It is the moral imperative of every poor country to lift all its people out of poverty. And yet India, like so many other poor countries, has failed to do this. Development Economics carries much of the blame for this. Wrong beliefs and dangerous fashions within this field have mostly failed to help -- and sometimes caused much harm.

Welcome to Episode 57 of Everything is Everything, a weekly podcast hosted by Amit Varma and Ajay Shah.

For magnificent, detailed, juicy show notes, ⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Everyone is raving about India's digital public goods -- or its digital public infrastructure, aka DPI. But is the picture all rosy? What is the flip side of this technological achievement?

Welcome to Episode 56 of Everything is Everything, a weekly podcast hosted by Amit Varma and Ajay Shah.

In this episode, Ajay and Amit talk about how such a government monopoly cannot be a good thing. In the long run, suppressing competition will hurt us. Firstly, it empowers the state more than it should, and power corrupts. Secondly, it stifles competition, and thus, innovation.

For magnificent, detailed, juicy show notes, ⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

It is considered a truism that building infrastructure is always great for the economy. Roads, ports, airports & bridges always have huge positive externalities. But is this truism true? Yes -- and no. There is a good story; and there is a bad story.

Welcome to Episode 55 of Everything is Everything, a weekly podcast hosted by Amit Varma and Ajay Shah.

In this episode, Ajay talks about how infrastructure enabled a services revolution in India -- but did not move the needle when it became to goods. What's more, while big infrastructure projects once gave us great bang for the buck, that is no longer true. We need to think about why that is the case -- and where our money is best spent.

For magnificent, detailed, juicy show notes, ⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠.