​If there is one part of the PGPX interview that produces the most anxiety, it is the extempore. It is also the part that applicants consistently prepare for in exactly the wrong way.

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A few intakes ago, I ran back-to-back mock extempores with two applicants on the same day. The first had done everything the internet tells you to do.

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Six months of newspaper editorials, a notebook full of statistics, summaries of every major policy debate. I gave him a topic he had actually prepared for, and he delivered a fluent two-minute monologue. Then I asked one question that was not in his notes. He restarted his prepared answer from the top, almost word for word, because he had nothing else to reach for.

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The second applicant was a supply chain manager who admitted upfront that she barely followed the news. I gave her a topic she knew nothing about. She spent her first thirty seconds simply organising the question: what is really being asked here, who are the stakeholders, where does the tension lie. Her content was thinner than his. Her performance was far stronger, because every time I pushed back, she had a structure to return to instead of a script to recite.

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That contrast is the entire extempore in miniature. The panel is not auditing your reading habits. They are watching what your mind does when a smart stranger hands you a problem you did not see coming and then starts dismantling your first answer.

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Think about what actually happens in a boardroom. A senior leader is rarely rewarded for reciting information everyone can look up. They are rewarded for taking an ambiguous situation, framing it clearly, weighing the trade-offs, and committing to a defensible call while colleagues challenge them in real time. The extempore is a ten-minute simulation of exactly that job. Which is why preparing for it like a general knowledge quiz misses the point entirely.

 

What the Panel Is Actually Testing

Here is how it works. You are given a topic. You speak for a few minutes. Then the panel starts pushing back. They will disagree with you, question your assumptions, introduce information you had not considered, and sometimes take the opposite position purely to see what you do next.

The extempore is not a test of factual depth. It is a test of executive maturity. Through the discussion, the panel is evaluating whether you can:

• Think clearly under time pressure

• Reason in a structured way on ambiguous issues

• Show balanced judgement rather than extreme opinions

• Separate facts from opinions

• Defend your reasoning without becoming defensive

• Update your position when presented with better evidence

• Communicate with the clarity expected of a leadership role

Notice that none of these require you to have read a specific editorial. All of them require you to think in a structured way, out loud, in real time.

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Extempore One: The Real Money Gaming Ban

Here is how a strong extempore typically unfolds. The exchange below is a composite drawn from mock sessions and debriefs across intakes, but every move in it is one I have watched real candidates make, or fail to make.

The topic: "Should India ban real money gaming apps?"

A weak candidate opens with a verdict. "Yes, they should be banned, they are ruining young people." Now the entire discussion is a defence of a position taken in the first five seconds.

A strong candidate opens by organising the problem.

"Before deciding on a ban, I would want to separate two things that often get merged: games of skill and games of chance. The regulatory question is different for each. I would also want to understand the scale of the harm we are trying to prevent, whether that is addiction, financial distress among low-income users, or predatory design, because the right instrument depends on which harm we are targeting."

The panel pushes: "Millions of young Indians are losing money they cannot afford. Is that not reason enough for an outright ban?"

The candidate holds the structure. "The harm is real, and I would not minimise it. But an outright ban has second-order effects. The industry employs thousands of people and generates significant tax revenue, and a ban tends to push demand to offshore and illegal platforms where users have no protection at all. So the question becomes whether regulation can reduce the harm without creating a worse unregulated market."

Then the curveball. "By your logic, should we also ban stock market trading? Retail investors lose money there too."

This is where most candidates wobble. The strong candidate separates the two issues instead of defending everything at once. "I do not think the comparison holds. Equity markets serve a core economic function, channelling savings into productive enterprise, and they operate under a mature regulator. Most real money games serve no comparable economic purpose, and many are engineered around reward loops designed to maximise engagement rather than value. Similar-looking risk does not imply similar underlying activity."

No panic. No retreat. No aggression. Just a candidate showing that the reasoning can survive contact with a hostile question. That is the entire game.

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Extempore Two: Bullet Trains in a Poor Country

One more composite, because this topic type appears in some form almost every cycle: the "priorities" trap.

The topic: "Should a country where millions still live in poverty be spending billions on high-speed rail?"

The trap is emotional framing. The topic is worded to pull you toward outrage in one direction or the other. Either "how dare we build bullet trains while people starve" or "critics of infrastructure are anti-progress." Both are panel bait.

A strong candidate reframes it in one line: "This is essentially a question about how a developing country should sequence its investments, not a question about trains."

From there, the discussion has room to breathe. Infrastructure investment and poverty alleviation are not a strict either-or, since large projects create employment, crowd in industrial corridors and signal execution capability. At the same time, opportunity cost is real, and a rupee spent on high-speed rail is a rupee not spent on primary health or rural roads, which may have higher marginal returns for the poorest.

The panel pushes: "So would you cancel the project?"

