Grand Tamasha

Although this history has largely been forgotten today, India was the epicenter of three major pandemics throughout the 19th and early 20th century. 

A new book by the economist Chinmay Tumbe, The Age of Pandemics: 1817-1920—How They Shaped India and the World, takes readers on a tour of three previous pandemics—cholera, the plague, and influenza—that ravaged India and highlights what we might learn from this past trauma. 

This week on the show, Chinmay speaks with Milan about India’s “Age of Pandemics” and why this dark chapter in Indian history has been glossed over. Chinmay and Milan also discuss the parallels between pandemics past and present, how pandemics have shaped politics, and why the flight of internal migrants is one of the most stylized facts of pandemics in history.

Episode notes:

1. Chinmay Tumbe, India Moving: A History of Migration
2. Government of India, Economic Survey 2017-18, “India on the Move and Churning: New Evidence.” 
3. Chinmay Tumbe, “Excerpt: The Age of Pandemics”

Of the many questions being asked about U.S. president-elect Joe Biden’s foreign policy, chief among them is how the new president might handle relations with China. 

The future trajectory of U.S.-China relations matters not just for the U.S. and China, but it also has real implications for India—its economics, politics, and foreign policy.

On the podcast this week, Milan sits down with Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President of Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on the Asia region—from China to Kazakhstan to India and Sri Lanka. 

Evan talks to Milan about the Trump administration’s Asia legacy, India’s inward turn, and the strategic relevance of the Quad. Evan also has some useful, pithy advice for how the incoming Biden administration might position itself in the Asia-Pacific.

Episode notes:

1. Evan Feigenbaum, “Biden Faces Immediate Tests in Asia”
2. Evan Feigenbaum, “Asia’s Future Beyond U.S.-China Competition”
3. Evan Feigenbaum, Twitter thread on America’s (missing) economic strategy in Asia
4. Hindustan Times, “RCEP would have hurt India’s economy, FTA with EU not easy: S Jaishankar”

Last week, the world saw two highly anticipated elections come to an end. The never-ending 2020 U.S. presidential election finally came to a close—with Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden capturing the White House.

On the other side of the world, tens of millions of voters went to the polls in the north Indian state of Bihar. The election produced a narrow victory for the ruling National Democratic Alliance—a coalition principally made of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its regional ally, the Janata Dal (United)

Joining Milan to talk all things elections are Grand Tamasha news-round up regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and theWall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution.

The trio discuss the key lessons of the U.S. 2020 election, the implications for India, and what the election tells us about the configuration of power in the United States come January 2021. Milan, Sadanand, and Tanvi also discuss the Bihar elections, what they say about Modi’s popularity, and the trials and tribulations of the political opposition.

Episode notes:

1. “Donald Trump Mashup”
2. Sadanand Dhume, “Will Biden Say Howdy Modi?”
3. Milan Vaishnav, “US: The end of a corrosive chapter”
4. Tanvi Madan, “For Delhi, US election result is consequential in terms of how the next administration approaches China”

Thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, India’s economy is expected to shrink by at least 9 percent this fiscal year—a gut punch that comes on the heels of several years of continuously slowing growth. At the heart of India’s economic woes is a severe banking crisis that some have argued has sapped the vitality out of India’s investment cycle and consumed the energies of government economic firefighters. 

This week, Milan sits down with Viral Acharya, former Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 2017-2019, and author of the recent book, Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India.

Milan and Viral discuss the health of India’s economy, the “silent crisis” afflicting India’s financial sector, the future of central bank independence in India, and the role that Indian economists based overseas can play back home. 

Since the onset of the novel Coronavirus, award-winning data journalist Rukmini has investigated the virus’ spread in India like very few people have. 

Twice a week since March, she’s been recording her thoughts on the pandemic in a short “mini-podcast” called The Moving Curve. 

In 100 bite-sized episodes, Rukmini has helped educate Indians--and their political leaders--about this unprecedented public health crisis straight from her home studio.

This week, Rukmini joins Milan to talk about the state of COVID-19 in India, the country’s surprisingly low fatality rate, and what large-scale seroprevalence studies tell us about where the virus is heading. Plus, Rukmini evaluates the impact of India’s lockdown and how the media has reported on the pandemic.

Episode Notes:

1. The Moving Curve Episode 98: “Pandemic Research, Made in India”
2. Rukmini, “Covid-19 spread in some unique ways in India, new contact tracing data shows”
3. Rukmini, “Why India has emerged as pandemic epicentre, despite early lockdown”
4. Partha Mukhopadhyay, “Is India’s Covid-19 death rate higher than Italy’s?”
5. IDFC Institute, “Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in slums and non-slums of Mumbai, India, during June 29-July 19, 2020”

Pankaj Mishra is the acclaimed author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction. He is a frequent contributor to some of the world’s top publications the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Guardian, the New Yorker, and Bloomberg.  

His new book, Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire, focuses on the decay of Western liberalism but somehow manages to cover an array of topics from Salman Rushie to The Economist to British colonialism and Indian politics.  

Pankaj and Milan discuss the state of Indian democracy, the (absent) standard-bearers of Indian liberalism, and how the Cold War-era conception of democracy helped India geopolitically. They also discuss what the British Raj can tell us about Brexit and the future of big government, for good and for ill. 

