Our existing political system is unlikely to throw up solutions for deep rooted gender inequality. The Women’s Reservation Bill has been doing rounds of the Indian Parliament in various forms since 1996 failing each time to pass. While we celebrate International Women’s Day, as a stroke of remarkable irony there ...

Petroleum industry is in terrible shape. Brookings India chairman and former CEO of Shell Vikram S Mehta details what the Finance Minister can do to put it back on track. I am one of the quick-fire commentators who complimented the finance minister on budget day for both ...

Unless the P5 recognize that a weak and inept leader challenges their own legitimacy, the UN will be encumbered by a powerless leader writes WPS Sidhu This year will witness at least two leadership transitions of great international significance, including for India. The first is the ...

In the face of a sluggish global economy and volatile global markets Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had to convey a message of continued macro stability while also striving to accelerate growth. Budget 2016-17 is a complex and comprehensive document touching on many different areas which finance minister ...

There are numerous small announcements in finance minister Arun Jaitley’s budget that must be lauded comments Shamika Ravi Most television channels track the stock market as the finance minister’s budget speech unfolds in Parliament. This is done to capture the announcement effects from the speech. Yet, ...

Brookings India Fellow Dr. Rahul Tongia’s energy wishlist for Budget 2016 may be difficult to pull off in a single budget, it gives a pathway to energy sustainability There’s a budget around the corner, and energy scholars/economists/etc. all have a number of wishes they hope can ...

Dr. Rakesh Mohan, Distinguished Fellow at Brookings India, insists that the government keep up public investment in a credible and transparent fashion, during a panel discussion on ‘Budget 2016’ with CNBC TV18. Transcript As a person who saw a lot of economies grappling with similar problems, how sacred should India’s 3.5% fiscal ...

Skard harbours the belief that it is women at the very top who make any sort of substantial change, but in India women have performed leadership roles even at the panchayat level writes Shamika Ravi In Women of Power, Skard examines ‘Half a century of female ...

Some time ago, I missed my grandfather’s funeral because an airline’s manager hid behind rules. No, I wasn’t asking him to break any rules, but he didn’t let me fly despite there being empty seats, my pleading to please charge me any price he wanted, and ...

The Delhi government’s two-week-long odd-even rule ended on 15 January, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announcing that the plan will return in a revised form in the near future. There have been several commentaries and opinions on this policy in the national and local media, while ...

The Chinese president’s visit to Iran (after summits in Saudi Arabia and Egypt) is of strategic significance. What is the difference between India and China’s strategic partnerships with Iran? Over $35 billion per year (the gap between India’s and China’s annual bilateral trade with Iran, which ...

Watch Vikram S Mehta on Macros with Mythili on ET Now. There’s been a dramatic collapse in the price of crude oil in recent weeks. Price of the Indian basket has more than halved since the Modi government took over in May 2014 – from 108 ...

The global economy is in trouble, but India is attracting positive comment. The finance minister must make the most of the moment. The finance minster was sensibly measured in his response to the chatter in Davos that India is in a sweet spot. He accepted credit ...

India must build a culture of knowledge creation by fostering public support for research. Research is like defence, a pure public good which the private sector can directly support only in limited ways. There are no sustainable market solutions for research, the government therefore should provide the ...

The US president’s swan song has eloquently, though incompletely, spelt out an ambitious but essential vision for a new world order The annual state of the union (SOTU) address by the sitting president to the US Congress is invariably a laundry list of the government’s legislative ...

Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), quotes Brookings India Non-Resident Senior Fellow WPS Sidhu extensively on how Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Nepal are among the top contributors to UN peacekeeping missions across the world. What are the factors driving these “relatively poor” nations to send troops to ...

There is tremendous interest in the new experiment that Delhi government is running on the roads of the national capital. To complement efforts at curbing the number of cars, there is a barrage of advertisements on local radio extolling the virtue of sharing rides. It immediately ...

Oil will diminish in significance in a reconfigured energy system. Decades hence, 2015 might well be seen as the year the oil era entered the phase of terminal decline. For during this period, there was a convergence of action and sentiment against oil products and oil companies. ...

