Ideas of India: Recent Episodes
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Through conversations with top thinkers in the social sciences and beyond, economist Shruti Rajagopalan explores the ideas that will propel India forward.
Today my guests are my colleagues Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah. Shreyas is a research scholar and Kadambari is a research associate at the Mercatus Center with the India program. We talked about completing five years of the 1991 Project, how it started, it's scope, the oral histories of the reformers in 1991, papers, essays, fellowships and much more.
Recorded July 10th, 2026.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:44 - The Origin Story
00:11:07 - Launching the Oral Histories Initiative
00:20:47 -Documentation and Memory
00:37:47 - Building the Repository
00:46:18 - The 1991 Project Website
00:58:11 - Walking with Giants
01:06:45 - Where are all the Women?
01:11:27 - Making Economic Reforms 'Sexy' Again
01:22:43 - The Importance of Intergenerational Interaction
01:34:33 - Incubating New Talent
01:41:39 - Gratitude and Acknowledgments
01:53:19 - Outro
Today my guest is M.R. Madhavan, co-founder and president of PRS Legislative Research.
We talked about the role and purpose of the Rajya Sabha, treatment of money bills in a Westminster system, how the anti-defection law and party whips have hollowed out parliamentary function, parliamentary procedure, the role of the governor, and much more.
Recorded June 24th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:33) - The Role and Purpose of the Rajya Sabha (00:14:46) - Money Bills, No-Confidence Motions, and Design Flaws (00:22:47) - GST and Constitutional Design (00:30:33) - One Country, One Tax System? (00:35:31) - The Problem with Anti-Defection Laws and Whips (00:43:55) - Who Will Bell the Cat? (00:50:53) - Parliamentary Pressures: Constitutional vs. Constituent Expectations (01:02:04) - Challenges Faced by State Legislatures (01:15:37) - Reforming the Office of Governor (01:27:18) - The Role of PRS in Parliamentary Functioning (01:35:13) - Outro
Today my guest is once again Rahul Sagar, who is a Global Network Associate Professor of Political Science at New York University Abu Dhabi.
We talked about his new book The Birth of Indian Liberalism, the recovery of the forgotten nineteenth-century thinker Mama Parmanand, why his Letters to an Indian Raja counts as the first work of Indian political theory, how Indian liberals had to justify building a state out of chaos rather than restraining one that already existed, their fight against the social tyranny of caste, clergy, and family, the case for binding the ruler and educating the citizenry before extending the vote, the divergence between British India and the princely states, religion as a moral resource, the roots of Hindu nationalism, and much more.
Recorded June 9th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:37) - A Complete Unknown (00:08:53) - The Historical Context of Emerging Indian Liberalism (00:15:47) - Features of Parmanand's Liberal Project (00:21:36) - The Princely States vs. British India (00:27:47) - Religion and the Development of Indian Liberalism (00:37:05) - Neither Scientific Nor Divine (00:46:33) - What Constitutes a Work of Political Theory? (00:51:27) - The Ethics of Parmanand's Anonymity (01:02:50) - Outro
Today my guest is Sajjid Chinoy, managing director and chief India economist at J.P. Morgan. He is also currently serving as a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. Sajjid previously served on the Advisory Council to India's 15th Finance Commission and has served on a number of expert committees of the Reserve Bank of India.
We talked about India's current balance of payments and capital account challenges, the constraints holding back private investment, why employment and exports have become first-order policy priorities, rupee depreciation, shrinking FDI, and much more.
Recorded May 21st, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:18) - Taking Stock of the Indian Economy (00:11:26) - Factors Dragging on Aggregate Demand (00:15:46) - Changing Policy Priorities for Indian Economic Growth (00:22:13) - Rethinking Fiscal Architecture in a Shock-Prone World (00:33:44) - Let the Rupee Depreciate (00:42:46) - Coping with Shrinking Capital Flows (00:50:00) - Improving India's Pull Factors (00:54:12) - Export-Led Growth and Improved Resilience (01:00:53) - Navigating Choke Points While Avoiding Autarky (01:07:33) - India's Trilemma (01:14:55) - Positive Signs of Resilience in the Indian Economy (01:18:41) - Outro
Today my guest is Ritam Chaurey, who is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
We talked about structural transformation in India over the last three decades, how firm level behavior responds to regulatory and fiscal changes, how firms choose between capital and labor, or permanent versus contractual labor, land use and factory location, and much more.
Recorded April 29th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:07) - The Industrial Disputes Act, Permanent Workers, and Contractors (00:10:14) - Impacts of Reliance on Contract Labor (00:16:02) - Labor Protections and Their Impact on Firm Behavior (00:22:35) - Binding Constraints and the Rise of 'Invisible Workers' (00:27:46) - Labor Supply Preferences in Structural Transformation (00:34:07) - A 'Bad Law,' Musclemen, and the Evolution of Debt Law in India (00:40:21) - SARFAESI's Unintended Consequences (00:46:28) - The Drop in Fixed-Capital Assets (00:48:57) - The Impact of Judicial Delays on Labor-Capital Substitution (00:52:41) - The Bankruptcy Code and Marginal Improvements (00:55:54) - Spillover Benefits of Relaxing Land Use Regulation (01:04:18) - Location-Specific Subsidies and Barrier Relaxation (01:06:36) - A Case Study: Uttarakhand and Himachal (01:13:32) - The Impact of New Bank Branches in Underbanked Communities (01:23:24) - The Demonetization Shock (01:29:48) - Outro
Today my guest is Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who is the Laurance Rockefeller Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton and former president and chief executive of the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is the author of various books and edited volumes, has served on various government committees, and is a columnist for the Indian Express.
We talked about the return of nihilism in political life, the hollowing of professional identities, the politics of vishwas, Adam Smith on concentrated power, what it takes to build lasting institutions, the assumptions behind nonalignment, and much more.
Recorded April 3rd, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:11) - The Challenges Facing Liberalism (00:06:50) - The Erosion of Moral Authority (00:11:32) - Nationalism, Feminism, and the Arc of History (00:16:55) - Globalization and the Crisis of Community (00:22:06) - Sincerity, Context, and Intelligibility in a Digital Age (00:30:37) - Professional Identities as Sources of Moral Meaning (00:40:45) - Formal Inclusion and Continued Inequality (00:45:54) - Concentration of Power and the Distortion of the State (00:51:37) - The Politics of Vishwas (01:01:57) - On Caste and the Limits of Identity Politics (01:05:34) - The Question of Social Trust (01:14:08) - Trust-Building and Barriers to Desegregation (01:24:53) - Institutions of Higher Learning (01:39:31) - The Assumptions of Nonalignment (01:46:12) - Outro
Today we are releasing a webinar recording from April 24th where Milan Vaishnav and I had a conversation on delimitation in India. Milan is a senior fellow and the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the host of the excellent Grand Tamasha podcast where this recording will be simultaneously released.
We talked about the failure to pass the 131st constitutional amendment bill in Parliament, the government's intention to reapportion and increase the size of the Lok Sabha, the delimitation freeze pegged to the 1971 census that has survived five decades, why the fiscal bargain between states matters as much as the political bargain, and much more.
Recorded April 24th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:24) - What is Delimitation? (00:35:03) - The Politics Behind the Constitutional Amendment (00:47:38) - The Political Arithmetic (00:51:53) - The Financial Bargain (01:30:21) - Outro
Today my guest is Samanth Subramanian, who is a journalist and writer and the author of the recent books The Web Beneath the Waves and A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane.
We talked about under water sea cables and choke points in critical global infrastructure, the intersection of technology and geopolitics, large language models, JBS Haldane and the relationship between science and politics, and much more.
Recorded March 25th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:35) - Vulnerability and Resilience: Grappling with the Fragility of Undersea Connections (00:03:48) - Underwater Sea Cables (00:10:48) - How America's Big Tech Companies Dominate Bandwidth (00:14:37) - Concentration of Infrastructure (00:20:27) - The 2Africa Cable and Countries Without Leverage (00:27:17) - Geopolitical Vulnerabilities (00:34:51) - Indian Resilience (00:39:27) - Choke Points in the Global AI Economy (00:44:05) - The Challenges of Decommissioning Nuclear Plants (00:49:45) - On the Frontiers and Ethics of AI Technology (00:56:37) - Haldane's Legacy and Science in the Public Square (01:06:34) - Optimism and Pessimism About the Future of Science (01:12:59) - Outro
Today my guests are Arvind Subramanian and Devesh Kapur. Arvind is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. Devesh is the Starr Foundation Professor of South Asian Studies and Director of the Asia Programs at the Johns Hopkins. They are co-authors of the recent book, A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey.
We talked about India's redistributive democracy, why Indian states have taken such different development paths, India's socialism and consequent scarcity, manufacturing challenges, and much more.
Recorded February 13th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:18) - A Sixth of Humanity (00:06:51) - The Effect of Education on State Development (00:13:39) - Redistributive Democracy in India (00:21:54) - One Democracy, Multiple Outcomes at the State Level (00:36:52) - Tamil Nadu (00:38:01) - The Collapse of Punjab (00:42:12) - Shades of Socialism in India (01:08:00) - Upside-Down State (01:26:36) - Manufacturing (01:46:23) - Outro
Today my guest is Dr. V Anantha Nageswaran, who is currently serving as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. He is also the co-author of the books Economics of Derivativesand The Rise of Finance: Causes, Consequences and Cures.
We talked about import substitution and strategic resilience, futures and options market, gross fixed capital formation, crypto markets, India's growth trajectory, and much more.
Recorded March 12th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:38) - Import Substitution as a Policy (00:11:19) - Indian States' Spending Problem (00:18:16) - Capital Formation (00:25:47) - Increasing Financialization (00:30:21) - Options and Futures Markets in India (00:34:15) - Securities Transactions Tax (STT) (00:40:27) - Curbing Crypto (00:46:01) - How Should We Approach Policy Regulation? (00:51:04) - Deregulation (00:53:41) - Digital Public Infrastructure (00:56:28) - India's Growth Trajectory
Today my guests are Ornit Shani and Rohit De, historians and the authors of the latest book Assembling India's Constitution. Ornit Shani is an associate professor of history at the University of Haifa and the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise. Rohit De is an associate professor of history at Yale University and the author of A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic.
We talked about how their latest book is a radical departure from the usual telling of the making of the Indian Constitution as an elite project, the mass mobilization that took place during the drafting of the constitution, the role of public participation in political negotiation, the status of provincial legislatures and of princely states during the constitution making, and much more.
Recorded January 20th, 2026 and February 10th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:49) - Situating Rohit and Ornit's Book (00:13:52) - More Than the Text (00:27:22) - Provincial Legislatures (00:35:40) - India's Princely States (01:01:04) - Mass Mobilization (01:16:10) - Theater and the Constitution (01:26:06) - Judicial Interpretation (01:31:21) - Future Projects (01:34:08) - Outro
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, When the Chips are Down, and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens.
We spoke about rare earths and critical minerals, China's dominance, the gap between India's ambitions and opportunities, the potential for recycling, and much and more.
Recorded February 2nd, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - 1991 Fellowship (00:01:11) - Intro (00:02:59) - Rare Earths versus Critical Minerals (00:10:15) - Why Are Rare Earths and Critical Minerals So Important Now? (00:29:29) - Geopolitical Uncertainty (00:33:14) - China's Process Advantage (00:44:10) - Industrial Policy (00:48:10) - India's Critical Elements Mission (00:53:00) - Auctions (00:56:53) - India's Position in the Value Chain (01:04:36) - Recycling (01:34:04) - Law of One Price (01:41:28) - Pakistan and Rare Earth Reserves (01:46:26) - Outro
Today my guest is Nachiket Mor, a health economist whose work focuses on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a visiting scientist at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore, and a commissioner and author on the Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India's Health System, which published its final report in The Lancet in January 2026.
We talked about the different layers of the Indian healthcare system, the design and policy failures in both public and private sector healthcare, the role of community workers, the health insurance and regulation market, and much more.
Recorded January 29th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - 1991 Fellowship (00:01:11) - Intro (00:02:32) - Policy Design Failure in India's Healthcare System (00:07:43) - Layers of Indian Healthcare (00:14:04) - ASHA Workers (00:23:59) - State Capacity (00:26:47) - The Exit to the Private Sector (00:34:00) - Getting Ambitious with ASHA Workers (00:37:54) - Stacking Healthcare (00:51:53) - India's Private Sector Healthcare (01:05:14) - Government Insurance Instruments (01:13:10) - Insurance Regulation in India (01:41:09) - Outro
Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly, the author of the recent book, Trilegal: The Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm. He is one of the founders of Trilegal and specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting.
We talked about how Trilegal grew in the context of India's market liberalization and sectoral reforms, different partnership structures, delegated legislation, regulatory capture, the alchemy between the founding partners, and much more.
Recorded January 6th, 2026.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - 1991 Fellowship (00:01:11) - Intro (00:02:20) - In the Shadow of Liberalization (00:07:28) - Specialization (00:20:55) - Delegated Legislation (00:28:35) - Managing Risk (00:33:30) - Dispute Resolution (00:38:44) - Trilegal's Partnership Structure (00:51:57) - Scaling (00:59:42) - Design or Alchemy? (01:05:08) - Regulatory Capture (01:11:27) - Foreign Law Firms (01:19:08) - Outro
Today my guest is Renuka Sane who is the managing director of Managing Director of Trustbridge. An institution that seeks to improve India's business environment by improving the rule of law. Renuka was a member of many expert committees including: the Task Force of Experts set up by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation; the research team of the Bankruptcy Legislative Reforms Commission; the Pension Advisory Committee of the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority; and the Working Group on personal insolvency at the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. She received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New South Wales.
We talked about the old, new, and unified pension scheme and related reforms over the last few decades in India, India's broader financial regulation framework, separation of powers in regulatory authorities, the way regulatory orders are written, and much more.
