Grand Tamasha

A troubling surge in hate crimes and discrimination targeting Asian Americans has hit the headlines in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The violence has cast a newfound spotlight on the bigotry many Asian immigrant populations experience in the United States. While Indian Americans have not borne the brunt of the discrimination of the COVID era, the community is no stranger to prejudice. A new s...

Sadanand Dhume, “Modi Declared Victory, Then Covid Struck Back With a Vengeance,” Wall Street Journal Sadanand Dhume, “India’s Second Covid Wave Recedes. Will a Third One Sweep In?” Wall Street Journal  Dhruva Jaishankar and Tanvi Madan, “How the Quad Can Match the Hype,” Foreign Affairs  

Samanth Subramanian, “In the push for new vaccines, taxpayers keep paying and paying,” Quartz. Samanth Subramanian, “The US’ support for vaccine patent waivers still leaves plenty to be resolved,” Quartz. Samanth Subramanian, “Why is India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, running short of vaccines?” Quartz. Samanth Subramanian, “India is feeling all the pain—and none of the gain—of an undecl...

More than fifteen years ago, India’s parliament passed a sweeping piece of legislation known as the Right to Information Act—a law that transforms the way ordinary citizens access the inner workings of government, offering them an unprecedented glimpse into how policy is made, how funds are allocated, and how interests are served. A new book by the political scientist Himanshu Jha, Capturing Insti...

On Sunday, the highly anticipated results from five state assembly elections across India were announced. These results come at a time of great uncertainty in India as the country is in the throes of a devastating second wave of the coronavirus, which is racking up nearly 400,000 new cases every day.  To help make sense of these elections and how they fit into the broader Indian political landscap...

This month, voters are going to the polls in five Indian states to select the members of their respective state assemblies. These polls are being seen as a test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity and the ability of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to grow or further consolidate its popularity in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Election results will be announced on...

This week on Grand Tamasha, Christophe Jaffrelot joined Milan to discuss Emergency Rule in 1970s India and the parallels between the political structures then and now. Most people who work on India regularly refer to India as the world’s largest democracy and the most enduring democracy in the developing world. However, they often have to footnote such statements with the caveat that India experie...

Few regions of the world have gotten more attention in the first few months of the Biden administration than Asia. And, within Asia, top leaders from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to President Joe Biden himself have singled out the importance of the Indo-Pacific region in particular. To discuss why this region has gotten such significant air-time and to hel...

Jairam Ramesh is Milan’s guest on the show this week. The two discuss Ramesh’s approach to biography writing, Menon’s inscrutable personality, his status as Nehru’s “soulmate,” and his lasting legacy for Indian foreign policy. Plus, the two discuss Menon’s contemporary relevance as India stares down the possibility of another conflict with China over their contested border. Menon is, in many ways,...

The contested borders between India, China, and Pakistan render the Himalayas one of the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints in the year 2021. A new book by the journalist Myra MacDonald, White as the Shroud: India, Pakistan and War on the Frontiers of Kashmir, takes readers inside the long-simmering conflict over the Siachen glacier—one of the most obscure and forbidding battlegrounds...

To discuss the farm laws—the motivations behind them, their likely consequences, and the political fallout—Milan sits down with two experts on Indian agriculture, Shoumitro Chatterjee of Penn State University and Mekhala Krishnamurthy of Ashoka University and the Centre for Policy Research. The three discuss the state of Indian agriculture, the motivations behind the new laws, the anxieties that h...

One night in the summer of 2014, two teenage girls living in a remote village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh went missing. Hours later, they were found dead and hanging from a tree in a mango orchard. A media frenzy ensued that propelled the case to the front pages of national newspapers and prime time cable news. It was quickly decided that this was another clear-cut case of rape and...

As a new administration takes office in Washington, followers of the U.S.-India relationship are eagerly anticipating what shape ties between these two nations will take under a new president. A new book by the journalist Meenakshi Ahamed, A Matter of Trust: India–US Relations from Truman to Trump, offers a sweeping portrait of this relationship over seven decades.  This week on the show, Milan si...

Indian Americans are now the second-largest immigrant group in the United States. Their growing political influence and their courtship by the Indian government raises important—as yet unanswered—questions. How do Indians in America regard India, and how do they remain connected to developments there? What are their attitudes toward Indian politics and changes underway in their ancestral homeland?...

On Monday, the Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented one of the most highly anticipated Indian budgets in recent memory. Facing a global health pandemic, a severe economic slowdown, and continued anxieties over inflation, some commentators argued that this budget was not simply the most important of the Modi government’s tenure, it was one of the most important in three decades.   T...

Ravinder, a professor of Modern South Asia Studies at the University of Copenhagen, joins Milan on the show this week to talk about her new book. The two discuss how brand-building is displacing nation-building in the 21st century and who the makers of India’s “new brand” actually are. Plus, Milan and Ravinder discuss the untold backstory of the “India Shining” campaign and why Prime Minister Modi...

This week on the show, Chinmay speaks with Milan about India’s “Age of Pandemics” and why this dark chapter in Indian history has been glossed over. Chinmay and Milan also discuss the parallels between pandemics past and present, how pandemics have shaped politics, and why the flight of internal migrants is one of the most stylized facts of pandemics in history. 

On the podcast this week, Milan sits down with Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President of Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on the Asia region—from China to Kazakhstan to India and Sri Lanka.  Evan talks to Milan about the Trump administration’s Asia legacy, India’s inward turn, and the strategic relevance of the Quad. Evan also has some useful, pithy advice for how t...

Joining Milan to talk all things elections are Grand Tamasha news-round up regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution.  The trio discuss the key lessons of the U.S. 2020 election, the implications for India, and what the election tells us about the configuration of power in the United States come January 202...

This week, Milan sits down with Viral Acharya, former Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 2017-2019, and author of the recent book, Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India. Milan and Viral discuss the health of India’s economy, the “silent crisis” afflicting India’s financial sector, the future of central bank independence in India, and the role that Indian economists...

Since the onset of the novel Coronavirus, award-winning data journalist Rukmini has investigated the virus’ spread in India like very few people have.  Twice a week since March, she’s been recording her thoughts on the pandemic in a short “mini-podcast” called The Moving Curve.  In 100 bite-sized episodes, Rukmini has helped educate Indians--and their political leaders--about this unprecedented pu...

In this week's episode, Pankaj Mishra and Milan Vaishnav discuss the state of Indian democracy, the (absent) standard-bearers of Indian liberalism, and how the Cold War-era conception of democracy helped India geopolitically. They also discuss what the British Raj can tell us about Brexit and the future of big government, for good and for ill. 

Today, Milan speaks with Sumitra Badrinathan (University of Pennsylvania) and Devesh Kapur (Johns Hopkins-SAIS) about the findings of a brand new survey--the Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS)-- that sheds light on the political attitudes of Indian Americans (full disclosure: Milan is a co-author of the new study). Milan, Devesh and Sumitra discuss why Indian Americans, contrary to media repo...

This week Milan is joined by political scientist Paul Staniland, author of a recent Carnegie essay titled, “Political Violence in South Asia: The Triumph of the State?” Paul is an associate professor at the University of Chicago and nonresident scholar with the South Asia Program at Carnegie. Milan and Paul discuss intra-state conflict trends in the region, the massive rise in India’s internal sec...

If you’ve watched prime time television in India at any point in the last two decades, there is zero chance that you are not acquainted with Milan’s guest on the show this week. Since 1999, the journalist Nidhi Razdan has been reporting on the biggest news coming out of India--from politics to the economy and, especially, foreign affairs.