Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Kushagr Bakshi is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and an SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, where he also received his LLM. He received his first law degree from NUJS in West Bengal. We discussed a chapter of his dissertation called " The Country Without a Post Office: Jammu and Kashmir and the Imaginations of Freedom Within a Federation. We talked...
Nov 14, 2024•54 min•Ep. 122
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Aarushi Kalra Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Brown University. We discussed her job market paper, " Hate in the Time of Algorithms: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment on Online Behavior ." We talked about the demand and supply of toxicity against minorities on social media platforms, user behavior, platform behavior, real world segregation due to ethnic violence, and much more. Record...
Nov 07, 2024•50 min•Ep. 121
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Abishek Choutagunta , who received his PhD in economics from the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg. He is also an EV India fellow at the Mercatus Center. We discussed his paper " President's Rule in India: State Emergency or Political Capture? " with Christian Bjørnskov , Stefan Voigt , and myself, yes you heard that right. We talked about the Centripetal Federalism in ...
Oct 31, 2024•54 min•Ep. 120
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Atanu Chatterjee, a PhD candidate in geography at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a lecturer at the School of Human Settlements, XIM University Bhubaneswar. We discussed his dissertation examining the in situ slum rehabilitation scheme through a state-led intervention in low income housing in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. We talked about the reasons for the emergence of urban slums in Ahmedabad...
Oct 24, 2024•58 min•Ep. 119
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Steven Brownstone , a PhD candidate in economics at the University of California, San Diego. His research focus is on the fields of development economics, agricultural economics, and political economy. We discussed his job market paper, Labor Market Effects of Agricultural Mechanization: Experimental Evidence from India . We talked about the reason there isn't a natural mechanization in ri...
Oct 17, 2024•47 min•Ep. 118
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Deepika Padmanabhan , who's a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University. Her research focuses on nationalism, language and self-determination with a regional focus in South Asia. We discussed her job market paper , everyday imposition language promotion as a nation building strategy in Southern India. We talked about how the exposure to dominant national languages like English ...
Oct 10, 2024•46 min•Ep. 117
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. This is the 2024 job market series where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about the latest research in India. I spoke with Sukrit Puri , who is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT and an Elinor Ostrom fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research focus is on the entanglement between business and politics in emerging economies, and his dissert...
Oct 03, 2024•58 min•Ep. 116
Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. We are kicking off the 2024 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India. Our first scholar in the series is Rolly Kapoor , who is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics at University of California, Santa Cruz. Before this, she received a BA in Economics from Delhi University and an MSE in Economics from University Co...
Sep 26, 2024•40 min•Ep. 115
Today my guest is Ruchir Sharma, who is the Chairman of Rockefeller International , a columnist with the Financial Times , and the author of the recent book, What Went Wrong with Capitalism . We talked about American debt levels, US monetary policy, regulation and cronyism, industrial policy, the Indian economy under Modi, and much more. Recorded July 31st, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Click here for the l...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 114
Today my guest is Amol Agrawal , who is the author of History of Private Banking in South Canara District (1906-69). He teaches economics at Ahmedabad University and blogs at the excellent blog Mostly Economics . We spoke about the colonial and post-colonial history of banking in India, the unique features of the South Canara district, and its bankers, inclusive banking by state and private banks, bank nationalization, and much more. Recorded July 26th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 113
Today my guests are Amartya Lahiri and Devashish Mitra who are joining me to discuss their latest paper for the 1991 project titled India's Development Policy Challenge . Amartya Lahiri is the Royal Bank Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Devashish Mitra the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. We spoke about structural transformation ...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 112
Today my guest is Anirudh Burman . He is an associate research director and fellow at Carnegie Endowment India, and prior to that, he worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and the Centre for Policy Research, both in New Delhi. He has his master's in law from Harvard Law School. We spoke about the dysfunctional land markets and the kinds of reforms required in land use policy, land sale and land transfers. We also talked about the various experiments with land pooling and ...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 111
Today my guests are Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah, who are my colleagues at the Mercatus Center and research scholars working with me on the 1991 Project. We spoke about the kinds of policy change we would like to see in the coalition government led by Modi's in his third term. We talked about the research Shreyas, Kadambari and I have been working on in the areas of competition policy, regulating India's digital marketplace, labor law reforms, scaling India's manufacturing, streamlining GST,...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 110
Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform. We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report . written by Sajith and his co-authors, Anurag Pagaria, Nachammai Savithiri both at Blume Ventures; the many countries that make up the country of India; bifurcated between India1, 2, ...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 109
Today my guest is Anne O Krueger . She is a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She served World Bank's Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy managing director at the IMF from 2001 to 2006. We talked about her famous 1974 paper "The Political Economy of a Rent Seeking Society" on its 50th anni...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 108
Today my guest is Karthik Muralidharan. He is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the recent book Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance ." We talked about the lacking state capacity in India, about improving the quality of public expenditure, fiscal federalism, methods to improve the hiring process for government, better ways of staffing and using the Indian bureaucracy, randomized c...