2015 will be remembered for bold initiatives at the bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral level As 2015 draws to an end, it will be remembered for bold initiatives and done deals at the bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral level, which will flourish or flounder depending on how successfully ...

Three of the most exciting initiatives have emerged on the sidelines of the official deliberations, and Indians have played a prominent role in all of them Ever since Charles Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget Field at the end of his epochal maiden solo, non-stop transatlantic flight ...

Rahul Tongia, Fellow, Energy and Environment in an interview with James Bennett, AM, ABC News, Friday December 18, on India’s coal consumption in the coming years. KIM LANDERS: As celebrations subside following the Paris climate accord, the world’s third-biggest emitter India is warning its coal consumption ...

India may have been late to the emissions party, but with innovation and rapid development, it can make a disproportionate contribution to emissions reduction. India’s carbon reduction pledges (the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs) have been labelled as medium or even weak by many global ...

Enough has been written (mostly against) the idea to limit cars in Delhi, by license plate.  Will it work? Can you enforce it? Will it lead to more sales of alternate number of cars? And, most importantly, are alternatives such as public transport ready, especially considering ...

Recently, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan spoke at the release of the IEA’s India Energy Outlook about cutting down of the country’s import dependence for domestic energy needs by 10 per cent by 2020-21. How can this be done? There are three initiatives that the government needs ...

The climate-change relevant question is, how will the continuing compounded advance of technology impact the energy sector? How do we square this circle? On the one hand, the world has come together to tackle the threat of global warming. More than 150 countries have set out ...

One of the most important ambitions of modern India is the 100 smart cities project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We want to make our cities smarter by using IT and digital infrastructure, by managing our energy and water use and by creating an intelligent transport ...

As world leaders gather for the global COP21 climate negotiations. Many may feel it is now or never. But the question remains, who is supposed to contribute how much toward emissions reductions? India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) submission has targeted a measurable (33-35 percent) improvement ...

Indian smart city efforts need to recognise the economic differences between its cities. Off-the-shelf technology solutions are not viable  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bold commitment to build 100 smart cities throughout India is a worthy centrepiece of his urban agenda. The promise of this tech-savvy approach ...

A change in roles means that this will be the last column of this series. Looking back over the almost three years of “Muddy Waters”, I see four broad themes that have taken up much of my attention. I will use this opportunity to reflect on ...

The most disturbing trend to emerge out of the National Crime Record Bureau data is that consistently for over 2 decades, every fifth suicide in India is by a housewife. And though significant in numbers, farmer suicides, in comparison are a much smaller fraction. But more ...

“The Future of Oil” is headed towards an interesting crossroad. The pathway will not be signposted; there will be many twists and turns. Oil is headed towards a future in which it will lose its pre-eminence in the energy landscape. Key Highlights:  Over the next five ...

The recent series of dastardly and heinous attacks in places as dispersed as Baghdad, Beirut, Bamako, Kabul and Paris by myriad terrorist outfits ranging from the Taliban to Islamic State and al-Qaeda hold several important lessons for international efforts to counter terrorism. First, cities, especially those ...

Some institutional arrangements that can maximise the collective impact of individual contributions The Companies Act of 2013 mandates a contribution of two per cent of post-tax profits of companies to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. There was much debate about the merits of this mandate, with ...

Despite the Narendra Modi government’s foreign policy hyper-activism, Africa has remained a neglected continent for India. When the India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS), originally scheduled for December 2014 in New Delhi, was postponed ostensibly on account of the deadly Ebola crisis sweeping West Africa, this perception was ...

Is India liberal, tolerant and democratic, or is it conservative, atavistic and authoritarian? Investors want to know Key highlights: It takes a long time to build a brand, but just one dissonant message to kill its appeal. The conversation today in academic circles, corporate boards and ...

The recent behaviour of tur dal prices suggests that  the National Mission on Protein Supplements set up in 2011-12 has remained largely unsuccessful. Subir Gokarn suggests three components of a budgetary approach that can help increase the prospects of such missions succeeding. Key Highlights: A large mission requires ...

India must have a serious dialogue with African countries on its role in future peacekeeping operations on the continent.  India’s participation in the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO) is probably without parallel; it has been one of the largest contributors of peacekeepers and has suffered the most ...

