Background Paper No. 5
By Nikhila Natarajan
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.
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.
Originally published by Carnegie Council
Dhruva Jaishankar in conversation with Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin
India Climate Update is produced by Observer Research Foundation America (ORF America), Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and facilitated and distributed by ClimateWorks Foundation.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
India’s economic engagement with the US can be assessed along five dimensions - trade, migration, capital flows, technology, and standards and regulations
Originally published in Observer Research Foundation.
By Nikhila Natarajan, Trisha Ray and Michael Depp.
Originally published in A 2030 Vision for India’s Economic Diplomacy, GP-ORF Series, 2021
By Dhruva Jaishankar
By Dr. Andreas Kuehn, Jared Mondschein, and Aaron Clark-Ginsberg
Originally published in Sustainable Cities and Society, Volume 67
India Climate Update is produced by Observer Research Foundation America (ORF America), Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and facilitated and distributed by ClimateWorks Foundation.
Originally published in Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s China-India Brief
By Dhruva Jaishankar
Observer Research Foundation America, 1100 17th St. NW, Suite 501, Washington DC 20036 USA