Milan Vaishnav, “On electoral bonds, a short-lived celebration,” Hindustan Times, February 17, 2024.“Crime and Politics with Milan Vaishnav,” The DAKSH Podcast, September 2022.Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, eds., Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018).Milan Vaishnav, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

Constantino Xavier and Riya Sinha, “How India Budgets to Become a Leading Power,” Centre for Social and Economic Progress, February 8, 2023.Constantino Xavier, “India: Looking to Help Frame a New Global Balance,” in Regional Security Outlook 2023 (Canberra: Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, 2022).Constantino Xavier and Amitendu Palit, eds., Connectivity and Cooperation in the Bay of Bengal Region (New Delhi: Centre for Social and Economic Progress, 2023).Constantino Xavier and Jabin Jacob, eds., How China Engages South Asia: Themes, Partners and Tools(New Delhi: Centre for Social and Economic Progress, 2023).Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on India and the United States: A Vision for the 21st Century,” Chennai, India, July 20, 2011.

“South Asia’s Economic Turmoil (with Ben Parkin),” Grand Tamasha, September 21, 2022.“Pakistan After Imran Khan (with Aqil Shah),” Grand Tamasha, May 4, 2022.Zoha Waseem, “A House Divided: Karachi’s Politics Remain in Flux,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 3, 2022.

Karan Thapar, “Debunking propaganda myths, restoring truths,” Hindustan Times, January 27, 2024.Sreenivasan Jain, Mariyam Alavi, and Supriya Sharma, “Bringing Journalistic Scrutiny to Hindutva Conspiracy Theories,” The Wire, January 17, 2024.

“India's Tryst With Policymaking (with Pranay Kotasthane),” Grand Tamasha, January 25, 2023.Pranay Kotasthane and Raghu S. Jaitley, Missing In Action : Why You Should Care About Public Policy (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2023).Pranay Kotasthane, “Anticipating the Unintended,” weekly Substack newsletter.

“What the Personal Data Protection Act Means for India (with Rahul Matthan),” Grand Tamasha, Septemner 27, 2023.“Book Discussion: The Third Way: India’s Revolutionary Approach to Data Governance,” Carnegie India Global Technology Summit 2023, December 7, 2023.Rahul Matthan, “Tech policy in India has had a year packed with action,” Mint, December 27, 2023.

Back in 2019, we started the Grand Tamasha podcast on a whim. India’s 2019 general elections were around the corner, and we sensed that there might be a (temporary) marketplace for a weekly audio podcast focused on Indian politics and policy for diehards hoping to keep up with the campaign action. Nearly five years later, the podcast has become a weekly fixture and the marketplace has turned out to be more welcoming that we had imagined. For Milan, one of the joys of doing a podcast week-in and week-out is the ability to read some of the best new books on India and speak with their authors—from journalists to historians, and political scientists to novelists. Last year, we published our first annual list of our favorite books featured on the podcast in 2022. As the current year comes to an end and we prepare for a mini-podcast hibernation for the holidays, here—in no particular order—are our Grand Tamasha top books of 2023 (drumroll, please): Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century By Joya Chatterji. Published by Yale University Press, Penguin Random House India, Vintage. Migrants and Machine Politics: How India's Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness By Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil. Published by Princeton University Press. Age of Vice By Deepti Kapoor. Published by Riverhead, Juggernaut. Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India By Akshay Mangla. Published by Cambridge University Press. In this episode, Milan talks about why he loved each of these books and includes short clips from his conversations with Joya, Adam and Tariq, Deepti, and Akshay. Think of this final episode of our tenth season as our little holiday present to you—our listeners.

Prashant Jha, “What BJP wins in 3 states mean for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” Hindustan Times, December 4, 2023.  Vaibhav Tiwari, “‘Conceit’: Congress slammed by INDIA bloc allies after 3-1 election drubbing,” Hindustan Times, December 4, 2023. Ritesh Mishra and Dipankar Ghose, “Misfired OBC gambit, infighting: How to lose a mandate in 5 years,” Hindustan Times, December 4, 2023. Sunetra Choudhury, “HT Interview: Unsavoury words were used against me…Madhya Pradesh election results have silenced them: Scindia,” Hindustan Times, December 4, 2023. 

1.      Michael Greenstone et al., “The Solvable Challenge of Air Pollution in India,” India Policy Forum 2017-18: 1-51. 2.      Michael Greenstone et al., A Roadmap Towards Cleaning India’s Air (EPIC India and Harvard Kennedy School, 2018). 3.      Michael Greenstone et al., “Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India,” Working Paper, January 27, 2023.

Experts Rahul Sagar, Aditya Balasubramanian, and Ramachandra Guha discuss the history of India's princely states, the Congress Party's changing stance towards them, the challenges of integrating them into the Indian Union, the management of the states by the Indian Political Department, a dispute over Junagar's succession, and the abolishment of privy purses and its impact on Indian politics.