Recorded December 17th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - The 1991 Fellowship
(00:01:09) - Intro
(00:02:49) - India's Pension System
(00:35:42) - Private Sector Pension Schemes
(01:06:28) - Regulatory Orders
(01:24:03) - Improving Transparency at the Reserve Bank of India
(01:34:57) - Outro
Today my guest is Snigdha Poonam who is a journalist and writer. She is the author of the new book Scamlands and also the author of the 2018 award winning book Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World.
We talked about the scam industrial complex in different states like Jharkhand, Assam and Tamil Nadu in India, the interaction between the scam economy and the formal economy, the transnational scams in China and Cambodia and how they are connected to India, the aspirations and traumas of the scam work force and much more.
Recorded November 17th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:13) - The Scam-Industrial Complex
(00:03:48) - On Jamtara and the Economics of Joining a Scam
(00:09:12) - The Moral Logic of Scamming
(00:13:31) - How the State Enables the Scam Economy
(00:15:54) - Inside Assam's Paperwork and Insurance Scams
(00:23:04) - The Politics of Legibility in Assam
(00:32:47) - Women in the Scam Economy
(00:38:32) - How Scammers Get Trapped Inside the System
(00:46:18) - From Local Scams to Transnational Cybercrime
(00:52:18) - Scam Slavery in Southeast Asia
(01:02:15) - Reporting on the Shadow Economy
(01:10:49) - Starting the Story
(01:16:54) - From Aspiration to Desperation
(01:21:56) - Closing Reflections
(01:27:08) - Outro
Shruti and Ideas of India producer Dallas Floer sit down for the 2025 end-of-year episode. They look back at key themes and top episodes from the past year, address listener questions, and look forward to what's in store for Shruti and the show in 2026.
Recorded December 16th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:03) - Listener Questions
(00:25:50) - Big Themes and Top Episodes
(00:42:21) - Personal Moments
(00:46:53) - Looking to 2026
(00:49:47) - Hope or Concern for Next Generation
(00:51:45) - Intellectual Mood Around India
(00:53:01) - Shruti and Animals
(00:56:52) - What's New for 2026
(01:00:07) - The Ideas of India Team
(01:05:21) - Thank You's
(01:09:49) - Outro
Our seventh and final scholar in the series is Ammu Lavanya, a PhD candidate in Economics at George Washington University. Her research is in the areas of International Finance, Monetary Economics, Empirical Banking and Financial History. We spoke about her job market paper titled International Financial Flows, Credit Allocation and Productivity. We talked about financial liberalization in India, the 2004 banking reform that increased the ceiling on raising foreign equity its impact on market value, lending capacity and increasing productivity through credit in India, the difference between private versus state owned banks, and much more.
Recorded October 9th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:06) - Understanding Capital Inflows and Financial Liberalization
(00:04:36) - Concerns Around Foreign Capital and Hot Money Flows
(00:07:12) - The Banking Reform and Ownership Landscape in India
(00:12:10) - Banks Most Affected and Patterns of Foreign Investment
(00:17:05) - Impact on Borrowing Capacity and Lending Behavior
(00:19:38) - Productive Lending and Screening Mechanisms
(00:25:53) - Managerial Practices and Governance Improvements
(00:34:20) - Firm-Level Effects and Data Construction
(00:39:50) - Aggregate Effects and Decline in Misallocation
(00:45:19) - Implications for Policy and the Future of Liberalization
(00:48:42) - Differences Between Public and Private Banks
(00:53:15) - Outro
Our sixth scholar in the series is Nayantara Biswas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Clark University. Her research focuses on health equity impact evaluations of small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies.
We spoke about dissertation titled, The Impact of Social Policies on Reproductive Health, Maternal Employment, and Child Health: Evidence from India. We talked about demand side versus supply side policy interventions in public health, India's maternal health policy landscape, the ASHA workers program, variation across states in policy impact and much more.
Recorded August 28th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:35) - Setting the Stage
(00:04:44) - India's Maternal–Child Health Policy Landscape
(00:08:29) - Uneven Progress: State Differences, Culture, and Measurement Challenges
(00:09:24) - Who Are the ASHA Workers?
(00:11:56) - Trust, Access, and the Information Channel
(00:14:26) - Pay, Hours, and Unionization: Why Conditions Vary by State
(00:16:50) - How Incentives Are Structured
(00:21:44) - From Design to Data: Building the District-Level Panel
(00:25:20) - We Are Measuring ASHAs—and Something Else
(00:26:45) - DiD Simplified: How the Causal Claim Works
(00:33:45) - Policy Implications: Where to Invest and How to Train
(00:36:53) - Cost-Effectiveness: Supply vs. Demand
(00:39:53) - Why Supply-Side Effects Take Time
(00:41:50) - Beyond Pregnancy: Anganwadi Daycare and Women's Work
(00:46:27) - Outro
Our fifth scholar in the series is Karthik Narayan, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Nuffield College and at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. His research focuses on monetary policy, macroeconomics and finance in developing countries.
We spoke about his job market paper titled, Macroeconomic Effects of Scheduled and Unscheduled Monetary Policy Surprises.
We talked about how the Reserve Bank of India makes and announces its policies, its impact on interest rates, inflation expectations and output, measuring the impact of policy announcements, the Lucas Critique and much more.
Recorded August 28th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:22) - Measuring Causality Is Hard
(00:11:16) - What Counts as a Policy Surprise?
(00:13:27) - OIS and MIBOR: Expectation Thermometers
(00:21:11) - Short term versus long term effects on asset prices
(00:27:18) - Noise and Fiscal-Monetary Coordination
(00:32:46) - Inflation Before and After the MPC
(00:37:24) - The Lucas Critique
(00:40:51) - Practical Implications
(00:45:48) - Other Research Interests
(00:47:39) - Outro
Our fourth scholar in the series is Asad Tariq, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with a particular interest in religion, politics and public service delivery in India. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Constituencies of Change: Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India.
We talked about the 2008 delimitation exercise, especially at the state level, gerrymandering, the median voter versus swing voters and ethnic groups, public service delivery for minorities, especially Muslims, and much more.
Recorded September 5th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:02:42) - Packing and Cracking
(00:05:10) - From Theory to Ballots
(00:06:40) - Median Voter Logic: A Mechanism in Play
(00:08:24) - Delimitation as an exogenous shock?
(00:19:06) - Does Identity of the elected leader matter?
(00:20:10) - Enter: Swing Voters
(00:23:07) - Schools, Roads, and Wires: Evidence on Public Goods
(00:26:21) - Crunching the Numbers
(00:29:44) - Drawing the Lines: Gerrymandering Then and Now
(00:37:41) - Outro
Our third scholar in the series is Chetana Sabnis, who is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on how states regulate intimate relationships and construct hierarchies of familial belonging. We spoke about her job market paper titled, The Intimacy Contract in Action: How Indian Courts Determine which Extramarital Relationships Deserve Recognition. We talked about extramarital affairs, polygamous relationships, Uniform Civil Code, social versus legal acceptance, and much more.
Recorded September 5th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:23) - How Courts Recognize “Family”
(00:03:12) - Why This Paper? Rethinking “Family”
(00:05:28) - India’s Legal Patchwork: Customs vs. Code
(00:11:07) - Judicial Heuristics: Rituals, Cohabitation, Children
(00:14:44) - Endogamy vs. Interfaith: Law, Bias, and Recognition
(00:22:22) - How the State Views Children
(00:25:27) - Welfare Logic & Gendered Maintenance
(00:29:29) - UCC and the “Intimacy Contract”
(00:35:48) - The Role of the State
(00:42:30) - Contract vs. Sacrament
(00:49:00) - Outro
Our second scholar in the series is Sunny Rai, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi.
Her research focuses on misinformation, mental health and cross-cultural variations in human language. We spoke about her co-authored job market paper titled, Social Norms in Cinema: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Shame, Pride and Prejudice. We talked about depictions of shame and pride and heroism in Indian versus American films, the challenges with textual analysis of a visual medium, and much more.
Recorded September 5th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:44) - Shame and Pride in Film
(00:12:31) - Teaching Machines Norms
(00:16:52) - Textual Analysis in a Visual Medium
(00:18:26) - The Trouble with Subtitles and Scripts
(00:27:41) - Self-Shaming vs. Other-Shaming
(00:30:33) - LLM Alignment Needs a Culture Check
(00:36:20) - Looking Ahead: A Final Reflection
(00:37:01) - Outro
Our first scholar in the series is Kartik Srivastava, who is a PhD candidate at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Before this, he received his bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he majored in Economics and Engineering Sciences.
His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Familiar strangers: Evidence from referral-based hiring experiments in India. We talked his large-scale experiment at a footwear manufacturing firm in Delhi, on how referral-based hiring improve firm productivity, cohesion, and inclusion, differences in hiring between higher caste versus lower caste networks, feudalism and labor opportunities, and much more.
Recorded August 28th, 2025.
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Today my guest is Narayani Basu, who is a historian and the author of the latest book, A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K. M. Panikkar. Her last book was a biography of V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India.
We talked about KM Panikkar, his comparison with VP Menon, the Indian nationalist movement in the interwar years, the origins of India’s diplomatic relationship with China, Pannikar’s Zionism and much more.
Recorded August 1st, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:07) - The Elusive K. M. Panikkar
(00:07:52) - Panikkar’s and the Indian National Movement
(00:19:32) - Panikkar’s Intellectual Arc
(00:26:45) - Unifying an Indian Identity
(00:35:38) - India’s Princely States
(00:40:19) - Panikkar and China
(00:54:43) - Panikkar and the 1950s
(00:59:43) - Panikkar’s Thought vs. His Government Work
(01:08:35) - Panikkar’s Blind Spots
(01:15:48) - Panikkar and Today’s India
(01:18:27) - Outro
Today my guest is Yamini Aiyar, who is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the author of the recent book Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi’s Schools.Her main research interests are contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, and federalism.
We talked about the challenges of education policy and welfare in India, the lack of agency experienced by school administrators and teachers, the role of local governments in education, Delhi’s experiment with education reforms, portable benefits and school vouchers, and much more.
Recorded July 16th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:27) - Delhi School Experiment
(00:12:45) - Education in a Welfare State
(00:28:34) - Incompetent Petty Tyrants
(00:38:17) - Federalism and Education
(00:50:18) - How to Build Empowerment
(01:05:39) - Is the Delhi Experiment Generalizable?
(01:18:52) - Portability and Education
(01:28:15) - Outro
Today my guest is Rathin Roy, who's a Distinguished Fellow at the Kautilya School of Public Policy and a Visiting Senior Fellow at ODI Global. His main research interests are political economy, public finance, and development economics, and he also served on the 13th Finance Commission. We talked about India's fiscal resources are distributed across states and between the union and state governments, the divergence between rich and poor states, compensatory welfare and its consequences and much more. Recorded July 8th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:38) - India’s Fiscal Federalism System
(00:22:46) - India’s Welfare State
(00:34:19) - Unequal Growth
(00:45:58) - Consumption Taxes
(01:02:30) - Public Finance in India
(01:27:06) - Outro
Today my guests are legal scholars Chitrakshi Jain and Prashant Reddy T, the authors of the recent book Tareekh pe Justice, Reforms for India’s District Courts. We talked about the dysfunction in India’s lower courts, opacity in the evaluation of district court judges, the problems with judicial data, and much more. Recorded July 1st, 2025.
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Today my guest is M.R. Sharan, an assistant professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland College Park. He is the author of numerous papers and the book Last Among Equals: Power, Caste, & Politics in Bihar’s Villages.
His main research interests are development economics and political economy. We talked about his research on local government in India, incentives of various political actors and the power structures they inhibit, fiscal federalism, and much more.
Recorded May 21st, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:07) - Local Political Actors
(00:16:16) - Portability
(00:20:36) - Village Government in India
(00:53:42) - Separation of Powers
(01:03:51) - Inclusion
(01:21:20) - Outro
Today my guest is Rakesh Mohan, the is President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. He has also served as Executive Director on the Board of the International Monetary Fund, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India
We talked about his work with the Government of India since the 1980s, especially dismantling the infamous License Permit Raj during the 1991 reforms, his work on urbanization and infrastructure, the kinds of structural reforms India still needs to undertake, and much more.
Recorded April 25th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:13) - Labyrinth of Control
(00:23:55) - Dismantling the Licensing System
(00:48:27) - Regrets
(01:07:31) - The Infrastructure Report
(01:28:05) - Structural Transformation
(01:46:23) - Outro
Today my guest is environmental scholar, historian and biographer Ramachandra Guha. He is the author of a number of books, including a two-volume biography of Gandhi and the award-winning book “India After Gandhi.”
We talked about his latest book, "Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism.” We spoke about global versus local commons, bottom up approach to environmentalism in India, urbanization, economic growth and technological progress and much more. Recorded May 7th, 2025.
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:08 - Speaking with Nature
00:08:42 - Unquiet Woods
00:38:29 - Science and Progress of Environmentalism
00:47:33 - Radhakamal Mukerjee
00:55:06 - K. M. Munshi
01:03:38 - Technological Progress and Tradeoffs
01:11:22 - Jayaprakash Narayan
01:19:39 - Outro
Today’s episode is the second part of my conversation with Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need. He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until he retirement in 2022. His most recent initiative is We Are One Humanity (WAOH), a writers collective responding to the worldwide thrusts against democracy and equality. We spoke about his reflections on communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, revenge and reconciliation in South Asia, Sikhs and Buddhists, differences between north and south India, constitutional values, and much more.
Recorded April 17th, 2025.
