Grand Tamasha

Thirty years ago, Seema Sirohi first moved to Washington as a journalist charged with covering India’s relationship with the United States. At the time, Washington saw India as a problem—rather than a useful part of its foreign policy solution—to big, complex global challenges. Today, the situation could not be more different: the United States and India are deeply enmeshed in a strategic partnership that runs the gamut, from space to terrorism, and from climate change to technology. Seema, a U.S.-based columnist for the Economic Times, narrates this tectonic shift in a new book, Friends with Benefits: the India-U.S. Story.On this week’s show, she joins Milan to discuss the book and her own personal journey. They discuss the evolution of U.S.-India ties over the past three decades, including the rocky years of the early 1990s, the breakthrough in the George W. Bush administration, and the setbacks towards the end of India’s UPA-2 government. Plus, the two discuss the Washington establishment’s blind spots on both China and Pakistan and how these have repeatedly come at the cost of greater cooperation with India in years past.

The decline of India’s parliament is a refrain that has often been repeated over the last seventy-five years of modern Indian democracy. A new book on India’s Parliament addresses the decline thesis head-on and provides a warts-and-all assessment of India’s legislative chamber.The book is called House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy and its author is the scholar Ronojoy Sen. Ronojoy, a senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies at the National University of Singapore, joins Milan on the podcast this week to discuss the evolution of India’s parliament, the constitutional pre-history of legislative institutions in India, and the surprising lack of debate around universal suffrage. Plus, the two discuss the plague of parliamentary disruptions, the black box of conflicts of interest, and how the practice of Indian democracy transformed the institution of Parliament. Madhav Khosla and Milan Vaishnav, “The Three Faces of the Indian State,” Journal of Democracy 32, no. 1 (January 2021): 111-125. Ronojoy Sen, “Has the Indian Parliament stood the test of time?” Observer Research Foundation, August 15, 2022.  

Our Grand Tamasha top three books of 2022 (drumroll, please): Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and IndependenceBy Shrayana Bhattacharya. Published by HarperCollins India. The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of GovernmentBy Rahul Sagar. Published by Hurst/HarperCollins India. The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern IndiaBy Mansi Choksi. Published by Atria/Icon/Penguin Viking. In this episode, Milan talks about why he loved each of these books and includes short clips from his conversations with Shrayana, Rahul, and Mansi. Think of this bonus episode as our little holiday present to you, our listeners. We'll see you in January.

“A Test of the BJP’s Dominance in Gujarat (with Mahesh Langa),” Grand Tamasha, December 6, 2022.  “Previewing India’s G20 Agenda (with Karthik Nachiappan),” Grand Tamasha, November 30, 2022. “Congress Drama, Indian Diplomacy, and the Diaspora (with Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan),” Grand Tamasha, October 12, 2022.

Karthik Nachiappan, Does India Negotiate? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2020) Karthik Nachiappan, “The international politics of data: When control trumps protection,” Observer Research Foundation, October 26, 2022. Arindrajit Basu and Karthik Nachiappan, “Data opportunity at the G20,” Hindu, August 18, 2022. “How Rising Powers Can Make—Or Break—International Order” (with Rohan Mukherjee), Grand Tamasha, November 16, 2022.  

Semafor “Climate” newsletter by Bill Spindle.  Bill Spindle, “Energy: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly,” The Energy Adventure(r) newsletter, June 14, 2022. Bill Spindle, “The Free Power Flywheel,” The Energy Adventure(r) newsletter, August 29, 2022. Bill Spindle, “Global climate conference threatens to be a bust,” Semafor, October 22, 2022. “How India Can Get to Net Zero Emissions (with Jayant Sinha),” Grand Tamasha, October 13, 2021. “What COP26 Means for India—and the World (with Navroz Dubash),” Grand Tamasha, November 17, 2021.

“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.