PGPX Extempore Topics 2026: Full List, Frameworks and How to Structure Your Answer
Updated: 2 days ago
Updated August 2026
PGPX extempore is the part of the IIM Ahmedabad interview that candidates prepare for last and lose marks on first. The panel hands you a slip, gives you about a minute to think, and expects roughly 90 seconds of clear speech. Then they disagree with you on purpose.
What follows is the full updated topic list for the 2026-27 cycle, the five frameworks that cover almost every prompt you will be handed, and the facts that make each topic answerable.
What PGPX extempore actually tests
It is not a test of factual depth. It is a test of executive maturity, assessed across four things at once:
Thinking under time pressure. Structured reasoning on an ambiguous issue. Balanced judgment rather than an extreme position. Communication clarity at the level expected of someone who will run a function.
So prepare for structure and judgment, not recall. A candidate with three good frameworks and ten current facts outperforms one who has memorised fifty headlines.
The 60-second thinking method
You will usually get about a minute before you speak. Spend it like this.
First 10 seconds: clarify what is being asked. Most topics are framed emotionally but test policy judgment. "Should India stop buying Russian crude" is not a question about war. It is a question about trade-offs between energy cost and tariff exposure.
Next 20 seconds: name three stakeholders. Government, the affected citizen or consumer, and the business or institution caught in between. Naming them stops you from arguing in the abstract.
Next 20 seconds: pick one central trade-off. Growth against equity. Autonomy against regulation. Speed against due process. One trade-off, not three.
Last 10 seconds: decide your stance. Balanced, but a stance. Neutrality without judgment reads as weakness.
Five frameworks that cover almost every topic
Each category of topic has one framework that fits it best. You do not need a fresh approach every time.
1. Stakeholder impact
Best for policy, ethics and geopolitics. Use it whenever the prompt contains "should", "allowed", or "must not". Work through the impact on government and institutions, then on citizens and consumers, then on long-term national interest.
2. Short term against long term
Best for economic and political topics. State the immediate benefit or risk, then the structural implication, then whether the short-term gain justifies the long-term cost. Most policy topics resolve cleanly on this axis.
3. Case, concern, guardrail
Best for contested topics. Explain why the idea exists and why it is attractive, then the legitimate objection, then the conditions under which it could work. This is how you take a position on a sensitive subject without sounding partisan.
4. Scale and context filter
Apply this to every answer, not just some. Run your conclusion through three filters: population scale, institutional capacity to implement, and the size of the informal economy. A policy that works at the scale of a mid-sized country often does not survive any of the three. This is what separates a considered answer from a generic one.
5. If I were the decision maker
Best for policy-maker prompts, which show up often. State your objective, then the constraints you actually face, then a phased approach. Two phases is enough for 90 seconds.
The 90-second speaking structure
One line reframing the issue. One framework-based breakdown. One clear but nuanced conclusion.
In practice it sounds like this: this is essentially a trade-off between X and Y. In the short term, A. Over a longer horizon, B. So my view is C, provided D holds.
Avoid slogans and activist language. Avoid sounding like a television panellist. If some panels push you to two or three minutes, add one more piece of evidence and one more counter, not more adjectives.
For the interview questions that typically follow the extempore, see our breakdown of cracking the IIM Ahmedabad PGPX interview, and Launchpad's Interview Practice Tools let you rehearse both back to back.
PGPX extempore topics for 2026-27
Eighty topics, grouped by theme. The first three sections are the likeliest this cycle, because they are what the panel has been reading about all year.
War, energy and the 2026 oil shock
The conflict in West Asia exposed how little energy security India actually has.
Cutting excise duty to hold pump prices steady was sound policy or a deferred bill?
Should India expand its strategic petroleum reserve to the level held by large importers elsewhere?
Diversifying crude sourcing away from a single region: realistic within a decade, or rhetoric?
What should India's posture be when a shipping chokepoint it depends on is threatened?
A prolonged energy shock justifies slowing down climate commitments. Agree or disagree?
Should oil marketing companies price freely, or is state intervention right in a crisis?
Foreign portfolio outflows during the crisis: a verdict on India, or on global risk appetite?
Remittances from the Gulf are a strategic vulnerability, not just an inflow.
Should defence procurement be insulated from trade and tariff negotiations?
