In this episode, Matt sits down with Shruti Rajagopalan (Mercatus Center) to talk about what the future holds for India. We often have a tendency to think of the current economic and geopolitical situation as simply the way things are. Especially for people who grew up in the United States over the past 50 years, the fact that it is an economic and…

In this conversation, Puja Mehra talks to Dr. Shruti Rajagopalan about the historical context of the 1991 Economic Liberalisation of India. She illustrates how the economy in india worked through the manufacture of a bicycle and goes on to explain the impact of those economic reforms, the careful planning that went into it, the people who brought i…

In this episode, Puja Mehra talks to economist Payal Malik about the impact of big tech companies like Google and Meta on market competition in India and the recent antitrust ruling against google. They explore how these giants dominate industries through data extraction, stifling innovation and harming suppliers, the need for new regulations to ad…

Today my guests are Amartya Lahiri and Devashish Mitra who are joining me to discuss their latest paper for the 1991 project titled India’s Development Policy Challenge. Amartya Lahiri is the Royal Bank Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Devashish Mitra the Gerald B. and Daphna Crame…

Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson are anthropologists based in America. Their partnership was central to the development of Dual-Inheritance Theory, a framework that applies Darwinian evolution to culture and explains how genes and culture have intertwined to shape our species. This is their first ever joint interview. Full transcript available at: j…

Today my guest is Anirudh Burman. He is an associate research director and fellow at Carnegie Endowment India, and prior to that, he worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and the Centre for Policy Research, both in New Delhi. He has his master’s in law from Harvard Law School. We spoke about the dysfunctional land markets an…

In this conversation, Puja Mehra talks to Vijay Singh Chauhan about the complexities of government budgeting and fiscal management in India. They discuss discrepancies in GDP numbers, government borrowing, the fiscal deficit, the importance of transparency, statistical skills, and public input in the budget-making process, and much more. For more o…

Today my guests are Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah, who are my colleagues at the Mercatus Center and research scholars working with me on the 1991 Project. We spoke about the kinds of policy change we would like to see in the coalition government led by Modi’s in his third term. We talked about the research Shreyas, Kadambari and I have been work…

Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform. We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report. written by Sajith and his co-auth…

In this conversation, Puja Mehra and economist Amol Agrawal discuss the history and evolution of banking in India, the establishment of princely state banks, their merger into the State Bank of India, the emergence of new banking forms and much more. ABOUT AMOL AGRAWAL Amol Agrawal is a teacher of economics having taught economics at Ahmedabad Univ…

Today my guest is Anne O Krueger. She is a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She served World Bank’s Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy man…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to economist Nikhil Gupta about the financial situation of households (including weakening income growth, growing debt, and reliance on non-mortgage personal loans), the intricate relationship between the household and corporate sectors, recent trends in savings, investments, and borrowings, and mu…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to economist Amol Agrawal about the history of private banks in India, how the RBI was setup, banking regulation through the years, the beginnings of some of India's most iconic private banks and much more. ABOUT AMOL AGRAWAL Amol Agrawal is a teacher of economics having taught economics at Ahmedab…

Today my guest is Karthik Muralidharan. He is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the recent book Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance.” We talked about the lacking state capacity in India, about improving the quality of public expendi…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to economist Rathin Roy about India's economic growth and challenges, the country's economic transformation, the need for inclusive development, the growing disconnect between the masses and the growth process and much more. ABOUT RATHIN ROY Rathin Roy was the Director and CEO of the National Insti…

Lucy Turnbull is an urbanist, businesswoman and philanthropist. She was the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney, from 2003-4. From 2015-20, she was the inaugural Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, tasked with delivering strategic planning for the whole of metropolitan Sydney. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to former secretary with the Ministry of Agriculture Siraj Hussain about agriculture policy, managing food inflation, minimum support price, wheat procurement, nuanced policies that balance farmer interests with consumer needs and much more. ABOUT SIRAJ HUSSAIN Siraj Hussain joined the IAS in 1979 …

