The 45th GCPP Academic Conference: The Changing World Order
| DATE | October 3, 2026 |
The 45th GCPP Academic Conference: The Changing World Order
The Academic Conference for the 45th cohort of Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy took place over the weekend. Across two days, four tracks and fourteen sessions, participants took a wide-angle view of The Changing World Order, tracing how shifts in trade, technology and the distribution of power are reshaping the choices before Indian policymakers.
Dr Sanjaya Baru opened the conference by tracing how the global order has moved from multipolarity to something not yet named, and where India’s rise fits within it.
Track 1: Geopolitics Dr. Kajari Kamal Kamal asked how far Kautilya’s thinking on power and statecraft, forged in a world of rival kingdoms, still carries into the choices India faces today. Dr Atul Mishra examined India’s approach to international order through its words and its deeds, asking how far a middle power can make and shape the rules.
Track 2: Geoeconomics With the US, the EU and China each bending trade rules to their own ends, Dr Villur S Seshadri weighed how much room a fragmenting system leaves India. Pratik Datta confronted one of the sharpest tensions in Indian economic policy: how to attract the foreign capital that growth demands while screening out investment that carries strategic risk. Narayan Ramachandran examined how tariffs, sanctions and export controls have become instruments of strategy, and what that means for how India wields its own economic weight.
Track 3: Emerging Technology Innovation drives long-run growth but cannot be ordered into existence; Dr Ashish Kulkarni drew out what its economics means for India in an age of technology rivalry. Dr Karthik Nachiappan mapped how chips, data, compute and technical standards became sources of geopolitical leverage, and where India stands as it builds its own. Payal Malik examined how market power and network effects are reshaping competition in India’s digital markets, and whether regulation can keep pace.
Track 4: Domestic Reforms V. Ravichandar drew on over two decades of working with government in Bengaluru to examine how citizens and the state can collaborate to change how cities are governed. Dr Vidya Mahambare examined why so many of India’s young adults remain out of work, and what it would take to make formal jobs easier to create and workers freer to move. Dr Shubho Roy looked past headline reforms to ask whether India’s laws and incentives are building the conditions for growth or quietly working against them.
Manish Sabharwal closed the conference by reflecting on the opportunities before India and the choices that will shape its next phase of growth.