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Today my guest is Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need. He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until his retirement in 2022. His most recent initiative is We Are One Humanity (WAOH), a writers collective responding to the worldwide thrusts against democracy and equality. We spoke about his reflections on his biographies of the founding fathers, Vallabhai Patel, Mohandas Gandhi, C Rajagopalachari, and Gaffar Khan, their competing visions, debates with others like Ambedkar and Nehru, constitutional values, the civil rights movement, his faith, and much more.
Recorded April 18th, 2025.
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Timestamps
Intro - 00:00:00
Patel - 00:01:34
Rajaji - 00:31:20
Ghaffar Khan - 00:51:53
Gandhi - 01:05:53
Competing Visions - 01:17:32
Biographies of Family Members - 01:18:54
Serendipity in the Research Process - 01:23:40
Civil Rights in the US - 01:27:23
Pessimistic or Optimistic? - 01:35:16
Role of God and Faith - 01:36:27
Outro - 01:38:20
Today my guest is Prachi Mishra, who is a Professor in the Department of Economics, and Director and Head of Isaac Center for Public Policy at Ashoka University. Prior to joining Ashoka, Prachi was Chief of the Systemic Issues Division and Advisor in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund.
We spoke about the current state of the Indian economy, India’s growth trajectory, if the rupee is overvalued, India’s fiscal consolidation, and much more. We also spoke about Trade, but this episode was recorded before the big tariff announcements on April 2.
Recorded March 31st, 2025.
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Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a Partner at Blume Ventures, an early stage Indian venture fund. He is also a well known writer, and the author of the annual Indus Valley Report. We spoke about the trends in the latest Indus Valley Report, the stratifications in Indian consumer markets, investor sentiment, policies and infrastructure to foster the AI boom in India, the AI start-up scene and much more.
Recorded March 6th, 2025.
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:04:32 - 2025 Trends
00:24:30 - Last Year vs. This Year
00:32:25 - The Role of Artificial Intelligence
00:45:59 - Artificial Intelligence Startup Scene
01:16:40 - Sajith’s Reading Habits
01:22:20 - Outro
Today my guest is Justice Jasti Chelameswar, who is a former justice of the Supreme Court of India. Prior to his elevation, he served as chief justice in High Courts in Gauhati and Kerala and as a justice in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
We spoke about his judgments on electoral qualifications, judicial conduct, transparency in judicial appointments, the constitutional right to privacy, separation of powers, and how dissent shapes constitutional interpretation, and much more.
Recorded February 25th, 2025.
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:27 - Election Law Cases
00:17:15 - Process of Writing Opinions
00:25:38 - Misconduct of Judicial Officers
00:31:34 - NJAC Opinion
00:44:47 - Fundamental Right to Privacy
01:06:29 - Death Penalty Matters
01:15:36 - Outro
Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly, one of the founders of Trilegal, one of India’s leading law firms. He specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting.
We talked about the top-down nature of electricity regulation and pricing in India, the dysfunctional DISCOMS, the reforms required for an energy transition towards renewables and nuclear energy, and much more.
Recorded February 11th, 2025.
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:06 - Electricity in India 00:15:31 - DISCOMs 00:41:26 - Open Access 00:44:31 - Expanding Capacity 00:46:52 - Renewable Energy 00:50:04 - Technology Diffusion 00:59:11 - Nuclear Power 01:17:18 - Outro
Today my guest is Christopher J Coyne, who is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, the Associate Director of the F.A. Hayek Program at the Mercatus Center. We talked about the economics of conflict and peace, history of the US security state, the US intervention in Afghanistan, domestic consequences of militarism abroad, and much more.
Recorded January 15th, 2025.
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Today my guest Katherine Butler Schofield who is a professor of South Asian Music and History at King’s College London. She is the author of the recent book Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858. She also hosted a podcast series called The Histories of the Ephemeral on the same theme.
We talked about the history of classical music in India - from Natyasastra to Dhrupad and to khayals and qawallis. about Aurangzeb’s relationship with music, the sacking of Delhiand it’s influence on hindustani classical music, the powerful tawaifs of that time, and much more.
Recorded January 24th, 2025.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:02:17) - The Nāṭyaśāstra and Tasting Music
(00:09:29) - Raga Style and Persian Influences
(00:18:35) - The Influence of Intoxicants
(00:19:42) - Aurangzeb and Other Courtly Characters
(00:33:37) - Aurangzeb’s Demise and Its Effect on Music
(00:43:15) - Traveling Musicians and the Spread and Rise of Different Forms
(00:49:49) - Development of Tomri
(00:55:37) - What Makes Punjab So Different
(00:59:17) - The Tawaif
(01:02:06) - The Stories of Sophia Plowden and Khanam Jan
(01:18:07) - Outro
Today my guest is Anton Howes head of innovation research at The Entrepreneurs Network, and the historian-in-residence at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. He is the author of Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation and the excellent Substack Age of Invention. We talked about salt trade in India, the Dutch culture of innovation, the Royal Society of Arts, endogenous versus O-ring theories of growth, why the Industrial Revolution took place in Britain, and much more.
Recorded November 11th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:29) - History of the Salt Trade and Salt Tax in India
(00:11:12) - Harvesting Salt in Bengal
(00:17:140 - The Great Hedge of India
(00:23:58) - The Rationale for Taxing Salt
(00:25:49) - The Western European Salt Trade and Land Control
(00:34:22) - The Dutch Golden Age
(00:39:44) - Baltic Salt and New Forms of Sleeching
(00:45:51) - Maritime Trade
(00:48:24) - Why Did the Industrial Revolution Take Place in Britain and Not Elsewhere?
(01:03:14) - Solving the Problem of Debasement in Britain
(01:08:33) - The Path to the Royal Society of Arts
(01:16:39) - A Culture of Tinkerers and Improvers
(01:20:49) - The Society of Arts’ Aims and Legacy
(01:31:15) - Theories of Progress
(01:40:20) - The Society of Arts and the Tool of Status
(01:47:43) - Outro
Today my guest is Anant Sudarshan, an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). We talked about air pollution in India, crop burning, subsidizing electricity, depleting ground water, the impact of the collapse of keystone species and much more.
Recorded November 25th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:52) - Air Pollution in India
(00:06:00) - Causes of Pollution in Delhi
(00:07:32) - Addressing Crop Burning as a Source of Pollution
(00:14:11) - Regulatory Frameworks for Pollution in India
(00:18:16) - Creating a Market for Pollution
(00:39:52) - Vehicular Pollution and Rationing
(00:53:56) - How Subsidies Complicate the Pollution Problem
(01:02:44) - Pigouvian Subsidies
(01:08:19) - Electricity as a Right
(01:26:04) - The Near-Extinction of Vultures in India
(01:38:41) - Outro
Today the roles are reversed. Producer Dallas Floer interviews Shruti for the annual end of year episode where they look back at key themes and episodes from the past year, address listener questions, discuss the job market series, and share some questions from previous guests.
On behalf of Shruti and the entire Ideas of India team, thank you for listening to the podcast this year. We’re excited to bring you more episodes in 2025.
Recorded November 26th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:23) - Listener Questions
(00:02:27) - Essential readings on the Indian economy
(00:04:19) - The economy of eastern India from 1970 to today
(00:06:18) - Achieving a “Developed India”
(00:09:20) - Alternate paths for economic students
(00:014:56) - Suggested dissertation topics for PhD students
(00:18:57) - Revising stances on COVID shutdowns
(00:24:42) - Problematic TV news programs in India
(00:27:57) - Predicting the economic impact of AI
(00:30:11) - The South Korean chaebol model
(00:38:24) - Karthik Muralidharan: reimagining state capacity
(00:41:02) - Aparna Chandra: institutional checks on judicial bias
(00:44:03) - Arjun Ramani and Thomas Easton: critical reforms to maintain growth
(00:47:29) - Ruchir Sharma: the state of American capitalism
(00:51:00) - The Job Market Series
(00:54:01) - Questions from Past Guests
(00:56:59) - Shifting stances on schooling and drugs
(01:02:11) - Law and economics
(01:05:36) - “Home” when living in many cultures
(01:09:44) - Next up for The 1991 Project
(01:11:31) - Personal goals for 2025
(01:16:26) - Thanks and Good Wishes
(01:18:29) - Outro
Today my guest is Pravin Krishna is the Chung Ju Yung Distinguished Professor of International Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University, at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Department of Economics. We talked about history of preferential trade agreements, India’s approach to trade liberalization, whether such agreements are trade creating or diverting, and much more.
Recorded November 12th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:00:59) - Essential Components of the Postwar Multilateral Trade System
(00:04:38) - India’s Role in the GATT and the Special Status of Developing Countries
(00:06:31) - India in the Global Trade System After 1991
(00:09:10) - The Decline of the WTO and New Trade Dynamics
(00:17:45) - Understanding the Small Percentages of Preferential Trade
(00:20:19) - Indian Trade Liberalization and Alliances from 2010–2020
(00:26:18) - Viner: Trade Creation and Trade Diversion
(00:33:35) - More Optimistic View of Equilibrium
(00:38:46) - Foreign Lobbies in Domestic Markets
(00:49:3) - Just pick a number
(00:55:21) - The Impact of Trade Liberalization
(01:04:05) - Labor Elasticity in Relation to Trade Openness
(01:11:17) - Predicting the Near Future Impact of U.S. Trade Tariffs
(01:19:52) - How the New Administration’s Plans Might Impact India
(01:25:58) - Future Trade Relations Between India and China
(01:30:52) - Outro
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I spoke with Deepti Sharma, who's an Assistant Professor at Ahmedabad University. She completed her PhD in public policy from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Management of Health Services at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Her current research focus is empirical methods, applied microeconomics, public health and gender studies. We discussed her job market paper, Does it matter who you ask for Time Use Data? We talked about the systematic bias in proxy reporting when compared to self-reporting in time use surveys, some techniques used to fix those biases, the gendered nature of these biases, policy implications of using these time use surveys and much more.
Recorded September 12th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:12) - Grand Tamasha
(00:02:42) - Proxy-Reporting Versus Self-Reporting in Time-Use Surveys
(00:07:16) - Gender Bias and Systematic Bias in Proxy-Reported Data
(00:10:27) - How Cultural Norms and Gender Perceptions Shape Reporting
(00:16:59) - Challenges in Collecting Accurate Time-Use Data
(00:19:34) - Methodological Approaches to Working with Proxy-Reported Data
(00:24:43) - Suggested Approaches to Conducting Time-Use Surveys
(00:31:21) - Impact of Climate Change on Gendered Agricultural Work
(00:33:17) - Hysterectomy Rates and Health Insurance Policies in India
(00:36:03) - Outro
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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 about assymetrical federalism versus hetererarchy, constitutional values and imagination for federalism in India, and much more.
Recorded October 24th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:06) - Grand Tamasha
(00:04:12) - Asymmetric Versus Heterarchical Federalism
(00:19:37) - Isn’t this Asymmetric Federalism?
(00:31:39) - Democracy in Local Governments
(00:43:27) - Rethinking the Rajya Sabha
(00:53:30) - Outro
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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.
Recorded October 24th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:00:58) - Grand Tamasha
(00:02:31) - Exploring How Social Media Users Engage with Toxic Content
(00:06:06) - Understanding the Drivers of Toxic Speech on the Internet
(00:08:50) - Definitions of Toxic Content
(00:11:05) - Scale of Data and Choice of Language
(00:12:23) - Impact of Recommendation Algorithms on User Engagement
(00:16:27) - Key Findings on Toxic Content Exposure and Sharing
(00:22:08) - Interpreting How Personalization Shapes Engagement in Toxic Social Media Content
(00:25:31) - How Recognizing the Agency and Sophistication of Users Shapes Interpretive Models
(00:31:45) - The Challenges of Platform Regulation
(00:34:04) - The Challenges of Creating Interventions to Address Toxic Content
(00:35:46) - Social Media as Normalizing Toxic Speech
(00:38:09) - The Route of the Ram Rath Yatra As Lens on Segregation
(00:48:58) - Outro
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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 India, state and local government finances, emergency powers, SR Bommai, constitutional design, and much more.
Recorded September 6th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:01) - Grand Tamasha
(00:02:58) - Article 356 and President’s Rule
(00:26:47) - Why are local governments broken in India?
(00:46:33) - India is Centripetal in its Federalism
(00:53:08) - Outro
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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, the successes and failures of the in situ slum rehabilitation scheme, the differences across four recent slum redevelopments, the types of problems residents face post rehabilitation, and much more.
Recorded September 12th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:10) - Grand Tamasha
(00:02:54) - The Aims of In Situ Slum Redevelopment
(00:05:58) - Frameworks for Understanding Slums
(00:10:06) - The Economic Context of Slums in Relation to Governance
(00:12:26) - Communal Violence and Segregation and the Formation of Slums
(00:15:46) - Approaches to Slum Redevelopment
(00:17:05) - Slum Redevelopment in Ahmedabad
(00:19:37) - Ahmedabad As a Success Story?
(00:21:35) - Consent and Coercion in the Redevelopment of Slums
(00:26:07) - Public–Private Partnerships and Participation in Redevelopment Schemes
(00:27:21) - Challenges in Adjusting to In Situ Redevelopment
(00:30:19) - Expectations of Living in a Post-Redevelopment Colony
(00:32:03) - Basis for Evaluating the Success of Rehabilitation
(00:34:01) - Allotment of Homes and Ownership Restrictions
(00:36:15) - Questions Regarding the Resale of Allotted Homes
(00:40:04) - Issues that Impede Residents’ Adjustment to Communal Living
(00:42:51) - The Role of the State in Facilitating Transitions to Redeveloped Housing
(00:44:14) - Mechanisms for Creating Successful Redevelopments
(00:46:27) - A Participatory Approach Versus a Top-Down Approach to Redevelopment
(00:49:03) - Building the Capacity of Community Associations
(00:51:36) - Grounds for Optimism
(00:53:09) - Improvements of the Institutional Framework Through Community Empowerment
(00:54:45) - The Potentially Supportive Role of NGOs
(00:56:390 - No Quick Fixes but Revised Platforms
(00:57:33) - Outro
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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 rice plantation in Telangana, the role of the state in the uptake of mechanization, the labor market in a developing country that is undergoing a structural transformation and much more.