Today my guests are Tom Easton and Arjun Ramani from The Economist. Tom Easton is Mumbai bureau chief. He joined The Economist in 2000 at the New York bureau and was appointed the Asian business editor in 2007. Arjun Ramani is on an extended stint in Mumbai and Delhi bureaus covering the Indian economy. Before this, he was the global business and e…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to economists Maitreesh Ghatak and Rishabh Kumar about poverty estimation in India, historical trends in poverty reduction, defining the poverty line, poverty in rural areas vs urban areas and much more. ABOUT MAITREESH GHATAK Maitreesh Ghatak is Professor of Economics at the London School of Econo…

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University. A bestselling author, his books include The Case Against Education, Open Borders, and Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Deregulation. Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/bryan-caplan-155 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to Chakshu Roy about challenges faced by members of parliament in contributing to economic policymaking, the importance of research support, the limitations of the parliamentary system and much more. ABOUT CHAKSHU ROY Chakshu Roy is an expert on the rules and procedures of Parliament and its functi…

Today my guest is Rohit Lamba, an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. We spoke about his recent book Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future which he has coauthored with Raghuram Rajan. We spoke about their argument to shi…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to Vijay Singh Chauhan about streamlining cargo clearance processes in India, the challenges faced during COVID-19 in cargo clearance and much more. For more of our coverage check out thecore.in Subscribe to our Newsletter Follow us on: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to Rajesh Vetcha about Airports, how they are run, how the systems that allow for the functioning of airports work, passenger charters and much more. For more of our coverage check out thecore.in Subscribe to our Newsletter Follow us on: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube…

Today my guest is Rasheed Griffith, who is the CEO of the Caribbean Progress Studies Institute, the host of the podcast the Rasheed Griffith Show, and one of my favorite writers on Substack. He also directs the Emergent Ventures Africa-Caribbean grants program at the Mercatus Center. We spoke about whether the former colonizers owe reparations to t…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to economist and deputy director at Carnegie India Suyash Rai about manufacturing policy in India, Apple's planned iPhone manufacture in India, whether PLI schemes actually work, industrial policy in India and much more. ABOUT SUYASH RAI Suyash Rai is a deputy director and fellow at Carnegie India.…

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to Former Finance Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Haseeb Drabu about the inner workings of the Kashmir economy, opportunities for businesses in the valley, what the abrogation of Article 370 meant for businesses and much more. ABOUT HASEEB DRABU Haseeb Drabu is an Indian politician, economist and the…

In this episode, we are joined by Lainie Ross (University of Rochester Medical Center) and (once again!) Christos Lazaridis (UChicago Medicine), this time to talk about the different ways of defining death. In our previous episode with Christos, we talked about death and the vexed history of attempts to define it. Prior to the advent of modern life…

Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme. Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi, a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co-autho…

Today my guests are M. Krishnan and Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan. M. Krishnan is an economist based in Chennai and Singapore, and specializes in agriculture education systems, fisheries, and aquaculture research. He is currently an advisor at Infinite-Sum Modeling Inc and was a distinguished scientist of the Agricultural Research Service of the I…

Aparna Chandra is a constitutional scholar and associate professor of law at the National Law school in Bangalore. She is the coauthor, along with Sital Kalantry and William Hubbard of the recent book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India. We spoke about the problem of pendency across all courts in the Indian judiciary…

This is our 100th episode and I want to thank our listeners, the guests who have been exceptionally generous with their time and insights, the fantastic team at Mercatus that helps me produce and disseminate the podcast, and to all our donors and supporters. Today my guest is Douglas Irwin, who is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth…

Join journalist Puja Mehra as she talks to Economists, Academics and Researchers and breaks down one story to give you all the context you need - historical, macro-economic and policy-related - to understand how it fits into the larger picture of India's economy. For more of our coverage check out thecore.in --Support the Core Report-- Join and Int…

Today my guest is Rahul Matthan, a technology lawyer and partner at Trilegal. He assisted the Indian government in developing India’s data privacy law and he is the author of the recent books Privacy 3.0 and The Third Way. We spoke about India’s digital public infrastructure revolution, India’s unified payments system, AI, blockchain, the design is…