Analysis

Download the Discussion Document  Executive Summary Strategic technologies serve as a fulcrum of geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalries between technologically advanced states. This discussion document addresses the geopolitics of international standard-setting in the context of emerging technologies that require global integration. It also suggests approaches on how India should deal with...

Women constitute half of the Indian population, yet their labor force participation is at 21%. This is shy of being one third of the men’s labor force participation rate that stands at 74.4%. This is an abysmally low number. Various factors drive our low numbers including but not limited to...

The Union, States, and other stakeholders can reap benefits from broad-based employment platforms like the Kerala Knowledge Economy Mission. But for such technological innovations to succeed, they require more nuance, engagement, and diversity at the design stage to cater to the needs of all of Kerala’s unemployed. Read the article...

Earlier this month, the Rajapaksa government imposed a state of emergency in Sri Lanka after its bungled response to a brewing foreign exchange crisis cascaded into food shortages. An army general has been put in charge of catching both hoarders of food and holders of foreign currency. Like a Greek...

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” RSJ’s invocation of Toynbee reminded me of an instance of majoritarianism from the past week that should scare us, once again. A Bengaluru-based ready-to-cook food manufacturer was accused of mixing cow bones in dosa batter, through a targeted disinformation campaign on popular social...

India Policy Watch #3: Today’s Ehrlichians Insights on burning policy issues in India — Pranay Kotashane We consistently write here on why the oft-repeated narrative that India’s population is the root cause of its ills, is problematic. This week, I came across an excerpt in Jason Crawford’s delightful MIT Tech Review article...

Millions of people across the world lost their jobs as the COVID pandemic raged across the world. No one was spared. From wall street to the streets of Mumbai, there was panic. Suddenly hundreds of millions were working from home as countries locked down and kept people indoors. “Zoom” became...

This article was first published in The Mint. HLL Biotech, a government-owned company, has a state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing plant near Chennai. It has been mothballed since 2012. Last week, the Supreme Court heard a petition pleading the court to direct the government to use it to produce Covaxin, amid the...

In the past few weeks, anonymous Twitter accounts such as Swiggy DE and DeliveryBhoy have made allegations regarding issues faced by delivery partners of food delivery apps. These include low payouts, opaque payout calculations and alleged cheating, unexplained differences in surge rates, order clubbing and assignments to avoid incentive pay,...

Have you tried booking domestic flights recently? If yes, you would have noticed a strange and unpleasant phenomenon. Not only are the ticket prices high across the board, but all airlines seem to be charging the same high price. You would have shrugged this occurrence off by blaming the government...