Growth Is Good

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia sits down with Dr Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, CEO of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, to unpack the relationship between science, technology, innovation and economic growth. They discuss why technology by itself does not create growth, how deep science becomes deep tech, and why research only matters for the economy when it turns into prod...

What does it actually take for India to become a high-income economy? In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul sits down with Prachi Mishra — one of India's most respected economists, with stints at the IMF, Goldman Sachs, and the RBI. She now leads the Isaac Center for Public Policy at Ashoka University. One of the most wide-ranging conversations on India's economic future we've had o...

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul sits down with Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran — India's Chief Economic Advisor — for a candid, wide-ranging conversation on what it will really take for India to grow. From the "missing middle" in India's manufacturing to why 30-year-old policy prescriptions are still relevant today, Dr. Nageswaran brings together decades of thinking — as a sch...

Ajay Shah is back! And this time, he's going granular. In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia and Ajay Shah break down why firms — not policies, not savings rates, not grand macroeconomic plans — are the true unit of economic growth. GDP is just the sum of value added by every firm in the country. Ajay lays out 4 pillars that determine whether a society produces great firms or squa...

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia speaks with Dr. Rakesh Mohan — former Deputy Governor of the RBI, former Executive Director at the IMF, and one of the key policy minds around India’s 1991 reforms. This is a grounded, insider account of how reforms actually happen — and why they are harder than we think. Watch till the end for Dr. Mohan’s reflections on how policy thinking in Ind...

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia is joined by Anand Prasad, co-founder of Trilegal, for a wide-ranging conversation on India’s legal system, economic growth, and the incentives that quietly shape how business actually works. Anand traces his journey from becoming a lawyer just after liberalisation to building one of India’s most influential corporate law firms. From there, the co...

What did it really mean to start a business under the Licence Raj? Why is socialism back as a “feel-good” word? And why do Amit Varma and Mohit Satyanand worry that we’re drifting away from the spirit of 1991, even as India’s young entrepreneurs give them hope? In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia sits down with writer–podcaster Amit Varma and investor–entrepreneur Mohit Satyanand to...

What really pulled 302 million Indians out of poverty? In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia sits down with Dr Shamika Ravi, Member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM), to unpack what the latest data actually says about poverty, growth, inequality and jobs in India. They talk about her journey from development economist to growth thinker, why a famous ultra-poor...

Shahi Exports, India’s largest apparel exporter, started in 1974 with one sewing machine. Today, it employs over 100,000 workers across 50+ factories, with women making up nearly 70% of its workforce. In this episode of Growth is Good, we explore Shahi’s remarkable rise, its impact on women’s empowerment, and what it teaches us about India’s manufacturing potential. From family-led beginnings to b...

Entrepreneur and thinker Jerry Rao joins Growth is Good to reflect on India’s reform story — from the unlikely rise of the software and BPO industries to why simplifying taxes and fixing administration are key to sustaining growth. Chapters: 0:00 – 1:51 | Promo 1:52 – 7:55 | Teachers’ unions, election roles, & why admin reform must precede attitude change 7:56 – 9:38 | “We lost 20 years”: Lice...

In this episode of Growth is Good , Rahul speaks with Montek Singh Ahluwalia , former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and a central figure in India’s reform journey. They discuss how reforms were debated and designed inside government, why some changes stuck while others stalled, and what it takes to build political coalitions around growth. Montek reflects on lessons from the 1991 refo...

In this episode of Growth is Good, Arvind Panagariya returns to unpack his latest book, The Nehru Development Model—a sweeping intellectual and historical account of how India embraced socialism post-independence and why it stayed stuck there for decades. We dive deep into how Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of industrialization, planning, and self-sufficiency created a sprawling license-permit Raj, why...

What drives India’s biggest reforms? How did campaigns like Incredible India and Startup India come to life? And what really goes on inside the engine room of government? When we talk about economic reform in India, we often think of big slogans or bureaucratic hurdles. But few people have actually been inside the engine room of reform quite like Amitabh Kant. From his early days as a district col...

