Indore didn’t become India’s cleanest city because of technology or money. The makeover happened because a public institution learned how to execute. What can the rest of India learn from that transformation? https://youtu.be/uhYgJtoM96g In this episode of Capital Calculus, StratNewsGlobal.Tech speaks with Arkaja Singh, Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and co-author of a landmark study on Indore’s transformation to explore the deeper governance story behind the city’s success. The conversation goes beyond waste management to examine one of the most important questions facing India today: how do we build capable institutions that can consistently deliver outcomes? Key themes:…
Author: Anil Padmanabhan
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For decades, India’s economic story was powered by a simple but powerful idea: aspiration. As incomes rose, Indians travelled more, upgraded faster, bought homes, changed smartphones more frequently and embraced the belief that tomorrow would be better than today. But what happens when the world becomes persistently uncertain and subject to annual shocks of dramatic magnitude? Conventional wisdom would suggest that repeated shocks eventually weaken consumer confidence and dampen demand. Yet a new Ipsos Consumer Pulse Survey reveals a far more nuanced picture. https://youtu.be/VPPv0r3Tnmw Indian consumers have not stopped spending. They have not abandoned aspiration. Instead, they appear to be…
Undoubtedly, India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) transformed the country over the last decade. Aadhaar gave over a billion Indians a digital identity; UPI revolutionised payments; more than 50 crore citizens entered the formal banking system in under a decade—a process that would normally have taken nearly five decades. But inclusion is not prosperity. India now faces a much bigger challenge: how to create livelihoods, improve productivity, and raise incomes at population scale. This is the promise of DPI 2.0. https://youtu.be/brMh8PFKiCg In this episode of Capital Calculus, hosted on StratNewsGlobal.Tech, Anil Padmanabhan speaks with Debjani Ghosh, Distinguished Fellow at NITI Aayog,…
India has undertaken one of the most significant upgrades to its economic measurement system in decades. The rebasing of GDP and CPI may appear technical on the surface—but beneath it lies a much bigger story: India’s economy has structurally transformed. The weight of food in the inflation basket has fallen sharply. Services and discretionary consumption are playing a much larger role. Digital data systems, GST integration, real-time labour surveys, and improved tracking of the informal economy are reshaping how India measures growth and inflation. https://youtu.be/l5pvvgZCGyk But this raises deeper questions: In this episode of Capital Calculus, StratNews Global.Tech speaks with…
Has the biggest bet by the Gulf countries come under threat? For years, countries like the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have worked hard to transform themselves into global hubs for trade, capital, and technology. https://youtu.be/r19CzCLKQIg But this conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran is different. It’s not just about territory, it is about targeting the economic backbone of the region: energy, shipping, infrastructure. So are we looking at a cyclical phase of instability or is this a structural break that could redefine the Gulf’s future? To answer all this and more, StratNewsGlobal.Tech spoke to Dr Clemens Chay, Senior…
He led India during the 1965 war, used a severe food crisis to launch the Green Revolution, and shepherded India through a critical phase of its economic and political transition. All of this, in just 18 months. And yet, today, Lal Bahadur Shastri remains one of the most overlooked Indian Prime Ministers in modern history. In this conversation with Sanjeev Chopra, who authored a biography on PM Shastri, StratNewsGlobal.Tech revisits the former PM’s leadership during one of India’s most challenging periods. https://youtu.be/ER5XxTZ4dfE This episode then examines whether PM Shastri was simply a transitional figure after Jawaharlal Nehru—or was he quietly…
For over seven decades India overlooked the strategic risk of foreign insurers underwriting India’s maritime trade. The escalation of the face-off between Israel-US and Iran and the subsequent withdrawal of foreign insurers posed a rude wake-up call for India. https://youtu.be/pbc7FRVcwVU It fast tracked a proposal to create a home-grown insurance pool to underwrite Indian shipping. Indeed, this is a desperate, yet bold bet by India on ring fencing its maritime trade. The obvious question though is whether it is case of better late than never, or too little, too late? To answer this and more, StratNewsGlobal.Tech spoke to Balasundaram R,…
On 1 July 2017 India rolled out the Goods and Services Tax (GST). It collapsed 36 tax jurisdictions and consequently for the first time India was economically unified. Further it all but eliminated the cascading effect of taxes that prevailed in the earlier regime of indirect taxes. Indeed, it was the biggest tax reform ever. Nearly, a decade later, the country has few regrets. Yes, GST is still a work in progress. Yet it has more than matched expectations. https://youtu.be/2QuaboxijT0 Now, a new academic paper has empirically proved the long-held belief that GST is accelerating formalization of the Indian economy.…
For nearly 60 years, the writ of Left-Wing Extremism held sway over 182 districts—spreading across 10 states of India. After sustained action, which accelerated in the last decade, India has broken the back of Naxalism, which was birthed in 1967 in Naxalbari in West Bengal. https://youtu.be/AXY0WHrEAkM As on 1 April, as Home Minister Amit Shah informed Parliament, presence of Naxalites had shrunk to a few districts of Chhattisgarh. How was this battle won? More importantly, does this signal a new dawn for this large swathe of India, which is also mineral rich? To answer all this and more, StratNewsGlobal.Tech spoke…
India’s Census 2027, which kicked-off on 1 April, is not just a headcount—it is a national X-ray. After more than a decade, India is finally counting itself again. But this time, the stakes are far higher. Since the last Census in 2011, India has undergone massive changes: digital transformation, rapid urbanisation, migration shifts, falling fertility, and expanding welfare systems. https://youtu.be/TG7F3og1fWY In this episode of Capital Calculus, StratNewsGlobal.Tech spoke with Himanshu, Associate Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, to understand why Census 2027 could redefine India’s economy, inequality, and polity. We discussed: Why India is “flying blind” without an updated Census data…