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Where the Ships Don't Come: GIFT City and the Changing Geography of Global Finance

A few weeks ago, while reading about the history of international finance, I noticed something that seemed almost too obvious to be interesting: many of the world's great financial centres grew out of places where people traded. London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai have very different histories, but there is a broad pattern. They were ports, entrepôts or commercial crossroads before they became major financial centres. Ships brought goods; merchants followed them; information, credit, insurance, foreign exchange and investment followed the merchants. Over time, commercial and financial institutions accumulated in the same places. That prompted a slightly mischievous question when I thought about India's GIFT City. Why is India attempting to build an international financial centre in Gandhinagar, an inland planned city with no historic port? But perhaps that question belongs to an older geography of capitalism. The more interesting question may be whether, in the tw...
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Beyond Sanyal's Sensationism: Why India Must Reform, Reinvent, and Expand the University in the AI Era

Part I: The University Is Being Put on Trial There is something peculiar about the current debate on Indian higher education. Almost everyone agrees that India's universities need reform, and that proposition is hardly controversial anymore: curricula in many institutions lag behind technological and economic change, teaching quality varies enormously, industry linkages remain weak, research output is uneven, many graduates require substantial workplace training, and the adoption of artificial intelligence across teaching, research and administration remains far below what the technology now makes possible. These are legitimate concerns. But a more radical proposition has begun to emerge from some quarters: that the university itself is becoming obsolete. Artificial intelligence can explain concepts, generate essays, write code, analyse information, and tutor students. Online platforms can provide lectures from leading academicians anywhere in the world. Employers increasingly comp...
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Beyond GDP Growth: Is India Entering an Age of Capability Building?

Reading between the GDP lines India’s economy has just produced a number that has resulted in a by-now familiar round of cautious celebration. Real GDP grew by 7.8% in the first quarter of FY27, comfortably above expectations. Private consumption remained strong, while gross fixed capital formation grew by 11.9%. Manufacturing, construction, and services also recorded healthy expansion.  For an economy navigating difficult global environments, the number is reassuring: the domestic growth engine appears to have considerable momentum. Yet a GDP growth number, however impressive, is only the beginning of the story.  The first instinct is naturally to ask whether this pace of growth can continue. Economists examine consumption, investment, exports, inflation, interest rates, and global conditions to estimate what the next few quarters might look like. Investors will look at earnings and capital flows. Policy-makers will look at whether the momentum is broad enough to withstand ex...
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Beyond the Chemical Industry: Building India's Molecular Transformation Capability

Part I: The Case for a Molecular Economy  India wants to build a chemical industry worth close to $1 trillion by 2040. The ambition is not fanciful. The NITI Aayog, in a recent report titled "Chemical Industry: Powering India's participation in Global Value Chains", released on 3 July, has projected that India's chemicals market, valued at around $220 billion in 2023, could reach roughly $400-450 billion by 2030 and $850 billion-1 trillion by 2040. It has also identified several structural constraints: dependence on imported feedstocks and speciality chemicals, inadequate common-user infrastructure, logistics inefficiencies, regulatory complexity, and shortages of skilled talent. The Union government has now begun putting physical infrastructure behind the ambition. On 24 July, it approved the BHAVYA Rasayan Scheme that provisions ₹3,030 crore to establish three dedicated chemical parks, with central assistance of up to ₹1,000 crore per park. The parks are envisaged a...
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