Hypocrisy on Stilts in India

The BJP’s charge against Gandhi is a serious one.

AI and the Global South

Unprecedentedly powerful predictive tools will strengthen authoritarian regimes’ surveillance capacity.

Shashi Tharoor on India-Russia relations, the Quad, Ambedkar, and more

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, and an MP for the Indian National Congress, discusses his most recent book, India’s foreign policy, and India’s majoritarian turn in an interview with Project Syndicate. 

Can China Save Its Economic Miracle?

To improve medium-term growth, China must heed the lessons of its own history and focus on removing barriers to market entry and entrepreneurship. An economy’s growth rate comes from a combination of an increase in the average size of existing firms (intensive-margin growth) and an increase in the number of firms (extensive-margin growth). A study of the Chinese manufacturing sector that I co-authored with Xiaobo Zhang suggests that during the last few decades, extensive-margin growth accounted for about 70 percent of overall GDP expansion.

Eating the Last Cannibal

For political figures like Trump and Putin, courage is redefined as a willingness to break the state’s laws if the state’s own interests – or their own – demand it. The implication is that civilisation endures only if there are brave patriots who will do the dirty work. This is a decidedly right-wing form of “heroism.” It is easy to act nobly on behalf of one’s country – short of sacrificing one’s life for it – but only the strong of heart can bring themselves to commit crimes for it.

China after zero-Covid

The post-Covid era has arrived in China. What now?

Hypocrisy on Stilts in India

The BJP’s charge against Gandhi is a serious one.

1w ago

AI and the Global South

Unprecedentedly powerful predictive tools will strengthen authoritarian regimes’ surveillance capacity.

3w ago

Who stands for freedom?

We desperately need free markets, but that means, above all, markets that are free from the stranglehold of monopoly and monopsony.

A Farewell to Russia

Russia is special, but mainly in the sense that it is uniquely capable of destroying, in a matter of days, what took centuries to build.

The Dark Side of Neutrality

Those who would claim neutrality forfeit their standing to complain about the horrors of colonisation anywhere.

India’s Thin-Skinned Leaders

Narendra Modi’s government has long been overly sensitive to world opinion

A blueprint from India for women's economic empowerment

The extraordinary success of women’s self-help groups in India represents one of the best-case outcomes.

Shashi Tharoor on India-Russia relations, the Quad, Ambedkar, and more

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, and an MP for the Indian National Congress, discusses his most recent book, India’s foreign policy, and India’s majoritarian turn in an interview with Project Syndicate. 

The Age of Verbiage

One cannot deny the fact that there are too many overconfident experts making too many predictions about too many issues too quickly these days. A basic economic principle is useful here: the 24-hour news cycle has created a huge need for expert opinion, and the market has simply created the supply to meet the growing demand.

Death or Glory in Russia

Russia’s reversion to warlordism is fuelled by a religious fundamentalism.