Grand Tamasha

Scaachi Koul is an Indo-Canadian culture writer at Buzzfeed and the author of the 2017 book of essays, “One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.” For those of you who spend any time on social media, you will know Scaachi is a force of nature--dishing out sharp-witted takes on cultural and political issues from Kamala Harris to the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking. But she’s also written extensively about her Kashmiri identity and her life as an Indian woman growing up in Canada. This week on the podcast, Scaachi joins Milan to discuss her Indo-Canadian upbringing, how politics in Kashmir stirs up family conflict, and the cultural import of “Indian Matchmaking.” She also talks about her unique relationship with her father--a frequent (and humorous) presence in her writing and on her social media feed. Episode notes:Scaachi’s article on the Kamala Harris VP pick.Scaachi’s essay on how Kashmir is dividing her familyScaachi’s 2017 book of essaysScaachi’s take on the Netflix show, “Indian Matchmaking

If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are you are a fan of the podcast, “The Seen and the Unseen.” For 186 episodes and counting, the journalist Amit Varma has been putting together some of the most thoughtful, insightful and eclectic conversations with the best and brightest in India.  This week, Amit joins Milan on the show to reflect on his career as a journalist, author, entrepreneur, podcast host, and--yes--professional poker player. Milan talks to Amit about his libertarian leanings, his views on nationalism, and why exactly India has so few economic reformers.Show notes:1. Amit’s podcasts: “The Seen and the Unseen” and “Econ Central”2. Previous episodes of “The Seen and the Unseen” with Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Karthik Muralidharan, and J.P. Narayan.3. The archives of “Range Rover,” Amit’s poker column for the Economic Times4. A previous episode of “The Seen and the Unseen” in which Amit speaks at length about libertarianism5. Amit’s newsletter, “India Uncut”6. Amit’s Times of India column on nationa

On August 15, 2020, India celebrated its 73rd birthday. To reflect on the state of Indian democracy and to kick off the podcast’s fourth season, Pratap Bhanu Mehta joins Milan for a wide-ranging conversation on India’s past, present, and future.Pratap is a professor of political science at Ashoka University and contributing editor and columnist at the Indian Express. He is a noted author, scholar, and commentator, not to mention arguably India’s finest public intellectual.Pratap and Milan discuss what the COVID crisis says about Indian democracy, the future of secularism in India, the popular yearning for strongman rule, and the maladies plaguing India’s rule of law institutions.  

The police in India, as in America, face a reckoning. From the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests to the Delhi riots and the COVID pandemic, recent events have raised troubling questions about the quality of Indian policing. In 2019, the non-profit Common Cause and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies issued a report on the “Status of Policing in India.” The report is one of the most comprehensive, empirical examinations of the police on record. This week on the show, Vipul Mudgal, the Director of Common Cause, joins Milan to discuss the colonial legacy of the Indian police, the personnel and operational challenges ordinary police officers must confront, and the contested role the police have played during the COVID pandemic. Vipul also outlines a reform blueprint for more effective policing.   Programming note: This is the very last episode of Season Three of Grand Tamasha. As usual, we are going to take a little time off this summer to recharge our batteries and prepare for a brand-new seas

Here’s a hard truth about policy conversations on India: we rarely hear about India’s northeast. In fact, in doing more than 50 episodes of this podcast, not even one has been dedicated to the northeastern region of the country. The Northeast is a region of immense geostrategic importance. It is home to nearly 50 million Indian citizens. It is also home to South Asia's longest running armed conflict, where over 50,000 people have died. And, yet, it is often written off as a footnote, an outlier or part of the periphery. To enlighten us--and to educate us--about this often overlooked corner of India, social activist and indigenous leader Binalakshmi Nepram joins Milan on the show this week. Bina is the Founder of the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network and also serves as Convenor of the Northeast India Women Initiative for Peace. Bina and Milan discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the Northeast, how the region fits into India’s popular imagination, the intense discrimination the region’s citizens endure, and the

Two weeks ago, the Modi government announced a series of economic measures intended to get the Indian economy back on track after the country’s prolonged lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.Over five days, the Finance Minister addressed a series of daily press conferences in which she outlined the government’s plan of action to assist the country’s poorest citizens, reform the country’s regulatory framework, and stimulate new investment.To break down the meaning of these latest moves, Roshan Kishore, Data and Political Economy editor at the Hindustan Times, joins Milan this week on the show. The two discuss India’s long-term economic downturn, the immediate impacts of the nationwide lockdown, the Modi government’s economic relief package, and the state of the political opposition.

