Ideas of India

V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor and economist known for work on finance and derivatives, walks through import substitution as strategic resilience and how it can coexist with exports. He explores rising financialization, why private investment lags, the quirks of India’s futures and options markets, STT design, crypto regulation, and trade-offs in digital public infrastructure.

Rohit De, Yale historian of legal life, and Ornit Shani, historian of citizenship and democratic franchise, explore Assembling India’s Constitution. They trace mass mobilization, the constitution as practice beyond text, provincial legislatures and princely states, public petitions, radio and theater, and how popular ownership shaped legitimacy and ongoing constitutional contestation.

Pranay Kotasthane, deputy director at the Takshashila Institution and chair of the High Tech Geopolitics Programme, researches critical minerals and tech policy. He unpacks why rare earths matter now. He traces China’s processing advantage and geopolitical leverage. He discusses India’s constraints, recycling as a smart alternative, and where targeted industrial policy can help.

Nachiket Mor, a health economist working on system design and reform, discusses India’s layered public and fragmented private healthcare. He talks about policy design failures, upgrading community health workers, why patients move to private care, purchaser–provider splits, insurance design, and using pharmacies and telemedicine to expand access.

Akshay Jaitly, co-founder of Trilegal and author on building a modern Indian law firm, reflects on founding amid 1990s liberalization. He discusses specialization, delegated legislation and regulatory capture. He explains partnership models, lockstep growth, scaling challenges and how Indian legal practices adapted to new markets and cross-border opportunities.

Renuka Sane, Managing Director of TrustBridge and an esteemed economist, dives deep into India's pension landscape and regulatory frameworks. She explains the strengths and weaknesses of defined benefit versus defined contribution systems, critiques the Unified Pension Scheme, and highlights the challenges of expanding pensions to informal workers. The conversation also touches on the importance of regulatory transparency, especially with the Reserve Bank of India, and how well-structured rules can enhance market function and consumer protection.

Snigdha Poonam, a journalist and the author of Scamlands, delves into the intriguing world of scams. She explores how scams have evolved into an organized economy intertwined with formal systems in India, highlighting regions like Jharkhand and Assam. The discussion includes the normalization of scamming within communities, state complicity, and how women are disproportionately affected. Snigdha also uncovers transnational scams, including cybercrime networks and the grim reality of scam slavery in Southeast Asia, linking youthful aspirations to these darker narratives.

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 your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:03) - Listener Questions (00:25:50) - Big Themes and Top Episodes (00:42:21) - Personal Moments (00:46:53) - Looking to 2026 (00:49:47) - Hope or Concern for Next Generation (00:51:45) - Intellectual Mood Around India (00:53:01) - Shruti and Animals (00:56:52) - What's New for 2026 (01:00:07) - The Ideas of India Team (01:05:21) - Thank You's (01:09:49) - Outro

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 value, lending capacity and increasing productivity through credit in India, the difference between private versus state owned banks, and much more. Recorded October 9th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Ammu on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:03:06) - Understanding Capital Inflows and Financial Liberalization (00:04:36) - Concerns Around Foreign Capital and Hot Money Flows (00:07:12) - The Banking Reform and Ownership Landscape in India (00:12:10) - Banks Most Affected and Patterns of Foreign Investment (00:17:05) - Impact on Borrowing Capacity and Lending Behavior (00:19:38) - Productive Lending and Screening Mechanisms (00:25:53) - Managerial Practices and Governance Improvements (00:34:20) - Firm-Level Effects and Data Construction (00:39:50) - Aggregate Effects and Decline in Misallocation (00:45:19) - Implications for Policy and the Future of Liberalization (00:48:42) - Differences Between Public and Private Banks (00:53:15) - Outro

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 side policy interventions in public health, India's maternal health policy landscape, the ASHA workers program, variation across states in policy impact and much more. Recorded August 28th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Nayantara on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:35) - Setting the Stage (00:04:44) - India's Maternal–Child Health Policy Landscape (00:08:29) - Uneven Progress: State Differences, Culture, and Measurement Challenges (00:09:24) - Who Are the ASHA Workers? (00:11:56) - Trust, Access, and the Information Channel (00:14:26) - Pay, Hours, and Unionization: Why Conditions Vary by State (00:16:50) - How Incentives Are Structured (00:21:44) - From Design to Data: Building the District-Level Panel (00:25:20) - We Are Measuring ASHAs—and Something Else (00:26:45) - DiD Simplified: How the Causal Claim Works (00:33:45) - Policy Implications: Where to Invest and How to Train (00:36:53) - Cost-Effectiveness: Supply vs. Demand (00:39:53) - Why Supply-Side Effects Take Time (00:41:50) - Beyond Pregnancy: Anganwadi Daycare and Women's Work (00:46:27) - Outro