board Search, World Development Corporation’s Directors' Institute – World

Nair’s appointment reflects rising demand for trained and experienced independent directors The appointment of Ajit Nair as an Independent Director at Nityas Gems and Jewellery Limited points to a wider pattern taking shape in Indian boardrooms — one where senior professionals with deep operational credentials are increasingly stepping into formal governance positions. The appointment was recognised by World Development Corporation’s Directors’ Institute – World Council of Di

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