Indian women are lonely in the bedroom, lonely in the kitchen, lonely in the workplace. Shrayana Bhattacharya joins Amit Varma in episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss the interior and exterior lives of these unseen millions. Also check out 1. Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence -- Shrayana Bhattacharya. 2. Select Shah Rukh Khan films: Baazigar, DDLJ, Dil Tho Pagal Hai, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Dilwale, Mohabbatein. 3. Shar Rukh Khan interviews selected by Shrayana: 1, 2, 3, 4. 4. The Power to Choose -- Naila Kabeer. 5. Naila Kabeer on Amazon. 6. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth -- Marilyn Waring. 7. The Odd Woman and the City -- Vivian Gornick. 8. Vivian Gornick on Amazon. 9. Future Sex -- Emily Witt. 10. Kamala Das's autobiography, poems and stories. 11. Deborah Levy and Bell Hooks on Amazon. 12. Poor Economics -- Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. 13. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty -- Albert O Hirschman. 14. The Art of Loving -- Erich Fromm. 15. The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford. 16. Selected Satire: Fifty Years of Ignorance -- Shrilal Shukla. 17. Most of Amit Varma’s writing on DeMon, collected in one Twitter thread. 18. Dani Rodrik's tweet thread about the 'jerk quotient' in economics. 19. The Hidden Taxes on Women -- Sendhil Mullainathan. 20. "Academia is a giant circlejerk" -- Amit Varma's tweet. 21. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ajay Shah (in reverse chronological order): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 22. The Universe of Chuck Gopal -- Episode 258 of The Seen and the Unseen. 23. Miss Excel on Instagram and TikTok. 24. Bahujan Economics. 25. Raghuram Rajan at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2018. (Minute 5 onwards.) 26. In Service of the Republic -- Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah. 27. Superforecasting -- Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. 28. Listen, The Internet Has SPACE -- Amit Varma. 29. Raees: An Empty Shell of a Gangster Film -- Amit Varma. 30. The Baptist, the Bootlegger and the Dead Man Walking -- Amit Varma. 31. Bootleggers and Baptists-The Education of a Regulatory Economist -- Bruce Yandle. 32. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Jai Arjun Singh and Uday Bhatia. 33. The Life and Times of Abhinandan Sekhri -- Episode 254 of The Seen and the Unseen. 34. Films, Feminism, Paromita -- Episode 155 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Paromita Vohra). 35. Modi’s Lost Opportunity -- Episode 119 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Salman Soz). 36. Women at Work -- Episode 132 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Namita Bhandare). 37. What explains the decline in female labour force participation in India? -- Urmila Chatterjee, Rinku Murgai and Martin Rama. 38. Why Are Fewer Married Women Joining the Work Force in India? -- Farzana Afridi, Taryn Dinkelman and Kanika Mahajan. 39. India Moving — Chinmay Tumbe. 40. India = Migration -- Episode 128 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Chinmay Tumbe). 41. House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths. 42. The Right to Sex -- Amia Srinivasan. 43. 'Let Me Interrupt Your Expertise With My Confidence' -- New Yorker cartoon by Jason Adam Katzenstein. 44. The Confidence Gap -- Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. 45. The Ugliness of the Indian Male -- Mukul Kesavan. 46. The Blank Noise Project by Jasmeen Patheja. 47. Why Loiter? -- Shilpa Phadke. 48. The Jackson Katz quote on passive sentence constructions. 49. The Kavita Krishnan Files -- Episode 228 of The Seen and the Unseen. 50. Metrics of Empowerment — Episode 88 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Devika Kher, Nidhi Gupta and Hamsini Hariharan). 51. Jane Austen and Pico Iyer on Amazon. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit’s online courses, The Art of Clear Writing and The Art of Podcasting. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It’s free!

India is in bad shape. Bad economics is one reason why. Economists Rajeswari Sengupta and Shrayana Bhattacharya join Amit Varma in episode 274 of The Seen and the Unseen to take stock of the mess. You don't like dissent? Too bad. We're Bongs, and you cannot shut us up. Also check out: 1. Shrayana Bhattacharya on Twitter, Instagram and Google Scholar. 2. Rajeswari Sengupta on Google Scholar and her own site. 3. Demystifying GDP -- Episode 130 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rajeswari Sengupta). 4. Twelve Dream Reforms -- Episode 138 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan, Rajeswari Sengupta & Vivek Kaul). 5. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman -- Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 6. Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh -- Shrayana Bhattacharya. 7. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah). 8. India’s Lost Decade — Episode 116 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra). 9. The Lost Decade — Puja Mehra. 10. The Art and Science of Economic Policy — Episode 154 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah). 11. Rukmini Sees India’s Multitudes -- Episode 261 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rukmini S). 12. The State of Our Economy (Nov 2021) -- Episode 252 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra and Mohit Satyanand.) 13. Taking Stock of Our Economy (May 2021) — Episode 227 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ila Patnaik). 14. Two Economic Crises (2008 & 2019) — Episode 135 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Mohit Satynanand). 15. The Indian Economy in 2019 — Episode 153 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vivek Kaul). 16. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ajay Shah (in reverse chronological order): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 17. Everything That Was Broken -- Mary Oliver (from Felicity). 18. I Boiled My Buttocks for a Week -- Amit Varma on how we normalize everything. 19. Dekalog -- Krzysztof Kieślowski. 20. What the Economy Needs Now -- Various authors. 21. Beware of the Useful Idiots -- Amit Varma. 22. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on the creator ecosystem with Roshan Abbas, Varun Duggirala, Neelesh Misra, Snehal Pradhan, Chuck Gopal, Nishant Jain and Deepak Shenoy. 23. The Anti-Defection Law — Episode 13 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Barun Mitra). 24. Our Parliament and Our Democracy -- Episode 253 of The Seen and the Unseen (w MR Madhavan). 25. Urban Governance in India -- Episode 31 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 26. Emergent Ventures. 27. India’s Problem is Poverty, Not Inequality -- Amit Varma. 28. On Inequality -- Harry Frankfurt. 29. We Must Save Our Farmers — Amit Varma. 30. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on agriculture (in reverse chronological order): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 31. Intent to Implementation : Tracking India's Social Protection Response to COVID-19 -- Shrayana Bhattacharya and Sutirtha Sinha Roy. 32. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. 33. Modi’s Lost Opportunity — Episode 119 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Salman Soz). 34. Most of Amit Varma’s writing on DeMon, collected in one Twitter thread. 35. What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been — Episode 188 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arvind Subramanian). 36. The Median Voter Theorem. 37. The 'bloated and grotesque' tweet by @mrjohndarby. 38. ASER, CMIE and SWAN. 39. The Billion Prices Project. 40. Pramit Bhattacharya Believes in Just One Ism — Episode 256 of The Seen and the Unseen. 41. In Bollywood, women get screen time but very little talk time -- Mohua Das. 42. A Woman, Thinking -- Paromita Vohra. 43. Lost in the Shallows -- Amit Varma on Dear Zindagi. 44. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande -- Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 45. Mrinal Pande’s pieces for Pragati on women in Indian agriculture: 1, 2. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit’s online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It’s free!

In today's discussion, Shrayana Bhattacharya, an economist at the World Bank and author of "Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh," shares insights on how Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan intertwines with the lives of Indian women. She explores their struggles for independence, the emotional nuances of economic behavior, and the stark gender gap in the workforce. Shrayana sheds light on the complexities of women's identities linked to fandom, societal roles, and the dynamic nature of urban challenges, advocating for systemic changes to support women's empowerment.