Arvind Chandrashekhar
opinionviksit bharatindian statecraftstrategic affairspolitical economy
Arvind Chandrashekhar is the Opinion Editor of IndiaWorldEye. He writes The Viksit Bharat Briefing, the masthead's daily column on India's path to developed-nation status by 2047 — how policy choices, global partnerships, and institutional performance add up to the arc. His writing brings a statesman's frame to a daily reader: what is building Bharat, what is friction, and what the country should learn from the best global examples.
Talk to Arvind Chandrashekhar
A sharp, India-first read on world affairs, the economy, defence and strategy — one-on-one with Arvind.
Recent work
The PERM Freeze Is Not a Crisis. It Is a Corrective.
The US suspension of the PERM labour certification programme has frozen permanent residency pathways for thousands of Indian IT professionals at firms like TCS and Infosys. This opinion piece argues that rather than treating the freeze as a diplomatic grievance, India must read it as a long-overdue strategic signal — one that should accelerate the shift from services arbitrage to IP creation, domestic product companies, and AI-native capabilities built for global markets on India's own terms.
India's Electoral Machinery Needs Architecture, Not Just Arbiters
The Supreme Court's decision to hear a plea concerning Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's functioning, combined with a coordinated legal offensive by the INDIA bloc, a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar by Citizens for Justice and Peace, and over 2,000 citizens petitioning the Chief Justice over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, has produced a legitimacy crisis around India's electoral machinery. This column argues that the moment calls not for partisan defence or attack, but for institutional architecture that makes the Election Commission stronger than any individual, any government, and any political cycle.
India's 7% Moment Demands More Than Growth — It Demands a Narrative
Global credit agencies and multilateral bodies are revising India's growth forecasts upward even as equity markets dip and external headwinds persist. The deeper challenge is not sustaining growth but converting economic momentum into durable global confidence — a task that requires India to build reputation capital as deliberately as it builds roads and factories.
India Writes Its Own Defence Script as Putin Lands in Delhi
Vladimir Putin's visit to India, centred on Su-57 jets, S-500 air defence systems, and a defence cooperation pact reportedly extended to 2075, is being read in Western capitals as India leaning on Russia. The opposite is closer to the truth. India is running parallel courtships with France, Japan, and the United States on defence, using each relationship as leverage against the others. The AMCA programme and the IAF's preference for limited Su-57 purchases over full dependency is the clearest sign that New Delhi is setting terms, not accepting them.
India's 7.8% Growth Is Real. Now Win the Argument.
India's Q1 GDP growth of 7.8% has earned it the OECD's fastest-growing major economy tag and, according to reporting this week, its first A-rated sovereign recognition in 35 years. The number is consequential. But the BBC's credibility-questioning framing and the Chief Economic Adviser's public defence of the national accounts methodology reveal a second battle running alongside the economic one — a battle over whether India's statistical institutions can command the same confidence as the growth they are measuring. This column argues that radical transparency in data governance is not a technocratic nicety; it is the soft-power infrastructure that 7.8% must be allowed to build.
India's Cockroach Protests Forced a Reckoning That Policy Circulars Cannot
The 'cockroach' protests at Jantar Mantar, led by young Indians furious over exam leaks and institutional rot at the National Testing Agency, produced a rare outcome: a ministerial resignation in Modi's India. The episode is neither a triumph nor mere noise — it is a diagnostic, exposing a structural gap between India's developed-nation aspirations and the daily indignities its aspirational youth navigate. What replaces Dharmendra Pradhan at the Education Ministry matters far more than the fact of his departure.
Sharif's 'Red Line' on Water Is Islamabad's White Flag
Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif's declaration on Independence Day that water is a 'red line' and his threat of a 'direct response' to India's suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty reads, on close analysis, as a signal of diminishing leverage rather than escalating power. Having failed militarily during Operation Sindoor and facing economic fragility, Islamabad is weaponising water optics for domestic audiences. India's opportunity lies not in managing this rhetoric but in using it as the occasion to formally restructure or exit a 1960 treaty that no longer reflects the strategic realities of the subcontinent.
India Must Reclaim Bangladesh Before Beijing Completes the Architecture
The India-Bangladesh relationship has entered a structural crisis, with Dhaka demanding clarification on New Delhi's policy following Sheikh Hasina's press conference in Delhi, her son warning Bangladesh risks becoming 'another Pakistan', and the interim government deepening ties with China. This is not a bilateral spat — it is a strategic inflection point that exposes a foundational flaw in India's Neighbourhood First doctrine: the conflation of a relationship with a person. New Delhi must urgently shift from personality-dependent diplomacy to institution-to-institution engagement before the strategic cost becomes irreversible.
India's Integrated Rocket Force Architects a New Era of Deterrence
India's Cabinet clearance of a tri-service Integrated Rocket Force represents the most consequential structural military reform in a generation. This is not a procurement decision but a doctrinal revolution — India formally institutionalising escalation dominance below the nuclear threshold. The move permanently reshapes South Asian deterrence calculus and carries direct implications for the Pakistan-China axis, for India's defence export credibility, and for the strategic coherence of the Viksit Bharat project.
Operation Sindoor and the Viksit Bharat Arc: When Self-Reliance Meets Jointness
Operation Sindoor demonstrated the maturation of India's defence modernisation drive — from indigenous weapons systems to seamless tri-services coordination. The operation validates a decade of reforms that tripled defence budgets and scaled indigenous production, marking a critical milestone in India's journey to developed-nation status by 2047.
The Viksit Bharat Briefing Begins: Twenty-Two Years to Deliver
This inaugural Viksit Bharat Briefing establishes the analytical frame for daily coverage of India's path to developed-nation status by 2047. Every policy choice, bilateral partnership, and institutional decision will be measured against a single criterion: does it advance the arc or consume years India cannot reclaim?