Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US last month resulted in a number of agreements between the two countries that signal a new level of cooperation and economic engagement. They are being dubbed part of an Indo-US Strategic Partnership. Ranging from sale of drones and manufacture of GE engines for Indian fighter jets… Continue reading Indo-US Partnership Not Exactly Strategic
The world’s largest democracy now actually has the world’s largest population to show for it. Over 1.4 billion people and 945 million registered voters, according to India’s Election Commission. Somehow an old Indian citizen and voter like me has been disenfranchised it seems– or so it appears to me – for why else would my… Continue reading The State of India’s Democracy
I have been writing about EU’s CBAM on my blog ever since I read about it in The Economist, so it came as a surprise to me that CBAM is to go into effect in October this year. I had in fact, written after the climate summit at Glasgow, that it was disappointing to read… Continue reading Expand and Reform CBAM For the World
A trilateral meeting in San Francisco made international news quietly, if that is possible, a few weeks ago. Australia, UK and the US, part of the trilateral group AUKUS, announced a nuclear-powered submarine that the US will help Australia deploy in the Pacific. The news died as quietly as it broke. Not too many seemed… Continue reading Aukus-Pocus and All That Quad
As the Ukraine-Russia conflict drags into the second year, any chance of a quick end to the war recedes further away from us into the distance. If anything, 2023 began with a ratcheting up of the call for more arms from Ukraine and the west scrambling to make more military equipment available. Zelensky has been… Continue reading Stalemate in Ukraine Crisis, with America the Only Winner.
If we thought that the 2008 Financial Crisis is the worst crisis the business world has seen this century, we had better think again. Close on the heels of that, we had the Covid-19 global pandemic, and we are still in the grip of a regional war with global repercussions, plenty of geopolitical tensions, as… Continue reading Davos Man Ready to Face the Challenges of the 21st Century?
Inflation has been a global problem since last year. Ever since Covid-related lockdowns were lifted and people started buying goods and services just like in the days before Covid-19. Except that thanks to the lockdown, manufacturing facilities couldn’t ramp up production levels to meet the surging demand. Neither could shipping companies handle the surge in… Continue reading How Stubborn Can Inflation Get This Year?
In a high-inflation environment, it’s perhaps time to look at how consumers are being affected and how they are managing to cope. In Europe, of course, the impact of the war in Ukraine is being most directly felt, I would imagine. What with temperatures dropping, and prices and interest rates rising. Elsewhere too, it is… Continue reading Wintertime, and the Living Ain’t Easy
With so many summits and conferences going on this month in the Global South, and many of them in Asia, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on India’s place in Asia. Also, how Asia and the rest of the world think of India and our position in Asia. We like to… Continue reading India @ the Heart of Asia
As if we don’t have enough going on already in our lives and across the world, we have new conflicts to deal with almost every other day. It has reached such high-pitched ridiculousness, that almost anything one says, or writes, or does, can be cause for another conflagration. If it isn’t our own ruling party… Continue reading Hot-Under-the-Collar Culture Wars
Peripatetic Perch 