Each week, Milan Vaishnav and his guests from around the world break down the latest developments in Indian politics, economics, foreign policy, society, and culture for a global audience. Grand Tamasha is a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times.
Author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed discusses her new book, "Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America." She explains the book's focus on Indian Americans who have transformed fields like technology, medicine, and public policy. The conversation covers early pioneers like Kanwal Rekhi, the role of execution versus creativity, challenges faced by women, the impact of figures like Deepak Chopra and Neil Katyal, and insights on caste, privilege, and parenting approaches for future success.
Anticolonial movements of the 20th century generated audacious ideas of freedom. After decolonization, however, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those radical ideas. Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is a new book by the scholar Sandipto Dasgupta which provides an innovative account of how India ultimately addressed this daunting challenge. It's a fresh, somewhat revisionist look at the making of the postcolonial constitutional order and tr...
At this point, you’ve probably read 1,001 post-mortem analyses of the India-Pakistan conflict, desperately searching for some new nugget or data point that helps you understand this brief, but intense clash between these two South Asian rivals. In this sea of hot takes, one essay stands out both for its analytical clarity and its wisdom. That piece was written by the scholar Joshua T. White and it’s simply titled, “Lessons for the next India-Pakistan war.” It was published by the Brookings Insti...
On Saturday, India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire, ending—at least for now—the latest bout of armed conflict between the two South Asian rivals. The announcement followed the launch of “Operation Sindoor”—India’s response to the April 22nd terrorist attack in Kashmir, which claimed the lives of 26 innocent civilians. India’s strike prompted a worrying tit-for-tat standoff which quickly escalated into the worst conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations in a quarter-century. The fighting ...
The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World is the new book by the celebrated historian William Dalrymple . For listeners of Grand Tamasha, Dalrymple surely needs no introduction. He is the bestselling author of nine books, including The Last Mughal , The Anarchy , and City of Djinns . He is cofounder of the Jaipur Literature Festival and cohost of the wildly popular podcast, “ Empire ,” with Anita Anand. His new book, The Golden Road , highlights India’s often forgotten role as a c...
It’s been a typically busy few months in the world of Indian politics and policy. To roundup all the latest developments from India, Milan is joined on the show this week by Grand Tamasha regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution. The trio discuss the recent terrorist attack which killed 26 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s recent whirlwind trip to India, and Trump’s tariff th...
In India today, so many political debates are focused on welfare and welfarism. It seems that state after state is competing to offer the most electorally attractive benefits to its voters. The central government, for its part, has pioneered a new model of social welfare built around digital ID and direct cash transfers to needy households. Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy is a new book by the scholar Louise Tillin . It examines the development of India’s ...
On April 2nd, the U.S. government announced a host of sweeping tariff hikes with every single one of America's trading partners. The aim of the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs was ostensibly to “rebalance” the global trading system, as some Trump advisors have put it. However, the drastic measure roiled markets and eventually resulted in the President imposing a 90-day pause on most tariffs, with the exception of strategic sectors and imports from China. India, for its part, was slapped with ...
Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consulting firms, tech-savvy volunteers, pollsters, data-driven insights, and online battles to mobilize voters. But what exactly is driving these changes in the landscape of electioneering? The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them is a new book by the scholar Amogh Dhar Sharma which tries to locate answers to this questi...
A reactionary antidemocratic ethos born and bred in America has come to infect democracies around the world. This is the central thesis of a timely new book by the journalist Zack Beauchamp , The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World . Through a mix of political history and reportage, The Reactionary Spirit reveals how the United States serves the birthplace of a new authoritarian style, and why we’re now seeing its evolution in a diverse set of cou...
Kishore Mahbubani is widely regarded as one of Asia’s most well-known diplomats, commentators, and strategic analysts. Having grown up in poverty in Singapore in the 1950s, however, there was nothing preordained about Mahbubani’s success. But over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, he would go on to become one of the most recognizable and revered diplomats of his generation. Mahbubani served in Cambodia, Malaysia, and the United States. He was Permanent Secretary at the Sing...
The Indus Valley Annual Report , published by Blume Ventures, is an annual deep-dive into the Indian macroeconomy, the Indian consumer, and the innovation ecosystem in India. The report has become one of the most highly anticipated reports on the economy—pored over by policy wonks, economic analysts, and India watchers. The lead author of the report is Sajith Pai . Sajith is a partner at Blume Ventures , an early stage venture firm with offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, and San Francisco. Saj...
Europe is not typically the focus of the Grand Tamasha podcast but recent developments involving Europe, the United States, and India raise fresh questions about the future shape of the international order. Last week, a high-level European Commission delegation embarked on a historic trip to New Delhi, where the two sides spoke optimistically of a promising new chapter in their relationship. Across the ocean in Washington, however, there were alarming signs of a breakdown in the Trans-Atlantic r...
Vishwa Shastra: India and the World is the new book by the scholar and foreign affairs analyst Dhruva Jaishankar . The book provides a comprehensive overview of India’s interactions with the world—from ancient times to the present day. The book also serves as a comprehensive resource for those seeking to understand how India might define the emerging world order. In so doing, it rebuts the conventional wisdom that India lacks a strategic culture. Dhruva is Executive Director of the Observer Rese...
There are two narratives doing the rounds about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Washington to break bread with U.S. President Donald Trump. The first narrative, touted by the government and its backers, is that Modi skillfully threaded the needle with Trump, standing up for Indian interests but also giving the president some important early wins that can position India well for the future. The second narrative suggests a more pessimistic vision: that U.S.-India relations ar...
