Grand Tamasha

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The Rise of the "Scams Raj" Nov 06, 2019

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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.

State Elections, the U.S. Congress on Kashmir, and a Nobel Prize for India Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

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.

Yamini Aiyar on the Hits and Misses of Modi’s Welfare Agenda Oct 23, 2019

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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.

Shoaib Daniyal on How the BJP Conquered West Bengal Oct 16, 2019

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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.

Ashley J. Tellis on America’s “India Dividend” Oct 09, 2019

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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.

Deep in the Heart of Texas: Inside “Howdy, Modi!” Oct 03, 2019

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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 Jaishankar on India's Pluralism, Jammu and Kashmir, and Globalization Oct 01, 2019

Show notes

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.

“Howdy, Modi,” the Kashmir Clampdown, and the Indian Economy Sep 25, 2019

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On this week’s podcast, Milan sits down with Grand Tamasha regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution to round up the latest news on Indian politics and policy.

The two begin by dissecting the massive, 50,000 person “Howdy, Modi” rally held over the weekend at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. They discuss the optics, the significance, Trump’s role, and the key takeaways from Modi’s address. Later on the podcast, the three talk about the ongoing lockdown in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and the BJP’s endgame in the contested state. Milan, Sadanand, and Tanvi conclude with an assessment of the Indian government’s measures to shore up the flagging Indian economy.

Prashant Jha on Why We Missed the Modi Wave Sep 18, 2019

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Milan speaks with Prashant Jha, opinion editor at the Hindustan Times and author of the book, How the BJP Wins: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine. So many election analysts, journalists, and political scientists failed to predict the massive mandate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed in the 2019 general election. This has prompted a good deal of soul-searching as to why. In this conversation, Prashant—who was one of the few who picked up on the pro-Modi wave during the campaign—explains why so many election observers missed the writing on the wall.

Milan also speaks with Prashant about the current state of the BJP, the induction of BJP president Amit Shah into the government, what ails the Congress Party, and what could upset the BJP’s current electoral dominance.

Niha Masih on the History and Political Implications of the NRC in Assam Sep 11, 2019

Show notes

Milan speaks with Niha Masih of the Washington Post about the ongoing political drama surrounding the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. Nearly 33 million residents of Assam applied to have their names included on the register, which was intended to distinguish between who was a legitimate resident of the state of the Assam and who was an illegal migrant from Bangladesh. When the list finally came out in late August, nearly 2 million people discovered that their names were left off the list--calling their citizenship status into question.

Niha recently spent time on the ground in Assam and she and Milan discuss the history of the NRC process, its contested implementation, and the political color it has taken on in recent years. The two also debate the political implications of the registry for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the fate of the millions whose names did not appear on the revised list.

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