Grand Tamasha

On September 5, 2017, the journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot and killed outside of her house in Bangalore by armed assailants traveling on a motorbike. Lankesh, a journalist and social activist, was known for being a fierce critic of right-wing Hindutva politics and her murder has widely been seen as retribution for her outspoken views.

A new book by the journalist Rollo Romig, I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India, recounts the extraordinary life and tragic death of Gauri Lankesh. Rollo is a journalist, essayist, and critic. He has been reporting on South India since 2013, most often for The New York Times Magazine.

To talk more about his new book and his years reporting from South India, Rollo joins Milan on the show this week. They discuss Rollo’s love affair with Bangalore, Lankesh’s complex character, the shadowy rightwing organization Sanatan Sanstha implicated in her killing, and the police investigation into her death. Plus, the two discuss Gauri Lankesh’s legacy and what her murder tells us about the state of contemporary India.

Episode notes:

1. Nitish Pahwa, “A Reporter Who Risked and Lost Her Life in Modi’s India,” New York Times, August 6, 2024.

2. Rollo Romig, “How to Steal a River,” The New York Times Magazine, March 1, 2017.

3. Rollo Romig, “What Happens When a State Is Run by Movie Stars?” The New York Times Magazine, July 1, 201

4. Rollo Romig, “Masala Dosa to Die For,” The New York Times Magazine, May 7, 2014.

On February 1st, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her eighth Budget of the Modi era. This year’s budget was tabled at a precarious economic juncture, for India and for the world. India has been challenged by slowing growth, persistent inflation, and global uncertainties motivated in part by the return of Donald Trump to the White House just a few weeks ago.

So, how has the finance minister approached this delicate moment? What are the government’s priorities for the coming fiscal year? And has it made the tough decisions that could revive underlying animal spirits?

To discuss these and many other questions, Milan is joined on the podcast this week by Sukumar Ranganathan, editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times.

Long-time listeners will know that Sukumar has regularly appeared on the show to share his insights on India’s political economy with us. On this week’s show, Milan and Sukumar discuss India’s worrying growth slowdown, the government’s pitch for deregulation, and a generous tax cut for the middle class. Plus, the two discuss the potential impacts of Trump’s tariffs on the Indian economy.

Episode notes:

1. “Anticipating the Unintended,” issue 287, February 2, 2025.

2. Roshan Kishore, “What the budget does for politics,” Hindustan Times, February 2, 2025.

3. Roshan Kishore, “What the budget does for demand,” Hindustan Times, February 2, 2025.

4. Roshan Kishore, “What the budget does for the fisc,” Hindustan Times, February 2, 2025.

5. Roshan Kishore, “What the budget 2025 means for economic reforms,” Hindustan Times, February 2, 2025.

6. “Previewing India's 2024 General Election (with Sukumar Ranganathan),” Grand Tamasha, April 17, 2024.

2024 was widely hailed as the year of elections with 73 countries holding elections in and more than 1.5 billion voters exercising their franchise. On Grand Tamasha, we’ve discussed the 2024 Indian general election as well as the recent U.S. presidential election at some length. But there was another important election in South Asia which has important ramifications both for India and the wider Indo-Pacific. In September 2024, for the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, a third-party candidate was elected president.

According to Neil DeVotta, our guest on the show this week, the election was nothing short of a peaceful revolution that represents a dramatic political realignment in the island nation.

Neil DeVotta is a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, where he works on South Asian security and politics, ethnicity and nationalism, conflict resolution, and democratic transitions. And he’s also the author of a recent essay in the January 2025 issue of the Journal of Democracy, called “Sri Lanka’s Peaceful Revolution.”

To kick off the thirteenth season of the podcast, Milan sits down with Neil to discuss the tumultuous political history of Sri Lanka, its charismatic new president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and the state of the Sri Lankan economy. Plus, the two discuss how Dissanayake will delicately balance relations with both India and China.

Episode notes:

1. Neil DeVotta, “Sri Lanka's Peaceful Revolution,” Journal of Democracy 36.1 (January 2025): 79-92.

2. Neil DeVotta, “Colombo's Controversial New President,” East Asia Forum, 24 July 2022.

3. Neil DeVotta, “A Win for Democracy in Sri Lanka,” Journal of Democracy 27.1 (January 2016): 152–66.

4. “South Asia's Economic Turmoil (with Ben Parkin),” Grand Tamasha, September 21, 2022.

5. “Inside Sri Lanka's Economic Meltdown (with Ahilan Kadirgamar),” Grand Tamasha, May 18, 2022.

One of the most talked about policy experiments in India in recent memory is the reform of government schools in the city-state of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Under the leadership of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Delhi government has implemented an innovative program to equip students with foundational literacy and numeracy. But while these reforms are much discussed, they have been surprisingly under-studied. A new book by the scholar Yamini Aiyar tries to remedy this gap.

