Vikram Nehru

6 posts
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Six reasons for India to look east

Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment India’s recent growth deceleration highlights a simple truth: the reforms of the 1990s are no longer enough. While the current slowdown is partially cyclical, growth is unlikely to return to above 8 per cent per year without further reform. But India also has a golden opportunity to ‘look east’ and sustain high growth rates for years to come. The reform agenda is long and well understood — India needs to reform its trade, infrastructure, education and labour markets. What is needed now is the will to act.

Thailand’s rice policy gets sticky

With Europe threatening to push the global economy into yet another recession, one would think this would be a time for economies to batten down the hatches, build fiscal and foreign exchange buffers, and brace for the coming storm.Think again. Yingluck Shinawatra’s government recently introduced a new rice policy that will cause a haemorrhaging of Thailand’s public funds at a time when its economy desperately needs to improve its international competitiveness
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Myanmar’s Five Economic Priorities

Myanmar’s successful by-elections and Aung San Suu Kyi’s landslide victory deservedly captured the international headlines a fortnight ago. But those headlines overshadowed an equally pathbreaking economic development.
Vikram Nehru

Southeast Asia Fault Lines: Thailand’s Southern Provinces

Southeast Asia is often viewed as a dynamic region, home to several of Asia’s tiger economies. But look a bit closer, and the region is replete with internal tensions—some between countries, but most within countries.
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Rising tensions in the South China Sea

Tensions continue to rise in the South China Sea following the Obama administration’s foreign policy ‘pivot’ toward Asia late last year.There are many reasons for the pivot, but a principal motivation was to protect the freedom of navigation in the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea.
Most Southeast Asian economies are less well positioned to handle the economic uncertainties and surprises of 2012 than they were when the global financial crisis hit in 2008

Southeast Asia in 2012: Four Clouds and a Silver Lining

Some Chinese astrologers have pronounced that 2012, the year of the dragon, will be particularly volatile. But you don’t have to believe in the Chinese zodiac to know that Southeast Asia is likely to have a tumultuous year. Four potentially important trends and events could cast a cloud over the subregion—and there may be one particularly glittery silver lining.