This past week, voters in the state of Gujarat went to the polls to select the 182 newest members of the state assembly. While the votes will be counted on December 8, there is an ... Read more
This past week, voters in the state of Gujarat went to the polls to select the 182 newest members of the state assembly. While the votes will be counted on December 8, there is an aura of inevitability around the result; journalists, pundits, and polls all point toward a decisive victory by the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi. But this year’s contest is not without its fair share of intrigue. In what has traditionally been a two-party contest between the BJP and the Congress Party, this year Gujarat features an ambitious new entrant in the form of the Aam Aadmi Party. To talk more about this year’s election and what it signifies, Milan is joined on the show this week by the journalist Mahesh Langa. Mahesh is a veteran journalist who currently serves as the Gujarat correspondent for the Hindu. He previously covered the state for the Hindustan Times. The two discuss the significance of the 2022 race, AAP’s pitch to voters, and the Congress’ listless campaign. Plus, the two discuss the enduring legacy of the 2002 riots and the salience of the “Gujarat Model.” Read more
In December, India will assume the presidency of the G20, an international forum comprising the world’s twenty largest economies. It’s India’s first time chairing the group, and it ... Read more
In December, India will assume the presidency of the G20, an international forum comprising the world’s twenty largest economies. It’s India’s first time chairing the group, and it represents a major diplomatic and political opportunity for the government to shape perceptions around India’s role in the world and to make headway on some of its key priorities heading into 2024, a general election year. To discuss India’s agenda at the G20 and its approach to multilateralism more generally, Milan is joined on the show this week by the scholar Karthik Nachiappan. Karthik is a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and a nonresident senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa. Karthik is the author of the book, Does India Negotiate?, which revises the conventional narrative that India’s multilateral behavior is prickly, obstructionist, and defensive. Milan and Karthik discuss India’s emerging G20 agenda, its attitude toward existing multilateral institutions, and what its behavior at the recent COP27 climate summit tells us about its evolving approach. Plus, the two discuss India’s digital soft power ambitions and how those aims could conflict with international concerns about data localization. Read more
Why do rising powers on the global stage sometimes challenge an international order that enables their growth, yet at other times support an order that constrains them? This is the ... Read more
Why do rising powers on the global stage sometimes challenge an international order that enables their growth, yet at other times support an order that constrains them? This is the core question motivating a big, new book on international order by political scientist Rohan Mukherjee. The book is titled, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions, and it is a comprehensive study of conflict and cooperation as new powers join the global arena. The book focuses on how international institutions shape the choices of rising states as they pursue equal status with established powers. Rohan is an assistant professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. To talk more about his new book, Rohan joins Milan on the show this week from his office in London. The two discuss China’s surprisingly cooperative behavior in the post-Cold War era, India’s grievances with the liberal international order, and the importance of status concerns in international relations. Plus, Milan and Rohan discuss India’s approach to the nuclear nonproliferation regime during the Cold War, U.S. policies to restrain China, and the implications of a more isolationist U.S. foreign policy for rising powers. Read more
Semafor's Bill Spindle joins Milan to discuss the showdown between rich and poor nations at COP27 this week, India's opportunity to play a pivotal role in climate diplomacy, and wh ... Read more
Semafor's Bill Spindle joins Milan to discuss the showdown between rich and poor nations at COP27 this week, India's opportunity to play a pivotal role in climate diplomacy, and whether U.S.-China tensions will cloud the conference. This week, climate negotiators and world leaders from around 200 countries are descending on the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el Sheikh for COP27—the twenty-seventh gathering of the 197 nations that signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change back in 1992. As proceedings get underway, a huge question mark hangs over this year’s climate summit. Rich nations are pushing for poor countries to announce greater cuts to carbon emissions, but developing countries claim that their developed counterparts have stiffed them when it comes to climate finance. To make sense of this dynamic at this year’s gathering and to explore the unique role India plays, journalist Bill Spindle joins Milan on the show this week. Bill is the climate and energy editor at the new journalism start-up, Semafor. He’s also a ten-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal, where he served as South Asia Bureau Chief from 2016 to 2020. Bill has spent the last year crisscrossing the length and breadth of India reporting on the transformation of India’s energy sector—a journey he documented on Substack. Bill and Milan discuss the developed vs. developing country deadlock that imperils the COP27 proceedings, India’s opportunity to play a leadership role, and the continuing uncertainty over U.S.-China relations. Plus, the two discuss Bill’s year-long adventure traveling 8,000 kilometers across India by train. Read more
Rahul Sagar returns to Grand Tamasha to talk to Milan about the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India and the man behind them, Madhava Rao. Regular Grand Tamasha l ... Read more
Rahul Sagar returns to Grand Tamasha to talk to Milan about the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India and the man behind them, Madhava Rao. Regular Grand Tamasha listeners will recall that Milan had the scholar Rahul Sagar on the podcast several months ago to talk about his new book, To Raise a Fallen People: How Nineteenth-Century Indians Saw Their World and Shaped Ours. That book was a look at the nineteenth-century intellectual roots of India’s foreign policy strategy and its approach to great power politics. And now Rahul has another book out—this one is called, The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of Government. Rahul returns to the podcast this week to talk to Milan about an important but largely forgotten set of lectures that represented the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India. Plus. Milan and Rahul talk about the legacy of India’s princely states, the unique historical figure of Madhava Rao, and why the latter’s treatise has been largely ignored—until today. Read more