Yamini’s new book, Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi's Schools, draws on three years of ethnographic research where she and a team of colleagues were embedded in a cluster of schools across the national capital.

Yamini is currently Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and the Watson Institute at Brown University. Many of our listeners will know her from her work with the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, where she served as President from 2017 to 2024.

To kick off season thirteen of Grand Tamasha, Yamini joins Milan on the show this week. They discuss Yamini’s decade-long adventure studying India’s public schools, the core elements of the Delhi education model, and the mysterious ways in which the India bureaucracy operates. Plus, they discuss whether the Delhi experiment can travel beyond the national capital.

Episode notes:

1. “How Bureaucracy Can Work for the Poor (with Akshay Mangla),” Grand Tamasha, March 29, 2023.

2. Yamini Aiyar and Shrayana Bhattacharya, “The Post Office Paradox: A Case Study of the Block Level Education Bureaucracy,” Economic & Political Weekly 51, no. 11 (2016).

3. Lant Pritchett, “Is India a Flailing State?: Detours on the Four Lane Highway to Modernization,” HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP09-013, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009.

4. Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Milan Vaishnav, Rethinking Public Institutions in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Grand Tamasha is Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced with the Hindustan Times, a leading Indian media house. For five years (and counting), Milan has interviewed authors, journalists, policymakers, and practitioners working on contemporary India to give listeners across the globe a glimpse into life in the world’s most populous country.

For the past two years, in anticipation of the show’s holiday hiatus, we’ve published an annual list of our favorite books featured on the podcast over the previous twelve months.

In keeping with this tradition, here—in no particular order—are Grand Tamasha’s top books of 2024.

Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
By Janaki Bakhle. Published by Princeton University Press.

Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance
By Karthik Muralidharan. Published by Penguin Viking India.

The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy (published in the United States and the UK as The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy)
By Rahul Bhatia. Published by Context (South Asia); Little, Brown (UK); and PublicAffairs (United States).

In this special bonus episode, Milan talks about why he loved each of these books and includes short clips from his conversations with Janaki, Karthik, and Rahul.

This is the final episode of our twelfth season. Thanks to our listeners to being such loyal followers of the show. We’re excited to kick off our thirteenth season in mid-January after taking a short holiday break.

Episode notes:

1. Milan Vaishnav, “Grand Tamasha’s Best Books of 2023,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 19, 2023.

2. Milan Vaishnav, “Grand Tamasha’s Best Books of the Year,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 20, 2022.

3. “Identifying the New India (with Rahul Bhatia),” Grand Tamasha, September 25, 2024.

4. “A Blueprint for India’s State Capacity Revolution (with Karthik Muralidharan),” Grand Tamasha, May 22, 2024.

5. “Savarkar, In His Own Words (with Janaki Bakhle),” Grand Tamasha, March 27, 2024.

If there is one thing political scientists can agree on, it is that we live in an era of populism. With the recent election of Donald Trump, populism has returned to the United States, raising questions about what changes we might see in upcoming elections in 2025.

South Asia has been no stranger to populism and a new book, Righteous Demagogues: Populist Politics in South Asia and Beyond, provides a framework for understanding its origins, its evolution, and its prospects. The authors of this new book are the scholars Dann Naseemullah and Pradeep Chhibber and they join Milan on the show this week to discuss their new book.

Dann is a Reader in International Politics at King's College London. And Pradeep is currently Professor of Political Science and the Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

The three discuss the COVID-era origins of the book, definitions of populism, and the ways in which populism has played out across the subcontinent over the last seven decades. Plus, they talk about the future of ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, the current turmoil in Bangladesh, and what exactly is new in the “New India” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Episode notes:

1. “The Lessons of Gujarat Under Modi (with Christophe Jaffrelot),” Grand Tamasha, May 29, 2024.

2. Pradeep Chhibber and Adnan Naseemullah, “This is how Modi is different from other Right-wing populists like Trump, Erdogan & Duterte,” ThePrint, August 21, 2019.

Where and when ethnic violence breaks out is a question of longstanding concern to the India policy community.

Previous work in political science has pointed to a diverse array of factors—ranging from civil society bonds to elite networks and coalition politics as potential explanations. A new book by the scholar Aditi Malik highlights political parties, specifically party instability, as the principal culprit.

In Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India, Aditi highlights how the levels of party instability informs the decisions of political elites to organize or support violence. Settings marked by unstable parties are more vulnerable to recurring and major episodes of party violence than those populated by durable parties. This is because transient parties enable politicians to disregard voters' future negative reactions to conflict.

Aditi is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross. She studies political violence, gender-based violence, social movements, and contentious politics.

