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.

By Medha Prasanna

Without intentional strategies to strengthen energy infrastructure, the Global South will remain largely a consumer of AI technologies.

Background Paper No. 37

By Anit Mukherjee and Caroline Arkalji

By Brian Webster, Alan Gelb, and Anit Mukherjee

Shifting the payment of social transfers from cash to direct deposit via bank or mobile money accounts can directly improve efficiency for governments and convenience for beneficiaries. It may also produce positive spillovers such as boosting financial inclusion and empowering women. But do these spillovers materialize, and under what circumstances?

By Udaibir Das

The Trevor Manuel G20 Africa Expert Panel Report reframes Africa’s constraints as a single system of mispricing, debt compression and governance asymmetry. Its proposals for refinancing, collective bargaining and International Monetary Fund quota reform mark the first coordinated attempt to shift power within the international financial architecture.

By Udaibir Das

Ubuntu economics does not invoke moral claims. It advances a structural argument: Africa’s demographic momentum, mineral endowments and ecological assets are central to global prosperity, and instability in the region imposes system-wide costs. The reform frameworks are now primarily in place. The question is whether the political and institutional conditions of 2026 permit their implementation.

By Piyush Verma and Telmen Altanshagai

Mongolia is not just a customer or supplier—but a co-partner in building new regional supply-chains, new corridors and new resource-alliances. It speaks to a future where India is not simply plugged into global energy markets, but co-creating them.

By Udaibir Das

While stability prevails in institutional titles, resilience prevails in policy content. This shift influences the oversight and allocation of approximately $470tn in global financial assets. This has structural implications and affects public accountability.

By Dhruva Jaishankar and Ammar Nainar

Once a quiet backstage function of the armed forces, defence diplomacy has emerged as one of India's sharpest tools of statecraft. From joint exercises and training missions to disaster relief and maritime surveillance, India's military now operates far beyond the battlefield: building trust, shaping partnerships, and projecting the country's strategic interests on a rapidly shifting global stage.

By Julianne Smith and Lindsey Ford

American allies are rapidly transforming their relationships whether Washington likes it or not; these networks can either serve or undermine U.S. interests depending on how Washington engages with them. If the United States fails to reset ties with Asian and European partners, it risks being left on the sidelines of a rapidly changing world order.

By Udaibir Das

What began as a spread on a bond has become a spread across the sovereign balance sheet. The 2025 annual meetings have made clear that incremental adjustments will not suffice. Until new institutions and norms emerge, sovereigns will continue to pay in basis points and in ownership and discover that what the premium buys is not sovereignty, but postponement.

Background Paper No. 36

By Nvard Chalikyan

Background Paper No. 35

By Udaibir Das and Hansika Nath

By Udaibir Das

In a climate emergency, redundancy might be precisely what resilience requires. The sovereignty premium is that insurance price. Whether it’s worth paying depends on how much autonomy matters versus efficiency – and whether choice exists at all.

By Piyush Verma and Abhinav Jindal

India’s bid to host COP 33 is a clear signal of geopolitical intent. It positions the world’s largest democracy, the most populous nation and the fourth-largest economy as a bridge between developed and developing worlds.

Edited Volume

By Elie Alhajjar, Raj Shekhar, Divyansh Kaushik, Honson Tran, Megha Shrivastava, Zeena Nisar, Ingrid Erickson, Urmi Tat, Resham Sethi, Priyanshu Gupta, Katelyn Radack, Mandeep Rai, Neeraj Jain, Vaibhav Garg, Jatin Patni, and Wm. Matthew Kennedy

Editors: Andreas Kuehn and Anulekha Nandi