In India’s general elections, scheduled for April-May 2024, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping to repeat, if not outdo, its 2019 performance. In those elections, the party and its allies garnered 45 percent of the vote share and won over 300 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. Few observers had anticipated this scale of victory, subsequently attributed to factors ranging from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persona, the BJP’s superior party organization and higher levels of financial endowments, and its skillful blending of Hindutva, nationalism, and social welfare.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has immense potential to enhance human capabilities and drive growth in several industries. It is projected to greatly improve governance, healthcare, and education outcomes. However, this potential may not be realized if the building blocks of AI remain concentrated in the hands of a few dominant companies or the countries in which they are located.

How are disputes resolved when formal legal processes are difficult to follow and customary norms of dispute resolution have not quite evolved? I uncover that in certain types of cases; people resolve the dispute informally while adopting a formal court-like structure, almost mimicking official procedures. People set up dispute resolution processes that are cosmetically similar to the formal system and behave “as if” the entire process is legal.

Amidst geopolitical flux and increasing tensions, the Indo-Pacific remains one of the world’s most important economic and geopolitical regions.