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Dhiraj Nayyar

Chief Economist at Vedanta and Guest Writer at IMPRI Impact.

The SVB Downfall: a Macroeconomic Phenomenon

The real world has a way of confounding textbook economics. Macroeconomics, the branch that deals with the big things like growth, inflation and interest rates, seems broken when used to implement policy. In medicine, a drug is not approved for use if it has potentially serious side-effects. Or, if it’s approved, it is administered with care, in the right doses. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the pressure on other US banks suggests that economists still don’t quite appreciate the side-effects of their actions.

Opening Up to Foreign Universities, A Game Changer?

Can India create a higher education system worthy of its aspirations as a full-fledged knowledge economy? That’s still to be determined. But India is on the verge of taking a major, long-awaited first step in the right direction: With the recent release of draft rules by the country’s higher education regulator — the University Grants Commission — India is moving closer to allowing high-quality foreign universities to set up campuses to help meet the country’s growing appetite for advanced education.

Union Budget 2023- 24: Prosperity Oriented Approach to Governance

Like previous Budgets, this too will be tailored to PM Modi’s longer term, prosperity-oriented approach to governance, rather than a short term, populist approach.

One of the standard features of office buildings and residential complexes of a certain, not so distant, vintage in India’s major cities is the absence of any designated space for parking cars. Urban planning hasn’t been one of the country’s great strengths. In fact, most cities have grown unplanned. However, the lack of parking spaces for cars (there may be some for two-wheelers) was quite deliberate. Urban planners simply did not believe that India would become prosperous enough for masses to own cars in any reasonable time frame (infrastructure is built for at least 30 to 50 years). And to be fair it wasn’t just urban planners, but most of the nation.

Exploring the Economic Potential of Indian Waterways

Eleven months ago, in a first for inland waterway cargo movement in India, the MV Lal Bahadur Shastri, a river cargo vessel, transported 200 metric tonnes of food grain over 2,350 km from Patna to Guwahati via Bangladesh. Now, the MV Ganga Vilas, a luxury liner, has begun to operate the world’s longest river cruise, across 3,200 km, from Varanasi to Dibrugarh via Bangladesh.

G20’s Role in Creating More Adaptive Climate Change Policies

Much of the multilateral discussion and collective decision-making on climate change takes place at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC), better known by its nomenclature of COP (conference of parties). There is a strong case to begin a parallel track, which radically changes the contours of the conversation under India’s presidency of G20. It is a terrific opportunity for India to lead the world into a more realistic pathway to achieving more concrete outcomes in the battle against climate change.