Prasad Dixit

India’s colonial hangover cannot be vanquished until its democratic institutions relearn how to govern themselves. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent invocation of the need to defeat the “Macaulay mindset” has stirred a familiar fault line in India’s public life. Almost at once, the debate collapsed into its usual trenches: the dominance of English, the legacy of colonial education and the supposed invasion of foreign culture. These are easy targets, and comforting ones. They suggest that...

India’s electorate is maturing faster than its political class, leaving parties trapped in outdated assumptions about caste, freebies and grievance. Are political parties keeping pace with the citizens they seek to woo? As the dust settles after the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) emphatic win in Bihar, the familiar ritual of parties, pundits and psephologists rummaging through their usual toolkit of explanations has begun. The familiar debates and arguments of pro-incumbency or...

Partisan shouting matches over growth, GST, and reforms drown out the nuanced discussion India’s economy sorely needs. For much of modern history, the economy has been too important to be left to economists—and too complicated to be left to politicians. That uneasy truth is being tested again. From Washington to New Delhi, the state of the economy has become the prime theatre of political combat. Since America’s “Make America Great Again” era ushered in a new age of tariffs and economic...