#366 Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
Opposition to the IDBI Bank Disinvestment, RBI Trying Too Many Things at Once, and Drastic Price Controls on Anti-cancer Drugs.
EconomicsCulture
Anticipating the Unintended.
Public policy frameworks, geopolitics, and governance from an Indian perspective.
Recent essays
30 of 35#365 Tunnel Boring Machines Aren't Boring
Monetary Policy Trilemma, New Controls on Tunnel Boring Machines, and is China's Open-weight AI Strategy Changing Face?
#364 Madhyamarga
Gandhi’s Legacy, the Asian Games Show, and Chip Incentives Under the Scanner
#363 The DNA of Deregulation
Insurance Sector Suffers due to Flip-Flop Regulations, and China’s Little-known Technology Acquisition Mechanism
#362 The Powers and Limits of Charismatic Authority
Weberian Charisma in Politics, and the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026.
#361 Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
The Shadow of 9/11, OpenAI-Hugging Face Breach, and China+1 in Rare Earths
#360 Grossly Debated Parameter
On the GDP Debate and India’s Semicon 2.0
#359 Misaligned Cognitive Maps
Explaining the Issues at Stake in the Controversy on Mining Royalties, and Why Central Banks All Over are Battling Communication Problems
#358 LLMs vs LLMs
PolicyWTF ft. the Directorate of Sugar and Vegetable Oils, Local Language Mandates, and India’s Middle Power AI Strategy
#357 Libre not Gratis
Five Ideas for this Independence Day Weekend, and One Public Finance Take on UPI Fee
#356 When Will China Block Its Open-weight Models?
What do Unchanged Repo Rates Signal? Why is China Giving Away its AI Models? What Does the Makkah Defence Pact Mean for India?
#355 Fables, Exits, and Aspirations
A new book on Indian Public Finance, Why has Gen Z Checked Out Of The Living Room?, and a New Arrow in China's Mercantilism Quiver
#354 When Faced Against a Cannon...
Protests and Education
#353 A Kafkaesque Nightmare
SIR Troubles, ASML's Quarterly Earnings, Water for Data Centres, and the American Confusion over Chinese Open-source Models
#352 The Art of the Impossible
H20 → E20 and The Wrong Lesson from a Drowning City
#351 How to Get to 'Sovereign AI'?
Two perspectives on the AI Sovereignty Question
#350 Of Delays and Denials
China's Overlooked Outbound Investment Restrictions and RBI's Defence of the Rupee
#349 Slowly; then Suddenly
Aaya Ram Aaya Ram and India-US Dynamics
#348 Pause and Think
India's Declining Fertility Rate - an Opportunity; and Does India Have Any Leverage Against the US and China?
#347 Clawing Back
Economic Rearguard Action, Ten Years of Bihar's Prohibition, and Making Sense of the Many Critical Mineral Frameworks
#346 Rebuilding
Cockroach Problems, India's Chip Future, and a New Tool for Policy Reasoning
#345 Anecdata*
Observations from Silicon Valley and Sri Lanka
#344 Juggernauts
Juggernauts: the political one and the geopolitical one.
#343 Overhang
India's Economic Resilience and One Year of Operation Sindoor
#342 Quick-fire
Decoding Hungarian Election Results, India's Dog in the US-China Fight on AI chips, and Five Crucial Developments in Tech Geopolitics
#341 Misaligned Expectations
What to Expect from the Islamabad Talks, Pakistan's Role in the Talks, and Geography Comes Back to Bite
#340 Deterrents; Real and Mythical
Chokepoint - The Word of the Year, The Flavours of Nationalism, and A Housing PolicyWTF
#339 Divergence and Assimilation
D.R. Nagaraj's Views on the Ambedkar-Gandhi Debate, India's Response to China's Supply Chain Warfare, and a Call for Negative Results of Supply Chain Weaponisation
#338 Matsyanyaaya
West Asia War Take #3, Virtue Signalling in International Relations, and new Data Confirms Slow Progress of Semiconductor Projects
#337 Ramps, Tipping Points, and U-turns
The West Asia War, a welcome TACO on chip controls, India's Energy Insecurity, and the Press Note 3 Amendment