Why the middle class will shape global development | Homi Kharas

Dan Banik speaks with Homi Kharas about one of the most important yet surprisingly underexplored forces in modern development: the rise of the global middle class. Drawing on Kharas’s book The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change the World, the conversation traces how the middle class emerged as a powerful social and economic force, why its center of gravity is shifting toward Asia, and what that means for the future of development. Along the way, they reflect on how the middle class shapes demand, drives growth, influences politics, and changes what citizens expect from markets and the state. Homi Kharas is a senior fellow at Brookings and previously spent 26 years at the World Bank, including seven years as Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific and as Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, where he led the Bank’s work on economic policy, debt, trade, governance, and financial markets. The episode also examines the tensions at the heart of this transformation. As more people move into middle-class life, new questions emerge about inequality, insecurity, democracy, consumerism, and whether middle-class expansion can be sustained in a world under growing environmental pressure. From the anxieties facing Western middle-class societies to the optimism and aspiration associated with middle-class growth in Asia, this is a wide-ranging conversation about prosperity, possibility, and the changing social foundations of the global economy.   Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how societies function — from healthcare and education to governance, public debate, and the future of work. But as AI systems become more powerful and more deeply embedded in everyday life, they also raise important questions about misinformation, democratic accountability, and the role of human judgment. In this episode, Dan Banik speaks with Francesco Marcelloni, Professor of Data Mining and Machine Learning at the University of Pisa and Academic Director of the Knowledge Hub on AI at the Circle U. European University Alliance. They explore how AI actually works, why the debate around the technology has become so polarized, and what it means for decision-making in governments, hospitals, universities, and businesses. The conversation examines both the risks and the opportunities of artificial intelligence, including its potential to improve medical diagnosis, support education, and help policymakers analyze vast amounts of data. Dan and Francesco also highlight why preserving human oversight, critical thinking, and democratic accountability will be crucial in the AI era. Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

India-China relations are entering a new phase of cautious re-engagement after five years of deep tension following the 2020 Galwan clash. Leaders have resumed meetings, direct flights have restarted, and diplomatic channels are active again. However, beneath these gestures lie enduring structural fault lines: a widening power asymmetry, unresolved border disputes, shifting public opinion in India, and Beijing’s tendency to view New Delhi through the prism of US–China rivalry. Dan Banik speaks with Manoj Kewalramani, Chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme and a China Studies Fellow at the Takshashila Institution and author of Smokeless War: China’s Quest for Geopolitical Dominance. Together, they examine whether the current thaw represents meaningful stabilization or merely a fragile “cold peace.” The conversation explores how economic interdependence coexists with strategic mistrust, why India is pursuing de-risking rather than decoupling from China, and how domestic politics and public narratives shape policy choices in both countries. From a development perspective, the episode also asks whether policy lessons can travel across fundamentally different political systems. Can India draw operational insights from China’s infrastructure and governance successes without compromising democratic institutions? And is Beijing willing to accommodate India’s aspirations as an independent global power? Resources: Between Rivalry and Rapprochement: The Trials and Trajectory of India-China Relations (Kewalramani, 2026) Manoj Kewalramani's books and articles on China Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

In an era of intensifying great-power rivalry, shrinking foreign aid budgets, and declining faith in multilateralism, what role is left for global justice? In this wide-ranging conversation, the Yale philosopher Thomas Pogge joins Dan Banik in Oslo to examine whether morality still has a place in international politics or whether power has fully displaced principle. The episode explores the growing shift from soft power to hard power, the erosion of solidarity in global development, and the strategic competition between the United States, China, and Europe. Pogge reflects on why philosophers have become increasingly marginal in public life and argues that today’s global crises (from climate change to persistent poverty) cannot be solved by technocratic fixes alone. They require moral clarity, institutional imagination, and renewed commitment to shared values. The discussion also turns to the rise of the Global South and the need for stronger collective bargaining institutions, particularly within the African continent. Pogge outlines the Ecological Impact Fund — a bold new mechanism designed to reward green innovation based on real ecological impact in the Global South — and explains how rethinking intellectual property rules could accelerate climate and pollution solutions where they are needed most. Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

In this episode of In Pursuit of Development, Dan Banik is joined by Dr. David McNair, Executive Director of ONE.org, for a conversation on the future of activism and global development in an age of overlapping crises. At a time when debt distress is rising, humanitarian funding is falling, and trust in multilateral institutions is under strain, what does effective advocacy look like? Drawing on two decades of campaigning to reduce child mortality, unlock billions for climate and sustainable development, and reform elements of the global financial architecture, McNair reflects on what has worked in the past and why some of those strategies may no longer be sufficient. The discussion explores the politics of solidarity, the rise of agency in the Global South, the cost of capital facing African economies, and the growing calls to modernize global financial governance.  Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

In this episode of In Pursuit of Development, Dan Banik speaks with Yale historian David Engerman about how “development” became one of the most powerful and contested ideas of the modern era. Drawing on Engerman’s 2025 book Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made, the conversation follows six influential South Asian economists and policymakers, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Manmohan Singh, Mahbub ul Haq, Rehman Sobhan, and Lal Jayawardene, from Cambridge classrooms to planning commissions and global institutions. Along the way, they unpack the enduring arguments that still shape policy today: poverty versus inequality, markets versus states, trade versus protection, and expertise versus politics. The episode also explores how ideas associated with human development emerged, why “the Global South” became a category with political force, and what these intellectual friendships and rivalries reveal about the promises and tensions inside the development project. Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