With over 40 African heads of governments and states attending, the third India-Africa Forum Summ (IAFS) being held in New Delhi is the biggest foreign policy event hosted by India in more than three decades. While this process was partly in response to initiatives by other ...

Four ways in which India and Africa matter to each other The third (IAFS) in New Delhi this week, with over 40 African heads of governments and states attending, will be the biggest foreign policy event hosted by India in more than three decades. While this process ...

An article in the Scientific American quotes Brookings India Fellow Rahul Tongia’s research. Rural homes regularly experience rolling blackouts during times of peak demand as utilities move available power to commercial operations and energy-hungry cities. That means the average rural consumer ends up subsidizing power for ...

There is no better way to understand the spike in the price of tur dal than through simple supply and demand factors. Let’s look at the supply side first. There are three ways to increase the availability of tur, or, for that matter, any commodity: increase ...

Coupled with the re-engagement of existing and emerging powers with the proceedings, the UNGA is becoming an important venue for a great power dance Time was when the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) jamboree in New York was an entertaining but worthless talkfest used by ...

Depression, and not debts, is responsible for the decades-long tragedy of farmer suicides in Maharashtra, said a paper by an American think-tank after analysing suicide-related information provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The paper, written by Brookings Institution India fellow and Indian School of ...

The needle of change must be shifted more sharply, democracy is not an acceptable cover for non-performance. There is a telling vignette in Arun Maira’s interesting new book, An Upstart in Government. Maira was a member of the Planning Commission in the rank of minister of ...

The government’s multi-pronged approach, labelled Indradhanush, attempts to address a number of structural problems of public sector banks, including asset quality, writes Subir Gokarn. The condition of the Indian banking sector’s balance sheets, more specifically that of the public sector banks, is a serious threat to ...

Brookings India Director of Research and former Deputy Governor of the RBI, Subir Gokarn, answers questions on the RBI Monetary Policy review in Business Standard. Read the full transcript of the webchat here. Is the Reserve Bank of India immune to political and India Inc’s pressure for rate cuts ...

A new financial architecture that replicates the Bretton Woods framework is being built in Asia, with China playing a pivotal role. Subir Gokarn identifies opportunities and challenges for this new financial architecture.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently announced the Indradhanush framework – a reform structure for transforming the public sector banks. Subir Gokarn (Director of Research, Brookings India and former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India) spoke to the Swarajya Research Team to find out what he thinks of this ...

Fact: India is home to more than 30% of the world’s extremely poor people Fact: Uttar Pradesh accounts for 8% of world’s population living in extreme poverty Fact: 8 Indian states have more poor than 25 of the poorest countries in Africa Fact: There are 66 million ...

INEQUALITY: WHAT CAN BE DONE? Anthony B Atkinson HARVARD BUSINESS; Pages 400, Rs 1,250 Inequality is back in fashion, thanks to Thomas Piketty. Yet, before Mr Piketty, there was Tony Atkinson, his teacher, who has been at the forefront of research on the topic since the ...

The World Bank recently announced that short of exceptional circumstances, they would no longer fund coal in developing regions. The U.S. and other nations are also contemplating, if not making, similar choices, driven in part by concerns about climate change. This view may be impractical, if ...

But the challenge in education lies in enabling teachers to innovate and individualise pedagogy. Key takeaways from the Brookings India publication, Accelerating Access to Education If you would like to request a copy of the book please email us on info@brookingsindia.org In his second address to students ...

The G-20 may have to revert to its crisis management role, but in more complex conditions The G-20 finance ministers and Central Bank governors meeting took place last Friday and Saturday in Ankara, Turkey. The group’s summit meeting will be held in Antalya in mid-November, seven ...

Subir Gokarn pushes for government reforms in infrastructure and ease of doing business This interview first appeared on ET Now on 31 August 2015. Watch the full video here. The numbers are out – first quarter fiscal gross domestic product (GDP) at 7% and gross value ...

The launch of the GSLV–D6 powered by an indigenous cryogenic engine is a game-changer Even as the country was agog with a salacious society murder and an indefensible regional protest over reservations, which hogged the electronic bandwidth and the print media, an event of strategic import ...

