Podcast · Society & Culture

Ideas of India

by Mercatus Center at George Mason University · English · Society & Culture

Through conversations with top thinkers in the social sciences and beyond, economist Shruti Rajagopalan explores the ideas that will propel India forward.

New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 1 hr 14 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 53 min

Kishen Shastry on the Political Economy of Hindu Monastic Institutions (Mutts) in Karnataka

This is the 2026 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India. On this episode, I spoke with Kishen Shastry who is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Judge Business School. He received his Ph.D. in economics in 2026 at the University of Cambridge where his research focus was economics of religion and informal institutions. We discussed his job market paper titled, " The Political Economy of Informal Institutions in India ." We talked about the economics of religion,…

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Earlier episodes 28 most recent

E170 · 24 Sep 2026 · 46 min

Nisha Vernekar on Night-shift Reforms and Women's Work in India

This is the 2026 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India. On this episode, I spoke with Nisha Vernekar who is a PhD Candidate in Economics at University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research focus is at the intersection of gender, education, labour economics and development economics. We discussed her job market paper, (coauthored with Karan Singhal) titled, " Breaking the Night Barrier: Night-shift Reforms and Women's Work in India ." We talked about the regulatory frictions in the labor market in India,…
E169 · 10 Sep 2026 · 57 min

Aishwarya Kekre on Land Fragmentation and Its Impact on Structural Transformation

This is the 2026 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India. We are launching our series with Aishwarya Kekre , who is a PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Virginia. Her research focus is at the intersection development, trade and spatial Economics. We discussed her job market paper, "Barriers to Structural Transformation: The Role of Agricultural Land Fragmentation." We talked about the reasons for land fragmentation in India, its impact on manufacturing enterprises, on employment in both…
E168 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 13 min

Rana Hasan on Harnessing the Economic Potential of Indian Cities

Today my guest is Rana Hasan who is the Director, Centre for Economic Growth at NCAER and Senior Affiliate Scholar at the Mercatus Center. Prior to this he was the Regional Lead Economist at the Asian Development Bank. We talked about how to classify and define a city, coordination problems in urban governance, their potential as engines of growth and employment, land use regulation, and how cities are the mother of all general equilibrium problems, and much more. Recorded July 23rd, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Prefer to watch this episode, see the full length…
E167 · 13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

Gaurav Chiplunkar on the Frictions in India's Labor Market

Today my guest is Gaurav Chiplunkar , who is an Assistant Professor in the Global Economies and Markets group at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia . We talked about labor market frictions in India, understanding the reasons for low female labor force participation in India, the importance of information flows and networks, the role of middlemen, and much more. Recorded July 8th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Prefer to watch this episode, see the full length video here . Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Gaurav…
E166 · 30 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 54 min

Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah on the 'The 1991 Project'

Today my guests are my colleagues Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah . Shreyas is a research scholar and Kadambari is a research associate at the Mercatus Center with the India program. We talked about completing five years of the 1991 Project , how it started, it's scope, the oral histories of the reformers in 1991, papers, essays, fellowships and much more. Recorded July 10th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Prefer to watch this episode, see the full length video here . Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Shreyas on X Follow…
E165 · 16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 36 min

M.R. Madhavan on Party Power and the Decline of India's Legislatures

Today my guest is M.R. Madhavan , co-founder and president of PRS Legislative Research . We talked about the role and purpose of the Rajya Sabha, treatment of money bills in a Westminster system, how the anti-defection law and party whips have hollowed out parliamentary function, parliamentary procedure, the role of the governor, and much more. Recorded June 24th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro…
E164 · 2 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

Rahul Sagar on the Birth of Indian Nationalism

Today my guest is once again Rahul Sagar , who is a Global Network Associate Professor of Political Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. We talked about his new book The Birth of Indian Liberalism , the recovery of the forgotten nineteenth-century thinker Mama Parmanand, why his Letters to an Indian Raja counts as the first work of Indian political theory, how Indian liberals had to justify building a state out of chaos rather than restraining one that already existed, their fight against the social tyranny of caste, clergy, and family, the case for binding the ruler and educating the…
E163 · 18 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 19 min

Sajjid Chinoy on Whether India Faces another 1991 Moment

Today my guest is Sajjid Chinoy , managing director and chief India economist at J.P. Morgan. He is also currently serving as a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. Sajjid previously served on the Advisory Council to India's 15th Finance Commission and has served on a number of expert committees of the Reserve Bank of India. We talked about India's current balance of payments and capital account challenges, the constraints holding back private investment, why employment and exports have become first-order policy priorities, rupee depreciation,…
E162 · 4 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

Ritam Chaurey on Placing the Firm at the Center of India's Structural Transformation

