Leonid Bershidsky: “The real breakthrough for crypto will only come if and when the world is unimaginable without it, as it was unimaginable without the internet back in 2004. Even 13 years after it all started, that sense of an irreversible technological revolution — one that would deserve the Web 3.0 label — still requires some technological leaps, even in areas where the blockchain has its obvious uses, such as payments or the creation of contracts. But the turning point will not come in the form of overwhelming statistical evidence, or as a single event, such as a major traditional investor’s conversion to the crypto creed or a major nation’s adoption of a blockchain-based currency. It’ll come as a feeling, a sense that Web 3.0 has changed the world so much that losing it would leave a scar. That sense is the biggest prize when it comes to technological revolutions.”
Anticipating the Unintended on India’s PLI programs: “Through the Phased Manufacturing Program (PMP), the government increases import duties on final consumer products such as mobiles, chargers etc. This leads to import substitution because products assembled in India (even with imported parts) start to become cost-comparable to the duty-levied imports. Every year, the government keeps adding new products to this PMP list, with the objective of increasing the number of final goods that are assembled in India. The final aim and hope is that these assembly units will become the nuclei for a complete manufacturing ecosystem over time…The costs of this strategy are being borne by two sets of Indians. The first losers are all consumers. Higher import duties mean that mobile phone prices have been increasing…Second, the Indian manufacturers themselves have been under the pump because of rising tariffs for mobile phone parts…Before copying the mobile phone policy success playbook in other sectors, we must remember that the burden of protectionist policies is borne by the consumers and eventually the manufacturers, both. Protectionism can play spoilsport in India’s hopes of exporting its electric vehicles and mobile phones to the world.”
Tripurdaman Singh: “Even while embracing Westminster-style democracy in form, India’s Constitution bent, twisted, and adapted its norms and techniques, creating something very different in substance: both unusual and hard to categorise. While many of these distinctions were indeed down to the impress of Nehru, it is important to note that these ideas were widely shared in the Constituent Assembly, including by Ambedkar and Patel. Even when expressed in the language and paradigm of a British constitutional legacy, India’s Constitution created an institutional structure and political culture that constitutes a typology of its own, distinct from Westminster. It was, to quote the constitutional historian Harshan Kumarasingham, an ‘Eastminster’ — the first of its kind.”
