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If Trump, Modi talk climate
As is now well known, President Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement. This “Trexit” had all the hallmarks of a scorched earth strategy. Trump bashed not only the agreement, calling it “less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a ...Advancing cooperation in higher education
It is that time of the year when India struggles to meet the educational expectations of its youth. An increasing number of school graduates are enrolling in college but the shortage of quality institutions has led to unreasonable entrance requirements. Despite recent visa restrictions, the US remains a favoured destination for resourceful ...Clean energy can cement Indo-US ties
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Washington, US President Donald Trump and he will find numerous areas of disagreement. High on that list will be climate change. Early this month, Trump put a stick in the eye of the world by announcing that he will pull the US out of the ...Narendra Modi goes to Washington, again
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans for his fifth visit to the US in just four years and his first face-to-face meeting with President Donald Trump, there is a perception that the two polarizing and uber-nationalistic leaders could determine the future course of India-US relations in two diametrically opposite ways. On the ...India and the United States in the Trump era: Re-evaluating bilateral and...
Donald Trump’s election at a time of growing and converging interests between India and the United States necessitates a re-evaluation of several aspects of Indian domestic and foreign policy. This paper identifies four areas in which Trump’s election affects Indian interests: bilateral relations (encompassing trade, investment, immigration, and technological cooperation), the Asian balance of power, counterterrorism, and global governance. ...Donald Trump’s friends and foes: a role reversal
Since the US took to the global stage during World War I, two categories of countries have mattered to its world view: allies and adversaries. Both sets of countries garner great attention from Washington, though sometimes the latter commands even more consideration than the former, who are often taken for granted. Countries ...Over The Barrel: A note to the class of 2017
I was in the US last week for Commencement Week when students receive their degrees. The tradition is to surround this occasion with speeches by luminaries, faculty and staff, and to have much revelry. As I have two daughters studying in the Boston region and one of them was graduating, I had ...Trump’s Paris Agreement withdrawal: What it means and what comes...
Today, President Donald Trump announced that he will withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change. It was adopted in 2015 by 195 nations, with 147 ratifying it including the United States, which is the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter. Experts offer their analyses on what the ...Actualising East: India in a Multipolar Asia
After years of a ‘Look East’ policy that recognised the importance of the Asia-Pacific region for Indian interests, the Indian government decided to upgrade it rhetorically to ‘Act East’. The objective of the ‘Act East’ policy is to ensure a multipolar Asia, through deeper institutional engagement, land and maritime connectivity, and security ...‘Vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ for the 21st century
From Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi, India’s leaders have often evoked the phrase vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is one family), taken from the Maha Upanishad, to elucidate the country’s global outlook. While the term has become a mantra of India’s diplomatic lexicon, it has remained ambiguous and rarely elaborated. Indeed, despite their ...New Delhi’s efforts at ICJ may just have won Kulbhushan Jadhav a...
On May 18, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the principal judicial arm of the United Nations – ruled on the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, whom Pakistan alleges is an Indian spy. The court unanimously declared that Pakistan must take all measures at its disposal to ensure that Jadhav is not ...The art of curry diplomacy
Infosys plans to curry favour with the Donald Trump administration with a promise of creating 10,000 new American jobs. We should note that the first of four “Technology and Innovation Hubs” promised by Infosys will be in Indiana. No doubt, this is designed to charm Vice President Mike Pence by bringing tech ...Joint Doctrine for Armed Forces: the single-service syndrome
Last month the three service chiefs released the latest iteration of the Joint Doctrine for the Indian Armed Forces. In the foreword the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Admiral Sunil Lanba, wrote that that the Joint Doctrine “provides foundations for greater integration and interdependence, to achieve higher inter-operability and compatibility ...Should India Inc. bid for Westinghouse?
George Westinghouse and the company he founded in 1886 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pioneered the commercial production and transmission of a scientific marvel called electricity, which has since powered and revolutionized the modern world. With the dawn of the nuclear age, Westinghouse Electric Company went on to develop pressurized water reactors (PWRs) for ...Coming up Trumps
As Donald Trump completes 100 days as US President, what has it meant for India? The short answer is, nobody knows, not even Trump. But in an era of greater uncertainty, it is important for India to identify the key variables triggered by Trump’s election. They relate, essentially, to four broad areas: ...Why is today’s oil market, a ‘no mans’ land?
The oil market has never been easy to call but these days it appears to be in “no man’s” land. Why is that the case? A few weeks back American Tomahawk missiles took out a Syrian airfield. The price of the North Sea Brent crude jumped up by 2% to $56.08/barrel, but ...Newer Challenges for Open Access in Electricity
For the last 15 years or so, introduction of competition has been one of the main aims of reform in the electricity sector in India. One of the key measures to bring about competition is open access (OA) whereby, mainly, large consumers have access to the transmission and distribution (T&D) network to ...Donald Trump’s tumultuous 100 days
As Donald Trump lunges towards 100 days of his presidency with the elegance of a raging bull in a china shop strewn with nuclear trip wires, he has notched up several dubious “firsts” in this brief period: the first to lose a hand-picked national security adviser to scandal in a mere 24 ...Delhi’s inefficient electricity subsidies
Who doesn’t like discounts or freebies, especially from the government? Subsidies aren’t inherently wrong they can help keep goods and services affordable, and encourage “good” things like education. The challenge is making them efficient and focused, so that they help the poor and deserving the most. The Delhi government offers substantial subsidies ...Delhi’s household electricity subsidies: High and inefficient
Subsidies in the power sector aren’t new or unique to Delhi. These can play a helpful role in keeping power affordable for citizens, but the downsides of poor subsidy designs range from poor signalling of true costs, leading to wastage, to over-charging some users and financial losses for the utilities. This paper ...Can unarmed states prohibit nuclear weapons?
Guess what terrifies nations armed with the most powerful weapons ever invented? Believe it or not a mere UN conference to ban them, which began on 27 March in New York. This gathering of nations without nuclear weapons to negotiate a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total ...Can unarmed states prohibit nuclear weapons?
