The latest controversy surrounding the just-about-to-start ninth edition of the IPL (a court case challenging its staging in Maharashtra while farmers are dying in Vidarbha) is a clear illustration of...
High level engagement of Pakistan is a waste of diplomatic capacity and political capital Pakistan’s decision to ‘suspend’ the peace process with India along with the ‘co-operation’ on investigating the...
Almost exactly a year ago, we were on our way from Vienna to Budapest and ended up reading the Vienna Hauptbahnhof Railway Station some three hours early. It had been...
Increase in capital outlay in the 2016—17 Karnataka budget is a good sign for the state by Varun Ramachandra (@_quale) and Pranay Kotasthane (@pranaykotas) [Note: This article first appeared in...
A few months back, Anupam Manur, a colleague at the Takshashila Institution, had written an Op-Ed in The Hindu that the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) mechanism is archaic and needs...
Action now shifts to the states which will have the first real opportunity to react to a new, and still shifting fiscal landscape By Pranay Kotasthane (@pranaykotas) One of the most...
I’ve commented earlier on this blog about how investment banks indirectly fund scientific research – by offering careers to people with PhDs in pure sciences such as maths and physics....
Back in the 1970s, economist Thomas Schelling proposed a model to explain why cities are segregated. Individual people choosing to live with others like themselves would have the macroscopic impact...
Bus Rapid Transport, which is mass transport based on lanes dedicated to buses, is something that has been proposed in India for a very long time but has never really...
India’s Policy towards Myanmar: Interests, determinants and risk factors Guru Aiyar and Priya Ravichandran, The Takshashila Institution Download the discussion document in PDF format (160KB) Executive Summary Myanmar’s elections in...
My first exposure to political ideologies took place in 2004, when I joined the now-defunct (but then brilliant) social networking site Orkut. While filling up my personal details, I was...
This piece by David Henderson has a very powerful quote by Milton Friedman. Quoting in full: In the circumstances envisaged in the socialist society, the man who wants to print...
How can India respond to a Chinese project that is aimed at creating a geo-strategic realm for itself? By Pranay Kotasthane (@pranaykotas) Last week saw two articles in Indian media on the challenges...
Karnataka held its annual global investors meet last week. On its sidelines, Rajya Sabha MP Dr Rajeev Gowda launched Resurgent Karnataka, a publication by Raintree Media. I shared my thoughts on smart cities...
Implementation of Pune’s City Parking Policy In response to the draft public parking policy of Pune Municipal Corporation Siddarth Gore, Scholar Centre for Smart City Governance, The Takshashila Institution Read...
Four parameters that are likely to guide China’s engagement in West Asia By Pranay Kotasthane (@pranaykotas) My previous post Talking about the Asia beyond Pakistan was in light of the Indian...
A survey shows it is clear that many supporters of both the Net neutrality and Free Basics campaigns were not really aware of the issues they were supporting