• OPINION

  India and China learn how to turn down the heat

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 30/08/2017

  » As summer reached the high Himalayas this past June, one corner of the mountains turned hotter than expected. On a small plateau called Doklam, close to where the India-China border meets the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, two of the largest armies in the world faced off against each other. Chinese soldiers, convinced they were on Chinese territory, had brought equipment to extend a road; Indian soldiers, who viewed the land as disputed, blocked the earth-movers. For three months, the armies camped just metres away from each other, the Indians on the higher ground and the Chinese in a little valley. Neither government seemed to know how to back down.

• OPINION

  India's states will pay for populism

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/07/2017

  » Things only seem to get worse for India's farmers. They'd barely recovered from two years of drought when they were hit by the government's decision last autumn to declare 86% of India's currency illegal. They struggled through that, and the consequent crash in prices, in hopes that this year's monsoon would be healthy. And, although forecasters insisted enough rain would fall, an "unexpected dry spell" is now threatening to ruin their summer crop.

• OPINION

  Tax reform starts to look like an Indian wedding

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 27/06/2017

  » India stands on the brink of one of its most momentous policy reforms in decades unprepared and uncertain. We're just a few days away from the launch of a new indirect-tax regime, the goods-and-services tax, or GST, and anxiety about its roll-out is all-pervasive.

• OPINION

  Don't expect young to save centrism

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/05/2017

  » At a victory rally for France's young new President Emmanuel Macron outside the Louvre last week, I was struck by the generational gap between the candidate and his most animated supporters.

• OPINION

  Modi's misguided economics will catch up with him

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 02/05/2017

  » It's been almost three years since Narendra Modi took over as prime minister of India -- but, in many ways, it feels longer. Mr Modi's domination of Indian politics, and of Indians' imagination, is complete; no alternative seems possible, every challenger has been defeated. But bad economics has a habit of catching up with its practitioners eventually. And for all his political success, Mr Modi's mismanagement of the Indian economy may yet be his downfall.

• OPINION

  An age of undiplomatic diplomacy

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 09/05/2017

  » What happens when strongmen meet? We know that the world is slowly filling up with populist nationalists, from Manila to Washington. But how do they plan to deal with each other? Will they join forces against the sanctimonious, supra-national powers that dismay them all? Or will they compete, as erstwhile tough guys seem most comfortable doing?

• OPINION

  China's carrier should worry India

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 27/04/2017

  » The launch of China's second aircraft carrier this week is an important and depressing moment for India. The "Type 001A" -- likely to be named the Shandong -- will give China an edge for the first time in the carrier race with its Asian rival, a literal two-to-one advantage. After decommissioning the INS Viraat earlier this year, the Indian navy is down to a single carrier, INS Vikramaditya. Worse, the Shandong has been built at China's own giant shipyard at Dalian; Vikramaditya is merely a re-purposed 1980s-era Russian carrier formerly known as the Admiral Gorshkov.

• OPINION

  India losing faith in free-trade deals

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 11/04/2017

  » Until fairly recently, it looked like two massive new agreements would compete to define the future of world trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, backed by the US, would try to move the global trade architecture toward new norms, with harmonised regulations at its centre. Meanwhile, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, backed by China, would drastically reduce remaining tariffs across a swathe of Asia and push the existing model of trade and manufacturing as far as it could go.

• OPINION

  Modi's path forward is cleared, but still unclear

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/03/2017

  » When voters in the northern province of Uttar Pradesh delivered Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party a landslide victory in elections to the state assembly, he cemented his place as India's most powerful leader in two generations. With every major competitor confused, defeated or in decline, there's simply no national alternative in sight to Mr Modi or his Bharatiya Janata Party. Oddly, however, this also means we are less certain than ever about what sort of leader he will be, and where he will steer India's economy.

• OPINION

  Modi is a different nationalist to Putin or Trump

  News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 06/04/2017

  » Over the past year, Russia's Vladimir Putin has emerged as the ideological patron of a certain brand of conservatism worldwide. Politicians from France's Marine Le Pen, to Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, to Donald Trump appear drawn to Mr Putin's vision of a world marked by weaker transnational power blocs, fewer meddlesome liberals and a harder line against radical Islam.

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