Ideas of India

Today my guests are legal scholars  Chitrakshi Jain  and Prashant Reddy T , the authors of the recent book Tareekh pe Justice, Reforms for India's District Courts . We talked about the dysfunction in India's lower courts, opacity in the evaluation of district court judges, the problems with judicial data, and much more. Recorded July 1st, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. C...

Today my guest is M.R. Sharan , an assistant professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland College Park. He is the author of numerous papers and the book Last Among Equals: Power, Caste, & Politics in Bihar's Villages . His main research interests are development economics and political economy. We talked about his research on local government in...

Today my guest is   Rakesh Mohan. He is the President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. He has previously served as Executive Director on the Board of the International Monetary Fund and as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. We talked about his work with the Government of India since the 1980s, especially dismantling the infamous...

Today my guest is environmental scholar, historian and biographer  Ramachandra Guha . He is the author of a number of books, including a two-volume biography of Gandhi and the award-winning book " India After Gandhi ." We talked about his latest book, " Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism ." We spoke about global versus local commons, bottom up approach to environmentalism...

Today's episode is the second part of my conversation with  Rajmohan Gandhi , a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need . He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until he retirement in 2022. H...

Today my guest is  Rajmohan Gandhi , a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is  Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need . He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until his retirement in 2022. His most recent initiative is  We Are On...

Today my guest is Prachi Mishra, who is a Professor in the Department of Economics, and Director and Head of Isaac Center for Public Policy at Ashoka University. Prior to joining Ashoka, Prachi was Chief of the Systemic Issues Division and Advisor in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund.  We spoke about the current state of the Indian economy, India's growth trajectory, if th...

Today my guest is  Sajith Pai , who is a Partner at  Blume Ventures , an early stage Indian venture fund. He is also a well known writer, and the author of the annual Indus Valley Report. We spoke about the trends in the latest Indus Valley Report, the stratifications in Indian consumer markets, investor sentiment, policies and infrastructure to foster the AI boom in India, the AI start-up scene a...

Today my guest is  Justice Jasti Chelameswar , who is a former justice of the Supreme Court of India. Prior to his elevation, he served as chief justice in High Courts in Gauhati and Kerala and as a justice in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.  We spoke about his judgments on electoral qualifications, judicial conduct, transparency in judicial appointments, the constitutional right to privacy, separa...

Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly , one of the founders of Trilegal, one of India's leading law firms. He specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting. We talked about the top-down nature of electricity regulation and pricing in India, the dysfunctional DISCOMS, the reforms requ...

Today my guest is  Christopher J Coyne , who is a Professor of  Economics  at George Mason University, the Associate Director of the  F.A. Hayek Program  at the Mercatus Center. We talked about the economics of conflict and peace, history of the US security state, the US intervention in Afghanistan, domestic consequences of militarism abroad, and much more.  Recorded January 15th, 2025. Read a ful...

Today my guest Katherine Butler Schofield who is a professor of South Asian Music and History at King's College London. She is the author of the recent book Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858 .   She also hosted a podcast series called The Histories of the Ephemeral on the same theme. We talked about the history of classical music in India - from Natyas...

Today my guest is  Anton Howes head of innovation research at The Entrepreneurs Network, and the historian-in-residence at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce . He is the author of Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation and the excellent Substack Age of Invention .   We talked about salt trade in India, the Dutch culture of innovation...

Today my guest is  Anant Sudarshan , an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) .  We talked about air pollution in India, crop burning, subsidizing electricity, depleting ground water, the impact of the collapse of keystone species and much more.  Recorded November 25th,...

Today the roles are reversed. Producer Dallas Floer interviews Shruti for the annual end of year episode where they look back at key themes and episodes from the past year, address listener questions, discuss the job market series, and share some questions from previous guests.   On behalf of Shruti and the entire Ideas of India team, thank you for listening to the podcast this year. We're excited...

Today my guest is  Pravin Krishna is the Chung Ju Yung Distinguished Professor of International Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University, at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Department of Economics .  We talked about history of preferential trade agreements, India's approach to trade liberalization, whether such agreements are trade creating or diverting, and much...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Deepti Sharma , who's an Assistant Professor at Ahmedabad University. She completed her PhD in public policy from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Management of Health Services at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad....

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with  Kushagr Bakshi  is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and an SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, where he also received his LLM. He received his first law degree from NUJS in West Bengal. We discussed a chapter of his dissertation called " The Country W...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha  on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with  Aarushi Kalra  Ph. D. candidate in Economics at Brown University. We discussed her job market paper, " Hate in the Time of Algorithms: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment on Online Behavior ." We talked about the demand and supply of toxicity against minorities on social media platforms...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha  on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Abishek Choutagunta , who received his PhD in economics from the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg.  He is also an EV India fellow at the Mercatus Center. We discussed his paper " President's Rule in India: State Emergency or Political Capture? " with   Christian Bjørnsk...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha  on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with  Atanu Chatterjee, a PhD candidate in geography at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a lecturer at the School of Human Settlements, XIM University Bhubaneswar. We discussed his dissertation examining the in situ slum rehabilitation scheme through a state-led intervention in low income ho...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha  on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Steven Brownstone , a PhD candidate in economics at the University of California, San Diego. His research focus is on the fields of development economics, agricultural economics, and political economy. We discussed his job market paper, Labor Market Effects of Agricultural Mechanization: Ex...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha  on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. I spoke with Deepika Padmanabhan , who's a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University. Her research focuses on nationalism, language and self-determination with a regional focus in South Asia. We discussed  her job market paper , everyday imposition language promotion as a nation building str...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. This is the 2024 job market series where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about the latest research in India.  I spoke with Sukrit Puri , who is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT and an Elinor Ostrom fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His resea...

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. We are kicking off the 2024 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India.  Our first scholar in the series is Rolly Kapoor , who is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics at University of California, Santa Cruz. Before...