Subir Gokarn says our ability to withstand shocks is greater than it was three years ago Watch his full interview on CNBC Awaaz here What is your assessment of the depreciating Chinese currency? Do you foresee currency wars taking place? We saw the Chinese yuan depreciate ...

More disruptions in financial and other markets unless central banks take necessary actions to ensure markets do not freeze Watch the full interview on CNBC here What is your own assessment of how this core problem of slow growth can be resolved because you can inject liquidity ...

China’s path to global economic leadership is bound to be marked by episodes of turbulence Recent developments in the Chinese financial sector have raised concerns globally about another looming crisis. Fears about a currency war have been expressed and equity markets in both emerging and developed ...

Recent news reports would have us believe that India’s chances for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have been scuppered even before they began by the very countries that promised to support its case when the reality is the other way around. ...

In my previous column, I wrote about some patterns emerging from the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO’s) household survey on expenditure on education. The same round also queried expenditure on health by households. This column explores some findings from the 71st Round survey of social expenditures ...

A few years ago, smart grids were all the rage Amitabh Bachchan was even on the cover of a business magazine in 2010 with a Smart Meter, and was dubbed “Power Genie”. Given, however, the low percentage of Smart Meter rollouts across homes, we have to ...

India Inc can no longer limit its CSR involvement to the new Companies Act. It has to forge partnerships with the beneficiary community. Corporates have scrambled to meet their corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations under the new Companies Act, 2013. This is not a surprise, as ...

This column first appeared in The Hindu, on July 28, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. As all political parties pull up their socks before ...

This column first appeared in Business Standard, on July 26, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Over the past few weeks, new data releases have ...

The recently concluded twin summits in Ufa – the summits of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – are a strategic milestone for the emerging global order. The outcomes of these summits also hold significance for ...

Big data provides both companies and governments the ability to differentiate sharply and productively between customers and beneficiaries of welfare programmes. Used effectively, organisations delivering products and services can leverage large databases about customers/beneficiaries to combine economies of scale with the benefits of precision targeting. Further, ...

For over a decade, farmer suicides in India has been a serious public policy concern. More recently, this has led to a shrill media outcry and much politicking. The government response to the crisis of farmer suicide has mostly been simplistic and sometimes aggravating. The main ...

The recently concluded twin summits in Ufa, Russia of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) are a strategic milestone for the emerging global order and India’s role in it for several reasons. First, host Russia sought ...

I recently returned to Delhi after several days at my home in Binsar. Binsar is a remote forest and wildlife sanctuary in the Kumaon hills. It is almost totally cut off. There is no electricity, and although some of us who can afford the upfront capital ...

From the 6th Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit at Fortaleza to the forthcoming seventh Brics summit in Ufa this week, this unlikely grouping first conceived as an investment portfolio is increasingly reflecting the desire and limited ability to shape a new world ...

Quality   Focus on Learning Outcomes: There is an unequivocal need for the education system to shift its focus from access and infrastructure to improving learning outcomes for all students in the country. While some basic standards for infrastructure are needed, greater priority should be given ...

The word peacekeeping does not appear anywhere in the Charter of the UN. Yet, ever since the first peacekeeping operation was launched in May 1948 in the Middle East, that one word evokes the very raison d’etre of the world body. Since then the UN has ...

Budget 2015 was creative on several dimensions but fresh thinking was completely missing in health financing. This budget, like several in the past, reinforced insurance as the strategy for health financing in India. As the experience of many countries has revealed, this is a perilous path ...

By most accounts Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has notched up a good year in the foreign policy realm, with Modi himself being the principle planner and implementer of the most significant initiatives. Even his most ardent political critics have acknowledged the energy and vigour he ...

As the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government approaches its first anniversary, the assessments have ranged from congratulatory to critical, depending on the observer and the criterion. Here is my contribution to the kitty. A year ago, I had written a column entitled “Three national missions”, in ...

Multi-domain, multi-scale, and multi-stakeholder efforts are needed to overcome the combination of acute and chronic challenges facing India’s energy future. Analogies aren’t perfect, but a number from the healthcare domain could apply to energy. Doctors often characterize diseases or conditions as acute or chronic – energy ...

