Unequal

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently suffered a major electoral setback, with his party falling well short of a simple majority in Parliament at a time when they had set their sights on a two-thirds majority. One of the major reasons for this sobering outcome has been the underperforming Indian economy under Modi’s leadership. Post-poll surveys show that voters were particularly dissatisf...

A new book details how successive Indian Prime Ministers have betrayed the people of India and failed to deliver on the basics like health and education. In “ India is Broken ”, Ashoka Mody argues that deep structural problems with no easy fixes mean India may be on the cusp of throwing away its demographic advantage. In this conversation, I spoke to Ashoka Mody, who is a former IMF and World Bank...

Until very recently, Gautam Adani was the wealthiest man in Asia. At one point in 2022, he was the second richest man in the world , ahead of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Adani’s rise came on the back of staggering growth in the value of the stocks of his conglomerate, the Adani group.  All that has changed dramatically in the last few weeks since Hinderburg Research, a US-based short seller, releas...

The release of the global hunger index report has once again turned the spotlight on food insecurity in India.  While overall levels of undernourishment in the population remain unacceptably high, the figures for chronic undernourishment among children are particularly alarming.  I spoke to Dipa Sinha, who is an associate professor of Economics at the Dr BR Ambedkar university in Delhi and is one...

The floods in Pakistan have been devastating. They have been described as " Biblical ". The outcome of a " monsoon on steroids ." They have caused damage to almost half of the country. The total economic losses are estimated to be in the region of USD 10 billion, or about 4 percent of Pakistan's annual GDP. Pakistan's minister for climate change Sherry Rehman has called for developed countries to...

Making sense of India’s wheat export ban Late on Friday, the Indian government announced that it is banning the export of wheat citing food security risks within the country due to soaring prices of wheat. Just a day prior, India had said that it will be sending trade delegations to nine countries with the idea of attempting to boost wheat exports.  The dramatic u-turn after about a month of “we w...

In January this year, Alex wrote a prescient piece warning that a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine could have severe food security implications around the world. We spoke to him about his analysis of the situation now that the invasion has happened and what scenarious the world should be preparing for. If you found the podcast useful, please consider sharing it. You can also subscribe to the U...