# The Khyat Institute

> Policy research on Indian governance and political economy, written for the long horizon. Every document states the strongest version of the opposing argument before answering it, carries a primary source and a date for every figure, and names the condition under which its forecasts would be wrong. Errors are corrected in place, with a dated note.

Documents are published under CC BY-ND 4.0 and may be republished in full, by anyone, without permission — unaltered, credited to The Khyat Institute, and linked to the original. Published URLs never change. Every document also carries Google Scholar citation tags and a schema.org ScholarlyArticle record.

## Chetavani — policy briefs

- [Chetavani 003: Artha Before Moksha: Why India Cannot Skip the Rung of Prosperity](https://khyatinstitute.org/chetavani/003-artha-before-moksha): 6 October 2026. Indian tradition placed prosperity beneath dharma, not in its place. The Chanakya Sutra roots dharma in artha; the Hitopadesha puts wealth between worthiness and dharma; the ashrama system sequenced renunciation after the householder's debts were paid; Vivekananda held that restraint is a virtue only in those strong enough to choose otherwise. This brief argues that India after independence inverted that order, renaming poverty as simplicity, and that the inversion hardened into an industry of obstruction, as Kudankulam and Sardar Sarovar show. It also takes up the strongest objection, that the same principle forbids engineering away the climb to Kedarnath, and offers a tentative answer.
- [Chetavani 002: The decisive word is 'only'](https://khyatinstitute.org/chetavani/002-the-decisive-word-is-only): 2 October 2026. The common account of India's religious difference contrasts one God with many. That account is wrong, and its error obscures the real fault line. Sikhism is strictly monotheistic, Advaita is monist, Jainism and Buddhism posit no creator; what the dharmic traditions share is not polytheism but a refusal to monopolise the path to truth. The Abrahamic traditions in their classical forms make the opposite claim: one path, and salvation through it alone. This brief argues that exclusive soteriology, not monotheism, is the incompatibility; that India's civilisational settlement can accommodate any god and any form of worship on the condition of respect for its foundational commitments; and that the cow is the hardest test of that condition. It also sets out where this argument is weakest.
- [Chetavani 001: The UPI levy arrives at a threshold proposed in 1999](https://khyatinstitute.org/chetavani/001-upi-mdr-threshold): 16 September 2026. NPCI's 0.4% merchant discount rate on UPI transactions above ₹2,000 has been defended as infrastructure cost recovery and attacked as a concession to United States pressure. The evidence supports neither framing in full. The charge accrues in proportion to merchant acquiring scale, at a moment when two applications with US parent companies hold roughly four-fifths of UPI volume and the cap intended to address that concentration has been deferred for a sixth year. Its direction matches a published 2026 US trade complaint; its design withholds what that complaint principally sought. It also opens a price gap against a settlement rail that carries no charge. This brief examines who receives the levy, tests the arguments on each side, and notes that its ₹2,000 threshold matches a figure in a proposal, first developed in 1999, to replace India's tax system.

## About this publication

- [Manifesto](https://khyatinstitute.org/manifesto): What the Institute holds, and what it does not offer. Its declared priors, stated so readers may discount for them.
- [Citation and republication](https://khyatinstitute.org/republication): How to cite a document, why the URL will not change, and the terms for reproducing one in full.
- [Corrections](https://khyatinstitute.org/corrections): The corrections policy and the log. Errors are amended in place with a dated note.
- [Write for us](https://khyatinstitute.org/write-for-us): Submission guidelines. No affiliation required; the whole editorial test is stated in advance.
- [Privacy](https://khyatinstitute.org/privacy): What the site collects, and how to decline being counted.

## Optional

- [Full text of every document](https://khyatinstitute.org/llms-full.txt): the complete text of everything published, in one file.