All Things Policy

The Moon is about to get crowded, with governments and private companies planning multiple missions over the next decade. India has its own ambitions as well, which include several uncrewed missions culminating with a human landing in 2040. However, the rules for lunar exploration were written more than half-a-century ago and are showing their age. Saurabh Todi talks to Aditya Ramanathan about the strange but growing problem of lunar governance.

In this episode of All Things Policy, Wini, Kripa and Ramita look at the basic principles of IPEF, the story behind its formation, its relevance, particularly for India, and its future.

This episode is part of a series of podcasts on understanding the Quad’s role in the Indo-Pacific, where we host experts, analysts and scholars working on the Quad. Stay tuned for more! Each of the four Quad countries — India, the US, Japan, and Australia — places remarkable importance on the Southeast Asian region. How can the Quad work better with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southeast Asian bloc? In this episode of All Things Policy, Blake Berger, Associate Director at the Asia Society Policy Institute, speaks to Bharat Sharma and suggests areas where the Quad and ASEAN can work together to meet emerging challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly maritime security and private sector collaboration. In this vein, existing challenges to greater cooperation between the two groupings are also discussed.

In this episode of ATP, Saurabh Todi and Pranav Gupta talk about rise in women representation in bureaucracy, its reasons and implications. They also discuss why similar rise hasn't been seen in electoral representation.

In this episode, Amit Kumar and Anushka Saxena discuss why the Taiwan issue should matter to India, how India's Taiwan policy has shaped up in the past, and what should the future policy priorities be.

The prison system is the most overlooked pillar of the Indian criminal justice system. Starved of funds, overcrowded with prisoners and laced with corruption, is there a scope for reforming Indian prisons and achieving true rehabilitation of prisoners? In this episode of Police Chowki, Shrikrishna Upadhyaya hosts two experts, Mr Somesh Goyal (ex-IPS and DGP of Himachal Pradesh) and Mr Javeed Ahmad (ex-IPS and DGP of Uttar Pradesh), in a conversation on the colonial context of Indian prisons, issues of overcrowding, health and hygiene, the prison economy, and policy reforms needed in Prison Manuals. Mr Goyal also talks about the ‘Har Haath ko Kaam’ initiative he led towards giving paid jobs to all prisoners in Himachal Pradesh.

20 years ago, the Congress Party took a drubbing in 3 state elections. The ‘India Shining’ slogan of the NDA government had taken everyone by storm. Buoyed by their momentum, the ruling party decided to prepone General Elections by eight months. Yet in May 2004, the ultimate story was one of an absolute surprise. The Congress won the elections. In this episode, Carl Jaison speaks to Jayshree M Sundar, author of the book – ‘Don’t Forget 2004’ & who headed the agency that executed the marketing and advertising campaigns which dovetailed into the political strategy for the Congress party, bringing it back to power after a 9 year hiatus. In a very illustrious career, Jayshree Sundar has worked with clients like Cadbury, Maruti Suzuki, Gillette, Parker, Xerox among many others. During the period when she oversaw the agency pitch that won the rights to execute the advertising campaign of the Congress party, Jayshree was President (North region) of Leo Burnett. Currently, she teaches marketing courses at business schools all over India.

The concept of nations, nationality and citizenship are being redefined in many ways. In such a scenario, what does Dual Citizenship mean? How can it impact individuals and countries? Saurabh Todi and Khyati Pathak speak to Suman Joshi in this episode.  Tweet: The topic of Dual Citizenship has come back into public discourse in recent times. Saurabh Todi and Khyati Pathak discuss this with Suman Joshi.

So far, on SiliconPolitik, our limited edition podcast series on semiconductor chips, we have gotten insights into the geopolitical, economic, and technical aspects of the value chain. However, what goes into running a semiconductor firm, namely one within a niche in the design stage of this value chain? Join us on All Things Policy, as Satya Sahu talks to Vish Madhugiri, Chief Strategist of Saaz Micro Inc. to gain a practitioner's perspective on chip R&D, especially the journey to make imaging sensors for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Secularism is conventionally understood to be the separation of state and religion. However, according to the Indian Constitution, citizens are governed by differing sets of personal laws that depend upon their religion. What, then, is the meaning of Indian secularism? Turkey and France are both secular countries with no official state religions. At the same time, wearing a fez became illegal in Turkey in 1925, and wearing a hijab within public school premises was banned in France in 2004. If the state interferes in matters of religion, is a country truly secular? In this episode of All Things Policy, Rohan Pai and Shreya Ramakrishnan discuss these difficult questions by analysing the history of secularism, and its various, often paradoxical, definitions across time and geography.