This week, Milan sits down with podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution for a special live edition of the Grand Tamasha news round-up. The three discuss India's emerging response to the coronavirus, its economic fallout, and the ramifications for India's foreign policy. The trio also answered viewer questions, recommended their favorite quarantine binge-watches, and debated the role of peas in keema. Watch the livestream here.

YOU'RE INVITED: Join Milan, Tanvi, and Sadanand for a special LIVE episode of Grand Tamasha on Tuesday, May 19, at 11am EST / 8:30pm IST. Tune in as they break down the week's news - and join the live chat to ask questions! Add it to your calendar, and join the live show here.  

This week on the show, Milan is joined by New York Times journalist Sopan Deb--author of the brand-new memoir, Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. Whether it’s Hasan Minhaj’s comedy--OR the spectacle of the “Howdy, Modi” rally in Houston--OR Aarti Shahani’s heartbreaking memoir--listeners of this show know that getting inside the Indian immigrant experience is one of Grand Tamasha’s obsessions. On the surface, Sopan is a successful journalist, comedian, and cultural commentator. But in his new book, he explores a side of his life that existed well below the surface--his estrangement from his parents, the alienation he felt as an immigrant kid in a mostly white New Jersey suburb, and the heartbreak he endured watching his family life not so much fall apart as melt away. Milan and Sopan discuss his toxic family life, his Indian-American coming-of-age story, and his life-changing journey to meet the parents who raised him. YOU'RE INVITED: Join Milan, Tanvi, and Sadanand for a specia

YOU'RE INVITED: Join Milan, Tanvi, and Sadanand for a special LIVE episode of Grand Tamasha on Tuesday, May 19, at 11am EST / 8:30pm IST. Tune in as they break down the week's news - and join the live chat to ask questions! Add it to your calendar, and join the live show here. After a six-week nationwide lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, on May 3rd the Indian government commenced a calibrated relaxation of this unprecedented shutdown. To discuss the economic impacts of the crisis and what steps government can take to cushion the blow, this week on the show Milan welcomes back the economist Arvind Subramanian. Arvind served as the chief economic advisor to the Government of India between 2014-2018 and is currently a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute.Milan speaks with Arvind about how Indian authorities should respond to the economic crisis, the utter failure of global economic cooperation, and whether China’s reputational hit off

In a much cited 2009 essay, economist Lant Pritchett argued that India is not a failed or a failing state, but a flailing one. In Pritchett’s words, India is “a nation-state in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national level remain sound and functional but this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs.”A new book the author and journalist Shankkar Aiyar takes the argument one step further. Aiyar’s new book, The Gated Republic: India’s Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions argues that the failure of India’s public sector to deliver on its most essential functions has created a massive gap, which the private sector has had no choice but to fill.On this week’s episode, Milan speaks with Aiyar about the causes and consequences of the proliferation of India’s “gated republics,” what the COVID-19 crisis reveals about the Indian state, and whether democracy is part of the solution or part of the problem.

This week, Milan sits down with podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution for a special “Happy Hour” edition of the “Grand Tamasha” news round-up.The three discuss how India is faring in its pitched battle against the Coronavirus, the reasons behind festering anti-China sentiment among many Indians across the political spectrum, and the impact COVID-19 is having on India’s domestic politics.Plus, the trio discuss their personal lockdown strategies for staying sane during self-isolation.

India is in the middle of an unprecedented 21-day countrywide lockdown as it tries to contain the growing threat of Coronavirus. This virus has wrought so much fresh destruction but it also has the potential to exacerbate pre-existing inequalities in Indian society.This week on the show, Milan speaks with Amitabh Behar, the Chief Executive Officer of Oxfam India. For seven decades, Oxfam India has been providing humanitarian and development assistance across India in an effort to address gaps in service delivery, gender equity, injustice, and livelihoods.Amitabh and Milan discuss India’s response to the crisis, the precarious lives of India’s urban poor and migrant labor, the pandemic’s particular effects on women, and the connection between entrenched social norms and violence against women.