Guess what terrifies nations armed with the most powerful weapons ever invented? Believe it or not a mere UN conference to ban them, which began on 27 March in New York. This gathering of nations without nuclear weapons to negotiate a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total ...View from India: Pak may want to think twice about US mediation
Donald Trump, deal-maker. That’s how the president of the United States has long branded himself. But his tenure as deal-maker-in-chief has not gotten off to a great start. Whether it is the defiance of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in conducting missile tests or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons, Trump has ...Over The Barrel: Democrat’s dilemma
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “a government big enough to give you everything you want is also strong enough to take away everything you have “. Seen through a contemporary India-centric lens , this statement could read, “people want a strong government for development and stability but not so strong as to compromise their ...China benefits from nuclear disorder
The rise in global nuclear disorder and its increasing disconnect from world order is epitomized in the nuclear weapon programmes of two weak and potentially failing states Pakistan and North Korea. While both these countries might understandably perceive some advantage to having acquired nuclear weapons, the real beneficiary is China. Beijing’s ...Why EVMs are win-win
Free and fair elections to choose political representatives are a cornerstone of a democracy, and a fundamental human right of people. Voting procedures play a significant role in the conduct of free and fair elections in a democracy: These convert voters’ preferences into a political mandate, which forms the basis for policy ...The impact of Electronic Voting Machines on electoral frauds, democracy,...
Free and fair elections are cornerstones of democracy. In India, electronic voting machines (EVMs) were introduced with the objective of reducing electoral fraud. We exploit the phased roll-out of the EVMs in state assembly elections to study its impact on electoral fraud, democracy, and development. Our main findings are: Introductions of EVMs ...How Companies Can Champion Sustainable Development
Given political climates around the world and a new wariness around international cooperation, the private sector could find itself in the hot seat: trying to pick up the slack on big issues from climate change to sustainable development. This demand for taking on a larger role may come not only from advocacy ...North-East Asia goes dangerously ballistic
If there was any doubt that North-East Asia has become the most dangerous place on earth, with the prospect of a nuclear exchange, then recent events provide ample evidence that the region has attained this dubious distinction. Additionally, a new UN report, which went practically unnoticed, revealed that North Korea has continued ...Gender issues in India: an amalgamation of research
Forty-two years have passed since the United Nations first decided to commemorate March 8th as International Women’s Day, marking a historical transition in the feminist movement. Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view development issues across the world. On this past occasion of International Women’s Day 2017, here ...Working Paper: Trade Policy Reform in India Since 1991
SUMMARY: This paper discusses India’s trade policy reform since 1991, providing quantitative information and qualitative insights regarding the evolution of trade policy in the past 25 years. The Finance Minister in his 1991 Union Budget speech explicitly stated that trade policy reform was an important part of the economic reform initiated by ...A sentinel’s censure
The latest collection of P. Chidambaram’s articles is an indictment of India’s evolution as a liberal democracy I was a panelist at a function in Mumbai recently to discuss P. Chidambaram’s latest book Fearless in Opposition: Power and Accountability. The book is a compilation of his weekly articles written in 2016 ...Indo-US naval cooperation: steady as she goes?
The US and Indian navies could carry out ‘benign naval and maritime activity’ during periods of diplomatic strain. In the ever-expanding universe of Indo-US cooperation, perhaps the brightest and most alluring star is the deepening partnership between the Indian and US navies. Consider two recent pronouncements: First, admiral Harry Harris, the commander ...What explains childhood violence?
Violence in childhood is a serious health, social and human rights concern globally, there is, however, little understanding about the factors that explain the various forms of violence in childhood. This paper uses data on childhood violence for 10,042 individuals from four countries. We report Odds Ratios from pooled logit regression analysis ...Challenges, recommendations for meeting 2017 norms for air pollution from...
In this Brookings India IMPACT Series paper, Rahul Tongia and Deborah Seligsohn discuss the challenges for India in meeting the upcoming 2017 standards for air pollution from thermal power plants. While these new environmental norms are a welcome step in reducing emissions and are in line with global standards, gaps still remain in ...No such thing as a perfect renewable energy contract
India’s 175 GW renewable energy (RE) targets by 2022 are ambitious, to say the least. Compared to RE targets in Europe, China, or California that require 4-5% growth in RE capacity annually, Indian targets require 25% growth. This translates to enormous capital investment (well over $100 billion), including from global investors. RE ...Women and representative governance in India
Brookings India Senior Fellow Shamika Ravi recently presented glimpses of her work on women and representative governance in India to a group of students from New York University. Dr. Ravi presented her research through three main perspectives namely, governance, representation and potential solutions. Her research has been inspired by the ‘missing women’ ...India is an average low-tariff economy, there are misconceptions otherwise
India is widely known as a country with high import tariffs. This view, however, is incorrect. Changing this view is important for several reasons, both within India and outside. But first, the facts. World Trade Organization estimates of India’s applied most favoured nation (MFN) tariffs, i.e. tariffs applicable in general, are 13.4% ...Can Trump really value a strong, independent India?
The US capital is a strange place these days. The District of Columbia’s coffee shops are running a brisk business, attending to a steady stream of ex-Obama administration officials and patient federal government employees awaiting policy direction from on high. Many members of the Republican policy firmament appear alienated, some bitterly so. ...A disrupter’s guide to India’s defence budget
While India’s defence budget is now the fourth largest in the world, it is not providing adequate bang for the buck The latest Union budget unveiled on 1 February by finance minister Arun Jaitley has been widely commended as a “defining” and “watershed” moment, as providing “stability and predictability”, and as being ...2016, the year of inflexion for the oil industry?
India hasn’t yet joined the global move towards clean energy. But for how long can it hold out? A large part of my working life was spent with the Shell Group and I accumulated shares in the company. Last year, I decided to reduce my holdings of these shares. This was because ...What Trump’s TPP withdrawal means for India
In one of his first acts upon assuming office, Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum confirming the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This move did not come as a surprise. As a presidential candidate, Trump had vociferously campaigned against what he described as bad or unfair trade agreements that the ...Demonetisation – thereafter proposing a new abnormal
Now let’s try demonetisation without denouement, perpetually preserve the uncertainty A little over two months has passed since the Narendra Modi government’s ambush on its own currency. In keeping with the unexpected nature of its launch, the manoeuvre has had some unexpected consequences. There are at least three ways in which the ...Passing the baton: what to watch in the Donald Trump regime
With Donald Trump taking over as US President from Barack Obama, what legacy does he inherit? How could the change in administration in Washington affect India, directly or indirectly? Bilateral Issues Immigration: Trump campaigned on anti-immigration sentiment, but sometimes tried to make an exception for high-skilled immigration, which includes the H-1B visa ...A tradeoff between growth and social objectives exists for microfinance...
