Short read: Manmohan Singh has a legacy beyond 1991. Nuclear deal with US shows his strategic vision
India’s former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh (1932 – 2024) – who was also a former Finance Minister, a former RBI Governor, a former professor at the Delhi School of Economics – passed away last week. Those of us who lived through the unforgettable summer of 1991 – when PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh […]
Short read: How Much Should You Tell Your Kids About Your Finances?
India is going through one of the strongest financialisation of savings trends the world has seen, thanks to rising awareness about financial assets beyond the traditional physical assets like real estate and gold and the ubiquity of mobile apps making it easy to transact. Yet, most of us don’t discuss our finances openly, especially with […]
Short read: Why are Nordic companies so successful?
The Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland are admired for having pulled off an improbable balance of a welfare state and a market economy. Even more remarkable is how companies from these tiny countries punch way above their weight and dominate their respective industries at a global scale. “Lego is the planet’s biggest […]
Long read: Indian immigration is great for America
Donald Trump’s win in the recent American presidential elections involved a considerable shift in support base from the opposite side, most notably Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors. And this coalition of supporters is beginning to see conflict of interest. Most notably on the issue of immigration on which Trump and his right-wing supporters have been […]
Long read: The quiet and fierce courage of the women in Shyam Benegal’s cinema
From hit movies made by Indian women about Indian women, we move on to celebrate the late Shyam Benegal (1934-2024) whose movies were amongst the first in Hindi cinema to give women agency and to give them – rather than male actors – centrestage. Growing up in India through the 1970s and 1980s meant being […]
Long read: How feminism, not Bollywood, drew global audiences to Indian cinema in 2024
India is undergoing a pivotal shift wherein women are pulling ahead of men in many different spheres of life. In Chapter 4 of our bestselling book “Behold the Leviathan: the Unusual Rise of Modern India” we have given our take on the ascendancy of Indian women (see here). As always, cinema is a reliable barometer […]
Short read: Ravichandran Ashwin, the Encyclopedist
If you have watched Test cricket on grounds across the world, you are likely to have found Chennai to have the most cricket-aware crowd and enjoyed discussing the intricacies of the game with a stranger in the stands. Ravichandran Ashwin is the embodiment of such a Chennai cricket fanatic. Following his retirement, as one would […]
Short read: Quantum Computing Is Finally Here. But What Is It?
Over the past month, we have been bombarded with news about how Quantum Computing is here and how it will change the world and our lives. It followed Google’s announcement that its quantum computer ‘Willow’ had cracked a problem that would take a traditional computer billions of years to solve, an indication of the exponentially […]
Short read: The Indian family that built a business empire in Hawaii from scratch
Indians dominate business life in some of the most remote corners of the planet. This BBC article is about the Watmull family from Sindh (now in Pakistan) who moved to Hawaii in 1915 and now dominate business life in Hawaii. It is a remarkable story of industry and intelligence spanning several generations and a century: […]
Long read: How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve U.S.-China Relations
Over the past few weeks, we have featured a few pieces on the sheer strength of Chinese manufacturing and how the world’s lack of relative competitiveness and hence dependence on it will define geo-politics as well. Here’s another piece which endorses that view, except it also focuses on China’s weaknesses which if fixed will likely […]
Long read: How Microfinance and Data Capture Pushed Tamil Nadu’s Most Disadvantaged Into Debt Distress
This long article in The Wire is a critique of how regulation impacts the lives of the most vulnerable sections of Indian society. The first stage of this drama unfolds during the first wave of Covid in April-June 2020: “When the COVID-19 pandemic began, microfinance operations came to a complete standstill in India. The state […]
Long read: Why Starlink’s India troubles signal the next big battle for space internet
In case you haven’t kept upto the date with the battle between Indian and global galacticos for control of the satellite internet you should read this article to get upto date. Over the next 12 months, this battle between the masters of the universe promises much entertainment, frenzied Indo-American lobbying and phone calls at the […]
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