Recorded September 11th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:04) - Grand Tamasha
(00:02:36) - The Wage and Labor Effects of Mechanized Drum Seeders in Telangana
(00:07:43) - Wages Failing to Rise: NREGA and a Profitability Ceiling
(00:09:41) - Women’s Changing Role in the Farming Labor Market
(00:11:07) - The Puzzle of Mechanization: Is Government Intervention Necessary?
(00:15:41) - Mechanization or Migrant Labor
(00:19:27) - The Role of Government in Mechanization Adoption
(00:23:46) - Should Telangana farmers grow rice?
(00:26:08) - Market Distortions and Maximizing Food Production
(00:29:31) - Larger Economic Questions About Agricultural Subsidies
(00:34:18) - Future of Mechanization and Agricultural Policy in Telangana
(00:36:45) - The Long Shadow of Feudalism: Concentration of Land and Labor Market Power in India
(00:39:00) - How the Feudal Structure Shaped Current Farm Ownership and Women’s Labor
(00:41:54) - New Research in Relation to Existing Stories of State Capacity
(00:46:05) - Outro
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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 and Hindi impacts the identity of subnational regional speakers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the politics of language in South Asia, the instrumental versus symbolic characteristics of regional languages and much more.
Recorded September 11th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:08) - Grand Tamasha
(00:02:47) - Linguistic Diversity and National Identity
(00:03:55) - History and Politics of Multilingualism in India
(00:06:20) - Language as a Nation-Building Tool with Putative Effects
(00:08:53) - Experiencing the Hierarchy of National and Subnational Identities Through Language
(00:11:51) - Observing the Discriminatory Effects of Linguistic Imposition
(00:15:37) - Bilingualism or Diglossia
(00:18:03) - Differences in the Political and Economic Valences of Hindi and English
(00:21:18) - Migration and Language Politics
(00:22:35) - Linguistic Pluralism in Relation to National Identity and Growing Nativism
(00:25:39) - Hindi as the Site of Political and Economic Tensions
(00:30:45) - Dialects of Local Languages Provoking a Subnational Identity
(00:34:26) - A Linguistic Origin Story
(00:38:33) - Politics in Tamil Film
(00:43:20) - The Future of Linguistic Diversity with Advancements in Technology
(00:45:15) - Outro
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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 dissertation focuses on family firms in India. We discussed his job market paper, Corporate Kinship: Political Attachments of the Family Firm, we talked about how family firms differ from management and expert run businesses in India, whether it is in their firm structure or their political giving, whether family firms are most strategic or expressive in politics, the differences in the nature of the quid pro quo for a family firm versus a management run firm, the latest electoral bond scheme, and much more.
Recorded September 11th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:16) - Grand Tamasha
(00:03:05) - Analyzing Family-Run Firms and Campaign Donations
(00:07:06) - How Family Businesses Donate Politically in Relation to Corporations and Individuals
(00:10:17) - Distinctions Between Family-Run and Non-Family-Run Firms
(00:14:48) - Political Donations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Overlap or Distinct Strategies?
(00:19:35) - The Hidden Side of Campaign Contributions
(00:25:56) - Ethnic Identity in Relation to Expressive Giving
(00:28:59) - Challenges in Measuring Quid Pro Quo Arrangements
(00:35:55) - The Impact of Demonetization on Political Donations
(00:37:06) - Assessing the Reaction to the Information Shock from Mandated Disclosures
(00:45:22) - Understanding the Reputational Impact of Political Donations
(00:51:15) - Is Uncertainty a Factor?
(00:57:11) - Outro
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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 College London.
Her research focuses on issues related to gender, access and urban mobility in developing countries. We spoke about her job market paper titled, Together to Work? The Effect of Travel Buddies on Women’s Employment and Mobility in India, co-authored with Smit Gade. We talked about the difficulties women have in navigating urban areas, its effect on female labor force participation, the impact of safe travel on job market decisions, and much more.
Recorded September 6th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:14) - Grand Tamasha
(00:05:07) - Mobility Constraints for Women in India
(00:07:37) - The Study: How Do Women Travel Together?
(00:10:04) - Background on Women’s Travel in India
(00:13:00) - Social Norms and the Cognitive Load: Benefits of Women Traveling Together
(00:16:42) - Findings on Travel Buddies and Job Interview Attendance and Additional Positive Impacts
(00:21:14) - Implications for Further Research on Women’s Mobility Patterns
(00:26:40) - Diverse Reactions to Travel Interventions
(00:28:32) - Policy Implications for Supporting Women’s Travel
(00:33:43) - Other Research Projects on Women and Labor
(00:39:29) - Outro
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.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:00:59) - Capitalism in America (00:07:48) - Problems in Monetary Policy (00:17:07) - Elite Consensus and Capitalism (00:21:13) - Crisis and Course Correction (00:27:14) - Credit and Bond Markets in the US (00:33:07) - Industrial Policy in the US (00:38:46) - Misunderstanding Systemic Risk (00:48:18) - Declining Birth Rates and Economic Growth (00:51:00) - Technology versus Regulation (00:58:12) - India’s Economic Future (01:00:30) - Modi Government’s Economic Policies (01:16:25) - Alternative Ways out of Fiscal Crisis? (01:18:04) - Outro
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.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:21) - History of Private Banking in India
(00:12:06) - Lending and Deposits
(00:16:17) - Industrial Development and Banking
(00:21:24) - Bank Runs in India
(00:25:54) - Success of South Canara Banks
(00:28:38) - Systemic Risk in South Canara
(00:36:16) - Banking Castes?
(00:40:29) - What was the RBI so wrong about with South Canara banking?
(00:47:50) - Pigmy Deposit Scheme
(01:05:28) - Why Were India’s Banks Nationalized?
(01:23:35) - Outro
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 and increasing total factor productivity, manufacturing versus services led growth, industrial policy, export led growth, how to employ India’s youth in more productive sectors, and much more.
Recorded July 29th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:27) - State of India’s Structural Transformation
(00:08:28) - Has India’s Growth Peaked?
(00:15:39) - Trade-, Export-, and Manufacturing-Led Growth
(00:27:50) - Manufacturing-Led or Services-Led Growth Model?
(00:47:16) - Scaling Manufacturing
(00:59:38) - Labor Productivity in India
(01:06:41) - Rising Protectionism
(01:19:44) - Monetary Policy and Trade Policy
(01:35:26) - Outro
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 leasing in India, how to think about eminent domain law, land titling, land title insurance and much more.
Recorded July 15th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:46) - How does India’s Land Market work? (00:15:23) - Why do we have such bad regulation? (00:23:519) - Land Transfer and Consolidation (00:40:35) - Transitioning to an efficient land regulation system (00:45:25) - Eminent Domain (01:05:35) - Land Leasing
(01:11:01) - Land Pooling (01:28:37) - Outro
Welcome to Ideas of India, where we examine academic ideas that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan, and I am a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. 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, and much more.
Recorded July 1st, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:31) - Past Budgets Announcements and Upcoming Budget (00:09:38) - Restarting reforms (00:22:56) - The Tinkering of Government (00:27:08) - Regulation of Big Tech Companies (00:51:35) - India’s Labor Regulations (01:10:33) - Solutions to India’s Regulatory Environment (01:20:27) - Outro
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, and 2; gross fixed capital formation, fintechs, the consumption led boom that India is experiencing, the space industry, and much more.
Recorded June 25th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:09:16) - Private Consumption and Fixed Capital Formation
(00:14:15) - Gross Fixed Capital Formation (00:22:39) - Regime Uncertainty (00:26:51) - The Indian Consumer (00:35:10) - Bottlenecks and Reforms (00:42:18) - Mutual Funds Savings Model (00:47:33) - Path from Seed to IPO (00:55:40) - India's Foreign Investors
(01:00:57) - India's Fintechs
(01:11:09) - Space Tech in India
(01:17:36) - What's on Pai's Bookshelf?
(01:23:39) - Outro
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 anniversary, her experience understanding the license permit raj system in India, the 1991 trade liberalization, the Washington consensus, decline of the WTO, the new protectionism in the US, reforming Argentina and much more.
Recorded May 17th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:24) - Rent-Seeking in Turkey and India
(00:10:49) - Professional Influences (00:15:35) - South Korean Miracle (00:18:53) - Korea vs. India (00:26:19) - Import Substitution and Rent (00:29:15) - Turning Around the World Bank (00:38:59) - The Krueger Consensus (00:42:18) - Africa
(00:45:39) - India's 1991 Reforms
(00:50:52) - World Trade Organization
(00:53:53) - United States and Free Trade
(01:02:14) - License Permit Raj in the US
(01:04:36) - International Monetary Fund
(01:06:47) - Hope for Milei and Argentina
(01:11:30) - Looking Back on Success
(01:13:31) - Outro
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 control trials and development and much more.
Recorded May 15th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:07:46) - Quality of Public Education (00:17:59) - Decentralization vs. Federalism (00:31:58) - Welfare Expenditure (00:41:30) - Personnel for the Indian State (01:09:08) - Better Approach for Skilling (01:17:26) - Empanelment (01:34:32) - The Backdrop of the Field of Economics (01:56:52) - Outro
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 in the London office. We spoke about various aspects of covered in a recent six-part special report on India’s economy written by Arjun and Tom.
Recorded May 2nd, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:03) - The India Express and its Future (00:01:57) - Reasons for Optimism and Pessimism Over India’s Future (00:14:45) - Long-Run Economic Growth (00:18:51) - Is India Prepared to be a Capitalist Country? (00:29:37) - Unemployment vs. Informal Labor Market in India (00:47:17) - India and Education (00:51:21) - State Capacity Problems (01:02:11) - Concrete Ceilings for Indian Businesses (01:08:24) - The Binding Constraint (01:13:30) - Industrial Policy (01:31:53) - Future of Economic Journalism (01:44:50) - Outro
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 education and health, India’s growth rate numbers, and much more.
Recorded April 19th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:05:21) - Zooming into Indian States
(00:20:25) - Why not Decentralization?
(00:26:28) - Scaling Education
(00:51:14) - Educating the Global South
(00:53:22) - Picking Winners and Losers
(01:10:22) - India's Growth Rate
(01:18:44) - Outro
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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, and much more.
Recorded April 4th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:09:37) - Do Former Colonizers Owe Reparations to the Caribbean People?
(00:22:29) - The Counterfactual for Caribbean Colonies
(00:35:48) - India, Caribbean and Scale
(00:40:52) - Is Saint Lucia the Best at Spotting Talent?
(00:49:37) - Caribbean Civil Rights Movement
(00:58:01) - Innovation in Caribbean Music
(01:03:59) - Homophobia
(01:13:10) - Most Underrated Caribbean Island?
(01:19:05) - V.S. Naipual
(01:30:57) - Outro
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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 Marathon: Reshaping the Post-Pandemic World Order.
Today we are discussing his most recent book, When the Chips Are Down, coauthored with Abhiram Manchi. We spoke the evolution of the semiconductor industry, industrial targeting, Moore’s law, Rock’s law, Taiwan’s Comparative advantage, whether India can lead in semiconductor chips and more.
Recorded March 12th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:08:35) - Moore's Law
(00:14:08) - Rock's Law
(00:21:41) - Geopolitics of the Semiconducter Industry
(00:27:46) - Metacritical Technologies
(00:38:49) - Geographical Concentration
(00:48:34) - Zelenograd
(00:59:44) - Unease of doing Business in India
(01:09:45) - Industrial Targeting in Taiwan
(01:30:57) - Outro
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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 at the (NITI) Aayog, Government of India, where he formerly led the institution’s sections on Trade and Commerce, Strategic Economic Dialogue, International Cooperation, and Vision India@2047.
Today we are discussing their recent coauthored paper titled Indian Fisheries in the Context of WTO Regulations, published by the Mercatus Center in collaboration with Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. We spoke about the big issues concerning fisheres, in particular, India’s interests in at the 13th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently held in Abu Dhabi.
Recorded March 13th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:50) - Fisheries in India
(00:13:46) - Overfishing and Illegal Fishing in India
(00:19:59) - Overfishing Negotiations
(00:22:01) - Subsidies
(00:26:27) - At the Negotiating Table
(00:28:24) - IUUs
(00:33:01) - Seasonal Fishing Ban
(00:37:33) - Leading the Global South
(00:45:17) - Measurement
(00:48:47) - Domestic Politics
(00:53:35) - The Future
(00:59:38) - Outro
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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.
Recorded February 16th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:01:12) - Function of the Supreme Court
(00:07:05) - Special Leave Petition (SLP)
(00:13:57) - A People’s Court?
(00:35:56) - Fast tracks and VIP Culture
(00:48:25) - Malice, Incompetence or Compassion?
(00:52:03) - People Like Us
(01:04:41) - Ending SLPs
(01:23:15) - Too Cool for Rules
(01:29:51) - Chief Justice as First Among Equals
(01:33:50) - Outro
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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. We spoke about India’s liberalization moment in 1991, the five phases of globalization, British repeal of Corn laws, premature deindustrialization, the relevance of the WTO, absolute versus comparative advantage, the future Argentina, and much more.
Recorded January 23rd, 2024.
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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.
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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, and much more.
Recorded December 22nd, 2023.
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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 subjects, the difficulty of subtitling Hindi films, her favorite films, songs, artists, and much more.
Recorded December 12th, 2023.
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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.
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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 the impact of distortionary policies and regulations on farmer’s ability to cope with weather shocks in India, the agricultural produce market system, the choice of crop mix, and the effectiveness of water audits in the UK and much more.
Recorded September 21st, 2023.
