Ideas of India

Today my guest is Ruchir Sharma, who is the Chairman of Rockefeller International , a columnist with the Financial Times , and the author of the recent book, What Went Wrong with Capitalism . We talked about American debt levels, US monetary policy, regulation and cronyism, industrial policy, the Indian economy under Modi, and much more. Recorded July 31st, 2024. Read a  full transcript  enhanced...

Today my guest is  Amol Agrawal , who is the author of  History of Private Banking in South Canara District (1906-69).  He teaches economics at Ahmedabad University and blogs at the excellent blog  Mostly Economics .  We spoke about the colonial and post-colonial history of banking in India, the unique features of the South Canara district, and its bankers, inclusive banking by state and private b...

Today my guests are   Amartya Lahiri   and   Devashish Mitra  who are joining me to   discuss their latest paper for  the 1991 project  titled  India's Development Policy Challenge .   Amartya Lahiri is the Royal Bank Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Devashish Mitra the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs at th...

Today my guest is Anirudh Burman . He is an associate research director and fellow at Carnegie Endowment India, and prior to that, he worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and the Centre for Policy Research, both in New Delhi. He has his master's in law from Harvard Law School. We spoke about the dysfunctional land markets and the kinds of reforms required in land use polic...

Today my guests are Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah, who are my colleagues at the Mercatus Center and research scholars working with me on the 1991 Project.  We spoke about the kinds of policy change we would like to see in the coalition government led by Modi's in his third term. We talked about the research Shreyas, Kadambari and I have been working on in the areas of competition policy, regula...

Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform. We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report . written by Sajith and his co-authors, Anurag Pagaria, Nachammai Savithiri both at...

Today my guest is  Anne O Krueger . She is a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She served World Bank's Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy managing director at the IMF from 2001 to 2006. We...

Today my guest is  Karthik Muralidharan.  He is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the recent book  Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance ." We talked about the lacking state capacity in India, about improving the quality of public expenditure, fiscal federalism, methods to improve th...

Today my guests are Tom Easton and Arjun Ramani from The Economist. Tom Easton is Mumbai bureau chief. He joined  The Economist  in 2000 at the New York bureau and was appointed the Asian business editor in 2007. Arjun Ramani is on an extended stint in Mumbai and Delhi bureaus covering the Indian economy. Before this, he was the global business and economics correspondent  in the London office. We...

Today my guest is Rohit Lamba , an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. We spoke about his recent book Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India's Economic Future which he has coauthored with Raghuram Rajan. We spoke about their argument to shift the focus from industrial and trade policy tow...

Today my guest is Rasheed Griffith, who is the  CEO  of the  Caribbean Progress Studies Institute , the host of the podcast the  Rasheed Griffith Show , and one of my favorite writers on  Substack . He also directs the  Emergent Ventures Africa-Caribbean grants program at the Mercatus Center.   We spoke about whether the former colonizers owe reparations to the Caribbean people, economic divergenc...

Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme . Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi , a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co- author of - Missing in Action: Why Should You Care A...

Today my guests are M. Krishnan and Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan . M. Krishnan is an economist based in Chennai and Singapore, and specializes in agriculture education systems, fisheries, and aquaculture research. He is currently an advisor at Infinite-Sum Modeling Inc and was a distinguished scientist of the Agricultural Research Service of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Badri Nar...

Aparna Chandra is a constitutional scholar and associate professor of law at the National Law school in Bangalore. She is the coauthor, along with Sital Kalantry and William Hubbard of the recent book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India . We spoke about the problem of pendency across all courts in the Indian judiciary, whether the Supreme Court is truly a people's c...

This is our 100 th episode and I want to thank our listeners, the guests who have been exceptionally generous with their time and insights, the fantastic team at Mercatus that helps me produce and disseminate the podcast, and to all our donors and supporters. Today my guest is Douglas Irwin , who is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of dozens of books an...

Today my guest is  Rahul Matthan , a technology lawyer and partner at Trilegal. He assisted the Indian government in developing India's data privacy law and he is the author of the recent books Privacy 3.0 and The Third Way . We spoke about India's digital public infrastructure revolution, India's unified payments system, AI, blockchain, the design issues around India's NCPI , Aadhaar, privacy, an...

Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History at Australian National University. His research focuses on various aspects of the history of modern South Asia. And he is the author of the new book, Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India . We spoke about the history of a conservative and ideological opposition politics of India, influence of BR Shenoy an...

Today my guest is  Nasreen Munni Kabir , a documentary filmmaker, TV producer and director, author, biographer, translator/subtitler, and an absolute authority on all things Hindi cinema. We spoke about her biographical conversation series of books with artists like Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Lata Mangeshkar, Waheeda Rahman, Zakir Hussain, AR Rahman. We also spoke about her documentary films on Guru Du...

Today the roles are reversed. In the 2023 end of the year review episode, producer Dallas Floer asks Shruti questions from our listeners about Shruti's ideas of India, how Shruti prepares for the podcast, various guests, the most listened to and the most underrated episode picks of the year, and much more.  Recorded December 12th, 2023. Read a  full transcript  enhanced with helpful links. Follow...

Our last scholar in the series this year is Rajat Kocchar, a post-doctoral scholar at University of Chicago's Energy and Environment Lab. He has a Ph. D. in Economics from the University of Southern California, and his research lies in the field of environmental economics, in particular, on the understanding the factors that incentivize adaptation to climate shocks. We discussed his paper, "Does M...

Shruti spoke with  Vani Swarupa Murali a PhD. Candidate and an instructor at the South Asian Studies Department in the National University of Singapore (NUS). She has a Masters in Asian Studies from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Her research lies at the intersection of political science and agricultural policy and environmental governance. We spoke about "When Sowin...

Shruti spoke with Kartikeya Batra, who is a Ph. D. candidate in economics at the University of Maryland and has a master's in international affairs from The Fletcher School. His research lies at the intersection of political economy, development economics, and economic history. They discussed his job market paper titled " Long-Run Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from India ," and talked a...

In this episode, Shruti spoke with  Vatsal Khandelwal , who is a junior research fellow at  Merton College  and an associate member of the  Department of Economics  at University of Oxford. His main research interest are development and behavioral economics, with a focus on social and economic networks. They discussed his job market paper titled " Silent Networks: The Role of Inaccurate Beliefs in...

Shruti spoke with Sarath Pillai, who is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the  Center for the Advanced Study of India  at University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in History from the  University of Chicago , a Master of Studies in Law from  Yale Law School , a MA in history from the  University of Delhi , and a Postgraduate Diploma in archives and records management from the  National Archives o...

Shruti spoke with Rithika Kumar, who is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the  Kellogg Institute for International Studies  at the University of Notre Dame. She received her PhD in political science from the  University of Pennsylvania  in August 2023. Her research lies at the intersection of gender, urbanization and politics in India. Shruti and Rithika discussed her job market paper titled " Lef...