Senior Fellow Shamika Ravi was a panellist at the 5th Plenary of Day 2 at the Inclusive Finance India Summit 2016, held on December 6, 2016. Shamika Ravi described why most microcredit borrowers are women. She shared a story of the Grameen Bank from a gender perspective. When Grameen Bank started, 40 ...Global trends: discontinuity and disruption – risks and challenges...
Key global trends include rising income, climate change, growing cyber dependency, ageing population, artificial intelligence, and the changing nature of conflict Last week, two events held the world spellbound: one featuring outgoing US President Barack Obama was a cerebral, dignified and solemn affair while at the other guttural, farcical and burlesque circus, ...Barack Obama leaves a mixed legacy: impressive handling of the US economy...
Eight years ago, on a freezing January morning, I stood with over a million people on the National Mall in Washington DC to watch a 47-year-old African-American senator become the 44th US president. There was a pervasive sense at the time, particularly among young, highly educated and urban Americans, that Barack Obama ...Australia-India relations: poised for take off
Relations between India and the United States before the redefining changes of the past two decades were possibly best summarised in the title of a book by the American diplomat Dennis Kux: Estranged Democracies. But that phrase could just as easily have applied, more recently, to India and Australia. Despite their having ...The fight against hidden hunger: targeting the first 1000 days of a...
India faces an invisible public health crisis in the form of widespread maternal and child undernutrition. One-third of Indian women (of reproductive age) are undernourished, and close to 60 million children (under five years of age) are at risk, that is, they are either stunted (low height-for-age) or wasted (low weight-for-height). Women ...It’s time to resuscitate the Asia-Pacific Quad
2016 was quite a year. The Middle East continued its violent downward spiral; a failed coup in Turkey erased the last vestiges of democracy in that country; the new president of the Philippines launched a bloody, nation-wide vigilante war on drugs; North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test, and its biggest to ...Data management: India needs agency for energy data
India has no central body for maintaining and disseminating energy data, let alone analysing it. We propose the creation of a national Energy Information Agency to replace the current patchwork of systems. This would collect, standardize and analyse data across energy domains and make it publicly available. A lack of robust data ...Finding the sync: connecting the fragmented liberal and democratic...
Last year raised questions over relevance of liberal democratic processes, called for a review. 2016 has been a dramatic year. I am not sure about the others but the developments over the past year have made me reflect on four issues. The relevance of the current system and process of democratic politics ...How India can meet its ambitious renewable energy targets
A systemic approach that focuses on enabling the environment for more renewable energy will help India to meet its target of generating 175 gigawatts of energy by 2021. At the recently concluded Marrakesh Conference, most countries stood by their commitments made in Paris at COP21 for reducing carbon emissions. India’s ratification, on ...Demonetisation push to labour reforms: molding the future of the markets
Demonetisation has the potential to facilitate an environment that will develop a formal culture in India’s labour markets Among the loudest critics of the demonetisation policy are those who predict doom for India’s informal sector as a result of this exogenous shock. Numerous anecdotes are being forwarded to highlight the suffering of ...Health and Morbidity in India (2004-2014)
The decade from 2004 to 2014 saw the Indian economy grow at an impressive rate. This was also the time when the government brought sweeping policy initiatives into the healthcare sector. New health schemes were introduced at the national level as well as state levels. After a decade of experimentation, India is still faced with ...How to tame a dragon: To deal with Chinese muscle in a post-American...
The election of Donald Trump as US president has unleashed further uncertainty on a world already in considerable flux. Trump has promised economic protectionism, reversals on immigration and militarism against terrorists, but has outlined few concrete policies. Much will depend on his cabinet appointments and his ability to work with US Congress ...‘India should be less worried about trade with US than others’
Dhruva Jaishankar, Fellow, Foreign Policy, Brookings India, tells Aditi Phadnis of the Business Standard that India should take advantage of Donald Trump’s election as US President and shape an outcome to its advantage. Edited excerpts: After a long hiatus, a Republican has become the President of the United States. And it is ...Demonetisation: Effect on interest rates, inflation and policy action
Dr. Shamika Ravi (Senior Fellow, Brookings India) and Dr. Eswar Prasad (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution) participated in a debate about the demonetisation issue in India. Dr. Ravi responded to comments on inflation and interest rates: There is a problem of an information void within which estimates are being made, including the government ...India, meet President Trump
For India, there are naturally opportunities in Trump’s election, but concerns over his Asian policy cannot be brushed aside With the election of Donald Trump, we have seen the biggest shock to US politics in 70 years. Trump was given only a slim chance of victory. He had no previous experience as a public servant and few detailed ...Uncertainty and unpredictability about Trump’s presidency
Dhruva Jaishankar spoke to Quint and BloombergQuint on what having Donald Trump as the next U.S. President means for India. The election of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States was a surprise to many people in America and around the world. While there will be a lot of ...With Trump’s victory, American exceptionalism came to an end
Fifteen years ago, I came to the United States as an undergraduate student. A few weeks after my arrival, I watched the World Trade Center’s twin towers collapse live on television from my dormitory in Minnesota. Two years after that, stuck in a snowstorm in Colorado, I watched America plunge headfirst into ...Shamika Ravi on implications on govt’s demonetisation move
Speaking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement to demonitise Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes, Senior Fellow Shamika Ravi in this Facebook Live says the next few months will be painful, and should be seen as teething troubles for an economy trying hard to reform its corrupt self. As an economy we should aim ...Demonetization is a net positive move
Scaling back large bills will not end crime, but it will force the underground economy to employ riskier methods In a special broadcast on 8 November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a positive exogenous shock to the country. He declared that in less than four hours, Rs500 and Rs1,000 bills would be ...Brics Summit overshadowed by “how to isolate Pakistan” agenda
Instead of using the Brics summit to push for greater economic growth and a greater global governance role, India sought to use it more for dealing with Pakistan Hosting international summits inevitably offers a country the opportunity to lead the agenda and provide leadership to the meeting; enhance the institution’s role in ...Indian Financial Sector: Structure, Trends and Turns
This paper traces the story of Indian financial sector over the period 1950-2015. In identifying the trends and turns of Indian financial sector, the paper adopts a three period classification viz., the 1950s and 1960s, which exhibited some elements of instability associated with laissez faire but underdeveloped banking; the 1970s and 1980s ...Nutrition in India: Targeting the First 1,000 Days of a Child’s Life
Notwithstanding the sizeable economic and social gains made by India over the last two decades, the pernicious, often invisible, challenge of maternal and child undernutrition remains a national public health concern. This undermines the assumption that economic growth is in itself a sufficient condition for improvement in public health. India is home ...Progress must be made to corporatise railways: Rakesh Mohan
Rakesh Mohan, distinguished fellow, Brookings India, has said that while scrapping the separate Railway Budget is a positive move, the government has not yet clarified what it plans to do to make the railways more efficient. In an e-mail interview to Business Standard newspaper, Dr Mohan said little improvement has taken place ...Pew survey results heartening for government but should not lead to...