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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.” We talked about the overly centralized administrative, political, and fiscal Indian state, its impact on farmers’ livelihood, groundwater depletion and other environmental consequences, and more.
Recorded August 31st, 2023.
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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 titling versus land redistribution in India, the importance of property rights, relationship between land owning castes and socioeconomic outcomes, and much more.
Recorded September 19th, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti spoke with Vatsal Khandelwal, who is a junior research fellow at Merton College and an associate member of the Department of Economics at University of Oxford. His main research interest are development and behavioral economics, with a focus on social and economic networks.
They discussed his job market paper titled “Silent Networks: The Role of Inaccurate Beliefs in Reducing Useful Social Interactions,” (coauthored with Ronak Jain). They spoke about pessimistic beliefs and their impact on individual’s well-being, the methods to correct incorrect beliefs about social norms, the importance of social networks, support groups, students’ expectations’ impact on performance more.
Recorded September 21st, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Sarath Pillai, who is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School, a MA in history from the University of Delhi, and a Postgraduate Diploma in archives and records management from the National Archives of India, Delhi.
They discussed his job market paper titled “German Lessons: Comparative Constitutionalism, States’ Rights, and Federalist Imaginaries in Interwar India,” recently published in “Comparative Studies in Society and History.” They spoke about how the views of the princely states on federalism and constitutionalism are different from the view of the Indian nationalists; the influence of German thought on India in the early twentieth century; subnationalism and federalism in modern day India and more.
Recorded September 6th, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Rithika Kumar, who is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in August 2023.
Her research lies at the intersection of gender, urbanization and politics in India. Shruti and Rithika discussed her job market paper titled “Left Behind or Left Ahead?” and the feminization of politics, political and social impact of migration, norms holding back women, and much more.
Recorded September 6th, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Vanisha Sharma who is a Ph.D. candidate at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. She earned her BA in economics with a double minor in psychology and sociology at the University of Hong Kong. She is also the co-editor-in-chief for the blog Economics That Really Matters, which encourages early researchers to share development economics research.
Vanisha's research involves estimating effects of internet expansion in developing, rural communities. We discussed her job market paper titled “Social (Media) Learning: Experimental Evidence from Indian Farmers.” Shruti and Vanisha talked about how farmers learn through social media, how it impacts their farm expenditure, their battle against pests and weather shocks and more.
Recorded August 31st, 2023.
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On this episode, Shruti speaks with Duncan Webb about his research on reducing anti-transgender discrimination and other prejudice.
Recorded August 31st, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Amit Ahuja, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara, and Devesh Kapur, Starr Foundation Professor of South Asian Studies at SAIS at Johns Hopkins University, about their latest volume, Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State. Learn more about their latest volume and their other work here.
Recorded August 24th, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah about women missing from the 1991 reforms high table decision making, trends in female labor force participation, how women in economics are finding their seats in various economic institutions across India, and more. To learn more about Shreyas and Kadambari’s research, oral history interviews, and their work on the 1991 Project, visit the1991Project.com.
Recorded July 7th, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Saurabh Kirpal about the constitutional roots of marriage equality, fundamental rights, the role of the state, problems and challenges of the Indian courts and much more. Kirpal is a senior advocate at the Delhi High Court, the author of “Fifteen Judgments: Cases That Shaped India’s Financial Landscape” and the editor of the anthology “Sex and the Supreme Court: How the Law Is Upholding the Dignity of the Indian Citizen.”
Recorded June 26th, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Peter J. Boettke about the writings of F.A. Hayek, why artificial intelligence will not solve the knowledge problem, what many economists throughout history misunderstood about the market process, mainline vs. mainstream economics and much more. Boettke is a Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism and the director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has written dozens of books, including “The Battle of Ideas: Economics and the Struggle for a Better World,” “The Economic Way of Thinking,” “Living Economics: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” and, most recently, “F.A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy.”
Recorded June 8th, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Aditi Mittal about how to build a comedy career, why she curses and makes jokes about sex, the logistical difficulties of being a woman in comedy, male vs. female spaces and much more. Mittal is a comedian, writer and actor. She has two Netflix specials, “Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say” and “Girl Meets Mic,” which is part of the Comedians of the World series. Her third show, “Mother of Invention,” is on Amazon Prime U.K. and AUS and on NextUp Comedy. She’s also the host and executive producer of the podcast Women in Labour.
Recorded May 10th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Rohini Nilekani about civil society’s role in the state, public infrastructure, building state capacity, democratizing access to credit and much more. Nilekani is a journalist, children’s book author, activist and philanthropist. She is the founder of Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation, and the co-founder of Pratham Books. She is also the chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and the co-founder and director of EkStep, a nonprofit education platform. Her latest book is “Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A Citizen-First Approach.”
Recorded May 10th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Amit Varma about being alert to changing technologies, building online communities, creating for love vs. validation, how to use ChatGPT productively and much more. Varma is a writer, journalist and podcaster based in Mumbai. He hosts the weekly podcast The Seen and the Unseen and is a columnist at the Times of India. He is also the author of the blog India Uncut, which was active from 2004 to 2008. He won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007 and 2015, the first person to win it twice.
Recorded May 29th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Rahul Sagar about East India Company rule vs. crown rule, public finance constitutionalism, effects of technology on India’s intellectual history, historic preservation and much more. Sagar is the Global Network Associate Professor of Political Science at NYU Abu Dhabi. His primary research interests are in political theory, political ethics and public policy, and he has written on a range of topics including executive power, moderation and political realism. His books include “The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of Government,” “To Raise a Fallen People: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Indian Views on International Politics” and “Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy.”
Recorded May 16th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Montek Singh Ahluwalia about how policy reforms happen, civil servants vs. technocratic experts, the importance of expert committees, good and bad lobbying, economic growth and much more. Ahluwalia is an Indian economist and civil servant who was the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission of India, a position which carried the rank of cabinet minister. He was previously the first director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund.
Recorded April 26th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Sajith Pai about the various sectors of the Indian market, unique payment systems, public versus private investment, the role of artificial intelligence and much more. Pai is a long-time media executive turned venture capitalist. After working in media and entertainment, much of it in The Times of India Group, across strategy and corporate development roles, he moved to Blume Ventures, one of India’s leading early-stage venture firms, in 2018. At Blume, he actively focuses on and support its investments in the domestech space, including consumertech, smb saas, b2b marketplaces and more. He also writes on tech, business, culture and their intersections.
Recorded March 29th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Chakravarthi Rangarajan about currency crises, how the post-liberalization reforms built on earlier reforms, fiscal dominance, capital mobility and much more. Rangarajan is an Indian economist, a former member of parliament and 19th governor of the Reserve Bank of India. He formerly chaired the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. He is also the chair of the Madras School of Economics; a former president of the Indian Statistical Institute; the founding chairman of the C.R. Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science; former chancellor of the University of Hyderabad; and a professor at Ahmedabad University. His book “Forks in the Road: My Days at RBI and Beyond” describes the path-breaking reforms that he implemented during his tenure as governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Recorded March 22nd, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Pranay Kotasthane and Raghu S. Jaitley about the intersections of markets, society and the state. They discuss the importance of individual decision-making, self-governance versus good governance, why economic growth is a moral imperative, the persuasive power of Indian cinema and much more. Kotasthane is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme. Jaitley is a public policy and political economy enthusiast. They co-write “Anticipating the Unintended,” a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks. Their book, “Missing in Action: Why You Should Care About Public Policy,” examines Indian public policy through the lens of the state.
Recorded March 28th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Pranay Kotasthane and Raghu S. Jaitley about the intersections of markets, society and the state. They discuss the importance of individual decision-making, self-governance versus good governance, why economic growth is a moral imperative, the persuasive power of Indian cinema and much more. Kotasthane is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme. Jaitley is a public policy and political economy enthusiast. They co-write “Anticipating the Unintended,” a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks. Their book, “Missing in Action: Why You Should Care About Public Policy,” examines Indian public policy through the lens of the state.
Recorded March 28th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Nitin Pai about storytelling through the lens of his book, “The Nitopadesha.” They discuss the lessons of Indian folktales for citizens and bureaucrats, the importance of civic education, when democracy does and doesn’t work, the effects of economic growth on individual prosperity and much more. Pai is the co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent think tank and school of public policy based in Bangalore, whose goal is to champion India’s national interest and constitutional values. Pai previously worked in technology policy for the government of Singapore and played a role in the deregulation of the telecommunications industry and deployment of broadband infrastructure.
Recorded March 1st, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Alain Bertaud about how Indian cities have evolved, utilities pricing, land use restrictions such as floor area ratio and floor space index, slums, charter cities, urbanization in Africa and much more. Bertaud is an urbanist, distinguished visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and senior research scholar at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. From 1980 to 1999, he was the principal urban planner at the World Bank. His book about urban planning is titled “Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities.”
Recorded February 7th, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Poornima Dore about using regions rather than states as the unit of analysis, the importance of the construction sector, diversification, balanced regional development planning and much more. Dore is the director of analytics, insights and impact at Tata Trusts. She teaches at some of India's premier management and technical institutes and is also an active musician. Her research covers macro-regional growth, smart cities and local economy insights. She co-authored “Regional Economic Diversity: Lessons from an Emergent India,” a comprehensive study at the National Sample Survey regional level that quantifies regional output and talks about what kind of diversification can help India.
Recorded January 31, 2023
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Nikhil Menon about the history of Indian socialism and central planning, government-artist relationships, economists who dissented from the central-planning orthodoxy, the legacy of P.C. Mahalanobis and much more. Menon is a historian of modern South Asia, specializing in the political and economic history of 20th-century India. His research explores the histories of democracy and development in independent India. His book, “Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development,” tells the story of how India wedded western-style democracy and Soviet-inspired economic planning in the middle of the 20th century.
Recorded November 22nd, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Nirupama Menon Rao about the South Asian Symphony, Indian stories in opera, border tensions between India and China, the importance of Tibet, Taiwan and much more. Rao is a retired Indian diplomat, foreign secretary and ambassador. She was India’s first woman spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, the first woman high commissioner from her country to Sri Lanka and the first Indian woman ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. She served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 2009 to 2011 and as India’s ambassador to the United States from 2011 to 2013. She is the author of “The Fractured Himalaya: India, Tibet, China 1949-62” and founder of the South Asian Symphony Foundation.
Recorded December 13th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Janhavi Nilekani about India’s high rate of C-sections compared with vaginal births, problems with maternal healthcare, the present and future of Indian midwifery and much more. Nilekani is the founder and chair of the Aastrika Foundation, which seeks to promote a future in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity during childbirth, and the right treatment is provided at the right time. She is a development economist by training and now works in the field of maternal health. She obtained her Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard and holds a 2010 B.A., cum laude, in economics and international studies from Yale.
Recorded November 7th, 2022
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In a reversal of the podcast’s usual format, producer Dallas Floer interviews Shruti about the guests who appeared and the issues that were discussed on the podcast in 2022. They discuss how to get good data on India, why it’s important to learn more about India, what Shruti has learned from the job market series, and much more. They also answer listener questions and discuss the all-important topic of what Shruti is binge-watching.
Recorded December 12th, 2022
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This episode is the seventh installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Shweta Banerjee about Indian currency before the arrival of the East India Company, how the company changed India’s monetary system, demonetization, free banking and more. Banerjee is a Vanier Doctoral Scholar at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation provides a historical view of financial infrastructure in India from 1750 to 1947. She is interested in exploring finance as a site of contestation between early modern and modern states and financiers or bankers. Before entering her Ph.D. program, she spent several years at the World Bank working on financial inclusion, digitization and rural livelihood programs in South Asia.
Recorded September 22nd, 2022
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This episode is the sixth installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Mahima Vasishth about her job market paper, “Local Media Reports About Sexual Crimes and Judicial Outcomes in India.” They discuss the effects of media coverage on sexual harassment cases, what factors may be driving increased coverage, whether the gender of local politicians affects case outcomes and much more. Vasishth is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include labor economics, development economics and public economics, especially the factors that shape women’s economic outcomes.
Recorded September 22nd, 2022
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This episode is the fifth installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Khusdeep Malhotra about her dissertation, “Precarious Citizens, Excepted State: Sikh Rootedness in Kashmir After the Chittisinghpora Massacre.” They discuss commonalities between Sikhs and Muslims in Kashmir, the effects of land ownership on the Sikh community, the role of women in passing on Sikh identity and much more. Malhotra received her Ph.D. from Temple University in Geography and Urban Studies in May 2022 and her research interests include conflict, displacement and minority rights in South Asia.
Recorded September 22nd, 2022
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This episode is the fourth installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Anoop Jain about his paper, “‘Someone Should Be There To Take Care of It’: A Case Study of Users’ Views of Managed Shared Sanitation Facilities in Jharkhand, India.” They discuss whether toilets should be private or shared, who should build and maintain shared toilets, the need for better infrastructure and much more. Jain is the founding director of Sanitation and Health Rights in India, an organization that fights to eliminate open defecation throughout India. He has an M.P.H. from Tulane University and received his Doctor of Public Health from UC Berkeley in 2019. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, where his research examines the combined effects of multiple deprivations faced by households on population-level health outcomes.
Recorded September 7th, 2022
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This episode is the third installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Aliz Tóth about her job market paper, “My Way and the Highway: Embedded Bureaucrats and Bargaining over Land for Infrastructure.” They discuss the lack of trust between landowners and the state, the role of bureaucrats and politicians in land acquisition for infrastructure projects, differences between private- and public-sector projects, and much more. Tóth is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research examines states’ problem of acquiring valuable land from landowners to build public goods. In particular, her dissertation project investigates why large-scale infrastructure projects face social opposition in India and whether the state can enforce bargains with landowners.
