Grand Tamasha

If there is one thing political scientists can agree on, it is that we live in an era of populism. With the recent election of Donald Trump, populism has returned to the United States, raising questions about what changes we might see in upcoming elections in 2025. South Asia has been no stranger to populism and a new book, Righteous Demagogues: Populist Politics in South Asia and Beyond , provide...

Where and when ethnic violence breaks out is a question of longstanding concern to the India policy community. Previous work in political science has pointed to a diverse array of factors—ranging from civil society bonds to elite networks and coalition politics as potential explanations. A new book by the scholar Aditi Malik highlights political parties, specifically party instability, as the prin...

The discourse in India today on the issue of the Muslim community seems to swing between two contrary positions. According to the Hindu nationalist narrative, Muslims are a monolithic religious category whose presence justifies the need for greater Hindu solidarity. On the other hand, there is the narrative offered by liberals, who claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority to defend Indian...

Over the past twelve months, tales of spies and spycraft have complicated India’s relationships with key Western partners. In recent months, both Canada and the United States have alleged that India’s foreign intelligence agency was involved in a complex plot to identify and target Khalistani separatists who were citizens of those countries. In India, these allegations have, in turn, revealed deep...

India’s Near East: A New History is an important new book by the scholar Avinash Paliwal . The book traces the history of how New Delhi has grappled with the twin challenges of forging productive ties with its eastern neighbors—namely, Bangladesh and Myanmar—while building a robust administrative state in India’s Northeastern states. It is the story of a state’s struggle to overcome war, displacem...

The never-ending U.S. election has finally ended and Republican nominee Donald Trump has clinched a decisive victory. Trump is on track to win 312 electoral college votes and, for the first time, a majority of the popular vote. Kamala Harris, a surprise entrant in the race, lost a closely contested election, marking the second time in three elections that a female Democratic presidential nominee f...

As American voters go to the polls, all indications point to a statistical dead-heat between vice president and Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris and former Republican president Donald Trump. The outcome will likely turn on tens of thousands of voters in a handful of key swing states. According to leading pollsters and polling aggregators, the race in these states is too close to call. In thi...

The United States is fast approaching the end of a lengthy presidential campaign in which the issue of immigration has taken center stage. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to protect America’s borders, with Trump’s misleading claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets emerging as one of the defining...

One of the most remarkable developments in Indian politics in recent years is the surge in female voter turnout. For the first several decades after Independence, women’s participation on Election Day lagged men’s by between 8 to 12 percentage points. In recent years, however, that gender gap has completely disappeared. In most state elections today, women turn out to vote with greater frequency t...

Indian federalism is encountering some of its biggest challenges since the early years of the republic. Relations between the union government in Delhi and the states are rocky, to put it mildly. India’s better-off states are growing increasingly agitated about a system of fiscal federalism in which richer states end up subsidizing poorer, more backward ones. The new Goods and Services Tax (GST) h...

There is hardly a day that goes by when the subject of India’s demographics is not front and center in the news. Whether it is India surpassing China as the world’s most populous country, questions about how the Indian economy can provide enough jobs for a growing workforce, or how population should be used to allocate everything from legislative seats to fiscal transfers, demographics are at the...

On this week’s show, we’re doing something a little different. This week, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar paid a visit to our Carnegie Endowment office in Washington to take part in a fireside chat with Carnegie’s President Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar . Dr. Jaishankar’s visit to Washington comes on the heels of last week’s Quad Summit and a spate of high-level meetings coinci...

The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy is a new book by the journalist Rahul Bhatia . Many Grand Tamasha listeners will recognize Rahul’s byline in revered publications like the New Yorker, the Guardian, and Caravan. He’s written celebrated profiles of everyone from Arnab Goswami to cricket chief N. Srinivasan. And his reporting has taken on subjects from Baba Ramdev’s business empire t...

It has been more than three months since the conclusion of India’s massive 2024 general elections. And it is no exaggeration to say that the results of the election caught many, if not most, election observers by surprise. To many, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appeared invincible in national elections especially given the widespread popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And yet, t...

After a short summer break, Grand Tamasha is back with its twelfth season! As we head into the U.S. presidential elections and bid farewell to the Biden administration, it seems like an opportune time to discuss the last four years of U.S.-India ties under President Biden and to take stock of where we are at this particular moment in history. To do so, Milan is joined by one of the show’s most pop...

Gurcharan Das is one of India's best-known authors and thinkers. He had a celebrated career in business, most notably as the CEO of Procter and Gamble in India, before devoting his full attention to writing. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including India Unbound , The Difficulty of Being Good , and India Grows at Night . Most recently, Das has written a new book called The Dilemm...

This week on Grand Tamasha, Milan is joined by Grand Tamasha’s India news roundup regulars: Sadanand Dhume of the Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution. On the show this week, the trio discusses the 2024 Indian general election and its aftermath.  They debate the politics, as well as the economic and foreign policy implications of th...

On Sunday night, India’s new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was sworn into office, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at its helm once more. We have a new group of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) allies, a new group of ministers, and a new look in terms of how the Modi government will function in its third term. However, the economic challenges the new government faces are quite old. Ma...

We’ve finally come to the end of the 46-day Indian general election. And we have a surprising result which many experts did not see coming. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to secure a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha in what is being interpreted as a major setback. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) did, however, win a majority and is set t...

Gujarat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India is a new book by the scholar Christophe Jaffrelot but one that has an old backstory. It is the definitive account of Narendra Modi’s tenure as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. And it helps place into context the changes we’ve seen in national politics, economic policy, and society over the past ten years under Prime Minister Modi. It is a book...

Over the last five years, Milan has interviewed authors of big books, that have brought innovative new ideas to the India policy debate.  And he’s also interviewed authors of lengthy books. On the show this week, he sits down with an author who’s written a big book in every sense of the term. It is no stretch to say that Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governanc...

Breaking the Mould: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity is a big new book by the economists Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba . The book is both a critique of India’s development model as well as a manifesto for reform. Most notably, it challenges the conventional wisdom that India’s primary goal should be to transform the country into a blue-collar manufacturing powerhouse. Rajan and Lamba argue t...

The third phase of India’s 44-day long polls took place this week with voting held in 94 constituencies across 12 states. Thus far, the elections have been marked by lower-than-expected turnout, intensifying communal rhetoric, and a sharp debate about inequality and redistribution. Against this backdrop, the New York Times Magazine recently published an essay by the journalist Samanth Subramanian...

The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi entered this election as the clear favorite with every single pre-election survey pointing a decisive victory. However, the party is leaving no stone unturned in its effort to notch a third consecutive parliamentary majority. To discuss the BJP’s campaign, Milan is joined on the show this week by Smriti Kak Ramachandran , a...

As India heads to the polls, a new chapter is being written in a very old debate about poverty and inequality in India. This debate has been stirred up by the release of new data from a government-sponsored consumption survey, which some have argued shows a massive decline in poverty in India. Others believe that this data are not so unequivocal and point to a widening gap between top income-earne...