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A Comparative Look at the Development Experience of Brazil and China

Ashwin Nair presents a comparative look and contrasts the role of the state in the economic development of two BRICS countries, Brazil and China. The Brazilian State and the Chinese state are two vastly different entities. While one has a history of military rule the other owes a lot to Maoist ideology. Today Brazil has…
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Perspectives on US Mass Incarceration

In the face of the upcoming 2016 US Presidential Elections, Kalyani Unkule provides a timely persepective on the worrying trend of Mass Incarceration in the USA Against a recent history of political polarisation, the problem of mass incarceration is being discussed as providing an opportunity for bipartisan cooperation and is steadily receiving attention from US…
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India’s Invisible Innovation: Affecting India’s Business and Economic Milieu in the Future

Can India become a global hub for innovation? Ekta Gupta endeavors to answer this question as a reflection to Nirmalya Kumar’s TED talk on India’s Invisible Innovation. ‘Innovation is novelty in how value is created and distributed’ as defined by the famous economist Schumpeter. Thomas Friedman in his book, “The World Is Flat,” said, that it…
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Jekyll and Hyde: South Korea’s Family Businesses

Sayantan Chanda talks about the yet existing stronghold of the ‘Chaebols’ in South Korea and what consequences it holds for the South Korean economy and society. The Republic of Samsung-land is the name that many South Koreans these days have given to their country.[i] Founded in a by-gone era of instability and uncertainty, Samsung has…
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Greek Tragedy: Act II

Greece is the birthplace of democracy, Olympic Games and now has created a cocktail of the two namely ‘games in democracy’. Pawan Gopalakrishnan and Anuradha Saha explore how the recent European Union episode offers an opportunity to contemplate on how to not be the next Greece. Greece’s high debt to GDP ratio was not its only problem…
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Examining the Economic Impact of Amending the Land Acquisition Act, 2013

Harsh Loonker analyses the economic consequences of the proposed amendment of the Land Acquisition Act. 2013 The government promulgated an ordinance in December 2014 whereby amending article 10(a) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The ordinance had the sole aim of fast tracking the acquisition…
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Reimagining India’s Role in the Thirty Meter Telescope Project

Kalyani Unkule talks about India’s participation in the controversial TMT Project in Hawaii which is facing protests on cultural and environmental grounds and proposes a rethink in light of India’s own rich culture of supporting heritage over moneyed development. Scientific research is becoming increasingly internationally collaborative in nature and several of the Government of India’s…
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Eurocentrism, Solidarity and the Migrant Crisis

Kalyani Unkule examines the delicacy of the European migrant crisis and asks for a revisit to the historical aspects of European migration to come to a feasible solution. It is easy to see why the large-scale in-flow of migrants to continental European shores is being described as a “crisis” when one considers that 1,700 lives…
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Book Review: The Precariat – The New Dangerous Class

Kalyani Unkule analyses Guy Standing’s Precariat as a cogent, accessible foray into the specific nature of present-day “proletarianisation” of sections of Western society, a process marked by precariousness more than anything else, she feels, as the title suggests. Title: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class Author: Guy Standing (Bloomsbury. 2nd Edition. 2014) The precariat, as…
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UK election 2015: The Outcome

The UK’s political system embodies the ideal type of republican democracy in many ways and the constitution – for something that was never put down on paper – has provided a remarkable degree of stability. However, keeping this in mind, Kalyani Unkule argues that the far reaching changes in society and polity that were in…
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China 2015: Resetting the Asian Growth Story?

Regional multilateral forums are giving China a solid platform to assert its rising strength. Years of stellar economic performance has allowed Beijing to exert quite the influence in the Asia-Pacific region through these forums. Initiatives of development bank, regional security grouping, trade deals and economic strategies are announced and underlined in these forums. But as…
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The Great Recession and its Impact on Africa: Focus on Ghana and South Africa

Abstract The world observed the deadliest financial crisis since the great depression of the 1930s in 2008. The signs of a financial crisis started becoming visible in the mid-2007 and early 2008 by the demise of stock markets, the failures of big financial institutions in the United States and parts of Europe. Given that banks…
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