Digital Public Infrastructure and the Governance Deficit: Who Regulates the Regulators?
India's DPI stack—Aadhaar, UPI, ONDC—has become the world's most-studied model for inclusive digital infrastructure. Yet the regulatory architecture undergirding it remains fragmented, under-resourced, and constitutionally ambiguous.
Climate Policy
Why India's Climate Policy Demands a Federal Architecture
Centralised mandates cannot drive the decarbonisation required by 2070. A cooperative federalism grants states fiscal authority over green transitions.
Fiscal Policy
The Fiscal Architecture of India's Welfare State: Gaps, Overlaps, and Reforms
Concurrent jurisdiction over social spending creates perverse incentive structures that undermine both efficiency and equity in public service delivery.
Urban Policy
Urban Housing Policy at the Intersection of Informality and Capital
Slum rehabilitation programmes have systematically underdelivered. The failure lies not in execution but in the conceptual framework that treats informality as aberration.
Labour Policy
Platform Work and India's Social Security Deficit: The Gig Worker Question
Over 7.7 million workers are employed in India's gig economy—yet most remain outside the ambit of ESIC, EPF, and the Employees' Compensation Act. The four Labour Codes offer partial remedies.
Agricultural Policy
The Political Economy of Fertiliser Subsidies and Why They Persist
At ₹1.75 lakh crore annually, fertiliser subsidies dwarf most other agricultural interventions—and yet their reform remains a political third rail.
Education Policy
NEP 2020 at Implementation: From Transformative Vision to Institutional Reality
The National Education Policy promised a structural overhaul of Indian schooling and higher education. Two years after the deadline, state-level implementation tells a story of enthusiasm, constraint, and delay.
Health Policy
Ayushman Bharat at Five: Coverage Expansion Without Systemic Reform
The scheme has enrolled over 500 million beneficiaries. Yet hospitalisation rates, out-of-pocket expenditure, and catastrophic health spending tell a more sobering story.
Labour Policy
India's Four Labour Codes: A Critical Assessment of Reform Under Pressure
The consolidation of 44 central labour laws into four codes was presented as historic rationalisation. The reality—three years after notification—is considerably more complicated.
Governance
The District Collector in the Age of Digital Governance: Authority, Accountability, and Reform
The office of the District Collector—colonial in origin, democratic in mandate—faces a legitimacy crisis as central schemes increasingly bypass it. What should it look like in 2030?
