Category: Policy
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Textiles and Apparel: The Cliff Has Moved by Three Months, but the Uncertainty Remains
India has protected its textile exporters from an immediate policy shock. But extending an incentive is not the same as creating a predictable export environment. The real challenge is no longer simply the cost of exporting. It is the cost of not knowing what exporting will cost tomorrow. The Relief…
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When exporting workers becomes easier than creating jobs at home
For decades, remittances have been treated as one of the quiet successes of globalisation. A worker leaves home, earns abroad and sends money back. The family gains income, the country receives foreign exchange and poverty often falls. Unlike foreign investment, remittances do not require governments to negotiate with multinational corporations.…
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When Business Crosses Borders but Tax Systems Cannot
The tax system was built for an economy that had an address. For most of modern economic history, taxation followed physical geography. A factory stood somewhere. A bank had branches. A retailer had shops. Employees worked from identifiable offices and warehouses. Governments could therefore connect economic activity with territory: if…
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The Global Middle-Class Squeeze: When Progress Stops Feeling Like Progress
The Class That Made Modern Capitalism Stable The great economic achievement of the twentieth century was not simply mass production. It was the creation of mass economic security. Industrialisation produced factories, but rising wages, affordable housing, public education, pensions, healthcare systems and expanding consumer credit gradually created something politically even…
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When Birth Begins to Matter More Than Work
The old economic promise was simple: work, save, progress. The emerging economy is quietly rewriting it: inherit, own, appreciate. For much of the twentieth century, the idea of economic progress was closely connected with employment. Education improved the probability of getting a better job; a better job produced a higher…
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When the Digital Economy Meets the Invisible Economy
The Paradox of Progress — A country can have artificial intelligence, instant digital payments and world-class technology companies while millions of its workers still operate almost invisibly. This is one of the great contradictions of the twenty-first-century economy. A street vendor may receive payment through a QR code but have…
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The Economic Security Doctrine
When Dependence Becomes a ThreatFor much of the last four decades, economic policy was built around a comforting belief: countries that traded more would fight less. Supply chains would cross borders, capital would move freely, technology would spread, and mutual dependence would make conflict too costly. The factory, the container…
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When Everyone Needs the Facility but No One Builds It
The Infrastructure That Exists in Everyone’s Interest—and No One’s Budget One of the deepest weaknesses of industrial development is created not by a shortage of entrepreneurs, markets or technology, but by an uncomfortable economic contradiction. A group of businesses may urgently need a testing laboratory, research centre, common effluent treatment…