While the government has taken several steps in the right direction, these measures do not add up to a credible strategy to re-start infrastructure. Building up on action already taken, a strategy needs to be formulated around three dimensions. The Background For the past couple of ...

A year ago, I was requested to make recommendations on a 100-day action plan on energy for the new government. In response, I offered the following suggestions, which I hoped might define the roadmap for the following year. Steps should be taken to institutionalise the formulation ...

The first forecast for the south-west monsoon this year caused concern. It projected aggregate rainfall during the June-September period to be 93 per cent of normal, somewhat below the conventional range of 96-104 per cent. This projection would not have attracted much attention, but it comes ...

A little more than a week ago, World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for launching the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), which he called an “extraordinary effort” at financial inclusion. According to the Union finance ministry, India has attained 99 per ...

The Iran deal or the “Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Nuclear Program”, to use the wordy official moniker has been evaluated by most experts in only nuclear terms and measured in the number of centrifuges and ...

Oil prices have played a huge part in global economicdynamics over the past several years. They rose sharply in the couple of years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008. They crashed during the crisis, but recovered quite quickly. In late 2010, they surged past the ...

Achhe din sparked hope. The black market bill, whilst laudable in intent, has, however, raised fears of reinvigorated “inspector raj”. The labyrinthine maze of bureaucratic approvals, the tax charge on Cairn petroleum, the abrogation of the winning bid by Jindals for two coal blocks on the charge of cartelisation, and the ...

We are told early in life that we cannot both have our cake and eat it, too. Of course, this is taught to us before we take our first economics course. There, we are introduced to the “production possibility frontier”, which traces the combination of goods ...

The Draft National Health Policy of 2015 released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, is a comprehensive document. So comprehensive, in fact, that it says too little by saying too much. A National Heath Policy is commonly read as a political ...

India received commitments for over 260,000 MW of renewable energy during RE-Invest. While this is a great supply-side achievement, there are several issues in terms of handling this, and implications for the grid, both technically and financially. The Renewable Energy (RE) Global Investor’s Meet inaugurated by ...

This column first appeared in Business Standard, on February 8, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Soon after we moved to Mumbai a few years ...

This column first appeared in the Indian Express, on February 2, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. In the aftermath of the Republic Day India-US ...

This column first appeared in the Indian Express, on January 29, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Nuclear cooperation between the United States and India, ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. During the five-year period 2003-08, even as the world ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Developments in Europe have dominated the headlines over the ...

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 contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. A frequently asked but futile question is: Where ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Many, if not most, observers of the Indian economy ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the authors.   The last 10 years have been a roller coaster ...

This column first appeared in Business Standard, on December 14, 2014 . Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Many years ago, at an offsite that I ...

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 contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. While developed countries are increasingly leaning on workfare ...

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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Three recent bilateral agreements have the potential to dramatically change ...

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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. With squabbling members and embarrassingly poor integration there are few ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. There is little question now that the Indian economyis ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Now is the time for the government to ask ...

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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. The economic parallel of the popular aphorism about the ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. At the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International ...

By all accounts Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US was triumphal: both in purely investment terms and in terms of the lofty rhetoric and unprecedented public buzz that his outings generated. The former, according to the US-India Business Council, will yield an investment of ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the authors. Only the most churlish would argue that the prime ...

No one would believe that simply owning a smartphone would be enough to go online and get connected one would still need a data connection for that to happen. Similarly, it is time that we added a similar level of service to define electrification, a focus ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the authors. A look at how businesses have traversed the path ...

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 and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the authors. The inevitable hype over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the ...

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. relations and identifies three ways in which the two countries can cooperate further.

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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. When the G20 finance ministers and central-bank heads met in South ...

The MGNREGS stands out as one of the Indian government’s most ambitious social schemes, with far-reaching consequences throughout the economy. The only known recipe for poverty eradication is a combination of high growth and high development spending. Neither is sufficient. A recent study (Kapoor and Ahluwalia, ...

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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. The maiden visit of Chinese President Xi Jingping to ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. A triangle is symbolically important because it is ...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to Japan coincides with his 100 days in office and underlines his foreign policy emphasis on deeds (particularly deliverables) rather than words or highfalutin rhetoric (without concrete results). Predictably then the focus of the Japan trip has been on specific ...