The candidate lands a position instead of hedging. "No. I would judge each corridor on ridership economics and industrial spillover rather than treating high-speed rail as either a vanity project or a national necessity. And I would be more worried about cost overruns and delays than about the idea itself, because in infrastructure the gap between a good project and a wasteful one is usually execution, not intent."

Notice what happened in both stories. The candidate never showed off knowledge. They showed judgement, structure, and calm. That is what gets scored.

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The 60-Second Thinking Discipline

Most PGPX extempores give you a short window to gather your thoughts. Use it the same way every time, so that under pressure the habit carries you.

First 10 seconds: clarify what is actually being asked. Most topics are framed emotionally but test policy judgement. Strip the emotion and find the underlying question.

Next 20 seconds: identify the stakeholders. At least three. Government or institutions, citizens or consumers, and long-term national interest is a reliable default set.

Next 20 seconds: find the core trade-off. Almost every good topic reduces to one: growth versus equity, autonomy versus regulation, short term versus long term, innovation versus stability.

Final 10 seconds: decide your stance. Balanced, but not fence-sitting. Neutrality without judgement reads as weakness.

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A Framework That Works for Any Extempore

Once you are speaking, almost every topic can be handled with the same five-step process. It works because good thinkers approach uncertainty in a structured way, and the panel can hear that structure within the first thirty seconds.

Let us run it on a live topic: "AI will destroy more jobs than it creates, so companies should pay an automation tax."

 

Step 1: Define the core of the problem

Most applicants skip this because the topic sounds obvious. Do not skip it. Spend ten seconds establishing what the discussion is actually about.

"The proposal here links two separate claims. First, that AI-driven automation will be a net destroyer of jobs. Second, that taxation of automating companies is the right corrective. Each claim deserves its own scrutiny."

You have not taken a side yet, and you already sound more organised than most candidates.

Step 2: Acknowledge why the argument exists

Before you challenge a position, show the panel you understand it. "The anxiety is legitimate. AI is reaching white-collar work that previous automation waves never touched, and displaced workers cannot retrain overnight. A tax that slows adoption and funds transition support has intuitive appeal."

This one habit prevents the most common extempore failure: sounding like someone who dismisses the other side without engaging with it.

Step 3: Challenge the assumption

Now ask the question that separates strong candidates from average ones: is the stated problem actually the root problem?

Perhaps the issue is not job destruction but transition speed. Every previous technology wave destroyed categories of work and created new ones, and the pain concentrated in the lag between the two. If that is the real problem, taxing automation treats the symptom while slowing the productivity gains a developing economy needs. It may also simply push AI adoption, and the jobs that come with building it, to countries without such a tax.

Step 4: Think like a manager

Most applicants stop after presenting both sides. Managers do not. Managers ask: so what should we actually do?

"Rather than taxing the technology, I would target the transition. Portable benefits that are not tied to a single employer. Large-scale reskilling with industry participation rather than government programmes alone. Incentives for companies that redeploy workers instead of releasing them. The goal is to make the workforce mobile across the disruption, not to slow the disruption down."

Always leave the panel with solutions, not just observations.

Step 5: Take a position

Do not spend five minutes on the fence. The panel respects thoughtful conviction far more than endless neutrality. You can acknowledge complexity and still conclude.

"So my position is that an automation tax is the wrong instrument for a real problem. The disruption is coming either way, and India's interest lies in capturing the new work AI creates while protecting people, not job titles, through the transition."

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The Framework Applied to a Second Topic

Let us run the same five steps on a very different kind of topic: "Startups in India are overhyped."

Define the core. The word doing the work here is "overhyped", which implies a gap between perception and underlying value. So the real question is whether the attention, capital and policy support flowing to Indian startups exceeds their actual economic contribution.

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Acknowledge the argument. There is a case. A long tail of startups burns capital chasing growth without a path to profitability, valuations in some funding cycles have detached from fundamentals, and glamorous founder stories can pull talent away from equally valuable but less visible work in manufacturing or public service.

 

Challenge the assumption. But "overhyped" quietly assumes the sector should be judged on its median outcome. Venture ecosystems are designed around power laws, where a handful of successes justify a large number of failures. Judged on that basis, India's startup ecosystem has produced genuine infrastructure: digital payments at population scale, logistics networks, and formalisation of sectors that were entirely unorganised a decade ago. Hype in individual valuations does not mean the phenomenon itself is hollow.

 

Think like a manager. The useful question is not whether to celebrate or dismiss startups, but how to make the ecosystem healthier. Later-stage domestic capital so that value capture does not sit entirely with foreign funds. Governance standards that scale with valuation. And a policy lens that treats startups as one engine among several, alongside manufacturing and MSMEs, rather than the whole story.

 

Take a position. "Some startups are overhyped. The startup ecosystem is not. I would rather correct the excesses than discount a sector that has changed how a billion people transact."

Notice that at no point did we simply argue. We analysed, and the conclusion emerged from the analysis.

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One habit separates an IIMA-calibre answer from a generic MBA answer: passing every position through Indian realities before you commit to it.

