Grand Tamasha is Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced with the Hindustan Times, a leading Indian media house. For five years (and counting), Milan has interviewed authors, journalists, policymakers, and practitioners working on contemporary India to give listeners across the globe a glimpse into life in the world’s most populous country.

For the past two years, in anticipation of the show’s holiday hiatus, we’ve published an annual list of our favorite books featured on the podcast over the previous twelve months.

In keeping with this tradition, here—in no particular order—are Grand Tamasha’s top books of 2024.

Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
By Janaki Bakhle. Published by Princeton University Press.

Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance
By Karthik Muralidharan. Published by Penguin Viking India.

The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy (published in the United States and the UK as The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy)
By Rahul Bhatia. Published by Context (South Asia); Little, Brown (UK); and PublicAffairs (United States).

In this special bonus episode, Milan talks about why he loved each of these books and includes short clips from his conversations with Janaki, Karthik, and Rahul.

This is the final episode of our twelfth season. Thanks to our listeners to being such loyal followers of the show. We’re excited to kick off our thirteenth season in mid-January after taking a short holiday break.

Episode notes:

1. Milan Vaishnav, “Grand Tamasha’s Best Books of 2023,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 19, 2023.

2. Milan Vaishnav, “Grand Tamasha’s Best Books of the Year,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 20, 2022.

3. “Identifying the New India (with Rahul Bhatia),” Grand Tamasha, September 25, 2024.

4. “A Blueprint for India’s State Capacity Revolution (with Karthik Muralidharan),” Grand Tamasha, May 22, 2024.

5. “Savarkar, In His Own Words (with Janaki Bakhle),” Grand Tamasha, March 27, 2024.

If there is one thing political scientists can agree on, it is that we live in an era of populism. With the recent election of Donald Trump, populism has returned to the United States, raising questions about what changes we might see in upcoming elections in 2025.

South Asia has been no stranger to populism and a new book, Righteous Demagogues: Populist Politics in South Asia and Beyond, provides a framework for understanding its origins, its evolution, and its prospects. The authors of this new book are the scholars Dann Naseemullah and Pradeep Chhibber and they join Milan on the show this week to discuss their new book.

Dann is a Reader in International Politics at King's College London. And Pradeep is currently Professor of Political Science and the Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

The three discuss the COVID-era origins of the book, definitions of populism, and the ways in which populism has played out across the subcontinent over the last seven decades. Plus, they talk about the future of ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, the current turmoil in Bangladesh, and what exactly is new in the “New India” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Episode notes:

1. “The Lessons of Gujarat Under Modi (with Christophe Jaffrelot),” Grand Tamasha, May 29, 2024.

2. Pradeep Chhibber and Adnan Naseemullah, “This is how Modi is different from other Right-wing populists like Trump, Erdogan & Duterte,” ThePrint, August 21, 2019.

Where and when ethnic violence breaks out is a question of longstanding concern to the India policy community.

Previous work in political science has pointed to a diverse array of factors—ranging from civil society bonds to elite networks and coalition politics as potential explanations. A new book by the scholar Aditi Malik highlights political parties, specifically party instability, as the principal culprit.

In Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India, Aditi highlights how the levels of party instability informs the decisions of political elites to organize or support violence. Settings marked by unstable parties are more vulnerable to recurring and major episodes of party violence than those populated by durable parties. This is because transient parties enable politicians to disregard voters' future negative reactions to conflict.

Aditi is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross. She studies political violence, gender-based violence, social movements, and contentious politics.

She joins Milan on the show this week to talk about her book and the implications of her research findings. They discuss the role of elites in fomenting violence, when voters sanction violent politicians, and the similarities and differences in ethnic violence in Kenya and India. Plus, they discuss what Aditi’s book tells us about the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Episode notes:

1. “Paul Staniland on the Surprising Decline in Political Violence in South Asia,” Grand Tamasha, October 7, 2020.

2. Aditi Malik, “Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India,” Fifteen Eighty Four (CUP) Blog, August 14, 2024.

3. Zack Beauchamp, “Narendra Modi is Celebrating his Scary Vision for India’s Future,” Vox, January 27, 2024.

4. Aditi Malik. “Hindu-Muslim Violence in Unexpected Places: Theory and Evidence from Rural India,” Politics, Groups, & Identities, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2021): 40-58.

