Ideas of India

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. This is the 2024 job market series where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about the latest research in India.  I spoke with Sukrit Puri, who is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT and an Elinor Ostrom fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research focus is on the entanglement between business and politics in emerging economies, and his dissertation focuses on family firms in India. We discussed his job market paper, Corporate Kinship: Political Attachments of the Family Firm, we talked about how family firms differ from management and expert run businesses in India, whether it is in their firm structure or their political giving, whether family firms are most strategic or expressive in politics, the differences in the nature of the quid pro quo for a family firm versus a management run firm, the latest electoral bond scheme, and much more. Recorded September 11th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Sukrit on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:16) - Grand Tamasha (00:03:05) - Analyzing Family-Run Firms and Campaign Donations    (00:07:06) - How Family Businesses Donate Politically in Relation to Corporations and Individuals (00:10:17) - Distinctions Between Family-Run and Non-Family-Run Firms (00:14:48) - Political Donations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Overlap or Distinct Strategies? (00:19:35) - The Hidden Side of Campaign Contributions (00:25:56) - Ethnic Identity in Relation to Expressive Giving (00:28:59) - Challenges in Measuring Quid Pro Quo Arrangements (00:35:55) - The Impact of Demonetization on Political Donations (00:37:06) - Assessing the Reaction to the Information Shock from Mandated Disclosures (00:45:22) - Understanding the Reputational Impact of Political Donations (00:51:15) - Is Uncertainty a Factor? (00:57:11) - Outro

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. We are kicking off the 2024 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India.  Our first scholar in the series is Rolly Kapoor, who is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics at University of California, Santa Cruz. Before this, she received a BA in Economics from Delhi University and an MSE in Economics from University College London. Her research focuses on issues related to gender, access and urban mobility in developing countries. We spoke about her job market paper titled, Together to Work? The Effect of Travel Buddies on Women’s Employment and Mobility in India, co-authored with Smit Gade. We talked about the difficulties women have in navigating urban areas, its effect on female labor force participation, the impact of safe travel on job market decisions, and much more. Recorded September 6th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Rolly on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:14) - Grand Tamasha (00:05:07) - Mobility Constraints for Women in India (00:07:37) - The Study: How Do Women Travel Together? (00:10:04) - Background on Women’s Travel in India (00:13:00) - Social Norms and the Cognitive Load: Benefits of Women Traveling Together (00:16:42) - Findings on Travel Buddies and Job Interview Attendance and Additional Positive Impacts (00:21:14) - Implications for Further Research on Women’s Mobility Patterns (00:26:40) - Diverse Reactions to Travel Interventions (00:28:32) - Policy Implications for Supporting Women’s Travel (00:33:43) - Other Research Projects on Women and Labor (00:39:29) - Outro

Today my guest is Ruchir Sharma, who is the Chairman of Rockefeller International, a columnist with the Financial Times, and the author of the recent book, What Went Wrong with Capitalism. We talked about American debt levels, US monetary policy, regulation and cronyism, industrial policy, the Indian economy under Modi, and much more. Recorded July 31st, 2024. 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 (00:00:59) - Capitalism in America (00:07:48) - Problems in Monetary Policy (00:17:07) - Elite Consensus and Capitalism (00:21:13) - Crisis and Course Correction (00:27:14) - Credit and Bond Markets in the US (00:33:07) - Industrial Policy in the US (00:38:46) - Misunderstanding Systemic Risk (00:48:18) - Declining Birth Rates and Economic Growth (00:51:00) - Technology versus Regulation (00:58:12) - India’s Economic Future (01:00:30) - Modi Government’s Economic Policies (01:16:25) - Alternative Ways out of Fiscal Crisis? (01:18:04) - Outro

Today my guest is Amol Agrawal, who is the author of History of Private Banking in South Canara District (1906-69). He teaches economics at Ahmedabad University and blogs at the excellent blog Mostly Economics.  We spoke about the colonial and post-colonial history of banking in India, the unique features of the South Canara district, and its bankers, inclusive banking by state and private banks, bank nationalization, and much more.  Recorded July 26th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Amol on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:21) - History of Private Banking in India (00:12:06) - Lending and Deposits (00:16:17) - Industrial Development and Banking (00:21:24) - Bank Runs in India (00:25:54) - Success of South Canara Banks (00:28:38) - Systemic Risk in South Canara (00:36:16) - Banking Castes? (00:40:29) - What was the RBI so wrong about with South Canara banking? (00:47:50) - Pigmy Deposit Scheme (01:05:28) - Why Were India’s Banks Nationalized? (01:23:35) - Outro 

