Author Archives: Dr. Samir Saran

India, Writing

Growth story powered by indigenous engines

In the 1980s, a young India was being excited against older nation-states. In the 2020s, an ancient civilisation is leading the way in forging a new consensus

The year 2025 might well go down in Indian economic history alongside 1991 as a year that marks a decisive break with the past. These were both years that accelerated our intent, ambition, and execution as a nation. But, if in 1991, the initial burst of economic reform was driven by recognition of a balance of payments crisis, the 2025 reforms have been driven by understanding a balance of power opportunity. And this burst of reform, even more than those before, reflects how India’s leadership at the highest level — particularly Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself — understands the way that growth is nurtured in this evolving, fragmented world.

By creating a political and geo-economic challenge, Donald Trump invited the Modi of the past to reappear: The political and economic revolutionary who thrives by confronting stale orthodoxy and refuses to outsource national destiny. By revealing international relationships as nakedly transactional, the US president reminded New Delhi of one basic truth: Nobody is going to celebrate India’s rise. In a progress-starved global economy, growth is not shared. Instead, growth is competed for, hoarded, weaponised. We might have been lulled into thinking, for a time, that growth would emerge from partnerships. But Modi has correctly identified that growth is DIY: We must do it for ourselves — and keep doing it. It must be incubated, nourished, and sustained domestically, like a household plant that needs constant watering, or a steel plant that can never be shut down. Global relationships matter, but the West is neither enemy nor saviour. It is simply a partner whose errant ways must be moderated through calm engagement.

In the 1980s, a young India was being excited against older nation-states. But, in the 2020s, an ancient civilisation is leading the way in forging a new consensus, through example rather than exhortation. This is what it means to be Bharat. Growth is the greatest, best example we can set for the world. And that is what Modi has given us in this year of reform on steroids: The building blocks of decades of growth.

Perhaps, the most consequential of these is the pushing through of the four labour codes. This is the biggest factor-market structural reset since the 1990s. Today’s India has finally understood the support businesses need to help us become a developed nation. Rules have been cut by three-quarters, reporting forms by 60%, and registers for returns by 90%. More than 60 million enterprises will benefit — five times the footprint even of GST.

But GST itself has been reshaped: Two slabs eliminated, compliance simplified. Lower tax enabled quarters of euphoric growth — but, even more importantly, the fatigue felt by small businesses was addressed. Reform is not just a one-off event, an initial investment; it requires maintenance, continual recalibration in response to lived reality, and attentive leadership.

Tax cuts are, in fact, stimulus by stealth. When Union Budget 2025 raised the cut-off for income tax exemption to ₹1,00,000 a month, Modi showed that the creation of an Indian middle class requires its protection from government — not just from extortionary taxes but from unnecessary harassment and criminalisation. The Unified Securities Market Code, the Jan Vishwas 2.0 Bill, and the new Income Tax Act show that clarity rather than coercion is the cornerstone of India’s emerging State.

Finally, in December, three reforms signal the strategic confidence that Bharat now has. In the past, a divided polity twisted itself into knots about foreign participation in sectors such as insurance and nuclear energy. Those days are gone. Without fuss or fanfare, nuclear power and insurance were opened to private participation, their legal framework modernised and brought into line with global norms, and our clean energy ambitions restated.

Each of these reforms is individually significant. Taken together, they are revolutionary. Modi is doing nationally what he once did in Gujarat, what he did later with Digital India and the GST — taking big bets and forcing an ossified state machinery into movement through sheer willpower. No longer will anyone pretend that external benevolence can carry India forward. The engines and energy that propel us will be indigenous.

Throughout 2025, unforeseen challenges arose abroad. But Modi’s response was domestic energy, domestic focus, domestic reform. Before restructuring its partnership with the world, India must rewrite its contract with itself. This is the time to write India’s future, and Indians will do it.

