The Sandip Roy Show

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.

While it isn’t unusual to have women doctors in India now, and the rise of women in the medical field seems to have been steady, the road that led us to this place wasn’t easy. India’s first "lady doctors" battled everything from unsupportive husbands and over supportive husbands to widowhood, caste rules, and divorce. Kavitha Rao’s new book, ‘Lady Doctors’ tells the inspiring stories of these women, and the battles they fought. She joins Sandip in this episode to talk about it.

Mahatma Gandhi is known around the world as the apostle of non-violence, but what did his insistence on ahimsa actually mean for him? In this episode, Sandip talks to Jyotirmaya Sharma, professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad, about his new book – Elusive Nonviolence: The Making and Unmaking of Gandhi’s Religion of Ahimsa. They discuss what influenced Gandhi’s idea of non-violence, why the Hindu community largely rejected his ideals, whether he actually believed in equality and diversity, what has survived of his ideas, and more.

How does information warfare shape our realities? Has the problem of alternate realities worsened now? Does fake news or Whatsapp forwards create the problem or only add to it? And to what extent does fact-checking help?In this episode, Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan join Sandip to answer these questions and talk about their book, 'The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World'.

In this episode, Sandip talks to Vidya Dehejia, Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University, about her latest book, India: A Story through 100 Objects.

What leverage points does the international community have over the Taliban right now? In what way does the situation in Afghanistan affect India? And what will a Pak-China-Afghan axis mean for India?In this episode, Sandip Roy talks to Professor C Raja Mohan about the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, and its implications for India.Professor Mohan is the Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at National University of Singapore, and is also a contributing editor on foreign affairs for The Indian Express.