Ideas of India
Through conversations with top thinkers in the social sciences and beyond, economist Shruti Rajagopalan explores the ideas that will propel India forward.
Episodes
Today my guest is Nachiket Mor, a health economist whose work focuses on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a visiting scientist at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore, and a commissioner and author on the Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India's Health System, which published its fin...
Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly, the author of the recent book, Trilegal: The Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm. He is one of the founders of Trilegal and specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting.
We talked about how Trilegal grew in the context of India's market liberalization and sectoral reforms, differ...
Today my guest is Renuka Sane Read more
Today my guest is Snigdha Poonam who is a journalist and writer. She is the author of the new book Scamlands
Shruti and Ideas of India producer Dallas Floer sit down for the 2025 end-of-year episode. They look back at key themes and top episodes from the past year, address listener questions, and look forward to what's in store for Shruti and the show in 2026.
Recorded December 16th, 2025.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links...
Our seventh and final scholar in the series is Ammu Lavanya, a PhD candidate in Economics at George Washington University. Her research is in the areas of International Finance, Monetary Economics, Empirical Banking and Financial History.
We spoke about her job market paper titled International Financial Flows, Credit Allocation and Productivity. We talked about financial liberalization in India, the 2004 banking reform that incre...
Our sixth scholar in the series is Nayantara Biswas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Clark University. Her research focuses on health equity impact evaluations of small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies.
We spoke about dissertation titled, The Impact of Social Policies on Reproductive Health, Maternal Employment, and Child Heal...
Our fifth scholar in the series is Karthik Narayan, who Read more
Our third scholar in the series is Chetana Sabnis, who is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on how states regulate intimate relationships and construct hierarchies of familial belonging. We spoke about her job market paper titled, The Intimacy Contract in Action: How Indian Courts Determine which Extramarital Relationships Deserve Recognition. We talked about extram...
Our second scholar in the series is Sunny Rai, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi.
Her research focuses on misinformation, mental health and cross-cultural variations in human language. We spoke about her co-authored job market paper titled, Social Norms in Cinema: A Cross-Cultural Anal...
Our first scholar in the series is Kartik Srivastava, who is a PhD candidate at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Before this, he received his bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he majored in Economics and Engineering Sciences.
His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Familiar strangers: Evidence from referral-based hiring...
Today my guest is Narayani Basu, who is a historian and the author of the latest book, A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K. M. Panikkar. Her last book was a biography of V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India.
We talked about KM Panikkar, his comparison with VP Menon, the Indian nationalist movement in the interwar years, the origins of India's diplomatic relationship with China, Pannikar's Zionism and much more.
Recor...
Today my guest is Yamini Aiyar, who is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the author of the recent book Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi's Schools. Her main research interests are contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, and federalism.
We talked about the challenges of education policy and welfare in India, the lack of agency experienced by ...
Today my guest is M.R. Sharan, an assistant professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland College Park. He is the author of numerous papers and the book Last Among Equals: Power, Caste, & Politics in Bihar's Villages.
Today my guest is Rakesh Mohan. He is the President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. He has previously served as Executive Director on the Board of the International Monetary Fund and as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
We talked about his work with the Government of India since the 1980...
Today my guest is environmental scholar, historian and biographer Ramachandra Guha. He is the author of a number of books, including a two-volume biography of Gandhi and the award-winning book "India After Gandhi."
Today's episode is the second part of my conversation with Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need. He taught history and politics at the University of Illino...
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