Grand Tamasha

Crystal Ennis and Nicolas Blarel discuss India's evolving Middle East policy and its response to the Israel-Palestine conflict. They explore Modi's initial support for Israel, changing positions of the Congress party, and India's envy towards Israel's security capabilities. The podcast also highlights the historical context of India's relationship with Israel, their defense partnership, and the potential implications for India's Middle East relations.

Exploring the Women's Reservation Bill and its impact on gender representation in Indian politics. Examining the low percentage of female representation in Parliament and state assemblies. Discussing the alternative approach of mandating party tickets for women candidates. Exploring the challenges faced by women MPs and the BJP government's approach to women and governance. Analyzing the implications of the Women's Reservation Bill for political parties, politicians, and campaigns.

1.Ajay Mathur, “International finance must take a lead in mobilising solar investments,”Business Standard, September 7, 20232. Ajay Mathur, “Here's how solar can help triple renewable energy by 2030,” World Economic Forum, August 14, 2023.3. “What COP26 Means for India—and the World,” (with Navroz Dubash),Grand Tamasha, November 17, 2021.4. “How India Can Get to Net Zero Emissions,” (with Jayant Sinha),Grand Tamasha, October 13, 2021. 

Prashant Jha, Ashok Malik, and Ro Khanna discuss the recent G20 Summit in New Delhi, India's growing international engagement, the Delhi Declaration's noteworthy commitments, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, US-India cooperation, and insights from Ashok Malik's diverse career and India's G20 participation.

Ro Khanna, “The New Industrial Age,”Foreign Affairs, January/February 2023. “The Next Chapter in U.S.-India Defense Ties(with Lindsey Ford),”Grand Tamasha, September 5, 2023. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, Jonathan Kay, and Milan Vaishnav, “Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 9, 2021. Arvin Alaigh, “A Reckoning for the Modi Democrats,”Dissent, December 23, 2020.

Programming Note: This is the very last episode of Season Nine of Grand Tamasha. As is our usual, we are going to take July and August off to recharge our batteries. We will be back in September with our tenth season of podcasts, and we’re excited about the conversations we have planned for the Fall. Some of our listeners may recall way back in February 2020—the month before the world came to a standstill—Milan sat down with the journalistPramit Bhattacharya to to discuss the unfolding crisis in Indian economic data. Pramit returns to the show today to discuss a new report that he’s just published with Carnegie titled, “India’s Statistical System: Past, Present, Future.”Pramit’s new report is the single-best resource on the trials and tribulations of India’s data machinery. It contains the kind of straight-ahead reporting and analysis that people have come to expect from Pramit, who writes the “Truth, Lies, and Statistics” column forMintand the “Simply Economics” column for theHindustan Times.Milan and Pramit discuss why it is both the best and worst of times for data users in India, how India squandered its competitive advantage in statistical data, and just exactly what today’s data crisis means for the average Indian. Plus, the two discuss Pramit’s ideas for overhauling the system. Episode notes:“Pramit Bhattacharya on the Crisis in India’s Economic Data,”Grand Tamasha, February 12, 2020.Arvind Subramanian, “India's GDP Mis-estimation: Likelihood, Magnitudes, Mechanisms, and Implications,” Harvard Kennedy School Working Paper, June 2019.Pramit Bhattacharya, “How India’s Statistical System Was Crippled,”Mint, May 7, 2019.Pramit Bhattacharya, “Make our statistics credible again,”Mint, January 3, 2022.

Later this summer, California could be first American state to ban discrimination on the basis of caste. California’s move, and the moves by universities, cities, and towns across the country, to raise issues of caste discrimination has generated a massive controversy that is roiling the Indian American community in the United States. One reporter, the freelance journalist Sonia Paul, has been doggedly pursuing this story for years, even before it became a mainstream news issue. Sonia is an award-winning journalist, writer, producer and story editor based in Oakland, California, and she is the daughter of immigrants from India and the Philippines. Sonia joins Milan on the show this week to talk more about her reporting and the state of caste in America. Sonia and Milan discuss the difficulties of reporting on caste in America, the coded ways in which discrimination often takes place, and the debates in the Indian American community over moves to add caste as a protected category. Plus, the two discuss the fierce contest over California’s draft legislation. Episode notes: Sonia Paul, “The hidden caste codes of Silicon Valley,” BBC, April 18, 2023.Sonia Paul, “Trapped in Silicon Valley’s Hidden Caste System,” Wired, March 1, 2022.“California Could Become the First State to Ban Caste Discrimination,” KQED “The Bay” (podcast), June 5, 2023.Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, Jonathan Kay, and Milan Vaishnav, “Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 9, 2021.Maari Zwick-Maitreyi, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Natasha Dar, Ralph F. Bheel, and Prathap Balakrishnan, Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans (Equality Labs, 2018).Sonia Paul, “From Black Lives Matter, activists for India’s discriminated Dalits learn tactics to press for dignity,” The World, November 12, 2015.Patrick Cox, “Which version of Indian history do American school students learn?,” The World, April 27, 2017. 