This episode of In Pursuit of Development explores how AI is reshaping the way development organizations learn from evidence, unlocking lessons buried in evaluations and reports, and helping practitioners make better decisions in complex, fast-moving settings. Dan Banik speaks with Lindsey Moore, CEO and Founder of DevelopMetrics, about how ethical AI and predictive analytics can make development evidence genuinely usable — turning decades of evaluations into structured, searchable insight for better decisions.Lindsey draws on her experience in USAID and her work building domain-trained models to explain why the sector’s challenge is not an evidence shortage, but rather an evidence usability gap. Together Lindsey and Dan discuss what it takes to build context-aware systems: transparent taxonomies, careful human labeling, and models grounded in local perspectives rather than default assumptions embedded in general-purpose AI.The conversation also explores how large-scale evaluation archives can be transformed into institutional memory, strengthening professional judgment and helping organizations learn faster, reduce waste, and target interventions more precisely.In this episode:AI for global development beyond hype: What actually works in practice.Why definitions and taxonomies shape results (and power).How to reduce bias and improve context in development AI.Evidence infrastructure, knowledge management, and decision workflows.Resources:When USAID Shut Down, Its Lessons Nearly Vanished. AI Helped Recover Them (Stanford Social Innovation Review, December 2025)Integrating human-centered AI for land use policy: Insights from agricultural interventions in international development (Land Use Policy, 2025) Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

Vietnam is often held up as one of the world’s standout development success stories—rapid growth, dramatic poverty reduction, and a transformation from low-income to middle-income status within a single generation. But what happens when success starts to produce new tensions: rising inequality, changing public services, mounting pollution, and a consumption boom that reshapes everyday life?Dan Banik is joined by Arve Hansen, Research Professor at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Global Sustainability and author of Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes: Societal Transformations and Everyday Life (2022, Palgrave). Together, they explore Vietnam’s development model after Đổi Mới and the paradox of an officially socialist, one-party state delivering a globally integrated “market economy with a socialist orientation.”Rather than staying at the level of GDP and policy slogans, the conversation moves into the lived experience of development: mobility and the motorbike society, the rising status of car ownership, urban change, air quality, and how shifting diets and “meatification” reflect new middle-class aspirations. Dan and Arve also discuss Vietnam’s push for greener growth and electrification, the politics of land and infrastructure, and why sustainability transitions can become socially and politically sensitive.Finally, the episode situates Vietnam in today’s unstable global economy (e.g., trade shifts, geopolitics, and growing pressure to diversify) while asking what the next phase of development could look like as Vietnam tries to avoid the middle-income trap and sustain progress in a warming world. Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

Electricity is often treated as a basic development milestone. But in large parts of the African continent, the deeper challenge is not only connecting people to the grid, but ensuring power is affordable and reliable enough to support jobs, industrialization, and economic transformation. This episode explores what energy poverty really means, why progress is uneven across regions, and what it would take to move from “first access” to true “energy for growth.”Todd Moss is founder and executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub. He is a widely recognized expert on energy, development finance, and foreign policy and writes the popular Substack Eat More Electrons. Todd previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.The conversation begins with a critical distinction: electricity “access” can mask a much larger problem of unreliable supply. Todd argues that billions of people live with power that exists on paper but fails in practice as outages, high tariffs, and weak grids erode the benefits electrification is supposed to deliver. From there, Todd and Dan unpack the persistent tension between household electrification and powering firms. Dan raises the moral and political case for universal household access, while Todd makes the argument that job creation requires a different kind of electricity (dense, dependable, and scaled for industry) alongside the off-grid solutions that can improve welfare quickly.They then turn to policy and investment. Why do so many countries remain stuck with utilities that are not creditworthy? What makes large generation projects “bankable,” and why do credible offtakers and guarantees matter so much? Todd explains how renewed global interest in critical minerals could become an anchor for bigger energy systems, especially if governments negotiate strategically and use mining and processing to unlock broader infrastructure that supports non-mining sectors too.The episode also widens out to geopolitics and development finance, including what is changing in Washington and what new tools (particularly U.S. development finance) might mean for energy investment going forward. Finally, Dan and Todd tackle nuclear power: why it remains controversial, why new small modular designs are changing the conversation, and what the long-term geopolitical risks look like when nuclear fuel and technology can tie countries into decades-long dependencies.Resources:Eat More Electrons SubstackEnergy for Growth Hub websiteGlobal Market for Advanced Nuclear MapWho in Africa is Ready for Nuclear Power?PPA Watch Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

As the year comes to a close, this special year-end episode of In Pursuit of Development offers a reflective look back at the conversations that have shaped Season 6 so far. Host Dan Banik brings together the main ideas, debates, and tensions explored across the season, drawing connections between discussions on the rise of the Global South, shifting power in a multipolar world, democratic resilience, and the growing strain on multilateral institutions.The episode revisits how development thinking is being challenged by shrinking aid budgets, climate change, energy insecurity, and widening global inequalities, while also exploring the promises and risks of new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Throughout the reflection, Dan emphasizes the importance of human development, accountability, and solidarity in an increasingly complex global landscape.Looking ahead, the episode outlines key themes the podcast will tackle in the new year, including energy promotion and energy security, the intellectual foundations of development thinking, consumption and development linkages, the role of activism, AI and development, and a journalist’s perspective on global development. This episode is both a guide for listeners who want to catch up on Season 6 and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation about where global development is headed next. Host:Dan BanikLinkedIn Subscribe:Apple Spotify YouTubehttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/