Grand Tamasha

Most conventional accounts of the origins of liberalism in India typically begin and end with the British. Indian thinkers are often depicted as encountering liberal ideas through colonial institutions, adapting them to local conditions, and eventually turning them against the British Raj.  But a new book by  Rahul Sagar ,  The Birth of Indian Liberalism: Mama Parmanand’s Letters to an Indian Raja...

The making of India’s Constitution is usually told as the story of the few hundred prominent lawyers, politicians, and intellectuals who comprised the Constituent Assembly—the body tasked with drafting this historic document between 1946 and 1949. But a new book by the scholars  Rohit De  and  Ornit Shani ,  Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History , argues this familiar account c...

For decades, the H-1B visa program has been the centerpiece of America’s high-skilled immigration system.  To its defenders, it is a vital pipeline that brings talented workers from around the world to power the U.S. economy. But, to its critics, it is a system rife with abuse—one that can undermine American workers while also trapping foreign workers in exploitative arrangements. A new book,  Wil...

In democracies, we typically assume that public opinion on issues like jobs, the economy, and inflation matter for shaping policy and politics. But opinions on foreign policy are often treated as the preserve of elites, especially in a country like India. Yet, it turns out that we know surprisingly little about what ordinary Indians think about foreign policy, how stable those views are, and wheth...

India’s relations with Europe are often viewed through the lens of Brussels, Paris, Berlin, or London. But in recent years, India has also been deepening its ties with another important set of partners: the Nordic countries. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Oslo for the third India-Nordic Summit, bringing together India and the five Nordic countries—Norway, Sweden, Finland, Icela...

After the latest round of state elections, India’s political landscape looks more lopsided than at any time in the post-2014 era. The BJP claimed big wins in West Bengal and Assam—continuing its march across eastern India and solidifying its status as a hegemonic party. But politics at home is only part of the story.  Overseas, India is facing a turbulent moment—from the Iran war and Pakistan’s di...

India’s growth numbers shape how we understand everything from jobs to investment to global standing. But what if those numbers don’t tell the full story?  New research suggests India may have both underestimated and overestimated growth at different moments over the past two decades. That insight opens the door to a broader conversation about India’s macroeconomic choices, from exchange rate poli...

For more than a decade, India has steadily deepened its ties with the Gulf while trying to balance competing interests across the region. But today, that strategy is under strain—thanks to the Iran conflict, shifting regional alignments, a reemerging Pakistan.  How is India being impacted by the Iran crisis? And what do these geopolitical shifts mean for India’s West Asia policy?  To discuss these...

** NOTE TO LISTENERS: This week, we are releasing a special “flash episode” of Grand Tamasha to recap India’s recently concluded 2026 state assembly elections. As usual, we will still be publishing a new Grand Tamasha episode next Tuesday, May 12 at 9 pm ET, Wednesday 6:30 am IST.  It’s safe to say that India’s 2026 state assembly elections have scrambled many of the assumptions that have long sha...

India hasn’t updated how political power is distributed across its states in five decades—and the consequences are mounting. At the heart of delimitation lies a fundamental tension: should representation follow population, or preserve a delicate federal balance? Successive governments chose to defer the question, freezing India’s electoral map even as demographic divides deepened. The Modi governm...

For more than three decades, India’s growth story has rested on the promise of a large and youthful workforce—but whether that promise is being realized remains an open question. A new report published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University— State of Working India 2026 —takes a comprehensive look at how young Indians move from education into the labor market—and asks wh...

Over the past several decades, the story of Silicon Valley has been deeply intertwined with the story of Indian immigrants—engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors who helped shape the technology revolution while building new bridges between the United States and India.  Few individuals embody that journey as vividly Kanwal Rekhi . Rekhi was the first Indian-American founder & CEO to take a venture...

