Showing 41 - 50 of 65
Bad healthcare tops public failings
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 22/08/2017
» As India celebrated 70 years of independence last week, a tragedy in a remote corner of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, highlighted how far the world's largest democracy still is from being able to provide a healthy life for most of its citizens. For all its talk of smart cities and industrial corridors, this is the government's greatest failing -- and one where it could make a big difference quickly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.