Grand Tamasha
Episodes
Unleashing India’s Animal Spirits
07 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Leaders come and go, but institutions stay forever. This is the central takeaway of a new book by Subhashish Bhadra, Caged Tiger: How Too Much Governm...
The Democratic Dynamism of India's Slums
31 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve spent any time reading books, watching movies about—or traveling to—India—chances are you’ve come across the depiction of an urban...
What’s Happening to India’s Rohingya Refugees?
24 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Rohingya people have suffered decades of persecution in Myanmar, most recently in 2017 when the country’s security forces launched a major crack...
The Congress Comeback in Karnataka
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On May 13, the Congress Party notched a major election win—a decisive single-party majority in the southern state of Karnataka—earning the highest...
Opening the Black Box of India’s Internal Security State
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since Independence, the Indian state has grappled with a variety of internal security challenges—insurgencies, terrorist attacks, caste and communal...
Demography, Democracy, and India’s Destiny?
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At long last, we come to that time in every Grand Tamasha season where Milan stops to round up the last news on Indian politics and policy with two lo...
The Mythmaking of Nehru’s India
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nonalignment, secularism, socialism, democracy, high modernism—these are all ideas that students of India have long associated with India’s first ...
Ramachandra Guha Revisits India After Gandhi
19 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Find a list of the defining books about India published in the last 75 years and there’s one book that will show up on list after list after list—...
Is India’s Moment a Mirage?
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today is a big new book on India by the economist Ashoka Mody. Mody is an economic historian at Pr...
The Aftermath of the Adani Affair
05 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Few stories have captured more headlines in India this year than the saga of Gautam Adani. Adani is CEO of the Adani Group and a regular fixture on th...
How Bureaucracy Can Work for the Poor
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the decades, India has developed a reputation for having a strong society but a weak state. This bureaucratic, lumbering behemoth has especially ...
The Untold Global Backstory of India's Nuclear Program
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
India's nuclear program is often conceived as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. But a new book by the scholar Jayita Sarkar, Plough...
The Long and Winding Road of U.S.-India Relations
15 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thirty years ago, Seema Sirohi first moved to Washington as a journalist charged with covering India’s relationship with the United States. At the t...
Age of Vice: When Art Meets Life
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Age of Vice is the blockbuster new novel by the author Deepti Kapoor. It’s a love story, wrapped inside a tale of capitalism run amok, wrapped insid...
A Portrait of India's Parliament
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Can India Break Away From Russia?
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On February 24, the world will commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The ongoing war has fueled considerable debate...
Can India Lead From the Front?
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, Ashley J. Tellis published an important paper in which he unpacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for India to become a leading, rathe...
Adding Up India's Budget
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her government’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget. As in years past, the entire analyst cl...
The Congress Party's Quest for Relevance
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Congress Party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra has spent more than 120 days traveling the length of India from the southern city of Kanniyakumari to the nor...
India's Tryst With Policymaking
25 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After a short holiday break, this week we kick off the ninth season of Grand Tamasha. Milan’s guest on the show is Pranay Kotasthane, author of the ...
Grand Tamasha Unveils the Best Books of 2022
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
G20, State Elections, and the Future of the Congress Party
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To commemorate the season finale of Season Eight of Grand Tamasha, Milan welcomes back show regulars Sadanand Dhume (American Enterprise Institute and...
A Test of the BJP’s Dominance in Gujarat
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 count...
Previewing India’s G20 Agenda
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In December, India will assume the presidency of the G20, an international forum comprising the world’s twenty largest economies. It’s India’s f...
Indian Media's Moment of Reckoning
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A recent controversy involving the online news site the Wire and the tech giant Meta has sparked a new debate on the media in India. The recent contro...
How Rising Powers Can Make—Or Break—International Order
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why do rising powers on the global stage sometimes challenge an international order that enables their growth, yet at other times support an order tha...
Inside the COP27 Showdown
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, climate negotiators and world leaders from around 200 countries are descending on the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el Sheikh for COP27—t...