Today my guests are Amartya Lahiri and Devashish Mitra who are joining me to discuss their latest paper for the 1991 project titled India’s Development Policy Challenge. Amartya Lahiri is the Royal Bank Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Devashish Mitra the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. We spoke about structural transformation and increasing total factor productivity, manufacturing versus services led growth, industrial policy, export led growth, how to employ India’s youth in more productive sectors, and much more. Recorded July 29th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Amartya on X Follow Devashish on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:27) - State of India’s Structural Transformation (00:08:28) - Has India’s Growth Peaked? (00:15:39) - Trade-, Export-, and Manufacturing-Led Growth (00:27:50) - Manufacturing-Led or Services-Led Growth Model? (00:47:16) - Scaling Manufacturing (00:59:38) - Labor Productivity in India (01:06:41) - Rising Protectionism (01:19:44) - Monetary Policy and Trade Policy (01:35:26) - Outro

Today my guest is Anirudh Burman. He is an associate research director and fellow at Carnegie Endowment India, and prior to that, he worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and the Centre for Policy Research, both in New Delhi. He has his master’s in law from Harvard Law School. We spoke about the dysfunctional land markets and the kinds of reforms required in land use policy, land sale and land transfers. We also talked about the various experiments with land pooling and leasing in India, how to think about eminent domain law, land titling, land title insurance and much more.  Recorded July 15th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Anirudh on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:46) - How does India’s Land Market work? (00:15:23) - Why do we have such bad regulation? (00:23:519) - Land Transfer and Consolidation (00:40:35) - Transitioning to an efficient land regulation system (00:45:25) - Eminent Domain (01:05:35) - Land Leasing (01:11:01) - Land Pooling (01:28:37) - Outro

Today my guests are Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah, who are my colleagues at the Mercatus Center and research scholars working with me on the 1991 Project.  We spoke about the kinds of policy change we would like to see in the coalition government led by Modi’s in his third term. We talked about the research Shreyas, Kadambari and I have been working on in the areas of competition policy, regulating India’s digital marketplace, labor law reforms, scaling India’s manufacturing, streamlining GST, and much more.  Recorded July 1st, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Shreyas on X Follow Kadambari on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:31) - Past Budgets Announcements and Upcoming Budget (00:09:38) - Restarting reforms (00:22:56) - The Tinkering of Government (00:27:08) - Regulation of Big Tech Companies (00:51:35) - India’s Labor Regulations (01:10:33) - Solutions to India’s Regulatory Environment (01:20:27) - Outro

Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform. We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report. written by Sajith and his co-authors, Anurag Pagaria, Nachammai Savithiri both at Blume Ventures; the many countries that make up the country of India; bifurcated between India1, 2, and 3; gross fixed capital formation, fintechs, the consumption led boom that India is experiencing, the space industry, and much more. Recorded June 25th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Sajith on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:09:16) - Private Consumption and Fixed Capital Formation (00:14:15) - Gross Fixed Capital Formation (00:22:39) - Regime Uncertainty (00:26:51) - The Indian Consumer (00:35:10) - Bottlenecks and Reforms (00:42:18) - Mutual Funds Savings Model (00:47:33) - Path from Seed to IPO (00:55:40) - India's Foreign Investors (01:00:57) - India's Fintechs (01:11:09) - Space Tech in India (01:17:36) - What's on Pai's Bookshelf? (01:23:39) - Outro

Today my guest is Anne O Krueger. She is a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She served World Bank’s Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy managing director at the IMF from 2001 to 2006. We talked about her famous 1974 paper “The Political Economy of a Rent Seeking Society” on its 50th anniversary, her experience understanding the license permit raj system in India, the 1991 trade liberalization, the Washington consensus, decline of the WTO, the new protectionism in the US, reforming Argentina and much more. Recorded May 17th, 2024. 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 (00:01:24) - Rent-Seeking in Turkey and India (00:10:49) - Professional Influences (00:15:35) - South Korean Miracle (00:18:53) - Korea vs. India (00:26:19) - Import Substitution and Rent (00:29:15) - Turning Around the World Bank (00:38:59) - The Krueger Consensus (00:42:18) - Africa (00:45:39) - India's 1991 Reforms (00:50:52) - World Trade Organization (00:53:53) - United States and Free Trade (01:02:14) - License Permit Raj in the US (01:04:36) - International Monetary Fund (01:06:47) - Hope for Milei and Argentina (01:11:30) - Looking Back on Success (01:13:31) - Outro

Today my guest is Karthik Muralidharan. He is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the recent book Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance.” We talked about the lacking state capacity in India, about improving the quality of public expenditure, fiscal federalism, methods to improve the hiring process for government, better ways of staffing and using the Indian bureaucracy, randomized control trials and development and much more.  Recorded May 15th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Karthik on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:07:46) - Quality of Public Education (00:17:59) - Decentralization vs. Federalism (00:31:58) - Welfare Expenditure (00:41:30) - Personnel for the Indian State (01:09:08) - Better Approach for Skilling (01:17:26) - Empanelment (01:34:32) - The Backdrop of the Field of Economics (01:56:52) - Outro