Source: Originally appeared in Hindustan Times

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Artificial Intelligence, India, Writing

Beyond Chips, Data Centres Lies India’s Ai Opportunity

As the world leaves the Compute Era and enters the Diffusion Era, India – its companies, its institutions and governments – must ask three questions

The world is competing over AI. But this will not remain merely a race towards a smaller chip, a larger data centre, or a faster model. The winner will be determined by those who turn innovation into impact and convert technological advances into product value, institutional capacity and community trust. Power in this era will flow not only to those who own algorithms or command fields of silicon, but also to those who find ways to weave AI into daily life at the national or continental scale.

Three distinct processes and evolutions compose this AI age. The first is the Compute Era, in which chip supply chains and hyperscale data centres determine market share. It tilts towards those with capital, energy and traditional resources such as land and water. The second is the Diffusion Era, where nations with population-scale digital platforms and deep real-economy deployment shape how and where value is created, captured, and compounded. The third is the Governance Era, in which sovereign power and political legitimacy — as well as geopolitical leverage — pick winners among AI systems.

As talk of overinvestment in data centres and supporting facilities grows, we may see the peaking of the Compute Era. Computational resources will become a utility — invested in like legacy utilities, priced like them, and regulated like them. Such a path has been followed many times: The introduction of a new technology, a boom period of sensation and overinvestment, followed by an overhang in which the physical, corporate and human-capital remnants of the boom are transformed into core infrastructure for broader innovation and growth.

What you do with compute infrastructure is what will create value in the Diffusion Era. Nations like India — experienced at adopting and adapting technology at scale — will have a natural advantage. The benefits of compute as a utility will flow to those who can build applications that create value for the greatest number. Trust will be the key. Success will depend upon how effectively kinship and trust can be nurtured, and how much value a community sees in a product. LLMs will have to localise. Large models are trained on the Common Crawl, which over-represents Western data and misrepresents the cultural context of countries like India. The Diffusion Era will seek to correct that. New winners will emerge from within communities. Beyond the horizon lies the Governance Era. Governments will respond to the Diffusion Era by guarding data sovereignty more zealously than they have hitherto. They will seek to control the utilities left over from the Compute Era, and intervene in the competitive dynamics of the Diffusion Era. Such a return to sovereign power is almost inevitable for a boom-bust-diffusion technology.

As the world leaves the Compute Era and enters the Diffusion Era, India — its companies, its institutions and governments — must ask three questions.

First, can Indian companies take the necessary risks? Do they have the capability to bet on an unknown future? Smaller enterprises have demonstrated they have the entrepreneurial nous to do so. But will the broader private sector be able to seize the benefits of the Diffusion Era? It will require a change in mindset, in corporate governance, and risk appetite.

Second, can Indian institutions and finance find, energise and incentivise capital to create systems that can bet on unknowns and undiscovered innovations? Can we ensure that patient capital emerges from India and the world that can support and develop infrastructure at a utility scale?

And can the government create a world-beating regulatory structure that blends private profit and public good — like, for example, the Digital Public Infrastructure model? Can it protect individual rights and digital sovereignty without stifling entrepreneurial fever? Can we build an India-specific AI architecture that sits comfortably within and atop a global AI system?

If India can answer these three questions, it will dominate the threefold era of AI. Let’s build compute infrastructure, unleash entrepreneurial communities, and create supportive regulation.

Source: Originally Appeared in Indian Express

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Global Governance, international affairs, multilateralism, Multipolar World, Writing

Annual Trends Report : Beyond Global Polarization: New Cooperation Wanted

Foreword by Karim El Aynaoui, Paolo Magri, Samir Saran

In 2025, the global landscape became increasingly fragmented and uncertain. Great power competition intensified, regional conflicts became protracted and exacerbated, while economic nationalism reshaped the rules of trade and development. The mechanisms for conflict resolution and cooperation that have long provided a foundation for international cooperation are now under strain due to polarization and mistrust. Even longstanding alliances, bilateral and collective security architectures at the core of international security system have not escaped these changes. While some attribute these trends to the emergence of a multipolar world order, there is no consensus whether such a transformation is occurring or on the causal link. There is agreement only on the notion that the world is moving beyond the post-cold war order and that, eighty years after the creation of the UN, institutional reform is overdue.

