Mihir Sharma

The world is unequal enough and the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to make things more unequal still. Poorer countries have had to take on debt they will struggle to pay back. Their more fragile healthcare systems and crowded cities forced them into stricter and more economically harmful lockdowns,…

India’s Covid-19 cases continue to climb, even as the economy tanks. China is pressing forward on the two countries’ disputed Himalayan border, where dozens of Indian soldiers have been killed. Tax revenues have plummeted, state governments are unhappy and 21 million of India’s rare salaried jobs…

The pressures of the pandemic have fallen hardest on developing countries with weak governments. They’re struggling to determine who is being infected and why, and to mitigate the economic impact of lockdowns and social distancing measures. If dealing with Covid-19 is stressing those states,…

India is reeling from a quadruple whammy that is practically unique even during this pandemic. First, growth has taken a hit that appears to be larger than any of its peers, with GDP shrinking 23.9% in the first post-pandemic quarter. While the economy has re-opened somewhat since then, it remains…

A month before he ended his first stint as Japan’s prime minister in 2007, Shinzo Abe addressed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Quoting the Mughal scholar-prince Dara Shikoh, Abe spoke of the “confluence of the two seas” — the Indian and Pacific Oceans — that were undergoing a “dynamic coupling…

India has a new national education policy, the first since 1986. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s first Hindu nationalist majority government seems determined to shift the policy direction set by the secular nationalists who ran the country since independence; many rightly expected…

India is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic. It ranks just behind the US and Brazil in confirmed cases and is growing faster than either. The total rose 20% in just the last week, despite the fact that India is testing less than most of its peers. It’s looking increasingly…

The United Nations is currently forecasting that India will overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2027. India and Nigeria are estimated to add 470 million people over the next three decades – nearly a quarter of the world's population will grow by 2050. However, a new study from…