Investor, author Ruchir Sharma cuts through Covid fog at e-Adda today

Sharma’s latest book, The 10 Rules of Successful Nations, is born of data analysis, on-the-ground research and his deep interest in contemporary politics and current affairs. The book is a wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, and a slim primer with insights on the political, economic and social habits of successful nations.

While the economy has suffered, markets across the world, including India, have rebounded even as the pandemic rages on in most countries, including India. At the E-Adda, Sharma, who will be in conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, The Indian Express, and P Vaidyanathan Iyer, Executive Editor for National Affairs, The Indian Express, will navigate the audience through the fog created by the pandemic and domestic and international politics.

With a quarter century of travelling the world as a writer and investor, Sharma’s rules challenge conventional textbook thinking on what matters — and what doesn’t — for a strong economy. The book explains why successful nations embrace robots and immigrants, prefer democratic leaders to autocrats, elect charismatic reformers over technocrats, and pay no mind to the debate about big versus small government.

Sharma’s book also explains why rising stock prices matter as much or more than food prices, and the measure of debt is the best predictor of economic crises, and why no one number can accurately capture the value of currencies.

His earlier books include Democracy on the Road (2019), The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in a Post-Crisis World (2016) and Breakout Nations (2012). Sharma was selected one of the “top global thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2012 and was named as one of the Most Influential people in the world in 2015 by Bloomberg Markets.

Sharma, who started writing at 17, has been a writer longer than he has been an investor. He’s a regular contributor to several international publications. He is passionate about politics and has covered every national election in India, and many major state contests, going back to 1998. Sharma’s other interests include athletics and he continues to train for the 100 and 200 meters sprints. He has a keen interest in wildlife and in international cinema and attends major film festivals.