The discourse in India today on the issue of the Muslim community seems to swing between two contrary positions.

According to the Hindu nationalist narrative, Muslims are a monolithic religious category whose presence justifies the need for greater Hindu solidarity. On the other hand, there is the narrative offered by liberals, who claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority to defend Indian democracy.

A new book by the scholar Hilal Ahmed, A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India, departs from these unidimensional notions of Muslim identity. It applies concepts from political science, history, and political theory to provide a much more nuanced view of India’s Muslim community.

Ahmed is an associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), where he is also associated with the Lokniti Programme for Comparative Democracy. He is an authority on political Islam, electoral behavior, and Indian democracy.

Ahmed joins Milan on the show this week to talk about “substantive Muslimness,” the meaning of Hindutva, and what exactly is new if the “new India.” Plus, the two discuss the state of the political opposition and the BJP’s vulnerabilities.

Episode notes:             

1. “Identifying the New India (with Rahul Bhatia),” Grand Tamasha, September 25, 2024.

2. “What Really Happened in India's 2024 General Election? (with Sanjay Kumar),” Grand Tamasha, September 18, 2024.

3. Hilal Ahmed, “CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey: The three main takeaways,” Hindu, June 7, 2024.

4. “Decoding the 2024 Indian General Elections (with Sunetra Choudhury and Rahul Verma),” Grand Tamasha, June 6, 2024.

5. “Neha Sahgal on Religion and Identity in Contemporary India,” Grand Tamasha, June 30, 2021.

Over the past twelve months, tales of spies and spycraft have complicated India’s relationships with key Western partners.

In recent months, both Canada and the United States have alleged that India’s foreign intelligence agency was involved in a complex plot to identify and target Khalistani separatists who were citizens of those countries.

In India, these allegations have, in turn, revealed deep skepticism about the actions of western spy agencies and the negative role they’ve played in India and across the Global South.

A new book, Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India’s Secret Cold War, offers the first comprehensive history of US and UK intelligence operations in the Indian subcontinent. The author of this book is Paul McGarr, a lecturer in Intelligence Studies at King’s College London.

To talk more about his new book—and the West’s 50-year battle to win the hearts and minds of Indians—Paul joins Milan on the show this week.

The two discuss India’s tradition of spycraft, the long shadow of the British Raj, and secret collaboration between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its Indian counterparts. Plus, the two discuss why the covert efforts of British and American intelligence agencies in 20th century India largely proved to be misguided and self-defeating.

Episode notes:

1. VIDEO: “Indira Gandhi Overdid the ‘Foreign Hand’ but Some of Her Fears About the CIA were real ,” The Wire, November 21, 2024.

2. “Inside the Secret World of South Asia's Spies (with Adrian Levy),” Grand Tamasha, October 27, 2021.

India’s Near East: A New History is an important new book by the scholar Avinash Paliwal.

The book traces the history of how New Delhi has grappled with the twin challenges of forging productive ties with its eastern neighbors—namely, Bangladesh and Myanmar—while building a robust administrative state in India’s Northeastern states.

It is the story of a state’s struggle to overcome war, displacement and interventionism, but which exposes the limits of independent India’s influence both inside and outside its borders.

Avinash joins Milan on the show to talk more about his new book. Avinash is a Reader in International Relations at SOAS University of London, where he specializes in South Asian strategic affairs.

Avinash and Milan discuss India’s state-building experience in the northeast, the fate of the “Look East” and “Act East” policies, and India’s often contentious relations with both Burma and Bangladesh. Plus, the two discuss how two factors—China and Hindutva— are remaking India’s approach to the near east.

Episode notes:

1. “What the Taliban Takeover Means for India (with Avinash Paliwal),” Grand Tamasha, September 15, 2021.

2. “Binalakshmi Nepram on the Realities of India’s Oft-Forgotten Northeast,” Grand Tamasha, June 3, 2020.

3. Avinash Paliwal, “Bangladesh on razor’s edge: Why India must wake up to the looming economic crisis and political instability to its east,” Indian Express, December 13, 2022.

