The COVID-19 pandemic was a global emergency, but its health, social, and economic effects were highly uneven. In India--one of the world's most unequal democracies--the pandemic and government responses unfolded across a hierarchical social landscape and uneven institutional terrain, producing starkly different experiences of risk, protection, and loss.

Exams are designed to privilege rote learning-based multiple-choice questions, making syllabus completion rather than subject mastery the goal, and rote-based pedagogy the means

If any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslims in India, he will not remain Hindu”, thus spoke Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, at New York’s Madison Square Garden on 29 August.

Addressing a large gathering of young women in Pune during a student outreach programme called ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ on 22 August, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that an “adarsh naari” — an ideal woman — in India is “put in three boxes”. She is seen only “as a daughter, as a wife, or as a mother.” Gandhi added that there was “nothing wrong with being seen as one of these, but it cannot be your only identity”.

Over five weeks this summer, my travels have taken me to Delhi, Chennai and Sri City, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. I arrived roughly two weeks before the Jantar Mantar march to Parliament. The sea change after that march is unmistakable. The public sphere is freer, and the discussions far less constrained by fear. I would normally have predicted that the Hindu nationalist elite would lambast the protests of the young — their mockery, their satire, their choice of words and images for India’s post-2014 establishment — as Bharatiya sanskriti ke virudh (against Indian culture), even an insult to it

Yamini Aiyar is a Visiting Professor of Practice at Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

In The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru made an observation about MK Gandhi, capturing a feeling that was experienced widely but never articulated as sharply. To slightly paraphrase Nehru: “The dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear; pervasive, oppressive, strangling fear; fear of… the police; fear of the official class; fear of the laws meant to suppress and of prison… And then Gandhi came… Suddenly, as it were, the black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders.”

Federalism is not just about institutional arrangements; it is about accommodating India's many identities. The erosion of that principle of accommodation helps explain many of the institutional problems we see today.

We have a unique opportunity to rebuild an education system worthy of our youth

The linking of SIR with welfare benefits is the final act in the slow remaking of the Indian from citizen to labharthi. The rights-bearing active claimant is now a distant memory

For several years, an argument has been making repeated rounds in political circles — especially in Hindu nationalist ones, though even those not particularly
sympathetic to Hindu nationalism have sometimes expressed the same view, if less often and less emphatically. The argument is that, for all practical purposes, members of the “Gandhi Dynasty” — Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka — have become unwitting promoters of Narendra Modi’s ascending political fortunes.

The BJP is commemorating a new political “milestone”. On 10 June, wrote Ram Madhav, an important Hindu nationalist ideologue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi “will complete 4,399 consecutive days in office, overtaking Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of 4,398 days after the first general election”. To underline the political significance of the| occasion, the BJP officially celebrated the occasion under the leadership of the party’s National President Nitin Nabin and Home Minister Amit Shah at Bharat Mandapam. Modi ruling India longer than Nehru is an iconic moment for the party and its ideology, Hindu
nationalism.

The realm that is the intersection of politics and economics is encountering a weighty paradox in India. The Modi government is exercising mastery over the
political domain, but the problems of the Indian economy are growing worse. The chasm between increasing political domination and deepening economic frailties may not be bridgeable without serious reform.

It has been nearly two years since the 2024 national elections. How should we conceptualise the state of Indian politics today? Are there any significant reasons for concern?

Did the SIR with its deletions and active disenfranchisement of over 27 lakh voters propel the BJP to power in West Bengal? This is the question that is dominating the political debate

The defeat of the 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill in Parliament affords an opportunity to wrest the delimitation debate from narrow partisan concerns and open a wider conversation on India’s federal bargain.

What is the larger significance of India’s recent state elections? It is important to avoid easy generalisations, however tempting such generalisations may be. The BJP’s victory in West Bengal, undoubtedly hugely significant, does not imply that the 2029 Lok Sabha elections already have a foregone conclusion.

How should we judge the defeat of the Narendra Modi government’s 131st
Constitution Amendment Bill in India’s Parliament? Can we say India has won and
the government has lost? In the political life of a nation, there are moments when
the defeat of an elected government becomes synonymous with the victory of the nation.
This was one such moment.

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In this OP Jindal Distinguished Lecture at Brown, Fareed Zakaria reflects on India’s evolving role in a changing global order and the forces shaping its future. A thoughtful conversation on power, possibility, and global transformation.