Yet while these challenges and the erosion of traditional mechanisms of cooperation understandably dominate the attention of the public, policymakers and the expert community, they do not tell the whole story. Amidst polarization, unilateral policies and growing calls by political leaders to adopt inward-looking policies, new and pragmatic forms of cooperation are emerging. By keeping sight of the shared interest in coordinating responses to global challenges, these efforts are, in effect, transcending some of the existing divides between nations of the North and the South. They therefore might merit recognition and sustained support, not only for their potential transformative impact but also for the message they convey: that alternative pathways are possible! It is the ultimate acknowledgement that living in a world where an increasing diversity of political, economic, and social models coexists and where differing visions of governance and development are put forward comes with difficulties. Yet this very reality also offers a great opportunity: plurality is key to finding appropriate responses to emerging challenges.

It is in that spirit that leaders and experts from over 100 countries convened in February 2025 for the AI Action Summit. The summit highlighted innovation, real-world applications, and economic prospects of AI, while also addressing wider risks. The signing by 58 nations, including Morocco, India and Italy, and various international organizations of the Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet demonstrates that a core group of countries willing to mutualize their efforts is emerging.

On the war in Gaza, the High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and Implementation of the Two-State Solution, held in July, showed that many nations were eager to move past the deadlock in the UN Security Council and take collective action to end the war and discuss the contours of a comprehensive peace plan for the region, before the Gaza Peace Plan was signed by the parties and endorsed by the UN Security Council in early October. The New York Declaration, which is the outcome document of the July conference, was endorsed by 142 nations when they voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution backing the document. This stands as a reminder that coalitions can be formed across traditional divides. It is also a testament that when political will converges, pragmatic partnerships can emerge that transcend national interests, regional rivalries, or historical grievances. Unfortunately, at the moment a similar convergence has not yet fully materialized on the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Similarly, on the economic front, at a time when protectionism and economic nationalism seem to dominate the global narrative, it is important to recognize that new avenues for economic cooperation are also developing, as is the case for the Future of Investment and Trade Partnership (FITP), which brings together 14 small and medium-sized economies to support open and rules-based global trade. In sum, these efforts matter not only because they push back against the perception of an inevitable slide into isolationism or polarization into opposite camps at the international level, but also because they concretely demonstrate that pragmatic alliances that include diverse nations are still possible. Even when they operate outside traditional frameworks, such initiatives serve the broader global public interest by keeping channels of cooperation open. What stands out in these initiatives is the imagination behind them: a willingness to adapt, to experiment, and to work together in spite of differences. They reflect a simple truth: the challenges we face are shared, and the responses will only be effective if they are coordinated.

This belief is at the heart of the partnership between the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS, Morocco), the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF, India). Our three institutions coordinate a partnership that extends across regions, disciplines, and perspectives. The tripartite initiative that we launched in 2023 frames our strategic deliberations and engagement. It is an avenue for over 400 experts from three continents to meet, exchange, conduct research, and disseminate findings and cross-perspectives. One of the outputs of this joint research, the Annual Trends report, today in its third edition, seeks to provide a forward-looking analysis of global developments, to highlight areas where cooperation is possible, and to contribute ideas for a more inclusive and resilient international order.

This edition explores five key areas: global governance, security, the economy and development, energy and climate, and new technologies and the digital transition, underscoring that in a polarized world where blame and scapegoating consume valuable time, genuine progress depends on constructive engagement that brings together willing partners across regions to move beyond confrontation and build practical paths toward cooperation.

At the same time, even as new initiatives and partnerships take shape, this should not lead us to abandon the frameworks that have long underpinned international cooperation. Reforms are necessary, but they must not serve as an excuse to neglect the preservation of global public goods. These institutions remain the pillars that make cooperation possible, and investing in them is essential if we are to turn shared challenges into shared solutions.

Read the volume here.

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