The news from India has been coming fast and furious. On February 1, the finance minister revealed the latest Indian budget amidst a backdrop of slowing economic growth. On February 8, a new government in the state of Delhi was elected and, for the first time in a quarter-century, it’s headed by the BJP. And on February 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had his first face-to-face sit-down with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in the Trump 2.0 era. To discuss the latest events and wh...
On September 5, 2017, the journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot and killed outside of her house in Bangalore by armed assailants traveling on a motorbike. Lankesh, a journalist and social activist, was known for being a fierce critic of right-wing Hindutva politics and her murder has widely been seen as retribution for her outspoken views. A new book by the journalist Rollo Romig , I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India , recounts the extraordinary life and tr...
On February 1st, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her eighth Budget of the Modi era. This year’s budget was tabled at a precarious economic juncture, for India and for the world. India has been challenged by slowing growth, persistent inflation, and global uncertainties motivated in part by the return of Donald Trump to the White House just a few weeks ago. So, how has the finance minister approached this delicate moment? What are the government’s priorities for the coming f...
2024 was widely hailed as the year of elections with 73 countries holding elections in and more than 1.5 billion voters exercising their franchise. On Grand Tamasha, we’ve discussed the 2024 Indian general election as well as the recent U.S. presidential election at some length. But there was another important election in South Asia which has important ramifications both for India and the wider Indo-Pacific. In September 2024, for the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, a third-party candidate wa...
One of the most talked about policy experiments in India in recent memory is the reform of government schools in the city-state of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Under the leadership of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Delhi government has implemented an innovative program to equip students with foundational literacy and numeracy. But while these reforms are much discussed, they have been surprisingly under-studied. A new book by the scholar Yamini Aiyar tries to remedy this gap. Yamini’s new ...
Grand Tamasha is Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced with the Hindustan Times , a leading Indian media house . For five years (and counting), Milan has interviewed authors, journalists, policymakers, and practitioners working on contemporary India to give listeners across the globe a glimpse into life in the world’s most populous country. For the past two years, in anticipation of the show’s holiday hiatus, we’ve published an annual list of our favorite books feat...
If there is one thing political scientists can agree on, it is that we live in an era of populism. With the recent election of Donald Trump, populism has returned to the United States, raising questions about what changes we might see in upcoming elections in 2025. South Asia has been no stranger to populism and a new book, Righteous Demagogues: Populist Politics in South Asia and Beyond , provides a framework for understanding its origins, its evolution, and its prospects. The authors of this n...
Where and when ethnic violence breaks out is a question of longstanding concern to the India policy community. Previous work in political science has pointed to a diverse array of factors—ranging from civil society bonds to elite networks and coalition politics as potential explanations. A new book by the scholar Aditi Malik highlights political parties, specifically party instability, as the principal culprit. In Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India , Aditi highl...
The discourse in India today on the issue of the Muslim community seems to swing between two contrary positions. According to the Hindu nationalist narrative, Muslims are a monolithic religious category whose presence justifies the need for greater Hindu solidarity. On the other hand, there is the narrative offered by liberals, who claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority to defend Indian democracy. A new book by the scholar Hilal Ahmed , A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New In...
Over the past twelve months, tales of spies and spycraft have complicated India’s relationships with key Western partners. In recent months, both Canada and the United States have alleged that India’s foreign intelligence agency was involved in a complex plot to identify and target Khalistani separatists who were citizens of those countries. In India, these allegations have, in turn, revealed deep skepticism about the actions of western spy agencies and the negative role they’ve played in India ...
India’s Near East: A New History is an important new book by the scholar Avinash Paliwal . The book traces the history of how New Delhi has grappled with the twin challenges of forging productive ties with its eastern neighbors—namely, Bangladesh and Myanmar—while building a robust administrative state in India’s Northeastern states. It is the story of a state’s struggle to overcome war, displacement and interventionism, but which exposes the limits of independent India’s influence both inside a...
The never-ending U.S. election has finally ended and Republican nominee Donald Trump has clinched a decisive victory. Trump is on track to win 312 electoral college votes and, for the first time, a majority of the popular vote. Kamala Harris, a surprise entrant in the race, lost a closely contested election, marking the second time in three elections that a female Democratic presidential nominee failed to topple Trump. The election has implications for Indian Americans, for India, and for U.S.-I...
As American voters go to the polls, all indications point to a statistical dead-heat between vice president and Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris and former Republican president Donald Trump. The outcome will likely turn on tens of thousands of voters in a handful of key swing states. According to leading pollsters and polling aggregators, the race in these states is too close to call. In this hotly contested race, one demographic whose political preferences are much discussed, though less ...
The United States is fast approaching the end of a lengthy presidential campaign in which the issue of immigration has taken center stage. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to protect America’s borders, with Trump’s misleading claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets emerging as one of the defining moments of the race so far. Harris, on the other hand, has gone on the offensive, blaming Trump for ...
One of the most remarkable developments in Indian politics in recent years is the surge in female voter turnout. For the first several decades after Independence, women’s participation on Election Day lagged men’s by between 8 to 12 percentage points. In recent years, however, that gender gap has completely disappeared. In most state elections today, women turn out to vote with greater frequency than men. But this good news story obscures a puzzling fact: while Indian women vote at high rates, t...
