By Piyush Verma and Andrei Covatariu

Much of the conversation in Geneva rightly focused on managing AI's growing energy demand. That work is essential, but it is only half the story. The larger opportunity lies in how AI can reduce energy use across industry, buildings, transport and power systems, while enabling greater integration of renewable energy.

By Vasabjit Banerjee

China evidently recognises the Calcutta Port System as an economic force multiplier for India’s economic power in the region. The Indian government has recently advanced several solutions, from modernisation to expansion of the port system. Yet, more needs to be done by the Indian government and private investors to strengthen the port system to ward off Chinese influence.

By Udaibir Das

Two decades of relief and reform treated debt management as a capacity problem. In a low-income country, it is statecraft; the office must stand as an institution of the state, mandated, autonomous and accountable. Reforming it and holding the sovereign and parliament accountable for outcomes means the debt cycle finally has a circuit breaker.

Special Report No. 11

By Piyush Verma, Medha Prasanna, and Sarah Salah

By Udaibir Das

If the governor is the last port of call, choosing one is not a staffing decision. The question is no longer who is senior or who is loyal, but who can fight a fire, who can say no and whose word the market will trust at three in the morning. Independence can be hollowed without being repealed. The clause reads perfectly while the substance is gone.

Background Paper No. 38

By Jeffrey D. Bean and Dhruva Jaishankar

By Udaibir Das

Drawing on the public sector balance sheet literature, the economics of sovereign self-insurance, and the Knightian distinction between risk and uncertainty, this paper argues that conventional sovereign asset-liability management is necessary but incomplete.

Edited Volume

By Rachel Rizzo, Clemens Chay, Kartik Bommakanti, Vasabjit Banerjee, Aleksei Zakharov, Soumya Bhowmick, Arya Roy Bardhan, Jhanvi Tripathi, and Samriddhi Vij

Editors: Sharon Stirling and Eszter Karacsony

By Udaibir Das

More moves of this kind should be expected, extending beyond energy into critical minerals, technology standards, industrial policy, and cross-border finance. The UAE’s decision is not an outlier. It is a marker — not of fragmentation, but of redefinition.

By Dhruva Jaishankar and Ylli Bajraktari

The United States and India now have a major opportunity to cooperate more closely on AI. But they must move beyond the rhetoric of shared values to building shared infrastructure.

Special Report No. 10

By Piyush Verma, Caroline Arkalji, and Telmen Altanshagai

By Udaibir Das

Fiscal space, financial space and institutional credibility are no longer separable policy domains. They are jointly binding constraints. The IMF flagships document their components but not the mechanism.

By Sujai Shivakumar, Hideki Tomoshige, and Jeffrey D. Bean

India is positioning itself as an increasingly important node in the global semiconductor ecosystem, building on its established strengths in chip design and deep pool of STEM talent. These efforts come at a time when global semiconductor supply chains remain highly concentrated, creating opportunities for India to contribute to diversification and resilience. 

By Udaibir Das

Under conditions of armed conflict and state rupture, banking shifts away from decentralized intermediation towards directed, survival-orientated finance. Yet the policy conversation has concentrated on sanctions, commodities and trade — the institutional reorganization of banking under conflict remains less well examined.

By Udaibir Das

Adopted by the National People’s Congress in March 2026, China’s 15th Five-Year Plan does not treat finance as a supporting function for economic growth. It treats finance as a strategic instrument of technological capability.

By Dhruva Jaishankar

For countries around the world — whether allies, partners, or competitors of the United States — there are important and immediate questions of how much and to what degree they will accommodate, or hedge against, the United States’ new approach to the world.

By Andreas Kuehn

Technology alliances are emerging as the decisive arena of AI competition, where leadership depends less on model breakthroughs than on the global diffusion of trusted infrastructure, standards, and ecosystems.

By Udaibir Das

Africa’s debt story is usually told as a liability problem: too much debt, the wrong currency, the wrong creditor, the wrong maturity. Those issues matter. But long-run sustainability is a balance-sheet question: is borrowing being converted into assets that raise the repayment base?

By Benjamin Tkach and Vasabjit Banerjee

While India-Taiwan collaboration on submarine technology would represent a step change from pre-existing economic cooperation, improving domestic production capacity necessitates pursuing mutual gains wherever possible.

By Udaibir Das

Africa’s debt story is not about waiting for easier global money. It is about whether domestic financial systems can absorb sovereign risk without amplifying internal fragility – and whether policy space purchased at 10% to 13% builds assets that justify the cost.

By Piyush Verma

Energy need not be a constraint on India's AI ambitions. It can be a competitive advantage. Encouraging data-centre locations that reflect grid readiness and renewable availability can reduce system stress while improving reliability. Expanding frameworks for round-the-clock clean power supported by storage and flexible resources can ensure AI growth strengthens climate goals rather than complicates them.

Special Report No. 9

By Medha Prasanna, Caroline Arkalji, and Piyush Verma

By Dhruva Jaishankar

For both India and New Zealand, their trade agreement represents, more than anything else, a risk mitigation strategy. Concerned about over-dependence on China and the United States as both producers and consumers — and the failure of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization — New Delhi and Wellington have opted to bet on each other and bring a modicum of certainty to an uncertain world.

Special Report

Produced by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and ORF America

Special Report No. 8

By Dhruva Jaishankar, Ammar Nainar, and David Vallance

By Udaibir Das

The current metrics of India–Africa economic diplomacy focused on mobilization volume, systematically fail along the diplomatic-financial chain. An integrated balance-sheet framework could realign these incentives through institutional capacity thresholds, end-use governance, and countercyclical safeguards, transforming diplomatic finance from a source of vulnerability into genuine development capital.

By Udaibir Das

For the first time in years, the Budget addresses not just who issues debt but also whether it actually trades afterwards. A new market-making framework for corporate bonds, accompanied by instruments that let investors take positions on bond performance without holding the bonds, marks a departure from India's longstanding focus on issuance while ignoring liquidity.

Edited Volume

By Dhruva Jaishankar, Anit Mukherjee, Anirban Sarma, Mannat Jaspal, Nilanjan Ghosh, and Sunaina Kumar

Editors: Sharon Stirling and Eszter Karacsony

Special Report No. 7

By Piyush Verma, Medha Prasanna, Caroline Arkalji, Erlijn Van Genuchten, and Siddharth Sharma

By Udaibir Das

Global financial institutions continue to frame the 2026 outlook for emerging markets through a familiar cyclical lens. The consensus assumes U.S. monetary easing, a softer dollar and a modest global slowdown will favor local-currency assets, credible disinflation paths and balance-sheet repair. This narrative is historically grounded and internally coherent. It is also increasingly insufficient.