Facts to anchor on. Brent moved from around $60 at the start of 2026 to close to $120 during the crisis before easing to the high $80s. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries close to a fifth of global oil trade, was the pressure point, and a US-Iran agreement to end the fighting and reopen it was signed in Switzerland on 19 June 2026. Wholesale price inflation ran at 9.68 percent in May 2026 against 8.3 percent in April, with fuel above 30 percent, while retail inflation stayed contained at 3.93 percent. The government cut excise duty by ₹10 a litre on petrol and diesel and prioritised domestic LPG supply. Foreign portfolio investors pulled roughly ₹2.7 lakh crore out of equities in the first half of 2026.
The strong answer separates two channels. Direct trade with the countries in the conflict is small. The exposure runs through crude, freight, fertiliser, petrochemical inputs and Gulf remittances, which is why the shock appeared in input costs and the rupee first.
Protests, institutions and accountability
The 2026 protests were about exam integrity or about youth unemployment. Which?
Should national entrance examinations be run by an independent statutory body?
A minister resigning under public pressure is accountability working, or optics.
Should candidates affected by a paper leak have a statutory right to compensation?
Leaderless, satire-driven digital movements strengthen democratic accountability. Defend or attack.
Where should the line sit between the right to assemble and the power to impose prohibitory orders?
Coaching institutions are a symptom of examination design, not the cause. Do you agree?
Do platforms carry any responsibility for how mass mobilisation happens on them?
Is high-stakes single-exam selection the right way to allocate seats at national scale?
Graduate unemployment at three times the national rate is a skills problem or a demand problem.
Facts to anchor on. The Cockroach Janta Party began on 16 May 2026 as a satirical movement founded by Abhijeet Dipke, after remarks by the Chief Justice of India the previous day comparing unemployed youth to cockroaches and parasites. It moved offline into demonstrations at Jantar Mantar from 6 June to 25 July, joined by student organisations, demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over irregularities in that year's national examinations, including a NEET paper leak. Sonam Wangchuk began a hunger strike at the site on 28 June and ended it 26 days later. A march towards Parliament on 20 July ended in clashes: Delhi Police put the injured at around 180, of whom 118 were security personnel, with 70 protesters detained, while organisers put the number of injured protesters at about 150. Pradhan resigned on 25 July 2026 and the protests were called off the same day.
Handle this one carefully. The panel is not testing your politics. Argue institutional design: who should own examination integrity, what accountability mechanisms exist between elections, and whether the pressure underneath is examination failure or graduate unemployment above 11 percent against overall unemployment near 3 percent.
Trade, tariffs and geopolitics
India was right to hold back on signing the trade deal until it gets a tariff edge over competing exporters.
Should India stop buying Russian crude?
Should agricultural and dairy market access ever be on the table in a trade negotiation?
Tariff diplomacy has replaced rules-based trade. Discuss.
Can India decouple from China?
China plus one: can India actually take the manufacturing share?
Make in India and America First are the same policy wearing different flags.
Free trade agreements have delivered less than promised. Agree?
Is strategic autonomy still viable, or does India now have to pick a bloc?
Export diversification away from a single large buyer: realistic or rhetorical?
Facts to anchor on. A framework for an interim agreement announced in early February 2026 cut the reciprocal tariff on Indian goods from 25 to 18 percent and removed the additional 25 percent tied to Russian oil purchases, alongside a commitment to reduce those purchases. As of early August 2026 the first tranche of the wider Bilateral Trade Agreement is still unsigned. India pulled back at the final stage, with the commerce minister saying the tranche is ready to operationalise once the tariff structure gives Indian exporters a real advantage over competitors in ASEAN and the neighbourhood. Meanwhile Russian crude crossed half of India's total crude imports for the first time in July 2026, and a US Senate bill introduced in mid-July proposes tariffs of up to 100 percent on the largest buyers of Russian energy, naming India among five.
That gap between the stated commitment and the import data is the whole answer to topic 22. Argue the trade-off, not the war. India has also widened its options through agreements with the European Free Trade Association, Oman and the UK, which is the counter to any claim that one partner is decisive.
Economy, policy and public finance
GST 2.0 has been good for the economy. Agree or disagree.
Should Indian Railways be privatised?
Disinvestment or privatisation: which is the right path?
Are public-private partnerships the answer to infrastructure, or a way of moving risk onto the public balance sheet?
Real estate remains the largest destination for unaccounted money in the country. Do you agree?
The aviation industry runs on a pricing model that cannot last.
High speed rail is the wrong spending priority for a country with this level of poverty.
Consumption-led growth is a weaker foundation than manufacturing-led growth.
Cash transfers or subsidies: which does more for the bottom quintile?
Should the inflation target be revisited after a supply-side shock?
