Themes

Caste and Reservation in India

Caste and reservation is the constitutional machinery through which India reserves a share of public jobs, university seats and legislative constituencies for historically disadvantaged groups.

India–China Relations

India and China are Asia's two civilisational powers and nuclear-armed neighbours whose 3,488 km disputed Himalayan boundary — the Line of Actual Control — has never been formally demarcated.

India's Demographics

India's demographics are the structural backdrop to almost every policy debate: the country is the world's most populous, its fertility has fallen below the replacement level, and it holds a large working-age majority that gives it a time-limited "demographic dividend".

India's Human Development

India's human development is the composite of its health, education and living-standard outcomes — how long people live, how much they learn, and whether they escape deprivation — measured by a spread of official and independent instruments that often disagree.

India's Informal Economy

India's informal economy is the roughly nine-tenths of the workforce that earns a living outside formal, regular, salaried employment: the self-employed, casual labourers, unregistered micro-enterprises and, more recently, app-based gig and platform workers.

India's Jobs and Labour Market

India's jobs and labour market is the system that determines who works, on what terms, and how the state counts it.

India's Semiconductor Strategy

India is attempting to build a domestic semiconductor industry — from chip fabrication to assembly and design — as a matter of both economic ambition and strategic autonomy.

India's Strategic Autonomy

Strategic autonomy is the organising principle of Indian foreign policy: the insistence on independent decision-making, unbound by formal alliances, so that India can partner with rival powers simultaneously and on its own terms.

India's Urbanisation and Migration

India's urbanisation and migration is the structural transition of people out of agriculture and villages into towns, cities and non-farm work — measured by the Census, the Periodic Labour Force Survey and municipal data, and governed through a fragmented set of institutions rather than a single authority.

India's Welfare State

India's welfare state is the machinery of direct benefit transfer, subsidies, the public distribution system and cash schemes through which the Union and state governments move money and grain to hundreds of millions of citizens.

Religion and the Law in India

Religion and the Law is the constitutional settlement that makes India a secular state while leaving family life to religion-specific codes.