Recorded September 7th, 2022
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This episode is the second installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Raahil Madhok about his job market paper, “The Development-Biodiversity Tradeoff in India’s Forests.” They discuss the effects of different types of infrastructure projects, state capacity, the Forest Rights Act, bird-watching and much more. Madhok is a Ph.D. candidate in the Food and Resource Economics Group at the Faculty of Land and Food systems at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on environmental and development economics.
Recorded September 7th, 2022
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This episode is the second installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Raahil Madhok about his job market paper, “The Development-Biodiversity Tradeoff in India’s Forests.” They discuss the effects of different types of infrastructure projects, state capacity, the Forest Rights Act, bird-watching and much more. Madhok is a Ph.D. candidate in the Food and Resource Economics Group at the Faculty of Land and Food systems at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on environmental and development economics.
Recorded September 7th, 2022
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This episode is the first installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Nishant Vats about his job market paper (co-authored with Pulak Ghosh), “Safety Nets, Credit and Productive Activity: Evidence from a Guaranteed Income Program for Small Entrepreneurs.” Vats is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are finance and development, financial intermediation and corporate finance, with a secondary interest in macroeconomics and political economy.
Recorded September 8th, 2022
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This episode is the first installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Nishant Vats about his job market paper (co-authored with Pulak Ghosh), “Safety Nets, Credit and Productive Activity: Evidence from a Guaranteed Income Program for Small Entrepreneurs.” Vats is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are finance and development, financial intermediation and corporate finance, with a secondary interest in macroeconomics and political economy.
Recorded September 8th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross about their new book, “Talent: How To Identify Energizers, Creatives and Winners Around the World.” They discuss how to identify and attract talent, competition vs. cooperation, the necessity of failure and resilience, effects of immigration on talent and much more. Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is co-author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and co-founder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University. Gross is a start-up investor in technology businesses including Uber, Instacart, Coinbase, GitHub and SpaceX. He co-founded Pioneer, a quantitative start-up accelerator, and was a partner at Y-Combinator and started its AI program.
This conversation is also being released as a bonus episode of Cowen’s biweekly podcast, Conversations with Tyler.
Recorded June 29th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin about their new book, “How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth.” They discuss the link between technological innovation and growth, the importance of global market competition, positive and negative effects of colonialism, the methodology of economic history and much more. Koyama is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University. He is interested in how historical institutions functioned and in the relationship between culture and economic performance. Rubin is a professor of economics at Chapman University. His research focuses on historical relationships between political and religious institutions and their role in economic development.
Recorded July 27th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Jennifer Murtazashvili about the problems with imposing liberal democracy in Afghanistan, building state capacity, education, the role of the U.S. in the Ghani government’s collapse and much more. Murtazashvili is the founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets and an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on issues of self-governance, security, political economy and public-sector reform in the developing world. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of “Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan” and the co-author (with Ilia Murtazashvili) of “Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan.”
Recorded July 20th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Ashwini Deshpande about caste discrimination in labor markets, the reservation system and its critiques, education of women, how endogamy perpetuates caste, Bollywood films and much more. Deshpande is a professor of economics and the founding director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at Ashoka University. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She is the author of “The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India” and “Affirmative Action in India.”
Recorded July 7th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Vinay Sitapati about Narasimha Rao’s socialism, his working relationships with Manmohan Singh and others, how his skills as a translator were useful in his career, and much more. Sitapati is a political scientist, lawyer and journalist. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and degrees from Harvard University and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. His first book, “Half-Lion,” was a best-selling biography of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Sitapati teaches at Ashoka University, near Delhi.
Recorded June 16th, 2022
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Saumitra Jha about medieval ports, competition versus complementarity, marriage endogamy, the effect of military experience on the prevalence of violence and much more. Jha is a professor in the political economy group at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs. He also convenes the Conflict and Polarization Lab within the Stanford King Center on Global Development. His research focuses on understanding the effectiveness of organizations and innovations that societies have developed to address the problems of violence and political risk in the past and to develop new lessons for contemporary policy.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Lant Pritchett for a second time. They discuss internal and external migration, the concept of open borders, definitions of poverty, the flaws of randomized controlled trials and much more. Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. He is currently affiliated with Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government as the research director of the RISE Programme, is the Research Director at LaMP (Labor Mobility Partnerships) and is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He previously worked with the World Bank from 1988 to 2007, living in Indonesia 1998-2000 and India 2004-2007. His publications span a wide range of development topics including economic growth, state capability, education, labor mobility and development assistance.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Adeel Hussain and Tripurdaman Singh about their book, “Nehru: The Debates That Defined India.” They discuss homogeneity in parliamentary democracies, tensions between liberalism and cultural traditions, the branches of the Indian and Pakistani governments and much more. Hussain is an assistant professor at Leiden University and a senior research affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. His research focuses on jurisprudence, comparative constitutional law, international law and the global history of legal and political thought, with a regional emphasis on South Asia and Europe. Singh is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. His work explores the broad themes of sovereignty, state formation, decolonization and constitution making.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Naushad Forbes about his new book, “The Struggle and the Promise: Restoring India’s Potential.” They discuss why Indian companies spend so little on R&D, how companies learn and innovate, protectionism vs. open markets, higher education reforms and much more. Forbes is the co-chairman of Forbes Marshall, India’s leading steam engineering and control instrumentation firm. He chairs the steam engineering companies within the group. He is also the chairman of Ananta Aspen Centre and was president of the Confederation of Indian Industry in 2016-17. Further, he is the chairman of the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Economic Research in Pune.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Barkha Dutt about her new book, “To Hell and Back: Humans of COVID.” They discuss the tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the failures of the Indian state, the stories of Indian migrant workers, the decline of cable news and much more. Dutt is an Indian television journalist, author and owner of the YouTube news channel Mojo Story. She is an opinion columnist with The Hindustan Times and The Washington Post. Her previous book is “This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines.”
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Anand Swamy and Tirthankar Roy about their new book, “Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy: India 1947 and Beyond.” They discuss India’s colonial legacy, forest laws, problems with eminent domain, the messiness of Indian legislation and much more. Swamy is the Willmott Family Third Century Professor of Economics at Williams College. His research interests are the economics of institutions and land, labor and credit markets in developing countries and South Asia. Roy is a professor at the London School of Economics, teaching South Asian and global history. His research focuses on Indian capitalism, specifically whether the country’s history reveals patterns that can help understand how Indian capitalism works today.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Ramachandra Guha about his latest book, “Rebels Against the Raj.” They discuss the influence of foreigners who renounced their native nationalities to become Indian, Gandhi’s legacy, economic protectionism, constraints on free speech, cricket and much more. Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history. For the academic year 2011–12, he held a visiting position at the London School of Economics He has also been a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Lant Pritchett about economic convergence, academic skepticism about growth, flawed methodologies in development economics, the shortcomings of India’s educational system and much more. Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. He is currently affiliated with Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government as the research director of the RISE Programme, is the Research Director at LaMP (Labor Mobility Partnerships) and is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He previously worked with the World Bank from 1988 to 2007, living in Indonesia 1998-2000 and India 2004-2007. His publications span a wide range of development topics including economic growth, state capability, education, labor mobility and development assistance.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Rajesh Veeraraghavan about his book, “Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India.” They discuss the pros and cons of centralized welfare programs, why technology is not a cure-all, academia, Tamil comedy and much more. Veeraraghavan is an assistant professor of science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He has a Ph.D. in information systems from the University of California, Berkeley, and he worked as a software developer at Microsoft for nearly a decade. His research interests include developing digital technology-enabled interventions to address inequality and critically examining the role of algorithms and technology and its potential harms for marginalized people.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Rukmini about her book, “Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India.” They discuss Indians’ multifaceted identities, endogamy, preference falsification and much more. Rukmini is a data journalist who writes columns for Mint, IndiaSpend and other publications. She has also written for HuffPost India, The Hindu and The Times of India. Additionally, she hosts a pandemic mini-podcast called The Moving Curve.
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In this episode, Shruti talks with Shrayana Bhattacharya about her book, “Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence.” They discuss the symbolic resonance of Indian film star Shah Rukh Khan, women’s changing social and economic status in India, the importance of supportive communities of women, Delhi as a city in transition, and much more. Bhattacharya is an economist in the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labour Unit for South Asia. Her research interests include urban bureaucracy, social protection and informality. She completed her postgraduate education in public administration and economics from Harvard University.
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In this episode, Shruti talks with Arvind Elangovan about his book, “Norms and Politics: Sir Benegal Narsing Rau in the Making of the Indian Constitution, 1935-50.” They discuss the tensions surrounding the making of the Indian Constitution, the legacy of colonialism, the differing viewpoints of leaders such as Nehru and B.N. Rau and much more. Elangovan is an associate professor of history at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. His research interests include the political and constitutional history of South Asia, postcolonial India and the history of political and social thought.
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This episode is the twelfth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Radhika Jain about her job market paper, “Private Hospital Behavior Under Government Insurance: Evidence from Reimbursement Changes in India.” They discuss the Bhamashah Health Insurance Program in Rajasthan, how hospitals are reimbursed for healthcare expenses, the effects of competition on the healthcare market and much more. Jain is the Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow for 2019-2022 at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Her research focuses on healthcare markets, the effectiveness of public health policy and gender disparities in health.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the 11th in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Apurav Yash Bhatiya about how voters behave in simultaneous versus sequential elections, possible reasons why they behave differently, politicians’ use of the bully pulpit and much more. They discussed his paper titled “Behavioral Voters in a Decentralized Democracy” (coauthored with Vimal Balasubramaniam and Sabyasachi Das). Bhatiya is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Warwick. His research areas include political economy, development, and labor economics.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the tenth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Dr. Archana Dang about her paper, “Role of Time Preferences in Explaining the Burden of Malnutrition: Evidence from Urban India.” They discuss India’s double burden of over- and undernutrition, why financial savings might be a good predictor of obesity, the effects of COVID on India’s obesity levels and much more. Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Economic Growth. Her research interests include the economics of health, specifically issues of overweight and obesity in India. Her work has been published in the journal Economics and Human Biology.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the ninth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Kim Fe Cramer about her job market paper, “Bank Presence and Health.” They discuss how access to banking and credit benefits health, why those benefits happen, whether healthcare should be subsidized and much more. Cramer is a Ph.D. candidate in finance and economics at Columbia Business School. She researches how the financial sector affects development outcomes and has conducted experiments in countries including India, Kenya and Ecuador.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the eighth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti and Karan Babbar talk about his job market paper, “COVID-19 and Period Products Usage Among Menstruating Women in Urban and Rural India.” They discuss access to feminine hygiene products, effects of the pandemic on women’s health, how reproductive knowledge is transmitted, and much more. Babbar is a Ph.D. scholar at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. His research interests include education, public health, gender and intersectionality.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the seventh in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Neha Gupta about her job market paper, “Homeownership, Renting and Market Failures: Evidence from Indian Slums.” They discuss government policies to increase affordable housing, how nonstate actors affect slum and nonslum housing, the Swiss housing market and much more. Gupta has a Ph.D. in economics and finance from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her research interests include applied economics, causal econometrics, empirical macroeconomics, and urban and development economics.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the sixth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Karmini Sharma about her job market paper, “Tackling Sexual Harassment: Experimental Evidence from India.” They discuss how training about sexual harassment affects women’s preferences and men’s behavior, how long these effects are likely to persist, and the broader implications for the #MeToo movement in India. Sharma is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on the intersection of economics of gender, development economics and experimental economics. She seeks to understand deterrence of sexual harassment, gender segregation and discrimination.
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This episode is the fifth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Ashish Sedai about his job market paper, “Piped Water: Welfare and Empowerment: Empirical Evidence From a Gendered Analysis in India.” They discuss the importance of indoor piped drinking water and its relevance to Indian women’s participation in the labor force. Sedai is a Ph.D. candidate the Department of Economics at Colorado State University. His research focuses on how economic opportunities are generated and distributed in society, as well as the interplay between power and institutions and between economic behavior and the performance of the economy.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the fourth in a miniseries of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Bhumi Purohit about female leaders’ access to networks, gender quotas, expanding women’s access to social and political capital, and much more. Purohit is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on comparative politics, political behavior and South Asia; in particular, she seeks to understand the behavioral and institutional barriers to women’s political representation.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the third in a mini-series of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Dr. Gaurav Mittal about illegal and informal methods of transit, the role of courts and bureaucrats in transportation policy, failed government schemes to solve the transportation crisis and much more. Mittal is an associate faculty member at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. He obtained his Ph.D. in geography from the National University of Singapore. His research interests include urban governance, public transport and political geography.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the second in a mini-series of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti talks with Chhavi Tiwari about her job market paper titled “Internal Migration and Rural Inequalities in India” (with Sankalpa Bhattacherjee). They talk about the differences between seasonal and permanent migration in India, how economic factors influence migration patterns, why women with more children are less likely to work outside the home and much more. Tiwari is an assistant professor of economics at TAPMI, Manipal. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
This episode is the first in a mini-series of weekly short episodes featuring young scholars entering the academic job market who discuss their latest research. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Arkadev Ghosh about his job market paper titled, Religious Divisions and Production Technology: Experimental Evidence from India. They discuss the effects of inter-religion work groups on team productivity, how wider political tensions can affect the workplace and much more. Ghosh is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of British Columbia. He obtained his master’s in economics at the London School of Economics and his bachelor’s degree at the University of Edinburgh.
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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta about Adam Smith’s “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” spectatorship and imagination, self-interest, federalism, the Scottish Enlightenment as applied to Indian politics and much more. Mehta is the Laurence Rockefeller Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He is also a contributing editor and columnist at the Indian Express and former president and chief executive of the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. He has written extensively on intellectual history, constitutional law and theory, political theory, India’s social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adiseshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize.
