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  • News & article

    The cost of a Modi election victory

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/12/2018

    » Many of us have long argued that, whatever its problems, India is one of the best long-term bets in the world for one simple reason: It has the sort of world-class institutions that can help build and sustain a genuine market economy. Sadly, many of those same institutions are being undermined by the country's own leaders -- most recently the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which Prime Minister Narendra Modi appear intent on subjugating as part of his bid for reelection. Of all people, Mr Modi should recognise that no election victory is worth giving up on India's best chance at becoming a world-beating economy.

  • News & article

    Belt and Road hits a pothole in Pakistan

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 12/10/2018

    » Pakistan's government has finally admitted it needs help. Finance Minister Asad Umar says he will be meeting officials of the International Monetary Fund in Bali this weekend. There he'll try and work out the terms for a bailout that would cover a US$10 billion (328 billion baht) hole in Pakistan's financing needs.

  • News & article

    Does Modi deserve a second term?

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 30/05/2018

    » Four years ago this week, Narendra Modi was sworn in as India's prime minister amid the kind of excitement and expectation not seen in decades. Not for 30 years had a single party won an electoral majority. Mr Modi's success, his rhetoric and his background all seemed like a decisive break with India's past.

  • News & article

    India's economy faces ominous 2018

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 09/01/2018

    » You'd think the Indian economy had returned to rosy health. It seems to have recovered from two enormous disruptions -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision just over a year ago to withdraw 86% of the currency in circulation, and the poorly-planned rollout in the middle of 2017 of a new goods-and-services tax. Exports are no longer declining, as they had for several quarters; indeed, for the last month that data is available, they rose 30%. The Purchasing Managers' Index expanded the fastest it has in five years. At least one international ratings agency has upgraded India's credit rating.

  • News & article

    Indians' skills don't match up -- yet

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/11/2017

    » If India is to live up the expectations of its own people and become a successful middle-income country in a few decades, the country has multiple problems to solve -- its sclerotic politics, its clogged infrastructure, its choked judicial system, its lack of investable capital, its interfering and inefficient state. But perhaps the greatest hurdle is its poor stock of human capital. Without better education, health and skills, India won't be able to build a middle class and its efforts to become the next China can't succeed.

  • News & article

    India's banks need more than a bailout

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 27/10/2017

    » India has long been faced with a slow-motion bank crisis.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    No end in sight to India's slow-motion bank crisis

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 01/03/2017

    » India's slow-moving banking crisis continues to drag on, as ponderous and unstoppable as the state-controlled banking sector itself. A recent study found that the gross "non-performing assets" of state banks rose by 55% in 2016, and 135% in the last two years. They now account for 11% of all state bank loans.

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