Ideas of India

In this episode, Shruti and Virginia Postrel discuss her latest book, “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.” They talk about different methods of dyeing, spinning as a feminine occupation, the textile trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, how technological changes disrupted the industry and much more. Postrel is an author, columnist and speaker whose work spans a broad range of topics from social science to fashion, concentrating on the intersection of culture, commerce and technology. Her previous books include “The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion” (2013), “The Substance of Style” (2003) and “The Future and Its Enemies” (1998). She is a regular columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes columns, focusing primarily on history and material culture, to Reason. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Virginia on Twitter  Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox! 

In this episode, Shruti talks to Himanshu Jha about his recent book, Capturing Institutional Change: The Case of the Right to Information Act in India. Himanshu is a lecturer and research fellow in the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University in Germany. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Himanshu on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Milan Vaishnav about a report, How Do Indian Americans View India?, in which he and his co-authors (Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur) conducted a survey about the political beliefs of Indian Americans. They discuss the results of the survey and talk about how the Indian American community might change in the future. Vaishnav is the director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press and HarperCollins India, 2017). His research focuses on Indian political economy, examining issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics and electoral behavior. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Milan on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox! 

In this episode, Shruti talks with Shoumitro Chatterjee about farms and farm policy in India, particularly in terms of government subsidies and other state intervention in agricultural markets. Chatterjee is an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include agriculture and international trade and development. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Shoumitro on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!  

In this episode, Shruti and Chandra Bhan Prasad discuss the legacy of philosophy of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the status of Dalits in India and the importance of entrepreneurship. Prasad is an Indian journalist, political commentator and activist, an entrepreneur and founder of the ByDalits.com platform, an adviser to the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the editor of Dalit Enterprise Magazine. He is also a winner of the Emergent Ventures grant for his work on Dalit capitalism and progress. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Chandra on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

In this episode, Shruti spoke with Arvind Panagariya about his book, Free Trade and Prosperity: How Openness Helps the Developing Countries Grow Richer and Combat Poverty. Panagariya is Professor of Economics and the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University. From January 2015 to August 2017, he served as the first Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, Government of India in Prime Minister Modi’s Cabinet. His primary research is international trade policy, economic development, and Indian political economy. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox! 

This episode is the sixth and final installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. The first episode featured Vaishnavi Surendra, the second episode featured Rohit Ticku, the third episode featured Tanu Kumar, the fourth episode featured Proma Ray Chaudhury, and the fifth episode featured Vaidehi Tandel. In this episode, Shruti talks with Kunal Mangal about his research on the pursuit of government jobs in India and why the competition for these jobs is so fierce. Mangal is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. His research focuses on labor markets in developing countries, and he is currently studying India’s competitive exam system for government jobs. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox! 

The fifth scholar in our young scholars series, Dr. Vaidehi Tandel. She is an economist specializing in urban political economy and policy in India. I spoke with Vaidehi about her work on urban economics in India, in particular, her paper on “What’s in a definition? A study on the suitability of the current urban definition in India through its employment guarantee programme. (with Komal Hiranandani and Mudit Kapoor) and her paper titled paper, “Too slow for the urban march: Litigations and real estate in Mumbai, (with Sahil Gandhi, Alexander Tabarrok and Shamika Ravi) and her joint work on using a system of Adaptive Controls in the battle against Covid. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox! 

The fourth scholar in our young scholars series is Proma Ray Chaudhury, a PhD Candidate at the School of Law and Government in Dublin City University under the EU Marie Curie ETN Global India Project, working on gender and women’s political participation in contemporary India. I spoke with Proma about her paper titled, “The Political Asceticism of Mamata  Banerjee: Female Populist Leadership in Contemporary India,” where she studies representation of female political leaders, in particular, Mamata Bannerjee in West Bengal. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox! 

For the next few weeks I will be speaking to young doctoral and post-doctoral candidates entering the academic job market and the policy world about their newly minted research on Indian political economy. The third scholar in our young scholars series, Dr. Tanu Kumar is a postdoctoral fellow at William and Mary’s Global Research Institute. She is a political scientist studying urban politics and service delivery. I spoke with Tanu about her paper, “Home-Price Subsidies Increase Local-Level Political Participation in Urban India,” which has been conditionally accepted at the Journal of Politics. In her paper, Tanu studies the effects of a housing subsidy program in Mumbai through an original survey of winners and nonwinners of program lotteries, and its effect on local political participation. We also discussed another one of Tanu’s papers, “The Human Capital Effects of Subsidized Government-Constructed Homes in Urban India,” on how this housing subsidy affects long-term investments in human capital. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!