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Yamini Aiyar

Yamini Aiyar

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Indian bureaucracy doesn’t need DOGE. Hiring more would be better for efficiency

The view that bureaucracies are bloated with far too many employees preying on taxpayers money is a widely held myth. Research shows how significantly...

03.12.2025 8

ThePrint

Yamini Aiyar

In Bihar, the wait for a new governance model

The two-decade long reign of Nitish raises an important question: Can governance stripped of politics achieve the goal of radical social...

06.11.2025 8

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

New GST regime: A grand bargain reduced to imperfect compromise

Far from a grand bargain, the GST is an imperfect compromise constrained by a political culture with a limited commitment to the federal principle

08.10.2025 20

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

Global development finance has lost its way. China can step in but India has an edge too

India can take the discourse of development beyond instrumental power play—build solidarities across the emerging economies and bargain for equity.

30.09.2025 6

ThePrint

Yamini Aiyar

What welfare scheme ghosts, fakes and deads teach us about EC voter list row

To restore public trust, the EC can use the next few weeks, in coordination with Bihar’s social audit cell and local NGOs, to undertake social audits.

29.08.2025 10

ThePrint

Yamini Aiyar

Citizen-State relations and the burden of document raj

The Bihar SIR debate is missing a deeper interrogation into the tyranny of paper and the culture of distrust entrenched within the population of the...

14.08.2025 20

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

The Emergency and politics of the body

On the surface, Sanjay Gandhi’s approach to family planning was not new as Malthusian worries had shadowed India’s demographic debates long before...

24.06.2025 40

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

DOGE lessons for the State capacity debate

The quest for effective State capacity has to guard against the slippery slope of authoritarianism

04.06.2025 10

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

How best to resolve the federal deadlock

The Union government will have to explore a new set of federal instruments to address the delimitation conundrum

14.03.2025 30

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

Niti Aayog 2.0 in the time of global churn

Niti Aayog’s performance in these 10 years has been underwhelming, stymied by a combination of contextual and structural factors.

15.01.2025 10

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

The disenchantment with the secular ideal

Supreme Court temporarily bars trials under the Places of Worship Act, highlighting the need to restore India's secular ethos amid rising communalism.

19.12.2024 8

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar

Lessons in democracy from the US elections

For democracy’s defenders, Trump’s re-election ought to serve as a catalyst for a deeper reckoning to work toward a more responsive and accountable...

21.11.2024 2

hindustantimes

Yamini Aiyar