This paper argues that India's Goods and Services Tax Network has already produced, through tax incentive rather than cryptographic consensus, the supply chain properties — traceability, transparency, fraud reduction, and audit trail — that the blockchain literature proposes to deliver through distributed ledger technology. The argument is not that blockchain does not work. It is that the mechanism that produces tamper-resistance is the incentive, not the technology, and India already has that mechanism at national scale. The paper's original theoretical contribution is a two-player simultaneous-move game formalizing the bilateral incentive structure that the VAT self-enforcement literature has assumed in prose but never derived from primitives. The unique Nash equilibrium (F,D) — formal supplier, demanding buyer — is obtained by iterated elimination of weakly dominated strategies and sustained by a single precise condition: τv > c_B, the input tax credit exceeds the buyer's cost of sourcing from a registered alternative. No audit is required at the transaction level. The ITC does the work that enforcement cannot. The upstream formalization cascade — empirically documented by Patnaik (2026) as a doubling of effects over five years — follows directly as this equilibrium applied iteratively upstream, tier by tier, without government intervention at each stage. To the author's knowledge, this micro-foundation does not appear elsewhere in the VAT literature. Pomeranz (2015), Kleven et al. (2011), and de Paula and Scheinkman (2010) treat the self-enforcement intuition as motivation or derive aggregate implications; none writes down the strategic form game or states the equilibrium condition in falsifiable form. The empirical case rests on scale. FY2024-25 gross collections of Rs. 22.08 lakh crore (approx. USD 263 billion). April 2025 single-month record of Rs. 2.37 lakh crore (approx. USD 28 billion). 1.51 crore active registered taxpayers. Six phases of e-invoicing threshold reduction from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 5 crore, directionally toward universal pre-validated coverage. GST 2.0 implemented September 22, 2025. The Production Linked Incentive scheme disbursing billions to Apple's contract manufacturers on the basis of GSTN-verified production data — the sovereign proof that the infrastructure is trusted for the highest-stakes commercial verification the government performs. The implication for Indian FMCG, pharmaceutical, and logistics firms is direct: private blockchain consortia built to solve domestic supply chain transparency problems are solving a solved problem at non-zero cost.
Abstract In the decade since the adoption of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda, India has transitioned from a passive participant to a global architect of sustainable development. This paper explores the intricate mapping of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) onto India’s macroeconomic policies. It examines how the "Saptarishi" priorities of the Union Budget and the decentralization of targets through NITI Aayog have created a unique "Indian Model" of development. While progress in clean energy (SDG 7) and digital inclusion (SDG 8) has been exemplary, the paper highlights the persistent challenges of climate-induced agricultural volatility and the financing gap.
Trust underpins democracy and monetary systems, yet centralized intermediaries—election commissions and central banks—increasingly betray this trust. India's recent electoral crises (in 2025), including Bihar's removal of 6.5 million voters and documented irregularities across states, expose democracy's vulnerability to manipulation by single authorities. Simultaneously, inflation at 6.7% erodes savings as central banks devalue currency through unchecked money printing. This essay argues that blockchain technology offers a revolutionary solution by replacing corruptible human gatekeepers with mathematically verifiable, distributed ledger systems. Drawing parallels between electoral fraud and monetary devaluation, I demonstrate how decentralized technologies can restore trust through transparency and eliminate single points of failure. However, the critical choice remains: will societies adopt truly decentralized systems, or embrace government-controlled digital currencies that deepen surveillance and control? The future of democratic and economic freedom hangs in the balance.
Pakistan's economic trajectory is defined by a structural trap: stabilization followed by consumption-led expansion that inevitably triggers a balance of payments crisis, renewed borrowing, and deepened fiscal vulnerability. This paper proposes a comprehensive 20-year transition strategy to break this cycle by replacing debt-financed consumption with an investment-led, export-oriented model grounded in the principles of riba-free finance. The framework synthesizes the disciplined interventionist state model of 1960s South Korea with the decentralized, borderless opportunities of the 21st-century digital economy through a Dual-Track Growth Engine covering both physical industrialization and virtual services expansion. The strategy further proposes a Digital Public Infrastructure architecture centered on the Raast payment system and blockchain-enabled supply chain transparency to formalize Pakistan's shadow economy, estimated at over $450 billion. On the financing side, the paper develops an equity-based paradigm for mobilizing diaspora capital through Mudarabah-based instruments, replacing domestic sovereign debt with Sukuk and Ijarah certificates, and executing structured debt-for-equity swaps with bilateral creditors including China. A phased 20-year roadmap is provided, with mathematical risk assessment through the Contingent Claims Approach, and a candid treatment of academic critiques including IMF framework conflicts and principal-agent problems in equity-based financing. The objective is economic self-sufficiency by Pakistan's centenary in 2047.
