Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia
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Hindustan Times
New GST regime: A grand bargain reduced to imperfect compromise
Far from a grand bargain, the GST is an imperfect compromise constrained by a political culture with a limited commitment to the federal principle
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India can take the discourse of development beyond instrumental power play—build solidarities across the emerging economies and bargain for equity.
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Pakistan is likely to enjoy closeness with the US, China and Saudi Arabia. This is different from its relative isolation of recent years.
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News from Saxena
Democracy in Times of Democratic Erosion: The Case of India
This article draws on evidence gathered from the India Election Survey 2024, a nationally representative post-poll survey of voter perceptions, to deepen understandings of democratic resilience in contexts of democratic erosion.
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Even with the option of EU markets, China will have to be a significant part of India’s economic policy. But the difficult security relationship is an important complication.
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The credibility of the Election Commission is in question. A recent survey by CSDS-Lokniti across five states and Delhi-NCR points to a significant drop in trust in the Election Commission. It is an important warning.
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This article examines the relationship between democratic legitimacy of political parties and their electoral outcomes, to identify when concerns over democratic process and norms matter to electoral outcomes. In so doing, this paper seeks to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on the twin dynamics of democratic erosion and resilience in the contemporary moment.
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The Citizenship, Inequality, and Urban Governance (CIUG) Project, a collaboration between scholars at Brown University and Indian researchers, recently carried out one of the largest surveys of Indian cities, covering over 31,000 households across 14 urban centres. The study looks at how class, caste, and religion influence access to basic services, and how citizens exercise their rights in rapidly growing cities. It finds sharp inequalities in water, sanitation, housing, and civic participation, with class standing out as the main factor determining access to services.
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Unless dramatic reversals take place, the core of India’s foreign policy, which, at least since 2000, has focused on the US, Pakistan, China, and Russia, stands on the verge of collapse.
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Tariffs have been used in the past by countries like Japan and South, to promote or hinder industrialisation. The surprise in Trump’s tariff argument is two-fold.
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Disenfranchisement by institutional fiat is profoundly undemocratic. The effect of the ECI's new documentary process in Bihar will tilt the scales in favour of the BJP.
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At a deeper level, both Left and Right populism are linked to globalisation, the world’s greatest economic force between 1980-2010.
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