The Sandip Roy Show

Shrayana Bhattacharya is trained in development economics and is currently working at a multilateral development bank. But, to the surprise of many around her, she spent the last 15 years interviewing women who are Shah Rukh Khan fans. And she did this, to understand the Indian economy. Her book, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, details her research and reveals an emotional map of the economy. In this episode, she joins Sandip Roy to discuss what she found, and what the SRK fandom can teach us about womanhood.

We often use data to understand India and its problems. Be it data about unemployment, how we vote, what crimes we commit, and even who we choose to love. But data journalist Rukmini S' new book, Whole Numbers and Half Truths, talks about how we use numbers to make sense of all this, without realising that data can be misleading or that we might be misreading it. In this episode, she joins host Sandip Roy to discuss India's problem with data.

You can listen to the series at:3 Things - https://bit.ly/34jEQbpExpress Elections - https://bit.ly/3gvzDQ1

A lot of us can relate to the idea that increasingly, we are finding it harder to focus and are more distracted. Many blame themselves and their smartphones for shorter attention spans, but a new book claims that there is another reason why we can’t pay attention the way we used to. In this episode, best-selling author Johann Hari speaks to Sandip about his new book, Stolen Focus, in which he writes about how we have profoundly misunderstood what’s happening to our attention, and calls for an attention rebellion.Episode image credit: Kathrin Baumbach

How bad is India's water crisis? What has led us to this place? And what can be done to solve it? In this episode, Sandip is joined by Mridula Ramesh to talk about India's groundwater crisis. From the Indus Valley civilisation, to British policies that still affect us, Ramesh tells us about all that has caused India's grave water crisis.Ramesh is the author of the new book, Watershed: How We Destroyed India's Water and How We Can Save It. She is founder of the Sundaram Climate Institute, which focuses on waste and water solutions.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation has said that eating insects can help us fight hunger and malnutrition. This is considering they are rich in protein, and farming them can be more sustainable and environment-friendly. Now, even though the idea can invoke disgust, perhaps even shame, in many people, insects have been part of the human diet for centuries.In this episode, host Sandip Roy is joined by Srishtaa Aparna Pallavi and Tansha Vohra to talk about the past, present and future of eating insects in India. They discuss what insects are the most popular as food, why certain foods are considered inferior, the concerns around popularizing this practice, and their favourite insect recipes. Shrishta Aparna Pallavi, writes about indigenous people and their traditions and foods, and has given an acclaimed TED talk on what food our ancestors loved.Tansha Vohra is a permaculture designer, and runs the Boochi project, which explores insect eating in India.

Are all countries obliged to tighten their belts equally for the sake of climate change? Based on our current efforts, have we reached a point of no return? And do we need a new narrative to change that? In this episode, Sandip Roy is joined by Jnanpith award winner and writer Amitav Ghosh to answer these questions, and to talk about his latest book, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.Also in the end, an audio postcard from Shillong.

In their latest book, Nehru: The Debates that Defined India, Adeel Hussain and Tripurdaman Singh look at four men debated the first Prime Minister – Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sardar Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee – and how theses exchanges came to shape India as we know it today. In this episode, they both join Sandip to discuss what they found out during their research, and what we can learn from these debates.Adeel Hussain is an assistant professor at Leiden University and a senior research affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. And Tripurdaman Singh is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

What is ailing India's democratic institutions today? – This question is at the heart of investigative journalist Josy Joseph's latest book, The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State. In this episode, host Sandip Roy talks to him about it, along with how the deep state threatens our democracy, and what has led us to this place.

The arrival of the monsoon is always big news in India. But its drama and romance is also accompanied by anxiety and tension, especially now, with the rains growing more erratic, and some places getting less of it while others experience floods and cloudbursts. In this episode, Sandip speaks to one of the world's foremost monsoon meteorologists, Dr Sulochana Gadgil about the myths and realities surrounding the monsoons. Dr Gadgil was with the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.