On Friday, April 10, the South Asia Institute, the McCombs School of Business, the Clements Center for National Security, the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and the Global Sustainability and Leadership Institute hosted an all-day conference, “India at 100: Decades of Decisions.” The conference was held in GSB 2.124, McCombs Graduate School of Business Building, from 12:30 pm – 8:00 pm.
Event Description:
UT’s first-ever conference on India’s economic and political future. Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true. Joan Robinson captured India’s paradox decades ago—and it’s never been more relevant than right now.
1.4 billion people. The world’s largest democracy. An economy at an inflection point. Infrastructure ambitions that defy gravity. Governance at a scale humanity has never attempted.
India at 100 will be shaped by decisions made in the next decades.
On April 10, 2026, we convened economists, political scientists, policy experts and cultural icons who are shaping those decisions.
Agenda:
12:30 pm – 12:45 pm • Check in and Opening Statements
12:45 pm – 1:45 pm • One Sixth of Humanity: Tracing India’s Macroeconomic Journey, with Arvind Subramanian, Devesh Kapur, Dilawar Syed
1:50 pm – 2:30 pm • Labels of Perception: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction, with Aranya Sahay, Alka Bhanot
Break
2:45 pm – 3:30 pm • The Growth Triangle: The Future of the Indo-US-TX Corridor, with D.C. Manjunath, Tanvi Madan, Aaron Demerson, Vijay Mahajan
3:35 pm – 4:15 pm • Accelerating India’s Development: Unlocking Human Capital at Scale, with Karthik Muralidharan, Kishore Gawande
Break
4:45 pm – 5:30 pm • Walk This Way: India and the Future of Sustainable Growth, with Sonal Shah, Ashish Gupta, Deval Sanghvi, Meeta Kothare
5:35 pm – 6:15 pm • A Brave New World: India’s Position in the Global AI Ecosystem, with Gaurav Tembey, Ashish Agarwal, Sanjay Banerjee (Sponsored by the Strauss Center)
Break
6:25 pm – 6:55 pm • The Happiness Hypothesis: Unlocking Modern Happiness Through Ancient Wisdom, with Raj Raghunathan
7:05 pm – 7:50 pm • Whose Language Is It Anyway: Language, Stories and Identity of New India, with Saurabh Dwivedi, Dalpat Rajpurohit (Session in Hindi)
Conference Adjourned