India’s Hidden Treatise on Statecraft
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 Ra...
Southern Asia's Nuclear Future With Ashley J. Tellis
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The competitive and often antagonistic relationships between China, India, and Pakistan have roots that predate their possession of nuclear weaponry. ...
Making the Indian Economy Work for Women
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 journal...
Congress Drama, Indian Diplomacy, and the Diaspora
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 dev...
Rohini Nilekani on the Secret to Successful Governance
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 fo...
Rearranging Marriage in Modern India
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India is a moving account of love in contemporary India. The book’s author, Mansi Choksi, follows thre...
South Asia's Economic Turmoil
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In country after country in South Asia, we are seeing worrying signs of economic turmoil and political upheaval. Earlier this year, Pakistani Prime Mi...
When and Why Do India and Pakistan Fight
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since their mutual independence in 1947, India and Pakistan have been locked into a fierce rivalry that shows no signs of abating anytime soon. But a...
How China Sees India With Ambassador Shyam Saran
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we kick off the eighth season of Grand Tamasha with a very special guest. On the season premiere, Milan sits down with Ambassador Shyam Sara...
Season Finale: Where is Indian Foreign Policy Going?
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This season, in twenty episodes, Grand Tamasha has covered a lot of ground—from the war in Ukraine, to the UP elections, and India’s water crisis....
How Five-Year Plans Shaped India's Economy—and Democracy
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, soon after coming to power, the Narendra Modi government decided to abolish India’s decades-old Planning Commission, replacing it with a ne...
What Kind of World Power Does India Want to Be?
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of world power does India want to be? Few questions have been asked as often or as intensely since India’s economic take-off in the early ...
The Indo-Australian Vote and Milan’s Delhi Reunion
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the weekend, Australian voters elected a new government with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Anthony Albanese at the helm, ousting the rulin...
Inside Sri Lanka's Economic Meltdown
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sri Lanka has been the site of dramatic economic and political upheaval over the past several weeks as years of economic mismanagement have resulted i...
Mr. Modi Goes to Europe
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently completed a three-country, whirlwind tour of Europe. The trip began in Germany, where Modi met with Germa...
Pakistan After Imran Khan
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On April 11, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted from office, having suffered defeat in a dramatic no confidence vote in the national assem...
U.S.-India Ties After the ‘2+2’ Summit
27 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Two weeks ago, the foreign and defense ministers of the United States and India met in Washington for the fourth annual U.S.-India “2+2” Dialogue....
Making Development Work for the Poor
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most vexed questions in development studies is why the poor often receive such poor government services. The development literature is litt...
Religious Polarization in Karnataka
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past two months, the southern Indian state of Karnataka has been the site of significant religious tensions as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJ...
Democracy and Anti-Corruption Protests in India
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Ideas Matter: Democracy and Corruption in India is the title of a new book by the author Bilal Baloch. The book provides a framework for understa...
Russia, China, and Pivotal State Elections
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The last few weeks have seen a flurry of activity on the Indian politics and policy front. India has found itself front and center in the Ukraine cris...
How to Fix India’s Water Crisis
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Water is everywhere—in the highest mountains, in the deepest ocean, in the Ganga, in sewers, within you, and in the air. But the glass of water i...
The Road to the 2024 Election Starts Now
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the results of five assembly elections were announced and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed i...
How Will the Ukraine Crisis Impact India’s Economy?
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the Indian government revealed that India’s economy expanded by 5.4 percent in the third quarter of the current fiscal year, which was we...
India's High-Wire Act on Russia-Ukraine
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Late last week, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, deploying the might of the Russian military to conduct a hostile takeover o...
Nehru's Long Shadow Over India
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died nearly six decades ago, but it is remarkable how much his legacy continues to color modern Indi...
Breaking Down India’s Budget
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On February 1, the Union government presented its budget for the upcoming fiscal year—setting the tone for its midterm pivot as the government turn...
