Tanking stock markets may not be the best background in which to discuss curbing portfolio inflows into India. But to insulate Indian policymaking from the fickle twists and turns of the US Fed and regain monetary autonomy, India must impose capital controls on short-term portfolio flows.
INDIA’S per capita income, representing the average income of an Indian citizen, has risen from INR 79,000 in 2013–14 to INR 1,71,000 in 2022–23 — an increase of 116 percent. Therefore, some claim that incomes have more than doubled in India since the present ruling dispensation took office. The catch is that: a) this includes the price increase during the period and hence does not represent the real increase in incomes, and b) the data for 2022–23 and two earlier years is provisional and subject to revision.
It is a privilege to deliver the inaugural address for the Conference on Public policy Research, Pedagogy, and practice organized by the Delhi School of Public Policy and the Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi. In any discipline, particularly in the social sciences and in professional programs, research, pedagogy, and practice need to be tailored to the emerging context and challenges which the discipline needs to help understand and address. The title of my address has the terms “Reimagining Public Policy”. It also stresses “Emerging Global and Domestic Trends”.
Declaring that "enough is enough" and that the system is "not fair," British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week unveiled a five-point plan in the House of Commons to tackle illegal immigration. This plan involves setting up a new permanent unified small boats operational command, enhancing the capacity of immigration officers to focus on enforcement, slashing costs by ceasing to use hotels for asylum seekers, increasing the number of asylum caseworkers, and a new pact with Albania to expedite cases from the nation.
Rarely is a handshake the same as a slap in the face. But when the national security advisers of Saudi Arabia and Iran shook hands in Beijing last Friday, it delivered a stinging blow in Washington DC that echoed in the world’s capitals.
As the United States stays bogged down in its efforts to degrade Russia as a world power, at the expense of Western treasure and Ukrainian lives, not to speak of global growth and deprivation in swathes of Africa, China, identified by the Americans as their systemic rival, has won a decisive round in West Asia in its ongoing contestation of US hegemony of the global order.
South Asia, with the exception of India, was perhaps the most severely impacted region in the world by the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war as the region’s domestic contradictions leading to leadership changes and inequities, and even debt-inducing foreign policies continued to play out and further complicate the adverse impacts.
It was not only the economy or the social landscape of countries like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, but their fragile polities faced even more devastating outcomes. Moreover, their smart gaming and balancing acts between the two competing regional super powers in China and India were severely hampered during the year as the Chinese BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) and its debt-trap and “wolf warrior” diplomacy not only came under stress but created a strategic rethink in several countries.
Apart from the expected third term for President Xi Jinping and the installation of his protégé Li Qiang as Premier of the State Council, the ongoing ‘two sessions’ signals an intensification of China’s “decoupling” process with the United States, the strengthening of the Communist Party’s domination of the State, especially its finance and S&T establishments, and a boost to China’s armed forces with a rising defense allocation despite a slowing economy.