Kuala Lampur, April 8 -- Political economy is not just an old-fashioned term from the time of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. It is the essential, often hidden, reality of how any society functions. It is the simple, powerful recognition that the economy is not a natural system like the weather. It is a human-made system of rules, and those rules are written by politics-by ideologies, by power, by who gets a seat at the table. In other words, it's the study of the marriage between power and production. Every economic arrangement-who owns what, who profits, who struggles-is the result of political choices: laws on taxation, regulations on corporations, trade deals, labour rights, and the definition of property itself. The question is: Who benefi...