This paper examines the challenges hindering rooftop solar (RTS) deployment in India and explores how a U.S.-India partnership can unlock its full potential. RTS, a decentralized and scalable renewable energy solution, is critical to India’s renewable energy goals, including its target of 40 GW of RTS capacity under the National Solar Mission by 2022 which remains unmet with only 10.9 GW installed as of 2023. Key barriers include high upfront costs, limited financing options, policy fragmentation, and resistance from distribution companies (DISCOMs). The paper identifies actionable solutions, leveraging U.S. expertise in innovative financing models, net metering policies, and grid modernization. Collaborative initiatives, such as USAID-backed loan guarantees and green bonds, could alleviate financing gaps, while technical assistance from the U.S. can support DISCOMs in integrating distributed solar. The paper also emphasizes the need for performance-based incentives, consumer awareness programs, and community solar models to accelerate adoption. A successful U.S.-India collaboration can address systemic challenges, enhance RTS scalability, and contribute to global climate goals. By leveraging shared expertise and resources, this partnership offers a pathway to strengthen India’s renewable energy transition while fostering bilateral cooperation in clean energy development.
Dr. Aashka Thakkar, Satyajitsinh Gohil, Nitesh Mishra, Mistry Neelam
The present research examines the most prominent five cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Biance Coin, Tether, and Solana—that are accessible in India according on the value of their market caps. It additionally highlights the benefits and drawbacks of each type of cryptocurrency as well as the advantages of some over alternatives. The article additionally outlines important aspects of the prominent digital currencies that are accessible in India. The study also concentrates on price assessment of the top five cryptocurrencies during the last year (1 years) as well as this study also indicate the contrasting of prices volatility of cryptocurrencies.
The Indian music industry, like its global counterparts, faces significant challenges in protecting intellectual property IP and ensuring fair compensation for musicians. With the rise of digital platforms and increasing instances of piracy, musicians are finding it difficult to maintain control over their works. However, emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence AI, and smart contracts offer innovative solutions to these challenges. This research paper explores the role of these technologies in enhancing IP protection and streamlining royalty distribution in India’s music industry. By focusing on the potential of blockchain for copyright management, AI for automated content monitoring, and smart contracts for transparent and efficient royalty distribution, this study highlights the opportunities and challenges associated with implementing these technologies in the Indian context.
The article closely reads a discussion paper by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog and a strategy paper by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) advocating non-financial use cases of blockchain in India. By noting the discursive shift from transparency to trust to adjustably transparent enacted in these two documents, and consequently the Indian state's redescription of blockchain, the paper foregrounds how blockchain systems are being designated as "decentral" but have recentralizing effects where the state reinvents and re-establishes itself as an intermediary. The paper illustrates how discursive shifts concerning trust, transparency, (de)centralization and (dis)intermediation are crucial sites for investigating redescriptions of emerging sociotechnical systems.
There is a debate among investors about the benefits cryptocurrencies can take to a portfolio and how their prices move in the market.It's not hard to see that cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, but that doesn't stop investors from pouring large sums of money into cryptocurrency investments.Generate huge returns or catastrophic losses.One of the main challenges facing cryptocurrencies is determining how they perform with assets such as stocks and the rest of the market.The purpose of this article is to investigate whether cryptocurrencies provide diversification benefits and whether individual cryptocurrencies move similarly against each other.Of particular interest is whether there is a connection between the cryptocurrency market and the stock market.The cryptocurrencies chosen for the project were primarily benchmarked against stocks in the information technology-focused Nasdaq 100 Index, as well as a number of other assets.
Non Fungible Token (NFT) Industry has been witnessing multi-million dollar trade in recent times. With rapid innovation of the NFT market environment by technology, innovation, and decentralization, it is becoming hard to distinguish between genuine NFT from fads and scams. This article discuss the NFT market microstructure, with a focus on price formation, market structure, transparency, and applications to other financial areas. Market manipulation in NFT market with the context of wash-sale patterns has also been surveyed. The article concludes by providing pointers on due-diligence activity that can be adopted by investors to mitigate NFT trading risk.
