1) Over at Foreign Affairs, Ron Inglehart, the founder of the World Values Survey, has authored an excellent essay on the decline of religiosity. This is old news for many countries of continental Europe, but the trend has now generalized all over the world. Inglehart thinks modernity leads to secularism. I think evidence is mounting that he is right. Can you think of reasons why?
2) The WSJ published an excellent essay on China's imperial overreach. Will the Belt and Road Initiative prove to be a symbol of China's rising clout on the world stage, or will it backfire? Read and ponder.
3) It seems Prime Minister Modi of India is finally getting interested in doing some reforms. Bills that reform the agricultural sector and labor laws just passed in the lower house. Here is a critical take on these reforms, but personally I am quite enthusiastic. And I am not sure non-rushed reforms can be reforms at all. The Modi government initially showed a lot of promise as a force for economic reform. Instead the government turned quickly to a focus on its Hindu nationalist agenda, to the exclusion of major reforms. As a result, growth dropped. A resumption of pro-market reforms in India was long overdue.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has a great summary and assessment of the recent Indian reforms. The article is both balanced and basically correct: the main avenue for enhancing India's growth prospects at the moment consists of resuming reforms to modernize the economy. These two reforms are just a start, and the effort should extend to other sectors as well. Encouraging the emergence of more financial transactions mediated by privately-owned banks, for instance.