Grand Tamasha

Over the years, one could fill a small library with books that have been written about how Indian democracy survived against all of the odds—inequality, poverty, a difficult neighborhood, and a sprawling geography. Somewhat surprisingly, however, very few books have been written about the role the military has played—or not played—as it were. Many of India’s neighbors have experienced military coups and some, like Pakistan, have been unable to shake near-constant military involvement in daily political life.

And yet, all is not well when it comes to civil-military relations in India. This is the argument of Milan’s guest on the show today, Anit Mukherjee, who is the author of the brand new book, The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Military in India. Anit is a professor at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore who also just so happens to be a former officer in the Indian Army. Milan and Anit chat about civil-military relations in India, its impact on defense capabilities, and the prospect of reform under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This week on Grand Tamasha, Milan sits down with the writer Aatish Taseer, an award-winning author who writes extensively about India and South Asia in his growing body of fiction and non-fiction writing. His most recent book, “The Twice Born: Life and Death on the Ganges,” is part travelogue, part social commentary, and part autobiographical journey of self-discovery set in the city of Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism.

Two weeks ago, Aatish received notice that the government of India was revoking his status as an Overseas Citizen of India—known as OCI. The government alleges that Aatish concealed the fact that his father, the late Salman Taseer, was a Pakistani citizen (a violation of OCI regulations). Aatish was born in London, is now a permanent resident of the United States, but was raised in New Delhi, where he spent his formative years. Milan speaks with Aatish about his life, his reporting, and the latest developments around his citizenship status.

There is arguably no more consequential generation to the future of India than today’s millennials. The median age of India’s population is just 28 years old. This means that Indian millennials number around 400 million--roughly one-third of the entire Indian population. By the year 2021, two-thirds of India’s population will be within the working age of 20-35 years. It is no exaggeration to say that the economic, political, and social views of India’s youth will have a profound effect on the country’s future trajectory.

This week on the show, Milan speaks with Vivan Marwaha, who is both an Indian millennial and the author of a new book on Indian millennials—What Millennials Want—that will be published by Penguin Random House India in 2020. Milan and Vivan talk about India’s much-ballyhooed “demographic dividend,” whether there is an Indian Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez waiting in the wings, and why India’s youth are bullish on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.

Milan talks with Snigdha Poonam, national affairs reporter for the Hindustan Times, on the startling rise of truly outrageous scams across India. Through a series of eye-popping investigations, Snigdha and her colleagues have mastered the art of exposing extraordinary scams involving ordinary people in India. They have uncovered call center scams, insurance scams, exam scams, fake jobs scams, and other scams that you did not even know existed.

Snigdha is the author of the book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World, and has a knack for getting deep inside the psyche of the Indian heartland. Milan speaks with Snigdha about her journalistic exploits, the personal toll of investigative reporting, and what is powering the proliferation of scams in the “New India.” Here is their conversation, recorded in the Hindustan Times studio in New Delhi last summer.

Milan sits down with podcast regulars Tanvi Madan (Brookings Institution) and Sadanand Dhume (American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal) to round up this month’s news. 

This month’s round up tackles three topics. Last week, voters elected new state governments in Haryana and Maharashtra in the first polls since May’s general election. Milan, Sadanand, and Tanvi discuss the results and their significance for Indian politics going forward. Second, the U.S. Congress recently held a hearing on the state of human rights in South Asia. This hearing saw a contentious debate break out about the state of play in Jammu and Kashmir. Our guests debate what this means for U.S.-India relations. And finally, three economists--Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer--were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in economics. This particular Nobel has created a lot of buzz in India, not least because Banerjee is a native son of West Bengal and both he and Duflo have spent much of the careers working on issues of development and poverty in India. The trio discuss the Indian reaction to the prize announcement.

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, and politics. Milan and Yamini discuss the Modi government’s approach to welfare, the role of technology in augmenting state capacity, and the unfinished business of the past.

When India went to the polls in the Spring of 2019, there were few states that election observers were watching more closely than the state of West Bengal. Home to 100 million Indians and responsible for 42 seats in Parliament, West Bengal is always a state worth watching. Yet, this time was different. For decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a bit player in this eastern state. For three decades, the state was a bastion of India’s Communist parties. And since 2011, the state has been dominated by Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress, a popular Bengali regional party. And, yet, in 2019 the BJP did the unthinkable.  It won 18 of Bengal’s seats--earning a stunning 40 percent of the vote. And it did so despite having a minimal party organization on the ground. This summer, Milan sat down with Shoaib Daniyal of the Indian digital news site Scroll.in. During the election, Shoaib did some of the most interesting and most illuminating reporting on the electoral battle in Bengal. Here’s our conversation from the Hindustan Times studio in New Delhi from this July.

For nearly twenty years, relations between the United States and India have been on the upswing. Once a nuclear pariah and a country tagged as an important partner of the former Soviet Union, India has steadily grown closer to America since the start of the George W. Bush administration.

This week, Milan talks with Ashley J. Tellis, co-author (with former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill) of a new essay in Foreign Affairs called, “The India Dividend.” Ashley holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was a key protagonist, during his time in the U.S. government, in the project to bolster U.S.-India ties. Ashley explains why the logic of U.S.-India ties is misunderstood by so many and why exactly the United States and India share a strategic convergence when it comes to China. Milan also asks Ashley about how the two countries can resolve flashpoints like Russia, Iran, and trade and how to assess the significance is of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent trip to the United States.

This week on the podcast, Milan and executive producer Lauren Dueck take listeners deep in the heart of Texas and inside the gargantuan “Howdy, Modi!” rally held in Houston on September 22nd. Milan and Lauren speak with three Indians residing in Houston about their experiences taking in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump. Why did they show up? What did they experience? And what were the main takeaways for the United States, India, and Indian-Americans? To discuss the larger significance of the historic rally, Milan and Lauren also speak with Sonia Paul, a freelance journalist and audio producer who covered the event for the Atlantic. If you are wondering what it felt like to be in the stadium that day, look no further.

EAM Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stopped at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the first day of his whirlwind trip through Washington, DC. We were lucky enough to record the conversation, which was hosted by Carnegie President William J. Burns, and Ashley J. Tellis. Today we're sharing the minister's remarks in full, along with a selection of the questions we thought Grand Tamasha listeners might be most interested in. The video of the full event will be available on our website in the coming days, and we'll update this description when it's posted.