The prime minister has hoisted his administration’s flag on the masthead of good governance. This is a welcome and timely objective. The question is, what does the prime minister mean by “good”? He campaigned on the slogan of “minimum government, maximum governance”. This would suggest that ...

The Planning Commission is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body, but over the years it has acquired tremendous power of distant planning which is unsuitable to a country as diverse and complex as India. Let us neither reinvent nor restructure such a body. Let us, ...

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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. The title of this column is borrowed from ...

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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. Indians are proud of their frugality. Saving money is ...

Since the dawn of nuclear weapons in 1945 two axioms have dominated the discourse: one, only nuclear weapons could deter other nuclear weapons. Two, as conventional conflict would inevitably escalate to a nuclear level the primary objective of the military in nuclear-armed states was to avert ...

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 per cent to 22 per cent of net demand and time liabilities. Many perceived this as a kind of back-door easing, because it allowed ...

The finance minister announced in his budget speech that he would enhance the resources of the “clean energy fund” by doubling the cess on coal production from Rs 50 per tonne to Rs 100 per tonne. This fund was set up in 2000 to incubate, encourage ...

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 and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. Opinion on the recently concluded fifth India-US strategic dialogue ranged ...

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 contract demand to bring it down. Two, if inflationary expectations are high and/or if there is risk of them rising, policy has to work towards moderating ...

There is supreme irony that the genesis of the self-consciously anti-western BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping came from the most evocative symbol of the western liberal economic world the head of an investment bank’s asset management unit, Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs. ...

Women constitute a quarter of Narendra Modi’s cabinet, even though they make up only a little over 11 per cent of the 16th Lok Sabha. This is significant, even internationally. In South America, for instance, women hold the same proportion of Cabinet positions, but the proportion ...

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 attributes to Sigmund Freudvia Groucho Marx, is that he would never want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. The second ...

I think that cricket provides great metaphors for virtually everything in life. Thursday’s Budget certainly lends itself to cricketing references. Not for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley the six sixes in an over kind of thriller; more the nudging and pushing, singles and twos kind of innings ...

Conventional wisdom suggests that great powers and aspiring great powers prefer bilateralism to multilateralism or plurilateralism; they consider the former a characteristic of the strong and regard the latter only as the privilege of the weak. India is no exception. Yet, multilateralism offers a useful path ...

By now, the budget proposals will have been finalised. The finance minister may make some last-minute changes, but these will not be substantive. The FM knows that his speech on July 10 will be closely heard and rigorously interpreted. He knows that as the first major ...

They say that oil and water don’t mix. Literally true, perhaps, but, speaking metaphorically, they can be an explosive combination. The mix between the two poses the most significant risk to the Indian economy over the next few months. It threatens to reignite the drivers of inflation, the fiscal ...

In the grand scheme of candidate, and now prime minister, Narendra Modi ‘Iraq’ never featured either benignly or as a potential cause of concern. Yet, these four letters, coupled with the dreaded acronym ISIS (variously elaborated as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or the ...

A focus on women citizens Riding on the aspirations of an electorate, Modi’s arrival into Delhi is commonly seen as a vote for development. Women are a significant share of that electorate with fundamentally distinct concerns. The last few weeks’ horrific reminder of how India publically ...

In this article, W.P.S. Sidhu talks about the crisis in Iraq and how the kidnapping of the Indian hostages by ISIS caught the Modi administration off-guard. He concludes, however, that this crisis might provide just the right incentive to rework India’s policy to the Middle East.

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 workers without prior government approval is an extremely significant development. The plan is to raise the ceiling under which such approval is not needed ...

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 that the former could do no right while the latter could do no wrong. Obama’s major foreign policy speech at West Point Academy; the ...

This may be the right political moment to resolve the dilemmas surrounding the energy policy. Energy sits at the nub of every politician’s deepest dilemma. How to meet the demands of the electorate for affordable and reliable fuel without pushing government finances into a deep hole? ...

High on the government’s priorities should be to gain control over the fiscal situation. Between the Budget for 2014-15 to be presented next month and the one for 2015-16 in February, every opportunity to deal with both short-term and structural fiscal problems must be taken. Here ...

