Rohit Lamba Reimagines India’s Economic Policy Emphasis

Today my guests are Tom Easton and Arjun Ramani from The Economist. Tom Easton is Mumbai bureau chief. He joined The Economist in 2000 at the New York bureau and was appointed the Asian business editor in 2007. Arjun Ramani is on an extended stint in Mumbai and Delhi bureaus covering the Indian economy. Before this, he was the global business and economics correspondent in the London office. We spoke about various aspects of covered in a recent six-part special report on India’s economy written by Arjun and Tom. Recorded May 2nd, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Arjun on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:03) - The India Express and its Future (00:01:57) - Reasons for Optimism and Pessimism Over India’s Future (00:14:45) - Long-Run Economic Growth (00:18:51) - Is India Prepared to be a Capitalist Country? (00:29:37) - Unemployment vs. Informal Labor Market in India (00:47:17) - India and Education (00:51:21) - State Capacity Problems (01:02:11) - Concrete Ceilings for Indian Businesses (01:08:24) - The Binding Constraint (01:13:30) - Industrial Policy (01:31:53) - Future of Economic Journalism   (01:44:50) - Outro

Today my guest is Rohit Lamba, an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. We spoke about his recent book Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future which he has coauthored with Raghuram Rajan. We spoke about their argument to shift the focus from industrial and trade policy towards a services and education policy, how India can and should decentralize, if India can scale education and health, India’s growth rate numbers, and much more.  Recorded April 19th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:05:21) - Zooming into Indian States (00:20:25) - Why not Decentralization? (00:26:28) - Scaling Education (00:51:14) - Educating the Global South (00:53:22) - Picking Winners and Losers (01:10:22) - India's Growth Rate (01:18:44) - Outro Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Rohit on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Today my guest is Rasheed Griffith, who is the CEO of the Caribbean Progress Studies Institute, the host of the podcast the Rasheed Griffith Show, and one of my favorite writers on Substack. He also directs the Emergent Ventures Africa-Caribbean grants program at the Mercatus Center.  We spoke about whether the former colonizers owe reparations to the Caribbean people, economic divergence in post-colonial Caribbean countries, Caribbean music, homophobia, VS Naipaul, West Indian cricket team, and much more.  Recorded April 4th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:09:37) - Do Former Colonizers Owe Reparations to the Caribbean People? (00:22:29) - The Counterfactual for Caribbean Colonies (00:35:48) - India, Caribbean and Scale (00:40:52) - Is Saint Lucia the Best at Spotting Talent? (00:49:37) - Caribbean Civil Rights Movement (00:58:01) - Innovation in Caribbean Music (01:03:59) - Homophobia (01:13:10) - Most Underrated Caribbean Island? (01:19:05) - V.S. Naipual (01:30:57) - Outro Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Rasheed on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

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, and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens. He has co-edited India’s Marathon: Reshaping the Post-Pandemic World Order. Today we are discussing his most recent book, When the Chips Are Down, coauthored with Abhiram Manchi. We spoke the evolution of the semiconductor industry, industrial targeting, Moore’s law, Rock’s law, Taiwan’s Comparative advantage, whether India can lead in semiconductor chips and more. Recorded March 12th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:08:35) - Moore's Law (00:14:08) - Rock's Law (00:21:41) - Geopolitics of the Semiconducter Industry (00:27:46) - Metacritical Technologies (00:38:49) - Geographical Concentration (00:48:34) - Zelenograd (00:59:44) - Unease of doing Business in India (01:09:45) - Industrial Targeting in Taiwan    (01:30:57) - Outro Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Pranay on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Today my guests are M. Krishnan and Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan. M. Krishnan is an economist based in Chennai and Singapore, and specializes in agriculture education systems, fisheries, and aquaculture research. He is currently an advisor at Infinite-Sum Modeling Inc and was a distinguished scientist of the Agricultural Research Service of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan is an economist specializing in trade and international policy. He is a Fellow at the (NITI) Aayog, Government of India, where he formerly led the institution’s sections on Trade and Commerce, Strategic Economic Dialogue, International Cooperation, and Vision India@2047. Today we are discussing their recent coauthored paper titled Indian Fisheries in the Context of WTO Regulations, published by the Mercatus Center in collaboration with Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. We spoke about the big issues concerning fisheres, in particular, India’s interests in at the 13th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently held in Abu Dhabi. Recorded March 13th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:50) - Fisheries in India (00:13:46) - Overfishing and Illegal Fishing in India (00:19:59) - Overfishing Negotiations   (00:22:01) - Subsidies (00:26:27) - At the Negotiating Table (00:28:24) - IUUs (00:33:01) - Seasonal Fishing Ban (00:37:33) - Leading the Global South (00:45:17) - Measurement (00:48:47) - Domestic Politics (00:53:35) - The Future (00:59:38) - Outro Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Badri on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Aparna Chandra is a constitutional scholar and associate professor of law at the National Law school in Bangalore. She is the coauthor, along with Sital Kalantry and William Hubbard of the recent book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India. We spoke about the problem of pendency across all courts in the Indian judiciary, whether the Supreme Court is truly a people’s court, the problem of special leave petitions, potential ways to reform the judiciary, and much more.  Recorded February 16th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Timestamps (00:01:12) - Function of the Supreme Court (00:07:05) - Special Leave Petition (SLP) (00:13:57) - A People’s Court? (00:35:56) - Fast tracks and VIP Culture (00:48:25) - Malice, Incompetence or Compassion? (00:52:03) - People Like Us (01:04:41) - Ending SLPs (01:23:15) - Too Cool for Rules (01:29:51) - Chief Justice as First Among Equals (01:33:50) - Outro Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Aparna on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

This is our 100th episode and I want to thank our listeners, the guests who have been exceptionally generous with their time and insights, the fantastic team at Mercatus that helps me produce and disseminate the podcast, and to all our donors and supporters. Today my guest is Douglas Irwin, who is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of dozens of books and papers, most recently, Clashing over Commerce, which is a magisterial history of US trade policy. We spoke about India’s liberalization moment in 1991, the five phases of globalization, British repeal of Corn laws, premature deindustrialization, the relevance of the WTO, absolute versus comparative advantage, the future Argentina, and much more.  Recorded January 23rd, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Doug on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Today my guest is Rahul Matthan, a technology lawyer and partner at Trilegal. He assisted the Indian government in developing India’s data privacy law and he is the author of the recent books Privacy 3.0 and The Third Way. We spoke about India’s digital public infrastructure revolution, India’s unified payments system, AI, blockchain, the design issues around India’s NCPI, Aadhaar, privacy, and much more. Recorded January 22nd, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Rahul on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History at Australian National University. His research focuses on various aspects of the history of modern South Asia. And he is the author of the new book, Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India. We spoke about the history of a conservative and ideological opposition politics of India, influence of BR Shenoy and more generally the Austrian economists on Swatratra party, about C Rajagopalachari, other members, and much more. Recorded December 22nd, 2023. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Aditya on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Today my guest is Nasreen Munni Kabir, a documentary filmmaker, TV producer and director, author, biographer, translator/subtitler, and an absolute authority on all things Hindi cinema. We spoke about her biographical conversation series of books with artists like Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Lata Mangeshkar, Waheeda Rahman, Zakir Hussain, AR Rahman. We also spoke about her documentary films on Guru Dutt, and television series Movie Mahal chronicling the history of Hindi cinema, how she chooses her subjects, the difficulty of subtitling Hindi films, her favorite films, songs, artists, and much more.  Recorded December 12th, 2023. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.