Over the decades, India has developed a reputation for having a strong society but a weak state. This bureaucratic, lumbering behemoth has especially struggled to deliver basic pub ... Read more
Over the decades, India has developed a reputation for having a strong society but a weak state. This bureaucratic, lumbering behemoth has especially struggled to deliver basic public goods like health, education, water, and sanitation. But a new book by the University of Oxford political scientist Akshay Mangla, Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India, forces us to revise this conventional wisdom. In some parts of India, the state has succeeded in delivering quality primary education for its poorest citizens despite sharing the same institutional framework and often the same demographic characteristics of other, poorly performing regions. To talk more about why and when the state works, Akshay joins Milan on the podcast this week. Akshay and Milan discuss the importance of norms in driving policy implementation, the stark variation in education outcomes in north India, and how authoritarianism and deliberation can coexist. Plus, the two discuss the Modi government’s New Education Policy and the future of primary education in the country. Read more
Jayita Sarkar uncovers how India built its nuclear program from the ground up and challenges the conventional wisdom that India's nuclear ambitions were an inward-looking endeavour ... Read more
Jayita Sarkar uncovers how India built its nuclear program from the ground up and challenges the conventional wisdom that India's nuclear ambitions were an inward-looking endeavour of secretive technocrats. Read more
Seema Sirohi joins Milan this week to unpack the long and complicated history of U.S.-India relations over the last three decades and how the United States has come to view India a ... Read more
Seema Sirohi joins Milan this week to unpack the long and complicated history of U.S.-India relations over the last three decades and how the United States has come to view India as an essential partner as opposed to a strategic problem. Read more
Happymon Jacob and Sameer Lalwani join Milan to give their opposing takes on whether India can start to break away from Russia one year after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Read more
Happymon Jacob and Sameer Lalwani join Milan to give their opposing takes on whether India can start to break away from Russia one year after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Read more
Dipankar Ghose from the Hindustan Times joins Milan to discuss the Bharat Jodo Yatra, its impact on the Congress Party's electoral fortunes, and Rahul Gandhi's image. Read more
Dipankar Ghose from the Hindustan Times joins Milan to discuss the Bharat Jodo Yatra, its impact on the Congress Party's electoral fortunes, and Rahul Gandhi's image. Read more
Pranay Kotasthane kicks off Season 9 of Grand Tamasha with Milan with a lively discussion on the role and capacity of the Indian state, ideology in Indian politics, and pro-busines ... Read more
Pranay Kotasthane kicks off Season 9 of Grand Tamasha with Milan with a lively discussion on the role and capacity of the Indian state, ideology in Indian politics, and pro-business versus pro-market policies. Read more
One of the blessings (though it sometimes feels like a curse) of hosting Grand Tamasha, Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy, is that our host Milan Vaishnav end ... Read more
One of the blessings (though it sometimes feels like a curse) of hosting Grand Tamasha, Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy, is that our host Milan Vaishnav ends up reading a ton of books and interviewing many authors. In what we hope will become an annual holiday tradition, Milan has made a list of his top three India reads of the year, based on some of the books we’ve highlighted on the show’s recently wrapped eighth season. Read more
