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Eat before reading

Book review of The Indian Pantry

The politics of cool

However much the government and its outreach community might insist it is merely an enabling act, it is hard to see it as anything but the first step towards a constitutionally Hindu nation

India's stranded workers

Across the world, workforces 'stranded' by technological, regulatory, or climatic change have become politically crucial to the rise of populism

India's dark road

The public, political and media culture in much of north India has rotted away. The media responds to public bloodthirstiness by exaggerating the violence of protests

The populists march on

The larger question for observers of politics worldwide is where British result fits into the broader narrative about the upsurge in populism and right-wing nationalism

How CM Modi predicted PM Modi

If NDA has been resolutely statist instead of leading a market-friendly economic transformation, that should not surprise anybody

Status revoked

There will always be ever more stringent loyalty tests, and at some point everyone with a soul will fail to clear at least one

Two parties and many

A fragmented politics, with multiple shifting coalitions, is far better, more efficient, and more democratic, than the "normal" two-party system

In economics of helping the poor, Abhijit Banerjee gives clear answers

Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer together have launched a movement within development economics

Projecting a pipeline

One way of helping project finance revive in India is by demystifying risk - and the government has just taken a useful step in that direction

Einsteinian economics

If this is how the government is thinking, then we are in real trouble, says the author

Breaking down companies

In today's world, who do companies really have to respond to?

Budget 2019: Fiscally correct, but familiar tax targets

FM rationalises revenue estimates, squeezes capex ; focuses on repairing financial sector and ease of paying taxes

'Indian' agenda for Modi 2.0: Eco Survey projects 7% GDP growth in 2019-20

The Survey praised the government's performance on the provision of certain last-mile goods, combined with behavioural changes

The Beijing question

India prides itself on its "strategic autonomy", but there will come a time, soon, when it should pick a side

21st century castes?

A post-caste worldview such as Modi claims is, in a country still ridden with caste divisions, more an erasure than an aspiration

Ever more extreme

For those from more liberal traditions, therefore, it is easy to collapse all strains of BJP and of Hindutva into one - and, they are all likely to damage national cohesion and constitutional values

Comparing 2014 & 2019

This time around, the BJP's tone is very different

Kashmir's troubled future

'Kashmir is a live political issue in India in a way that it never has been before', says the author

Why JLF is forever young

This year, my favourite session at JLF was one that wasn't even on the programme, featuring the librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge