Big Ideas
Ideas that seem important, underexplored, or worth talking about more — things I find myself returning to across different contexts. I will update them as my thinking on them evolves. Also, check a long list of public policy frameworks here.
By December 2028, China will lose its geopolitical leverage due to its dominance in rare earths
While it will remain the world’s largest rare earths producer, the strategic importance of these materials wil decline. China will stop putting additional export controls on these technologies and begin diluting existing ones by that time.
China’s geoeconomic conduct should be called an international market failure
While many countries have woken up to the threat from China, they are responding individually with ineffective instruments, including tariffs, export bans, and increased scrutiny of investments. That’s where framing China’s conduct as an international market failure can help bring countries together and force China to take corrective action. The current situation is not the result of a US-China trade war, but a direct consequence of China’s use of the global economic system to its benefit at the expense of others. Without this lens, China will continue to portray itself as the champion of a system it dismantled.
This XKDR video explains my thinking.
The Case for Societism: The Indian society can self-correct. The State and the Market are not the only change-makers.
Institutionally, there are three major actors in any sovereign community— the market, the State, and the society. They are complementary—each of them is better at some tasks and is worse at others. For example, the state is very adept at employing force, but efficient usage of resources is not its forte. A market is efficient but is oblivious to inequality. And society has several self-correcting mechanisms but is susceptible to majoritarianism. Though civil society initiatives have wide-ranging abilities aimed at self-reform, the emergence of the welfare state has slowly and steadily sidelined society.
Here’s my talk for Manthan on Societism.
India should spearhead an Open Tech Maitri
Many developing countries find digital sovereignty, AI sovereignty, and techno-strategic autonomy promising. In practice, however, these ideas often turn out to be attempts at technology autarky. This is counterproductive since technology interdependencies will continue to exist even if some attempts at building domestic capabilities succeed. The best countries can do in such a world is to reduce asymmetric vulnerabilities and develop alternatives that can provide insurance against the bottlenecking of proprietary technologies. This is where an Open Technology Maitri comes into play.
We need a principled alliance of developing countries to promote ‘open’ technologies. This would include promoting the development and adoption of open-source software, open standards, open protocols, open datasets, open platforms, open hardware and interoperability in tech products and services. While there is an economic logic to promoting open technologies (which has been well-known and examined for decades), in the contemporary context, open technologies would help safeguard techno-strategic autonomy.
We need a Regulatory Responsibility Act on the lines of the FRBM Act
We have a law that prevents governments from overspending—the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM). While the law isn’t strict enough, governments take fiscal discipline somewhat seriously because of this law.
Unfortunately, there is no such law for regulatory discipline—arbitrariness is the default state of affairs. Thus, the Commission could recommend a Regulatory Responsibility Act on the lines of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act.
India needs a SAMR-type regulator for leverage against Trump’s US or Xi’s China
This one is a bit heretical because it goes against my priors on economic freedom. Yet, I do think that we need to build retaliatory options with the cards we have today. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has masterfully turned what should be bureaucratic processes—mergers and acquisitions—into powerful geopolitical levers. The key to its geopolitical power lies in this mega-regulator’s antitrust function. SAMR’s authority is triggered to review any M&A deal if the companies involved meet certain revenue thresholds in China, even if the companies are not Chinese. It allows Beijing to claim jurisdiction over a deal between, say, two American tech giants if they both sell a significant amount of products or services in China. Punishment for non-compliance can range from hefty fines to a complete ban on operating in the Chinese market.
India is the only other big market which can use a strategy of this nature. The current Competition Commission of India focuses narrowly on market competition. We need a regulator that considers national strategic interests, data sovereignty, and geopolitical implications.
Indian state governments should permanent trade and investment desks in important business centres of the world
A more active economic diplomacy by Indian states can be beneficial to all relevant stakeholders. It is in the states’ interest because they understand their comparative advantages, needs and challenges far better than the union government. Thus, they can choose to invest in external economic relations that are suited to their conditions.
Economic paradiplomacy can also benefit the investors as they get to directly engage with the entity that controls crucial variables for running businesses, such as land, labour, electricity, and law and order.
And finally, this strategy can benefit the union government as well. It frees up the already strained capacity of the external affairs and commerce ministries for broader issues.
3 missing meta-institutions in our democracy: Parliament’s own think tank, An institution for vertical and horizontal bargaining, and An independent fiscal council
A popular way to think about strengthening the Indian Republic is to ponder on improving its institutions. However, this route often ends up in mere despondence over our many underperforming institutions. While confronting these demons is an absolute necessity, here’s another way to think about this issue: what are the meta-institutions that the Indian Republic is missing altogether?