Write for us

What is not required

No institutional affiliation. No doctorate. No prior publication. No introduction from someone already known to us. A submission is read on what it argues and what it can source, and nothing else is consulted.

Fluent, idiomatic English is not a requirement either. A clear argument in plain prose is worth more than a polished one, and prose can be edited in a way that reasoning cannot. Anyone who can state a claim and show the evidence for it can write for this publication.

What is required

Three things, and they are the same three that govern everything published here.

The opposing case, stated in full. Every document sets out the strongest version of the argument against it, in that argument’s own terms, before answering it. Not a parenthetical and not a strawman — a section written as though by someone who believes it. This is the requirement most submissions fail, so it is worth saying plainly: if the opposing case cannot be made persuasive, the piece is not finished.

A primary source for every figure. Every number carries a source and a date, located and read, not quoted from a secondary report. Where the data does not exist, the document says so rather than reasoning around the gap.

Falsifiable forecasts. Any prediction states a horizon and the condition under which it would be wrong. “If X has not occurred by the fourth quarter of 2028, this analysis is wrong.”

Everything else — register, structure, diction — is editing, and editing is our job rather than the contributor’s.

What we publish

	Length	What it is
Chetavani	1,200–2,000 words	Policy briefs. Where positions are taken.
Working papers	4,000–8,000 words	Slow, heavily sourced, methodology and limitations stated.
Commentary	600–1,000 words	Faster, at a lower evidentiary ceiling, and labelled as such on the page.

The subject is Indian governance and political economy, read over a long horizon. A piece that will still be worth reading in three years is the target; a piece that responds to this week’s announcement usually is not, unless it says something about the slower thing underneath.

How to propose a piece

Write to hello@khyatinstitute.org with a few paragraphs: the claim, the evidence it rests on, and what the strongest objection to it would be. That is enough. There is no form, no portal and no need to write a full draft on spec — a proposal that can be read in two minutes is preferred to a finished paper that took a month.

A draft already written is welcome too. Send it as text in the body of the email or as an attachment; formatting does not matter.

What happens next

Every submission gets a reply. Where a piece is declined, the reason is given — briefly, but specifically enough to be useful somewhere else. A proposal that is close but not yet right will be said to be close, with what is missing.

Accepted pieces are edited, and nothing is published without the author seeing the edited version first. If an edit changes an argument rather than its expression, it is not made without agreement.

Terms

Guest work is published under the contributor’s own name, not the house byline, with a short contributor note. Contributors are free to republish their own work anywhere, immediately, and are encouraged to.

Documents are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives licence, so anyone may reproduce the piece in full with credit and a link — see citation and republication. Copyright remains with the author.

Corrections apply to guest work exactly as they do to house documents: errors are amended in place with a dated note, and logged at /corrections.