Sustainable Finance & Emerging Markets Strategist. Analysing capital flows, macroeconomic policy, geoeconomics & Global South dynamics.
New Delhi | Manila | Hong Kong
Joined May 2010
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Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
The Gita has been a good guide — do your duty without regard to the outcome and with no expectation of reward. I have tried to live like that and while I have very few titles or positions to point to, I have been true to myself and, I hope, to my dharma.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Govt of India: Builders come back
What they offer: Endless red tape, statuary auditors required for tiny startups, board meetings and resolutions, mandatory unfunded maternity liability, more red tape if you happen to earn Forex for the country. Hanging threat of more quotas.
The guarantee: Unease of business.
The flex: "we've reformed." @sanjeevsanyal
A mind does its finest work when the place around it stops getting in the way. Reliable roads, clean air, fast permit office, capital within reach, and better quality of life in general.
San Francisco has offered builders that bargain for decades. Shenzhen remarkably assembled its own version in recent years. The two cities share little politically, yet both understood that the inventor is an asset worth housing well.
India has treated its true elite, the meritorious, with something close to apathy. We applaud them when they succeed abroad and obstruct them when they try at home.
Bengaluru was our one serious contender. It had the talent, the institutions and the early capital. What it received was cratered roads, punishing commutes, flooded streets every monsoon and recurring bouts of hooliganism. Few cities have squandered a head start so thoroughly.
So the young founders leave. Every year I watch more of them settle in SF, and the companies that might have been ours, some now worth billions, leave with them.
I just heard Piyush Goyal urge Indian researchers and innovators abroad to come back and build. On what terms, exactly? What is the government prepared to offer? Not one Indian city today can match the quality of life a returning scientist gives up.
Nearly eight decades after Independence, we have not managed to build even a couple of genuinely liveable cities with sound infrastructure and a working ecosystem. That failure deserves a serious thought.
A mind does its finest work when the place around it stops getting in the way. Reliable roads, clean air, fast permit office, capital within reach, and better quality of life in general.
San Francisco has offered builders that bargain for decades. Shenzhen remarkably assembled its own version in recent years. The two cities share little politically, yet both understood that the inventor is an asset worth housing well.
India has treated its true elite, the meritorious, with something close to apathy. We applaud them when they succeed abroad and obstruct them when they try at home.
Bengaluru was our one serious contender. It had the talent, the institutions and the early capital. What it received was cratered roads, punishing commutes, flooded streets every monsoon and recurring bouts of hooliganism. Few cities have squandered a head start so thoroughly.
So the young founders leave. Every year I watch more of them settle in SF, and the companies that might have been ours, some now worth billions, leave with them.
I just heard Piyush Goyal urge Indian researchers and innovators abroad to come back and build. On what terms, exactly? What is the government prepared to offer? Not one Indian city today can match the quality of life a returning scientist gives up.
Nearly eight decades after Independence, we have not managed to build even a couple of genuinely liveable cities with sound infrastructure and a working ecosystem. That failure deserves a serious thought.
India suffers from what I call the ‘Exit Reflex’, the conditioned belief among its ablest minds that a serious career begins at the departure gate. It is no longer a choice made at the margin. For a large share of our top graduates from most elite institutions, it is the default plan.
I believe the cause for this is more institutional than cultural.
First, the state governs merit as a suspect rather than a strategic asset. A founder meets compliance, tax uncertainty and permission long before he meets encouragement.
Second, our cities have no real sovereigns. Municipal bodies lack fiscal and planning autonomy, so Bengaluru is run as an appendage of state politics rather than as an economic engine.
Third, we underinvest in discovery. India spends about 0.64% of GDP on research; China spends 2.43%.
Fourth, we have mistaken the diaspora for an export. We cite increasing remittances and overlook the capacity that left with them.
This matters far beyond start ups imo. A state that steadily exports its finest minds weakens its own capacity to govern, defend, invent and compete. The quality of a nation's human capital is a strategic asset and it deserves the vigilance we reserve for borders & reserves.
China understood this early. In 1987 barely 5% of its overseas students returned. By 2007 the figure was 30.6%; by 2018 it was nearly 80%. They built Shenzhen out of a special economic zone, then offered returning scientists laboratories, funding, housing and standing through programmes such as the Thousand Talents Plan. Returnees were treated as national assets and not as nostalgic visitors.
Until we build cities and institutions worth returning to, the Exit Reflex will remain our most expensive export.
In reality, most states are trapped in a race to outdo each other with freebies and doles, with little thought given to long term productivity & fiscal sustainability.