Facts to anchor on. GST moved to a two-rate structure of 5 and 18 percent, with 40 percent for luxury and sin goods, effective 22 September 2025. The 12 and 28 percent slabs went. Gross collections were around ₹2.11 lakh crore in July 2026, so the revenue-loss argument has weakened. The counter is that states absorb much of the adjustment, and this year the fiscal gap also carries a fuel excise cut. India stayed the fastest-growing large economy through FY26, and forecasters have trimmed FY27 to roughly 6.5 to 6.8 percent citing oil and trade risk.
Startups, capital and business
The startup ecosystem is too dependent on foreign venture capital.
Startups are overhyped compared with traditional businesses.
The government is not doing enough for startups.
Funding has fallen sharply this year. Cycle or structural correction?
Quick commerce destroys more retail livelihoods than it creates.
Should foreign ownership be capped in strategically sensitive consumer platforms?
Profitability has replaced growth as the metric. Maturing market or retreat?
Family businesses adapt to disruption better than venture-funded ones. Defend or attack.
Should domestic institutional capital be channelled into venture funding by policy?
Facts to anchor on. Private equity and venture capital investment fell about 36 percent in the first half of 2026, with exits down about 29 percent. Foreign portfolio outflows over the same period were around ₹2.7 lakh crore. Those two numbers are the strongest version of the dependence argument and also the strongest counter, since both track global risk conditions rather than anything about the businesses being funded.
Technology, AI and jobs
AI will create more jobs than it removes in this country.
Should AI be used in examinations and assessment?
India should not try to build domestic alternatives to Google, Meta and OpenAI.
Sovereign AI is a strategic necessity, not a vanity project.
Data centres are being built faster than the power and water to run them.
Should disclosure of AI-generated content be a legal obligation?
Deepfakes are now an electoral risk, not a novelty. What is the policy response?
The IT services model is over. Discuss.
Should there be a public compute utility, the way there is a public payments rail?
Facts to anchor on. IT services gross hiring in FY26 was roughly 170,000 against a five-year average near 230,000, and TCS ended FY26 with net headcount down by more than 23,000. At the same time, AI-linked job postings are projected near 3.8 lakh in 2026, up about 32 percent. Both are true, and the good answer explains the composition shift rather than picking a headline. The entry-level rung is what is disappearing, not the whole ladder, which is also the link between this section and the protest section.
On sovereign AI: the IndiaAI Mission is a roughly ₹10,372 crore programme, more than 38,000 GPUs have been onboarded to the common compute pool, and indigenous models from Sarvam, BharatGen and others launched around the February 2026 AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The counter that impresses a panel is that almost all of that compute runs on imported chips, so sovereignty at the model layer sits on dependence at the hardware layer.
Work, labour and education
Should gig workers get the same protections as full-time employees?
Does the 90-day threshold for gig worker benefits protect the system or exclude the workers?
Should students above 15 be allowed to take part-time gig work?
Should business school rankings be based entirely on student feedback?
Deemed-to-be universities exist to generate profit.
Are four-year degrees still the right default?
Return to office mandates: management failure or necessary correction?
Should companies be required to hire a minimum share of freshers?
Facts to anchor on. The four labour codes took effect on 21 November 2025, and the Social Security (Central) Rules came into force on 8 May 2026. Gig and platform workers need 90 days of engagement with one aggregator in a financial year, or 120 days across several, to qualify for benefits. Aggregators contribute 1 to 2 percent of annual turnover, capped at 5 percent of what they pay out to workers. That is the first statutory link between platform work and welfare, and also why unions argue most workers will fall below the line. On students and part-time work, the statute is the reference point: employment below 14 is prohibited outside family enterprise, and 14 to 18 year olds are barred from hazardous occupations.
Society, governance and ethics
CSR has become a self-promotion budget.
Mental health is over-discussed relative to the attention it warrants.
Should real money gaming be permitted again?
Is the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 a transparency measure or an overreach into the affairs of a religious minority?
Do allegations of electoral roll manipulation weaken confidence in the system, regardless of whether they are proven?
Should the bilateral cricket fixture with Pakistan have gone ahead after the Pahalgam attack?
One nation, one election: efficiency gain or a compression of federalism?
Should judicial remarks about citizens be subject to any institutional restraint?
Facts to anchor on. Real money gaming is the cleanest business case here. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026 and bans real money games outright, including formats previously defended as games of skill, along with their advertising and payment rails. On 27 May 2026 the Supreme Court held that these games attract 28 percent GST on the full face value of deposits rather than on platform commission, reviving tax demands the industry puts near ₹2.5 lakh crore. Constitutional challenges to the Act are still pending. So the question is not whether gambling should be legal. It is whether blanket prohibition plus a retrospective tax liability is proportionate regulation, and what that signals to anyone building in a regulated sector.
On the Waqf Act: the Supreme Court declined in September 2025 to stay the statute as a whole while staying specific provisions, including the requirement to demonstrate five years of practising the faith, pending state rules. The substantive challenge continues. Argue the questions the Court framed: who administers religious endowments, what the burden of proof on property claims should be, and where administrative oversight ends. Do not argue about communities.
Asked to you, not in general
How did the oil shock and the rupee move affect your company's costs this year?
How will the new US visa conditions affect your company's revenue?
What is the H-1B fee change likely to do to both economies?
What are the biggest problems in the city you work in, and what would you do about them as a policymaker?
Where does AI change the economics of your function specifically?
What is the most expensive decision your organisation made in the last two years, and was it right?
Facts to anchor on. The one-time $100,000 fee applies to new H-1B petitions filed from 21 September 2025 and to the lottery cycle that follows. Existing holders and renewals sit outside it. Indian nationals were roughly 71 percent of recipients in 2024, which is why the reaction was loud. The quieter fact makes the better answer: large services vendors had already localised, and H-1B holders make up only around 3 to 5 percent of a typical vendor's workforce, so the sharper impact lands on smaller firms, staffing-model companies and individual mobility rather than on the top line of the largest exporters. If you work in services, say what your own onsite mix looks like. That specificity is what is being tested.
Common mistakes in PGPX extempore
Taking an extreme moral position. The panel reads it as immaturity, not conviction.
Saying everyone is partly right. Neutrality without judgment is the most common failure and the easiest to fix. A conditional position is still a position.
Overloading on data. Six numbers with no argument connecting them reads as memorisation. One number proving one point beats six recited.
Sounding like a news panellist. Slogans, rhetorical questions and outrage all cost marks.
Ending without a conclusion. If you have made your point and your counter, stop early. A clean close at 90 seconds beats a ramble to three minutes.
Treating the follow-up as an attack. They disagree deliberately. Conceding a fair point and holding the rest is a stronger signal than defending everything.
Function jargon. If you cannot say it to someone outside your industry, it does not belong in a 90-second answer.
How to prepare for PGPX extempore in two weeks
Build a broad base first. Cover around twenty topics spanning economy, geopolitics, technology, education and governance, so that no prompt feels unfamiliar. Write only the opening 15 seconds for each, not the full answer.
Practise switching frameworks. Take one topic and answer it twice, once through the trade-off lens and once through the stakeholder lens. This is what stops you sounding rehearsed.
Keep it timed. Sixty seconds to think, ninety to speak. Record every attempt and review it once at double speed, looking for how long you took to say something specific and how often you repeated yourself.
Stress test your answers. Ask what a well-informed person who strongly disagrees would say, then answer that out loud. If you have someone to practise with, have them push back for two minutes after every response.
Build a one-page fact sheet. About fifteen anchors, dated: crude price range and the excise cut, GST structure, tariff position, hiring data, labour code thresholds, and one number from your own industry. Fifteen you recall cleanly beat fifty you half-remember.
PGPX extempore FAQs
How long is the extempore in a PGPX interview?
Usually about a minute to think and 90 seconds to speak, though some panels let candidates run to two or three minutes. Prepare for 90 seconds and be able to extend with one more piece of evidence and one more counter.
Do I need to know statistics to answer well?
No. You need about fifteen current facts you can recall precisely, and the judgment to use one of them per answer. Structure and a defensible position matter more than volume of data.
Is it safer to stay neutral on a sensitive topic?
No. Neutrality without judgment is read as an inability to decide. Take a position on the mechanism or the policy, and keep the argument on institutions and evidence rather than on any group of people.
What if I get a topic I know nothing about?
Reframe it as a trade-off you do understand, name three stakeholders, and reason from first principles. Say plainly that you are reasoning rather than reciting. Panels respect that more than a bluffed statistic.
How current do the facts need to be?
Current to the month. Almost every topic on this list moved in the last six months: crude doubled and came most of the way back, a trade framework was signed while the deal behind it still is not, a gaming ban became law and then a tax ruling, and a protest movement went from an internet joke to a minister's resignation in ten weeks. The frameworks carry over between cycles. The facts do not.
If you're weighing PGPX against IIM Calcutta's MBAEx or IIM Bangalore's EPGP this cycle, our complete PGPX application guide and MBAEx guide cover fees, eligibility and timelines side by side.
Getting practice with real follow-ups
Reading a topic list is not preparation. The gap between candidates shows up in the two minutes after the answer, when someone senior disagrees with them. That part only improves with live practice.
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