She joins Milan on the show this week to talk about her book and the implications of her research findings. They discuss the role of elites in fomenting violence, when voters sanction violent politicians, and the similarities and differences in ethnic violence in Kenya and India. Plus, they discuss what Aditi’s book tells us about the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Episode notes:

1. “Paul Staniland on the Surprising Decline in Political Violence in South Asia,” Grand Tamasha, October 7, 2020.

2. Aditi Malik, “Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India,” Fifteen Eighty Four (CUP) Blog, August 14, 2024.

3. Zack Beauchamp, “Narendra Modi is Celebrating his Scary Vision for India’s Future,” Vox, January 27, 2024.

4. Aditi Malik. “Hindu-Muslim Violence in Unexpected Places: Theory and Evidence from Rural India,” Politics, Groups, & Identities, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2021): 40-58.

The discourse in India today on the issue of the Muslim community seems to swing between two contrary positions.

According to the Hindu nationalist narrative, Muslims are a monolithic religious category whose presence justifies the need for greater Hindu solidarity. On the other hand, there is the narrative offered by liberals, who claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority to defend Indian democracy.

A new book by the scholar Hilal Ahmed, A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India, departs from these unidimensional notions of Muslim identity. It applies concepts from political science, history, and political theory to provide a much more nuanced view of India’s Muslim community.

Ahmed is an associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), where he is also associated with the Lokniti Programme for Comparative Democracy. He is an authority on political Islam, electoral behavior, and Indian democracy.

Ahmed joins Milan on the show this week to talk about “substantive Muslimness,” the meaning of Hindutva, and what exactly is new if the “new India.” Plus, the two discuss the state of the political opposition and the BJP’s vulnerabilities.

Episode notes:             

1. “Identifying the New India (with Rahul Bhatia),” Grand Tamasha, September 25, 2024.

2. “What Really Happened in India's 2024 General Election? (with Sanjay Kumar),” Grand Tamasha, September 18, 2024.

3. Hilal Ahmed, “CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey: The three main takeaways,” Hindu, June 7, 2024.

4. “Decoding the 2024 Indian General Elections (with Sunetra Choudhury and Rahul Verma),” Grand Tamasha, June 6, 2024.

5. “Neha Sahgal on Religion and Identity in Contemporary India,” Grand Tamasha, June 30, 2021.

Over the past twelve months, tales of spies and spycraft have complicated India’s relationships with key Western partners.

In recent months, both Canada and the United States have alleged that India’s foreign intelligence agency was involved in a complex plot to identify and target Khalistani separatists who were citizens of those countries.

In India, these allegations have, in turn, revealed deep skepticism about the actions of western spy agencies and the negative role they’ve played in India and across the Global South.

A new book, Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India’s Secret Cold War, offers the first comprehensive history of US and UK intelligence operations in the Indian subcontinent. The author of this book is Paul McGarr, a lecturer in Intelligence Studies at King’s College London.

To talk more about his new book—and the West’s 50-year battle to win the hearts and minds of Indians—Paul joins Milan on the show this week.

The two discuss India’s tradition of spycraft, the long shadow of the British Raj, and secret collaboration between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its Indian counterparts. Plus, the two discuss why the covert efforts of British and American intelligence agencies in 20th century India largely proved to be misguided and self-defeating.

Episode notes:

1. VIDEO: “Indira Gandhi Overdid the ‘Foreign Hand’ but Some of Her Fears About the CIA were real ,” The Wire, November 21, 2024.

2. “Inside the Secret World of South Asia's Spies (with Adrian Levy),” Grand Tamasha, October 27, 2021.

India’s Near East: A New History is an important new book by the scholar Avinash Paliwal.

The book traces the history of how New Delhi has grappled with the twin challenges of forging productive ties with its eastern neighbors—namely, Bangladesh and Myanmar—while building a robust administrative state in India’s Northeastern states.

It is the story of a state’s struggle to overcome war, displacement and interventionism, but which exposes the limits of independent India’s influence both inside and outside its borders.

Avinash joins Milan on the show to talk more about his new book. Avinash is a Reader in International Relations at SOAS University of London, where he specializes in South Asian strategic affairs.

Avinash and Milan discuss India’s state-building experience in the northeast, the fate of the “Look East” and “Act East” policies, and India’s often contentious relations with both Burma and Bangladesh. Plus, the two discuss how two factors—China and Hindutva— are remaking India’s approach to the near east.

Episode notes:

1. “What the Taliban Takeover Means for India (with Avinash Paliwal),” Grand Tamasha, September 15, 2021.

2. “Binalakshmi Nepram on the Realities of India’s Oft-Forgotten Northeast,” Grand Tamasha, June 3, 2020.

3. Avinash Paliwal, “Bangladesh on razor’s edge: Why India must wake up to the looming economic crisis and political instability to its east,” Indian Express, December 13, 2022.