All Things Policy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a packed three-day State visit to the US recently. In this episode of All Things Policy, Takshashila's Sachin Kalbag and Yusuf Unjhawala break down the strategic and tactical import of one of the "most consequential friendships" of the 21st century.

According to a report by United Nations, India had the largest diaspora population in the world with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020. Several of these people left for potential job opportunities in different countries. Emigration can be one of the solutions to address our unemployment crisis. Sudisha Mishra and Sridhar Krishna invite Avinash KS from Karnataka Skill Development Corporation to understand what the government is doing to promote and facilitate emigration.

Can information truly serve as a natural and universal source of empowerment? How do caste, class, and gender shape the definition, production, and leveraging of information? What unintended consequences might arise if we place excessive trust in the power of information? Sarthak Pradhan talks with Janaki Srinivasan, the author of the recently launched book "The Political Lives of Information." The book referred to in the podcast can be found here.

In this episode of All Things Policy, Saurabh Todi, Pranay Kotasthane, Bharat Reddy, and Aditya Ramanathan discuss the announcements in the India-US joint statement in the field of Semiconductors, Advanced Telecommunications, and Space.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is the premier investigation agency of the Government of India. The CBI is unique in as much as it sits at the confluence of law enforcement, politics, and the rule of law in India. In this episode of Police Chowki, Javeed Ahmad (ex-IPS & Joint Director, CBI) speaks to Shrikrishna Upadhyaya about the role and function of the CBI, the contentious issues around the misuse of CBI to target political opponents, the conflict of CBI with the federal structure of India, its constitutionality or the lack of it, why the public servants in India are scared of the 3Cs: CBI, CVC and CAG and more.

Ever since US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Beijing was postponed in February this year, analysts and policymakers intensely speculated when the visit would take place. Now, as the much-awaited visit has recently concluded, deliberations surrounding what it achieved are all the news. In this episode, Amit Kumar and Anushka Saxena chime in into these deliberations, to discuss the context of the visit, what respective sides had to say about it, and how this was not the breakthrough in US-China relations many hoped it would be.

In this episode of All Things Policy, Saurabh Todi and Shambhavi Naik discuss the potential of the Bio-economy to drive national economic growth. They discuss avenues for collaboration between India and the US in the field of biotechnology and bio-manufacturing in light of the upcoming state visit of PM Modi.

The costs of training and running a large language model (LLM) were prohibitively expensive, and only a few big tech companies could afford to do it. That understanding has been turned upside down since the time Meta open-sourced their LLM named LLaMA. Satya S Sahu and Bharath Reddy talk about the promises and pitfalls of this move.

China’s security and economic cooperation with Central Asian countries has been deepening over the decades. In May this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new blueprint for ties with the five Central Asian countries. In this episode, Manoj Kewalramani speaks to Temur Umarov from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center to understand the shifting sands of geopolitics in Central Asia.

Women officers make up only 10-11% of police forces on average across states in India. In the fifth episode of Police Chowki - limited series on All Things Policy, Shrikrishna Upadhyaya hosts Javeed Ahmad & Sutapa Sanyal (ex-IPS officers) to discuss the interface between women and police on the one hand and the lives of women serving in the police forces on the other. They discuss the representation of women in police forces, the effectiveness of gender-based reservation policies, and challenge prejudicial notions surrounding women in police workplaces. They also discuss institutional support for women officers and the impact of masculine-heavy police culture on the functioning of women in police.