governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
It is a measure of the randomness of the policy changes in the United States that the left hand no longer knows what the right is doing or more appropriately neither of its two right hands know what the other is up to. Working at cross purposes Consider that Elon Musk, reportedly working overtime, sleeps […]
Read More Trump’s DOGE & “Reciprocal Tariffs”: Different StrokesThe big question is does Budget 2025 help India step onto the path to Viksit Bharat by 2047? If high, inclusive growth is the surest way to reach that goal, the Finance Minister’s proposals for 2025-26 generally point in the right direction. But that is not saying much. Has reform by stealth reached the end […]
Read More Budget 2025: Slow turn towards Viksit BharatSocial roles evolve over the long term. Today’s “mother” need not be a female and a “father” not necessarily male. In the context of increasingly degenderized institutional roles, recent social policy reversals in Russia, China and the United States come as surprises- not least because equality is a central tenet of both Socialism and Liberalism. […]
Read More Global Illiberalism is rolling back gender equalityIn 2024 the United States and the European Union together added 39 percent of global GDP (2015 $). China was second at 19 percent whilst India lagged at 3.5 percent. Together these four economies added 62 percent to global GDP. Incredible as it might seem, in the short span of thirty-six years, by 2060- within […]
Read More Can India replace China?India, like the rest of the world, is not yet visibly on the freeway to net zero. Greta Thunberg and others of her persuasion believe this is because young people—future victims of climate change—are not in charge. This could well be true. But consider the recklessly fast-forwarded track for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Fintech, or social […]
Read More On the Freeway to net zeroThere is a 93 percent probability that at least one year between 2022-2026 will dislodge 2016 as the warmest year. More worryingly, the probability of a temporary increase in temperature more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) which was zero in 2015, has now increased to 48 percent. The warning bell is ringing, and it […]
Read More Energy Transition Under fiscal and Institutional stressAn India, more populous than China this year, and growing to 1660 billion people by 2050, is touted as good news by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – an agency which monitors population trends and its implications for the economy. Most Indians though, have mixed feelings about adding 240 million odd people to what […]
Read More Think before you have a babyCinema buffs know that the dream sequence ends when the lights come on. But politicians and economists can spin national dream sequences over long periods to captivate ordinary folk in a make-believe world. Two decades of post WWII peace The end of World War II in 1945, paradoxically, through a diabolical nuclear explosion at Hiroshima […]
Read More India’s choices amidst great power rivalryGlobal population growth decelerated since 1965, even before “The Population Bomb”, a 1968 best-seller by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, advocated population control if the world were not to starve to death. In 1972, the Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth”, which similarly predicted that the world would run out of its natural resources. […]
Read More Population growth- Ticking bomb or blessingIn Hong Kong, British style democracy is being nudged out by Sinicized democratic norms, where the Communist Party of China, and not citizens, determine the limits of democratic conventions. But it is not just China which feels compelled to sculpt the principles of classic, citizen-centric democracy to the objective conditions on the ground. Post-colonial Africa […]
Read More Improbable democracies or impossible benchmarks
Opinion India 