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Showing posts from April, 2025

Emigration Is (Not) Bad: Rethinking the Debate

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The Ministry of External Affairs, in a question to the Rajya Sabha, gave a response that over 2 lakh Indians gave up their citizenship in 2024. Since 2022, every year, this is the figure of number of Indians giving up Indian citizenship. The past two to three years in India have seen extensive talk about the number of people moving out and relinquishing their citizenship. People also give a very catchy term for that- "Brain Drain", where intelligent and well-qualified citizens are leaving the country for opportunities elsewhere. Then there is the argument of demographic change, where regions are seeing young people leave for green pastures and old people remain with no one to take care of them. All of them are true and valid points, but there is another side of the debate which we often ignore and miss.  The causes of migration can be broadly categorised as push and pull factors. Only if both of them work together, mass migration usually happen. As we have already discussed m...

Free-Trade is (not) just about economics

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The Trump Administration's new tariff policy has been in discussion for some time now. Starting from his campaign season, he has been harshly talking about imposing reciprocal tariffs with the US's major trading partners. Well, everything that Trump has been talking about tariffs only since last year, right? Not so. Trump made tariffs a central policy even in his 2016 election campaign, and the US entered a trade war with China, which lasted even during the Biden Administration. To our shock, Biden didn't remove most of the tariffs that were imposed by the Trump administration. In addition, Biden continued to keep them as well as continue to impose tariffs on aluminium, steel and 200% on Chinese EVs. Now, you can see there is a small affinity for tariffs not only in the US but around the world.  Let us not deny the fact that we are all beneficiaries of free trade. We are taught pure economics in school but not international political economy. Hence, our understanding of eco...

News Capsule For The Month of March 2025

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  Following are the top news for the month.   If you wish to follow and get notifications of future articles, you can sign up using the email on the left sidebar.  Article of the month Kerala  Kerala state budget presented in the state assembly.  CPIM's state meeting ends in Kollam with a strict change of ideology.  An elephant goes on a rampage in a temple festival.  CASA says it will enter electoral politics in Kerala.  Six were arrested in an Aluva drug bust. Kochi Metro has yet to fix the Kaloor Stadium glitch. A Kerala cop was caught red-handed while taking a bribe for passport verification.  Rites Ltd emerges as the sole bidder for Phase III Kochi metro line.  Director of Empuraan film 📽 Prithviraj says he'll be making 17 voluntary edits to the film after the backlash.  BJP has nominated former minister and technocrat Rajeev Chandrashekhar for the post of State President ahead of local elections this year and State elect...