February 14, 2025 • 54 mins
A new survey released by the Hoover Institution – part of Hoover’s Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations – offers a window into a handful of challenges facing the world’s fifth-largest economy and emerging world power. Sumit Ganguly, the inaugural director of the Huntington Program, joins Hoover research fellow Dinsha Mistree in a wide-ranging conservation about India including the timing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s White House visit (can he avoid a tariff war?), an Indian foreign policy that’s long on partnerships but short on alliances, India’s role in a growing AI industry, plus what the future holds for the world’s-largest population whose demographics are changing as well as its tastes in work, leisure, and family planning.
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(00:00):
[MUSIC]
>> Bill Whalen (00:05):
It's Wednesday, February 12, 2025.
And welcome back to Matters of Policy andPolitics, a Hoover Institution podcast
devoted to governance and balance of powerhere in America and around the world.
I'm Bill Whalen.
I'm the Virginia Hobbs CarpenterDistinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism.
I'll be the moderator of today's show.
But I'm not the only Hoover fellowwho's moderating podcasts these days.
And with that in mind,I recommend you go to our website and
(00:28):
one link in particular,that that is hoover.org/podcast.
That's podcast with an S,let me repeat that, hoover.org/podcast and
there you will find, yes, podcast.
You will find written commentary,you will find tailored videos.
It is literally drinking froma fire hydrant, a policy, but
it's what we do very well here at Hoover.
So definitely check that out.
(00:49):
So today we're doing somethingdifferent on this podcast,
something which we have not done sinceits inception, I'm embarrassed to say.
And we're going to talk about India,the nation of India, the subcontinent.
It is home to the world's largestpopulation, it is, I believe,
the fifth-largest economy.
My guest will correct meon that if I'm wrong.
I believe it is projected toperhaps surpass Germany and
Japan in the next two years.
(01:10):
It is also a country very much inthe news today, Wednesday the 12th,
because its prime minister,Narendra Modi has arrived in Washington,
DC to have a meeting with Donald Trump.
They're gonna have a one on one,they're gonna have a private dinner,
not a state dinner, but a private dinner,
which means that Trump is gonna reallyput the hooks on him for stuff.
There's a lot for the two to talkabout in terms of tariffs, energy,
(01:32):
defense purposes, maybe look at into thelarger geopolitics of the region in terms
of India, China and military,economic competition and so forth.
So helping us to unpack that and more,
including the Hoover Institution'sinterest in India.
We're joined today by Shumit Ganguly, whois a Hoover Institution senior fellow and
director of Hoover's Huntingdon Programon strengthening US India relations.
(01:52):
We're also joined by Dinsha Mistry,a Hoover Institution research fellow and
research associate at StanfordUniversity Freedman's Poly Institute for
National Studies.
Gentlemen, thanks forcoming on the podcast today.
>> Sumit Ganguly (02:02):
Thanks for having us.
>> Bill Whalen (02:04):
So when we arranged this a while back, I didn't realize that Mr.
Modi was going to be in Washington,but here he is.
I believe he was in France discussingartificial intelligence before that.
He's in the US forsomething like 36 hours,
it's kind of pure barnstorming,if you will, but here he is.
So my question to you two, let's takethe meeting not from Donald Trump's
perspective, butfrom Prime Minister Modi's perspective,
(02:26):
what do you think he hopes to getout of this one on one with Trump?
>> Sumit Ganguly (02:29):
Well, I think he is once again trying to reestablish
a rapport with Trump because hebelieves in personal diplomacy.
And during Trump's first term in office,
he had actually forged a personalrelationship with Trump.
(02:51):
He was greeted with considerable fanfarewhen Trump held an event in Houston and
when there was a reciprocalvisit by Trump in New Delhi.
And Modi also ensured that hetook Trump to his home state
of Gujarat,where they filled a cricket stadium.
(03:15):
And Modi is, of course,extremely concerned about
the prospect of significanttariffs being imposed on India.
And Modi no doubt wishes to speak to Trump
about the very vexed issue of H1B visas.
Which enables Indian professionals
(03:37):
with significantqualifications to work for
a period of up to five yearsin India as long as there
is an employer willing to support them foran H1B visa.
These, I think, are the principalissues that will be on Mr.
(03:59):
Modi's mind, but I'm certain there areother things that Dinsha can highlight.
>> Bill Whalen (04:06):
Well, Dinsha, in fact,
President Trump left a little gifton the Prime Minister, didn't he?
>> Dinsha Mistree (04:10):
Yeah, it seems that this is just breaking news,
It looks like that Trump hasannounced that there will
be reciprocal tariffs put onany country that has tariffs.
India, of course,has very high tariff barriers.
This is something I see moreof as a bargaining move,
sort of a first solve in Trump too.
(04:31):
As Sumit mentioned, the US-India,the relationship between Trump and
Biden was actually pretty close.
And Trump's last trip, actually,right before COVID hit in his first term,
was to India,where there was a lot of pomp and fanfare.
But underneath that was a prospect ofa mini trade deal that was put on hold
during the Biden administration.
(04:51):
Biden didn't really wanna deal withthings like tariffs or trade policy or
anything like that, it seemed like.
But what we're seeing now, I suspect Modimight wanna think about revisiting that.
You certainly will wanna be verywary of Trump's first folly, but
I think India, for the most part,was probably expecting that.
>> Bill Whalen (05:11):
I think the Trump foreign policy is pretty black and white.
You're with us, oryou're not, friend or family.
Help me figure out where India fitsin this, because on the one hand,
he has called India,I think, the tariff king.
So that would make India a badguy in Donald Trump's worldview.
On the other hand, if you watched himcampaign to get back in the White House,
he didn't really rail that much againstIndia to the extent he was going after
(05:33):
other countries.
It was China, it was Iran, it wascountries close to the United States,
Mexico and Canada andborder policies and so forth.
So, simple question, gentlemen,in the Trump view of things,
is India a friend or a foe?
>> Dinsha Mistree (05:48):
It's a side to be courted, I would say.
He certainly approachedthem as a friend before.
I think we've expected a lot morefrom India vis a vis China, and
some of that certainly has beenbuilt up behind closed doors.
It seems like India is takinga much stronger stance on that.
The other big thorn in US India relationsfrom a geostrategic perspective is,
(06:09):
of course, Russia.
Now, it's not clear where Trump is gonnafall on Russia at this very moment,
and that actually works toIndia's benefit in some ways.
Because if Trump is being a littlebit more cool towards Russia,
then perhaps he will allow thatRussia India relationship.
But make no mistake,if India were to have its druthers,
(06:29):
what they would want is they would wantto have their cake and eat it, too.
They would want to be friends withthe world and enemies toward none.
And that's not going to fit verywell in the Trump worldview,
as you just described.
India's gonna have to make somechoices in the coming years, right?
>> Bill Whalen (06:44):
Go ahead.
>> Sumit Ganguly (06:45):
And speaking of choices, I think the one bur that could easily
get into Trump's saddle isIndia's relationship with Iran.
India, over the years, under pressure froma series of American administrations,
has actually reduced its dependenceon hydrocarbo from Iran.
(07:09):
And has reduced its presence in Iran,
though it still remains committedto the development of a port.
But it cannot afford tototally abandon Iran.
And at some point, this issue maywell come to Trump's attention.
>> Bill Whalen (07:33):
I have confessed to being guilty of Indian neglect on this podcast,
but here we are sitting at StanfordUniversity in Palo Alto California.
And Dinsha, you told me something veryinteresting as we're getting prepared
for the show.
You said you've been at Stanford fornine, almost 10 years, and
there's very little in the way of coursesoffered on India's political economy.
(07:54):
I find this remarkable in several regards.
First of all, Stanford is a universitywith a big worldview, number one.
Second, Stanford is a universityfast by the Pacific Ocean, so
it tends to look toward the otherside of the world, not toward Europe.
And then thirdly,it's in the heart of Silicon Valley,
the northern end of Silicon Valley.
And it's interesting, I think somethinglike 1% of this area is actually Indian,
(08:19):
but about 6% of the Silicon Valleyworkforce is Indian.
And a much higher percentage,obviously, in the C suites and
the executive positions.
And then you get into the H1Bissue that Sumit mentioned in,
I think 70 of H1B visas go toIndia's software engineers.
Why does Stanford just not pay,and we don't wanna rip Stanford?
Obviously, you have a large bet forStanford, but
(08:41):
why does India just not getthe same attention that China does?
>> Dinsha Mistree (08:44):
That's a great question that since I've been here,
I've been scratching my head.
When I first got to Stanford in 2015,I'll tell you,
they had three Bollywood classes a quarterand no India political economy classes.
There's a lot of cultural stuff andculture is very important.
Appreciating Indian culture, the deep,long civilization that has a long history.
(09:05):
But just to have no politicaleconomy classes, policy classes,
has always really surprised me andmade me head scratch.
It's not like there's anyshortage of donors either.
If you walk around, especially theengineering quad, you'll find any number
of buildings named after prominentIndians and Indian Americans.
So it doesn't seem to be a money problem.
I would suspect that as opposed to, say,
the China programs that we've seenflourish on university campuses, where
(09:29):
either the Chinese government has fundedprograms to try and encourage things.
Or there's been a backlash becauseChina obviously gets the concern and
the attention that it does.
For the most part, India,
it's not like the government of Indiahas been focused very much on that.
As a matter of fact, they've encouragedsome of their biggest donors not to
support US Universities in years past.
(09:51):
And reciprocally, maybe it'sa blessing that India is in such a hot
spot that we need tohave programs about it.
But at this point, India,as you let at the top of the show,
it's just too big to ignore.
Apart from all ofthe importance in geostrategic,
apart from being the world's largestpopulation, 22% of the world's population,
(10:14):
the trade that we see,you mentioned the diaspora.
And it's just critical, especially onour campus, a bulk of our students,
it's the largest place forinternational students.
They come from India,
apart from the students whoare coming directly from India.
We've got people of Indian origin,people who are born here and
are now getting into Stanford.
(10:34):
So it's hopefully,something we can turn around.
I think the Hoover programthat we've started here,
the Huntington Program, is the firststep and hopefully one of many.
I would love to see lots of India programsspanning the gamut of all kinds of
different policy areas, where we'vestarted with what we've started with.
>> Bill Whalen (10:52):
Right, let's talk about the Huntington Program.
It is formally the Huntington Programon strengthening US India Relations.
The two of you were in India two years agoat a delegation featuring our director,
Condoleezza Rice, who has a connection toIndia through her State Department years.
But let's talk aboutthe creation of the program.
Why did it come to be?
(11:12):
The director is looking at the world,she's looking at India, and
what is she thinking?
>> Dinsha Mistree (11:18):
So putting myself in her head, maybe this might be risky for
my job.
You first tried to get me totalk about my employer, and
now you're talking about our director.
It's okay.>> Bill Whalen: It's okay,
you'll take me down with you,so don't worry.
[LAUGH] That's great.
Well, that's dangerous forboth of us then, I think.
