India Archive

For more than six decades following India’s independence in 1947, urbanization remained an afterthought for policymakers, who hardly recognized the positive relationship between urban expansion and economic development. It wasn’t until 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi became India’s youngest prime minister and brought with him a new, young brigade of leaders, that those in power began to acknowledge that urbanization could serve India’s economy. Gandhi’s initiatives on urbanization, while new, were nonetheless hesitant. Through the 1990s and the early 2000s, analysts increasingly spoke of India’s “urban turn” and hinted at the beginnings of a serious investment in urban infrastructure and connectivity. […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie discuss the impact of El Niño on South America, Iran’s economy after the end of sanctions, recent elections in Taiwan and upcoming elections in Uganda. For the report, we are joined by Miles Kahler, senior fellow for global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, who explains the increasing influence of emerging economies on the international stage. Listen: Download: MP3 Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: El Niño Tests Latin America’s Ability to Adapt to Climate Risks After Sanctions, Rouhani’s Economic Agenda Faces Challenges […]

Assessments of the largest emerging economies—China, India and Brazil—and their global influence have been as volatile as each of their stock markets. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the buoyancy of their economies supported both a global recovery and their status as the rising powers of the 21st century. Now, the boom decade after 2001 seems a distant memory. As China’s economy slows from supercharged to respectable growth and rebalancing curbs its demand for commodities, growth in commodity-producing countries, Brazil among them, has slumped. Even India, which surpassed China’s growth rate for the first time in 2015, […]