How long might the war in Iran go on? In what ways is India affected or vulnerable,
now or later? What are India’s options?

No chief minister, even in today’s era of political centralisation, would stay quiet if the Government of India failed to set up the Finance Commission. This is the battle local governments must fight

In December 2025, newspapers in India carried an arresting, dystopian image: scores of young people sitting obediently in rows on an airstrip in the eastern state of Odisha to take an exam. Over 8,000 test takers had lined up under the sun to compete for 187 posts in the police service. That so many people were willing to take an exam in such inhumane conditions is revealing. In India, government jobs have long been coveted because they bring financial security and a measure of social prestige. But the candidates in Odisha were vying for the lowest rung of the police service. Such a large volume of candidates for such a poorly paid post reflects widespread desperation among educated youth. India’s economy has failed to generate opportunities for the country’s many young people, even as it has recorded an average annual GDP growth rate of six to seven percent over the past three decades.

Is the India-US trade deal beneficial to India, or is it an act of coercion on the part of
the US, which India has humiliatingly accepted? The

The view that bureaucracies are bloated with far too many employees preying on taxpayers money is a widely held myth. Research shows how significantly understaffed the Indian state is.

We’re thrilled to launch the first edition of Con-GRA, a conference dedicated to graduate students in the social sciences—particularly economics, political science, and sociology—whose research focuses on contemporary South Asia.

Con-GRA offers a space where emerging scholars can share their work, receive thoughtful feedback, and engage in sustained, interdisciplinary conversations. We approach South Asia not as a regional case but as a site of theoretical innovation, where new questions, methods, and frameworks are emerging across disciplines.

This inaugural edition marks a commitment to building an enduring intellectual home for social science scholars of South Asia.

New York is America’s most cosmopolitan outpost, not its heartland. One must look at what happened elsewhere in the US on 4 November.

The two-decade long reign of Nitish raises an important question: Can governance stripped of politics achieve the goal of radical social transformation?

A new study on urban India reveals that Muslims, Dalits, and tribal communities are denied equal rights and access to public services while upper castes enjoy the best living conditions, with Kochi and chennai standing out as rare examples of inclusive urban equality.

The capacity to live a full life in India's cities is heavily constrained by class, caste and religion.

Leela chats with Steve as he wonders about the different ways humans worship.

Leela Prasad is St. Purandar Das Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. She is the President of the American Academy of Religion (2025). She has received prestigious awards and fellowships for the study of religion, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright-Nehru senior fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Without the humanities, we may produce efficient workers — fluent in algorithms and markets but unable to envision and inquire.

Far from a grand bargain, the GST is an imperfect compromise constrained by a political culture with a limited commitment to the federal principle

India can take the discourse of development beyond instrumental power play—build solidarities across the emerging economies and bargain for equity.

Pakistan is likely to enjoy closeness with the US, China and Saudi Arabia. This is different from its relative isolation of recent years.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At a deeper level, both Left and Right populism are linked to globalisation, the world’s greatest economic force between 1980-2010.

Much drew on the past, much represented a break from history

Aiyar writes: "To be clear, in interrogating efficiency, and questioning its dominance as the core value proposition of the State, I am not making the case that efficiency is undesirable. Indeed, entrenched waste, corruption and incompetence of the State is visible to citizens at every turn."

Varshney writes: "Trump-Modi summit was, of course, not without benefits for India, but benefits for US are greater."

New documentary tells the story of legal suppression in India.

Arvind Subramanian gives assessment of India's economic slowdown in podcast with FT's Martin Wolf

Aiyar writes on Twitter/X: "Reframing the cash transfer debate in India today New Year issue. I am no fan but to deride investments in welfare as "freebies" & "revadis" is just wrong. The real prob is this new fad distracts frm structural challenges in the econ while feeding the authoritarian beast"

Varshney writes: "The BJP’s principal claim was that it had done more than any other major party to restore the justly great status of Ambedkar in the national public realm. But, to Ambedkar, Hindu unity was exactly the opposite of what his project sought"

Varshney writes: "Unwavering civility would perhaps be the best way to describe what I experienced. Even when in positions of high power, arrogance never touched him, and civility never failed."

Politically and ideologically, in J&K and Haryana, closer analysis reveals BJP's performance is less than it seems.