Ideas of India

Latest Episodes:

Raahil Madhok on the Development-Biodiversity Tradeoff in India Sep 29, 2022

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This episode is the second installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Raahil Madhok about his job market paper, "The Development-Biodiversity Tradeoff in India's Forests." They discuss the effects of different types of infrastructure projects, state capacity, the Forest Rights Act, bird-watching and much more. Madhok is a Ph.D. candidate in the Food and Resource Economics Group at the Faculty of Land and Food systems at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on environmental and development economics.

Recorded September 7th, 2022

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Nishant Vats on the Impact of Income Guarantee on Farm Incomes in India Sep 15, 2022

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This episode is the first installment of a series in which Shruti speaks with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars about their research as they enter the job market and the world of academia. In this episode, Shruti talks with Nishant Vats about his job market paper (co-authored with Pulak Ghosh), "Safety Nets, Credit and Productive Activity: Evidence from a Guaranteed Income Program for Small Entrepreneurs." Vats is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are finance and development, financial intermediation and corporate finance, with a secondary interest in macroeconomics and political economy.

Recorded September 8th, 2022

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A Conversation on Talent Sep 01, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross about their new book, "Talent: How To Identify Energizers, Creatives and Winners Around the World." They discuss how to identify and attract talent, competition vs. cooperation, the necessity of failure and resilience, effects of immigration on talent and much more. Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is co-author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and co-founder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University. Gross is a start-up investor in technology businesses including Uber, Instacart, Coinbase, GitHub and SpaceX. He co-founded Pioneer, a quantitative start-up accelerator, and was a partner at Y-Combinator and started its AI program.

This conversation is also being released as a bonus episode of Cowen's biweekly podcast, Conversations with Tyler.

Recorded June 29th, 2022

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Photo credit: Drew Bird Photo

Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin on How the World Became Rich Aug 18, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin about their new book, "How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth." They discuss the link between technological innovation and growth, the importance of global market competition, positive and negative effects of colonialism, the methodology of economic history and much more. Koyama is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University. He is interested in how historical institutions functioned and in the relationship between culture and economic performance. Rubin is a professor of economics at Chapman University. His research focuses on historical relationships between political and religious institutions and their role in economic development.

Recorded July 27th, 2022

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Jennifer Murtazashvili on The Future of Afghanistan Aug 04, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Jennifer Murtazashvili about the problems with imposing liberal democracy in Afghanistan, building state capacity, education, the role of the U.S. in the Ghani government's collapse and much more. Murtazashvili is the founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets and an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on issues of self-governance, security, political economy and public-sector reform in the developing world. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of "Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan" and the co-author (with Ilia Murtazashvili) of "Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan."

Recorded July 20th, 2022

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Ashwini Deshpande on Gender and Caste Discrimination and Affirmative Action in India Jul 21, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Ashwini Deshpande about caste discrimination in labor markets, the reservation system and its critiques, education of women, how endogamy perpetuates caste, Bollywood films and much more. Deshpande is a professor of economics and the founding director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at Ashoka University. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She is the author of "The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India" and "Affirmative Action in India."

Recorded July 7th, 2022

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Vinay Sitapati on Liberalization and Narasimha Rao Jul 07, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Vinay Sitapati about Narasimha Rao's socialism, his working relationships with Manmohan Singh and others, how his skills as a translator were useful in his career, and much more. Sitapati is a political scientist, lawyer and journalist. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and degrees from Harvard University and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. His first book, "Half-Lion," was a best-selling biography of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Sitapati teaches at Ashoka University, near Delhi.

Recorded June 16th, 2022

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Saumitra Jha on Commerce and Peace Jun 23, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Saumitra Jha about medieval ports, competition versus complementarity, marriage endogamy, the effect of military experience on the prevalence of violence and much more. Jha is a professor in the political economy group at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs. He also convenes the Conflict and Polarization Lab within the Stanford King Center on Global Development. His research focuses on understanding the effectiveness of organizations and innovations that societies have developed to address the problems of violence and political risk in the past and to develop new lessons for contemporary policy.

Recorded on May 23rd, 2022

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Lant Pritchett on Reforming Development Economics Jun 09, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Lant Pritchett for a second time. They discuss internal and external migration, the concept of open borders, definitions of poverty, the flaws of randomized controlled trials and much more. Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. He is currently affiliated with Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government as the research director of the RISE Programme, is the Research Director at LaMP (Labor Mobility Partnerships) and is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He previously worked with the World Bank from 1988 to 2007, living in Indonesia 1998-2000 and India 2004-2007. His publications span a wide range of development topics including economic growth, state capability, education, labor mobility and development assistance.

Recorded April 27th, 2022

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Adeel Hussain and Tripurdaman Singh on The Debates That Defined India May 26, 2022

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In this episode, Shruti speaks with Adeel Hussain and Tripurdaman Singh about their book, "Nehru: The Debates That Defined India." They discuss homogeneity in parliamentary democracies, tensions between liberalism and cultural traditions, the branches of the Indian and Pakistani governments and much more. Hussain is an assistant professor at Leiden University and a senior research affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. His research focuses on jurisprudence, comparative constitutional law, international law and the global history of legal and political thought, with a regional emphasis on South Asia and Europe. Singh is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. His work explores the broad themes of sovereignty, state formation, decolonization and constitution making.

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