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Three filters do most of the work:

Scale. A policy that works for a country of fifty million behaves very differently across 1.4 billion people. Enforcement, delivery and exceptions all change at that scale.

Institutional maturity. An idea that assumes a fast judiciary, a nimble regulator or seamless centre-state coordination needs a reality check before it becomes your recommendation.

The informal economy. Most Indian workers are outside formal employment. Any answer about jobs, taxation, credit or welfare that ignores this is answering a question about a different country.

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When a candidate says "this idea works in theory, but at Indian scale the enforcement burden changes the calculus", the panel hears someone who will not embarrass them in a boardroom.

 

What Not to Do

Five mistakes appear in almost every weak extempore:

1. Taking extreme moral positions. You are being assessed as a future manager, not a debater.

2. Overloading with facts and statistics. Data name-dropping reads as insecurity, not depth.

3. Sounding like a news panelist. Slogans and activism language are instant credibility killers.

4. Saying everyone is right and wrong simultaneously. Balance means weighing sides, not refusing to choose.

5. Ending without a conclusion. An analysis that trails off is an analysis that failed.

Themes I Would Prepare for in 2027

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Applicants always ask me for a topic list. My honest answer: prepare themes, not topics. Almost every interesting extempore eventually becomes a discussion about competing priorities, and if you understand the underlying tension, you can handle any specific phrasing of it.

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Here are the themes I would invest time in this cycle:

Artificial intelligence. AI now touches every industry, which makes it a management question, not just a technology question. Can innovation coexist with regulation? Will AI create more jobs than it destroys? How should governments regulate models that evolve faster than legislation? Will classroom education, including the MBA itself, stay relevant?

India's geopolitical position. India is simultaneously balancing relationships with the United States, Russia, Europe, China and the Global South. Every geopolitical decision creates trade-offs. Understanding those trade-offs is far more valuable than memorising headlines.

Climate versus growth. India cannot ignore climate change, and it cannot ignore economic development either. That tension produces rich discussions around energy policy, manufacturing, carbon markets and industrial strategy.

Employment. India grows rapidly, yet formal job creation remains uneven. The gig economy, startups, automation, manufacturing, skilling, labour reforms. Almost every employment discussion becomes a debate about balancing efficiency with inclusion.

Governance and institutions. Federalism, judicial independence, electoral reforms, media regulation. One caution here: stay institutional, not political. The panel appreciates intellectual honesty far more than ideological certainty.

Practice Topics From Previous PGPX Rounds

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Use these for practice, not memorisation. Pick one, apply the 60-second thinking discipline, then speak for ninety seconds and have a friend argue against you. That is worth more than reading fifty editorials.

Business and economy

• Should CEOs take a salary cut to redistribute benefits to junior staff?

• Are layoffs really the last resort when top management draws large bonuses?

• Is the stock market similar to gambling?

• Buy now pay later: convenience or a trap?

• The ethics of inflating company valuations: should new-age brands face stricter pre-IPO regulation?

• Can India benefit from the China plus one strategy?

• Should business lobbying be made legal in India?

• Do we need more entrepreneurs than managers?

• Is an MBA necessary to succeed in business?

Technology and society

• Can artificial intelligence replace human intelligence?

• To what extent should AI be used in classrooms, and with what effects?

• Is technology increasing unemployment?

• Fake news will destroy India's social fabric, so social media must be controlled. Agree?

• Social media influencers: authentic advocates or marketing pawns?

• Which matters more: creativity or knowledge?

Governance and polity

• Uniform Civil Code: your opinion?

• One nation, one election: advantages and disadvantages?

• Electoral bonds and anonymous corporate donations: a threat to democracy?

• Should there be a limit to media freedom?

• Coalition politics in a diverse democracy: strength or weakness?

• New-age politicians: champions of change or agents of opportunism?

• Central Vista and public spending on architectural redesign: necessity or wastage?

• Monuments to historic figures: pride or wastage of public money?

India and the world

• Was the G20 Summit a diplomatic success for India?

• India's role in multilateral organisations: leverage or isolation?

• Should India invest in strategic ports globally to become a maritime power?

• Is nuclear disarmament mandatory for world peace?

• Is military force an effective means to long-term peace?

• Sports and diplomacy: should India play cricket with nations it has tensions with?

Environment and equity

• Do the rich bear more responsibility for pollution than the poor?

• Developed nations' CO2 versus developing nations' methane: who carries more climate liability?

• Governmental liability in climate-related disasters: fair or a blame game?

• Work-life balance is a myth. Agree?

• Is cricket limiting other sports in India?

• India versus Bharat: the widening economic divide

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If you take one thing from this article, let it be this. The strongest candidates in the PGPX extempore are rarely the smartest people in the room. They are the ones most comfortable thinking out loud while someone equally intelligent disagrees with them.

If your answer sounds like something a CXO or a policy advisor could say in a room full of sceptics, you are on the right track. That is exactly the situation the extempore is designed to simulate. Prepare accordingly.