Category: Industry Sectors
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India’s Microfinance Moment: From Financial Inclusion to Financial Fragility
Microfinance in India was born with moral ambition. It promised to democratise credit, liberate households from moneylenders, and convert the poor into micro-entrepreneurs. In its early decades, the narrative carried the glow of social transformation—small loans, collective responsibility, and women-centric empowerment were presented as antidotes to exclusionary banking. Yet, by…
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The Long Road to an India–US Trade Compact: Between Strategic Convergence and Structural Friction
A Relationship Shaped by History, Not Habit The idea of an India–US Free Trade Agreement has resurfaced many times over the past three decades, only to stall at the intersection of economics and politics. Unlike India’s trade engagements with the EU, ASEAN, or even the UK, a US trade deal…
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India–EU Free Trade Agreement: From Missed Opportunities to a Strategic Economic Reset
The India–European Union economic relationship has long been defined by potential rather than performance. Despite being natural partners—India as a fast-growing consumption and manufacturing base, and the EU as a technology, capital, and standards powerhouse—bilateral trade has remained modest relative to scale. The renewed push toward an India–EU Free Trade…
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Renewables Cross the Coal Threshold: A Structural Break, Not a Cycle
The moment renewables overtook coal in global power generation marks more than a symbolic milestone—it signals a deep structural shift in how the world produces, distributes, and consumes energy. For over a century, energy transitions moved slowly, constrained by infrastructure lock-in, geopolitics, and capital intensity. Coal to oil took decades;…
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Chemicals at a Structural Crossroads: From Volume Cycles to Strategic Molecules
For much of the post-war industrial era, the global chemicals sector expanded on the back of scale, cheap energy, and steadily rising downstream demand. Commodity chemicals—ethylene, propylene, ammonia, methanol, bulk polymers—were treated as volume businesses, where margins fluctuated with economic cycles but long-term growth was rarely questioned. That historical compact…
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Fragmented Futures: How Global Industry Is Entering a Post-Synchronous Era
For much of the post–World War II period, global industry moved in broad cycles. Manufacturing booms and busts were largely synchronized across regions and sectors, driven by common forces—interest rates, commodity prices, trade volumes, and consumer demand. Steel, chemicals, autos, capital goods, and infrastructure tended to rise and fall together.…
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Manufacturing at a Crossroads: Reading India’s Mixed Industrial Signals
India’s manufacturing sector today stands at an inflection point, reflecting a familiar but important pattern in the country’s development journey. Industrial output growth has moderated, especially in consumer durables and export-oriented manufacturing, even as infrastructure-linked sectors such as steel, cement, and capital goods tied to public projects continue to show…
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External Sector at a Crossroads: When Goods Stall and Services Carry the Load
India’s external sector has entered a familiar but increasingly fragile phase. Merchandise exports remain under sustained pressure, reflecting not just cyclical weakness but deeper structural shifts in the global economy. Weak global demand, prolonged manufacturing slowdowns in advanced economies, and ongoing trade-policy uncertainty have combined to dampen orders for goods-intensive…
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