NYTimes: “In one of the great scenes of one of the great gangster movies, Mike Newell’s “Donnie Brasco,” an aging Mafioso named Lefty Ruggiero paces a hospital corridor while his son fights for his life following a drug overdose. “Twenty-eight years, you can read it on his birth certificate: Bellevue Hospital,” Lefty, played by Al Pacino, tells Donnie, played by Johnny Depp, about his comatose son. “Now he’s back, in there, and I’m out here, worried to my death. And he’s asleep in there, same as 28 years ago, with the same expression. He’s made no progress.” It’s a line that could apply just as well to America’s policy debates.”
James Robinson: “Samuel Huntington, the political scientist, 35 years ago, showed that, if you look historically, democracy goes in waves. Countries democratize, sort of together, and then you get a reverse wave. When countries democratize, people expect the world. They think democracy will change their lives, transform society. But, democracy in a country with clientelistic politics and very weak state institutions, does not transform people’s societies, and people are disillusioned. And I think that disillusionment is common, whether it’s in the US, whether it’s in the Philippines, whether it’s in Brazil. And then people look for an alternative. And then all sorts of models come on to the table. Realistic models and unrealistic models.”
Nina Alag Suri: “Driverless cars navigate complex city streets. Autonomous warehouses orchestrate millions of packages. Algorithmic trading systems execute billions in transactions. And now, autonomous hiring systems are transforming how organizations find, assess, and select talent.”
Business Standard: “The deepening fault line of sub-national fiscal drift beneath India’s political economy is now hard to ignore. Evidence of competitive populism is mounting. Press reports put pre-election doles across eight states over the past two years at ₹67,928 crore. Significantly, women-centric schemes have become the new normal, often enabling the ruling party to defy anti-incumbency…A PRS report estimates that nine states cumulatively budgeted over ₹1 trillion in 2024–25 largely for unconditional cash transfers to women — an unprecedented scale of fiscal outlay tied directly to electoral cycles. Arguably, these commitments have blurred the line between welfare and political patronage, embedding populism in state finances. Development economics supports well-designed conditional transfers, especially to women. The issue is not cash transfers per se. It is their current architecture — being largely unconditional, universal, and effectively permanent — that creates enduring fiscal claims without efficiency gains, shifting states’ spending from productive investment to recurrent giveaways.”
Ruchir Sharma: “Many consumers are resisting, even turning back the digital revolution… The old is holding up surprisingly well against the new, thriving even. Technology may be evolving at an accelerating pace, but humans will not always rush to adopt the new, new thing. Having grown up in the physical world, many consumers still feel more comfortable with the traditional thing. In the US, the Harris Poll found two-thirds of respondents wished they could go back to a time before everyone was “plugged in”.”
