Brahmins and Ashraafs not only set the rules for social climbing but also imposed rigid categories on the masses through their proximity to British power.
From Kautilya’s Arthashastra to Mughal policies and British non-intervention, India’s response to supply shocks has long been defined by the role of the state.
When the British replaced Persian with English as the administrative language in 1837, they uprooted a seven-century tradition that had become, in every sense, Indian.
The relationship between Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent was built over five centuries by people who were entrepreneurial, mobile, literate, and commercially connected.
From the inception of Indian statecraft, political theorists were aware of the dangers of corruption. Arthashastra recommends that all senior officials be tested by secret agents.
Temples, military labour markets, and land-grant regimes structured medieval caste hierarchies. Today, access to education, employment, bureaucratic categories, and media platforms do.
As early states developed in the Iranian plateau and northern India, ideas continued to circulate between the steppe and the settlements of the Iranian plateau and the Punjab plains.
Migration in North India isn’t just due to lack of development today. It was shaped by the evolution of labour markets under Sher Shah, Mughals, and the East India Company.
Electoral competition now appears dominated by welfare delivery and governance metrics, but ideology has not disappeared in Tamil Nadu. Instead, it has become strategic.
India’s fast-growing data centre sector may strain state electricity networks; Central Electricity Authority has urged Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu to boost capacity.
On lessons from the ongoing West Asia conflict, he says that while US had superior technology and strike capability, Iran used geography to its advantage.
China patiently invested capital, skill and technology in coal gasification. Unlike it, we won’t move from words to action. As crude prices decline, we lose interest.
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