Books on Turkish constitutional law tend to be heavily doctrinal, descriptive, and politic ally unengaged, which makes Kemal Gözler’s recent work on the constitutional amendment package of April 2017 somewhat unusual: Elveda Anayasa, which roughly translates as “Farewell Constitution,” was published a month before the referendum took place. Apart from the book’s annex, drawn from Gözler’s earlier work on the differences between parliamentary and presidential systems of government, the book deals with the recent amendments to the Turkish Constitution, and more generally with the legal and political atmosphere preceding the referendum, to expose what Gözler argues was the real motivation behind the proposal: a subtle destruction of the constitutional system’s separation of powers arrangements. The book is divided into five chapters. In Chapter 1, Gözler asserts that the amendments, contrary to what is commonly assumed, do not establish a presidential system of governance. Noting that a presidential system is typically marked by a strict separation of powers, that is, by a clear distinction between the legislative and executive organs of the state, he argues that the amendments, would do the exact opposite: the amended Article 116 now allows the president to dissolve the parliament, and the parliament to dissolve the presidency, both without cause. In both cases, the result is that new elections must be held for both the presidency and the parliament (at 15–16). The idea of each branch being able to dissolve the other, if anything, is reminiscent of a parliamentary system. However, Gözler astutely observes that discussions of systemic/institutional features obfuscate what is really going on: the unification of all three branches of government under an executive presidency. To begin with, while the president has the unconditional right to dissolve the parliament, the parliament can exercise the same power only with a three-fifths majority. Further, under the new system, parliamentary and presidential elections must be held on the same day, a requirement that is likely to result in the coordination of electoral campaigns to prevent a potential scenario in which the president has a different party affiliation than the parliamentary majority. This, for Gözler, is proof of the amendment package’s real motivation: subordinating the parliament to the presidency (at 17–19). As for the judicial branch, the new composition of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, the state organ responsible for judicial promotions and demotions, reveals the government’s ambition to subordinate the judiciary to the presidency: of the total thirteen members of the council, four are directly appointed by the president. In addition, the minister of justice, a presidential appointee, heads the council and his undersecretary, a bureaucrat also appointed by the president, is also a member of the council. The remaining seven members are appointed by the parliament, already under the control of the executive (at 19–22), placing the judiciary under the effective control of the president. Gözler concludes this chapter, inspired by the writings of Montesquieu, with a discussion of how the absence of true separation of powers will result in a loss of individual liberties (at 25). While empirical data indeed seems to be on the side of Gözler,1 the author does not explain how and why, as a general matter, a decline in separation of powers arrangements causes a similar decline in individual liberties, especially considering the voluminous scholarship on how authoritarian regimes consciously choose to preserve (at least some) individual liberties, usually in order to deflect national and international criticism.2 Chapter 2, titled “On the Silence of Consti t utional Law Scholars over the Constitutional Amendments” and without going into any “naming and shaming,” categorizes the Turkish constitutional law community into three camps: (i) the rather small number of scholars speaking out against the amendments; (ii) those not disclosing their personal view on the matter; and (iii) those openly advocating the amendments (at 39). Gözler quite confidently and rightly asserts that while the overwhelming majority of Turkish constitutional law scholars were against the amendment package (at 38), the ones who garnered most of the media attention were those speaking in favor of it. The author points to the general decline in free speech, and the cases of recently dismissed academics, including some reputable constitutional law scholars, as reasons for the general silence of the intellectual community over the amendments (at 35–36). Gözler also bemoans how in addition to the silence of scholars, the media paid considerable attention to laypersons unqualified to speak on the amendments (at 41). While one cannot help but agree with the author on how the silence of the legal community indeed decreased the quality of discussions surrounding the amendment package, listening to the opinions of laypersons, too, is valuable, even if only to assess the public legitimacy of the proposals. Nevertheless, it is undeniably true that most of the media gave disproportionate coverage to those supporting the amendment package, while those against it received considerably less airtime. Both sides of the referendum campaign resorted to erroneous claims, and Gözler describes these in detail in Chapter 3. The campaign against the amendments propagated the idea that the amendments would result in the abrogation of both the Republic and the unitary state, the latter of which would be achieved by the creation, through presidential decrees, of a federal state. This latter claim, as Gözler convincingly shows, has no basis because none of the amendments purports—even when read quite expansively—to establish federal units within the country (at 47–48). The author is equally dismissive of the first claim that the amendments would deal a severe blow to the Republic, explaining that democracy, not the Republic, is the victim of the amendments (at 44–46). From the author’s standpoint, this is understandable: Gözler defines “republic” as a concept utterly divorced from democracy, merely denoting the opposite of monarchy and hereditary rule. Here, Gözler fails to take note of the particular meaning associated with the term “republic” in Turkish legal and political discourse, often intertwined with general and substantive notions of democracy and the rule of law, and not merely an antithesis of hereditary rule.3 Read in this second and more expansive sense, contrary to Gözler’s claim, it is not unreasonable to argue that the amendments do deal a blow to the idea of Turkey being a republic. In the second half of the same chapter, the author criticizes what he perceives to be erroneous claims made by the campaign in support of the amendments: he