The never-ending U.S. election has finally ended and Republican nominee Donald Trump has clinched a decisive victory. Trump is on track to win 312 electoral college votes and, for the first time, a majority of the popular vote.

Kamala Harris, a surprise entrant in the race, lost a closely contested election, marking the second time in three elections that a female Democratic presidential nominee failed to topple Trump.

The election has implications for Indian Americans, for India, and for U.S.-India relations.

To discuss these topics and more, Milan is joined on the show this week by Grand Tamasha news roundup regulars, Sadanand Dhume of the Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution.

The trio discuss the election results, the voting patterns of Indian Americans, what a Trump 2.0 might look like, and the implications of the elections for U.S.-India relations

Episode notes:

1. Tanvi Madan, “India will need to adapt to a new White House,” Indian Express, November 4, 2024.

2. Sadanand Dhume, “Indian-Americans and the ‘Racial Depolarization,’” Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2024.

3. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “Indian Americans at the Ballot Box: Results From the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 28, 2024.

4. VIDEO: “Deciphering the Indian American Vote,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 31, 2024.

5. Milan Vaishnav, “With Trump, it’s back to the future for the US,” Hindustan Times, November 6, 2024.

6. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “How Will Indian Americans Vote? Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 14, 2020.

7. AAPI Data tweet on exit poll data on Asian American voters, November 8, 2024.

8. Tanvi Madan, “Has India made friends with China after the Modi-Xi agreement?” Brookings Institution, October 29, 2024.

As American voters go to the polls, all indications point to a statistical dead-heat between vice president and Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris and former Republican president Donald Trump. The outcome will likely turn on tens of thousands of voters in a handful of key swing states. According to leading pollsters and polling aggregators, the race in these states is too close to call.

In this hotly contested race, one demographic whose political preferences are much discussed, though less studied, is Indian Americans. A new study, the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS), tries to fill this gap. The IAAS is a nationally representative online survey conducted by the Carnegie Endowment in conjunction with data and analytics firm YouGov. The report is authored by Sumitra Badrinathan of American University, Devesh Kapur of Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and Grand Tamasha host Milan Vaishnav.

This week on the show, Milan speaks with Sumitra and Devesh about the main findings of their new report and what they portend for the election as well as future political trends in the United States.

Episode notes:

1. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “Indian Americans at the Ballot Box: Results From the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 28, 2024.

2. VIDEO: “Deciphering the Indian American Vote,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 31, 2024.

3. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “How Will Indian Americans Vote? Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 14, 2020.

4. Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

5. Sara Sadhwani, “Asian American Mobilization: The Effect of Candidates and Districts on Asian American Voting Behavior,” Political Behavior 44 (2022):105–131.

6. Devesh Kapur, Nirvikar Singh, and Sanjoy Chakravorty, The Other One Percent: Indians in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

7. “Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur Decode the 2020 Indian American Vote,” Grand Tamasha, October 14, 2020.

The United States is fast approaching the end of a lengthy presidential campaign in which the issue of immigration has taken center stage.

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to protect America’s borders, with Trump’s misleading claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets emerging as one of the defining moments of the race so far. Harris, on the other hand, has gone on the offensive, blaming Trump for sabotaging a bipartisan Senate bill that would have beefed up border protection.

Amidst this back-and-forth, there’s been relatively little attention paid to the changing composition of who exactly is trying to enter the United States without prior authorization. Since 2020, India has emerged as the country of origin for the largest number of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. outside of the Western Hemisphere.

A new analysis by the Niskanen Center, “Indian migrants at the U.S. border: What the data reveals,” digs into what we know—and what we don’t—about this surge from India. The authors of this new analysis, Gil Guerra and Sneha Puri, join Milan on the show this week to talk about their new research.

Gil is an Immigration Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center, where he focuses on immigration and foreign policy, migrant integration, and demographic trends at the U.S.-Mexico border. And Sneha is an Immigration Policy Fellow at the Niskanen Center, focusing on a wide range of immigration policy issues such as legal migration pathways, employment-based visas, and irregular migration.

The three discuss the data on irregular migration, the surge in Indian “encounters” at the border, and the reasons behind the spike. Plus, the trio discuss the similarities and differences between Chinese and Indian migration, the recent controversies around Khalistani separatists in the diaspora, and the policy options facing the next U.S. president.