With AI poised to displace a significant share of the workforce sooner than we think, I wonder whether our political leadership has even begun preparing for what lies ahead.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
BREAKING: Dutch spies hacked Jared Kushner's iPhone and watched him access a Dubai bank account holding hundreds of millions funneled from Azerbaijan, part of at least $2 billion MBS and MBZ placed for him after he promised to push their agenda with Trump, per a Vanity Fair excerpt.
"Jared was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy. He promised MBZ that he'd push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund. He wanted normalization with Israel so that business could take off," a source who knew the arrangement said.
The money was meant to redraw the region's map and lock in normalization with Israel. Roughly $1 billion of it was deposited in Israel's Central Bank for Kushner, with Netanyahu requiring dual-key approval on any transfers.
The two royals initially discussed more than $10 billion for a shared slush fund. That narrowed to roughly $2 billion deposited into accounts Kushner could access, including roughly $750 million at First Abu Dhabi Bank under a UAE charity used as cover for covert operations.
The reveal comes as Kushner is deeply involved in Iran war diplomacy, where Iran has accused him and Steve Witkoff of pocketing $9 billion through market manipulation, using insider knowledge of the talks to trade oil futures, energy stocks, and prediction markets.
Expected better from a ‘rocket scientist’ than cheap name calling. You lost me at fangs, but I persevered out of courtesy.
Digging pits is not teaching a man to fish. It is paying him to stand near the pond. Drèze's failure is simple as he built a welfare architecture that measures success by how many people depend on the state, not by how many outgrow it. I don’t see a policy that never shrinks its own beneficiary list as empowerment.
That’s my assessment, you can have yours and worship that guy daily. So chill bro, no need to be this hyper.
The Sanghi Ecosystem has its "fangs out" whenever it hears the word "MGNREGA"
Forgetting that Modiji stopped this scheme to give direct cash transfer to people instead of jobs. MGNREGA was a "teach a man to fish" plan of UPA. But sadly, BJP created a system of endowments. Agriculture and Rural productivity went down over years. Infrastructure Projects which were called as capital investments and growth drivers, could have used MGNREGA as force multiplier.
But sadly, for our Armchair Economists. The growth of Adani-Ambanis and top 1% seems to be the only visible growth in India. While rest 90% of people survive below Rs 25,000 per month. And these people have not seen any real economic growth or development in last 12 years. We did achieve the miracle of getting 25 Crore people out of Poverty under Dr Manmohan Singh. But we failed to achieve a Chinese Miracle style next jump of these people onto middle class like post- Deng Xiaoping China. Modi and Sanyal Economics forced 10 Crore people back into poverty during COVID.
And this is where Jean Dreze style bottom up approach in Economics is important. Capability Approach is the only viable option if India wants to make that next great leap forward. And Jean Dreze is the foremost authority on Capability Approach in present times.
Well, chola warships were maritime assets that sailed, traded and projected power while leftist intellectual ‘rigour’ often drifts into uncharted waters of wishful theories that never quite dock in reality. Imagine @sanjeevsanyal did it as a side project, what a terrific guy!
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Thread on the allure of poverty porn
Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
That is how rational the argument should be. That last sentence sums up as far as how the these schemes work. Stop posting abusive and hate filled comments is plain stupid. If you have any arguments, you post.
A lot of people are hurling abuses and sending weird DMs over the Drezé tweet, as if I had exposed their own father for something. Bros, take a chill pill. I have nothing personal against the guy. My assessment is based on neutral observation & a study of poverty alleviation models across other parts of Asia.
I never thought people were so emotionally invested in a Belgian grifter. In that decade, China was leapfrogging us across almost every vertical while we were being governed by people like Drezé under Ms. Gandhi’s NAC. What a lost decade and what a braindead generation of leftist academia it sustained. Now, we have to spend decades cleaning up the mess as current incumbents also doubled down on populist net negative schemes.
And once again, my position is simple: every welfare scheme should be judged by one test only - does it reduce the number of people who need it?
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
An excellent take down of the poverty porn development economics peddled by the likes of Dreze and others. Do read.
Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.
A lot of people are hurling abuses and sending weird DMs over the Drezé tweet, as if I had exposed their own father for something. Bros, take a chill pill. I have nothing personal against the guy. My assessment is based on neutral observation & a study of poverty alleviation models across other parts of Asia.
