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PODCAST

Ideas of India

Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Through conversations with top thinkers in the social sciences and beyond, economist Shruti Rajagopalan explores the ideas that will propel India forward.

science social sciences

All Episodes

01:47:09

Pranay Kotasthane on the Political Economy of Rare...

Ideas of India ·

2026/02/26

Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme. Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi, a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co-author of - Missing in Action: Why Should You Care About Public Policy, When the Chips are Down, and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens. We

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01:41:52

Nachiket Mor on Rethinking India's Healthcare System

Ideas of India ·

2026/02/12

Today my guest is Nachiket Mor, a health economist whose work focuses on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a visiting scientist at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore, and a commissioner and author on the Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India's Health System, which published its final report in The Lancet in January 2026. We talked about the

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01:19:50

Akshay Jaitly on the Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm

Ideas of India ·

2026/01/29

Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly, the author of the recent book, Trilegal: The Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm. He is one of the founders of Trilegal and specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting. We talked about how Trilegal grew in the context of India's market liberalization and sectoral reforms, different partnership structures, delegated legislation, regulatory

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01:35:54

Renuka Sane on Regulatory Frameworks, Rule of Law,...

Ideas of India ·

2026/01/15

Today my guest is Renuka Sane who is the managing director of Managing Director of Trustbridge. An institution that seeks to improve India's business environment by improving the rule of law. Renuka was a member of many expert committees including: the Task Force of Experts set up by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation; the research team of the Bankruptcy Legislative Reforms Commission; the Pension Advisory Committee of the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority; and the Working Group

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01:27:59

Snigdha Poonam on the Political Economy of...

Ideas of India ·

2026/01/02

Today my guest is Snigdha Poonam who is a journalist and writer. She is the author of the new book Scamlands and also the author of the 2018 award winning book Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World. We talked about the scam industrial complex in different states like Jharkhand, Assam and Tamil Nadu in India, the interaction between the scam economy and the formal economy, the transnational scams in China and Cambodia and how they are connected to India, the aspirations and traumas

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01:10:36

2025 in Review

Ideas of India ·

2025/12/23

Shruti and Ideas of India producer Dallas Floer sit down for the 2025 end-of-year episode. They look back at key themes and top episodes from the past year, address listener questions, and look forward to what's in store for Shruti and the show in 2026. Recorded December 16th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to

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54:10

Ammu Lavanya on How Foreign Capital Changed Indian...

Ideas of India ·

2025/12/04

Our seventh and final scholar in the series is Ammu Lavanya, a PhD candidate in Economics at George Washington University. Her research is in the areas of International Finance, Monetary Economics, Empirical Banking and Financial History. We spoke about her job market paper titled International Financial Flows, Credit Allocation and Productivity. We talked about financial liberalization in India, the 2004 banking reform that increased the ceiling on raising foreign equity its impact on market

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47:31

Nayantara Biswas on Demand- and Supply-Side...

Ideas of India ·

2025/11/20

Our sixth scholar in the series is Nayantara Biswas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Clark University. Her research focuses on health equity impact evaluations of small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies. We spoke about dissertation titled, The Impact of Social Policies on Reproductive Health, Maternal Employment, and Child Health: Evidence from India. We talked about demand side versus supply

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48:54

Karthik Narayan on Measuring the Effects of...

Ideas of India ·

2025/11/06

Our fifth scholar in the series is Karthik Narayan, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Nuffield College and at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. His research focuses on monetary policy, macroeconomics and finance in developing countries. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Macroeconomic Effects of Scheduled and Unscheduled Monetary Policy Surprises. We talked about how the Reserve Bank of India makes and announces its policies, its impact on interest rates,

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42:49

Asad Tariq on Electoral Redistricting and Public...

Ideas of India ·

2025/10/23

Our fourth scholar in the series is Asad Tariq, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with a particular interest in religion, politics and public service delivery in India. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Constituencies of Change: Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India. We talked about the 2008 delimitation exercise, especially at the state level,

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51:24

Chetana Sabnis on The Intimacy Contract and the...