*This column first appeared in Mint, on May 25, 2014.  All views are personal. Brookings India does not hold an institutional view on any subject. Narendra Modi’s ambitious development plan, anchored in investment, infrastructure and job creation, requires two fundamental external conditions. First, ensuring a no-war ...

Brookings India Fellow Dr. Shamika Ravi, and Mr. R.N. Ravi,  former Special Director, Intelligence Bureau of India, address questions on the economic and foreign policy priorities for the new government:   How will Narendra Modi govern? Is he the right person to lead India during this challenging ...

The new PM should pave the way for the introduction of a bill that lays out the road map for energy independence,security and sustainability The new prime minister should immediately give a speech on energy. It should emphasise the criticality of the energy crisis and articulate ...

CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan and Latha Venkatesh caught up with some of the most influential voices in the country to get a sense of what is likely to happen as far as the economy is concerned, as far as the mood in the market is concerned and ...

**This column first appeared in the Business Standard, on May 19, 2014.  All views are personal. Brookings India does not hold an institutional view on any subject. The mandate received by the new government gives it an opportunity to set a long-term agenda without political threats. ...

Gender inequality is a serious concern in most sectors but the gap between men and women has narrowed the least in political representation. Women make up merely 22% of lower houses in parliaments around the world and in India, this number is less than half at ...

On the last day of polling in India’s 16th general elections the final phase of which witnessed vicious, communal and extremely local campaigning in one corner of a single state one could be forgiven for concluding that foreign policy has no role in India’s future direction. ...

What is the value of saving one unit (or kilowatt-hour, kWh) of electricity? Most households would think about their bill, and then try and recall what they pay for electricity.  What a large number of consumers don’t always realize is they pay a regulator-approved price that ...

It is a matter of confidence, credibility and trust. Whatever be the political hue of the next government and whoever its leader, the challenge will be to reinvigorate investor confidence in the political stewardship of the economy, restore the credibility of the executive and rebuild trust ...

The dominant factor that will determine whether India evolves into a middle-income nation over the next few decades is the country’s ability to generate massive numbers of jobs. As is well known, India is now in a potentially virtuous phase of its demographic transition. The working ...

Over the past few months, I have written several columns about the chronic and intensifying problems in infrastructure. To my mind, two issues are of particular concern. First, there is a severe imbalance between investments across sectors, which lowers the productivity of each investment. Infrastructure is ...

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will “study in detail India’s nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it, to make it relevant to challenges of current times.” (Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat, BJP’s 2014 election manifesto). Unsurprisingly, these words have perturbed international strategic experts. Everyone remembers how the ...

Why ‘right to entrepreneurship’, promised by Congress manifesto, is a bad idea. Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about ...

The second volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fifth Assessment Report was published on March 31. This volume is titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. It aggregates the current state of knowledge at both global and regional levels on how ecosystems are responding to ...

Capital efficiency is a critical determinant of how companies perform. Return on capital employed, which measures the surplus available to the providers of capital to the business, is a useful summary measure of this. Managements are judged by shareholders to have failed in strategy and execution when this measure ...

By now, all of us are used to global rankings of various kinds placing India close to the bottom of a large set of countries. Whether it is ease of doing business or corruption or transparency or human development or infrastructure quality, whenever a new ranking ...

If India is serious about being everyone’s ally in the Persian Gulf, it will have to engineer a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran In a deft diplomatic dance last week India simultaneously hosted Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the defence minister of Saudi Arabia, and ...

In its essence, governance is about alignment. Multiple groups, each with its own menu of interests, some coherently articulated and others not, demand recognition and satisfaction from the government. Areas of commonality need to be found and reinforced, while differences need to be reconciled, not by ...

The old order changeth yielding place to new… (The Passing of Arthur) Despite the veracity of this maxim, existing members of the old nuclear order, which is closely intertwined with the world order even today, are challenging the inevitability of this line from Alfred Tennyson’s classic ...

Frankly, I think we spend too much time and effort analysing the numbers presented by the interim Budget. At its core, the process simply involves obtaining parliamentary approval for the government to continue spending money on activities that are ongoing – from the routine to the ...

