Senior Fellow, Energy, Investment and Connectivity
Amit has nearly two decades of experience as a public policy researcher, an entrepreneur and a financial analyst. He is the author of "India and the Changing Geopolitics of Oil (Routlege, 2021), a book that looks at India's changing role in the global oil trade and how it can use this heft to secure energy supplies. He is also the lead author of the report "Chinese Investments in India" (Feb 2020), which looked at China's penetration of India's startup ecosystem. He is the founder of tezbid.com, a numismatic portal.
Amit started his career with the Economic Times, where he tracked the energy sector. He was a part of the start-up team of ET Now, the business news channel. Amit was responsible for setting up India Reality Research, a new research outfit within CLSA India, a stockbroking firm. He has also worked with Deccan Chronicle Group as the business editor for their general dailies.
He holds a Master in Business Administration from IIM- Ahmedabad and a Bachelors degree in Technology from IT-BHU. Download high-res bio image
A decade after its launch, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has slowed down in South Asia, the result of poorly conceived projects, and irresponsible behavior from borrower and lender alike.
Pakistan’s latest economic data tries to paint a cheerful picture, but the economy is still in deep trouble. The main culprit is the ‘managed’ float of the Pakistani rupee, which covers for a multitude of other sins.
Bangladesh’s economy has been in distress for some time and is not doing as well as assumed. This could have been one of the factors that drove the protests and the subsequent coup.
Pakistan’s peripheral regions have long been treated as colonies to benefit the Punjabi core. This neglect is facing a vigorous pushback, in the form of peaceful protests and violent resistance. The economic crisis has exacerbated tensions in Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, which remain poor despite abundant natural resources.
The long-delayed Iran-Pakistan pipeline has put Pakistan in yet another bind of its own making. Abandoning the project will expose it to Iranian penalties, while completing it will violate the sanctions imposed by the U.S., its financial benefactor, and its other patron Saudi Arabia which competes with Iran for West Asian leadership.
Long treated by Pakistan as a colony, Balochistan has seen several high-profile attacks by locals against Chinese interests. The growing unrest in the region reflects Islamabad’s failure to address key development issues. With less than 10% of this year’s federal budget earmarked for development, it appears that the only means of quelling the violence is more repression.
As India begins membership talks with the International Energy Agency, Senior Fellow for Energy, Investment, and Connectivity at Gateway House, Amit Bhandari joins us to talk about how we got here, what’s in it for both parties, and how the agency will adapt to the increasing strategic autonomy of India and countries like it.
As Pakistan heads to the polls, debt restructuring and economic recovery are on the ballot. The winner of the contest will inherit a weak economy while wielding little authority to implement reform, and will eventually shoulder the blame for the inevitable crisis.
India and France are both large energy importers with a shared interest in stable prices and decarbonisation. They have much to offer each other. France is a leader in nuclear power and green hydrogen, and can help India with the technology it needs. India, with its large and growing market, can help bring down the cost of these technologies and mainstream them.
A well-supplied oil market, along with new investments in oil exploration and production means that pending a major disaster, India will not have to worry about oil prices in the coming year.