What does India think? This is a question that those of us who work on policy issues outside of government are often expected to answer. A country as big and diverse as India is naturally home to a wide variety of views. Often, we tend to reflect the positions of our peers, ...Municipal bond market could be the answer to financing woes of Smart...
As India considers more flexible and reliable ways of paying for the improvement of smart cities, the largely untapped municipal bond market can serve as a significant source of financial capital. As India continues to experience rapid urban expansion, public and private leaders at the national, state and local level are looking at ...Save me, technology; for I have (energy) sinned
Many things demand a balance, energy being one of them. Electricity, in fact, must always be in balance as grid power cannot easily be stored. Unfortunately, in recent times the emphasis has shifted from reducing the demand of power in India through efficiency to increasing its supply. Except for limited examples such ...“Govt’s ambitious power capacity target may lead to huge...
The Economic Times on our latest IMPACT Series paper, ‘India’s Updated (2016) Renewable Energy “Guidelines”: Bold targets, but can we meet them?’. Download the paper here. The article says, “The numbers for renewable energy, coal-fired capacity and power demand don’t quite add up upon triangulation. The targeted 1,500 million tonne of coal by ...India’s Updated (2016) Renewable Energy “Guidelines”:...
The government has announced a number of targets and support mechanisms for renewable energy (RE). Almost two years ago, the central government announced plans to grow to 175 GW of RE capacity by 2022, more than a five-fold growth in just seven years. RE has since been supported through a number of ...Building Smart Cities in India: Allahabad, Ajmer, and Visakhapatnam
As India continues to experience rapid urban expansion, public and private leaders at a national, state, and local level are looking into ways to better manage larger populations and unlock greater economic potential. Launched under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, the “Smart Cities Mission” is an ambitious multiyear effort to boost ...Paper | India’s coal requirement by 2020: A bottom-up analysis
Key findings India is heavily dependent on coal based power for its electricity needs, 79 per cent of total electricity generation is coal/thermal based. This is not expected to change drastically in the near future. Thermal power generation consumes around 76 per cent of total coal available in the country (imports included). ...Why Hillary is a safe bet for India
The field is set. With the formal anointing of party nominees at the Republican and Democratic Party conventions in July, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is certain to be the next U.S. president. This match-up is remarkable for several reasons. Trump would be the first U.S. leader in over a half ...For smart cities to succeed, strengthening local governance is a must
The lack of effective devolution of power to local governments is a major bottleneck in the essential transformation of urban India. India is in the midst of an ‘urban revolution,’ but the current state of municipal services across the country is found wanting. According to Census 2011, 31.16 per cent of the Indian population (377 ...How India reformed its petroleum sector
Political compulsions ensured that the process was done slowly, steadily and stealthily Indian newspapers have carried a series of interesting recollections by bureaucrats and technocrats of their involvement in the economic reform programme of 1991. None talked about the energy sector and, in particular, petroleum. This was understandable as their focus was ...Think you’re being eco-friendly by using cloth bags? Think again
The most important factor for cloth bags to actually be “eco-friendly”: reuse 171 times. That’s how many times one reportedly has to reuse a cloth bag to justify the extra energy consumed for its manufacture compared to a disposable plastic bag. While the exact number may vary with the thickness of the ...“Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric does not create an opening for...
In an interview to The Quint on July 22, Foreign Policy Fellow Dhruva Jaishankar offered a comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Presidential election campaign, and the ramifications of the election for India and the rest of the world. The current state of affairs in the Republican and Democratic Parties He started with ...China’s reaction to Hague ruling could have negative impact on other...
China’s shrill and bellicose response during and after the ruling has only served to heighten alarm over Beijing’s intentions and behaviour among all the major powers, including India The ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague against China’s claim on the South China Sea in a case brought ...Is the struggle between China and India a struggle to secure their energy...
India will need to import the bulk of its fuel for this decade and the next. In another four years, India is expected to become the world’s largest coal importer, overtaking Japan, the European Union and China. The Chinese attempts to dominate the South China Sea is, from the Indian standpoint, far more ...The South China Sea arbitration ruling, and why it matters to India
The future of the South China Sea has global implications, as jurisdiction over a few seemingly minor islands legitimises control over vast amounts of sea On Tuesday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague released its much-awaited ruling on a case brought by the Philippines against China on the South China Sea disputes. ...Here’s how the future of the South China Sea will have global...
On Tuesday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague released its much-awaited ruling on a case brought by the Philippines against China on the South China Sea disputes. The decision marks the most high-profile development concerning the overlapping and intensifying territorial disputes, which directly involve China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, ...India has done little to bridge energy supply-demand gap
India has done very little in the last few decades by way of harmonizing its governance structures to secure its energy needs despite a surging demand to fuel its growing economy, and the crisis may worsen in the coming years, Brookings India chairman Vikram Singh Mehta said at a policy discussion forum ...Critical Seoul NSG meet will have reverberations for India’s...