Episode Notes: 

1. Pankaj Mishra, Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire
2. Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the Present
3. Pankaj Mishra, “Coronavirus Will Review an All-Powerful State”
4. Ramachandra Guha, “The 50-50 democracy”
5. Ashutosh Varshney, Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy

In the summer of 2008, the journalist Ananth Krishnan moved to Beijing to pick up some Mandarin. Little did he know that this fateful decision would kick off a decade-long immersion in Chinese politics, economics, foreign policy, and culture. 

This week on the podcast, Ananth talks with Milan about his new book, “India’s China Challenge: A Journey Through China’s Rise and What It Means for India.” Ananth, the China correspondent for the The Hindu, talks to Milan about India’s underinvestment in understanding Chinese domestic affairs, the lessons India should learn from China’s economic miracle, and the status of current border tensions between the two neighbors. Plus, the two discuss how India can respond to the economic and political challenge that China poses.

Episode notes:

1. Grand Tamasha with Ashley J. Tellis on “India’s China Conundrum” 
2. Ashley J. Tellis, “Hustling in the Himalayas: The Sino-Indian Border Confrontation”

Although Indians in America account for less than one percent of registered voters, this election season they have been actively wooed by both Democrats and Republicans in an unprecedented manner.

Thanks to the increasing political influence of Indian Americans, the camaraderie between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, and the addition of Kamala Harris to the Democratic ticket, there is a sense that this community’s votes are very much at play.

Today, Milan speaks with Sumitra Badrinathan (University of Pennsylvania) and Devesh Kapur (Johns Hopkins-SAIS) about the findings of a brand new survey--the Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS)-- that sheds light on the political attitudes of Indian Americans (full disclosure: Milan is a co-author of the new study).

Milan, Devesh and Sumitra discuss why Indian Americans, contrary to media reports, remain solidly with the Democratic Party and why they are overwhelmingly concerned with kitchen table issues, rather than foreign policy concerns such as U.S.-India relations. They also talk about the impact of Kamala Harris, partisan polarization among Indians in America, and why Republicans face an uphill climb to win over Indian American voters.

Notes:

1. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “How Will Indian Americans Vote? Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey”
2. Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh, “The Other One Percent: Indians in America”
3. Sara Sadhwani, “Kamala Harris is likely to bring in Indian American voters, this research finds”
4. Devesh Kapur, “Diaspora, Development, and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India”

The political landscape of South Asia has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Insurgencies that were raging across the subcontinent in the 1990s and early 2000s have largely been contained and the heavy-hand of the state has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence. Why has this happened and what exactly does it mean for South Asia’s future?

To shed light on the surprising conflict dynamics in South Asia, this week Milan is joined by political scientist Paul Staniland, author of a recent Carnegie essay titled, “Political Violence in South Asia: The Triumph of the State?” Paul is an associate professor at the University of Chicago and nonresident scholar with the South Asia Program at Carnegie.

Milan and Paul discuss intra-state conflict trends in the region, the massive rise in India’s internal security forces, the precarious state of liberal democracy in South Asia, and what South Asia can tell us about political violence in America.

Episode notes:

1. Paul Staniland, Adnan Naseemullah, and Ahsan Butt, “Pakistan’s Military Elite.”
2. Paul Staniland, “Leftist Insurgencies in Democracies.”
3. Paul Staniland, “4 Questions on India, Liberalism America, Etc.”
4. Paul Staniland, “Trends in Insurgency in South Asia.”

If you’ve watched prime time television in India at any point in the last two decades, there is zero chance that you are not acquainted with Milan’s guest on the show this week. Since 1999, the journalist Nidhi Razdan has been reporting on the biggest news coming out of India--from politics to the economy and, especially, foreign affairs.

A stalwart presence night after night on NDTV--one of India’s leading news outlets--Nidhi was the executive editor of the channel and the primary anchor of their prime time news show, “Left, Right & Centre.” In June 2020, Nidhi announced that she was taking a break from reporting journalism in order to teach journalism at Harvard.*

Milan asks Nidhi about how television journalism has changed over the last two decades, why the business model of journalism is broken, and the festering issue of self-censorship in newsrooms. Milan and Nidhi also discuss the surprise “India angle” to the U.S. elections and the international ramifications of the Article 370 decision in Kashmir, Nidhi’s home state.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: On this episode of the podcast, Milan identified Nidhi Razdan as an associate professor of journalism at Harvard University and spoke with her about her future teaching plans. On January 15, Nidhi Razdan revealed that she was the victim of a sophisticated phishing attack and that her Harvard appointment was a central element of this fraud. In a subsequent blog post, Razdan provided further details about the alleged attack.  

Episode Notes:

1. Nidhi Razdan, “The Shameful Vilification Of Rhea Chakraborty”
2. Amit Varma, “Driven to Extremes. Part 1: News Television”
3. Sevanti Ninan, “How India's Media Landscape Changed Over Five Years”
4. Priya Ramani, “Your Guide To Loving Indian Media Again”
5. Grand Tamasha episode with Ashley J. Tellis on “India’s China Conundrum”