Even though fair elections are held at regular intervals for State Assemblies and Parliament, they do not reflect the true consent of the people because a large number of women are missing from the electorate On her arrival in India recently, the words of Gloria Steinem, ...

Behaviour traits of primates can be positive or negative for governance The institution of the alpha male is common to several species, including virtually all primates. At any given time, one male dominates the group, which, among other things, gives him the exclusive right to reproduce. When an ...

The word “energy” is missing from the executive and legislative vocabulary. It is, of course, liberally used, and issues like “energy independence” and “energy security” are part of any official statement on economic policy. But it has not been officially defined. There is no national policy ...

The spectacular failure of the Syrians on both the political and humanitarian fronts has put India’s objectives in jeopardy and reflects the perils of failed negotiations We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline, to make records with a mobile, we didn’t have ...

The spread of power centres all over the word (rather than its concentration in Europe as was the case in 1914) may prevent global war Noted Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan in a thoughtful essay titled The Rhyme of History identifies several worrying trends from the eve of the ...

The goals for financial inclusion need to be matched by the means being used In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994), James Collins and Jerry Porras postulated that an important characteristic of such companies was their articulation of their Big Hairy ...

The 30th Annual Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas Memorial Lecture   CONTENTS:  Introduction Sustainability Framework Sustainability and Financial Performance Regulatory and Strategic Dimensions Concluding Thoughts Good Evening. It is my great privilege to be delivering the 30th Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas Memorial Lecture. I follow a long list of ...

Whether the state, as an institution, is doing the right things and has the capacity to do them are fundamental questions in a liberal democracy. As India approaches the next general election, these are particularly significant questions. However, the articulation is as yet fuzzy and needs to get sharper ...

The global economy can be viewed as a rather complex balancing act between forces of integration and those of autarchy. In many domains – trade, development and macroeconomic stability are the obvious examples – the emergence of multilateral institutions as critical players in the process of ...

The government must make it easier for oil and gas companies to acquire assets abroad An important plank of India’s energy security policy is to build up a portfolio of international oil and gas assets. The government recognises that hydrocarbons are tradables and can be purchased ...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is in the process of putting out its fifth series of assessment reports. There are three components in this series. The report on the first component – science – was released at the end of September. The other two – ...

Subir Gokarn: The earlier assessment was made at a time when the rupee had not depreciated. It is obviously showing signs of stability, importantly because of the announcement by the FED and the expectation that liquidity levels will continue to remain buoyant in the global economy. ...

Act I: Idealism Beginning with the second Five-Year Plan in 1956, public enterprise was given a central role in the industrial development strategy for the economy. At that point, the perception that very large upstream investments, which would lay the foundations for comprehensive industrialisation, were best ...

We have messed up the present. Can we still recover the future? We are in the midst of a severe economic crisis. Our macroeconomic indices are weakening. The first quarter growth figure has come in at 4.4 per cent and some analysts are projecting a figure ...

When the United States Federal Reserve began what turned out to be a series of quantitative easing (QE) measures in October 2008, most observers would have seen it as a temporary crisis response measure, to be withdrawn as soon as it had done its job of ...

Subir Gokarn était le gouverneur adjoint de la banque centrale indienne entre 2009 et 2012. Il est aujourd’hui directeur de la recherche du groupe de réflexion Brookings India. Il évoque la crise des changes qui frappe son pays et qui s’aggrave avec l’hémorragie des capitaux. Comment ...

A film that I still remember from my teenage years is the Bruce Lee classic, Enter the Dragon. In the film, when the group of contestants is travelling to the island for the tournament, Lee is asked by a rather aggressive competitor, Parsons, about his martial ...

How the recent gas price hike got it right. ONGC, Reliance and Cairn, the three major oil and gas producers in the country, should make an earnest effort to bring politicians, bureaucrats and other opinion-makers to their producing fields in the offshore basins of Krishna Godavari, ...

Talent, money and policy must be harnessed to search for the optimal development-environment balance The tragedy in Uttarakhand cannot be overstated. It is a tragedy of monumental proportions. For me, there is a personal dimension. I have a home in the forest sanctuary of Binsar which ...