By Dhruva Jaishankar
In its diplomacy, India has reprioritized its near neighborhood, extending financial, developmental, and trading benefits to other South Asian countries and revitalizing more productive regional institutions.
Special Report
By Medha Prasanna, Caroline Arkalji, and Hansika Nath
By Hsiao-Chen Lin
The evolving scenario between India and Pakistan also serves as a timely analytical lens through which Taiwan can assess its own strategic vulnerabilities and prepare more robustly for future contingencies in the Indo-Pacific theatre.
By Udaibir Das
While financial institutions promote debt swaps as ‘win-win’ solutions that address both debt distress and development financing, borrowing countries report a systematic failure in achieving both objectives, revealing an inversion of development finance principles.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
For India, navigating U.S. export controls remains a challenge 20 years since the civilian nuclear agreement was signed.
By Udaibir Das
If climate finance is to support transitions that are durable and inclusive, it must evolve to accommodate precisely these kinds of interventions: institutionally grounded, locally designed and systemically significant.
By Anit Mukherjee
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a key enabler of economic and social transformation, the BRICS grouping — comprising both emerging and influential economies — has a unique opportunity to shape the trajectory of AI development through a Global South lens.
By Udaibir Das
As private digital tokens gain ground, existing oversight and payment monitoring frameworks are struggling to keep pace. While regulators debate their response, the market—driven mainly by U.S.-based technology and market actors—is moving ahead.
Background Paper No. 33
By Anit Mukherjee and Caroline Arkalji
By Udaibir Das
China must build on its institutional progress and the policy suggestions noted in the 2025 FSSA while adapting to a more fragmented global financial landscape. The shift from insulation, as pointed out by the IMF in 2010, as well as the shift to sensible integration, as outlined by the IMF in 2025, stays unfinished.
This special report explores the opportunities of a U.S.-India Strategic Energy and Industrial Partnership.
Special Report
By Aditya Ramji
Background Paper No. 32
By Abhisri Nath & Jeffrey D. Bean
By Udaibir Das
As concessional finance declines, vulnerabilities mount and aid priorities shift, vulnerable low-income countries must increasingly rely on domestic sources of funding. Efficient capital markets are not a luxury – they are foundational infrastructure for economic growth.
By Linda Nhon and Andreas Kuehn
Trump 2.0’s overall policy directions in critical and emerging technologies will likely hew to common expectations. The details, however, of what technologies the new administration will prioritise and how actions, such as tariffs and export controls for example, will affect the United States’ (US) innovation and technology leadership remains underexplored.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
Learnings from Delhi’s past should help in shaping the future as India bets big on new critical technologies.
By Udaibir Das
The key question is not whether the decline in aid and external assistance will push these economies towards more debt – it already does – but rather what kind of debt they will incur and what long-term implications it will bring.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
The EU and India both have apprehensions about China’s economic and manufacturing supremacy threatening employment and businesses at home.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
Trump and Modi announced a wide-ranging agenda to take the bilateral relationship forward. It included efforts that built upon the progress made during the Biden administration, particularly in terms of technology, defense, and regional cooperation.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
Understandably, Germany will be preoccupied in the short term with Europe’s eastern and southern flanks, the transatlantic relationship, and the Middle East, but Berlin has important economic and security interests in the Indo-Pacific.
By Udaibir Das
As AI takes on a greater role in economic analysis and policy, an unsettling question arises: will its ability to recognise systemic risks with historical precedents weaken with a lack of immediate algorithmic reference?
Background Paper No. 30
By Veronica Jijon
By Udaibir Das
The world’s most populous democracy faces a turbulent landscape of geopolitical rivalries, technological shifts and the urgency of climate action. The question remains: will global economic forces propel India toward leadership or will they impede its ascent?
Background Paper No. 29
By Anit Mukherjee and Ashwini Joshi
By Udaibir Das
In 2024, Africa’s economic and political importance grew significantly, laying a strong foundation for 2025 to be a transformative year for the continent.
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
By Divyansh Kaushik and Lindsey Ford
The recent bilateral crisis has caused significant damage, but it has not destroyed the fundamental calculation that brought TRUST into being: the United States and India need each other to maintain democratic technological leadership against authoritarian competition.
By Piyush Verma
By working more closely with India, South Africa, and Indonesia, Brazil can move faster at home, bargain better abroad, and ensure the Global South is not just present but powerful at the table where tomorrow’s rules are written.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
A strong transatlantic bond that for almost eight decades had evolved into a highly integrated defense and economic system among the world’s leading industrial economies – institutionalized under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and G7 – now faces new stresses.
By Anit Mukherjee
With only two months left for the start of the leaders’ summit in Belém, the future of climate action seems to be based more on hope than conviction. A positive outcome from COP30 will require stronger commitment from the global community than what we have seen until now.
By Udaibir Das
Financial surveillance fails when it matters most. Every major financial disruption – from the 1997 Asian crisis to the 2008 financial crisis or recent geopolitical shocks from wars, sanctions and trade realignments – has exposed how blind spots persist in national systems, regional arrangements and global oversight.
By Hsiao-Chen Lin
By pointing out that even Beijing engages with Taipei in similar domains, New Delhi exposed the overreach in China’s narrative. The line was sharply drawn; recognition does not equate to subordination.
By Karan Bhasin
A lesser-known reality of the GST is that it has a total of eight tax slabs, excluding the exemptions. These start at 0.25 and go all the way up to 28 per cent.
By Udaibir Das
In dynamic-system terms, the global economy has shifted from a high-integration equilibrium towards a more fragmented state, but the transition path is still in motion. For financial institutions, the challenge is calibrating marginal gain in resilience against the marginal erosion of competitive advantage.
By Piyush Verma
At a time when multilateralism is under significant stress and global climate finance remains skewed and inequitably distributed, IBSA+Indonesia offers a fresh model of geopolitical collaboration on energy and climate – anchored in shared values and driven by practical action.
Western Balkans Report: Countering Cybercrime
By Jeffrey D. Bean and Bruce W. McConnell
Background Paper No. 34
By Anit Mukherjee and Caroline Arkalji
By Anit Mukherjee
The Indo-Pacific’s future will be shaped by secure, interoperable digital systems that advance public service delivery, expand financial inclusion, and foster cross-border collaboration.
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
