Briefings and explainers on power, trade, borders, and the sea lanes that connect them.
India and the world, without the noise.
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Special policy brief · September 2026
The Factory That Never Was India is a $4.15 trillion economy and the world’s sixth-largest by IMF nominal GDP for 2026. Manufacturing value added is still about 13.5% of GDP on the World Bank series — far below China, Vietnam or Bangladesh — while agriculture still occupies roughly two-fifths of the workforce. The East Asian path out of farm poverty ran…
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Why India Grew Fast Without Becoming China or Vietnam
India is a large economy. It is not a rich one. The 1991 balance-of-payments crisis forced New Delhi to dismantle much of the Licence Raj. Thirty-five years later the country is still growing fast. It is still poor per person. The World Bank puts India’s GDP at $3.96 trillion in 2025. The IMF’s April 2026…
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What BRICS Is — and Why It Matters to India
BRICS is a club of large developing and emerging economies. It is not NATO. It is not the United Nations. It is not a customs union with one tariff. The original core was Brazil, Russia, India, China, then South Africa. From 2024 the group widened. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates came in….
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LAC Explained: What the Line of Actual Control Is — and Is Not
The Line of Actual Control, or LAC, is the line that separates Indian-held territory from Chinese-held territory along a long Himalayan frontier. It is the working military reality on the ground. It is not a finished, jointly demarcated international border. That distinction is the whole problem. Borders that both sides have signed and mapped can…
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Why the Malacca Strait Matters to India
The Strait of Malacca is one of the world’s most important shipping passages. It sits between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and it is the main maritime connection between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. For India it is not a distant map label. A large share of East…