India Speak: The CPR Podcast

Listen to the forty-ninth episode of ThoughtSpace featuring Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Ajay Vir Jakhar and Yamini Aiyar. The Government of India passed three farm reform bills- The Farmers’ Produce Trade And Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Bill, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, in the Mon...

In the 48th episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr KP Krishnan, Professor at the National Council of Applied Economic Research and former IAS officer. As we debate the future of the Indian economy, the issue of regulation has emerged consistently as a crucial fault line. How does India design regulatory systems in ways that are effective, cons...

In the 47th episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham, India’s leading NGO in the space of elementary education. Pratham has been playing an active role during this pandemic to connect with students and communities across the country and partner with governments to support learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to...

In the forty sixth episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr Jishnu Das, Senior Visiting Fellow at CPR and professor at Georgetown University. As India begins to unlock, after three months of the world’s strictest lockdown, cases of COVID-19 are increasing in many parts of the country. This has put into question the effectiveness of the lockdown...

In this forty-fifth episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Senior Fellow and Director of the new State Capacity Initiative at CPR and Associate Professor at Ashoka University. In the last few weeks, the government of India has made significant announcements on reforming agriculture, particularly the regulatory framework...

In episode 44 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR speaks with Shyam Saran, Former Foreign Secretary and Senior Fellow, CPR. In the last few weeks, a crisis has been brewing on our borders between India and China over the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Late last week, in an unprecedented move, top Generals from both countries met to seek a resolution to the crisis....

In episode 43 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr K R Shyam Sundar, one of India's leading researchers on labour laws, and professor at the Xavier Institute of Management, Jamshedpur. In a bid to revive the economy in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, several state governments issued ordinances with respect to labour reforms that have further...

In episode 42 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Ambassador Shyam Saran, India’s former foreign secretary and Senior Fellow at CPR. The coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis of an unprecedented nature that is reshaping the global order. Countries are grappling to control the spread of the disease by announcing lockdowns and closing borders. Economi...

In episode 41 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with members of the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) initiative on the limitations of India’s social security architecture and the need to rethink what it means to be a welfare state. Our guests include Anindita Adhikari, PhD student at Brown University and a member of the Right to Food and Right to W...

In episode 40 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Ananth Padmanabhan, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and Dean of the Daksha Fellowship; and Sahil Deo, co-founder of CPC Analytics and faculty at Daksha Fellowship. Historically, pandemics have been watershed moments in altering citizen-state relations. In the context of COVID-19, data...

In episode 39, part 2 of ThoughtSpace, co-hosts Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, and Dr Jishnu Das, Professor at Georgetown University and Senior Visiting Fellow at CPR, speak with Dr Madhukar Pai, Professor and Director of McGill Global Health Programs and International TB Centre; Nandita Venkatesan, a journalist, TB survivor and TB disability advocate; and Dr Sarthak Rastogi...

In episode 39, part 1 of ThoughtSpace, co-hosts Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, and Dr Jishnu Das, Professor at Georgetown University and Senior Visiting Fellow at CPR, speak with Dr Madhukar Pai, Professor and Director of McGill Global Health Programs and International TB Centre; Nandita Venkatesan, a journalist, TB survivor and TB disability advocate; and Dr Sarthak Rastogi...

In the 38th episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr Mahesh Vyas, MD and CEO of Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy. As the economy comes to a grinding halt and businesses close for the duration of the lockdown, the big question we look at in this episode is the impact of the lockdown on unemployment, labour force participation, and the ove...

In episode 37 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar and Dr Jishnu Das speak with Dr Christiana Iyasere, Dr Saumya Das and Dr Nim Pathy. While India goes into lockdown 2.0 and determines the best strategies to stop the spread of COVID-19, countries across the world have adopted myriad approaches to tackle the outbreak. In this episode, we step away from India to look at what is happening across the world,...

In episode 36 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Pravesh Sharma, former IAS officer and CEO of Kamatan Farms Pvt. Ltd., and Dr Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Senior Fellow at CPR. The agriculture economy in India came to halt with the 21-day national lockdown. Supply chains have broken down, labour is in short supply and there has been a surge in food prices...

In the 35th episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr Rathin Roy, Director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent 21-day national lockdown have brought the Indian economy to a standstill. This comes at a time when India’s economy and public finances were already under considerable s...

In episode 34 of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar speaks with Partha Mukhopadhyay and Mukta Naik about the migrant worker crisis unfolding across the country. The lockdown imposed by the Indian government last week has brought the country to a standstill. Simultaneously, it has created panic in the lives of India’s migrant workers and labourers. Videos and images of migrants walking home hundreds of kil...

In the 32nd episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar (President and Chief Executive, CPR) speaks to Sanjoy Hazarika (Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Honorary Research Professor, CPR) about the implications of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam. The passage of the CAA was met by a fierce reaction in the northeastern part of the country, particularly in Assam....

In the 33rd episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar (President and Chief Executive, CPR) speaks with Dr Jishnu Das (Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR and professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University). As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, the Indian government responded to the threat by imposing an unprecedented 21-day loc...

In the 31st episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar (President and Chief Executive, CPR) speaks to Patrick Heller ( Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs, Brown University), about the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The passage of the CAA led to agitations across the country. Since December 15, thousands of students, activists and ordinary people are out o...

In the 30th episode of CPR's podcast, ThoughtSpace Richa Bansal talks to Mukta Naik, Fellow, CPR and Gregory Randolph, Executive Vice President, JustJobs Network, discussing their research on the role of small cities in shaping youth employment in India and Indonesia. Sharing key findings, Naik and Randolph shed light on the similarities and differences between the two countries and how their rese...

In the 29th episode of CPR ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Senior Visiting Fellow, Philippe Cullet, about the book, 'Right to Sanitation: Critical Perspectives' co-edited by him, Sujith Koonan and Lovleen Bhullar, published by Oxford University Press. The book represents the first effort to conceptually engage with the right to sanitation and its multiple dimensions in India, as well as its br...

In the 28th Episode of ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Senior Fellow, D Shyam Babu, discussing the Lok Sabha bill that aims to provide 10 percent reservation in government jobs and education to the economically backward section in the general category. Through the amendment of Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution, the bill seeks to allow states to make ‘special provision for the advancement...

In the 27th episode of CPR ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Fellow, Rahul Verma, about his new book, ‘Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India’, co-authored with Pradeep K Chhibber. The book challenges the contemporary and common view that party politics in India is bereft of ideology and develops a new approach to defining the contours of what constitutes an ideology in multi...

In the twenty sixth episode of CPR ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Senior Fellow and former Foreign Secretary Ambassador Shyam Saran, about the recent turmoil in Sri Lanka's politics. Saran sheds light on how India should best approach this crisis and what the future course of action should be, given this has ramifications across South Asia.