Attracting Japanese companies shifting out of China thus is consistent with Bangladesh’s Look East policy. To facilitate this a Special Economic Zone is being built, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

However, progress towards a USD 5 trillion economy has so far been elusive. The goalposts are also shifting. Even at the scorching pace likely in 2021-22, the economy will hit USD 5 trillion only in 2025-26, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

The massive and growing concentration of incomes is not good news for India's fragile social fabric as it can trigger a political backlash, writes N. Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

The upshot of an inward-looking regime is a diminishing extent of trade openness - a sharp contrast with the East Asian miracle economies that prospered with export-orientation, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

South Asia’s diverse topography lends itself to greater cross-border power trade, but political inhibitions have ensured that actual progress has been less than the potential, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

If contract farming is an idea whose time has come, it is necessary to ask why did it take off from 2002-03 and then sharply decline by 2011-12 in this vanguard agrarian state, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

The anger of these agitating farmers is yet another manifestation of the narrative of farmer distress that stalks the India growth story, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor 

On the face of it, exiting RCEP definitely represents a setback to India’s economic ambitions of engaging with the Indo-Pacific, including attracting supply chains away from China, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

Interestingly, the current focus on encouraging inland water transportation along the Ganges and Brahmaputra only reactivates defunct commercial arteries of yesteryear when inland waterways linked Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Bangladesh, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor

India’s timely help to the Maldives is not without detractors, especially the political opposition that has been protesting the presence of the Indian military, writes N Chandra Mohan for South Asia Monitor