When it comes to the matter of relations between India and Pakistan, you’ve heard all of the familiar tropes. Two nuclear-armed rivals with hundreds of thousands of troops amassed along a contested border. A Hindu-majority India pre-destined to be at odds with a Muslim-majority Pakistan. A vibrant democracy in the east, a military-dominated polity in the west.A new book by the historian Pallavi Raghavan offers a very different account about relations between these two South Asian rivals in the immediate aftermath of Partition in 1947. Contrary to the conventional doom-and-gloom narrative, Raghavan’s book Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952 shows how amity and a spirit of cordiality infused relations between India and Pakistan in the first five years of their independence.This week on the podcast, Milan speaks with Pallavi about her book and the lessons it holds for today. The two discuss why yet another book on India-Pakistan relations was necessary, how Indi

If you listen to National Public Radio, chances are you’ve heard the journalist Aarti Shahani report on some of the biggest technology stories in the world. Microsoft. Google. Apple. Facebook. Aarti has covered them all.But there’s one story you may not have heard of--and that is Aarti’s own. In a new memoir, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares, Aarti documents her family’s harrowing journey--from Partition-era India to Casablanca, Morocco to Queens, New York.Aarti’s parents came to America with little money in their pockets and no legal documents to remain in the country. Battling poverty, discrimination, and wayward business partners, the Shahani family manages to make it. Until one day, nearly everything falls apart. Aarti’s father was arrested and accused of operating an electronics store that was a front for the Cali drug cartel. What followed was a jail sentence for Aarti’s father in New York’s notorious Riker’s Island prison and a years-long struggle to fight off deportation.This plot sou

In the wake of her mother's untimely death, a young woman from Bangalore--born into a life of privilege--drops everything and travels to the opposite end of India--to the state of Jammu and Kashmir--to search for a long-lost figure from her childhood--an enigmatic Kashmiri man named Bashir Ahmed.What follows is a tale of romance, intrigue, conflict, politics, self-discovery, and tragedy. Readers will find this and much more in the best-selling novel, The Far Field, written by author Madhuri Vijay. The book won the 2019 JCB Prize for Literature, one of India’s most prestigious literary awards. The Washington Post book critic Ron Charles says that The Far Field “offers something essential: a chance to glimpse the lives of distant people captured in prose gorgeous enough to make them indelible — and honest enough to make them real.”This week, Milan speaks with Vijay from her home in Hawaii. They discuss Vijay’s journey as a writer, her decision to set her book in Kashmir, and the surprising connections between h

Since the end of the Cold War, it has become commonplace to view America’s relationship with India through the prism of China. But a new book by the Brookings Institution scholar Tanvi Madan argues that China’s centrality to U.S.-India relations is hardly a product of the past few decades.Tanvi’s new book, Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations during the Cold War, offers a historically grounded yet readable guide to the ways in which China has influenced the trajectory of U.S.-India ties--directly and indirectly--since India’s independence in 1947.This week on the show, Milan and Tanvi discuss the twists and turns in the U.S.-India relationship over the decades, what India’s policy of “non-alignment” really meant, and whether nature and nurture are finally converging to forge a common American and Indian view on China.

In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a list of the 15 most polluted cities in the world. 14 of the 15 were in India. This is a troubling statistic that has been repeated ad nauseam in the media, by environmental advocates, and by concerned citizens of the country. But what are the causes of this environmental crisis, what are the social costs, and what—if anything—can be done about it?To tackle these questions, Milan sits down with Jessica Seddon on this week’s show. Jessica is the Global Lead for Air Quality at the Ross Center for Sustainable Cities at the World Resources Institute and she has spent more than a decade living and working in India on issues related to urbanization, infrastructure, the environment, and decentralization.Milan and Jessica discuss air pollution’s wide-ranging social impacts, why the crisis is so acute in India, the impact of Delhi’s “odd-even” experiment, and what—if anything—policymakers can do to turn the tide against toxic air quality in India’s cities.

This week, Milan sits down with podcast regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution for the first “Grand Tamasha” news round-up of 2020.The three discuss President Trump’s whirlwind, 36-hour visit to India, the ghastly Delhi riots that coincided with his trip, and the prospect of India becoming a political football in America’s 2020 presidential election season.And the trio could not resist talking about Ivanka Trump’s Tal Mahal internet memes, a very strange puppet video, and a Delhi schoolboy who would not let the Secret Service get in the way of his bhangra moves.

If the poor represent a majority of voters in India, why doesn’t this electoral power translate into better quality government services? Why are some vulnerable communities able to secure development from the state while others fail?These are some of the big questions that political scientists Adam Auerbach and Gabi Kruks-Wisner shed light on in this week’s episode of “Grand Tamasha.”Adam is assistant professor in the School of International Service at American University and his new book is called Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums. Gabi is assistant professor of politics and global studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India.Milan talks with Adam and Gabi about citizenship and political leadership in 21st century India, the strategies the poor employ to win access to development, and whether or not their research leaves them optimistic or pessimistic about democracy’s future