Today my guest is Ritam Chaurey , who is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies . We talked about structural transformation in India over the last three decades, how firm level behavior responds to regulatory and fiscal changes, how firms choose between capital and labor, or permanent versus contractual labor, land use and factory location, and much more. Recorded April 29th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Ritam on X Click here for the latest…
E161 · 21 May 2026 · 1 hr 47 min

Pratap Bhanu Mehta on Liberalism, Nihilism, and the Collapse of Sincerity

Today my guest is Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who is the Laurance Rockefeller Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton and former president and chief executive of the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is the author of various books and edited volumes, has served on various government committees, and is a columnist for the Indian Express. We talked about the return of nihilism in political life, the hollowing of professional identities, the politics of vishwas, Adam Smith on concentrated power, what it takes to build lasting institutions, the assumptions behind nonalignment, and…
E160 · 6 May 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

Shruti Rajagopalan and Milan Vaishnav on India's Delimitation Dilemma

Today we are releasing a webinar recording from April 24th where Milan Vaishnav and I had a conversation on delimitation in India. Milan is a senior fellow and the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the host of the excellent Grand Tamasha podcast where this recording will be simultaneously released. We talked about the failure to pass the 131 st constitutional amendment bill in Parliament, the government's intention to reapportion and increase the size of the Lok Sabha, the delimitation freeze pegged to the 1971 census that has…
E159 · 23 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 14 min

Samanth Subramanian on the Fragile and Resilient Technologies that Bind Us

Today my guest is Samanth Subramanian, who is a journalist and writer and the author of the recent books The Web Beneath the Waves and A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane . We talked about under water sea cables and choke points in critical global infrastructure, the intersection of technology and geopolitics, large language models, JBS Haldane and the relationship between science and politics, and much more. Recorded March 25th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti…
E158 · 9 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 47 min

Arvind Subramanian and Devesh Kapur on India's Precocious Development Odyssey

Today my guests are Arvind Subramanian and Devesh Kapur. Arvind is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. Devesh is the Starr Foundation Professor of South Asian Studies and Director of the Asia Programs at the Johns Hopkins. They are co-authors of the recent book, A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey . We talked about India's redistributive democracy, why Indian states have taken such different development paths, India's socialism and consequent scarcity, manufacturing…
E157 · 26 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

V. Anantha Nageswaran on Surveying the Growth and Financialization of the Indian Economy

Today my guest is Dr. V Anantha Nageswaran , who is currently serving as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. He is also the co-author of the books Economics of Derivatives and The Rise of Finance: Causes, Consequences and Cures . We talked about import substitution and strategic resilience, futures and options market, gross fixed capital formation, crypto markets, India's growth trajectory, and much more. Recorded March 12th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Click here for the latest…
E156 · 12 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

Ornit Shani and Rohit De on Assembling India's Constitution

Today my guests are Ornit Shani and Rohit De , historians and the authors of the latest book Assembling India's Constitution . Ornit Shani is an associate professor of history at the University of Haifa and the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise . Rohit De is an associate professor of history at Yale University and the author of A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic . We talked about how their latest book is a radical departure from the usual telling of the making of the Indian Constitution as an…
E155 · 26 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 47 min

Pranay Kotasthane on the Political Economy of Rare Earths and Critical Minerals

Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme . Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi , a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co-author of - Missing in Action: Why Should You Care About Public Policy , When the Chips are Down , and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens . We spoke about rare earths and critical minerals, China's dominance, the gap between India's…
E154 · 12 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 42 min

Nachiket Mor on Rethinking India's Healthcare System

Today my guest is Nachiket Mor , a health economist whose work focuses on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a visiting scientist at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore, and a commissioner and author on the Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India's Health System , which published its final report in The Lancet in January 2026 . We talked about the different layers of the Indian healthcare system, the design and policy failures in both public and…
E153 · 29 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

Akshay Jaitly on the Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm

Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly , the author of the recent book, Trilegal: The Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm . He is one of the founders of Trilegal and specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting. We talked about how Trilegal grew in the context of India's market liberalization and sectoral reforms, different partnership structures, delegated legislation, regulatory capture, the alchemy between the founding partners, and much more. Recorded January 6th, 2026. Read…
E152 · 15 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 36 min

Renuka Sane on Regulatory Frameworks, Rule of Law, and Pensions Reforms in India

Today my guest is Renuka Sane who is the managing director of Managing Director of Trustbridge . An institution that seeks to improve India's business environment by improving the rule of law. Renuka was a member of many expert committees including: the Task Force of Experts set up by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation; the research team of the Bankruptcy Legislative Reforms Commission; the Pension Advisory Committee of the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority; and the Working Group on personal insolvency at the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. She received a Ph.D.…
E151 · 2 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 28 min

