Ideas of India

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Jennifer Murtazashvili about the problems with imposing liberal democracy in Afghanistan, building state capacity, education, the role of the U.S. in the Ghani government's collapse and much more. Murtazashvili is the founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets and an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on issues of self-governance, security, political economy and public-sector reform in the developing world. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of "Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan" and the co-author (with Ilia Murtazashvili) of "Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan." Recorded July 20th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Jen on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Ashwini Deshpande about caste discrimination in labor markets, the reservation system and its critiques, education of women, how endogamy perpetuates caste, Bollywood films and much more. Deshpande is a professor of economics and the founding director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at Ashoka University. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She is the author of "The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India" and "Affirmative Action in India." Recorded July 7th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Ashwini on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Vinay Sitapati about Narasimha Rao's socialism, his working relationships with Manmohan Singh and others, how his skills as a translator were useful in his career, and much more. Sitapati is a political scientist, lawyer and journalist. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and degrees from Harvard University and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. His first book, "Half-Lion," was a best-selling biography of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Sitapati teaches at Ashoka University, near Delhi. Recorded June 16th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Saumitra Jha about medieval ports, competition versus complementarity, marriage endogamy, the effect of military experience on the prevalence of violence and much more. Jha is a professor in the political economy group at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs. He also convenes the Conflict and Polarization Lab within the Stanford King Center on Global Development. His research focuses on understanding the effectiveness of organizations and innovations that societies have developed to address the problems of violence and political risk in the past and to develop new lessons for contemporary policy. Recorded on May 23rd, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Saumitra on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Lant Pritchett for a second time. They discuss internal and external migration, the concept of open borders, definitions of poverty, the flaws of randomized controlled trials and much more. Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. He is currently affiliated with Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government as the research director of the RISE Programme, is the Research Director at LaMP (Labor Mobility Partnerships) and is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He previously worked with the World Bank from 1988 to 2007, living in Indonesia 1998-2000 and India 2004-2007. His publications span a wide range of development topics including economic growth, state capability, education, labor mobility and development assistance. Recorded April 27th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Adeel Hussain and Tripurdaman Singh about their book, "Nehru: The Debates That Defined India." They discuss homogeneity in parliamentary democracies, tensions between liberalism and cultural traditions, the branches of the Indian and Pakistani governments and much more. Hussain is an assistant professor at Leiden University and a senior research affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. His research focuses on jurisprudence, comparative constitutional law, international law and the global history of legal and political thought, with a regional emphasis on South Asia and Europe. Singh is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. His work explores the broad themes of sovereignty, state formation, decolonization and constitution making. Recorded May 13th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Adeel on Twitter Follow Tripurdaman on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Take our listener survey here. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Naushad Forbes about his new book, "The Struggle and the Promise: Restoring India's Potential." They discuss why Indian companies spend so little on R&D, how companies learn and innovate, protectionism vs. open markets, higher education reforms and much more. Forbes is the co-chairman of Forbes Marshall, India's leading steam engineering and control instrumentation firm. He chairs the steam engineering companies within the group. He is also the chairman of Ananta Aspen Centre and was president of the Confederation of Indian Industry in 2016-17. Further, he is the chairman of the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Economic Research in Pune. Recorded April 30th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Naushad on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Take the listener survey In this episode, Shruti speaks with Barkha Dutt about her new book, "To Hell and Back: Humans of COVID." They discuss the tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the failures of the Indian state, the stories of Indian migrant workers, the decline of cable news and much more. Dutt is an Indian television journalist, author and owner of the YouTube news channel Mojo Story. She is an opinion columnist with The Hindustan Times and The Washington Post. Her previous book is "This Unquiet Land: Stories from India's Fault Lines." Recorded March 27th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Barkha on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Take our listener survey here. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Anand Swamy and Tirthankar Roy about their new book, "Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy: India 1947 and Beyond." They discuss India's colonial legacy, forest laws, problems with eminent domain, the messiness of Indian legislation and much more. Swamy is the Willmott Family Third Century Professor of Economics at Williams College. His research interests are the economics of institutions and land, labor and credit markets in developing countries and South Asia. Roy is a professor at the London School of Economics, teaching South Asian and global history. His research focuses on Indian capitalism, specifically whether the country's history reveals patterns that can help understand how Indian capitalism works today. Recorded March 2nd, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Anand on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Take our listener survey here. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Ramachandra Guha about his latest book, "Rebels Against the Raj." They discuss the influence of foreigners who renounced their native nationalities to become Indian, Gandhi's legacy, economic protectionism, constraints on free speech, cricket and much more. Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history. For the academic year 2011–12, he held a visiting position at the London School of Economics He has also been a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Recorded February 24th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Ramachandra on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Check out Macro Musings: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings Follow Macro Musings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Macro_Musings Subscribe to Macro Musings on your favorite podcast app.