As rising seas, extreme weather, and environmental degradation displace millions, international law remains tethered to outdated definitions of persecution. This paper examines the legal vacuum confronting climate refugees and the urgent need for a more inclusive and equitable global protection framework.
Education inflation in India burdens middle-class households, eroding affordability and widening the income-expenditure gap. Rising tuition fees, weak regulation, and shadow education costs intensify debt dependency, threatening sustainable access to quality education without strong policy intervention.
Why do religions that look so alike produce such different political outcomes across Southeast Asia? This paper argues that religion is never a fixed force, it is a “strategic grammar”: a shared vocabulary of belonging, legitimacy and threat that leaders draw on selectively, shaped by history, institutions and regional norms. The same tradition can justify exclusion in one state and negotiation in another, revealing religion not as destiny, but as a language leaders learn to speak differently.
This paper examines the causal architecture of the ongoing West Asia conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, and its cascading effects on global energy markets and India’s energy security. With crude oil import dependency reaching nearly 89 percent in FY 2023–24, India remains acutely vulnerable to disruptions along the Strait of Hormuz. The paper argues that the resulting LPG supply shock stems from calculated escalation rooted in four interlocking causes: Iran’s contested nuclear ambitions, the collapse of the JCPOA, militarization dynamics seen in the Twelve-Day War, and the theoretical relationship between petrostates and militarized interstate disputes — situating India’s predicament within a condition of “dual energy dependency.”
The 2026 West Asia crisis exposed the structural limits of strategic autonomy in a formally multipolar world. Through the lens of energy dependence, chokepoint politics and financial hegemony, this paper argues that Global South vulnerabilities stem not from policy failures but from the architecture of the international energy order.
This paper examines India’s export potential in the context of the changing global trade landscape shaped by the “China Plus One” strategy and global supply chain diversification. It aims to evaluate whether India possesses the structural, institutional, and policy capacity to emerge as a competitive manufacturing alternative to China by analysing export trends, policy initiatives, logistics, and integration into global value chains. Using a mixed-method approach and a comparative case study of Vietnam, the study finds that while India has made sector-specific gains, particularly in electronics and pharmaceuticals, persistent structural constraints continue to limit broad-based manufacturing competitiveness and export-led growth.
Author: Sujal Kumar Poddar, Aasvi Kedia, Ditti Baid, Suryansh Pratap Singh ABSTRACT This study investigates the structural and economic disconnect between India’s municipal waste management ambitions and the lived realities of the informal waste workers who form the actual backbone of the country’s recycling ecosystem. While modern policy frameworks, exemplified by the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) guidelines of 2022 and urban clean-city campaigns, promote a highly formalized, capital-intensive vision of the circular economy, they systematically marginalize the informal sector, which handles 60% to 70% of urban recyclable waste. Utilizing primary survey data collected from 110 informal waste workers across Indian urban clusters, this paper analyzes the micro-economic constraints, behavioral realities, and institutional dynamics that govern waste worker decision-making. The empirical findings indicate that waste workers are not inherently unaligned with environmental sustainability; rather, their practices are strictly bounded by severe financial precarity, high transaction costs, and systemic institutional exclusion. Descriptive and cross-tabulation analyses demonstrate that over 57% of surveyed workers earn less than ₹10,000 per month, and 81.8% experience high financial instability, leaving them with zero economic margin to absorb the costs of enhanced segregation or safety compliance. Furthermore, the existing fiscal framework, such as an 18% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on recyclable scrap, drives transactions into untaxed, informal cash networks, penalizing formalization. This paper argues that India’s circular economy cannot succeed through top-down corporate monopolization. Instead, sustainable waste management requires an incentive-compatible policy framework that restructures fiscal policies, enforces informal cooperative sourcing quotas within EPR, provides micro-level neighborhood infrastructure, and leverages municipal co-management models to elevate informal workers into recognized green-collar professionals.
Authors: Dhriti Jade¹ ,Rajni Kumari² , Kiya Kamdar³ ABSTRACT This study delves into the contemporary workings of patriarchy, and exposes how dynamic and resilient it continues to be as it navigates through social and cultural contexts today. Patriarchy has diversified into countless social structures, cultural environments, and individual encounters. The patriarchal order not only perpetuates a division between the genders based on claimed superiority and hierarchy, fostering inequality in our private and public lives but is also constantly reinvented through everyday actions, cultural norms and institutional practices which allow it to remain prominent within our modern lives. It explores how patriarchal notions are entrenched, subtly reproduced, and negotiated on an everyday basis within society. We contest that the traditional yardstick to measure patriarchy has become archaic. Within this larger context, the study will explore the manifestation of this system via social media as a contemporary space where patriarchal notions are reproduced and simultaneously challenged. While such platforms do provide avenues for feminist conversations, organizing, and representation of minority narratives, it is also true that dissemination of gender stereotypes, discriminatory attitudes and harassment continue to be facilitated on the internet through algorithms and digital practices. Ultimately, the need for digital literacy and a greater degree of accountability on the part of the institutions will be discussed in order to effectively confront the complex workings of patriarchy.
Authors: Ankit Raj , Japho Esther Rani ABSTRACT India is heavily dependent on energy imports, leaving its macroeconomic stability sensitive to global fuel supply shocks and price volatility. The analysis of this paper explains the impact of international oil price fluctuations in low-income households through direct price pass-through, fiscal policy interventions, and indirect inflationary trends. Incorporating unit-level data from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022–23 and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2022–23, this study analyzes household consumption adjustments and the distributional incidence of fuel subsidies across rural and urban income cohorts between 2019 and 2023. Bivariate and descriptive analysis reveal an extreme spending polarization: while fuel budget shares remain rigid across all income levels, the poorest rural households devote nearly 60% of their monthly budgets to food security, leaving them zero financial buffer during oil shocks. Furthermore, the findings expose a distinct pro-rich bias in the absolute delivery of fuel interventions, where wealthy urban households capture up to ₹2,540.8 in annual subsidy benefits compared to just ₹635.2 captured by the rural poor. that universal fuel subsidies are failing to protect vulnerable populations and recommend transitioning toward targeted Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) and progressive subsidy reduction mechanisms.
Author: Keertana Deepak | St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai | Email: keertanadeepak@gmail.comABSTRACT This research examines the structural transformation of India’s education sector from 1999 to 2025, focusing on the nexus between privatization, escalating costs, and labor market outcomes. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study finds a significant paradox: while primary private enrollment tripled to 45% and gender parity was achieved in secondary schooling, the qualitative dividend remains constrained. Econometric analysis reveals that while privatization correlates with higher test scores, it imposes severe affordability thresholds that limit advanced attainment for low-income households. Furthermore, a persistent education-employment mismatch results in high unemployment and a 7% wage penalty for overeducated workers, particularly women. The findings suggest that unchecked marketization has transitioned the system from an engine of mobility into a mechanism for reproducing privilege. We advocate for a shift toward outcome-oriented policies, rigorous private sector regulation, and reaching the 6% GDP public spending benchmark to secure India’s demographic dividend.