When we talk about infrastructure in India, it’s usually in the context of potholes, delayed metro lines, or power outages. But our guest this week, Vinayak Chatterjee, brings a far deeper and more nuanced lens to the discussion. Vinayak walks us through the sector’s remarkable journey—from the crumbling systems of the 1990s to a present where power shortages are rare, road connectivity has transf...

Our popular discourse is obsessed with what should or should not be taught in schools. This mostly relates to history-medieval, and even ancient Indian history. Our guest for this episode has her own lament in this regard, though the history she's talking about is a lot more modern, hence relevant to our present challenges and opportunities. Shruti Rajagopalan, Senior Research Fellow at the Me...

We’ve talked a lot in this podcast about what plagues India’s businesses. ‘Regulatory cholesterol’ is a term that comes up repeatedly.  Our guest for this episode is a corporate lawyer who has helped his clients navigate the minefield that is entrepreneurship . Akshay Jaitly, Founding Partner at Trilegal, started out thinking about growth from the Nehruvian lens of redistribution, which was  the f...

Every episode of Growth Is Good has delved into why we must reform India’s economic policies to unlock our manufacturing potential. Labour remains a critical aspect where reforms are needed, often attempted, but found difficult to implement. The politicised nature of the question has given birth to narratives that contrast worker wellbeing with industrial growth, as if both cannot coexist. India’s...

Our guest for this episode is an employer who went beyond merely railing about the excessive compliances that Indian businesses must put up with . Manish Sabharwal, Vice-Chairman at TeamLease RegTech, remembers the number by heart – 26,134 – the number of different reasons an Indian employer can be put in jail. So do so many people from the industry, academia, and the government.  ‘Jailed for Doin...

Our guest for this episode, Tarun Bajaj, first stepped onto the field as an IAS Officer in 1988, just as India was about to shed its socialist baggage . While the country navigated the shift from scarcity to relative abundance, he had a ringside view (and several performing roles) of how the bureaucracy and political executive went from resisting to accepting the idea of the government giving up c...

Our guest for this episode of FED Dialogues is one of the strongest proponents of countries striving for GDP growth as a means of improving human lives at scale. American economist Lant Pritchett's arguments for growing the size of the pie are incisive and empirically driven, based on his work at the World Bank. He's done a lot of work in keeping alive the attention on the importance of growth by...

Ajay Shah, economist extraordinaire and author of the finest primer on public policy in India - 'In Service of the Republic' - believes everything is everything! It's more than just the 'catchy' name of his insightful podcast with Amit Varma. Ajay explained when he joined us for our own humble endeavour - FED Dialogues - that while the phrase is borrowed from Bruce Springsteen, it speaks to a deep...

Our guest for this episode of FED Dialogues, a private equity investor turned philanthropist, has a neat analogy for how he looks at philanthropy. He's done the ‘debt’ part of his philanthropy - set up a world-class university where he can see the impact he's creating. He's now looking at more ‘equity’ opportunities in  philanthropy. These are causes where the likelihood of success is lower, and a...

Our guest for this episode has just authored one of the most highly acclaimed books on India - “Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap For Effective Governance”. In this fascinating one hour conversation, Karthik gives us an introduction to  the key messages of his book - the idea that the government can do more by improving the quality of its spending, or the 'pipes of public servi...

Growing up in a business household, Naushad Forbes read and heard about the gulf in living standards that separated countries in the league of South Korea, from India. That gulf, which was non-existent at one point in time - India's per capita GDP was the same as South Korea's in 1960 and slightly higher than China's in 1990 - has since widened substantially, to the extent that today, China's per...

From classrooms to political rallies to multilateral summits, entrepreneurship is the buzzword being peppered liberally everywhere, and for good reason. It’s the fulcrum of innovation, employment and wealth creation. And nothing breeds success like success! It takes a few to succeed, for a thousand more to strive for success. So, the flywheel keeps spinning. But are we correctly defining entrepren...