India

BY KATHERINE MANSTED Benjamin Clayton’s recent post is another outing in a long line of U.S. power pessimism, which history will ultimately prove wrong. The world has a penchant for predicting U.S. decline. Indeed, reports of U.S. decline predated its rise. Charles Dickens famously wrote that, to its 19th century citizens, America “always is stagnated, […]

BY MALINI BOSE “Amazon seeks government nod to set up e-tail venture in India with investment of $500 million”[1] “Alibaba to lead $200 million investment into Paytm’s online market”[2] “Apple bites Make in India carrot, to set up manufacturing unit in Bengaluru”[3] As these headlines from 03 February 2017, illustrate, the Indian and international media […]

In one of India’s most far-reaching decisions since it gained independence, Prime Minister Modi suddenly announced on November 8th that the country would be withdrawing the legal status of its 500 and 1000 rupee notes. Equivalent to about USD $7.40 and USD $14.70 respectively, these two bills alone comprise over 80% of the currency in […]

BY ANSHUL PACHOURI The year 2016 marks an important milestone in India’s innovation story. First, India’s rank in the global innovation index improved quite significantly from 81st position in 2015 to 66th position in 2016. Second, the country also launched its flagship program Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) to advance its national innovation ecosystem under the […]

BY MALINI BOSE At the World Bank Spring Meetings this year, Raghuram Rajan, the head of India’s central bank christened India a “one-eyed king in the land of the blind” when asked to comment on the rapidly-growing Indian economy in the context of flagging global growth. The country’s growth-focused government did not approve—Finance Minister Arun […]

BY MALIKA NOOR MEHTA “Birth. Marriage. Death. In India, these three landmarks are celebrated with zeal,” says Rajneesh Yadav, the India Country Director at Free the Slaves, an international NGO working to eradicate sex trafficking and debt bondage. “When families refuse to perform the rituals associated with each of these events, they are considered social […]

BY SHANOOR SEERVAI The resounding victory of Hindu nationalists at India’s federal polls in May 2014 is attributed to one man: Narendra Modi. Fed up with the corruption and complacency of the Congress—the party that led India’s anti-colonial struggle and governed for much of its independent history—the world’s largest democracy voted for a leader who […]

Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest for sedition in Delhi is a violation of his constitutional rights. BY UZRA KHAN The actions of the Indian Government and the Delhi Police last week against students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi violated the fundamental principle of free speech and expression in the world’s largest democracy. JNU student […]

BY SHANOOR SEERVAI This essay is excerpted from the single ‘Daughters of the Red Light: Coming of Age in Mumbai’s Brothels.’ I am seated cross-legged on a brothel floor on a hot April afternoon. The door is ajar. Just beyond it, a disheveled man in a grey pinstriped shirt appears at the top of the […]

BY UZRA KHAN This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  One morning in 2014, Deepika Saran,1 a young employee at an e-commerce startup in Mumbai, got a call from The Times Group, India’s largest mass media company. “We’re interested in featuring your company in a supplemental spread on new […]

A proposed plan for the development of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, misses the opportunity to create affordable housing. BY SHANOOR SEERVAI You can judge a city by how its poor live, architect Kamu Iyer writes in his recent book tracing Mumbai’s development since the 1940s. By this measure, India’s financial capital fares dismally. The price […]

BY BRIAN CHIGLINSKY, PANGYRUS This article is being published in collaboration with Pangyrus.   Sendhil Mullainathan had studied poverty for years, and something haunted him in nearly every study. Born into a small rural village in India, the Harvard behavioral economist and winner of the MacArthur Fellowship—commonly known as a “genius grant”—was inherently skeptical of […]