Grand Tamasha

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.  

Christine Hall, “GlobalWonks relaunches as Enquire AI following $5.5M round,” TechCrunch, December 15, 2021. Bilal Baloch, “10 years later, assessing UPA’s response to IAC,” Hindustan Times, December 11, 2021. Sandip Sukhtankar and Milan Vaishnav, “Corruption in India: Bridging Research Evidence and Policy Options,” India Policy Forum 11: 193-276.

Sadanand Dhume, “India Has a Lot to Lose in Ukraine,” Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2022.   Tanvi Madan, “India is Not Sitting on the Geopolitical Fence,” War on the Rocks, October 27, 2021. “India's High-Wire Act on Russia-Ukraine,” (with Raji Rajagopalan), Grand Tamasha, March 2, 2022.

Chanpreet Khurana, “Mridula Ramesh: "Business leaders exist on a spectrum on 'water/climate awareness',” Moneycontrol, February 20, 2022. “What COP26 Means for India—and the World,” (with Navroz Dubash), Grand Tamasha, November 17, 2021. “How India Can Get to Net Zero Emissions,” (with Jayant Sinha), Grand Tamasha, October 13, 2021.

Mirza Asmer Beg, Shashikant Pandey, and Shreyas Sardesai, “The BJP’s rock solid social coalition,” Hindu, March 12, 2022. Rahul Verma, “Grand Old Party and Its Grand Illusions,” Times of India, March 13, 2022.