Statistical Endeavors

On Myanmar

This is adapted from a paper I wrote for my Comparative Politics class at Harvard . A Friendless People Thousands have been killed. Hundreds of thousands have fled. They are a people without a home, much less a state. Such is the plight of the Rohingya, whom a UN spokesperson once called the most friendless people in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the situation a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (“UN”). This latest wave of state-sponsored violence follows a series of attacks by militants—a small insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—in August on Myanmarese military outposts. The brutal military crackdown is ostensibly targeted at insurgents. Yet, it is unmistakably civilians who are bearing the brunt of the violence, with the UN High Commissioner calling the response “clearly disproportionate” and “without regard for basic principles of international law” (“UN”). The approach of ethnic institutionalism...

The Tax Reform India Needs

Image: Tizi A version of this article also appeared in the South China Morning Post's Young Post on Thursday, May 5. http://yp.scmp.com/news/features/article/103398/india%E2%80%99s-economy-taking-right-steps-goods-and-service-tax India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, was elected in 2014 on his economic credentials and the promise that he would bring to the nation the same prosperity he brought, as chief minister, to his home state of Gujarat. The keystone of Modi’s economic policy is a nationwide goods-and-service tax (GST), intended to streamline the myriad state and central-government levies currently encumbering business in the country. Under the prevailing tax regime, multiple layers of tax are imposed on the same good, and interstate trade is complicated by varying tax rates between states. Transporting goods across state borders can entail long waiting times to resolve tax matters, and the plethora of obscure charges leaves ample r...

Harmony in the Middle Kingdom

Image: Wikimedia Commons The four decades since Deng Xiaoping spearheaded “Reform and Opening Up” in China have seen growth on a scale unparalleled in modern history. Where hundreds of millions were once destitute, extreme poverty has been all but cast into the annals of history; the world competes to attract the wealth of China’s burgeoning middle and upper classes. Analyses of the country's explosive growth are aplenty. Real GDP has grown 64-fold, literacy is above 95%, and in a once Communist country the private sector, at least on paper, now accounts for 60 percent of economic activity. This piece, however, will look more at the stability of the country—while analysing potential economic factors underpinning this. A number of scholars predicted political and economic instability in China as nation rapidly became prosperous. Yet, in a country transformed, political and economic durability remain. The Chinese Community Party continues to enjoy high levels of popular leg...

Bardonomics

Search This Blog