Topic
Opinion & Commentary
The Bilateral Imperative
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on January 25, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Greek tragedy – Act II?
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on January 11, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Over the Barrel: Oilpolitik
This column first appeared in the Indian Express, on January 5, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to ...Tipping points and Goldilocks conditions
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on December 28, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Enjoying the capital flows ride
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on December 13, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...The Main Thing…
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on December 14, 2014 . Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to ...Workfare as an effective way to fight poverty: The MNREGA
This article first appeared in Ideas for India, on December 11, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to ...Learning the art of deal-making
This column first appeared in Mint, on December 8, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to ...Saarc: building a constellation of stars?
This column first appeared in Mint, on November 23, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to ...Can our banks finance the economic recovery?
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on November 16, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Over the barrel: On oil, let’s play the ‘what-if’ game
This column first appeared in Indian Express, on November 3, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...War, peace and international order
This column first appeared in Mint, on November 9, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to ...You can’t kill two birds …
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on November 2, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...A five-year baseline scenario
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on October 20, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Modi’s delivery challenges
By all accounts Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US was triumphal: both in purely investment terms and in terms of ...Rhetoric signifying something
This column first appeared in the Indian Express, on October 6, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Electrified, but without electricity
No one would believe that simply owning a smartphone would be enough to go online and get connected one would still need ...A capital ladder for infrastructure
This column first appeared in the Business Standard, on October 5, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Modi’s prayer at the multilateral altar
This column first appeared in Mint, on September 29, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion ...Energy: A Solid Pillar upon which to Build India-U.S. Relations
In this India-U.S. Policy Memo, Vikram Singh Mehta emphasizes the importance of energy as a solid pillar for building and consolidating India-U.S. ...Global Silver Linings
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on September 21, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to ...Making it work
The MGNREGS stands out as one of the Indian government’s most ambitious social schemes, with far-reaching consequences throughout the economy. The only ...The merits of going nuclear with China
This column first appeared in Mint, on September 15, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to ...The inclusion triangle
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on September 7, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Lessons not to emulate from Japan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to Japan coincides with his 100 days in office and underlines his foreign policy emphasis on ...Good governance 101
The prime minister has hoisted his administration’s flag on the masthead of good governance. This is a welcome and timely objective. The ...For new ideas, a clean break with the past
The Planning Commission is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body, but over the years it has acquired tremendous power of distant ...Strategy and structure
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on August 24, 2014. Like all products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute ...Why plumbing in India starts leaking in a few months while it lasts...
This column first appeared in Quartz, on August 10, 2014. Like all products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to ...A brave new nuclear deterrence world?
Since the dawn of nuclear weapons in 1945 two axioms have dominated the discourse: one, only nuclear weapons could deter other nuclear ...The SLR Barrier
In last week’s bi-monthly review of monetary policy, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reduced the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) from 22.5 ...A story of the clean energy fund
The finance minister announced in his budget speech that he would enhance the resources of the “clean energy fund” by doubling the ...A transformative India-US dialogue?
This column first appeared in Mint, on August 4, 2014. Like all products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion ...Explaining Expectations
Contemporary monetary policy is based on two fundamental premises. One, when inflation is above an acceptable level because of demand-side pressures, policy has to work to ...Just another set of BRICS in the wall?
There is supreme irony that the genesis of the self-consciously anti-western BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping came from ...Just Another Set of BRICS in the Wall ?
Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu outlines how due to inherent contradictions within the group and open competition between China and India, BRICS might ...
Missing women leaders
Women constitute a quarter of Narendra Modi’s cabinet, even though they make up only a little over 11 per cent of the ...Demanding to be included
In the 1977 film, Annie Hall, Woody Allen opens with two jokes that, he says, best reflect his attitude towards relationships. The first, which he ...Nudges and Pushes
I think that cricket provides great metaphors for virtually everything in life. Thursday’s Budget certainly lends itself to cricketing references. Not for ...Why multilateralism matters for India
Conventional wisdom suggests that great powers and aspiring great powers prefer bilateralism to multilateralism or plurilateralism; they consider the former a characteristic ...Why the FM must digress
By now, the budget proposals will have been finalised. The finance minister may make some last-minute changes, but these will not be ...Modi’s twin challenge- Oil and water
They say that oil and water don’t mix. Literally true, perhaps, but, speaking metaphorically, they can be an explosive combination. The mix ...Iraq: Modi’s black swan moment
In the grand scheme of candidate, and now prime minister, Narendra Modi ‘Iraq’ never featured either benignly or as a potential cause ...Beginning a new conversation on women
A focus on women citizens Riding on the aspirations of an electorate, Modi’s arrival into Delhi is commonly seen as a vote ...Iraq: Modi’s Black Swan Moment
In this article, W.P.S. Sidhu talks about the crisis in Iraq and how the kidnapping of the Indian hostages by ISIS caught ...A potential jobs breakthrough
The announcement by the Rajasthan government that it would amend the state’s labour laws to give employers in the manufacturing sector the flexibility to lay off ...US & India: Hope of deliverance
Initiatives by US President Barack Obama and Prime Minisiter Narendra Modi, leaders of the world’s biggest democracies, last fortnight evoked dramatically contrasting reactions: it appeared ...Getting down to the energy business
This may be the right political moment to resolve the dilemmas surrounding the energy policy. Energy sits at the nub of every ...Five fiscal fixes
High on the government’s priorities should be to gain control over the fiscal situation. Between the Budget for 2014-15 to be presented ...Narendra Modi’s Foreign Policy
*This column first appeared in Mint, on May 25, 2014. All views are personal. Brookings India does not hold an institutional view ...Economic & Foreign Policy Priorities for Modi’s Government
Brookings India Fellow Dr. Shamika Ravi, and Mr. R.N. Ravi, former Special Director, Intelligence Bureau of India, address questions on the economic and ...Create department of energy in PMO
The new PM should pave the way for the introduction of a bill that lays out the road map for energy independence,security ...Looking beyond Modi win: Experts analyze NDA’s uphill task
CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan and Latha Venkatesh caught up with some of the most influential voices in the country to get a sense ...Three national missions on priority for the Modi government
**This column first appeared in the Business Standard, on May 19, 2014. All views are personal. Brookings India does not hold an ...Why less ladies in the Lok Sabha
Gender inequality is a serious concern in most sectors but the gap between men and women has narrowed the least in political ...Foreign policy: continuity, not change
On the last day of polling in India’s 16th general elections the final phase of which witnessed vicious, communal and extremely local ...Time of day electricity pricing: From utilities to consumers
What is the value of saving one unit (or kilowatt-hour, kWh) of electricity? Most households would think about their bill, and then ...Believing in India again
It is a matter of confidence, credibility and trust. Whatever be the political hue of the next government and whoever its leader, ...Walking the line between demographic dividend and disaster
The dominant factor that will determine whether India evolves into a middle-income nation over the next few decades is the country’s ability ...The NIF Option
Over the past few months, I have written several columns about the chronic and intensifying problems in infrastructure. To my mind, two ...Updating India’s nuclear doctrine
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will “study in detail India’s nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it, to make it relevant to ...No monkey business
Why ‘right to entrepreneurship’, promised by Congress manifesto, is a bad idea. Little else is requisite to carry a state to the ...Thirsty, hungry and sick
The second volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fifth Assessment Report was published on March 31. This volume is ...Bang for the Buck
Capital efficiency is a critical determinant of how companies perform. Return on capital employed, which measures the surplus available to the providers of ...Slippery Slope for Infrastructure
By now, all of us are used to global rankings of various kinds placing India close to the bottom of a large ...Saudi Arabia, Iran and a three-way tango
If India is serious about being everyone’s ally in the Persian Gulf, it will have to engineer a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia ...Realigning governance
In its essence, governance is about alignment. Multiple groups, each with its own menu of interests, some coherently articulated and others not, ...Perils of preserving the ancien régime
The old order changeth yielding place to new… (The Passing of Arthur) Despite the veracity of this maxim, existing members of the ...A national agenda – hopefully!
Frankly, I think we spend too much time and effort analysing the numbers presented by the interim Budget. At its core, the ...India’s Missing Women
Even though fair elections are held at regular intervals for State Assemblies and Parliament, they do not reflect the true consent of ...The alpha male syndrome
Behaviour traits of primates can be positive or negative for governance The institution of the alpha male is common to several species, including virtually ...Why energy needs a big-picture view
The word “energy” is missing from the executive and legislative vocabulary. It is, of course, liberally used, and issues like “energy independence” ...India’s travails when peace talks fail
The spectacular failure of the Syrians on both the political and humanitarian fronts has put India’s objectives in jeopardy and reflects the ...Hearing echoes of 1914 in 2014
The spread of power centres all over the word (rather than its concentration in Europe as was the case in 1914) may ...BHAG inclusion BHAG
The goals for financial inclusion need to be matched by the means being used In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits ...Finance and Sustainability: Regulatory and Strategic Dimensions
The 30th Annual Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas Memorial Lecture CONTENTS: Introduction Sustainability Framework Sustainability and Financial Performance Regulatory and Strategic Dimensions Concluding ...The state of the state
Whether the state, as an institution, is doing the right things and has the capacity to do them are fundamental questions in a ...An evolving multilateralism
The global economy can be viewed as a rather complex balancing act between forces of integration and those of autarchy. In many ...Step on the gas
The government must make it easier for oil and gas companies to acquire assets abroad An important plank of India’s energy security ...Slow burn
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is in the process of putting out its fifth series of assessment reports. There are three ...Infra bottlenecks will dilute potential benefits of weak rupee: Subir...
Subir Gokarn: The earlier assessment was made at a time when the rupee had not depreciated. It is obviously showing signs of ...Public sector – Act V?
Act I: Idealism Beginning with the second Five-Year Plan in 1956, public enterprise was given a central role in the industrial development ...Dimming of brand India
We have messed up the present. Can we still recover the future? We are in the midst of a severe economic crisis. ...Taper tribulations
When the United States Federal Reserve began what turned out to be a series of quantitative easing (QE) measures in October 2008, ...“Un prêt du FMI est certainement une option” pour l’Inde
Subir Gokarn était le gouverneur adjoint de la banque centrale indienne entre 2009 et 2012. Il est aujourd’hui directeur de la recherche ...Fighting without fighting
A film that I still remember from my teenage years is the Bruce Lee classic, Enter the Dragon. In the film, when ...A fact check on gas
How the recent gas price hike got it right. ONGC, Reliance and Cairn, the three major oil and gas producers in the ...Reflections from Binsar
Talent, money and policy must be harnessed to search for the optimal development-environment balance The tragedy in Uttarakhand cannot be overstated. It ...