I mean, this is the blessing of havingone of the world's best geostrategic
(11:39):
thinkers running your institution.
Conde was on India longbefore it was cool.
Secretary Rice recognized both the promiseas well as the challenges of India well
before a lot of other people were thinkingabout it, certainly on this campus, and
I would argue across highereducation space as well.
As you mentioned, Secretary Rice, one ofthe big accomplishments she had toward
(12:02):
the end of her State Department careerwas the US India civil nuclear agreement.
Obviously, there were lots of players.
Obviously she had to work with a complexcast of India, but without her,
we held a conference in May about this.
Without her, it's just very clear thatthe deal would have either fallen apart or
taken a very differentform than what it took.
That deal, by the way,is one of the reasons why US and India,
(12:24):
why we don't talk aboutIndia as a hotspot.
It brought India back into the fold ofrespectable countries after a long period,
long hiatus, andchanged that entire trajectory.
So in some sense, it makes sense that whenSecretary Rice comes with her background,
knowing how important India is,that she puts this program together.
(12:47):
Sumit, you might wanna add some stuffabout how we've gone about building
the program and what we've done.
>> Sumit Ganguly (12:53):
Yeah, I certainly shall.
But before doing that,even during the initial
campaign that George W Bush had forthe presidency,
Gandhi was already advising him as one ofhis principal foreign policy advisors.
And she wrote an article in a journal,which is a quasi academic journal,
(13:17):
but those of us who study internationalrelations either subscribe to it or
receive it, because we are membersof the Council on Foreign Relations.
Which publishes it from New York, andit is one of the most widely read
publications in the world as faras international affairs and
foreign policy is concerned.
(13:39):
And in that, she wrote a article,I believe it was
called A Republican Foreign Policy orWords to that effect.
And in that,I noticed as early as that campaign,
that she had devoted a paragraph to India,
saying that this is alreadya regional power and
(14:00):
will be a power of greater consequencein the world in the years ahead.
So, even before entering government,
she had her eye on the ball,which is absolutely remarkable.
And once in government,particularly in Bush's second term,
(14:22):
after some cobwebs had been cleared and
the Iraq situation hadsomewhat stabilized,
they turned their attention to India.
And in this particular program,I'm particularly,
especially proud of being the inauguraldirector of the Huntington Program.
(14:48):
We are pursuing a multifacetedapproach to India.
Obviously, there is this trend ofimproving diplomatic relations.
We are also keenly interestedin bolstering the security and
defense relationship,particularly against a backdrop,
(15:09):
against a highly unpredictable, andthat's perhaps a charitable word,
People's Republic of China in Asia andbeyond.
Something of grave concern bothto Washington and to New Delhi,
and particularly New Delhi,because New Delhi and
Beijing are locked in a strategic rivalryfor some time with no end in sight.
(15:34):
So diplomacy,strengthening diplomacy is one strand.
A second strand is geopolitics, and
particularly the Indo USdefense relationship.
A third strand is cooperationin the realm of energy.
A fourth strand is to focuspossibly on counterterrorism,
(15:56):
an issue that remains ofconcern in both capitals
an issue that might havetemporarily gone away,
but is going to rearits ugly head anytime.
It's an unpredictable monsterwhich still lurks in the shadows.
(16:18):
So, it's a multifaceted programfocused on primarily these areas and
of course obviously the Indian economy.
And to that end,we are hoping to start an annual
conference starting this November,
(16:38):
bringing together some ofthe finest minds in this
country to focus on the India-USeconomic relationship.
And providing practicaladvice about some of
the challenges that India confronts andwhere ideas and
(17:00):
policy recommendations could be of value.
>> Dinsha Mistree (17:07):
Yeah, I think that Sumit's covered it all.
I mean, honestly, we're gonna leave nostone unturned in terms of trying to
promote this relationship.
I would add, apart from the immediatepolicy engagement here,
honestly, there's an educationalelement here too on both sides.
These two countries reallydon't know one another and
(17:29):
you find that in the leadersthemselves oftentimes.
They haven't traveled there, they don'tunderstand the respective systems.
Sometimes they choose people who are oldhands and actually know what's going on.
But sometimes it's not that way.
I can mention to you, forinstance, I've met Indian generals.
Their first trip to the US,their first real engagement with
(17:51):
any kind of American engagement,whether it's military or not,
is on a two-day trip whenthey're about to retire.
And that's shocking to me becauseideally if something happened,
our countries would havesome serious engagement.
>> Bill Whalen (18:08):
I'm curious about this because we've had workers come from India,
the United States for some time now.
Americans have become much more awareof Indian culture through pop culture,
Bollywood, which you mentioned,things like that, but yet
doesn't seem to be kind of a connection,bonding between the two.
Is India kind of a closesociety in that regard?
I mean, is part of the challengejust getting into India and
(18:30):
just sort of earning trust, oris it more complicated than that?
>> Dinsha Mistree (18:34):
It's more complicated than that.
So within India actually Iwould say that they're very
embracing especially Western culture.
They obviously wanna balance their owncultural values with Western culture.
But India now has more than a millionAmerican citizens who live there.
This is bigger than two congressionaldistricts in the other direction.
Many Indians, especially Indiansfrom the upper economic echelon,
(18:58):
they've got cousins who live here now.
Almost 2% of the US populationis of Indian origin.
So in these different dimensions,there's a lot of personal crossover.
It's just when you look at the government,you find people who just haven't really
gotten that much exposure to the otherside, and that's to both countries loss.
I think that's something where thisprogram really can do something in terms
(19:22):
of educating,
in terms of bringing both countries upto the prominence that it deserves.
There is a lot of concern that if wehelp India build up its military, if we
help its economy, but we did that withChina, and guess what we were left with?
We were left with the mess.
And I think that India's foundation,its principles are different.
(19:43):
Ultimately, it is a democracy.
Ultimately, it is a multicultural society.
Ultimately, it does have a lot of traitsthat are actually very in line with what I
would consider to befoundational American aspects.
>> Bill Whalen (19:54):
But I think one of the lessons of the China relationship is that
for decades there's been this underlyingnotion that, well, they're communists,
but they're really capitalists at heart.
And they kind of share our valueswhen it comes to making a buck.
But it turns out that it's actually,it's kind of a police state and
they don't really share ourvalues when it comes to freedom.
So my question too, gentlemen,is India more closely aligned with
(20:14):
the United States in terms of valuessuch as democracy, such as freedom?
>> Dinsha Mistree (20:19):
I would say it definitely does.
Where there are concerns, I thinkthat you have two approaches, right?
One is you can say we want to disengage,we wanna be away from you.
We wanna send you a message thatwhat you're doing is wrong and
somehow you should turn your story.
Versus, even if you saythat there are some issues,
how about we actually think muchmore about deeper integration and
(20:41):
showing them the values and the virtuesof Western culture, society and economy?
I think that India isstill trying to wake up,
particularly from experimentingwith socialism for 30 years.
But they're willing to wake up, andnow is the time really to embrace them.
Sumit, would you wanna add?
>> Sumit Ganguly (20:59):
Absolutely.
You were asking Billabout is India closed?
Why don't we have a warmerrelationship with India?
In considerable part, it's a legacy issue.
It's a legacy issue in thatduring much of the Cold War,
India was at odds with the United States.
(21:21):
In fact, a friend of mine who teachesat a university in Upstate New York,
Kenton Clymer, wrote a marvelousbook called Comrades at Arts.
And in that book, he shows howdifferent strategies of economic
development basically led the twocountries in very different directions.
(21:49):
And in the case of India,
there was this kind ofhalf-hearted socialism.
In fact, John Kenneth Galbraith,the great economist,
called it post office socialism.
It neither produced growth nordid it result in a reduction in poverty.
(22:13):
Since 1991,following a major fiscal crisis,
India opened its markets to the world,engaged in trade liberalization.
Though Trump would arguemuch more needs to be done.
And on this matter, he's absolutely right.
But since then, India has been muchmore receptive to the United States,
(22:37):
has attracted American investment,and as Dinsha pointed out,
a million Americans live andwork in India.
And consequently,I think the possibilities of a much
closer relationship,based upon many of the strands that
I had outlined that here atHoover we are trying to pursue.
(23:02):
But beyond that,the growth in people to people contacts,
and where now even Bollywoodstars are moving to Hollywood,
something I never thoughtI'd see in my lifetime.
So the relationship has become muchmore integrated than ever before.
(23:24):
We are really at the cuspof a transformation.
>> Bill Whalen (23:29):
So you mentioned John Kenneth Galbraith,
who was the Indian ambassador duringthe Kennedy years, during Camelot,
wasn't Moynihan also an Indianambassador at one point?
>> Sumit Ganguly (23:37):
Absolutely.
>> Bill Whalen (23:38):
Okay, so this is my question, last I checked,
I don't think Trump has picked anambassador to India yet, I might be wrong,
but I don't think he's picked one yet.
So what is the modelthat you would look for?
Would you look foran academic like Galbraith?
Would you look for an academic,sort of great world thinker like Moynihan?
Would you be looking for
someone who's perhaps entrepreneurialwith a business background?
If you could build an ambassador to India,what would you build?
>> Sumit Ganguly (24:01):
I would say above all, someone who is level-headed and
at the same time hasaccess to Trump's ear.
Because in this administration,obviously the State Department,
the Department of Defense,Commerce will play a role.
But I think this is a president whoreally wants to put his own stamp.
(24:27):
Whether one agrees or disagrees withhim is another matter altogether, but
he clearly wants to put his stamp on bothdomestic policies and foreign policy.
And ultimately it's someone who musthave access to the White House.
>> Dinsha Mistree (24:48):
You've got already on Trump's team some pretty strong people
for India.
Mike Waltz, who's nowthe National Security Council head,
he was the chair of the India Caucus.
Marco Rubio, who's strong on everythinginternationally, just this summer,
he had issued a proposed a very nice billpromoting stronger US India defense ties.
(25:09):
So you've got some real heavyweightson the DC side, I think,
on the ground in India.
Just as Sumit saying, you'll want somebodywho has Trump's here and also can sort of
cut through the noise to the extent thatthere will be any within the bureaucracy.
Someone who's also a bit of a deal-maker,and so apart from the academics you
mentioned, I think we've seen a coupleof really good ones recently.
(25:30):
Ambassador David Mulford, who helpedstart this Huntington program and
is currently traveling in India right now,he was working with Condoleezza Rice in
terms of closing out thisUS India civil nuclear.
The stories he has to tell.
Boy, boy, you want someone who'sreally sophisticated on the ground.
If you're Trump trying to get a mini tradedeal through or trying to build a new
energy relationship or any of these kindsof things, someone who has an appreciation
(25:53):
for the on the ground politics, butcan also get on the phone with Trump.
I would think the business communitywould supply somebody like that.
>> Bill Whalen (25:59):
All right, let's talk about something which has earned my great
appreciation, that isyour survey on India.
And let me clarify forour audience, when I say survey,
I'm not talking about a poll,not talking about data numbers.
What my two guests have done is theyactually, they reached out to a group of
experts on India and asked each oneto write an essay, an analysis,
(26:20):
a commentary, if you will, summing upan aspect of the Indian existence.
There are about eight to ten of theseprofiles, I believe, in this survey.
It's available at hoover.org,you can download it and read it yourself.
If you are traveling to India asa businessman, if you are trying to do
something with the government, just tryingto figure out how the country works, this
is a must read, because you would just geta brilliant overview of all things Indian.
(26:43):
So, gentlemen, I'd like to, first of all,congratulations on doing it,
you both co-edited the survey,I should mention.
Tell me first of all how you wentabout picking these various topics and
assigning them.
>> Sumit Ganguly (26:53):
This was very much a joint effort.
There are people whom I knewin the Bay Area and elsewhere,
and even in India,whom I suggested to Dinsha.
Dinsha in turn,knew people who had prior Stanford
connections who also could writewith authority on particular areas.
(27:18):
And the two of us essentiallyput our heads together and
chose these eight individualswho are extremely
knowledgeable in theirparticular issue areas.
We are indeed planning ondoing subsequent iterations.
I've already lined up five people fornext year.
(27:44):
And some chapters will be easedout because not enough changes
take place on an annual basis andnew chapters will be brought in.
>> Dinsha Mistree (27:55):
Yeah, for academics in particular, this is a hard thing
because we're not trained to writedescriptively about what's happening.
And we're not trained to writedescriptively about what's been
happening in the last year or 18 months.
As Sumit mentioned, this is something wewanted people to be able to take into
their hands and say, hey, this is thestuff I need to know before I go there.
(28:17):
Obviously, there were a lot of things thatwe had to leave on the cutting room floor.
We are talking abouta very advanced society.
But these were just the essentials.
And there are some things definitely thatnext year we should definitely cover some
other things.
For instance, demography, which is one ofthe chapters that's not gonna change much
in the next year or so, right?
(28:38):
So we might not needanother demography chapter.
>> Bill Whalen (28:41):
So there are four chapters here that I'd like for
you two to touch on just briefly,but just explain what defined.
The first one is,the assessment of India's economy.
And if I read correctly,
the Indian economy enjoys somethinglike 6 to 7% growth right now.
Which Donald Trump would kill for
because part of Donald Trump'sschemes in Washington involve,
I think, 4% growth to just kind of keepthings on a steady basis with the debt.
(29:04):
But here is 6 to 7% growth, butas the report the survey points out,
it is unevenly distributed andit is economic inequality, in short.
So why is this this way in India?
Why the inequality?
>> Sumit Ganguly (29:20):
The inequality for
the most part is a productof historical circumstances.
As I said, India's namby-pambysocialism really failed
to make a significant dental in rural andurban poverty.
And since 1991,India has dramatically reduced poverty.
(29:47):
But I was talking to one of our seniorfellows who's also a distinct or
a highly distinguished professorat the University of Chicago,
Raghuram Rajan, who's going to be here,in fact, next month.
And he was telling me that inequality in
(30:07):
the initial stages of rapidgrowth is almost inevitable.
That said, there are some structuralissues that do need to be addressed.
And this is a good point,a moment to hand over the baton to Dinsha,
who's thought more about India'spolitical economy than I have.
>> Dinsha Mistree (30:33):
Yeah, so you mentioned that India is the fifth largest economy in
the world, and that's great.
It's growing at gangbusters.
But that's also roughly the sizeof the California economy.
Just to draw a parallel, 1.4 billionpeople versus 38 million people.
>> Bill Whalen (30:49):
California has the same economic inequality as well, Barbell.
>> Dinsha Mistree (30:52):
Yep, and California, just to drive back, they would go for
6% economic growth too, I would imagine.
>> Sumit Ganguly (31:00):
Yes, everybody would.
>> Dinsha Mistree (31:02):
Change that, but this is India's biggest challenge in its
economy is not just managing theinequality and the poverty, but it's jobs.
It's jobs, jobs, jobs.
And there are a couple ofdifferent elements of it, really.
India hasn't trained a workforce yet,
at least not across the board in itscountry for those kinds of jobs.
(31:25):
Yes, they can train people who become theCEOs of Apple and Google or Microsoft and
Google, but the downstream workers,that's constantly been a challenge and
they're doing things to try andimprove it.
But you can't just train people oneday and expect it to fix the next.
Also, there's a mentality there.
I work with an NGO,teaches about 80,000 people a year across
(31:48):
North India free English classes andcomputer classes.
The number one thing that these studentssay when they come in is that they want
government's jobs.
This isn't atypical from what youhear in other developing countries,
government jobs are stable.
They also come with a lot moreprestige and they're well paying, but
they're not saying teachers are policeofficers, they want government's jobs.
(32:10):
So one big challenge is also justchanging that mentality and opening up
opportunities in the private sector,real opportunities in the private sector.
To that end, we've got a really niceHoover fellow who's joined us this year.
She'll be with us forseveral more years, Suhani Jalota,
who's working on labor forceparticipation in India.
And she's trying to figure out how toget people out of this sort of mindset,
(32:30):
how to get them plugged into the neweconomies, especially with AI,
especially focusing on women.
But really it's broad based,
trying to figure out how we canmove the needle in that dimension.
It's really exciting work she's doing.
It's really importantideas on planet growth.
>> Bill Whalen (32:44):
Sumit?
>> Sumit Ganguly (32:45):
Yeah, I completely concur with Dinsha because despite
rapid economic growth in the last quarter,India grew at 6.4%.
And that was a cause for graveconcern that it was not going faster,
more like 8% or aiming fordouble digit growth.
(33:07):
Because if it grew at aboutdouble digits or even 8% for
a decade, per capita incomewould double in a decade.
And Modi has set a goal to transformIndia, it's a fairly ambitious goal,
I must admit, to transform Indiainto a developed country by 2047.
(33:32):
I probably won't be around, butit's a nice vision to have and
certainly worth pursuingbecause it would essentially
lift hundreds of millionsof people out of poverty,
which they are still trapped in.
(33:52):
But Dinshaw is absolutely right,the key issue is employment.
And one of the things China did,its authoritarian political
structure notwithstanding,is they created thousands.
And not just thousands,millions of factory jobs which pulled
(34:14):
from the 1980s onwards,from Deng Xiaoping onwards,
just hundreds of millions ofpeople out of abject poverty.
I don't care fortheir political system and never have, but
I have to hand it to them that they didsomething extraordinarily intelligent.
(34:34):
Taking advantage of economies of scaleby hiring millions of workers and
turning China intothe factory of the world.
Quite like the Unitedkingdom in the 19th century.
>> Bill Whalen (34:50):
You mentioned Modi's 2047 deadline,
I assume that's because that'sthe 100th anniversary of independence.
>> Sumit Ganguly (34:56):
Absolutely.
>> Bill Whalen (34:57):
Hey, I got that one right.
Okay, all right.
Second topic I'd like you todelve into is foreign policy.
And here the survey calls it a quote,Focused and Dynamic Foreign Policy.
And I walked away a little confused fromthis one in that this write-up says that
India really isn't crazy at the thoughtof entering long-standing alliances.
(35:18):
Which I guess would be like a pacificversion of NATO or something like that,
but it's not averse to treaties andpacts and alliances at the same time.
So can you two walk methrough the nuance of that?
>> Sumit Ganguly (35:29):
Well, I'm gonna steal a sentence that Dinsha used early in this
conversation, that India doesn'twant to be enemies with anyone and
wants to be friends with everyone.
I think that pretty much sumsup Indian foreign policy
with rare exceptions like its local rival,Pakistan,
(35:51):
which, owing to Pakistan'sown policy choices,
basically Pakistan has lost that rivalry.
That rivalry, forall practical purposes is over.
India is trying to buy breathingspace with the People's Republic
of China because itrecognizes the extraordinary
(36:14):
asymmetries that exist currentlybetween India and the PRC.
For example, the PRC's economy is sixtimes the size of the Indian economy.
It's foreign service multiple timesthe size of the Indian foreign Service,
and its defense spending,even based upon unclassified figures,
(36:37):
is about three times the sizeof the Indian defense budget.
Given these gaps andasymmetries in the relationship,
India's foreign policy elite issimply trying to buy time and
trying to avoid alienating the PRC.
(37:02):
And in fact, Dinsha andI have just initiated
a project about this,about how India might best cope
with the long term threatthat it faces from the PRC.
So this is a real problem thatIndia has to grapple with.
(37:23):
But basically, I think Dinsha'scharacterization is correct.
While it does not want to build alliances,
it's happy to live withvarious partnerships,
including the one that has beenforged on a bipartisan basis
across multiple administrationswith the United States.
>> Bill Whalen (37:46):
Dinsha, tell me what the word Vishwa guru means.
Did I get it right?
>> Dinsha Mistree (37:52):
You did get it right.
>> Sumit Ganguly (37:53):
You did.
>> Bill Whalen (37:54):
Vishwa guru, yeah.
>> Dinsha Mistree (37:56):
I think in practice what they wanna be is educating and
leading the world,especially the developing world,
but really the world in terms of whatthe right kinds of practices are.
>> Bill Whalen (38:07):
Well, that word translates as world leader, doesn't it?
>> Dinsha Mistree (38:10):
Yes.
>> Bill Whalen (38:12):
Okay.
>> Dinsha Mistree (38:12):
But gurus are sort of teaching, right?
So educating in that way,not forcing the world into its worldview.
But just to return to what Sumit said,I think,
the US has a lot of troubles withCanada and Mexico as its neighbors.
Imagine if we shared a land borderwith China and imagine if that border.
>> Bill Whalen (38:32):
And Pakistan.
>> Dinsha Mistree (38:33):
And Pakistan, yes.
These are nuclear armed countries thatclaim part of your country as their own.
How do you handle that?
It's not an easy question.
We're very keen,obviously on saying that the US and
India should work very close together.
But we understand that just for breathingspace, some of the things that we would
(38:54):
love to see them do posturing onmight be very difficult for India.
So that's the big challenge forthem, just their own border.
How you deal with that?
>> Bill Whalen (39:06):
You've heard the phrase American century.
We've had alarmists talkabout a China century, but
does anybody in India talkabout an Indian century?
>> Dinsha Mistree (39:15):
They talk about it quite a lot.
Yes, of course.
I mean, maybe not in those languages, but
in that sort of a language withVishwa guru and terms like that.
They wanna be seen as, I think, thereversion to what we're seeing in India,
they wanna be recognizedas a civilizational power.
What that means is they're building offnot just of the last 10 or 15 years,
(39:36):
not just even of the last 75 years.
But they're trying to harken back toa five, 6,000 year tradition, say,
hey, we're here, this is our civilization,don't tread on us sort of thing.
That doesn't just involve China,that also involves the West.
They don't wanna bepushed around by anybody.
They wanna be more assertive and say,we're here and we deserve our own space.
(39:57):
And sorry, it's a much more assertive sortof aggressive foreign policy than what
we've seen from India previously.
>> Bill Whalen (40:03):
Topic number three is science and
technology and here I'd like you totalk about how India plans this.
For example, they had a science,technology, digital India plan,
I think back in 2015.
But I mentioned the beginning of thepodcast that Prime Minister Modi was in
France attending an AI summit.
I've read where AI related jobs globallywill be something like 100 million.
(40:25):
So let's talk about India andits role in artificial intelligence.
>> Dinsha Mistree (40:29):
Absolutely, so just science and technology generally,
I would say this is mypersonal interpretation.
The state has had just toomuch of a heavy thumb on it.
Most of the money goes towards systemsthat worked in the 40s and 50s,
these large vertical bureaucraticscientific research agencies that
just don't produce enough.
A lot of research money also goesinto state owned enterprises from
(40:53):
the government.
There's been very little amountsof money that the way we
have it to smaller companies,to R&B, to universities.
We just don't see that,
India now is starting todevelop those sorts of systems.
The National Research foundationthat they're creating
is one such model that they're trying out.
This is a big shift from howthey've previously done it.
(41:14):
I would also like to see revisions tothe tax laws that make research and
development beneficial know runthrough the private sector a lot more.
Those are things that Indiahas to sort out for itself.
We can provide some models but
they have to make the decisionson how they do this seriously.
It's a real tragedy because at the topof the system again you've got for
(41:35):
instance the top tech companies in the US.
The people who run the LLMs at allof these companies are people who
are trained in India, right?
So they've got the skills andthe capacity.
It's just they could get the governmentjust a little bit of the way out.
They'd have a lot more room to run and
maybe we'd see Indian versions ofApple and Microsoft and all of those
(41:58):
sorts of things that would make ourlives a lot better, quite honestly.
>> Bill Whalen (42:03):
Sumit?
>> Sumit Ganguly (42:04):
Yeah,
I completely concur witheverything that Dinsha has said.
For example, in the United Statesthere's a great deal of admiration, and
understandably so for the graduates ofthese Indian Institutes of Technology,
which was set up from the 1950s onwards.
Because they are highly skilledengineers who are talented, who come to
(42:29):
this country, many of whom are at Stanforditself, both as students and faculty.
But the problem withthe IITs is that they don't
incubate novel research for the most part.
They train people exceedingly well, but
they don't create people withan entrepreneurial spirit who
(42:53):
are willing to take risks untilthey come to this country.
In India, they are perfectly content togo work for a major engineering firm and
the products that they produceare perfectly reliable.
But you don't have this kindof propensity to take risk,
(43:16):
this propensity to be an entrepreneur,to innovate.
And this is where India really needs,
in my judgment,to create a ecosystem which
encourages both entrepreneurship,
(43:36):
risk taking and innovation.
>> Bill Whalen (43:41):
Would you drive that through universities similar to here
in the United States?
How exactly would youcreate the ecosystem?
>> Sumit Ganguly (43:48):
I think you have to work with both the private sector and
with universities and
to accept the fact that many ofthese things are going to fail.
This is the most wonderful thing thatI've discovered after living for
50 years in the United States is thatthere are second acts in American life.
>> Dinsha Mistree (44:12):
I would say the way that it works in the US,
I mean the great genius ofit was post World War II.
What we did was we really started tothink about how we could have a bottom
up system,
small teams of innovative scientistsreally with the politicians set aside.
Doing whatever they thought was the bigbreakthroughs through peer reviewed
systems andmerit based systems and the like.
(44:35):
That requires some level of humilityon the part of the government saying,
you know, we think AI is important.
Let's find the people who are actuallydoing AI and let them sort of determine
the priorities for this space untilit's strong enough to run on its own.
That can be very hard with a generalistbureaucracy that might have very different
(44:57):
opinions about what the future of thisvery fast changing space might be.
That seems to be a challenge.
>> Bill Whalen (45:03):
And the fourth and final topic area I want you to address,
gentlemen, is demographic trends.
This was an eye opener for me.
So I don't know how closely you followAmerican politics and American policy, but
politicians here love to usea phrase called silver tsunami.
And what that reference is is people likeme, people born between 1946 and 1964,
the boomers.
We're hanging around,we're living longer than people thought,
(45:26):
we're draining our entitlements.
We're draining our healthcare system,and we created a financial mess, and
it's complicated.
In short, we don't have enoughyoung people in this country.
We have too many old people,Japan has the same problems you will.
So as I'm reading this report,I'm walking around thinking,
India has the world's largest population.
It is a fertile country,it must be just a young country.
(45:47):
And yet I read about demographic trendsand I see the phrase maturing country.
So what does this mean?
It's a maturing country.
>> Dinsha Mistree (45:55):
You're making me feel like I need to have more babies.
I'm probably good withthe two that I've got.
I think that what we're seeing with Indiaright now is what we've seen with a lot of
countries where the economy is maturing.
People tend to put off having children forthat reason.
I think it's also just, honestly, toa certain extent, Western exposure, right?
(46:16):
You start to watch enough US televisionshows where you've got single people in
their 30s andthat rubs off on you in some ways.
That, for instance, Indian TV thattalks about being married by 21,
it's very different.
So there's something happeningin the psyche there,
but we definitely see pressureto delay having kids.
Right now, India has dropped justbelow replacement rate for children.
(46:40):
It's not going to hit them foranother generation or so.
But as the years go by andpeople start to age out of that workforce,
especially that 20 to 30 year timeframe,
the population will keep growing foranother 20 to 30 years.
>> Bill Whalen (46:56):
Would you add healthcare to that in terms of longevity,
people living longer through science?
>> Dinsha Mistree (47:00):
That's definitely happening as well, absolutely.
And in India, they've made great stridesin terms of improving public health,
really big, important improvements.
And that's only gonna getbetter as the economy improves.
But that keeps people alive longer and
people expect the state to help olderfolks in retirement pay for that.
So we're also going to see a lot moredemands for social services, welfare.
>> Bill Whalen (47:24):
Am I wrong to say that the largest population in the world has
a fertility problem, or.
>> Sumit Ganguly (47:30):
I wouldn't say that it's a problem.
I think this is actually a desirable goal
because in the 1960s and 70s,
there was this huge fearthat the Malthusian
nightmare would come to haunt India.
(47:51):
Population growth would completelyoutstrip India's ability to produce food,
let alone housing andeducation and healthcare.
In fact, a Stanford professor,Paul Ehrlich wrote a major book called
the Population Bomb, which I rememberreading as a college student
(48:12):
in the United States andfretting about the country of my birth.
That Malthusian nightmare, for anynumber of reasons hasn't been realized.
So it's actually a desirablestate of affairs.
But as Jack Goldstone,our colleague in that chapter,
(48:34):
points out that there'sa north south divide in India.
The southern states are muchmore prosperous and
there you've actually not onlyhit zero population growth,
but you're going below replacement levels.
It's the northern India,significant parts of
(48:57):
northern India that stillhave large families and
inadequate means to support them.
>> Bill Whalen (49:06):
Dinsha, are you suggesting a southern India lifestyle
comparable to the Bay Arealifestyle in terms of two income,
no kids for a long time andcommercial goods?
And we're gonna stream a lot of TV and eatwell in restaurants and we'll have kids.
Well, we're kind of ready, but we'renot gonna put any pressure us into it.
>> Dinsha Mistree (49:26):
You're definitely seeing more of that.
Even smart people can disagree andI like to see more babies.
So I think that I'd love to see Indiacontinue its demographic prosperity,
if you will, but this is definitelysomething that's happening.
People are having fewer babieswhere you're seeing it.
Apart from just the south north divide,
(49:47):
you're also finding Muslim communitiesin particular are continuing to
be very fertile andthat could be very good for India.
But it will create some internalpolitical challenges for
them as that population expands.
And particularly in the south,you see that population decline.
>> Bill Whalen (50:04):
Okay, final question for you gentlemen,
I sure appreciate your time today.
There's been a lot of talk in this countryabout a so called vibe shift after this
election of kind of a rejection of DEIin the country kind of politically,
the pendulum swinging the other way.
When we talk about India, and especiallyyoung Indians, aspirational Indians,
is there a vibe shift inthe country in that regard?
(50:25):
And the vibe shift,
the younger generation is seeing the worlddifferently from the Cold War generations.
>> Sumit Ganguly (50:32):
Most definitely, and but
this is evident amongst educated Indians.
I mean this is anecdotal, obviously.
And as social scientists,we are told never to rely on anecdotes and
consider them to be data.
But sometimes anecdotes are manifestationsof change taking place.
(50:56):
Walk into a mall in India, in a majorcity, and for a moment you might blink.
And other than the brown skins,you'd say what's different over here?
There's an H&M, there's a Zara,there's a Starbucks,
brands that we are completelyfamiliar with and
(51:20):
would expect at a major American mall.
They're studded across India.
And you have young people who thinkthat this is what they should
not only aspire to, but this issomething that they take for granted.
>> Bill Whalen (51:39):
Okay, but Dinsha, are they serious people?
Are they serious young people?
>> Dinsha Mistree (51:43):
Of course, all young people have to be serious.
I think there is actually also a bigvibe shift changing right now.
The US for 50 years has been the dream for
at least the upper elite Indian community,and it still is.
There are a lot of people who come here,but
increasingly I hear a lot of Indianswanting to stay home, which is great.
(52:04):
Their economy is providingmore opportunities for them.
The more concerning aspect iswhen I hear Indians who aspire to
go to friendly countrieslike Australia and Europe.
And I just get a little bitconcerned that America has
lost a little bit of that luster in India.
It used to be the placewhere dreams were made, and
(52:25):
now I think it can return to that.
But it's not felt like thatamong the young people,
especially the serious young people,as much as it once was.
>> Bill Whalen (52:33):
Well, gentlemen, we're gonna leave it there.
I want to thank you both forreally an enlightening podcast.
I really enjoyed reading the survey.
I learned a lot aboutIndia I did not know.
It's always good when I'm like,ignorance is pointed out to me.
But it really is just great jobof explaining this country.
And again, if you're going to India,if you're doing business in India,
you want to just learn more about it,read this survey.
(52:54):
Definitely check it out.
So again, gentlemen,congratulations, a job well done.
>> Sumit Ganguly (52:57):
Thank you very much.
>> Bill Whalen (53:00):
You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics,
the Hoover Institution podcastdevoted to governance and
balance of power here in America andaround the free world.
If you've been enjoying this podcast,please don't forget to review and
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And if you wouldn't mind, please spreadthe word, tell your friends about us.
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(53:20):
While you're at hoover.org, by the way,you sign up for the Hoover Daily Report,
which keeps you updated on what Sumit andDinsha are up to,
as well as their colleagues.
And that is emailed to you weekdays.
Also @ hoover.org you will findthe Hoover Institution Survey of India,
edited by Sumit and Dinsha.
It is just fascinating to readabout the promised potential and
reality of India as a world power.
(53:40):
For the Hoover Institution,this is Bill Whalen.
We'll be back soon witha new conversation.
Until then, take care,thanks for joining us today.
>> Presenter (53:48):
This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution,
where where we generate andpromote ideas, advancing freedom.
For more information about our work,to hear more of our podcasts,
or view our video content,please visit hoover.org.
[MUSIC]
>> Bill Whalen (00:05):
It's Wednesday, February 12, 2025.
And welcome back to Matters of Policy andPolitics, a Hoover Institution podcast
devoted to governance and balance of powerhere in America and around the world.
I'm Bill Whalen.
I'm the Virginia Hobbs CarpenterDistinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism.
I'll be the moderator of today's show.
But I'm not the only Hoover fellowwho's moderating podcasts these days.
And with that in mind,I recommend you go to our website and
(00:28):
one link in particular,that that is hoover.org/podcast.
That's podcast with an S,let me repeat that, hoover.org/podcast and
there you will find, yes, podcast.
You will find written commentary,you will find tailored videos.
It is literally drinking froma fire hydrant, a policy, but
it's what we do very well here at Hoover.
So definitely check that out.
(00:49):
So today we're doing somethingdifferent on this podcast,
something which we have not done sinceits inception, I'm embarrassed to say.
And we're going to talk about India,the nation of India, the subcontinent.
It is home to the world's largestpopulation, it is, I believe,
the fifth-largest economy.
My guest will correct meon that if I'm wrong.
I believe it is projected toperhaps surpass Germany and
Japan in the next two years.
(01:10):
It is also a country very much inthe news today, Wednesday the 12th,
because its prime minister,Narendra Modi has arrived in Washington,
DC to have a meeting with Donald Trump.
They're gonna have a one on one,they're gonna have a private dinner,
not a state dinner, but a private dinner,
which means that Trump is gonna reallyput the hooks on him for stuff.
There's a lot for the two to talkabout in terms of tariffs, energy,
(01:32):
defense purposes, maybe look at into thelarger geopolitics of the region in terms
of India, China and military,economic competition and so forth.
So helping us to unpack that and more,
including the Hoover Institution'sinterest in India.
We're joined today by Shumit Ganguly, whois a Hoover Institution senior fellow and
director of Hoover's Huntingdon Programon strengthening US India relations.
(01:52):
We're also joined by Dinsha Mistry,a Hoover Institution research fellow and
research associate at StanfordUniversity Freedman's Poly Institute for
National Studies.
Gentlemen, thanks forcoming on the podcast today.
>> Sumit Ganguly (02:02):
Thanks for having us.
>> Bill Whalen (02:04):
So when we arranged this a while back, I didn't realize that Mr.
Modi was going to be in Washington,but here he is.
I believe he was in France discussingartificial intelligence before that.
He's in the US forsomething like 36 hours,
it's kind of pure barnstorming,if you will, but here he is.
So my question to you two, let's takethe meeting not from Donald Trump's
perspective, butfrom Prime Minister Modi's perspective,
(02:26):
what do you think he hopes to getout of this one on one with Trump?
>> Sumit Ganguly (02:29):
Well, I think he is once again trying to reestablish
a rapport with Trump because hebelieves in personal diplomacy.
And during Trump's first term in office,
he had actually forged a personalrelationship with Trump.
(02:51):
He was greeted with considerable fanfarewhen Trump held an event in Houston and
when there was a reciprocalvisit by Trump in New Delhi.
And Modi also ensured that hetook Trump to his home state
of Gujarat,where they filled a cricket stadium.
(03:15):
And Modi is, of course,extremely concerned about
the prospect of significanttariffs being imposed on India.
And Modi no doubt wishes to speak to Trump
about the very vexed issue of H1B visas.
Which enables Indian professionals
(03:37):
with significantqualifications to work for
a period of up to five yearsin India as long as there
is an employer willing to support them foran H1B visa.
These, I think, are the principalissues that will be on Mr.
(03:59):
Modi's mind, but I'm certain there areother things that Dinsha can highlight.
>> Bill Whalen (04:06):
Well, Dinsha, in fact,
President Trump left a little gifton the Prime Minister, didn't he?
>> Dinsha Mistree (04:10):
Yeah, it seems that this is just breaking news,
It looks like that Trump hasannounced that there will
be reciprocal tariffs put onany country that has tariffs.
India, of course,has very high tariff barriers.
This is something I see moreof as a bargaining move,
sort of a first solve in Trump too.
(04:31):
As Sumit mentioned, the US-India,the relationship between Trump and
Biden was actually pretty close.
And Trump's last trip, actually,right before COVID hit in his first term,
was to India,where there was a lot of pomp and fanfare.
But underneath that was a prospect ofa mini trade deal that was put on hold
during the Biden administration.
(04:51):
Biden didn't really wanna deal withthings like tariffs or trade policy or
anything like that, it seemed like.
But what we're seeing now, I suspect Modimight wanna think about revisiting that.
You certainly will wanna be verywary of Trump's first folly, but
I think India, for the most part,was probably expecting that.
>> Bill Whalen (05:11):
I think the Trump foreign policy is pretty black and white.
You're with us, oryou're not, friend or family.
Help me figure out where India fitsin this, because on the one hand,
he has called India,I think, the tariff king.
So that would make India a badguy in Donald Trump's worldview.
On the other hand, if you watched himcampaign to get back in the White House,
he didn't really rail that much againstIndia to the extent he was going after
(05:33):
other countries.
It was China, it was Iran, it wascountries close to the United States,
Mexico and Canada andborder policies and so forth.
So, simple question, gentlemen,in the Trump view of things,
is India a friend or a foe?
>> Dinsha Mistree (05:48):
It's a side to be courted, I would say.
He certainly approachedthem as a friend before.
I think we've expected a lot morefrom India vis a vis China, and
some of that certainly has beenbuilt up behind closed doors.
It seems like India is takinga much stronger stance on that.
The other big thorn in US India relationsfrom a geostrategic perspective is,
(06:09):
of course, Russia.
Now, it's not clear where Trump is gonnafall on Russia at this very moment,
and that actually works toIndia's benefit in some ways.
Because if Trump is being a littlebit more cool towards Russia,
then perhaps he will allow thatRussia India relationship.
But make no mistake,if India were to have its druthers,
(06:29):
what they would want is they would wantto have their cake and eat it, too.
They would want to be friends withthe world and enemies toward none.
And that's not going to fit verywell in the Trump worldview,
as you just described.
India's gonna have to make somechoices in the coming years, right?
>> Bill Whalen (06:44):
Go ahead.
>> Sumit Ganguly (06:45):
And speaking of choices, I think the one bur that could easily
get into Trump's saddle isIndia's relationship with Iran.
India, over the years, under pressure froma series of American administrations,
has actually reduced its dependenceon hydrocarbo from Iran.
(07:09):
And has reduced its presence in Iran,
though it still remains committedto the development of a port.
But it cannot afford tototally abandon Iran.
And at some point, this issue maywell come to Trump's attention.
>> Bill Whalen (07:33):
I have confessed to being guilty of Indian neglect on this podcast,
but here we are sitting at StanfordUniversity in Palo Alto California.
And Dinsha, you told me something veryinteresting as we're getting prepared
for the show.
You said you've been at Stanford fornine, almost 10 years, and
there's very little in the way of coursesoffered on India's political economy.
(07:54):
I find this remarkable in several regards.
First of all, Stanford is a universitywith a big worldview, number one.
Second, Stanford is a universityfast by the Pacific Ocean, so
it tends to look toward the otherside of the world, not toward Europe.
And then thirdly,it's in the heart of Silicon Valley,
the northern end of Silicon Valley.
And it's interesting, I think somethinglike 1% of this area is actually Indian,
(08:19):
but about 6% of the Silicon Valleyworkforce is Indian.
And a much higher percentage,obviously, in the C suites and
the executive positions.
And then you get into the H1Bissue that Sumit mentioned in,
I think 70 of H1B visas go toIndia's software engineers.
Why does Stanford just not pay,and we don't wanna rip Stanford?
Obviously, you have a large bet forStanford, but
(08:41):
why does India just not getthe same attention that China does?
>> Dinsha Mistree (08:44):
That's a great question that since I've been here,
I've been scratching my head.
When I first got to Stanford in 2015,I'll tell you,
they had three Bollywood classes a quarterand no India political economy classes.
There's a lot of cultural stuff andculture is very important.
Appreciating Indian culture, the deep,long civilization that has a long history.
(09:05):
But just to have no politicaleconomy classes, policy classes,
has always really surprised me andmade me head scratch.
It's not like there's anyshortage of donors either.
If you walk around, especially theengineering quad, you'll find any number
of buildings named after prominentIndians and Indian Americans.
So it doesn't seem to be a money problem.
I would suspect that as opposed to, say,
the China programs that we've seenflourish on university campuses, where
(09:29):
either the Chinese government has fundedprograms to try and encourage things.
Or there's been a backlash becauseChina obviously gets the concern and
the attention that it does.
For the most part, India,
it's not like the government of Indiahas been focused very much on that.
As a matter of fact, they've encouragedsome of their biggest donors not to
support US Universities in years past.
(09:51):
And reciprocally, maybe it'sa blessing that India is in such a hot
spot that we need tohave programs about it.
But at this point, India,as you let at the top of the show,
it's just too big to ignore.
Apart from all ofthe importance in geostrategic,
apart from being the world's largestpopulation, 22% of the world's population,
(10:14):
the trade that we see,you mentioned the diaspora.
And it's just critical, especially onour campus, a bulk of our students,
it's the largest place forinternational students.
They come from India,
apart from the students whoare coming directly from India.
We've got people of Indian origin,people who are born here and
are now getting into Stanford.
(10:34):
So it's hopefully,something we can turn around.
I think the Hoover programthat we've started here,
the Huntington Program, is the firststep and hopefully one of many.
I would love to see lots of India programsspanning the gamut of all kinds of
different policy areas, where we'vestarted with what we've started with.
>> Bill Whalen (10:52):
Right, let's talk about the Huntington Program.
It is formally the Huntington Programon strengthening US India Relations.
The two of you were in India two years agoat a delegation featuring our director,
Condoleezza Rice, who has a connection toIndia through her State Department years.
But let's talk aboutthe creation of the program.
Why did it come to be?
(11:12):
The director is looking at the world,she's looking at India, and
what is she thinking?
>> Dinsha Mistree (11:18):
So putting myself in her head, maybe this might be risky for
my job.
You first tried to get me totalk about my employer, and
now you're talking about our director.
It's okay.>> Bill Whalen: It's okay,
you'll take me down with you,so don't worry.
[LAUGH] That's great.
Well, that's dangerous forboth of us then, I think.
I mean, this is the blessing of havingone of the world's best geostrategic
(11:39):
thinkers running your institution.
Conde was on India longbefore it was cool.
Secretary Rice recognized both the promiseas well as the challenges of India well
before a lot of other people were thinkingabout it, certainly on this campus, and
I would argue across highereducation space as well.
As you mentioned, Secretary Rice, one ofthe big accomplishments she had toward
(12:02):
the end of her State Department careerwas the US India civil nuclear agreement.
Obviously, there were lots of players.
Obviously she had to work with a complexcast of India, but without her,
we held a conference in May about this.
Without her, it's just very clear thatthe deal would have either fallen apart or
taken a very differentform than what it took.
That deal, by the way,is one of the reasons why US and India,
(12:24):
why we don't talk aboutIndia as a hotspot.
It brought India back into the fold ofrespectable countries after a long period,
long hiatus, andchanged that entire trajectory.
So in some sense, it makes sense that whenSecretary Rice comes with her background,
knowing how important India is,that she puts this program together.
(12:47):
Sumit, you might wanna add some stuffabout how we've gone about building
the program and what we've done.
>> Sumit Ganguly (12:53):
Yeah, I certainly shall.
But before doing that,even during the initial
campaign that George W Bush had forthe presidency,
Gandhi was already advising him as one ofhis principal foreign policy advisors.
And she wrote an article in a journal,which is a quasi academic journal,
(13:17):
but those of us who study internationalrelations either subscribe to it or
receive it, because we are membersof the Council on Foreign Relations.
Which publishes it from New York, andit is one of the most widely read
publications in the world as faras international affairs and
foreign policy is concerned.
(13:39):
And in that, she wrote a article,I believe it was
called A Republican Foreign Policy orWords to that effect.
And in that,I noticed as early as that campaign,
that she had devoted a paragraph to India,
saying that this is alreadya regional power and
(14:00):
will be a power of greater consequencein the world in the years ahead.
So, even before entering government,
she had her eye on the ball,which is absolutely remarkable.
And once in government,particularly in Bush's second term,
(14:22):
after some cobwebs had been cleared and
the Iraq situation hadsomewhat stabilized,
they turned their attention to India.
And in this particular program,I'm particularly,
especially proud of being the inauguraldirector of the Huntington Program.
(14:48):
We are pursuing a multifacetedapproach to India.
Obviously, there is this trend ofimproving diplomatic relations.
We are also keenly interestedin bolstering the security and
defense relationship,particularly against a backdrop,
(15:09):
against a highly unpredictable, andthat's perhaps a charitable word,
People's Republic of China in Asia andbeyond.
Something of grave concern bothto Washington and to New Delhi,
and particularly New Delhi,because New Delhi and
Beijing are locked in a strategic rivalryfor some time with no end in sight.
(15:34):
So diplomacy,strengthening diplomacy is one strand.
A second strand is geopolitics, and
particularly the Indo USdefense relationship.
A third strand is cooperationin the realm of energy.
A fourth strand is to focuspossibly on counterterrorism,
(15:56):
an issue that remains ofconcern in both capitals
an issue that might havetemporarily gone away,
but is going to rearits ugly head anytime.
It's an unpredictable monsterwhich still lurks in the shadows.
(16:18):
So, it's a multifaceted programfocused on primarily these areas and
of course obviously the Indian economy.
And to that end,we are hoping to start an annual
conference starting this November,
(16:38):
bringing together some ofthe finest minds in this
country to focus on the India-USeconomic relationship.
And providing practicaladvice about some of
the challenges that India confronts andwhere ideas and
(17:00):
policy recommendations could be of value.
>> Dinsha Mistree (17:07):
Yeah, I think that Sumit's covered it all.
I mean, honestly, we're gonna leave nostone unturned in terms of trying to
promote this relationship.
I would add, apart from the immediatepolicy engagement here,
honestly, there's an educationalelement here too on both sides.
These two countries reallydon't know one another and
(17:29):
you find that in the leadersthemselves oftentimes.
They haven't traveled there, they don'tunderstand the respective systems.
Sometimes they choose people who are oldhands and actually know what's going on.
But sometimes it's not that way.
I can mention to you, forinstance, I've met Indian generals.
Their first trip to the US,their first real engagement with
(17:51):
any kind of American engagement,whether it's military or not,
is on a two-day trip whenthey're about to retire.
And that's shocking to me becauseideally if something happened,
our countries would havesome serious engagement.
>> Bill Whalen (18:08):
I'm curious about this because we've had workers come from India,
the United States for some time now.
Americans have become much more awareof Indian culture through pop culture,
Bollywood, which you mentioned,things like that, but yet
doesn't seem to be kind of a connection,bonding between the two.
Is India kind of a closesociety in that regard?
I mean, is part of the challengejust getting into India and
(18:30):
just sort of earning trust, oris it more complicated than that?
>> Dinsha Mistree (18:34):
It's more complicated than that.
So within India actually Iwould say that they're very
embracing especially Western culture.
They obviously wanna balance their owncultural values with Western culture.
But India now has more than a millionAmerican citizens who live there.
This is bigger than two congressionaldistricts in the other direction.
Many Indians, especially Indiansfrom the upper economic echelon,
(18:58):
they've got cousins who live here now.
Almost 2% of the US populationis of Indian origin.
So in these different dimensions,there's a lot of personal crossover.
It's just when you look at the government,you find people who just haven't really
gotten that much exposure to the otherside, and that's to both countries loss.
I think that's something where thisprogram really can do something in terms
(19:22):
of educating,
in terms of bringing both countries upto the prominence that it deserves.
There is a lot of concern that if wehelp India build up its military, if we
help its economy, but we did that withChina, and guess what we were left with?
We were left with the mess.
And I think that India's foundation,its principles are different.
(19:43):
Ultimately, it is a democracy.
Ultimately, it is a multicultural society.
Ultimately, it does have a lot of traitsthat are actually very in line with what I
would consider to befoundational American aspects.
>> Bill Whalen (19:54):
But I think one of the lessons of the China relationship is that
for decades there's been this underlyingnotion that, well, they're communists,
but they're really capitalists at heart.
And they kind of share our valueswhen it comes to making a buck.
But it turns out that it's actually,it's kind of a police state and
they don't really share ourvalues when it comes to freedom.
So my question too, gentlemen,is India more closely aligned with
(20:14):
the United States in terms of valuessuch as democracy, such as freedom?
>> Dinsha Mistree (20:19):
I would say it definitely does.
Where there are concerns, I thinkthat you have two approaches, right?
One is you can say we want to disengage,we wanna be away from you.
We wanna send you a message thatwhat you're doing is wrong and
somehow you should turn your story.
Versus, even if you saythat there are some issues,
how about we actually think muchmore about deeper integration and
(20:41):
showing them the values and the virtuesof Western culture, society and economy?
I think that India isstill trying to wake up,
particularly from experimentingwith socialism for 30 years.
But they're willing to wake up, andnow is the time really to embrace them.
Sumit, would you wanna add?
>> Sumit Ganguly (20:59):
Absolutely.
You were asking Billabout is India closed?
Why don't we have a warmerrelationship with India?
In considerable part, it's a legacy issue.
It's a legacy issue in thatduring much of the Cold War,
India was at odds with the United States.
(21:21):
In fact, a friend of mine who teachesat a university in Upstate New York,
Kenton Clymer, wrote a marvelousbook called Comrades at Arts.
And in that book, he shows howdifferent strategies of economic
development basically led the twocountries in very different directions.
(21:49):
And in the case of India,
there was this kind ofhalf-hearted socialism.
In fact, John Kenneth Galbraith,the great economist,
called it post office socialism.
It neither produced growth nordid it result in a reduction in poverty.
(22:13):
Since 1991,following a major fiscal crisis,
India opened its markets to the world,engaged in trade liberalization.
Though Trump would arguemuch more needs to be done.
And on this matter, he's absolutely right.
But since then, India has been muchmore receptive to the United States,
(22:37):
has attracted American investment,and as Dinsha pointed out,
a million Americans live andwork in India.
And consequently,I think the possibilities of a much
closer relationship,based upon many of the strands that
I had outlined that here atHoover we are trying to pursue.
(23:02):
But beyond that,the growth in people to people contacts,
and where now even Bollywoodstars are moving to Hollywood,
something I never thoughtI'd see in my lifetime.
So the relationship has become muchmore integrated than ever before.
(23:24):
We are really at the cuspof a transformation.
>> Bill Whalen (23:29):
So you mentioned John Kenneth Galbraith,
who was the Indian ambassador duringthe Kennedy years, during Camelot,
wasn't Moynihan also an Indianambassador at one point?
>> Sumit Ganguly (23:37):
Absolutely.
>> Bill Whalen (23:38):
Okay, so this is my question, last I checked,
I don't think Trump has picked anambassador to India yet, I might be wrong,
but I don't think he's picked one yet.
So what is the modelthat you would look for?
Would you look foran academic like Galbraith?
Would you look for an academic,sort of great world thinker like Moynihan?
Would you be looking for
someone who's perhaps entrepreneurialwith a business background?
If you could build an ambassador to India,what would you build?
>> Sumit Ganguly (24:01):
I would say above all, someone who is level-headed and
at the same time hasaccess to Trump's ear.
Because in this administration,obviously the State Department,
the Department of Defense,Commerce will play a role.
But I think this is a president whoreally wants to put his own stamp.
(24:27):
Whether one agrees or disagrees withhim is another matter altogether, but
he clearly wants to put his stamp on bothdomestic policies and foreign policy.
And ultimately it's someone who musthave access to the White House.
>> Dinsha Mistree (24:48):
You've got already on Trump's team some pretty strong people
for India.
Mike Waltz, who's nowthe National Security Council head,
he was the chair of the India Caucus.
Marco Rubio, who's strong on everythinginternationally, just this summer,
he had issued a proposed a very nice billpromoting stronger US India defense ties.
(25:09):
So you've got some real heavyweightson the DC side, I think,
on the ground in India.
Just as Sumit saying, you'll want somebodywho has Trump's here and also can sort of
cut through the noise to the extent thatthere will be any within the bureaucracy.
Someone who's also a bit of a deal-maker,and so apart from the academics you
mentioned, I think we've seen a coupleof really good ones recently.
(25:30):
Ambassador David Mulford, who helpedstart this Huntington program and
is currently traveling in India right now,he was working with Condoleezza Rice in
terms of closing out thisUS India civil nuclear.
The stories he has to tell.
Boy, boy, you want someone who'sreally sophisticated on the ground.
If you're Trump trying to get a mini tradedeal through or trying to build a new
energy relationship or any of these kindsof things, someone who has an appreciation
(25:53):
for the on the ground politics, butcan also get on the phone with Trump.
I would think the business communitywould supply somebody like that.
>> Bill Whalen (25:59):
All right, let's talk about something which has earned my great
appreciation, that isyour survey on India.
And let me clarify forour audience, when I say survey,
I'm not talking about a poll,not talking about data numbers.
What my two guests have done is theyactually, they reached out to a group of
experts on India and asked each oneto write an essay, an analysis,
(26:20):
a commentary, if you will, summing upan aspect of the Indian existence.
There are about eight to ten of theseprofiles, I believe, in this survey.
It's available at hoover.org,you can download it and read it yourself.
If you are traveling to India asa businessman, if you are trying to do
something with the government, just tryingto figure out how the country works, this
is a must read, because you would just geta brilliant overview of all things Indian.
(26:43):
So, gentlemen, I'd like to, first of all,congratulations on doing it,
you both co-edited the survey,I should mention.
Tell me first of all how you wentabout picking these various topics and
assigning them.
>> Sumit Ganguly (26:53):
This was very much a joint effort.
There are people whom I knewin the Bay Area and elsewhere,
and even in India,whom I suggested to Dinsha.
Dinsha in turn,knew people who had prior Stanford
connections who also could writewith authority on particular areas.
(27:18):
And the two of us essentiallyput our heads together and
chose these eight individualswho are extremely
knowledgeable in theirparticular issue areas.
We are indeed planning ondoing subsequent iterations.
I've already lined up five people fornext year.
(27:44):
And some chapters will be easedout because not enough changes
take place on an annual basis andnew chapters will be brought in.
>> Dinsha Mistree (27:55):
Yeah, for academics in particular, this is a hard thing
because we're not trained to writedescriptively about what's happening.
And we're not trained to writedescriptively about what's been
happening in the last year or 18 months.
As Sumit mentioned, this is something wewanted people to be able to take into
their hands and say, hey, this is thestuff I need to know before I go there.
(28:17):
Obviously, there were a lot of things thatwe had to leave on the cutting room floor.
We are talking abouta very advanced society.
But these were just the essentials.
And there are some things definitely thatnext year we should definitely cover some
other things.
For instance, demography, which is one ofthe chapters that's not gonna change much
in the next year or so, right?
(28:38):
So we might not needanother demography chapter.
>> Bill Whalen (28:41):
So there are four chapters here that I'd like for
you two to touch on just briefly,but just explain what defined.
The first one is,the assessment of India's economy.
And if I read correctly,
the Indian economy enjoys somethinglike 6 to 7% growth right now.
Which Donald Trump would kill for
because part of Donald Trump'sschemes in Washington involve,
I think, 4% growth to just kind of keepthings on a steady basis with the debt.
(29:04):
But here is 6 to 7% growth, butas the report the survey points out,
it is unevenly distributed andit is economic inequality, in short.
So why is this this way in India?
Why the inequality?
>> Sumit Ganguly (29:20):
The inequality for
the most part is a productof historical circumstances.
As I said, India's namby-pambysocialism really failed
to make a significant dental in rural andurban poverty.
And since 1991,India has dramatically reduced poverty.
(29:47):
But I was talking to one of our seniorfellows who's also a distinct or
a highly distinguished professorat the University of Chicago,
Raghuram Rajan, who's going to be here,in fact, next month.
And he was telling me that inequality in
(30:07):
the initial stages of rapidgrowth is almost inevitable.
That said, there are some structuralissues that do need to be addressed.
And this is a good point,a moment to hand over the baton to Dinsha,
who's thought more about India'spolitical economy than I have.
>> Dinsha Mistree (30:33):
Yeah, so you mentioned that India is the fifth largest economy in
the world, and that's great.
It's growing at gangbusters.
But that's also roughly the sizeof the California economy.
Just to draw a parallel, 1.4 billionpeople versus 38 million people.
>> Bill Whalen (30:49):
California has the same economic inequality as well, Barbell.
>> Dinsha Mistree (30:52):
Yep, and California, just to drive back, they would go for
6% economic growth too, I would imagine.
>> Sumit Ganguly (31:00):
Yes, everybody would.
>> Dinsha Mistree (31:02):
Change that, but this is India's biggest challenge in its
economy is not just managing theinequality and the poverty, but it's jobs.
It's jobs, jobs, jobs.
And there are a couple ofdifferent elements of it, really.
India hasn't trained a workforce yet,
at least not across the board in itscountry for those kinds of jobs.
(31:25):
Yes, they can train people who become theCEOs of Apple and Google or Microsoft and
Google, but the downstream workers,that's constantly been a challenge and
they're doing things to try andimprove it.
But you can't just train people oneday and expect it to fix the next.
Also, there's a mentality there.
I work with an NGO,teaches about 80,000 people a year across
(31:48):
North India free English classes andcomputer classes.
The number one thing that these studentssay when they come in is that they want
government's jobs.
This isn't atypical from what youhear in other developing countries,
government jobs are stable.
They also come with a lot moreprestige and they're well paying, but
they're not saying teachers are policeofficers, they want government's jobs.
(32:10):
So one big challenge is also justchanging that mentality and opening up
opportunities in the private sector,real opportunities in the private sector.
To that end, we've got a really niceHoover fellow who's joined us this year.
She'll be with us forseveral more years, Suhani Jalota,
who's working on labor forceparticipation in India.
And she's trying to figure out how toget people out of this sort of mindset,
(32:30):
how to get them plugged into the neweconomies, especially with AI,
especially focusing on women.
But really it's broad based,
trying to figure out how we canmove the needle in that dimension.
It's really exciting work she's doing.
It's really importantideas on planet growth.
>> Bill Whalen (32:44):
Sumit?
>> Sumit Ganguly (32:45):
Yeah, I completely concur with Dinsha because despite
rapid economic growth in the last quarter,India grew at 6.4%.
And that was a cause for graveconcern that it was not going faster,
more like 8% or aiming fordouble digit growth.
(33:07):
Because if it grew at aboutdouble digits or even 8% for
a decade, per capita incomewould double in a decade.
And Modi has set a goal to transformIndia, it's a fairly ambitious goal,
I must admit, to transform Indiainto a developed country by 2047.
(33:32):
I probably won't be around, butit's a nice vision to have and
certainly worth pursuingbecause it would essentially
lift hundreds of millionsof people out of poverty,
which they are still trapped in.
(33:52):
But Dinshaw is absolutely right,the key issue is employment.
And one of the things China did,its authoritarian political
structure notwithstanding,is they created thousands.
And not just thousands,millions of factory jobs which pulled
(34:14):
from the 1980s onwards,from Deng Xiaoping onwards,
just hundreds of millions ofpeople out of abject poverty.
I don't care fortheir political system and never have, but
I have to hand it to them that they didsomething extraordinarily intelligent.
(34:34):
Taking advantage of economies of scaleby hiring millions of workers and
turning China intothe factory of the world.
Quite like the Unitedkingdom in the 19th century.
>> Bill Whalen (34:50):
You mentioned Modi's 2047 deadline,
I assume that's because that'sthe 100th anniversary of independence.
>> Sumit Ganguly (34:56):
Absolutely.
>> Bill Whalen (34:57):
Hey, I got that one right.
Okay, all right.
Second topic I'd like you todelve into is foreign policy.
And here the survey calls it a quote,Focused and Dynamic Foreign Policy.
And I walked away a little confused fromthis one in that this write-up says that
India really isn't crazy at the thoughtof entering long-standing alliances.
(35:18):
Which I guess would be like a pacificversion of NATO or something like that,
but it's not averse to treaties andpacts and alliances at the same time.
So can you two walk methrough the nuance of that?
>> Sumit Ganguly (35:29):
Well, I'm gonna steal a sentence that Dinsha used early in this
conversation, that India doesn'twant to be enemies with anyone and
wants to be friends with everyone.
I think that pretty much sumsup Indian foreign policy
with rare exceptions like its local rival,Pakistan,
(35:51):
which, owing to Pakistan'sown policy choices,
basically Pakistan has lost that rivalry.
That rivalry, forall practical purposes is over.
India is trying to buy breathingspace with the People's Republic
of China because itrecognizes the extraordinary
(36:14):
asymmetries that exist currentlybetween India and the PRC.
For example, the PRC's economy is sixtimes the size of the Indian economy.
It's foreign service multiple timesthe size of the Indian foreign Service,
and its defense spending,even based upon unclassified figures,
(36:37):
is about three times the sizeof the Indian defense budget.
Given these gaps andasymmetries in the relationship,
India's foreign policy elite issimply trying to buy time and
trying to avoid alienating the PRC.
(37:02):
And in fact, Dinsha andI have just initiated
a project about this,about how India might best cope
with the long term threatthat it faces from the PRC.
So this is a real problem thatIndia has to grapple with.
(37:23):
But basically, I think Dinsha'scharacterization is correct.
While it does not want to build alliances,
it's happy to live withvarious partnerships,
including the one that has beenforged on a bipartisan basis
across multiple administrationswith the United States.
>> Bill Whalen (37:46):
Dinsha, tell me what the word Vishwa guru means.
Did I get it right?
>> Dinsha Mistree (37:52):
You did get it right.
>> Sumit Ganguly (37:53):
You did.
>> Bill Whalen (37:54):
Vishwa guru, yeah.
>> Dinsha Mistree (37:56):
I think in practice what they wanna be is educating and
leading the world,especially the developing world,
but really the world in terms of whatthe right kinds of practices are.
>> Bill Whalen (38:07):
Well, that word translates as world leader, doesn't it?
>> Dinsha Mistree (38:10):
Yes.
>> Bill Whalen (38:12):
Okay.
>> Dinsha Mistree (38:12):
But gurus are sort of teaching, right?
So educating in that way,not forcing the world into its worldview.
But just to return to what Sumit said,I think,
the US has a lot of troubles withCanada and Mexico as its neighbors.
Imagine if we shared a land borderwith China and imagine if that border.
>> Bill Whalen (38:32):
And Pakistan.
>> Dinsha Mistree (38:33):
And Pakistan, yes.
These are nuclear armed countries thatclaim part of your country as their own.
How do you handle that?
It's not an easy question.
We're very keen,obviously on saying that the US and
India should work very close together.
But we understand that just for breathingspace, some of the things that we would
(38:54):
love to see them do posturing onmight be very difficult for India.
So that's the big challenge forthem, just their own border.
How you deal with that?
>> Bill Whalen (39:06):
You've heard the phrase American century.
We've had alarmists talkabout a China century, but
does anybody in India talkabout an Indian century?
>> Dinsha Mistree (39:15):
They talk about it quite a lot.
Yes, of course.
I mean, maybe not in those languages, but
in that sort of a language withVishwa guru and terms like that.
They wanna be seen as, I think, thereversion to what we're seeing in India,
they wanna be recognizedas a civilizational power.
What that means is they're building offnot just of the last 10 or 15 years,
(39:36):
not just even of the last 75 years.
But they're trying to harken back toa five, 6,000 year tradition, say,
hey, we're here, this is our civilization,don't tread on us sort of thing.
That doesn't just involve China,that also involves the West.
They don't wanna bepushed around by anybody.
They wanna be more assertive and say,we're here and we deserve our own space.
(39:57):
And sorry, it's a much more assertive sortof aggressive foreign policy than what
we've seen from India previously.
>> Bill Whalen (40:03):
Topic number three is science and
technology and here I'd like you totalk about how India plans this.
For example, they had a science,technology, digital India plan,
I think back in 2015.
But I mentioned the beginning of thepodcast that Prime Minister Modi was in
France attending an AI summit.
I've read where AI related jobs globallywill be something like 100 million.
(40:25):
So let's talk about India andits role in artificial intelligence.
