Grand Tamasha

When Narendra Modi campaigned for India’s top job in 2014, he contrasted the incumbent Congress Party’s “politics of welfare” with the BJP’s preferred approach, which emphasized the “politics of growth.” Modi and the BJP famously dismissed the Congress government’s emphasis on entitlements, arguing that--if brought to power--it would prioritize empowerment. Five years later, the BJP has won its second consecutive single-party majority. While political scientists are debating the precise factors that led to the BJP’s triumph, the consensus view is that the ruling party’s roll-out of popular welfare schemes--from healthcare to gas connections to toilets --was an important contributing factor. This week on the podcast, Milan sits down with Yamini Aiyar, President and CEO of the Centre for Policy Research, arguably one of India’s finest public policy research institutions. Yamini is one of India’s most respected voices on development, having worked for years at the intersection of public service delivery, policy,