I never thought people were so emotionally invested in a Belgian grifter. In that decade, China was leapfrogging us across almost every vertical while we were being governed by people like Drezé under Ms. Gandhi’s NAC. What a lost decade and what a braindead generation of leftist academia it sustained. Now, we have to spend decades cleaning up the mess as current incumbents also doubled down on populist net negative schemes.
And once again, my position is simple: every welfare scheme should be judged by one test only - does it reduce the number of people who need it?
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
//Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything.//
Brilliant takedown!
Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.
Three things:
1. MGNREGA is a failed programme orchestrated by the jholachap Dreze. It has deprived millions of their aspirations. In 2013–14, barely 9.6% of employed households completed the promised 100 days. If this is the grand success of a poverty alleviation model, i wonder what failure would look like.
2. You’re right, I never faced hardship for a single day in my life and I thank my stars for that. That’s why I want the lives of my countrymen to improve as well and not to be swindled by some poverty porn merchant for his ideological romanticism.
3. I have never hosted a single seminar in my life 😅
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Terrific takedown of Christi subvert and hocus-pocus ‘Socialist Economist’ Jean Dreze whose ‘economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything’.
Do Read:
Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Absolutely brilliant summation.
Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Drèze and his poverty porn explained:
Drèze’s influence peaked through the NAC, an unelected parallel power centre that drafted entitlement after entitlement while investment stalled, infrastructure slowed and policy paralysis set in. His framework treats the poor as permanent wards of the state, never as aspiring producers, traders or owners of capital. This is the core of poverty porn. It romanticises deprivation, rewards those who narrate it on conference stages & in foreign journals, and quietly depends on the poor remaining poor. A movement whose relevance requires misery cannot be trusted to end it. Such thinking is poison administered in the word salad.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
MNREGA was designed to keep India unproductive while being touted as a great humanitarian scheme.
It’s a tragedy that a so-called “right” party like BJP doubled down on socialist waste.
Drèze admirers larp a lot about MGNREGA. That tells you everything. If a two decade intellectual legacy rests on a scheme that paid people to dig gaddha one season and refill them the next, the legacy is weaker than its fans imagine.
MGNREGA was never a development programme. It was a consumption subsidy stupidly dressed as work. It created payrolls and negligible productivity. Its assets were notoriously flimsy, its leakages chronic and its own statutory promise of 100 days was never realised. Worse, it taught an entire rural generation that the state's highest aspiration for them was manual labour at subsistence wages.
Contrast China. Beijing moved its rural surplus labour into township enterprises, factories, ports and export corridors. They built capability that compounded without some jholachaap economist. We spent two decades paying for activity instead of building capacity, and called it a rights revolution.
Thankfully, parliament has now repealed the Act. Our poor never needed a perpetual shovel. We need to provide them more factory gates.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Not to mention the fact that his “food security bill” was a carbohydrate producer security bill. It would’ve served to increase malnutrition by ignoring vitamins, proteins etc. But it would’ve give him another contract to develop a bill to counter malnutrition he induced.
Drèze admirers larp a lot about MGNREGA. That tells you everything. If a two decade intellectual legacy rests on a scheme that paid people to dig gaddha one season and refill them the next, the legacy is weaker than its fans imagine.
MGNREGA was never a development programme. It was a consumption subsidy stupidly dressed as work. It created payrolls and negligible productivity. Its assets were notoriously flimsy, its leakages chronic and its own statutory promise of 100 days was never realised. Worse, it taught an entire rural generation that the state's highest aspiration for them was manual labour at subsistence wages.
Contrast China. Beijing moved its rural surplus labour into township enterprises, factories, ports and export corridors. They built capability that compounded without some jholachaap economist. We spent two decades paying for activity instead of building capacity, and called it a rights revolution.
Thankfully, parliament has now repealed the Act. Our poor never needed a perpetual shovel. We need to provide them more factory gates.
Shaurya Ritwik | शौर्य ऋत्विक retweeted
Jean Drèze and the con named socialist economics. Excellent thread 🧵
Seeing a lot of coordinated PR for Jean Drèze lately as he came out from his hibernation. Having spent years in international & development finance, I have met some of the sharpest minds in the field: sovereign negotiators, project financiers, central bankers and builders of real enterprises. One lesson is stone truth. Socialist economics survives not on evidence but on sentiment and on the comfort of never having to deliver anything. In India, that sentiment wears a jhola, celebrates scarcity as virtue & mistakes performative compassion for some great policy. It has made mediocrity respectable & us averse to higher ambitions in life. Jean Drèze is decorated practitioner of this mediocre game and his influence deserves scrutiny.