India, Feb. 2 -- The budget for the coming financial year was crafted in an environment defined by a profound shift in the global order, marked by the US's new doctrine of strategic uncertainty as a policy tool to "make America great again". For nearly 80 years, the world operated under a Pax Americana framework, which provided relative predictability in trade, security alliances, war, and global economic governance. That framework is now being challenged. Countries and corporations alike must recalibrate their strategies to navigate a world where predictability has given way to ambiguity, and rules-based multilateralism is increasingly replaced by transactional power dynamics.

The outlook is increasingly zero-sum, and the pace of change...