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Governance
How India is governed and how it could be governed better: institutions, development, tax, law and the state.
Blossomed, Not Assembled — Ancient Indian Wisdom Guide for Viksit Bharat
What can India's oldest texts teach a country racing to be developed by 2047? Not answers. Tests: what to borrow, what to keep, how to build rules that outlive their makers, who may use them, and what must never be spent.
6 days ago4 min read
Shade for People He Would Never Meet — What a developed India must never spend: its earth, its public roads and its institutions
A richer India could still be a poorer one. It could drain Punjab's water, let two apps crowd its payment rails and let its institutions quietly die. The last volume of Blossomed, Not Assembled names what a developed India must never spend.
7 days ago31 min read
Who May Drink From the Tank? — Mahad, the family and the langar, and the long opening of India's institutions
Most older Indians live with their children, and that is a real strength. The same homes, castes and temples also locked people out of water, land and food. Mahad and the langar show who opened them, and why care that forbids exit is not care.
7 days ago31 min read
A Boy, a Pot and Thirty Wards — How a Tamil village chose its leaders by lot, and rewrote its own rules in 921
In about 921, a Tamil village chose its committees by lot from a pot, barred men who hid their accounts, and then rewrote its own rules. The wall at Uttaramērūr does not prove ancient democracy. It shows something more useful, rules that were corrected.
Nov 529 min read
The Honey on the Tongue — What Kauṭilya knew about wealth, tax and temptation that a developed India still needs
Kauṭilya said no official can handle public money without tasting it. India's older texts give hard tests for what India still gets wrong: borrowing, freebies, a narrow tax base and prisons full of people awaiting trial.
Nov 534 min read
A Trophy, a Museum or a Weapon? — Why India should read its ancient wisdom like a laboratory notebook, not obey it like a command
India should not obey its ancient texts or ignore them. They cannot set a carbon price or run a central bank, but they give principles, questions and warnings, and their own teachers told students to keep the good and drop the rest.
Nov 541 min read
The School That Has Everything Except Learning — Why India cannot copy its way to Viksit Bharat, and the old Indian test for borrowing well
India cannot copy its way to Viksit Bharat. A copied school or regulator arrives without what made it work. An old Indian rule of debate gives a sharper test for borrowing, and India's own history shows the test both passed and failed.
Nov 538 min read
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