NSG meeting is no less important, for the potential implications it could have for relations between India and China writes Dhruva Jaishankar A decision by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on June 23-24 – as to whether to include India as a member – may be overshadowed in international media by other ...A game changer: Electricity feeder monitoring
The Government of India is proposing a bold and major scheme for monitoring, visualizing, and analyzing feeder level power supply across the nation, monitoring all the 11kV distribution feeders. In conjunction, a parallel scheme, Urja-Mitra, aims to notify consumers of outages, via SMS and online apps. Put together, these should be a ...India-US relations: Energy and environment
The energy market has undergone a major structural change since 2015. The most dramatic manifestations of this change are Saudi Arabia’s decision to forego the role of “swing producer,” the consequential drop in the price of oil, and the recent pronouncement in Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030″to reduce its dependence on petroleum. Underlying ...India-US relations: Higher education
Over the past decade, college tuition fees in the United States have skyrocketed, making it extremely difficult for average Americans to invest in higher education. Within the same time frame, the country has fallen from being ranked number one in college degree attainment to number 12 globally. The rising costs of higher ...India-U.S. | Looking back: Highs, lows, and steady progress
India and the United States have come a long way since 2008, the year that Barack Obama was elected U.S. President. Earlier that same year, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took the unusual step of putting the future of his government on the line over a matter of foreign policy – specifically, ...Emerging Powers and Global Governance: Whither the IMF?
Although the role of the emerging economic powers is increasing, their soft power is not rising at the same pace, explores Brookings India Distinguished Fellow Dr Rakesh Mohan in this policy brief. KEY POLICY HIGHLIGHTS: The centre of gravity of the global economy is shifting back towards Asia from the North Atlantic. This ...India’s underpowered foreign policy
Narendra Modi government needs to work with several other constituents, including state governments, corporate sector, think tanks and civil society writes WPS SIdhu At the end of its second year in office, the foreign policy performance of the Narendra Modi government resembles that of a gleaming Ferrari powered by a frugal Ambassador ...Sustainable development goals must be linked to energy and environment
Niti Aayog needs a sharp focus on weakening the link between energy demand and environmental degradation writes Vikram Mehta Niti Aayog has placed on the internet a 25-slide presentation entitled “Creating a movement for change”. It has set out a thematic roadmap for quintupling the GDP from the current $2 trillion to ...Can India’s Think Tanks Be Truly Effective?
If there is one big challenge that all think tanks face it is measuring their effectiveness writes Dhruva Jaishankar I have worked for much of the past decade in, or with, think tanks in both the US and in India, and am regularly confronted with misperceptions and misapprehensions about the sector. What ...The Urgent Need For India To Build A Design Economy
The “Make in India” initiative aims to create 100 million new jobs in the coming 10 years in the manufacturing sector and boost its contribution to GDP from 15% to 25%. (Globally, manufacturing accounts for 34% in Thailand, 32% in China, 31% in the Philippines, and 24% in Malaysia and Indonesia.) Yet, ...The Brussels syndrome
There needs to be an international consensus on zero tolerance for all terrorism, as advocated by India and several other countries writes WPS Sidhu. “What we had feared has come to pass,” said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel on 22 March. Like the Stockholm syndrome a phenomenon in which hostages express sympathy ...Next step in PM Jan Dhan Yojana is to help people start using their new...
A recent article in Global Government Forum quotes a Brookings India research paper on financial inclusion which calls for a model of financial inclusion which specifically caters to the need of the poor. (Global Government Forum is a publishing, events and research business that helps civil servants around the world to meet global challenges by building their expertise, ...Dr Barack versus President Obama
Barack Obama’s foreign policy reflects a moral duality that has befuddled friends and enemies alike Barack Obama’s foreign policy, like the main character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, reflects a moral duality that has befuddled friends and enemies alike and will complicate ...Planning for Accelerating Smart Meter and Smart Grid Rollouts in India
The Electricity Policy has taken a bold move to kick-start Smart Meters in India. This discussion note discusses roll-out the options. Many HT consumers are already on digital metering, that too with downloading of data (even if via a handheld instrument). Making such users’ metering “smart” will be analogous to AMR (automated ...How Make in India can be bad news for trade deal with Australia
Brookings India Chairman Vikram S Mehta explains the reason for tensions over India’s trade and manufacturing policy. In a story in the Australian Financial Review on why Australia’s prospects of negotiating a trade agreement with India are being threatened by differences within the Indian government over how to implement Make in India, ...Tie women’s reservation bill to sex ratio of constituency
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 is yet another 15-year-old girl, raped ...Budget fails to lay out a clear roadmap for petroleum industry
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 affirming fiscal rectitude and addressing the ...Union Budget: FM has chosen stability over growth
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 (FM) Arun Jaitley has categorised into ...Marginal revolutions from Budget 2016
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, it also reflects the gross mistake ...Brookings India Roundtable on “Future of Coal – 2020”
A Brookings India roundtable on “Future of Coal – 2020” invited experts to discuss future coal demand for the country, and also to share preliminary findings of our ongoing research on the challenges in ensuring sufficient coal supply contingent with the demand. Summary: The three key preliminary findings from our research are: Coal demand ...Budget 2016: Reduce & refocus power & diesel subsidies
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 be announced, often related to pricing, ...Paper | Building a Design Economy in India
In this paper, we outline the manner in which design can help promote the Indian economy. We look at the status of design in India, review the country’s development challenges, discuss the opportunities of a design economy, and make recommendations to enhance design in India. Highlights of Main Findings India’s design capacity ...Women who rose to the top and shattered stereotypes
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 presidents and prime ministers worldwide’, and ...The Data Is Unambiguous: The Odd-Even Policy Failed To Lower Pollution In...
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 ordinary citizens have enjoyed some side ...“Withdrawal of sanctions on Iran a huge opportunity for India to...
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 USD a barrel to just below ...Support research as corporate social responsibility in India
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 necessary support for this. Research is ...Priorities for India’s health policy
India’s health care sector is poised at a crossroads, and the direction taken now will be critical in determining its trajectory for years to come. In a recent Brookings India paper on the Indian government’s health care policy, Shamika Ravi and Rahul Ahluwalia argue that it should prioritize expanding and effectively delivering those aspects ...The global implications of Barack Obama’s speech
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 agenda aimed primarily at a domestic ...What drives South Asians to peacekeeping?
