This is Nitin Pai's cyberspace.

I’m interested in coffee, philosophy, sharp objects, public policy, tech and stationery.

You are in the structured section of my domain where I have my blog posts, newspaper columns, updates on my teaching and research, and other things you had always been warned about.

▸ Check out my book: The Nitopadesha: Moral Tales for Good Citizens.⭐

▸ I have recently been writing about: ☼ information age ☼ hyperdiversity ☼ liberal democracy ☼ economics ☼ Covid-19 ☼ philosophy and everything else

▸ In these columns: ☼ Mint ☼ Debates with my Daughters ☼ Sakal ☼ The Print ☼ The Hindu ☼ Pragati ☼ Pax Indica

▸ Other stuff ☼ Raw Notes ☼ Now

A nation is forged around dinner parties
Communal dining is the easiest pathway towards breaking age-old identity barriers that prevent the buildup of social capital. | 15th Jan 2024

Social capital is the fuel that Indian entrepreneurs require
Credit flows remain constrained by boundaries of caste and community. Public policy must address this problem. | 18th Dec 2023

2023 - The Year in Fiction
A rated list of 36 books I read and a further 41 that I opened. | 12th Dec 2023

When I tried to kill Mark Twain
A short story | 5th Dec 2023

Environmental goals are difficult to achieve without social capital
Getting international agreement on climate issues is the easy part; the difficult bit is getting hyperdiverse societies to cooperate at the everyday level. | 4th Dec 2023

The United States will continue to try to contain China’s technological progress
The Xi-Biden meeting in San Francisco did not achieve much, but showed Beijing's vulnerabilities in the geopolitics of high technology. | 19th Nov 2023

Leave firecracker policies to the state and local governments
A national ban on firecrackers is not necessary | 11th Nov 2023

The negative externalities of the war in West Asia
The effectiveness of mass terrorism, the acceptance of collective punishment and the West's loss of credibility will cast a long shadow on the 21st century. | 6th Nov 2023

A techno-optimist rejoinder to Marc Andreessen’s manifesto
We believe that the steering wheel is more important than the accelerator | 23rd Oct 2023

Some lessons from Hamas’s attack on Israel
Don't push the adversary to the wall, the enemy has a vote, walls are not a solution, cycles of violence make peace harder and pluralism is the answer | 10th Oct 2023

Championing pluralism will make India a vishwaguru
The 21st century world needs a better organising principle than national self-determination. | 9th Oct 2023

Diaspora politics has a messy dimension that will get messier
Extraterritorial political engagement comes with negative consequences for domestic politics and foreign policy. | 25th Sep 2023

Covert action is an instrument of statecraft
I am unimpressed with arguments that suggest that liberal democracies do not engage in targeted killings. | 25th Sep 2023

The essence of engineering
Engineering is a mindset that anyone can cultivate...even without an engineering degree. | 15th Sep 2023

Why I don’t like the word “hustle”
It might legitimise an amoral approach to business and normalise unscrupulous behaviour in the entrepreneural eco-system. | 11th Sep 2023

China’s economic problems mark the end of its geopolitical rise
Consistent with my 2018 assessment, Xi Jinping's undoing of Deng's reforms have led Chinese to be pessimistic about their future. | 28th Aug 2023

Replace JEE with a lottery for IIT admissions
Test preparation is corroding real education; shifting incentives away from competitive entrance exams is in the public interest | 21st Aug 2023

The immediate and important task for AI policy is to govern the industry
India should prevent the concentration of market & technological power in the hands of a few | 14th Aug 2023

Rajasthan gig worker welfare law needs improvement
Instead of empowering the individual worker, the Act empowers government officials. | 31st Jul 2023

India is less violent than it used to be
Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur have put together a book that discusses the Indian Republic's success in reducing violence. But the success is tentative and conditional. | 30th Jul 2023

Diaspora politics is going to get even more complicated
The risks of engaging overseas Indian communities are growing as a result of new trends in migration, demographics and technology | 17th Jul 2023

New expressways require new behaviour
Policies that change how people drive will have the greatest impact on road safety. | 2nd Jul 2023

On free bus transport for women
The economic benefits to the state could exceed the fiscal cost of free bus transport for women | 19th Jun 2023

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