Maxwell School News and Commentary

Mona Bhan, associate professor of anthropology and Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies, says that the resistance to India's revocation of Articles 370 and 35A "depends of course on this massive military influx of the Indian forces into Kashmir territory and how that's going to pen out, how people are going to be able to navigate this new terrain of intense militarization."

According to Devashish Mitra, Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs, "the real challenge now for the prime minister [of India] and his colleagues is job creation and expansion of the manufacturing sector."

The "Modi government should get a lot of credit for its Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code as well as the cleansing of the banking system, an important component being getting rid of non-performing assets," says Devashish Mitra, professor of economics and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs.

“What is clear from conversation with our alumni and fellow scholars is that public administration—as a field of practice and academic study—in nations around the world is in a time of revolutions, and that it is going to take a cadre of well-trained, committed people to help us deal with the challenges of the 21st century,” said Tina Nabatchi, Joseph A. Strasser Endowed Professor in Public Administration.

"No economist providing policy prescriptions can ignore the political constraint of the inevitability of redistribution to the bottom 20-30 percent," writes Devashish Mitra, Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs. "Therefore, an important task before any policy economist is to suggest the most efficient form of this redistribution—one that hurts the rest of the society the least. Of course, it also has to be fiscally viable and responsible."

"For those who might totally dismiss such a scheme, by saying that it amounts to socialism, let me remind them that many believers in the power of markets, including myself, have throughout been in support of cash transfers as the least distortionary method of redistribution and fighting poverty," writes Devashish Mitra, professor of economics and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs.

“The Ray Smith Symposium moves to connect the University with the broader campus community by involving a cross-section of Syracuse faculty,” says Susan S. Wadley, Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies, and a veteran anthropologist. “It’s the public humanities at its best.”

Devashish Mitra, professor of economics and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs, says, "any tariff increase will come at a huge cost to India’s consumers as well as producers who use imported inputs."

Instead of raising tariffs India should have emulated China by reforming labor laws and maintaining a low-tariff regime on intermediate goods to attract export-oriented global manufacturing firms, according to Devashish Mitra, Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs.