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 expenditure, fiscal federalism, methods to improve the hiring process for government, better ways of staffing and using the Indian bureaucracy, randomized control trials and development and much more.

Recorded May 15th, 2024.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:07:46) - Quality of Public Education

(00:17:59) - Decentralization vs. Federalism

(00:31:58) - Welfare Expenditure

(00:41:30) - Personnel for the Indian State

(01:09:08) - Better Approach for Skilling

(01:17:26) - Empanelment

(01:34:32) - The Backdrop of the Field of Economics

(01:56:52) - Outro

Today my guests are Tom Easton and Arjun Ramani from The Economist. Tom Easton is Mumbai bureau chief. He joined The Economist in 2000 at the New York bureau and was appointed the Asian business editor in 2007. Arjun Ramani is on an extended stint in Mumbai and Delhi bureaus covering the Indian economy. Before this, he was the global business and economics correspondent in the London office. We spoke about various aspects of covered in a recent six-part special report on India’s economy written by Arjun and Tom.

Recorded May 2nd, 2024.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:03) - The India Express and its Future

(00:01:57) - Reasons for Optimism and Pessimism Over India’s Future

(00:14:45) - Long-Run Economic Growth

(00:18:51) - Is India Prepared to be a Capitalist Country?

(00:29:37) - Unemployment vs. Informal Labor Market in India

(00:47:17) - India and Education

(00:51:21) - State Capacity Problems

(01:02:11) - Concrete Ceilings for Indian Businesses

(01:08:24) - The Binding Constraint

(01:13:30) - Industrial Policy

(01:31:53) - Future of Economic Journalism

(01:44:50) - Outro

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

We spoke about their argument to shift the focus from industrial and trade policy towards a services and education policy, how India can and should decentralize, if India can scale education and health, India’s growth rate numbers, and much more.

Recorded April 19th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:05:21) - Zooming into Indian States

(00:20:25) - Why not Decentralization?

(00:26:28) - Scaling Education

(00:51:14) - Educating the Global South

(00:53:22) - Picking Winners and Losers

(01:10:22) - India's Growth Rate

(01:18:44) - Outro

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