focuses on the misuse of comparative law, specifically the American presidential system, as an aspirational model (at 56–70).4 Gözler shows that the claims of some presidential aides that the amendments would create an executive akin to the US president are untenable for a number of reasons. Some of these include the fact that the Turkish president can appoint justices to the Constitutional Court, judges to the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, and other high-level bureaucrats without the consent of the legislature, whereas in the American system, “the advice and consent of the Senate” serves as a significant check on the president’s power to make similar appointments. Moreover, in the USA, the federal budget must be approved by Congress, whereas under the new constitutional amendments, if the Turkish Parliament fails to approve a budget plan, the preceding year’s budget, adjusted for the new year’s inflation rate, automatically goes into effect, thereby stripping the legislature of a significant control mechanism. The author goes into further detail to show how, contrary to the assertions of the government, the new amendments bear no resemblance to the US system of government, which leaves the reader with deeper insights on the (ab)use of comparative law by politicians in the form of invocations of other polities’ constitutionalist systems in either shallow or inaccurate ways. Chapter 4 of the book deals with the question of whether the constitutional amendments can be described in David Landau’s terms as an instantiation of “abusive constitutionalism.”5 The author is ready to answer this query in the affirmative, chiefly because the amendments go against the two themes central to the idea of constitutionalism: entrenching separation of powers and ensuring fundamental rights and freedoms. Despite all this, Gözler espouses a cautious approach, arguing that only time will conclusively tell whether or not the amendments are truly abusive in nature (at 84, 99). This caution and the author’s belief in the need for a retroactive assessment of the amendments as only way to identify with certainty the abusive nature of the amendments serve to expand on Landau’s thesis, as it emphasizes the difficulty of exposing an abusive constitutionalist endeavor while still in the making, as opposed to identifying abusive constitutionalism ex post facto. Further, the author contributes to Landau’s analysis by broaching the subject of unintended consequences of abusive constitutionalism (at 99–104): according to Gözler, if and when authoritarians fall out of favor, the constitutional space conducive to repressive rule becomes inhabited by others, possibly by opposition forces, which, in turn, could make use of the generous tools of state power to perpetuate the repression, all made possible by the initial abusive constitutionalist undertaking by their predecessors. The final chapter discusses some procedural issues related to the referendum, ultimately concluding that there are valid reasons to call this a constitutional plebiscite rather than a referendum. According to Gözler, a constitutional plebiscite diverges from a referendum in two major ways: (i) plebiscites typically take place under antidemocratic conditions, and (ii) plebiscites usually turn into a vote of confidence for a single, charismatic person in power, as opposed to voting on a legal text (at 108). Given that the referendum took place under emergency rule, and there were numerous reported incidents of violence against campaigners opposed to the amendments, as well as statements by incumbent politicians equating the opposition forces to terrorists, the author concludes that the context in which the referendum was held was not entirely free and fair (at 115–122). Further, the author draws our attention to a particular violation of the Turkish Constitution that occurred during the parliamentary deliberations on the proposed amendments: in direct contravention to art icle 175 of the Constitution, which stipulates that all votes on constitutional amendments (including those votes on whether to put the amendments to a referendum) shall be secret, some Members of Parliament (MPs) from the governing party voted openly—a violation that is well-documented through many photographs, some of which are printed in the book (at 127–129). Gözler rightly asks if it is reasonable to demand from society at large to follow the law and the Constitution in a political setting where MPs, who take an oath to uphold the Constitution prior to assuming office, violate the rules themselves. Overall, the book serves as a courageous intervention, as it provides a concise and accessible summary of the procedural and substantive irregularities of the recent constitutional amendments that were put to referendum in a setting where most scholars are—understandably—hesitant to be expressly critical of politically high-stake matters such as this amendment package. The book provides at once a testament, one hopes, to a shift in the tone of Turkish constitutional law scholarship from one that is prosaic and distanced to a more lively and politically engaged way of writing, as well as an opportunity to develop our thinking on key issues such as abusive constitutionalism and constitutional referenda—topics with which comparative constitutional law scholars continue to struggle. As the author quotes, in 1748, the famous French lawyer Montesquieu, commenting on the need for separation among the three branches of government, wrote: “Among the Turks, where the three powers are united in the person of the sultan, an atrocious despotism reigns” (at 22). While Gözler quite pessimistic ally writes “[i]t is feared that what Montesquieu wrote of the ‘Turkish land’ in 1748 is about to become true in 2016’s Turkey” (at 23), one hopes—now with the passing of the amendments with less optimism—that the near future will somehow prove the author wrong.
What political factors influence the allocation of economic patronage in democracies? Answering this question is vital to improving our knowledge of how states and markets interact. In this paper, I argue that changing levels of party centralization can drive important changes in the allocation of state largess. When governing parties are centralized, national party leaders will control sources of patronage, targeting benefits to particularly influential regions and industries. By contrast, when governing parties are decentralized, influential sub-national party leaders will advocate for their constituents, allocating patronage evenly through a national logroll. I find evidence for these relationships by comparing India's distribution process for industrial licenses and government finance under a decentralized Congress Party (1954-61) to its distribution process under a centralized Congress Party (1969-75).