Snigdha Poonam on the Political Economy of Transnational Scams

Today my guest is Snigdha Poonam who is a journalist and writer. She is the author of the new book Scamlands and also the author of the 2018 award winning book Dreamers : How Young Indians Are Changing Their World. We talked about the scam industrial complex in different states like Jharkhand, Assam and Tamil Nadu in India, the interaction between the scam economy and the formal economy, the transnational scams in China and Cambodia and how they are connected to India, the aspirations and traumas of the scam work force and much more. Recorded November 17th, 2025. Read a full transcript…
E150 · 23 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 11 min

2025 in Review

Shruti and Ideas of India producer Dallas Floer sit down for the 2025 end-of-year episode. They look back at key themes and top episodes from the past year, address listener questions, and look forward to what's in store for Shruti and the show in 2026. Recorded December 16th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship . Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:03) - Listener Questions (00:25:50) - Big…
E149 · 4 Dec 2025 · 54 min

Ammu Lavanya on How Foreign Capital Changed Indian Bank Lending

Our seventh and final scholar in the series is Ammu Lavanya , a PhD candidate in Economics at George Washington University. Her research is in the areas of International Finance, Monetary Economics, Empirical Banking and Financial History. We spoke about her job market paper titled International Financial Flows, Credit Allocation and Productivity . We talked about financial liberalization in India, the 2004 banking reform that increased the ceiling on raising foreign equity its impact on market value, lending capacity and increasing productivity through credit in India, the difference…
E148 · 20 Nov 2025 · 48 min

Nayantara Biswas on Demand- and Supply-Side Interventions in India's Maternal Health Policy

Our sixth scholar in the series is Nayantara Biswas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Clark University. Her research focuses on health equity impact evaluations of small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies. We spoke about dissertation titled, The Impact of Social Policies on Reproductive Health, Maternal Employment, and Child Health: Evidence from India . We talked about demand side versus supply side policy interventions in public health, India's maternal health policy landscape, the ASHA…
E147 · 6 Nov 2025 · 49 min

Karthik Narayan on Measuring the Effects of Unscheduled vs. Scheduled Monetary Policy Announcements

Our fifth scholar in the series is Karthik Narayan , who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Nuffield College and at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. His research focuses on monetary policy, macroeconomics and finance in developing countries. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Macroeconomic Effects of Scheduled and Unscheduled Monetary Policy Surprises. We talked about how the Reserve Bank of India makes and announces its policies, its impact on interest rates, inflation expectations and output, measuring the impact of policy announcements, the Lucas Critique…
E146 · 23 Oct 2025 · 38 min

Asad Tariq on Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India

Our fourth scholar in the series is Asad Tariq , who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with a particular interest in religion, politics and public service delivery in India. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Constituencies of Change: Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India . We talked about the 2008 delimitation exercise, especially at the state level, gerrymandering, the median voter versus swing voters and ethnic groups, public service delivery…
E145 · 9 Oct 2025 · 51 min

Chetana Sabnis on The Intimacy Contract and the Indian State

Our third scholar in the series is Chetana Sabnis , who is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on how states regulate intimate relationships and construct hierarchies of familial belonging. We spoke about her job market paper titled, The Intimacy Contract in Action: How Indian Courts Determine which Extramarital Relationships Deserve Recognition . We talked about extramarital affairs, polygamous relationships, Uniform Civil Code, social versus legal acceptance, and much more. Recorded September 5th, 2025. Read a full transcript…
E144 · 25 Sep 2025 · 38 min

Sunny Rai on Using Large Language Models to Understand the Depiction of Shame and Pride in Bollywood versus Hollywood

Our second scholar in the series is Sunny Rai , who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi. Her research focuses on misinformation, mental health and cross-cultural variations in human language. We spoke about her co-authored job market paper titled, Social Norms in Cinema: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Shame, Pride and Prejudice . We talked about depictions of shame and pride and heroism in Indian versus American films, the challenges with textual…
E143 · 11 Sep 2025 · 48 min

Kartik Srivastava on Referral-Based Hiring, Caste Networks, and Breaking Barriers in India's Labor Markets

Our first scholar in the series is Kartik Srivastava , who is a PhD candidate at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Before this, he received his bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he majored in Economics and Engineering Sciences. His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Familiar strangers: Evidence from referral-based hiring experiments in India . We talked his large-scale experiment at a footwear manufacturing firm in Delhi, on how referral-based hiring improve firm productivity,…

About Ideas of India

Through conversations with top thinkers in the social sciences and beyond, economist Shruti Rajagopalan explores the ideas that will propel India forward.

Ideas of India is a English society & culture podcast from Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Language: English
Category: Society & Culture
New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 1 hr 14 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1525952293
Website: ideasofindia.libsyn.com

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