Insights, a blog published by IMPRI.
There has been growing anger in China over a lack of receptivity to concerns being expressed by ordinary citizens about President Xi Jinping’s strict ‘zero covid’ policy. But after ten people were killed when a block of flats in the north-western city of Urumqi in Xinjiang province caught fire last week, this anger has come out into the open with protests in major Chinese cities from Shanghai and Beijing to Xinjiang and Tibet.
It is crucial to critique the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) reservation scheme for what it intends to do—push out caste-based reservations and replace them with economic criteria. But one should approach this not the way BJP expects one to do it. There has been much-needed critique and large-scale reaction to how EWS questions settled Constitutional provisions for Social Justice, but there are other essential issues one needs to raise about the EWS that have gone missing.
Parastatal bodies will continue to manage the affairs of cities even if there is a change in the government.
If the Indian economy has an Achilles’ heel, it is the country’s manufacturing sector. Despite rapid economic growth since pro-market reforms began in 1991, the share of manufacturing in India’s gross domestic product has remained stubbornly low, at about 15 per cent. (In China, it has been about 30 per cent in recent years.) Indian growth has been driven by services, most famously in information technology.
India’s decision to focus on balanced economic agreements, which include a wide set of areas and not just merchandise trade, with key economic and strategic partners reflects India’s much stronger geoeconomic and geostrategic position and confidence in its ability to pursue India’s national interests. India is carefully choosing its partners for economic agreements (the media description of them as free trade agreements is misleading and inaccurate and reflects old thinking).
The Sharm El-Sheikh climate conference has contributed little to arresting climate change; and its vaunted achievement, the loss and damage fund, is of suspect utility
For a nation such as India, which is among the countries most affected by terrorism, this is a time to take the lead in continuing to keep the spotlight on the menace of terrorism.