Ideas of India

Today's guest is Rohit De, who is an associate professor of history at Yale University. His recent book, A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic, is an excellent look at how the constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. Rohit details how those on the margins of society, like butchers and prostitutes, or drinkers and traders, made claims using the constitution after India's founding and shaped India's constitutional culture. I had a chance to speak with Rohit about the four cases he makes in the book. We talked about how individuals asserted their rights against an oppressive, regulatory, and socialist state that had criminalized their daily activities and infringed on their ability to carry on their profession. We also had a chance to talk about Indian constitutionalism, economic planning and controls during the Nehruvian socialism, the meaning of constitutional franchise, constitutional symbolism during the citizenship amendment protests in India, Rohit's intellectual journey, and much more. Full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/tag/ideas-of-india-podcast/ Connect with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan

Today my guest is Vijayendra Rao, or as he's known, Biju Rao, a lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. His recent book coauthored with professor Paromita Sanyal called Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies, is an excellent study of citizens voice in India's Gram Sabhas, or village assemblies, which are also the largest deliberative institution in human history. I had a chance to speak with Biju about deliberative democracy in India, federalism and local governments, conducting ethnographic research, what it means to be a development economist, the relevance of methodology and history, and much more. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Biju on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

Viral Acharya, C.V. Starr Professor of Economics and former RBI Deputy Governor, discusses fiscal dominance, banking reform, and restoring central bank independence. He covers risks from government borrowing, a blueprint for reprivatizing public banks, challenges from informal markets, and the role of technocrats and ideology in India’s policy shift.

My guest today is Sriya Iyer, a Bibby Fellow and College Lecturer at St Catharine's College and Affiliated Lecturer and Janeway Fellow at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge. Her recent book, The Economics of Religion in India is an excellent survey of her work on religion in India, from the economic point of view, studied using the tools of economics. In this book Sriya analyzes provisioning of religious and non-religious services by religious organizations in India, ethnic conflict, riots, competition between religious organization, and religious education. This work is extremely insightful and sheds light to understand more recent trends of nationalism in India. In this episode we cover her work on the economics of religion, caste, the rise of the BJP and Hindu nationalism, her intellectual influences, and much more. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

Anuj is a professor at the Jindal Global Law School. And his recent book, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India is an excellent account of the development and failure of the Public Interest Litigation movement. In this book Anuj details the big PIL cases in the last few decades – concerning pollution of the Taj Mahal, pollution of river Ganges, as well as cases dealing with vehicular pollution, deindustrialization and slum demolitions in Delhi. His analysis brings out two implications of the PIL movement on India – one on Indian citizens, especially the poor, because of arbitrary and draconian orders of the court. And the toll the PIL movement has taken on the Indian judiciary and its reputation. I had a chance to speak with Anuj about the relaxation of locus standi requirements and procedural constraints on the judiciary in India since the 1980s; about the current state of Supreme Court, ruled more by whim than by law, the work of a legal anthropologist, his intellectual influences, and much more. This conversation was recorded before the Prashant Bhushan contempt of court case. But Anuj's ideas and research also help explain these recent trends in the Indian judiciary. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

Dinyar Patel an Assistant Professor of South Asian History at the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research and a research affiliate at the Mittal Institute at Harvard University. His latest book, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, is an excellent biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, a foundational figure in the building of modern-day India. I had a chance to speak with Dinyar about the trajectory of Indian nationalism, the ideas that influenced Naoroji, the difference between Naoroji and his contemporaries like fellow parsi and British MP Mancherjee Bhownagree, Naoroji's correspondence with radical socialist Henry Hyndman, Dinyar's intellectual and professional journey, and much more. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

Welcome to Ideas of India, a podcast where we examine academic thinking that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan. Today, my guest is Madhav Khosla, associate professor of political science at Ashoka University and the Ambedkar Visiting Associate Professor at Columbia Law School. His latest book, India's Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy, details the main ideas or traditions of thought that informed the Indian constitutional project and discusses how the framing of the Constitution changed India's trajectory. In his book, Madhav talks about the decision of the framers to have a very long and codified Constitution as a pedagogical project. He argues that the framers centralized power to fight localism and parochialism. And we spoke about the framers' idea of representation in a society fragmented by religion and caste, with the backdrop of Partition, and the relevance of those choices today. I had a chance to talk about these themes, the link between India's founding and its constitutional troubles today, the framers of the Constitution, Madhav's intellectual influences, and much more. This conversation was recorded in person in February, before the COVID pandemic. But Madhav's book on the founding is unlikely to lose its relevance anytime soon. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!

Welcome to Ideas Of India, where we examine the academic ideas that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan, and I'm an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. My guest today is Ajay Shah, professor of economics at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. Over the years I've learned a lot from Ajay's academic and policy-oriented research on India, which is written at the intersection of economics, law, and public administration. His latest book, In Service of the Republic: The Art and Science of Economic Policy, co-authored with Prof. Vijay Kelkar, is an excellent overview of their interdisciplinary approach to policy in India. An important theme in the book is that market failure in itself does not justify state intervention. And between market failure and government intervention we must examine state capacity, the incentives of political actors, and the checks and balances provided by the larger institutional framework. While Ajay used to be more focused on technical aspects of economics and about where markets can fail, now his focus is on working through the rules and institutional arrangements through which we govern ourselves. In addition to the ideas in the book, Ajay and I talk about this evolution in his thinking, his first-hand experience with policy making, his journey as an economist, major influences, and much more. Full transcript of this episode Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox!