INDIA
Analyst
Radhika Pandey
Senior Fellow, National Institute for Public Finance and PolicyDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Sailing into a stormy world
INDIA · Report · 07 Apr 2025
The India-US goods trade is not very large, and while the 26% tariff will of course hurt, the damage in and of itself is relatively modest. The really important questions lie beyond. A recession in the US and difficulties in the world economy will weigh upon Indian growth. If the trade war get...
An Indian view on "Liberation Day"
INDIA · Report · 26 Mar 2025
"Liberation Day", April 2, the day when US President Trump is set to unveil his Tariff Plan, is drawing nearer, and not much is known about what will happen. The scenario for India is likely to involve some tariff cuts, some degradation of market access into the US, and some harm to India’s WTO ...
Review of the economy: sustained difficulties with growth
INDIA · Report · 24 Mar 2025
We assemble an array of methods to obtain insights into the state of the economy. These suggest sustained difficulties with growth in the post-pandemic period. Revenue growth for large firms is near zero in real terms. Goods export growth is near zero when expressed in nominal USD. Services ex...
The problem of the exchange rate
INDIA · Report · 21 Jan 2025
In late 2022, the INR moved to a highly managed exchange rate regime, with low volatility and (most likely) an attempt at a strong rupee. Such actions are inconsistent with the new inflation-targeting regime. They are likely to have reflected the consensus between the previous RBI governor and th...
Industrial policy, again
INDIA · Report · 04 Dec 2024
In recent years, there has been a new rise of industrial policy. This has taken multiple forms, such as granting large subsidies, raising protectionist barriers, and providing production-linked incentives in certain sectors. There is also a growing emphasis on backing domestic national champions'...
The new ways of services exports
INDIA · Report · 01 Oct 2024
The most important success of the Indian economy lies in IT and in a wide array of services exports enabled by IT. This field began with global firms contracting out to specialized IT services firms that had specialized abilities in operating in India. There is now an increasing shift to "Global ...
A review of the economy as the BJP begins its third term
INDIA · Report · 24 Jul 2024
The BJP has begun its third term, and this is a good time to review the overall state of the economy. There are important debates taking place, with concerns about measurement of GDP and employment as seen in the official data. We are able to pull together an internally consistent picture drawing...
Parsing the general elections
INDIA · Report · 04 Jun 2024
The BJP was expected to solidly win the elections. They have emerged as the largest single party but with a modest showing. They are about 30 to 40 seats short of a majority coalition. These results give new life to opposition parties. The successful coalition, which is likely to be led by BJP, w...
A new phase in the exchange rate regime
INDIA · Report · 30 May 2024
The INR exchange rate regime shifted into reduced flexibility in 2014. It is now possible to look back at the period from October 2022, and we see a new phase, with a tightly managed exchange rate and an almost fixed USD/INR exchange rate. It is not fully clear how this was implemented. The reduc...