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 work under the UN flag? Waheguru ...Delhi’s odd-even policy unsustainable
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 makes you wonder: Why aren’t the ...End of the oil age
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. The Paris summit on climate change ...Interview | India warns country’s coal consumption to double in...
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 will still double in coming years. ...Report | Priorities for India’s National health policy
One of India’s fundamental failings as a modern nation has been our inability to get successive governments to prioritize and deal with public goods. Public goods (as against private goods) have non-rival and non-excludable consumption which makes pricing difficult. This in turn makes their provision through the market mechanism tricky and hence ...India and Climate Change – Spoilsport or just late to the party?
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 observers. Global op-eds talk of India ...Delhi’s bar on cars: Using a sword instead of a scalpel for surgery
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 issues of first/last mile? Much of ...Initiatives needed from India to reduce the import of oil
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 to take when it comes to ...Any progress on climate change will depend on innovation and global...
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 their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) ...Chennai floods: A ‘Smart City’ must also be a ‘Resilient...
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 network. In the midst of all ...Will India accept legally binding agreements at COP21?
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 in emissions intensity (per GDP) versus ...Smart city initiatives should recognise differences between Indian cities
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 is greater livability, sustainability and improved ...Subir Gokarn signs off addressing four broad economic themes
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 current state of affairs in ...Over the past two decades, every fifth suicide in India is by a housewife
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 encouragingly, while farmer suicides have witnessed ...Will oil remain the bulwark of global energy system in the long-term?
“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 years: Oil, along with coal and ...Cities become battlefields of terrorism as world continues to urbanise
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 with a significant international presence (such ...Leveraging the CSR mandate
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 critics seeing it as a back-door ...India Inc worried about rise of religious, social intolerance
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 urban drawing rooms is not about ...How to make government missions more successful
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 contributions from multiple agencies at all ...Private sector, state government, civil society can take India-Africa...
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 emerging powers, particularly the Forum on ...Average rural consumer ends up subsidizing power for urban residents
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 urban residents by 240 to 510 ...Tur travails – Three components of a structural solution to the pain...
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 the area sown; improve productivity; and, ...Rating of Distribution Utilities in India: Linking the Financial with...
In August 2015, the Ministry of Power released the State Distribution Utilities Third Annual Integrated Ratings. This is the third instance of rating for utilities undertaken by the same agencies, thereby imparting some consistency to them. Though it is a transparent attempt to measure utility operations and financial performance, the current metrics do not go ...Depression drives maximum farmers to suicide, not debt, finds Brookings...
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 Business Professor Shamika Ravi, held illnesses ...Simplifying bureaucracy should be PM’s new mantra
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 state between 2009 and 2014. A ...Matters of valuation
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 reviving and sustaining growth. Bad assets ...Subir Gokarn on RBI Monetary Policy review
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 as Governor Raghuram Rajan is suggesting? ...Shaping the Asian financial architecture
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.How Far Can IndraDhanush Go?
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 new initiative of the government. How ...Why inequality needs a radical agenda
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 1960s. Over the last few years, ...Cleaning coal instead of wishing it away
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 not myopic, given that at least ...Narendra Modi’s class act on Teachers’ Day
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 around the country, Prime Minister Narendra ...VIDEO: 7% GDP suggests economy not recovering with domestic investments
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 added (GVA) at 7.1%. Do these ...VIDEO Yuan depreciation: India needs to protect domestic producers
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 by about 3% last week and ...VIDEO: To avoid market freeze, central banks have to act
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 how much ever you want but ...Health care – how, where & how much?
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 by households, carried out between January ...Smart is as smart does
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 be wary of Gartner’s famous Hype ...Spectrum policy in India
The mobile sector continues to see dramatic growth around the world. Usage of cellphones, smartphones, and tablets is increasing at a rapid pace. With the growing popularity and ease of use of mobile devices such as iPhone, Android phones, tablets, and other portable devices, new mobile applications are coming online that increase access and capability, ...Women voters can tip the scales in Bihar
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 the Bihar elections, they must recognise ...Educational reach and grasp
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 provided a wealth of information about ...Revealing the real strategic significance of BRICS
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 India’s future role in it. While ...Profiling and targeting
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, since data about the target group ...India’s Suicide Problem
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 issue with offering “special packages” to ...Strategic Importance of Ufa Summits
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 to use the summits to vindicate ...The art of distraction
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 costs of solar have brought lighting ...Brics: Shaping a New World order, Finally
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 order. This is a significant feat ...Key Policy Insights
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 to learning outcomes in the school ...Think Beyond Health Insurance
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 which will take India towards an ...Looking ahead: The next 365 days
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 has displayed while globetrotting around capitals ...A reality check on suicides in India
In this paper, we study the data from the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) of India and disaggregate across demographic and leading causes of suicides. We find that mental and physical health are the leading causes of suicides in India (20%) while the often cited factor, indebtedness, causes significantly lower number of ...The one-year scorecard
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 which I had argued that the ...Shaping India’s energy future: Ambitions, actions and obstacles
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 faces both sets of challenges. In ...Re-starting infrastructure
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 years, there has been widespread and ...A new energy
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 of an integrated energy policy. The ...Rainfall and the economy
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 after a succession of rain-related problems. ...How great power competition has changed
Power is now more evenly distributed in the international system. As a result, there is rising geopolitical competition among great powers. Shivshankar Menon lays out the several consequences of this increased competition.The inclusion project
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 cent financial inclusion, measured as households’ ...The Iran deal: Implications for U.S.-India relations
Should the deal with Iran on nuclear non-proliferation be concluded this summer, it would also vindicate India’s preference for diplomacy over military action to address contentious issues, particularly in the Middle East.Making India’s Electricity Utilities Viable Enterprises: Economics,...