Jun 06, 2024•1 hr 58 min•Ep. 107
Today my guests are Tom Easton and Arjun Ramani from The Economist. Tom Easton is Mumbai bureau chief. He joined The Economist in 2000 at the New York bureau and was appointed the Asian business editor in 2007. Arjun Ramani is on an extended stint in Mumbai and Delhi bureaus covering the Indian economy. Before this, he was the global business and economics correspondent in the London office. We spoke about various aspects of covered in a recent six-part special report on India's economy written ...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 106
Today my guest is Rohit Lamba , an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. We spoke about his recent book Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India's Economic Future which he has coauthored with Raghuram Rajan. We spoke about their argument to shift the focus from industrial and trade policy towards a services and education policy, how India can and should decentralize, if India can scale educ...
May 08, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 105
Today my guest is Rasheed Griffith, who is the CEO of the Caribbean Progress Studies Institute , the host of the podcast the Rasheed Griffith Show , and one of my favorite writers on Substack . He also directs the Emergent Ventures Africa-Caribbean grants program at the Mercatus Center. We spoke about whether the former colonizers owe reparations to the Caribbean people, economic divergence in post-colonial Caribbean countries, Caribbean music, homophobia, VS Naipaul, West Indian cricket team, a...
Apr 25, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 104
Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme . Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi , a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co-author of - Missing in Action: Why Should You Care About Public Policy, and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens . He has co-edited India's ...
Apr 11, 2024•Ep. 103
Today my guests are M. Krishnan and Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan . M. Krishnan is an economist based in Chennai and Singapore, and specializes in agriculture education systems, fisheries, and aquaculture research. He is currently an advisor at Infinite-Sum Modeling Inc and was a distinguished scientist of the Agricultural Research Service of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan is an economist specializing in trade and international policy. He is a Fellow...
Mar 28, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 102
Aparna Chandra is a constitutional scholar and associate professor of law at the National Law school in Bangalore. She is the coauthor, along with Sital Kalantry and William Hubbard of the recent book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India . We spoke about the problem of pendency across all courts in the Indian judiciary, whether the Supreme Court is truly a people's court, the problem of special leave petitions, potential ways to reform the judiciary, and much more....
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 101
This is our 100th episode and I want to thank our listeners, the guests who have been exceptionally generous with their time and insights, the fantastic team at Mercatus that helps me produce and disseminate the podcast, and to all our donors and supporters. Today my guest is Douglas Irwin , who is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of dozens of books and papers, most recently, Clashing over Commerce , which is a magisterial history of US trade policy. ...
Feb 22, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 100
Today my guest is Rahul Matthan , a technology lawyer and partner at Trilegal. He assisted the Indian government in developing India's data privacy law and he is the author of the recent books Privacy 3.0 and The Third Way . We spoke about India's digital public infrastructure revolution, India's unified payments system, AI, blockchain, the design issues around India's NCPI , Aadhaar, privacy, and much more. Recorded January 22nd, 2024. Read a f ull transcript enhanced with helpful links. Follow...
Feb 08, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 99
Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History at Australian National University. His research focuses on various aspects of the history of modern South Asia. And he is the author of the new book, Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India . We spoke about the history of a conservative and ideological opposition politics of India, influence of BR Shenoy and more generally the Austrian economists on Swatratra party, about C Rajagopalachari, other members,...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 98
Today my guest is Nasreen Munni Kabir , a documentary filmmaker, TV producer and director, author, biographer, translator/subtitler, and an absolute authority on all things Hindi cinema. We spoke about her biographical conversation series of books with artists like Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Lata Mangeshkar, Waheeda Rahman, Zakir Hussain, AR Rahman. We also spoke about her documentary films on Guru Dutt, and television series Movie Mahal chronicling the history of Hindi cinema, how she chooses her su...
Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 85
Today the roles are reversed. In the 2023 end of the year review episode, producer Dallas Floer asks Shruti questions from our listeners about Shruti's ideas of India, how Shruti prepares for the podcast, various guests, the most listened to and the most underrated episode picks of the year, and much more. Recorded December 12th, 2023. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Dallas on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent st...
Dec 28, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 96
Our last scholar in the series this year is Rajat Kocchar, a post-doctoral scholar at University of Chicago's Energy and Environment Lab. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California, and his research lies in the field of environmental economics, in particular, on the understanding the factors that incentivize adaptation to climate shocks. We discussed his paper, "Does Market Power in Local Agricultural Markets Hinder Farmer Climate Change Adaptation?" We talked about t...
Dec 14, 2023•40 min•Ep. 95
Shruti spoke with Vani Swarupa Murali a PhD. Candidate and an instructor at the South Asian Studies Department in the National University of Singapore (NUS). She has a Masters in Asian Studies from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Her research lies at the intersection of political science and agricultural policy and environmental governance. We spoke about "When Sowing is not Reaping: Decentralisation, Groundwater Extraction and Agrarian Livelihoods in Tamil Nadu." W...
Nov 30, 2023•36 min•Ep. 94
Shruti spoke with Kartikeya Batra, who is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Maryland and has a master's in international affairs from The Fletcher School. His research lies at the intersection of political economy, development economics, and economic history. They discussed his job market paper titled " Long-Run Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from India ," and talked about the erstwhile Zamindari or Taluqdari system and its impact on modern day Uttar Pradesh, land tit...
Nov 16, 2023•46 min•Ep. 93
