Grand Tamasha

“What Kind of World Power Does India Want to Be (with Rahul Sagar),” Grand Tamasha, June 1, 2022. Rahul Sagar, To Raise a Fallen People: How Nineteenth-Century Indians Saw Their World and Shaped Ours (Juggernaut, 2022). Ideas of India, online database curated by Rahul Sagar

Tanvi Madan, “China Has Lost India: How Beijing’s Aggression Pushed New Delhi to the West,” Foreign Affairs, October 4, 2022. Sadanand Dhume, “Hindu Nationalism Threatens India’s Rise as a Nation,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2022. Prashant Jha, “A story of friendship: The underlying theme of Jaishankar’s Washington DC visit,” Hindustan Times, September 30, 2022. “Rearranging Marriage in Modern India (with Mansi Choksi),” Grand Tamasha, September 28, 2022. Jayita Sarkar, Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022).

In country after country in South Asia, we are seeing worrying signs of economic turmoil and political upheaval. Earlier this year, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan lost a bruising no-confidence vote, resulting in his abrupt ouster. But now the new coalition government that took over from Khan is struggling under the weight of a rising debt burden. Sri Lanka has experienced a full-blown crisis, resulting in Asia’s first default in decades and the collapse of the Rajapaksa government. While India’s economic prospects remain relatively positive, there too there are concerns about how widely the gains of recent economic growth are being shared. To discuss South Asia’s economic outlook, journalist Benjamin Parkin joins Milan on the show this week. Ben is the South Asia correspondent for the Financial Times based in New Delhi and has previously worked with Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. The two discuss the external headwinds, domestic policy missteps, and continued uncertainty plaguing South Asian economies from Afghanistan to Bangladesh. They also discuss how China is using the present moment to press its advantage and how the West is responding. Plus, the two talk about India’s economic trajectory and sharply divided views on its recovery.

“Pallavi Raghavan on an Alternative History of India-Pakistan Relations,” Grand Tamasha, April 7, 2020. Brian Finlay, “The Passing of Our Co-Founder Michael Krepon,” Henry L. Stimson Center, July 16, 2022. “Myra MacDonald on the India-Pakistan Battle for Siachen,” Grand Tamasha, March 9, 2021.  

Shyam Saran, “Signs of Twin Troubles in China,” Business Standard, August 17, 2022. Shyam Saran, “Why India@75 Must Pay Attention to Fault Lines,” Mint, August 15, 2022. “India’s Future in a Changing Global Order (with Shivshankar Menon),” Grand Tamasha, February 2, 2022.  

Sri Lanka has been the site of dramatic economic and political upheaval over the past several weeks as years of economic mismanagement have resulted in rampant inflation, shortages of essential commodities, and the country’s first sovereign default in the post-independence era. The island’s dire economic conditions have spurred angry, and sometimes violent, protests which resulted in the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and continued calls for the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the country’s president and the prime minister’s brother.To discuss the economic and political causes and consequences of this crisis, Milan is joined on the show this week by political economist Ahilan Kadirgamar. Ahilan is Senior Lecturer at the University of Jaffna and one of Sri Lanka’s leading political economists. Ahilan and Milan discuss the tense situation on the ground, the economic roots of the current crisis, and the prospects for a return to wide-scale violence. Plus, the two discuss India’s role in extending an economic lifeline to Sri Lanka and whether the island nation can put a decades-old legacy of ethnic strife behind it. “Rethinking Sri Lanka’s economic crisis,” Interview with Ahilan Kadirgamar, Himal South Asian, February 28, 2022. Ahilan Kadirgamar, “Polarization, Civil War, and Persistent Majoritarianism in Sri Lanka,” in Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue, eds., Political Polarization in South and Southeast Asia: Old Divisions, New Dangers (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020). Ahilan Kadirgamar, "Sri Lanka stares at bankruptcy or redemption," The Hindu, April 16, 2022. Ahilan Kadirgamar. "The Political Economy of the Crisis in Sri Lanka," Economic & Political Weekly, April 30, 2022.

Aqil Shah, “The Shambolic End of Imran Khan,” Foreign Affairs, April 15, 2022. Aqil Shah, “Pakistan’s ‘Moderate Taliban’ Strategy Won’t Hold Up—For Anyone,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 30, 2021. Aqil Shah, “Pakistan: Voting Under Military Tutelage,” Journal of Democracy 30, no. 1 (2019): 128-142.    

Joshua T. White, After the foundational agreements: An agenda for US-India defense and security cooperation(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2021) Joshua T. White, “Nonstate threats in the Taliban’s Afghanistan,” February 1, 2022, Brookings Institution, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/02/01/nonstate-threats-in-the-talibans-afghanistan/ Ashley J. Tellis, “‘What Is in Our Interest’: India and the Ukraine War,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 25, 2022.   

“Information Politics and Social Change,” Ideas of India (podcast) with Shruti Rajagopalan and Rajesh Veeraraghavan, March 3, 2022. Philip Keefer and Stuti Khemani, “Why Do the Poor Receive Poor Services?” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 9 (2004): 935-943. Diego Maiorano, “The Politics of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Andhra Pradesh,” World Development 58 (2014): 95-105.   

Sugata Srinivasaraju, “Balancing Opinion And Diverting Attention,” New Indian Express, April 7, 2022. Soutik Biswas, “Bangalore: How polarisation is dividing India's Silicon Valley,” BBC, April 7, 2022. Pooja Prasanna, “Karnataka’s Hindutva hate politics: Blame it on a weak CM and an edgy Opposition,” TheNews Minute, April 6, 2022.