 Leaders come and go, but institutions stay forever. This is the central takeaway of a new book by Subhashish Bhadra, Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back. Subhashish is an economist whose career has straddled both the policy and corporate worlds. He has worked at a leading global management consulting firm, a venture capital firm, and a tech start-up, working closely with CEOs, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, politicians and academics throughout his career. His new book is a call to action that encourages Indians to move beyond their fixation with leaders and focus instead on building strong state institutions. While discussions of state capacity are typically the stuff of academic conference rooms and think tank seminars, Bhadra believes they should be at the core of everyday discussions Indians have on the future of their democracy. Subhashish joins Milan on the show this week to discuss his motivations for writing the book, the institutional flaws in Indian democracy, the need for a new “social contract” on welfare, and the appropriate balance between states and markets in India. Plus, Subhashish explains what ordinary citizens can do to change the status quo. Episode notes: Anirudh Burman, “Resisting the Leviathan: The Key Change in India’s New Proposal to Protect Personal Data,” Carnegie India, November 28, 2022.Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah, In Service of the Republic: The Art and Science of Economic Policy (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2022).Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Milan Vaishnav, eds.Rethinking Public Institutions in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017). 

If you’ve spent any time reading books, watching movies about—or traveling to—India—chances are you’ve come across the depiction of an urban slum somewhere along the way. In most of these popular portrayals, slums are dens of inequity and deprivation. Citizens appear to be trapped in a vortex of poverty, bad governance, and corruption. In these stories, politicians and their henchmen appear to have the last laugh, extracting whatever they can from citizens who have few exit options.A new book by the political scientists Adam Auerbach and Tariq Thachil, Migrants and Machine Politics, informs us that much of what we think we know is based on myth, not fact.Adam and Tariq join Milan on the podcast this week to discuss a decade’s worth of research in the slums of Bhopal and Jaipur. The trio discuss what slums look like from the bottom-up rather than the top-down, the realities of machine politics in India, and the surprising agency that poor citizens possess. Plus, they discuss how two trends—centralization and Hindu nationalism—might shape the future of local politics. Episode notes:Adam Auerbach et al. “Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World: Reflections on the Indian Case,” Perspectives on Politics 20, no. 1 (2022): 250-264.Adam Auerbach and Tariq Thachil, “Cultivating Clients: Reputation, Responsiveness, and Ethnic Indifference in India's Slums,” American Journal of Political Science 64, no. 3 (2020): 471-487.Adam Auerbach and Tariq Thachil, “How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Cho

Since Independence, the Indian state has grappled with a variety of internal security challenges—insurgencies, terrorist attacks, caste and communal violence, riots, and electoral violence. Their toll has claimed more lives than all of India's five external wars combined.Despite this, we know surprisingly little about the institutions of the state tasked with managing internal security. How well has India contained violence and preserved order? How have the approaches and capacity of the State evolved to attain these twin objectives?  And what impact does the State's approach have on civil liberties and the quality of democracy?These are three questions that a new book, Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State, takes up. It’s an important new volume co-edited by two of the best-known political scientists working on India—Amit Ahuja of the University of California-Santa Barbara and Devesh Kapur of Johns Hopkins-SAIS.Amit and Devesh join Milan on the podcast this week to discuss their new book and the lessons it holds for law and order in India. The trio discuss the centralization of internal security powers, the surprising decline in public violence, and the explosion in the size of India’s paramilitary forces. Plus, the three debate whether violence has moved from the periphery of Indian politics to center stage. Soutik Biswas, “Is India seeing a decline in violence?” BBC News, January 16, 2023. Ajai Shukla, “India's tryst with counterinsurgency,” Business Standard, March 15, 2023. Devesh Kapur, “The worrying rise of militarisation in India’s Central Armed Police Forces,” ThePrint, November 29, 2017. Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur, “Internal security threats: the 1980s,”Hindustan Times, 2022.