PolEcho

India vs BRICS was a good insightful analysis, wasn’t it? But today we’re stepping off the GDP numbers and into the streets of Kathmandu, where hashtags stopped trending because, well, hashtags weren’t working. Yes, Nepal recently banned a major social media platform, and what followed was not just silence online but chaos offline. Let’s decode this with credible sources , how did it happen?   Timelines, it did not happen overnight: Let’s go to 2020, The beginning of the issue: It all started with petitions to Nepal’s Supreme Court, where activists flagged that big social media platforms were operating without licenses, generating unmonitored ad revenue, and ignoring local rules. In short, Silicon Valley was making money with no taxes to Kathmandu   2023, The Directive: The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology finally stepped in. A directive was issued, get registered, set up local offices, comply with Nepali law, or face the mute button. Spoiler: most...

We had done a thorough analysis in our last post on India’s economic growth — comparing the Congress era with the BJP era — and found that the BJP has fallen short of the growth numbers achieved during the Congress years on all parameters.   Today, we’re taking that conversation a step further. Instead of looking at India in isolation, we’ll compare India’s growth with that of the BRICS nations. After all, it would be unfair to conclude that the BJP has slowed India’s progress without a relative benchmark. Because Momentum is contagious in economics. Strong peers lift you up; weak peers weigh you down."   Although BRICS now has 11 permanent members, for this comparison we’ll stick to the original five: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. This grouping offers a balanced mix — from China, the global giant, to South Africa, a smaller but significant economy — making it a fair and insightful comparison.   BRICS as a bloc is one of the most powerful in ...