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In this episode, Shruti talks with Alice Evans about fraternal capital, women’s limited mobility, female friendships, representations of women in art and much more. Evans is a lecturer at King’s College London and a faculty associate at the Center for International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She has published on topics such as women’s labor force participation, urbanization and social change, pro-worker reforms, what drives support for gender equality and more. Her book “The Great Gender Divergence” is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
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In this episode, Shruti talks with Uday Bhatia about Hindi gangster films, particularly “Satya” and its legacy. They discuss vigilante cops, corrupt politicians and other movie tropes, as well as how the Indian gangster film has evolved over time. Bhatia is a film critic with Mint Lounge. He has previously worked with Time Out Delhi and The Sunday Guardian. His writing has appeared in The Caravan, GQ, The Indian Quarterly, The Indian Express and The Hindu Business Line. Bhatia is also the author of “Bullets Over Bombay,” a book about the iconic Indian film “Satya” and its legacy.
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Ideas of India is a podcast in which Mercatus Senior Research Fellow Shruti Rajagopalan examines the academic ideas that can propel India forward. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, Stitcher or the podcast app of your choice.
In this episode, Shruti talks with Shreyas Narla and Prakhar Misra about India’s 1991 economic reforms. They discuss the role of Prime Minister Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, India’s transition from socialism to a market economy, the continued relevance of the 1991 reforms today and much more. Narla and Misra are research associates in the field of Indian political economy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
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In this episode, Shruti talks with Salil Tripathi about Bangladesh’s economic prosperity, cultural similarities and differences with India, religious and linguistic identity, and about what India can learn from Bangaladesh on its 50th anniversary. Tripathi is an Indian journalist, author and editor, currently the chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. and he is the Senior Advisor on Global Issues at the Institute for Human Rights and Business. He is the author of “Offence: The Hindu Case,” “Detours: Songs of the Open Road” and “The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy.”
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In this episode, Shruti and Amartya Lahiri discuss the Indian economy in light of the country’s socialist past, distrust of markets, current monetary policy and continuing challenges. Lahiri is a professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. He has previously held positions at the University of California Los Angeles and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His current research interests include macro- and microeconomic developments in India over the past three decades.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com
In this episode, Shruti and Krish Ashok discuss different Indian cuisines, oral versus written tradition, the fusion of different musical styles, the challenges of working remotely and much more. Krish is the global head of digital workplace practice at Tata Consultancy Services in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. He is also a classical violinist, guitarist and cellist, and he has written a book, Masala Lab, on the science of Indian cooking.
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For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com
In this episode, Shruti and Yashica Dutt discuss India’s caste system, being Dalit and “passing” as non-Dalit, the intersection of caste and gender, reservations in the Indian educational system and much more. Dutt is an Indian writer and journalist who has written on a broad range of topics including fashion, gender, identity, culture and caste. She has worked with the Hindustan Times, LiveMint, Scroll.in, The Wire and HuffPost India. Her new book, “Coming Out as Dalit,” is a memoir of her experience as a Dalit woman and the history of the Dalit movement.
Follow Yashica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YashicaDutt
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For a full transcript with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
In this episode, Shruti and Keshav Desiraju discuss Indian musical traditions, devadasi women and the music of M. S. Subbulakshmi. Desiraju is the author of “Of Gifted Voice: The Life and Art of M. S. Subbulakshmi.” He has recently retired from a career with the Indian Administrative Service and in 2013 was Secretary of Health & Family Welfare to the Government of India. He has held many positions with the Government of Uttarakhand, the Government of Uttar Pradesh and the Government of India. He continues to remain engaged with issues in public health, particularly mental illness, primary healthcare and community health, and he serves on the board of several nonprofit organizations.
Follow Keshav on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DesirajuKeshav
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For a full transcript with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
In this episode, Shruti and Chinmay Tumbe discuss the history of pandemics in India and throughout the world, including cholera, influenza, plague and now COVID-19. They also discuss how issues of caste, migration and scientific progress have influenced these pandemics. Tumbe is an assistant professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. His research interests include urban and labor economics, business and economic history, and migration studies. His most recent book is “The Age of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World.” He is also the author of “India Moving: A History of Migration.”
Follow Chinmay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChinmayTumbe
Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
For a full transcript of this conversation and helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com
In this episode, Shruti talks with Alice Evans about issues affecting women in India, including single-gender education, son preference, social media and many others. Evans is a lecturer at King’s College London and a faculty associate at the Center for International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She has published on topics such as women’s labor force participation, urbanization and social change, pro-worker reforms, what drives support for gender equality and more. Her book “The Great Gender Divergence” is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Follow Alice on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_alice_evans
For a transcript of this conversation and helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
In this episode, Shruti and Virginia Postrel discuss her latest book, “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.” They talk about different methods of dyeing, spinning as a feminine occupation, the textile trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, how technological changes disrupted the industry and much more. Postrel is an author, columnist and speaker whose work spans a broad range of topics from social science to fashion, concentrating on the intersection of culture, commerce and technology. Her previous books include “The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion” (2013), “The Substance of Style” (2003) and “The Future and Its Enemies” (1998). She is a regular columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes columns, focusing primarily on history and material culture, to Reason.
Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Follow Virginia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vpostrel
For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
In this episode, Shruti talks to Himanshu Jha about his recent book, Capturing Institutional Change: The Case of the Right to Information Act in India. Himanshu is a lecturer and research fellow in the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University in Germany.
Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Follow Himanshu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/himmijha
For a transcript of this conversation and helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
In this episode, Shruti speaks with Milan Vaishnav about a report, How Do Indian Americans View India?, in which he and his co-authors (Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur) conducted a survey about the political beliefs of Indian Americans. They discuss the results of the survey and talk about how the Indian American community might change in the future. Vaishnav is the director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press and HarperCollins India, 2017). His research focuses on Indian political economy, examining issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics and electoral behavior.
Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Follow Milan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MilanV
For a transcript of this conversation and helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.
In this episode, Shruti talks with Shoumitro Chatterjee about farms and farm policy in India, particularly in terms of government subsidies and other state intervention in agricultural markets. Chatterjee is an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include agriculture and international trade and development.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Connect with Shoumitro on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shoumitro_c
In this episode, Shruti and Chandra Bhan Prasad discuss the legacy of philosophy of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the status of Dalits in India and the importance of entrepreneurship. Prasad is an Indian journalist, political commentator and activist, an entrepreneur and founder of the ByDalits.com platform, an adviser to the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the editor of Dalit Enterprise Magazine. He is also a winner of the Emergent Ventures grant for his work on Dalit capitalism and progress.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Connect with Chandra Bhan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbhanp
In this episode, Shruti spoke with Arvind Panagariya about his book, Free Trade and Prosperity: How Openness Helps the Developing Countries Grow Richer and Combat Poverty. Panagariya is Professor of Economics and the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University. From January 2015 to August 2017, he served as the first Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, Government of India in Prime Minister Modi’s Cabinet. His primary research is international trade policy, economic development, and Indian political economy.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
This episode is the sixth and final installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. The first episode featured Vaishnavi Surendra, the second episode featured Rohit Ticku, the third episode featured Tanu Kumar, the fourth episode featured Proma Ray Chaudhury, and the fifth episode featured Vaidehi Tandel.
In this episode, Shruti talks with Kunal Mangal about his research on the pursuit of government jobs in India and why the competition for these jobs is so fierce. Mangal is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. His research focuses on labor markets in developing countries, and he is currently studying India’s competitive exam system for government jobs.
For Kunal’s research and for a full transcript of this conversation, visit https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
The fifth scholar in our young scholars series, Dr. Vaidehi Tandel. She is an economist specializing in urban political economy and policy in India. I spoke with Vaidehi about her work on urban economics in India, in particular, her paper on “What’s in a definition? A study on the suitability of the current urban definition in India through its employment guarantee programme. (with Komal Hiranandani and Mudit Kapoor) and her paper titled paper, “Too slow for the urban march: Litigations and real estate in Mumbai, (with Sahil Gandhi, Alexander Tabarrok and Shamika Ravi) and her joint work on using a system of Adaptive Controls in the battle against Covid.
For Proma’s papers and for a full transcript of this conversation, visit https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
The fourth scholar in our young scholars series is Proma Ray Chaudhury, a PhD Candidate at the School of Law and Government in Dublin City University under the EU Marie Curie ETN Global India Project, working on gender and women’s political participation in contemporary India. I spoke with Proma about her paper titled, “The Political Asceticism of Mamata Banerjee: Female Populist Leadership in Contemporary India,” where she studies representation of female political leaders, in particular, Mamata Bannerjee in West Bengal.
For Proma’s papers and for a full transcript of this conversation, visit https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
For the next few weeks I will be speaking to young doctoral and post-doctoral candidates entering the academic job market and the policy world about their newly minted research on Indian political economy.
The third scholar in our young scholars series, Dr. Tanu Kumar is a postdoctoral fellow at William and Mary’s Global Research Institute. She is a political scientist studying urban politics and service delivery. I spoke with Tanu about her paper, “Home-Price Subsidies Increase Local-Level Political Participation in Urban India,” which has been conditionally accepted at the Journal of Politics. In her paper, Tanu studies the effects of a housing subsidy program in Mumbai through an original survey of winners and nonwinners of program lotteries, and its effect on local political participation.
We also discussed another one of Tanu’s papers, “The Human Capital Effects of Subsidized Government-Constructed Homes in Urban India,” on how this housing subsidy affects long-term investments in human capital.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
For the next few weeks I will be speaking to young doctoral and post-doctoral candidates entering the academic job market and the policy world about their newly minted research on Indian political economy.
The next scholar in our young scholar series is of Dr. Rohit Ticku. Rohit is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Society at Chapman University. He is working on religion, culture and identity from an economic point of view. I spoke with Rohit about his paper, titled Economic Shocks and Temple Desecrations in Medieval India, which is coauthored with Anand Shrivastava and Sriya Iyer, where they show that economic downturns led rules to strategically desecrate temples to quell mass uprisings. I also discussed another one of Rohit’s papers titled Same Sex Marriage Laws and Coming out in America:Theory and Evidence from Catholic Priesthood (coauthored with Avner Seror) on the effect of the same-sex marriage laws on the expression of sexual identity in the United States.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
For the next few weeks, I will be speaking to young doctoral and post-doctoral candidates entering the academic and policy works about their newly minted research on Indian political economy. The first scholar in our young scholars’ series is Dr. Vaishnavi Surendra. Vaishnavi is a post-doctoral scholar at University of California, Berkley. She is a development economist working in the area of household finance and her research is focused on studying credit markets in rural India. Today I’ll be speaking with her on her findings on moneylenders in rural India. In her paper titled, “The Moneylender as Middleman: Formal Credit Supply and Informal Loans in Rural India” Vaishnavi demonstrates that informal moneylenders borrow from the formal banking system and lend to households acting as intermediaries to ease lending capital constraints in rural India.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Shruti talks with Adam Auerbach about competition, creative problem-solving, and formalizing political activity in India’s urban slums.
In this episode, Shruti spoke with Adam Auerbach about his 2019 book, Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums. Auerbach is an assistant professor in the School of International Service at American University. His research interests include local governance, urban politics, and the political economy of development, with a regional focus in South Asia and particularly in India. Shruti also talked with Adam about the ethnic and social diversity of Indian slums, the lack of geographic mobility between those neighborhoods, political representation at the extremely local level, and much more.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Today’s guest is Rohit De, who is an associate professor of history at Yale University. His recent book, A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic, is an excellent look at how the constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. Rohit details how those on the margins of society, like butchers and prostitutes, or drinkers and traders, made claims using the constitution after India’s founding and shaped India’s constitutional culture.
I had a chance to speak with Rohit about the four cases he makes in the book. We talked about how individuals asserted their rights against an oppressive, regulatory, and socialist state that had criminalized their daily activities and infringed on their ability to carry on their profession. We also had a chance to talk about Indian constitutionalism, economic planning and controls during the Nehruvian socialism, the meaning of constitutional franchise, constitutional symbolism during the citizenship amendment protests in India, Rohit’s intellectual journey, and much more.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Today my guest is Vijayendra Rao, or as he's known, Biju Rao, a lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. His recent book coauthored with professor Paromita Sanyal called Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies, is an excellent study of citizens voice in India's Gram Sabhas, or village assemblies, which are also the largest deliberative institution in human history.
I had a chance to speak with Biju about deliberative democracy in India, federalism and local governments, conducting ethnographic research, what it means to be a development economist, the relevance of methodology and history, and much more.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Connect with Biju on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bijurao
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Ideas of India is a new podcast in which Mercatus Senior Research Fellow Shruti Rajagopalan examines the academic ideas that can propel India forward. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, Stitcher, or the podcast app of your choice.
In this episode, Shruti spoke with Viral Acharya about his new book, Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India. Acharya is the C. V. Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business. He is also an academic adviser to the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Philadelphia. He served as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India from January 2017 to July 2019. His primary research interest is theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risk of the financial sector. This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN: Viral, thank you so much, and welcome to the show.
VIRAL ACHARYA: Thank you, Shruti. It’s my pleasure to be on your podcast.
On Fiscal Dominance RAJAGOPALAN: Your book outlines your theory of fiscal dominance. When I started reading it, I thought, in one sense, it’s a continuation of some of the past work. In the Indian context, for instance, Urjit Patel and Willem Buiter have done their work on fiscal dominance over monetary policy. Of course, there is Urjit Patel’s book, Overdraft, which is much more focused on the impact of fiscal dominance on banking regulation, a function of the RBI [Reserve Bank of India].
I initially thought your argument is along similar lines. As I read more carefully and got to the end, to me, it seemed that you are a little more radical than your colleagues. Because you’re not just talking about fiscal dominance over monetary policy, or even specifically about banking regulation.
The kinds of impact that fiscal dominance has on India’s economic growth or the current growth slump, or on its public finance and central and state relations, on private sector crowding out, even the nature of government spending and welfare entitlements. And by the end of it, I felt like your argument is a radical case made by a central banker to severely limit most of India’s government spending and not just narrowly about fiscal dominance.
