Back in 2019, we started the Grand Tamasha podcast on a whim. India’s 2019 general elections were around the corner, and we sensed that there might be a (temporary) marketplace for a weekly audio podcast focused on Indian politics and policy for diehards hoping to keep up with the campaign action. Nearly five years later, the podcast has become a weekly fixture and the marketplace has turned out to be more welcoming that we had imagined.

For Milan, one of the joys of doing a podcast week-in and week-out is the ability to read some of the best new books on India and speak with their authors—from journalists to historians, and political scientists to novelists. Last year, we published our first annual list of our favorite books featured on the podcast in 2022. As the current year comes to an end and we prepare for a mini-podcast hibernation for the holidays, here—in no particular order—are our Grand Tamasha top books of 2023 (drumroll, please):

Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

By Joya Chatterji. Published by Yale University Press, Penguin Random House India, Vintage.

Migrants and Machine Politics: How India's Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness

By Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil. Published by Princeton University Press.

Age of Vice

By Deepti Kapoor. Published by Riverhead, Juggernaut.

Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India

By Akshay Mangla. Published by Cambridge University Press.

In this episode, Milan talks about why he loved each of these books and includes short clips from his conversations with Joya, Adam and Tariq, Deepti, and Akshay. 

Think of this final episode of our tenth season as our little holiday present to you—our listeners.

Episode Notes:

Grand Tamasha’s Best Books of 2023