Tajikistan, under the Russian influence, has repudiated the Indian proposal for an air base in the strategically important Central Asian republic. The Russians have pressed the Tajikis for this eviction to pressurise the Indians into favouring the Russians while signing the lucrative multi-billion dollar defence deals. The Russian insistence comes as no surprise as over [...]
The bid for procurement of 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft at an estimated cost of Rs. 42,000 crores ($10.2 billion) for the Indian Air Force this week has generated a lot of buzz in the international defence market. The NYT reports that- Determined to build a domestic arms industry, India is requiring foreign suppliers to [...]
Let’s have unilateral trade liberalisation Abi is right. Dweep didn’t go far enough. What India needs to do is to say “to hell with the WTO” and unilaterally, completely, dismantle trade barriers. For that matter, so does everyone else. Here’s Sauvik Chakraverti on the topic on TCS Daily: Unilateral free trade is a very good [...]
Earlier this year the Doha round of WTO trade negotiations collapsed (again) after the US, Europe, India, and Brazil were unable to reach a reciprocating agreement on cutting farm subsidies in the west, and lowering industrial goods and service barriers in the developing world. India and Brazil blamed the US and Europe for not lowering [...]
Daniel Altman in his IHT blog opines Not so long ago, there were only two countries that collected client states around the world: the United States and the Soviet Union. These days, it seems like anyone with some economic clout can join in the fun. China has Sudan, Venezuela has Bolivia, and now Japan has [...]
Two news articles have touched upon the Africa story recently; one by Princeton N. Lyman and Patricia Dorff in The Washington Post reasons out the basis of a new US policy in Africa while the other in Taipei Times by Alex Vines and Gareth Price harps on India’s growing economic links with Africa. Lyman and [...]
This week’s issue of The Economist has a report on how (and why) Japanese investment into China is declining. But the appeal of China as a manufacturing hub and a huge new market is not universally shared among Japanese businesses. Some companies are moving operations to other countries instead, and others are keeping business back [...]
Ravikiran Rao asks more questions than he answers in the June issue of Pragati – The Indian National Interest Review. Advocates for Indian family businesses claim that they can teach a thing or two to the rest of the world, both about family values and about running a business. But family values are not unique [...]
This has been something significant on the economic and trade diplomacy front that has largely gone unnoticed. But for a few mandarins in the Indian commerce and foreign ministries and some officials in the CII headquarters, the story has remained under wraps. It started around three years back and it is about India and West [...]
Aaditya Mattoo, Deepak Mishra and Ashish Narain, in the Times of India, on the problem and solution for Indian agriculture: So, here’s the paradox: the hard-working Indian farmer — one of the world’s low-cost producers — is unable to compete globally. What is hobbling the Indian giant? A recent World Bank study finds that the [...]
Anyone who writes about there being “two Indias” is necessarily wrong. Anyone who describes India’s jettisoning of the licence raj in 1991 using words like “neo-liberal” is necessarily confused. And anyone who writes about Indian agriculture quoting P Sainath and no one else is necessarily unbalanced. Rajinder Sahota, writing in the Financial Times (they actually [...]
Contemplating a ban on iron-ore exports is absurd The bulk of India’s iron-ore exports last year went to China. This is being bandied as something sinister by those who dislike China because of geopolitical reasons and by those who dislike selling ‘our’ ore to ‘them’ instead of letting ‘our’ manufacturers have it. 1. So why [...]
Ajay Shah alerts us to a draft volume published by the World Bank (free download) titled Dancing with Giants: China, India and the global economy. Drawing upon the latest research, this volume analyzes the influences on the rapid future development of these two countries and examines how their growth is likely to impinge upon other [...]
Bhavya Khanna relates a fascinating explanation: Nehru in his often stated brilliance imposed severe restrictions on the trade and price of Gold in India. The sheik of Dubai had free trade in Gold, and was well, a smuggler’s paradise. Combine the two and you have possibly the largest movement of illegal gold trade in the [...]
In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Richard Wilder & Pravin Anand claim that India is rapidly evolving into Asia’s innovation center, leaving China in the dust. Its secret weapon? Intellectual property-rights protection. In recent years, New Delhi has taken big steps to protect these rights, and the results have been dramatic. [...]
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