ACHARYA: Absolutely, Shruti, that’s very well put. What I would say is that when the size of the state in terms of its borrowings and deficit becomes so large as it is in case of India, where even pre-COVID, the fiscal deficit numbers on a true consolidated basis were already in the range of 8% to 10% of GDP with demands increasing by the day—of course, post-COVID, these numbers are projected to be as high as 14% to 15% of GDP.
Now, when the government borrowing programs become so large, what I’m trying to highlight in the introductory chapter of the book is that it has a tendency to permeate every single aspect of financial sector policy, and you are spot on, which is that it is this everything aspect.
From the vantage point that I had, I found that the Reserve Bank of India is, of course, in charge of supervision and bank regulation as you mentioned. It is the debt manager for the government of India. It regulates the debt markets, so it sets the rules under which the debt markets are going to be governed. These rules can also get skewed in favor of government borrowing compared to borrowings by the private sector for example. It’s in charge of the external sector, so what kind of external debt the government issues can also be a pressure point between the central bank and the government interactions.
Other financial regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Board, are in charge of disclosure notes should publicly listed companies disclose if they have missed a payment on a bank loan. Now, in developed economies, you would think that any materially relevant information should be disclosed by the firm to its public investors, such as bondholders or shareholders, for efficient allocation of capital, for ensuring that minority investors are not taken advantage of by those who are privy to this insider information, and so on.
Yet, in India, whether you disclose defaults by publicly listed companies in a timely manner to the markets or not is driven by, what will that do to the credit rating of the company? How will that lead to capital requirements for public sector banks? What will that mean for the annual budget allocation? How much of a compromise would that lead to on the government’s desire to spend, say, on populist subsidy programs?
The reason why I point out this example is because it shows that something that looks so distant from the government budgets, which is the quality of disclosure of information on a stock exchange, is also actually intimately compromised by the end budgetary recalculations and the desire of what the budget should be in the minds of the government.
I think this is the main thesis. I want to actually make it clear that just fixing one aspect of this problem, which is you go narrowly in the direction of supervision or regulation of bond markets, this is not going to fix it because then it’s like a whack-a-mole problem. You kind of whack-a-mole and it springs up somewhere else because the fiscal is so deeply permeating the rest of the system. It’s always trying to get everything in the rest of the system to its advantage.
I think even as an economic framework, we need to do more along these lines in our conceptual thinking, in our theoretical models, and in teasing out how the interactions between the government and different parts of the economy work. It has its own conflicted objectives of being popular, for example, or running certain kinds of programs that will bring it the votes from a particular constituency that it’s trying to swing over in its favor. I think I wanted to offer an organizing framework, a set of principles that would help us think through. I think the sum total of it is that the fiscal stability and financial stability in India are now intimately linked.
This is a theme that I’ve been developing in my research over a period of time, that there is a nexus between the sovereign and the financial sector through its choice of the rules of the game, through its compromise of the central bank and other financial sector regulators, through its crowding out of the private sector, a form of financial repression basically. The governments get deeply intertwined with the bank balance sheets.
They want banks and others in the financial sector in one way or the other to make it easy for the governments to borrow. What that leads to is that when the governments doesn’t continue on a path of stable debt finances or there’s an external shock or there’s a shock like the pandemic that actually completely knocks off you from your steady-state path, then you have a serious problem. Because not only will the government face these problems, now it will impose a huge collateral damage to the financial sector in the process.
This nexus then starts creating what some people have called a doom loop or forward-backward linkages or a diabolical loop. There’s all kinds of fancy terms that economists have come up with. In some of my work, notably with Raghuram Rajan in a series of papers—first, a joint paper with him, then in a separate paper with him and one of my PhD students, Jack Shim—what we are trying to argue that by creating this nexus, governments actually first increase their debt capacity because you create a clientele in the economy that is repressively required to buy the government bonds in one way or the other.
Ideas of India is a new podcast in which Mercatus Senior Research Fellow Shruti Rajagopalan examines the academic ideas that can propel India forward. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, Stitcher, or the podcast app of your choice.
In this episode, Shruti spoke with Viral Acharya about his new book, Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India. Acharya is the C. V. Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business. He is also an academic adviser to the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Philadelphia. He served as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India from January 2017 to July 2019. His primary research interest is theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risk of the financial sector. This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN: Viral, thank you so much, and welcome to the show.
VIRAL ACHARYA: Thank you, Shruti. It’s my pleasure to be on your podcast.
On Fiscal Dominance RAJAGOPALAN: Your book outlines your theory of fiscal dominance. When I started reading it, I thought, in one sense, it’s a continuation of some of the past work. In the Indian context, for instance, Urjit Patel and Willem Buiter have done their work on fiscal dominance over monetary policy. Of course, there is Urjit Patel’s book, Overdraft, which is much more focused on the impact of fiscal dominance on banking regulation, a function of the RBI [Reserve Bank of India].
I initially thought your argument is along similar lines. As I read more carefully and got to the end, to me, it seemed that you are a little more radical than your colleagues. Because you’re not just talking about fiscal dominance over monetary policy, or even specifically about banking regulation.
The kinds of impact that fiscal dominance has on India’s economic growth or the current growth slump, or on its public finance and central and state relations, on private sector crowding out, even the nature of government spending and welfare entitlements. And by the end of it, I felt like your argument is a radical case made by a central banker to severely limit most of India’s government spending and not just narrowly about fiscal dominance.
ACHARYA: Absolutely, Shruti, that’s very well put. What I would say is that when the size of the state in terms of its borrowings and deficit becomes so large as it is in case of India, where even pre-COVID, the fiscal deficit numbers on a true consolidated basis were already in the range of 8% to 10% of GDP with demands increasing by the day—of course, post-COVID, these numbers are projected to be as high as 14% to 15% of GDP.
Now, when the government borrowing programs become so large, what I’m trying to highlight in the introductory chapter of the book is that it has a tendency to permeate every single aspect of financial sector policy, and you are spot on, which is that it is this everything aspect.
From the vantage point that I had, I found that the Reserve Bank of India is, of course, in charge of supervision and bank regulation as you mentioned. It is the debt manager for the government of India. It regulates the debt markets, so it sets the rules under which the debt markets are going to be governed. These rules can also get skewed in favor of government borrowing compared to borrowings by the private sector for example. It’s in charge of the external sector, so what kind of external debt the government issues can also be a pressure point between the central bank and the government interactions.
Other financial regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Board, are in charge of disclosure notes should publicly listed companies disclose if they have missed a payment on a bank loan. Now, in developed economies, you would think that any materially relevant information should be disclosed by the firm to its public investors, such as bondholders or shareholders, for efficient allocation of capital, for ensuring that minority investors are not taken advantage of by those who are privy to this insider information, and so on.
Yet, in India, whether you disclose defaults by publicly listed companies in a timely manner to the markets or not is driven by, what will that do to the credit rating of the company? How will that lead to capital requirements for public sector banks? What will that mean for the annual budget allocation? How much of a compromise would that lead to on the government’s desire to spend, say, on populist subsidy programs?
The reason why I point out this example is because it shows that something that looks so distant from the government budgets, which is the quality of disclosure of information on a stock exchange, is also actually intimately compromised by the end budgetary recalculations and the desire of what the budget should be in the minds of the government.
I think this is the main thesis. I want to actually make it clear that just fixing one aspect of this problem, which is you go narrowly in the direction of supervision or regulation of bond markets, this is not going to fix it because then it’s like a whack-a-mole problem. You kind of whack-a-mole and it springs up somewhere else because the fiscal is so deeply permeating the rest of the system. It’s always trying to get everything in the rest of the system to its advantage.
I think even as an economic framework, we need to do more along these lines in our conceptual thinking, in our theoretical models, and in teasing out how the interactions between the government and different parts of the economy work. It has its own conflicted objectives of being popular, for example, or running certain kinds of programs that will bring it the votes from a particular constituency that it’s trying to swing over in its favor. I think I wanted to offer an organizing framework, a set of principles that would help us think through. I think the sum total of it is that the fiscal stability and financial stability in India are now intimately linked.
This is a theme that I’ve been developing in my research over a period of time, that there is a nexus between the sovereign and the financial sector through its choice of the rules of the game, through its compromise of the central bank and other financial sector regulators, through its crowding out of the private sector, a form of financial repression basically. The governments get deeply intertwined with the bank balance sheets.
They want banks and others in the financial sector in one way or the other to make it easy for the governments to borrow. What that leads to is that when the governments doesn’t continue on a path of stable debt finances or there’s an external shock or there’s a shock like the pandemic that actually completely knocks off you from your steady-state path, then you have a serious problem. Because not only will the government face these problems, now it will impose a huge collateral damage to the financial sector in the process.
This nexus then starts creating what some people have called a doom loop or forward-backward linkages or a diabolical loop. There’s all kinds of fancy terms that economists have come up with. In some of my work, notably with Raghuram Rajan in a series of papers—first, a joint paper with him, then in a separate paper with him and one of my PhD students, Jack Shim—what we are trying to argue that by creating this nexus, governments actually first increase their debt capacity because you create a clientele in the economy that is repressively required to buy the government bonds in one way or the other.
Today’s guest is Viral Acharya, who is the C.V. Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His recent book, Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India is an excellent introduction to the problems of autonomous central banking in the face of fiscal dominance by the ever-expanding Indian state. The book contains a series of Viral’s lectures given during his tenure as Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India.
This conversations covers his views on fiscal dominance and its impact on central banking, the current banking crisis brewing in India, India’s informal economy, problems with fiscal federalism, the role of technocrats and the role of ideology, and the reversal of policy direction towards more statism.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
My guest today is Sriya Iyer, a Bibby Fellow and College Lecturer at St Catharine's College and Affiliated Lecturer and Janeway Fellow at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge.
Her recent book, The Economics of Religion in India is an excellent survey of her work on religion in India, from the economic point of view, studied using the tools of economics.
In this book Sriya analyzes provisioning of religious and non-religious services by religious organizations in India, ethnic conflict, riots, competition between religious organization, and religious education. This work is extremely insightful and sheds light to understand more recent trends of nationalism in India.
In this episode we cover her work on the economics of religion, caste, the rise of the BJP and Hindu nationalism, her intellectual influences, and much more.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/
Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Anuj is a professor at the Jindal Global Law School. And his recent book, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India is an excellent account of the development and failure of the Public Interest Litigation movement.
In this book Anuj details the big PIL cases in the last few decades – concerning pollution of the Taj Mahal, pollution of river Ganges, as well as cases dealing with vehicular pollution, deindustrialization and slum demolitions in Delhi. His analysis brings out two implications of the PIL movement on India – one on Indian citizens, especially the poor, because of arbitrary and draconian orders of the court. And the toll the PIL movement has taken on the Indian judiciary and its reputation.
I had a chance to speak with Anuj about the relaxation of locus standi requirements and procedural constraints on the judiciary in India since the 1980s; about the current state of Supreme Court, ruled more by whim than by law, the work of a legal anthropologist, his intellectual influences, and much more.
This conversation was recorded before the Prashant Bhushan contempt of court case. But Anuj’s ideas and research also help explain these recent trends in the Indian judiciary.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/ideasofindia
Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Dinyar Patel an Assistant Professor of South Asian History at the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research and a research affiliate at the Mittal Institute at Harvard University. His latest book, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, is an excellent biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, a foundational figure in the building of modern-day India.
I had a chance to speak with Dinyar about the trajectory of Indian nationalism, the ideas that influenced Naoroji, the difference between Naoroji and his contemporaries like fellow parsi and British MP Mancherjee Bhownagree, Naoroji’s correspondence with radical socialist Henry Hyndman, Dinyar’s intellectual and professional journey, and much more.
Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/ideasofindia
Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan
Welcome to Ideas of India, a podcast where we examine academic thinking that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan. Today, my guest is Madhav Khosla, associate professor of political science at Ashoka University and the Ambedkar Visiting Associate Professor at Columbia Law School. His latest book, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy, details the main ideas or traditions of thought that informed the Indian constitutional project and discusses how the framing of the Constitution changed India’s trajectory.
In his book, Madhav talks about the decision of the framers to have a very long and codified Constitution as a pedagogical project. He argues that the framers centralized power to fight localism and parochialism. And we spoke about the framers’ idea of representation in a society fragmented by religion and caste, with the backdrop of Partition, and the relevance of those choices today.
I had a chance to talk about these themes, the link between India’s founding and its constitutional troubles today, the framers of the Constitution, Madhav’s intellectual influences, and much more. This conversation was recorded in person in February, before the COVID pandemic. But Madhav’s book on the founding is unlikely to lose its relevance anytime soon.
Transcript: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/08202020/ideas-india-constitutional-democracy
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Welcome to Ideas Of India, where we examine the academic ideas that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan, and I’m an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
My guest today is Ajay Shah, professor of economics at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. Over the years I’ve learned a lot from Ajay’s academic and policy-oriented research on India, which is written at the intersection of economics, law, and public administration.
His latest book, In Service of the Republic: The Art and Science of Economic Policy, co-authored with Prof. Vijay Kelkar, is an excellent overview of their interdisciplinary approach to policy in India. An important theme in the book is that market failure in itself does not justify state intervention. And between market failure and government intervention we must examine state capacity, the incentives of political actors, and the checks and balances provided by the larger institutional framework.
While Ajay used to be more focused on technical aspects of economics and about where markets can fail, now his focus is on working through the rules and institutional arrangements through which we govern ourselves. In addition to the ideas in the book, Ajay and I talk about this evolution in his thinking, his first-hand experience with policy making, his journey as an economist, major influences, and much more.
Transcript: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/08062020/ideas-india-libertarianism-necessity/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ideasofindia
If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your friends and colleagues!