The Indian electricity system is struggling. Worldwide challenges of supply security, fuel choice, environmental impacts (now adding carbon and climate change), and sustainable business models are present, but the last one is where India is furthest behind. We have a muddled system with state and private participation that satisfies neither the social ...What the Iran nuclear deal means for India
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 Tehran’s break-out timeline to build a ...The great oil circle
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 $100-a-barrel mark and, with a few, ...Big problem, small solution
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 reluctance to allow the market freer rein have ...Having your cake…
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 that an economy can produce when ...Band-aid solutions for health problems
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 statement which is meant to provide ...Brightening the future with the sun and wind
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 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February ...Trysts with e-governance
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 ago, we were informed that our ...Advancing Financial Inclusion in India beyond the Jan-Dhan Yojana
The recent policy measures undertaken by the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India have provided a much-needed push for financial inclusion in the country. However, there remain some key gaps and concerns that must be addressed for attaining sustained comprehensive financial inclusion. This paper highlights some of these gaps ...The Green Budget
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 summit and against the backdrop of ...The Big Deal
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, starting with the July 18, 2005 ...India and Climate Change: Reversing the Development-Climate Nexus
After the November 2014 joint U.S.-China announcement on climate change, all eyes turned towards India. What would India do? Would it sign a similar agreement, especially with the impending visit by President Barack Obama? Even if some agreement were signed, what would India promise? Probably one of the best outcomes of the ...Intellectual Property Rights: Signs of Convergence
The Pre-Summit Backdrop Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have been among the most contentious economic issues in the bilateral relationship between India and the United States. For several years, the U.S. has claimed that the Indian regulatory regime has been both weak and inadequately enforced. In a number of IPR domains, the contention ...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 contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. A frequently asked but futile question is: Where are oil prices headed? The question ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Many, if not most, observers of the Indian economy see 2015 as a year of ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the authors. The last 10 years have been a roller coaster ride of sorts for emerging market ...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 contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Many years ago, at an offsite that I participated in, I heard a message ...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 contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. While developed countries are increasingly leaning on workfare programmes as a means to reduce ...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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Three recent bilateral agreements have the potential to dramatically change India’s relations with major powers and ...Developing SAARC’s Higher Education Potential
Education is a powerful medium to unleash the potential of the SAARC region by cutting poverty and promoting development. It can also be an instrument of soft power for a nation like India by raising its cultural and political, especially democratic, attractiveness for others. With rapid globalization and expanding communication technology, India ...SAARC and India’s Healthcare Opportunities
Less than one fifth of all international tourists to India are from the SAARC countries. Yet, more than half of all foreigners who visit India for medical treatments are from SAARC countries. Together the two statistics imply that while India gains a lot more from rest of the world in the tourism ...Turning Water Challenges into Opportunities
Water is vital in South Asia, where most countries are still largely agrarian. As such, water is inherently political – its socio-ecological flows are implicated in competition by economies, individuals and nations, while its distributional regimes have the capacity to alter lives and livelihoods. Competing water-use for agriculture, industry, and domestic purposes ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. There is little question now that the Indian economyis steadily climbing up from the bottom. ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Now is the time for the government to ask the question, “What should we do ...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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this year will mark ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. The economic parallel of the popular aphorism about the limitations of using one stone is ...The three components of livelihood security: jobs, skills and safety nets
(Remarks made in the ASSOCHAM Livelihoods Security Summit on November 3, 2014) Let me begin by expressing my appreciation for ASSOCHAM’s initiatives in furthering debate and understanding on the very critical issue of livelihoods. The theme for this seminar addresses a very important aspect of an overall strategy, i.e. security. Secure livelihoods ...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 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 Monetary Fund (IMF) earlier this month, headlines ...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 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 over $41 billion over the next ...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 data connection for that to happen. Similarly, it is time that we added a similar level of service to define electrification, a focus area for the government. A decade ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the authors. A look at how businesses have traversed the path between start-up and the stock market ...India-U.S. Energy Cooperation: Moving to Green, Clean and Smart
The U.S. is the second largest energy consumer in the world, and India is soon to become the third. The U.S. already has a large consumption base; India has enormous growth ahead of it given the low per capita levels of energy consumption (an order of magnitude lower than the U.S.). This ...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 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 Korea in late 2010, the United States ...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 known recipe for poverty eradication is a combination of high growth and high development spending. Neither is sufficient. A recent study (Kapoor and Ahluwalia, 2012) has shown that post-liberalisation, one ...Re-thinking Access and Electrification in India: From Wire to Service
“Electrification” has been a priority for India for many years, and there are ongoing plans and projects to improve access to many more households, followed by electricity for all in the coming years. Despite improvements in the threshold for village electrification (moving from any single point to 10% of homes plus common ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. A triangle is symbolically important because it is the smallest number of lines needed ...Do rural residential electricity consumers cross-subside their urban...
Santosh Harish and Rahul Tongia examine inequities in supply of household electricity in India, using minute-level data for every feeder across a major utility. Their model and results indicate disparities in load-shedding equate to a welfare transfer, from the rural areas to metropolitan areas or big cities, in the order of thousands ...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 deeds (particularly deliverables) rather than words or highfalutin rhetoric (without concrete results). Predictably then the focus of the Japan trip has been on specific deliverables in trade, investment, energy and ...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 planning which is unsuitable to a country as diverse and complex as India. Let us neither reinvent nor restructure such a body. Let us, instead, make a clean break and ...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 to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. The title of this column is borrowed from a classic work in business history, ...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 discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. Indians are proud of their frugality. Saving money is normally a virtue, but in some ...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 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 wars. Thus, Cold War relations were ...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 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 banks some more space to expand ...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 cess on coal production from Rs 50 per tonne to Rs 100 per tonne. This fund was set up in 2000 to incubate, encourage and develop innovation in clean energy. ...Why So Few Women in Politics? Evidence from India
In this paper, the authors analyze women as political candidates in Indian democracy. Using 50 years of assembly elections data at the constituency level from the Indian states, they show that women are more likely to contest elections in those constituencies where gender ratio of the electors is less in favor of ...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 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 from it being a dramatic “transformative ...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 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 and stabilising them at low levels.In ...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 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. This underlies, on the one hand, ...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 not be the ideal vehicle for the five countries to become part of and shape the emerging world order.
