Grand Tamasha

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 unprecedent...

Pankaj Mishra is the acclaimed author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction. He is a frequent contributor to some of the world’s top publications the New York Times , New York Review of Books , Guardian , the New Yorker, and Bloomberg .     His new book, Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire , focuses on the decay of Western liberalism but somehow manages to cover an array of topics fr...

In the summer of 2008, the journalist Ananth Krishnan moved to Beijing to pick up some Mandarin. Little did he know that this fateful decision would kick off a decade-long immersion in Chinese politics, economics, foreign policy, and culture.    This week on the podcast, Ananth talks with Milan about his new book, “ India’s China Challenge: A Journey Through China’s Rise and What It Means for Indi...

Although Indians in America account for less than one percent of registered voters, this election season they have been actively wooed by both Democrats and Republicans in an unprecedented manner.   Thanks to the increasing political influence of Indian Americans, the camaraderie between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, and the addition of Kamala Harris to the Democratic ticket, there is a sense th...

The political landscape of South Asia has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Insurgencies that were raging across the subcontinent in the 1990s and early 2000s have largely been contained and the heavy-hand of the state has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence. Why has this happened and what exactly does it mean for South Asia’s future? To shed light on the surprising conflict dynamics in So...

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.   A stalwart presence night after night on NDTV--one of Ind...

For the first time in decades, shots have been fired between China and India along the Line of Actual Control. As India grapples with the twin domestic crises of COVID and the economy, it simultaneously must manage a complex diplomatic and defense engagement with the Chinese.   This week on this show, Milan sits down with the Carnegie Endowment’s Ashley J. Tellis , one of the world’s foremost expe...

This week on Grand Tamasha, Milan is joined by podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution to discuss the triple-whammy of crises facing India. The three discuss the latest on India’s contested border with China, the raging COVID pandemic--which shows very little sign of slowing down, and end with a d...

Scaachi Koul is an Indo-Canadian culture writer at Buzzfeed and the author of the 2017 book of essays, “ One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter .”   For those of you who spend any time on social media, you will know Scaachi is a force of nature--dishing out sharp-witted takes on cultural and political issues from Kamala Harris to the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking. But she’s also...

If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are you are a fan of the podcast, “ The Seen and the Unseen .” For 186 episodes and counting, the journalist Amit Varma has been putting together some of the most thoughtful, insightful and eclectic conversations with the best and brightest in India.    This week, Amit joins Milan on the show to reflect on his career as a journalist, author, entrepreneu...

On August 15, 2020, India celebrated its 73rd birthday. To reflect on the state of Indian democracy and to kick off the podcast’s fourth season, Pratap Bhanu Mehta joins Milan for a wide-ranging conversation on India’s past, present, and future. Pratap is a professor of political science at Ashoka University and contributing editor and columnist at the Indian Express . He is a noted author, schola...

The police in India, as in America, face a reckoning. From the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests to the Delhi riots and the COVID pandemic, recent events have raised troubling questions about the quality of Indian policing. In 2019, the non-profit Common Cause and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies issued a report on the “ Status of Policing in India .” The report is one of the...

Here’s a hard truth about policy conversations on India: we rarely hear about India’s northeast. In fact, in doing more than 50 episodes of this podcast, not even one has been dedicated to the northeastern region of the country.   The Northeast is a region of immense geostrategic importance. It is home to nearly 50 million Indian citizens. It is also home to South Asia's longest running armed conf...

Two weeks ago, the Modi government announced a series of economic measures intended to get the Indian economy back on track after the country’s prolonged lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Over five days, the Finance Minister addressed a series of daily press conferences in which she outlined the government’s plan of action to assist the country’s poorest citizens, reform the country’s r...

This week, Milan sits down with podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution for a special live edition of the Grand Tamasha news round-up. The three discuss India's emerging response to the coronavirus, its economic fallout, and the ramifications for India's foreign policy. The trio also answered view...

YOU'RE INVITED: Join Milan , Tanvi , and Sadanand for a special LIVE episode of Grand Tamasha on Tuesday, May 19, at 11am EST / 8:30pm IST . Tune in as they break down the week's news - and join the live chat to ask questions! Add it to your calendar, and join the live show here .   

This week on the show, Milan is joined by New York Times journalist Sopan Deb --author of the brand-new memoir, Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me .   Whether it’s Hasan Minhaj’s comedy --OR the spectacle of the “ Howdy, Modi ” rally in Houston--OR Aarti Shahani’s heartbreaking memoir --listeners of this show know that getting inside the Indian immigrant experience is...

YOU'RE INVITED: Join Milan , Tanvi , and Sadanand for a special LIVE episode of Grand Tamasha on Tuesday, May 19, at 11am EST / 8:30pm IST . Tune in as they break down the week's news - and join the live chat to ask questions! Add it to your calendar, and join the live show here .  After a six-week nationwide lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, on May 3rd the Indian government commenced...

In a much cited 2009 essay, economist Lant Pritchett argued that India is not a failed or a failing state, but a flailing one. In Pritchett’s words, India is “a nation-state in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national level remain sound and functional but this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs.” A new book the author and journalist Sh...

This week, Milan sits down with podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution for a special “Happy Hour” edition of the “Grand Tamasha” news round-up. The three discuss how India is faring in its pitched battle against the Coronavirus, the reasons behind festering anti-China sentiment among many Indians...

India is in the middle of an unprecedented 21-day countrywide lockdown as it tries to contain the growing threat of Coronavirus. This virus has wrought so much fresh destruction but it also has the potential to exacerbate pre-existing inequalities in Indian society. This week on the show, Milan speaks with Amitabh Behar , the Chief Executive Officer of Oxfam India . For seven decades, Oxfam India...

When it comes to the matter of relations between India and Pakistan, you’ve heard all of the familiar tropes. Two nuclear-armed rivals with hundreds of thousands of troops amassed along a contested border. A Hindu-majority India pre-destined to be at odds with a Muslim-majority Pakistan. A vibrant democracy in the east, a military-dominated polity in the west. A new book by the historian Pallavi R...

If you listen to National Public Radio , chances are you’ve heard the journalist Aarti Shahani report on some of the biggest technology stories in the world. Microsoft. Google. Apple. Facebook. Aarti has covered them all. But there’s one story you may not have heard of--and that is Aarti’s own . In a new memoir, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares , Aarti documents her family’s harro...

In the wake of her mother's untimely death, a young woman from Bangalore--born into a life of privilege--drops everything and travels to the opposite end of India--to the state of Jammu and Kashmir--to search for a long-lost figure from her childhood--an enigmatic Kashmiri man named Bashir Ahmed. What follows is a tale of romance, intrigue, conflict, politics, self-discovery, and tragedy. Readers...

Since the end of the Cold War, it has become commonplace to view America’s relationship with India through the prism of China. But a new book by the Brookings Institution scholar Tanvi Madan argues that China’s centrality to U.S.-India relations is hardly a product of the past few decades. Tanvi’s new book, Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations during the Cold War , offers a hist...