India. 3 essays and 4 notes.

New entry in This Indian Life:

I often tell my friends that I’m white at heart because I know far more about American and European history than Indian history, and it’s a shameful fact that I’m working to fix. ​One of the books I bought a while ago was Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi, which I hadn’t got around to reading. I finally picked it…

I often wonder how accurate a lot of economic analysis and commentary about India really is, given the fact that India is not really one country. It is many countries in one. Some of our states are as big as other countries. Some of our states are bigger than other countries. Then there is the other problem. When you…

Pranay Kotasthane as usual with a thoughtful take on the state of affairs:

Lastly, the general impression I take away from this budget is the realisation of a party in power which has figured out a way to win elections in India that’s not contingent on strong economic performance. So long as you don’t screw up the economy badly, a combination of emotional issues and timely welfarism (direct cash transfer just before elections is a new, powerful tool now) should see you through most elections. Therefore, a 6.5 per cent growth and a 4 per cent fiscal deficit in a world that’s volatile and unpredictable is good enough to keep the global investors mildly interested while keeping the winning machine going domestically. That may not be enough for us to get out of the middle-income trap or lose out on the narrow window of demographic dividend we had. But the willingness to take bolder bets to address such structural challenges seems to have dissipated. More of the same is what we have settled for.