Grand Tamasha

Rasputin, Lucifer, Evil Genius, Sombre Porcupine, The World’s Most Hated Diplomat. These are just some of the choice names that people have given for the former diplomat and politician V.K. Krishna Menon.  

Menon is, in many ways, one of the most consequential figures in post-Independence India and he is the subject of a recent book by the politician and author Jairam Ramesh, titled: A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon. The book was awarded the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay-New India Foundation (NIF) Book Prize for 2020. 

Jairam Ramesh is Milan’s guest on the show this week. The two discuss Ramesh’s approach to biography writing, Menon’s inscrutable personality, his status as Nehru’s “soulmate,” and his lasting legacy for Indian foreign policy. Plus, the two discuss Menon’s contemporary relevance as India stares down the possibility of another conflict with China over their contested border.  

Episode notes: 

1. Jairam Ramesh, Intertwined Lives: P.N. Haksar & Indira Gandhi

This week on the podcast, Milan is joined once more by Grand Tamasha “news round-up” regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution. This week, the trio discuss three topics: last week’s heads-of-state summit of the “Quad” countries; recent, controversial assessments on the health of Indian democracy; and the Modi government’s renewed economic reforms push.  

Plus, the three offer recommendations for Indian cultural exports that sustained them during the pandemic.  

The contested borders between India, China, and Pakistan render the Himalayas one of the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints in the year 2021. A new book by the journalist Myra MacDonald, White as the Shroud: India, Pakistan and War on the Frontiers of Kashmir, takes readers inside the long-simmering conflict over the Siachen glacier—one of the most obscure and forbidding battlegrounds in the world. 

Myra joins Milan on the podcast this week to talk about her new book and its larger implications for regional and global politics. The two discuss Myra’s lifelong passion for India/South Asia, the origins of India and Pakistan’s decades-long battle for Siachen, and the toll war at 20,000 feet takes on soldiers from both sides. Plus, Myra reflects on how the Modi government’s August 2019 abrogation of Article 370in Jammu and Kashmir has impacted relations with both China and Pakistan. 

Episode notes: 

1. Myra MacDonald, Heights of Madness: One Women`s Journey in Pursuit of a Secret War
2. Myra MacDonald, Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War
3. Grand Tamasha, “Ashley J. Tellis on India’s China Conundrum” 

In September 2020, Indian lawmakers approved three controversial agriculture bills amidst an uproar on the floor of Parliament. That uproar would soon manifest outside of Parliament as tens of thousands of farmers took to the streets on the outskirts of Delhi to protest the passage of these laws. Today, the government and the farmers are locked in a months-long standoff, with everyone from the Supreme Court to foreign governments weighing in on the confrontation. 

To discuss the farm laws—the motivations behind them, their likely consequences, and the political fallout—Milan sits down with two experts on Indian agriculture, Shoumitro Chatterjee of Penn State University and Mekhala Krishnamurthy of Ashoka University and the Centre for Policy Research. 

The three discuss the state of Indian agriculture, the motivations behind the new laws, the anxieties that have fueled the protests, and possible compromises that can resolve the current impasse. If you have been watching the protests in India unfold but are struggling to make sense of them, this episode will help you fill in the blanks. 

Episode notes: 

1. Shoumitro Chatterjee, Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Devesh Kapur, and Marshall M. Bouston, “A Study of the Agricultural Markets of Bihar, Odisha and Punjab”
2. Yamini Aiyar and Mekhala Krishnamurthy, “On Farm Laws, How the Centre Faltered”
3. Mekhala Krishnamurthy, “Modi govt can bring real agriculture reforms only by working with states”
4. Shoumitro Chhatterjee and Mekhala Krishnamurthy, “Farm laws: First principles and the political economy of agricultural market regulation”
5. Bharat Ramaswami, “Constituency for reforms in BJP-ruled states can disprove fears that farm laws are a corporate plot”
6. Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian, “India’s Export-Led Growth: Exemplar and Exception”

One night in the summer of 2014, two teenage girls living in a remote village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh went missing. Hours later, they were found dead and hanging from a tree in a mango orchard. A media frenzy ensued that propelled the case to the front pages of national newspapers and prime time cable news. It was quickly decided that this was another clear-cut case of rape and murder in India’s heartland. 

A haunting new book, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, by the author Sonia Faleiro reveals that the truth, however, is far murkier. 

Sonia is Milan’s guest on the podcast this week and the two discuss the origins of The Good Girls, the notion of honor in contemporary Indian society, the pervasiveness of caste in the Hindi heartland, the troubled state of policing, and the battle Indian girls face even before leaving their homes. 

Parul Sehgal of the New York Times has this to say about The Good Girls: “‘The Good Girls’ is transfixing; it has the pacing and mood of a whodunit, but no clear reveal; Faleiro does not indict the cruelty or malice of any individual, nor any particular system. She indicts something even more common, and in its own way far more pernicious: a culture of indifference that allowed for the neglect of the girls in life and in death.”

Episode notes:

1. Parul Sehgal, “A Double Tragedy in India and the Search for Elusive Answers,” New York Times.
2. Rafia Zakaria, “Death in the Mango Orchard,” The Baffler

As a new administration takes office in Washington, followers of the U.S.-India relationship are eagerly anticipating what shape ties between these two nations will take under a new president. A new book by the journalist Meenakshi Ahamed, A Matter of Trust: India–US Relations from Truman to Trump, offers a sweeping portrait of this relationship over seven decades.  

This week on the show, Milan sits down with Meenakshi to discuss the evolution of U.S.-India relations, from the moment of independence in 1947 to Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. The two discuss Nehru’s perennial skepticism of America, Bill Clinton’s lifelong fascination with India, and how China’s recent actions have given the partnership an unprecedented boost. 

Episode notes: 

1. Rudra Chaudhuri, India and the United States Since 1947
2. Tanvi Madan, Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations During the Cold War
3. Grand Tamasha, “Tanvi Madan on the U.S.-India-China Fateful Triangle” 
4. Grand Tamasha, “Ashley J. Tellis on India’s China Conundrum” 

Indian Americans are now the second-largest immigrant group in the United States. Their growing political influence and their courtship by the Indian government raises important—as yet unanswered—questions. How do Indians in America regard India, and how do they remain connected to developments there? What are their attitudes toward Indian politics and changes underway in their ancestral homeland? And what role, if any, do they envision for the United States in engaging with India?

This week on the show, Milan sits down with his co-authors Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur to unveil the findings of a new report they’ve authored on how Indian Americans view India. Milan, Sumitra, and Devesh discuss what their new data tells us about Indian Americans remain connected to their ancestral homeland, how they assess the performance of Narendra Modi, and how they view India’s democratic trajectory. Plus, the trio talk about what a more divided diaspora might mean for U.S.-India relations and India’s foreign policy in the years to come.

Episode notes:

1. Grand Tamasha, “Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur Decode the 2020 Indian American Vote”
2. Grand Tamasha, “Deep in the Heart of Texas: Inside ‘Howdy, Modi!’”
3. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “How Will Indian Americans Vote? Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey”
4. Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh, “The Other One Percent: Indians in America.”

On Monday, the Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented one of the most highly anticipated Indian budgets in recent memory. Facing a global health pandemic, a severe economic slowdown, and continued anxieties over inflation, some commentators argued that this budget was not simply the most important of the Modi government’s tenure, it was one of the most important in three decades.  

To breakdown this year’s budget and to kick off the fifth season of Grand Tamasha, Milan was joined by Sukumar Ranganathan, editor in chief of the Hindustan Times. Sukumar and Milan break down the nuts and bolts of the budget—from spending priorities to the fiscal deficit and the government’s ambitious plans for disinvestment. The two also discuss the government’s broader economy strategy, including India’s continued inward turn on trade. 

Episode notes: 

1. Editorial, “What Union Budget 2021-2011 Gets Right,” Hindustan Times.
2. Roshan Kishore, “Where the Budget Gets India’s Economy Wrong,” Hindustan Times.
3. Yamini Aiyar, “Decoding the Budget and the Economics of Welfare,” Hindustan Times.
4. Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian, “India’s Inward (Re)Turn: Is it Warranted? Will it Work?”

This week on the show, Milan sits down with Vinay Sitapati, political scientist and author of the blockbuster new book, Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Modi. Vinay’s new book gives readers the crucial backstory to understanding India’s current political moment and it is full of historical insights, colorful anecdotes, and a decent dash of insider gossip. 

Vinay and Milan discuss the unusual duo of Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, Hindu nationalism’s obsession with elections, the BJP’s “schizophrenic” approach to economics, and how the Hindu nationalist movement manages to balance the twin impulses of inclusion and exclusion. Plus, Vinay explains how a better understanding of the BJP of yesteryear can inform our thinking about Narendra Modi and Amit Shah today. 

Episode notes:
 

1. Vinay Sitapati, “Election is the ideology,” Indian Express
2. Vinay Sitapati, Half-Lion: How P.V Narasimha Rao Transformed India
3. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India

This is the last episode of Grand Tamasha season 4! We'll be back in January with new episodes. If you have feedback or episode ideas, please contact us at [email protected]. Happy holidays!

By now, we are all familiar with the catch phrases, colorful billboards, and slick branding: Incredible India. India Shining. Make in India. New India.  

But these are not just the frivolous creations of marketing executives and tourist brochures—they are the stuff of 21st century nation branding. This is the argument of a new book by the scholar Ravinder Kaur, Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First Century India. 

Ravinder, a professor of Modern South Asia Studies at the University of Copenhagen, joins Milan on the show this week to talk about her new book. The two discuss how brand-building is displacing nation-building in the 21st century and who the makers of India’s “new brand” actually are. Plus, Milan and Ravinder discuss the untold backstory of the “India Shining” campaign and why Prime Minister Modi’s notion of a “New India” is not all that new after all.  

Episode notes: 
 

1. Martin Wolf, “Best books of 2020,” Financial Times
2. Ravinder Kaur, “‘I Am India Shining’: The Investor-Citizen and the Indelible Icon of Good Times”
3. Roshan Kishore, “Review: Brand New Nation by Ravinder Kaur”
4. Ravinder Kaur, “Who Owns the Republic?”