>> Dinsha Mistree (40:29):
Absolutely, so just science and technology generally,
I would say this is mypersonal interpretation.
The state has had just toomuch of a heavy thumb on it.
Most of the money goes towards systemsthat worked in the 40s and 50s,
these large vertical bureaucraticscientific research agencies that
just don't produce enough.
A lot of research money also goesinto state owned enterprises from
(40:53):
the government.
There's been very little amountsof money that the way we
have it to smaller companies,to R&B, to universities.
We just don't see that,
India now is starting todevelop those sorts of systems.
The National Research foundationthat they're creating
is one such model that they're trying out.
This is a big shift from howthey've previously done it.
(41:14):
I would also like to see revisions tothe tax laws that make research and
development beneficial know runthrough the private sector a lot more.
Those are things that Indiahas to sort out for itself.
We can provide some models but
they have to make the decisionson how they do this seriously.
It's a real tragedy because at the topof the system again you've got for
(41:35):
instance the top tech companies in the US.
The people who run the LLMs at allof these companies are people who
are trained in India, right?
So they've got the skills andthe capacity.
It's just they could get the governmentjust a little bit of the way out.
They'd have a lot more room to run and
maybe we'd see Indian versions ofApple and Microsoft and all of those
(41:58):
sorts of things that would make ourlives a lot better, quite honestly.
>> Bill Whalen (42:03):
Sumit?
>> Sumit Ganguly (42:04):
Yeah,
I completely concur witheverything that Dinsha has said.
For example, in the United Statesthere's a great deal of admiration, and
understandably so for the graduates ofthese Indian Institutes of Technology,
which was set up from the 1950s onwards.
Because they are highly skilledengineers who are talented, who come to
(42:29):
this country, many of whom are at Stanforditself, both as students and faculty.
But the problem withthe IITs is that they don't
incubate novel research for the most part.
They train people exceedingly well, but
they don't create people withan entrepreneurial spirit who
(42:53):
are willing to take risks untilthey come to this country.
In India, they are perfectly content togo work for a major engineering firm and
the products that they produceare perfectly reliable.
But you don't have this kindof propensity to take risk,
(43:16):
this propensity to be an entrepreneur,to innovate.
And this is where India really needs,
in my judgment,to create a ecosystem which
encourages both entrepreneurship,
(43:36):
risk taking and innovation.
>> Bill Whalen (43:41):
Would you drive that through universities similar to here
in the United States?
How exactly would youcreate the ecosystem?
>> Sumit Ganguly (43:48):
I think you have to work with both the private sector and
with universities and
to accept the fact that many ofthese things are going to fail.
This is the most wonderful thing thatI've discovered after living for
50 years in the United States is thatthere are second acts in American life.
>> Dinsha Mistree (44:12):
I would say the way that it works in the US,
I mean the great genius ofit was post World War II.
What we did was we really started tothink about how we could have a bottom
up system,
small teams of innovative scientistsreally with the politicians set aside.
Doing whatever they thought was the bigbreakthroughs through peer reviewed
systems andmerit based systems and the like.
(44:35):
That requires some level of humilityon the part of the government saying,
you know, we think AI is important.
Let's find the people who are actuallydoing AI and let them sort of determine
the priorities for this space untilit's strong enough to run on its own.
That can be very hard with a generalistbureaucracy that might have very different
(44:57):
opinions about what the future of thisvery fast changing space might be.
That seems to be a challenge.
>> Bill Whalen (45:03):
And the fourth and final topic area I want you to address,
gentlemen, is demographic trends.
This was an eye opener for me.
So I don't know how closely you followAmerican politics and American policy, but
politicians here love to usea phrase called silver tsunami.
And what that reference is is people likeme, people born between 1946 and 1964,
the boomers.
We're hanging around,we're living longer than people thought,
(45:26):
we're draining our entitlements.
We're draining our healthcare system,and we created a financial mess, and
it's complicated.
In short, we don't have enoughyoung people in this country.
We have too many old people,Japan has the same problems you will.
So as I'm reading this report,I'm walking around thinking,
India has the world's largest population.
It is a fertile country,it must be just a young country.
(45:47):
And yet I read about demographic trendsand I see the phrase maturing country.
So what does this mean?
It's a maturing country.
>> Dinsha Mistree (45:55):
You're making me feel like I need to have more babies.
I'm probably good withthe two that I've got.
I think that what we're seeing with Indiaright now is what we've seen with a lot of
countries where the economy is maturing.
People tend to put off having children forthat reason.
I think it's also just, honestly, toa certain extent, Western exposure, right?
(46:16):
You start to watch enough US televisionshows where you've got single people in
their 30s andthat rubs off on you in some ways.
That, for instance, Indian TV thattalks about being married by 21,
it's very different.
So there's something happeningin the psyche there,
but we definitely see pressureto delay having kids.
Right now, India has dropped justbelow replacement rate for children.
(46:40):
It's not going to hit them foranother generation or so.
But as the years go by andpeople start to age out of that workforce,
especially that 20 to 30 year timeframe,
the population will keep growing foranother 20 to 30 years.
>> Bill Whalen (46:56):
Would you add healthcare to that in terms of longevity,
people living longer through science?
>> Dinsha Mistree (47:00):
That's definitely happening as well, absolutely.
And in India, they've made great stridesin terms of improving public health,
really big, important improvements.
And that's only gonna getbetter as the economy improves.
But that keeps people alive longer and
people expect the state to help olderfolks in retirement pay for that.
So we're also going to see a lot moredemands for social services, welfare.
>> Bill Whalen (47:24):
Am I wrong to say that the largest population in the world has
a fertility problem, or.
>> Sumit Ganguly (47:30):
I wouldn't say that it's a problem.
I think this is actually a desirable goal
because in the 1960s and 70s,
there was this huge fearthat the Malthusian
nightmare would come to haunt India.
(47:51):
Population growth would completelyoutstrip India's ability to produce food,
let alone housing andeducation and healthcare.
In fact, a Stanford professor,Paul Ehrlich wrote a major book called
the Population Bomb, which I rememberreading as a college student
(48:12):
in the United States andfretting about the country of my birth.
That Malthusian nightmare, for anynumber of reasons hasn't been realized.
So it's actually a desirablestate of affairs.
But as Jack Goldstone,our colleague in that chapter,
(48:34):
points out that there'sa north south divide in India.
The southern states are muchmore prosperous and
there you've actually not onlyhit zero population growth,
but you're going below replacement levels.
It's the northern India,significant parts of
(48:57):
northern India that stillhave large families and
inadequate means to support them.
>> Bill Whalen (49:06):
Dinsha, are you suggesting a southern India lifestyle
comparable to the Bay Arealifestyle in terms of two income,
no kids for a long time andcommercial goods?
And we're gonna stream a lot of TV and eatwell in restaurants and we'll have kids.
Well, we're kind of ready, but we'renot gonna put any pressure us into it.
>> Dinsha Mistree (49:26):
You're definitely seeing more of that.
Even smart people can disagree andI like to see more babies.
So I think that I'd love to see Indiacontinue its demographic prosperity,
if you will, but this is definitelysomething that's happening.
People are having fewer babieswhere you're seeing it.
Apart from just the south north divide,
(49:47):
you're also finding Muslim communitiesin particular are continuing to
be very fertile andthat could be very good for India.
But it will create some internalpolitical challenges for
them as that population expands.
And particularly in the south,you see that population decline.
>> Bill Whalen (50:04):
Okay, final question for you gentlemen,
I sure appreciate your time today.
There's been a lot of talk in this countryabout a so called vibe shift after this
election of kind of a rejection of DEIin the country kind of politically,
the pendulum swinging the other way.
When we talk about India, and especiallyyoung Indians, aspirational Indians,
is there a vibe shift inthe country in that regard?
(50:25):
And the vibe shift,
the younger generation is seeing the worlddifferently from the Cold War generations.
>> Sumit Ganguly (50:32):
Most definitely, and but
this is evident amongst educated Indians.
I mean this is anecdotal, obviously.
And as social scientists,we are told never to rely on anecdotes and
consider them to be data.
But sometimes anecdotes are manifestationsof change taking place.
(50:56):
Walk into a mall in India, in a majorcity, and for a moment you might blink.
And other than the brown skins,you'd say what's different over here?
There's an H&M, there's a Zara,there's a Starbucks,
brands that we are completelyfamiliar with and
(51:20):
would expect at a major American mall.
They're studded across India.
And you have young people who thinkthat this is what they should
not only aspire to, but this issomething that they take for granted.
>> Bill Whalen (51:39):
Okay, but Dinsha, are they serious people?
Are they serious young people?
>> Dinsha Mistree (51:43):
Of course, all young people have to be serious.
I think there is actually also a bigvibe shift changing right now.
The US for 50 years has been the dream for
at least the upper elite Indian community,and it still is.
There are a lot of people who come here,but
increasingly I hear a lot of Indianswanting to stay home, which is great.
(52:04):
Their economy is providingmore opportunities for them.
The more concerning aspect iswhen I hear Indians who aspire to
go to friendly countrieslike Australia and Europe.
And I just get a little bitconcerned that America has
lost a little bit of that luster in India.
It used to be the placewhere dreams were made, and
(52:25):
now I think it can return to that.
But it's not felt like thatamong the young people,
especially the serious young people,as much as it once was.
>> Bill Whalen (52:33):
Well, gentlemen, we're gonna leave it there.
I want to thank you both forreally an enlightening podcast.
I really enjoyed reading the survey.
I learned a lot aboutIndia I did not know.
It's always good when I'm like,ignorance is pointed out to me.
But it really is just great jobof explaining this country.
And again, if you're going to India,if you're doing business in India,
you want to just learn more about it,read this survey.
(52:54):
Definitely check it out.
So again, gentlemen,congratulations, a job well done.
>> Sumit Ganguly (52:57):
Thank you very much.
>> Bill Whalen (53:00):
You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics,
the Hoover Institution podcastdevoted to governance and
balance of power here in America andaround the free world.
If you've been enjoying this podcast,please don't forget to review and
subscribe to our show.
And if you wouldn't mind, please spreadthe word, tell your friends about us.
The Hoover Institution has Facebook,Instagram and X feeds.
Our X handle is @hooverinstthat's H-O-O-V-E-R-I-N-S-T.
(53:20):
While you're at hoover.org, by the way,you sign up for the Hoover Daily Report,
which keeps you updated on what Sumit andDinsha are up to,
as well as their colleagues.
And that is emailed to you weekdays.
Also @ hoover.org you will findthe Hoover Institution Survey of India,
edited by Sumit and Dinsha.
It is just fascinating to readabout the promised potential and
reality of India as a world power.
(53:40):
For the Hoover Institution,this is Bill Whalen.
We'll be back soon witha new conversation.
Until then, take care,thanks for joining us today.
>> Presenter (53:48):
This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution,
where where we generate andpromote ideas, advancing freedom.
For more information about our work,to hear more of our podcasts,
or view our video content,please visit hoover.org.
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