Grand Tamasha

In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a list of the 15 most polluted cities in the world. 14 of the 15 were in India. This is a troubling statistic that has been repeated ad nauseam in the media, by environmental advocates, and by concerned citizens of the country. But what are the causes of this environmental crisis, what are the social costs, and what—if anything—can be done abo...

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 the first “Grand Tamasha” news round-up of 2020. The three discuss President Trump’s whirlwind, 36-hour visit to India , the ghastly Delhi riots that coincided with his trip, and the prospect of India becoming a political...

If the poor represent a majority of voters in India, why doesn’t this electoral power translate into better quality government services? Why are some vulnerable communities able to secure development from the state while others fail? These are some of the big questions that political scientists Adam Auerbach and Gabi Kruks-Wisner shed light on in this week’s episode of “Grand Tamasha.” Adam is ass...

India is home to over 200 million Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables,” who have historically occupied the bottom rung of the Hindu caste hierarchy . In recent decades, however, Dalits have experienced unprecedented political and social mobilization. But, across India’s states, the collective action undertaken by this historically marginalized community has been highly uneven--this is the argu...

“ The credibility of India’s official statistics has hit rock-bottom in recent years .” This is the conclusion reached by Milan’s guest on the show this week, Pramit Bhattacharya . Today, economists openly question the sanctity of India’s GDP growth figures. The government has chosen to scrap or suppress economic surveys it has conducted when they have thrown up inconvenient truths. And the apex s...

In 2015, the historian Ramachandra Guha wrote an essay in the Indian magazine Caravan that ruffled a lot of feathers. Guha remarked that while India had a right-wing party in power, the country lacked a serious right-wing intellectual ecosystem. A new book by the author and entrepreneur Jerry Rao argues that India in fact has a long, ancient tradition of right-wing thought. Rao’s book, The Indian...

On January 26, 2020—Republic Day—India celebrated the 70th anniversary of its landmark Constitution. This milestone comes at a time when India is engaged in an intense, contested, and sometimes violent,  debate over India’s constitutional values and what it means to be truly Indian. It is for this reason that a new book by the scholar  Madhav Khosla on the Indian Constitution could not have come a...

On January 10, the newly passed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) officially came into force. The act provides for an expedited pathway to citizenship for illegal migrants from a number of non-Muslim faiths hailing from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan and who seek refuge in India. The act has prompted intense protests across cities and towns in India. The act dovetails with another one of the...

On the season two finale of Grand Tamasha, Milan sits down with podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and the Brookings Institution’s Tanvi Madan to round up this month’s political news from India. First, Milan and his guests discuss the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the protests that have rocked India. Next, they discu...

One of the most reliable laments about Indian defense policy is that the Government of India spends far too little on defense. Experts say this is a problem for at least two reasons . First, India lags behind many of its strategic competitors when it comes to spending—which only deepens the country’s asymmetry in capabilities. Second, without greater investment, India won’t be able to live up to i...

90 percent of the world’s pharmaceutical market is comprised of generic drugs. Generics have been hailed as low-cost alternatives to their more expensive brand-name counterparts, thereby providing low-income patients around the world with affordable medicines. An explosive new book, Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom , by journalist Katherine Eban demolishes this myth and pr...

Over the years, one could fill a small library with books that have been written about how Indian democracy survived against all of the odds —inequality, poverty, a difficult neighborhood, and a sprawling geography. Somewhat surprisingly, however, very few books have been written about the role the military has played—or not played—as it were. Many of India’s neighbors have experienced military co...

This week on Grand Tamasha, Milan sits down with the writer Aatish Taseer , an award-winning author who writes extensively about India and South Asia in his growing body of fiction and non-fiction writing. His most recent book, “ The Twice Born: Life and Death on the Ganges ,” is part travelogue, part social commentary, and part autobiographical journey of self-discovery set in the city of Benares...

There is arguably no more consequential generation to the future of India than today’s millennials. The median age of India’s population is just 28 years old . This means that Indian millennials number around 400 million --roughly one-third of the entire Indian population. By the year 2021, two-thirds of India’s population will be within the working age of 20-35 years. It is no exaggeration to say...

Milan talks with Snigdha Poonam , national affairs reporter for the Hindustan Times , on the startling rise of truly outrageous scams across India. Through a series of eye-popping investigations , Snigdha and her colleagues have mastered the art of exposing extraordinary scams involving ordinary people in India. They have uncovered call center scams, insurance scams, exam scams, fake jobs scams, a...

Milan sits down with podcast regulars Tanvi Madan (Brookings Institution) and Sadanand Dhume (American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal) to round up this month’s news.  This month’s round up tackles three topics. Last week, voters elected new state governments in Haryana and Maharashtra in the first polls since May’s general election. Milan, Sadanand, and Tanvi discuss the results...

When Narendra Modi campaigned for India’s top job in 2014, he contrasted the incumbent Congress Party’s “politics of welfare” with the BJP’s preferred approach, which emphasized the “politics of growth.” Modi and the BJP famously dismissed the Congress government’s emphasis on entitlements , arguing that--if brought to power--it would prioritize empowerment . Five years later, the BJP has won its...

When India went to the polls in the Spring of 2019, there were few states that election observers were watching more closely than the state of West Bengal. Home to 100 million Indians and responsible for 42 seats in Parliament, West Bengal is always a state worth watching. Yet, this time was different. For decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a bit pla...

For nearly twenty years, relations between the United States and India have been on the upswing. Once a nuclear pariah and a country tagged as an important partner of the former Soviet Union, India has steadily grown closer to America since the start of the George W. Bush administration. This week, Milan talks with Ashley J. Tellis , co-author (with former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill...

This week on the podcast, Milan and executive producer Lauren Dueck take listeners deep in the heart of Texas and inside the gargantuan “ Howdy, Modi! ” rally held in Houston on September 22nd. Milan and Lauren speak with three Indians residing in Houston about their experiences taking in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump. Why did they show up? What did they exper...

EAM Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stopped at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the first day of his whirlwind trip through Washington, DC. We were lucky enough to record the conversation, which was hosted by Carnegie President William J. Burns, and Ashley J. Tellis. Today we're sharing the minister's remarks in full, along with a selection of the questions we thought Grand Tamasha listen...

On this week’s podcast, Milan sits down with Grand Tamasha regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution to round up the latest news on Indian politics and policy. The two begin by dissecting the massive, 50,000 person “ Howdy, Modi ” rally held over the weekend at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. They discuss the op...

Milan speaks with Prashant Jha , opinion editor at the Hindustan Times and author of the book, How the BJP Wins: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine . So many election analysts, journalists, and political scientists failed to predict the massive mandate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed in the 2019 general election. This has prompted a good deal of...

Milan speaks with Niha Masih of the Washington Post about the ongoing political drama surrounding the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. Nearly 33 million residents of Assam applied to have their names included on the register, which was intended to distinguish between who was a legitimate resident of the state of the Assam and who was an illegal migrant from Bangladesh. When the list f...

Last week on the podcast, Milan talked with journalist Rahul Pandita about the Indian government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, which grants the state of Jammu and Kashmir semi-autonomous status. According to Rahul , while many Kashmiris are up in arms over the government’s decision, many residents quietly support the move. This week, we continue our exploration of the eve...