Encore: How Shah Rukh Khan Inspires Female Empowerment
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Due to scheduling conflicts, there is no new episode of Grand Tamasha this week. A new episode of Grand Tamasha will air next Tuesday at 9:00 PM EST/W...
India’s Future in a Changing Global Order
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
India’s Path to Power: Strategy in a World Adrift is a manifesto written by eight of India’s leading public intellectuals that seeks to chart a fu...
Can India Beat COVID in 2022?
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Sunday, January 23, India reported more than 333,000 active COVID cases while the official number of fatalities surpassed 500 deaths. What is the s...
The State, the Economy, and the Art of Podcasting
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we conclude Season Six of Grand Tamasha with a bang. Before Milan was a podcast host, he was a podcast consumer. And two of his favorite In...
How Shah Rukh Khan Inspires Female Empowerment
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most of our listeners do not need an introduction to the Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. You’ve watched his movies. You’ve sung the songs his ...
Tibet: India and China's 'Three-Body Problem' in the Himalayas
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ambassador Nirupama Rao has had the kind of career that every Indian Foreign Service aspirant dreams of. In 2011, she retired as foreign secretary to ...
Unpacking the Modi Government's Farm Law Reversal
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In September 2020, India’s Parliament passed three farm reform bills that the government claimed would radically change the way in which agriculture...
Modi's Farm Law Reversal, India-China, and Trade Policy
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are nearly done with our sixth season of Grand Tamasha and we have been shamefully overdue in scheduling a news round-up for the Fall.To set things...
What COP26 Means for India—and the World
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After two, torturous weeks of around-the-clock negotiations at the COP26 Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, diplomats from nearly 200 countries agreed to ac...
The Rural Roots of Citizenship and Democracy in India
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For more than fifteen years, the scholar Mukulika Banerjee has been deeply embedded in the social and political life of two villages in the state of W...
How the Pulwama Case was Cracked
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On February 14, 2019, a suicide bomber crashed into an Indian paramilitary convoy in Pulwama, Kashmir, killing forty Indian soldiers. The attack was t...
Inside the Secret World of South Asia's Spies
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and the ISI is the brand new book by investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark. Sp...
Joanna Slater on the Pivotal Stories She Covered in India for the Washington Post
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joanna Slater is a veteran journalist who served as the Washington Post India bureau chief based in New Delhi from 2018-2021. She was posted there dur...
How India Can Get to Net Zero Emissions
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a few weeks, climate negotiators from around the world will descend on Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, al...
Narendra Modi and India's New Political System
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot’s new book, Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, is a comprehensive e...
The Looming Cloud of Sanctions Over U.S.-India Relations
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his maiden visit to Washington under the new Biden administration. It was all sunlight and good vi...
The Biden-Modi Summit and the Future of U.S.-India Relations
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Washington for his first in-person meeting in the American capital with U.S. President Joe B...
What the Taliban Takeover Means for India
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a month since the fall of Kabul and the sudden Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. In the intervening weeks, policymakers the world over have...
Kanti Bajpai on Why China and India Are Not Friends
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One year ago, Chinese and Indian forces traded blows in the remote Galwan Valley—resulting in the first deaths along the Line of Actual Control sinc...
Neha Sahgal on Religion and Identity in Contemporary India
30 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last two-and-a-half years, Milan and his guests have spent a lot of time on the podcast talking about some of the biggest questions facing In...
Arora Akanksha on Her Unlikely Quest to Run the United Nations
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Note: Milan’s interview with Arora Akanksha took place on June 18. On June 19, the United Nations General Assembly formally approved a second term f...
Niha Masih on Reporting on India's COVID-19 Crisis
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In India, there are growing signs that the country is slowly exiting the second wave of the COVID crisis as people get back to work, localities lift l...
Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Jonathan Kay on How Indian Americans Live
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A troubling surge in hate crimes and discrimination targeting Asian Americans has hit the headlines in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The violence...
Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan on the political and foreign policy ramifications of India's COVID second wave
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the show, Milan is joined by Grand Tamasha news round-up regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street...
Rachel Brulé on Gender Quotas and Gender Inequality in India
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1990s, India legislated sweeping new gender quotas in local government in the hopes that women’s political empowerment would help to re...
Samanth Subramanian on India’s Vaccine Conundrum
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the enduring puzzles about the tragic second wave of COVID is how India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, faces an alarming shortage of ...
Himanshu Jha on the Right to Information Act’s Long and Winding Road
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than fifteen years ago, India’s parliament passed a sweeping piece of legislation known as the Right to Information Act—a law that transforms...
Aditi Phadnis on India's Pivotal State Elections
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Sunday, the highly anticipated results from five state assembly elections across India were announced. These results come at a time of great uncert...
Anup Malani on India’s COVID Second Wave
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It has been a harrowing week for India. The country is reeling under the effects of a devastating second wave of the coronavirus, which is responsible...
Pradeep Gupta on What Makes the Indian Voter Tick
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This month, voters are going to the polls in five Indian states to select the members of their respective state assemblies. These polls are being seen...
Christophe Jaffrelot on India’s First Dictatorship
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most people who work on India regularly refer to India as the world’s largest democracy and the most enduring democracy in the developing world. How...
Darshana Baruah on the Indian Ocean Imperative
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few regions of the world have gotten more attention in the first few months of the Biden administration than Asia. And, within Asia, top leaders from ...
Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu on U.S.-India Relations in the Biden Era
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Biden administration has been in office for just a little over two months but India has already emerged as an important foreign policy priority fo...
Jairam Ramesh on the Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rasputin, Lucifer, Evil Genius, Sombre Porcupine, The World’s Most Hated Diplomat. These are just some of the choice names that people have given fo...
Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan on the Quad, Indian Democracy, and Modi's Economic Reforms
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the podcast, Milan is joined once more by Grand Tamasha “news round-up” regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute...
Myra MacDonald on the India-Pakistan Battle for Siachen
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The contested borders between India, China, and Pakistan render the Himalayas one of the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints in the year...
Shoumitro Chatterjee and Mekhala Krishnamurthy on the Economics (and Politics) of India’s New Farm Laws
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In September 2020, Indian lawmakers approved three controversial agriculture bills amidst an uproar on the floor of Parliament. That uproar would soon...
Sonia Faleiro on Life and Death in India’s Heartland
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One night in the summer of 2014, two teenage girls living in a remote village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh went missing. Hours later, th...
Meenakshi Ahamed on U.S.-India Relations from Truman to Trump
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As a new administration takes office in Washington, followers of the U.S.-India relationship are eagerly anticipating what shape ties between these tw...
Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur on How Indian Americans View India
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Indian Americans are now the second-largest immigrant group in the United States. Their growing political influence and their courtship by the Indian ...
Sukumar Ranganathan on India’s Budget Breakthrough
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, the Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented one of the most highly anticipated Indian budgets in recent memory. Facing a globa...
Vinay Sitapati on the Political History of the BJP Before Modi
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the show, Milan sits down with Vinay Sitapati, political scientist and author of the blockbuster new book, Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Mod...
Ravinder Kaur on India’s “Brand New Nation”
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By now, we are all familiar with the catch phrases, colorful billboards, and slick branding: Incredible India. India Shining. Make in India. New India...
Chinmay Tumbe on India's Age of Pandemics: Then and Now
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although this history has largely been forgotten today, India was the epicenter of three major pandemics throughout the 19th and early 20th century. ...
Evan Feigenbaum on Asia's Fragmented Future
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Of the many questions being asked about U.S. president-elect Joe Biden’s foreign policy, chief among them is how the new president might handle rela...
Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan on Biden, Bihar, and U.S.-India Bonhomie
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the world saw two highly anticipated elections come to an end. The never-ending 2020 U.S. presidential election finally came to a close—w...