Publications

In what has passed into diplomatic lore, when Henry Kissinger asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1972 for his thoughts on the French Revolution, he replied that it was ​“too early to say.” Although the mistranslated reference was to the 1968 French student riots, it nevertheless became a metaphor for far-sighted leaders thinking in centuries rather than years. Considering the current frenzy over unilateral tariffs, looking back just a few…

In August 2024, a violent uprising in Bangladesh (dubbed the ​‘Monsoon Revolution’) led to a political regime change, ending the fifteen-year term of Bangladesh’s previous Prime Minister. Taking stock of Bangladesh’s economy on priority, the new interim government (supported by the military and with constitutional approval by the Bangladeshi Supreme Court) recently issued a 400-page White Paper on the State of the Bangladesh…

In January 2025, India’s Consumer Protection Authority issued notices to Ola and Uber on the allegation that these ride-sharing platforms were pricing services differentially based on the profile of the user — iPhones were charged higher than Android devices and (anecdotally) also variably based on a device’s remaining battery level. The question of processing user data extraneous to the relevant service is increasingly prominent in…

Freedom to choose seats of arbitration is essential to party autonomy in international commercial arbitration. In Arif Azim Company Limited v Micromax Informatics FZE, the Supreme Court first upheld the parties’ rights to choose arbitral seats. It then applied the Shashoua principle to recognise a designated venue as the seat of arbitration, if a supranational set of rules accompanied it and there was no…

There is increasing debate surrounding the unprecedented use of unilateral sanctions in recent years (e.g. by the US, the EU, Japan, China, and Russia) — specifically, their legality under international law (as countermeasures), legality under WTO law (as national security exceptions), their architecture and overall market-distorting effect, and investment protection and/​or administrative disputes against (allegedly wrongful) freezing of assets…