Independent writing on political economy, governance, inequality, and development.
India — the world's largest democracy and one of its most unequal societies — presents a compelling challenge to the assumption that democracy and redistribution go hand in hand. This essay examines how caste, class, and religion shape redistributive politics, drawing on Suryanarayan's status-threat framework, Ambedkar's theory of democracy, and post-2014 electoral data.
This essay proposes four original frameworks — the River Theory, the Empty Chair Theory, the Rotten Potato Theory, and the Debt Spiral — to explain how corruption starts, spreads, sustains itself, and why it is so hard to stop.