Special Report
Produced by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and ORF America
Sharing the Burden: Preparing for Maritime Security Competition in the Indo-Pacific
India–Africa Economic Diplomacy: From Money Flows to Sustainable Balance-Sheet Resilience
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.
What the Budget really builds
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.
ORF Global Quarterly: Navigating Megatrends For 2026
Edited Volume
By Dhruva Jaishankar, Anit Mukherjee, Anirban Sarma, Mannat Jaspal, Nilanjan Ghosh, and Sunaina Kumar
Editors: Sharon Stirling and Eszter Karacsony
The Nexus of Artificial Intelligence and Energy Security: Strategic Opportunities for U.S.-India Leadership
Special Report No. 7
By Piyush Verma, Medha Prasanna, Caroline Arkalji, Erlijn Van Genuchten, and Siddharth Sharma
Outlook 2026: Emerging markets will need a new playbook
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.
Grids Will Decide the Global South’s AI Future
By Medha Prasanna
Without intentional strategies to strengthen energy infrastructure, the Global South will remain largely a consumer of AI technologies.
Digital Public Infrastructure and the Future of Digital Payments: Lessons from Pix and UPI
Digital Payments and Women’s Empowerment: Insights from PESP in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
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?
Trevor Manuel report: Africa’s post-G20 Bretton Woods moment?
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.
Africa’s Ubuntu economics takes the G20 stage
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.
India and Mongolia Forge a New Energy Axis
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.
How ‘resilience’ became global finance’s mirage of strength
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.
New Frontiers for India’s Defence Diplomacy
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.
The New Eurasian Order: America Must Link Its Atlantic and Pacific Strategies
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.
Why nations now pay more – and give up more – to secure financing
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.
India and the South Caucasus: Infrastructure, Arms, and Geopolitical Competition
Breaking the Trap: Debt Dynamics and Sustainable Finance in the Global South
The sovereignty premium countries pay for financial autonomy
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.