This paper assesses India’s current fiscal situation, its likely future evolution, and impacts on the economy. We examine possible reforms of macroeconomic policy (including fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy) and broader institutional reforms that will bear on the macroeconomic...

In the post-colonial world, the countries of South Asia have evolved politically in different ways, amidst internal and regional conflicts, but retained some commonality of institutions and cultures. Since the 1990s, the promise of market-led development and the growth of a middle class,...

This paper examines the functioning of some of India’s institutions of governance, namely, the legislative and executive branches of government, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy, from an instrumental, economic perspective. Governance is analyzed along three dimensions: (1) the degree of...

This paper discusses some puzzles in the contemporary macroeconomic scene in India, from the perspective of public finance and economic development. These include a fiscal deficit higher than it was during the 1991 crisis, but without a large current account deficit or rise in inflation or...

India’s federal system is distinguished by tax and expenditure assignments that result in large vertical fiscal imbalances, and consequent transfers from the central government to the state governments. Several channels are used for these transfers: the Finance Commission, the Planning...

This is a collection of essays written for the Financial Express, an Indian financial daily. The common themes of these essays, which cover a period of almost four years, from August 2010 to June 2014, are issues of growth and innovation in India, considered in two sequential parts, each part...

This is a collection of essays written for the Financial Express, an Indian financial daily. The common theme of these essays, which cover a period of almost four years, from October 2010 to May 2014, is the issue of how India is finding its place in the world, after a history of colonization...

We have certainly been living in interesting times. While avoiding the worst connotations of that concept (no global war or other catastrophe), we have seen the fall of communism, the rise of information technology, and the beginnings of a shift in the global economic balance, back toward the...

This is a collection of essays written for the Financial Express, an Indian financial daily. The common theme of these essays, which cover a period of almost four years, from June 2010 to March 2014, is the India’s struggles with economic policy reform. The essays are organized into...

These essays first appeared as columns in the Financial Express, one of India’s leading financial dailies. Together, they provide what I hope is an integrated perspective on where Indian policy and institutional reform is going, and what remains to be accomplished. Each piece is...