Ideas of India ·

2025/10/09

Our third scholar in the series is Chetana Sabnis, who is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on how states regulate intimate relationships and construct hierarchies of familial belonging. We spoke about her job market paper titled, The Intimacy Contract in Action: How Indian Courts Determine which Extramarital Relationships Deserve Recognition. We talked about extramarital affairs, polygamous relationships, Uniform Civil Code, social

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38:01

Sunny Rai on Using Large Language Models to...

Ideas of India ·

2025/09/25

Our second scholar in the series is Sunny Rai, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi. Her research focuses on misinformation, mental health and cross-cultural variations in human language. We spoke about her co-authored job market paper titled, Social Norms in Cinema: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Shame, Pride and Prejudice. We talked about depictions of

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47:41

Kartik Srivastava on Referral-Based Hiring, Caste...

Ideas of India ·

2025/09/11

Our first scholar in the series is Kartik Srivastava, who is a PhD candidate at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Before this, he received his bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he majored in Economics and Engineering Sciences. His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Familiar strangers: Evidence from referral-based hiring experiments in India. We talked his large-scale experiment at a

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01:20:03

Narayani Basu on K. M. Panikkar: India’s Impossible Man

Ideas of India ·

2025/08/28

Today my guest is Narayani Basu, who is a historian and the author of the latest book, A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K. M. Panikkar. Her last book was a biography of V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India. We talked about KM Panikkar, his comparison with VP Menon, the Indian nationalist movement in the interwar years, the origins of India’s diplomatic relationship with China, Pannikar’s Zionism and much more. Recorded August 1st, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful

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01:29:25

Yamini Aiyar Schools Us on Education Policy in India

Ideas of India ·

2025/08/14

Today my guest is Yamini Aiyar, who is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the author of the recent book Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi’s Schools. Her main research interests are contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, and federalism. We talked about the challenges of education policy and welfare in India, the lack of agency experienced by school administrators and teachers, the role of local governments in

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01:28:44

Rathin Roy on How India Slices the Fiscal Pie

Ideas of India ·

2025/07/31

Today my guest is Rathin Roy, who's a Distinguished Fellow at the Kautilya School of Public Policy and a Visiting Senior Fellow at ODI Global. His main research interests are political economy, public finance, and development economics, and he also served on the 13th Finance Commission. We talked about India's fiscal resources are distributed across states and between the union and state governments, the divergence between rich and poor states, compensatory welfare and its consequences and much

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01:37:48

Chitrakshi Jain and Prashant Reddy T. on the...

Ideas of India ·

2025/07/17

Today my guests are legal scholars Chitrakshi Jain and Prashant Reddy T, the authors of the recent book Tareekh pe Justice, Reforms for India’s District Courts. We talked about the dysfunction in India’s lower courts, opacity in the evaluation of district court judges, the problems with judicial data, and much more. Recorded July 1st, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Chitrakshi on X Follow Prashant on X

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01:22:00

M.R. Sharan Examines Decentralization and Local...

Ideas of India ·

2025/07/03

Today my guest is M.R. Sharan, an assistant professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland College Park. He is the author of numerous papers and the book Last Among Equals: Power, Caste, & Politics in Bihar’s Villages. His main research interests are development economics and political economy. We talked about his research on local government in India, incentives of various political actors and the power structures they inhibit, fiscal federalism,

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01:47:11

Rakesh Mohan Reflects on Dismantling the License...

Ideas of India ·

2025/06/20

Today my guest is Rakesh Mohan. He is the President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. He has previously served as Executive Director on the Board of the International Monetary Fund and as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. We talked about his work with the Government of India since the 1980s, especially dismantling the infamous License Permit Raj during the 1991 reforms, his work on urbanization and infrastructure, the kinds of

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01:20:29

Ramachandra Guha on the Origins of Indian...

Ideas of India ·

2025/06/05

Today my guest is environmental scholar, historian and biographer Ramachandra Guha. He is the author of a number of books, including a two-volume biography of Gandhi and the award-winning book “India After Gandhi.” We talked about his latest book, "Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism.” We spoke about global versus local commons, bottom up approach to environmentalism in India, urbanization, economic growth and technological progress and much more. Recorded May 7th, 2025

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59 results

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