#India's recent #FTAs increasingly include provisions on MSMEs, #gender, and sustainable development. This brief by @sunaina_kumar & @soumyabh_swears examines how far these provisions translate into gains for smaller firms and women. or-f.org/40460

Smallholder #farmers are where most #agribusiness Scope 3 emissions begin. Treating them as partners rather than a supply risk is the most direct route up the S3PI ranking: @BardhanArya, @shoba_suri, Nitin Rao, Kritika Banerjee, Sjoerd Panhuysen, & Sumit Roy. Read the full report 👉 or-f.org/40658 #Scope3 #NetZero #ESG

#EconomicDiplomacy cannot compensate for a weak business environment. For investors, transparent policymaking, reliable infrastructure, lower logistics costs and easy access to land and electricity remain more fundamental than outreach alone: @AVIRAL96 or-f.org/40198 #India

For #WestBengal, export growth depends less on broad incentives and more on targeted interventions—from testing and certification to cold-chain infrastructure, technology upgrading and border facilitation—that reduce costs that individual firms, especially #MSMEs, cannot bear alone: @BardhanArya or-f.org/39848 #IndustrialPolicy #Trade #Exports

#India’s 7.8% GDP growth in Q1 2026-27 confirms strong momentum. But #GDP measures the flow of output, not the stock of assets beneath it. Inclusive wealth asks whether produced, human, and natural capital are growing with the economy: @soumyabh_swears or-f.org/40340

Women-led firms are more likely to participate in global value chains than male-led firms, yet they remain smaller, undercapitalised and concentrated in low-technology production. As Asian manufacturing upgrades, access to credit—not market access—will decide whether inclusion endures: @soumyabh_swears or-f.org/39802 #GlobalValueChains #WomenInBusiness

#BRICS 3.0 could shift the focus from alternative payments to interoperability across #finance, digital systems, technology, manufacturing, and connectivity — expanding economic choices without replacing one form of dependence with another: @DrNilanjanG or-f.org/40543 #GlobalSouth

#India's SEEDS initiative in the #Caribbean and #LatinAmerica signals an important shift in South-South cooperation: leveraging technical expertise, local adaptation, and small-scale agro-processing infrastructure to deliver tangible developmental outcomes. In an era of shrinking aid flows, modest grants may carry outsized strategic and developmental value: @sunaina_kumar or-f.org/39524 #GlobalSouth #FoodSecurity

#WestBengal’s exports operate through a neighbourhood gateway serving #Bangladesh, #Nepal and #Bhutan, and a global niche economy built around products such as jewellery, tea, leather and marine goods. Each requires different public goods, making a one-size-fits-all export policy ineffective: @BardhanArya or-f.org/39848#Exports #TradePolicy #India

The most consequential outcome of the Modi-Takaichi summit may be the least reported: an exchange of letters between the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) and Japan’s Financial Services Agency on regulation, supervision and FinTech. #Japan’s #India story is turning financial: @soumyabh_swears or-f.org/39865

#India’s data-centre capacity is expanding rapidly, but much of it is concentrated in water-stressed cities. The policy challenge is to make #water efficiency, location and resource costs integral to digital infrastructure planning: @DrNilanjanG & Khush Advani or-f.org/40044 #DataCentres

Indian states are increasingly competing for foreign investment, creating a healthier investment environment by making governments more proactive and responsive to investor concerns. Competition can improve the proposition offered to global businesses: @AVIRAL96 or-f.org/40198 #Investment #India

India’s GCC sector now spans 2,117 centres, 2.36 million professionals and US$98.4 billion in revenue. Yet AI could decouple revenue growth from job creation, weakening one of India’s few large-scale pipelines into formal, high-productivity work: @BardhanArya & Siddharth Joshi or-f.org/39399 #AI #IndiaEconomy

#BRICS 3.0 could shift the focus from alternative payments to interoperability across #finance, digital systems, technology, manufacturing, and connectivity — expanding economic choices without replacing one form of dependence with another: @DrNilanjanG or-f.org/40543 #GlobalSouth

#WestBengal’s FY2026–27 Budget rightly recognises the importance of legacy industrial clusters. The bigger policy challenge now is ensuring support translates into technology adoption, market integration, and long-term competitiveness—not just financial assistance: Kumkum Mohata or-f.org/39688 #IndustrialPolicy

#India-#UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (#CETA) removes duties on nearly all Indian exports, but MSMEs have historically used FTAs far less than firms in developed economies. The deal’s value will depend on whether smaller exporters can actually use its provisions: Kumkum Mohata & Damayantee Majumdar or-f.org/39860

Two very different futures for #AI's gains: a competitive market that spreads productivity gains widely, or an oligopoly that prices by the value of the human labour it replaces — capturing the surplus instead of sharing it. Which one wins is a policy choice, not a technological inevitability: @BardhanArya or-f.org/39875 #Economy #Employment

#India’s next growth challenge is not simply creating more economic output, but ensuring it translates into wider opportunity. Stronger state capacity, productive employment, skills, and public services will determine whether growth delivers upward mobility for millions of households: Manish Vaidya & Kumkum Mohata or-f.org/40166 #IndianEconomy #ViksitBharat2047

#Sugar prices could have been ₹7-12/kg lower, and mills still profitable, had India opened its borders instead of imposing a 100 percent tariff—a policy that moved money from consumers to stockholders: @BardhanArya or-f.org/40355#SugarPrices #Agriculture

For developing economies, diversification is ultimately about expanding choice: more currencies, payment channels, sources of finance, trade routes, and economic partners. #BRICS 3.0 could test whether that optionality can become durable interoperability: @DrNilanjanG or-f.org/40543 #GlobalSouth