Ashley J. Tellis is with Milan this week to talk the transformations of the nuclear strategies and capabilities of India, China, and Pakistan. Plus, the two discuss U.S. policy opt ... Read more
Ashley J. Tellis is with Milan this week to talk the transformations of the nuclear strategies and capabilities of India, China, and Pakistan. Plus, the two discuss U.S. policy options to manage China’s nuclear modernization and the logic of an India-France-United States nuclear partnership. The competitive and often antagonistic relationships between China, India, and Pakistan have roots that predate their possession of nuclear weaponry. Yet the significant transformation of the nuclear capabilities that is now underway in all three countries simultaneously complicates and mitigates their geopolitical rivalries. This is one of the central arguments advanced by a new report authored by Ashley J. Tellis, the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The report, Striking Asymmetries: Nuclear Transitions in Southern Asia, is an authoritative account of the transitions in the nuclear weapons programs in China, India, and Pakistan over the last two decades. Ashley joins Milan on the show this week to discuss his new report and its implications. Milan and Ashley discuss China’s post-Cold War shift to its conservative nuclear posture, the developmental underpinnings of India’s nuclear program, and Pakistan’s diverse, burgeoning nuclear weapons arsenal. Plus, the two discuss U.S. policy options to manage China’s nuclear modernization and the logic of an India-France-United States nuclear partnership. Read more
Shaili Chopra was a well-known business journalist, working for outlets such as NDTV Profit and ET Now, before she decided to leave prime-time journalism and become an entrepreneur ... Read more
Shaili Chopra was a well-known business journalist, working for outlets such as NDTV Profit and ET Now, before she decided to leave prime-time journalism and become an entrepreneur, launching a new digital media platform—SheThePeople—dedicated to telling the untold stories of women in India and around the world. She has a new book out called, Sisterhood Economy: Of, By, For Wo(men), which distils some of the many lessons that she has learned over the years. The book is based on conversations with more than 500 women—and men—across India and touches on questions from love and marriage to livelihoods and the economy to business and Bollywood. Shaili joins Milan on the show this week to talk about the book’s key messages. The two discuss her radical decision to quit her high-profile job in journalism, the vexing question of women’s labour force participation, and the social norms and conventions governing Indian marriage. Plus, Shaili and Milan talk about the catalytic role technology can play in a woman’s life and why mothers-in-law often get a bad rap. Read more
These days, the world of Indian politics and policy appears to be moving at warp speed—even by Indian standards. To make sense of all the latest developments out of India, this wee ... Read more
These days, the world of Indian politics and policy appears to be moving at warp speed—even by Indian standards. To make sense of all the latest developments out of India, this week Milan is joined by Grand Tamasha regulars—Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal, and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution. The trio discusses three topics. First, they examine the latest drama coming out of the Indian National Congress and discuss the race to take over India’s Grand Old Party. Second, Milan, Sadanand, and Tanvi discuss the key takeaways and controversies from External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s lengthy visit to the United States. And finally, the group unpacks the creeping signs of religious polarization in the Indian diaspora, stretching from Canada to the United Kingdom and to the United States. Plus, the three share the best thing on India they’ve read in the past six months. Read more
Rohini Nilekani is the guest on Grand Tamasha this week to talk about the importance of civil society in good governance. Rohini Nilekani is an author and philanthropist who has ... Read more
Rohini Nilekani is the guest on Grand Tamasha this week to talk about the importance of civil society in good governance. Rohini Nilekani is an author and philanthropist who has worked for over three decades in India’s social sectors. She is the founder of Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation, and she also co-founded Pratham Books, a nonprofit which aims to enable access to reading for millions of children. With her husband Nandan, she is the co-founder and director of EkStep, a nonprofit education platform. Her latest book, Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar (Society, State, and Markets): A Citizen-First Approach, encapsulates many of the lessons she has learned in her years working in the civil society and philanthropic sectors. To talk more about these lessons, Rohini joins Milan on the show this week from Bangalore. The two discuss Rohini’s unlikely start in the world of civic activism, the role technology can play in bringing the state, society, and market into better alignment, and what works to reform urban governance. Plus, the two discuss the state of philanthropy in India and growing concerns about closing space for civil society in India. Read more
Mansi Choksi is on the podcast this week to talk about modern love in a changing India, how love and politics intersect, and what her book tells us about India’s social fault lines ... Read more
Mansi Choksi is on the podcast this week to talk about modern love in a changing India, how love and politics intersect, and what her book tells us about India’s social fault lines. The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India is a moving account of love in contemporary India. The book’s author, Mansi Choksi, follows three couples across the heartland of India as they navigate boundaries—of caste, class, religion, and traditional gender norms. What follows is a tale of romance, endurance, violence, and occasionally heartbreak. The Newlyweds does what most social science texts simply cannot—it brings us into the private lives of young people in love in India. Mansi’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, the New Yorker, National Geographic, Slate and the Atlantic. This week, she joins Milan on the podcast to talk about modern love in a changing India, how love and politics intersect, and what her book tells us about India’s social fault lines. Plus, Milan and Mansi discuss life in “Tier Two” India. Read more