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 16th Lok Sabha. This is significant, even internationally. In South America, for instance, women hold the same proportion of Cabinet positions, but the proportion of women in the lower houses ...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 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 is about two guests eating lunch ...What Drives Entrepreneurship? Some Evidence from India
This paper studies the growth of entrepreneurship in India by analyzing the micro, small and medium enterprises sector (MSME) and explores the factors that contribute to its development. The author analyzes a panel data of all 35 states and union territories from 1991 until 2006. The outcomes of interest are number of ...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 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley the six sixes in an over kind of thriller; more the nudging and pushing, singles and twos kind of innings that doesn’t keep you enthralled, but ...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 of the strong and regard the latter only as the privilege of the weak. India is no exception. Yet, multilateralism offers a useful path for countries to emerge as great ...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 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 deficit and the current account deficit. At this ...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 of concern. Yet, these four letters, coupled with the dreaded acronym ISIS (variously elaborated as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State of Iraq and the ...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 for development. Women are a significant share of that electorate with fundamentally distinct concerns. The last few weeks’ horrific reminder of how India publically consumes violence against women, in conjunction ...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 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.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 workers without prior government approval is an extremely significant development. The plan is to raise the ceiling under which such approval is not needed from 100 workers to 300. This ...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 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 Taliban prisoners for Sargent Bowe Bergdahl exchange; the ...No Imminent Renewables “Death Spiral” for India’s...
Rahul Tongia explains the challenges facing utility companies in India from distributed generation of renewables and a tiered pricing system in need of reform.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 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? In the specific context of India, ...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 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 is a list of five issues ...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 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 environment, particularly in India’s immediate neighbourhood ...Smart Grids in India: Separating Hype from Hope
Rahul Tongia discusses why Smart Grids in India have become a distinct possibility, instead of a science experiment, and why they can succeed now.
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 and sustainability The new prime minister should immediately give a speech on energy. It should emphasise the criticality of the energy crisis and articulate the government’s intent to develop a ...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 of what is likely to happen as far as the economy is concerned, as far as the mood in the market is concerned and with key crucial reforms. Below is ...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 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. This is exactly what any government ...Why Renewable Energy Is Harder in India than in Other Countries
Rahul Tongia discusses the challenges of renewable energy sources in India and offers recommendations to help better integrate renewables into the grid.
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 representation. Women make up merely 22% of lower houses in parliaments around the world and in India, this number is less than half at 10.8% in the outgoing Lok Sabha. ...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 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. Nothing could be further from reality. ...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 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 varies with their level of consumption, ...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 to generate massive numbers of jobs. As is well known, India is now in a potentially virtuous phase of its demographic transition. The working age (15-60) segment of the population ...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 issues are of particular concern. First, there is a severe imbalance between investments across sectors, which lowers the productivity of each investment. Infrastructure is essentially a network phenomenon, a chain, ...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 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 party delivered on its 1998 manifesto ...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 highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. ...Working Paper: Women in Party Politics
Introduction: The Women’s Reservation Bill – which proposes to reserve 33 per cent of seats in Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies for women – has been doing the rounds of the Indian Parliament in various forms since it was first introduced by the Deve Gowda government in 1996, failing each time, to ...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 titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. It aggregates the current state of knowledge at both global and regional levels on how ecosystems are responding to climate change and what the larger ...Contemporary Geopolitics
Senior Fellow WPS Sidhu made presentations at The Université Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), as part of the teaching and research multidisciplinary project set up around the “Institut des Etudes sur la guerre et la paix,” an international Chair devoted to the study of contemporary geostrategic issues. The three lectures focused on: Nuclear Disorder ...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 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 declines. There are three broad sets ...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 set of countries. Whether it is ease of doing business or corruption or transparency or human development or infrastructure quality, whenever a new ranking is announced, one instinctively begins searching ...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 and Iran In a deft diplomatic dance last week India simultaneously hosted Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the defence minister of Saudi Arabia, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the foreign minister ...Realigning governance
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 domination of one group over ...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 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 poem. In doing so, the original ...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 process simply involves obtaining parliamentary approval for the government to continue spending money on activities that are ongoing – from the routine to the priority and flagship programmes of 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 people because a large number of women are missing from the electorate On her arrival in India recently, the words of Gloria Steinem, American feminist and leader of the ...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 all primates. At any given time, one male dominates the group, which, among other things, gives him the exclusive right to reproduce. When an incumbent alpha shows signs of weakening, ...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” and “energy security” are part of any official statement on economic policy. But it has not been officially defined. There is no national policy on energy endorsed or supported by ...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 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 much time… Deep Purple, “Smoke on ...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 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 First World War in 1914, which ...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 of Visionary Companies (1994), James Collins and Jerry Porras postulated that an important characteristic of such companies was their articulation of their Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG. In contrast ...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 Thoughts Good Evening. It is my great privilege to be delivering the 30th Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas Memorial Lecture. I follow a long list of very eminent people, who have, by ...Energy 2030: Backgrounder
This backgrounder – prepared for the Petrotech 2014 CEO Conclave held in New Delhi, on December 17, 2013 – looks at the dynamics of energy demand and supply in 2030, the implications of geopolitical stress on energy trade, and provides a framework for a sustainable energy agenda in 2030. Key Insights: ...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 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 if it is to translate into ...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 domains – trade, development and macroeconomic stability are the obvious examples – the emergence of multilateral institutions as critical players in the process of integration reflects the strength of this ...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 policy is to build up a portfolio of international oil and gas assets. The government recognises that hydrocarbons are tradables and can be purchased in the open market. But given ...Slow burn
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 – impacts and mitigation – will be ...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 stability, importantly because of the announcement by the FED and the expectation that liquidity levels will continue to remain buoyant in the global economy. However, the depreciation over the last ...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 strategy for the economy. At that point, the perception that very large upstream investments, which would lay the foundations for comprehensive industrialisation, were best done by the state was quite ...Taper tribulations
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 calming markets and thawing out a ...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 the group of contestants is travelling to the island for the tournament, Lee is asked by a rather aggressive competitor, Parsons, about his martial arts style. He responds that his ...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 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, the desert of the Barmer district ...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 is a tragedy of monumental proportions. For me, there is a personal dimension. I have a home in the forest sanctuary of Binsar which is 40 miles north of Almora. ...