Episode notes:

1. Gil Guerra and Sneha Puri, “Indian migrants at the U.S. border: What the data reveals,” Niskanen Center, September 16, 2024.

2. Gil Guerra, “Four countries that will shape migration in 2024 – and beyond,” Niskanen Center, April 1, 2024.

3. Sergio Martinez-Beltran, “Indian migrants drive surge in northern U.S. border crossings,” NPR, September 10, 2024.

4. Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh, The Other One Percent: Indians in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

5. Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, “Industrial Policy Needs an Immigration Policy,” Foreign Affairs, August 22, 2024.

6. Terry Milewski, Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project (New York: Harper Collins, 2021).

7. Aparna Pande, From Chanakya to Modi: Evolution of India's Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2017).

8. “Dr. S. Jaishankar on the Future of U.S.-India Relations,” Grand Tamasha, October 2, 2024.

9. “The India-Canada Conundrum (with Sanjay Ruparelia),” Grand Tamasha, November 8, 2023.

One of the most remarkable developments in Indian politics in recent years is the surge in female voter turnout. For the first several decades after Independence, women’s participation on Election Day lagged men’s by between 8 to 12 percentage points. In recent years, however, that gender gap has completely disappeared. In most state elections today, women turn out to vote with greater frequency than men.

But this good news story obscures a puzzling fact: while Indian women vote at high rates, they are markedly less involved than men in politics between elections. A new book by the political scientist Soledad Artiz Prillaman gives us an explanation of why.

Soledad is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and the author of an award-winning new book, The Patriarchal Political Order: The Making and Unraveling of the Gendered Participation Gap in India.

She joins Milan on the show this week to talk about gender and politics and what can be done to ensure women have a seat at the table even when the electoral spotlight is off. The two debate the nature of coercive political power, the importance of social norms, and the ubiquity of patriarchy. Plus, the two discuss the backlash to women’s empowerment.

Episode notes:

1. Soledad Artiz Prillaman, “Strength in numbers: how women's groups close India's political gender gap,” American Journal of Political Science 67, no. 2 (2023): 390-410.

2. Gabi Kruks-Wisner, Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Rural Welfare in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

3. “What the Women's Reservation Bill Means for Women (with Carole Spary),” Grand Tamasha, October 25, 2023.

4. “Making the Indian Economy Work for Women (with Shaili Chopra,” Grand Tamasha, October 19, 2022.

Indian federalism is encountering some of its biggest challenges since the early years of the republic. Relations between the union government in Delhi and the states are rocky, to put it mildly.

India’s better-off states are growing increasingly agitated about a system of fiscal federalism in which richer states end up subsidizing poorer, more backward ones.

The new Goods and Services Tax (GST) has attracted fresh criticism because its benefits have not been shared equally by all states.

And the coming fight over how parliamentary seats will be allocated across states has only added fuel to the fire.

To discuss the brewing crisis in Indian federalism, Milan is joined today on the show this week by the economist Arvind Subramanian. Arvind is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He also served as the chief economic advisor to the government of India between 2014 and 2018. He recently co-authored a new essay in Economic and Political Weekly, “GST Revenue Performance: Gainers and Losers after Seven Years.”

Milan and Arvind discuss the foundations of the GST, its implications for India’s federal design, and its revenue implications. Plus, the two discuss growing resentment among India’s prosperous states over fiscal transfers, questions about political representation, and the prospects of a new grand federal bargain.

Episode notes:

1. Varun Agarwal et al., “GST Revenue Performance: Gainers and Losers after Seven Years,” Economic and Political Weekly 59, no. 37 (September 14, 2024): 35-49.

2. Varun Agarwal et al., “GST revenues: The fate of the compensation cess amid Centre-state row,” Business Standard, July 3, 2024.

3. Varun Agarwal et al., “GST's revenue performance: Centre's sacrifice for cooperative federalism,” Business Standard, July 3, 2024.

4. Josh Felman and Arvind Subramanian, “Is India Really the Next China?” Foreign Policy, April 8, 2024.

5. Arvind Subramanian et al., “Understanding GST revenue performance,” Business Standard, January 1, 2024.

6. Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman, “Why India Can’t Replace China,” Foreign Affairs, December 9, 2022.