For decades, India’s growth story has rested on the spectacular rise of its middle class. But a new book argues that this very group—roughly 40 million income-tax–paying households—is now under acute strain.  Facing a convergence of job disruption, wage stagnation, and rising debt, the middle class may no longer be the engine of growth it once was. This is the argument made in a new book titled, B...

On this week’s show, Milan sits down with the novelist Karan Mahajan, author of a much-anticipated new novel, The Complex. Karan and Milan discussed the book at our first ever live Grand Tamasha event at Carnegie headquarters in Washington, DC on March 16. Karan is an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University and the author of the books Family Planning and The Association of Small B...

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has once again altered the contours of international politics. For India, this evolving context raises several important questions about the viability of its foreign policy approach. This week on the podcast, Milan sits down with three of the contributors to a new compilation published by the Carnegie Endowment—Shoumitro Chatterjee, Sameer Lalwani, and Tanv...

Over the past two decades, Washington and New Delhi have drawn steadily closer—driven by shared concerns about China, expanding economic ties, and a growing Indian diaspora in the United States. To help us unpack all of this, this week Milan spoke with Congressman Ami Bera in his office on Capitol Hill.

For decades, Bangladesh has long oscillated between competitive democracy and dominant-party rule. In 2024, mass protests brought an abrupt end to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long tenure in power, opening the door to Bangladesh’s most consequential election in more than a decade—one that returned the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to power and reshaped the country’s political landscape. With Hasi...

Just weeks ago, India hosted the 2026 AI Impact Summit, the latest chapter in a global process that began in 2023 in the UK. For India, the stakes could not be higher: it’s a country with immense technical talent and a data-rich digital ecosystem, but also a services-led growth model that AI could either boost or seriously disrupt.  For the Modi government, the summit was part diplomatic showcase,...

We tend to think of populist leaders around the world as disruptive—skeptical of international institutions, impatient for change, and prone to upending foreign policy norms. But a new book by scholars Sandra Destradi  and Johannes Plagemann  argues that—while populists can have dramatic impacts on foreign policy—the extent of change depends on two key factors: the personalization of foreign polic...

Over the past year, Europe–India relations have entered a markedly upbeat phase. What was once a diffuse partnership—long on rhetoric, short on strategy—now looks far more purposeful.  From the announcement on a long-delayed EU-India Free Trade Agreement to expanding cooperation on security, technology, and migration, Europe and India appear to be—finally—converging around a shared strategic logic...

After years of trade skepticism, India appears to be back in the deal-making business—signing new agreements, reviving stalled talks, and announcing ambitious frameworks with key bilateral partners.  A few weeks ago, the European Union and India announced a mega-trade deal that was more than two decades in the works. And just days after this news broke, the White House announced that the United St...

Over the past few years, South Asia has witnessed a striking wave of mass protests toppling governments and upending long-standing political arrangements in countries ranging from Bangladesh to Nepal and Sri Lanka. These upheavals are often explained in terms of domestic factors—such as corruption, economic mismanagement, and democratic backsliding.  But in a recent Foreign Affairs  essay titled “...

U.S.-India relations were once described as one of Washington’s MOST important strategic bets in the twenty-first century. But over the past year, that partnership has come under serious strain—buffeted by trade disputes, sharp rhetoric, and deep disagreements over Pakistan and Kashmir.  In the current print edition of Foreign Affairs, Lisa Curtis and Richard Fontaine argue that this rupture is no...

2026 is shaping up to be a hectic political year in India. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appointed the relatively unknown Nitin Nabin to take over as party president. The BJP and its opposition challengers are gearing up for high-stakes assembly elections in five states later this spring. And the Election Commission of India (ECI) is in the midst of a...

Grand Tamasha is Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced with the Hindustan Times , a leading Indian media house .  For six years (and counting), host Milan Vaishnav  has interviewed authors, journalists, policymakers, and practitioners working on contemporary India to give listeners across the globe a glimpse into life in the world’s most populous country. Each Decembe...