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 Health: Evidence from India. We talked about demand side versus supply side policy interventions in public health, India's maternal health policy landscape, the ASHA workers program, variation across states in policy impact and much more.

Recorded August 28th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:35) - Setting the Stage

(00:04:44) - India's Maternal–Child Health Policy Landscape

(00:08:29) - Uneven Progress: State Differences, Culture, and Measurement Challenges

(00:09:24) - Who Are the ASHA Workers?

(00:11:56) - Trust, Access, and the Information Channel

(00:14:26) - Pay, Hours, and Unionization: Why Conditions Vary by State

(00:16:50) - How Incentives Are Structured

(00:21:44) - From Design to Data: Building the District-Level Panel

(00:25:20) - We Are Measuring ASHAs—and Something Else

(00:26:45) - DiD Simplified: How the Causal Claim Works

(00:33:45) - Policy Implications: Where to Invest and How to Train

(00:36:53) - Cost-Effectiveness: Supply vs. Demand

(00:39:53) - Why Supply-Side Effects Take Time

(00:41:50) - Beyond Pregnancy: Anganwadi Daycare and Women's Work

(00:46:27) - Outro

Our fifth scholar in the series is Karthik Narayan, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Nuffield College and at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. His research focuses on monetary policy, macroeconomics and finance in developing countries.

We spoke about his job market paper titled, Macroeconomic Effects of Scheduled and Unscheduled Monetary Policy Surprises.

We talked about how the Reserve Bank of India makes and announces its policies, its impact on interest rates, inflation expectations and output, measuring the impact of policy announcements, the Lucas Critique and much more.

Recorded August 28th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:22) - Measuring Causality Is Hard

(00:11:16) - What Counts as a Policy Surprise?

(00:13:27) - OIS and MIBOR: Expectation Thermometers

(00:21:11) - Short term versus long term effects on asset prices

(00:27:18) - Noise and Fiscal-Monetary Coordination

(00:32:46) - Inflation Before and After the MPC

(00:37:24) - The Lucas Critique

(00:40:51) - Practical Implications

(00:45:48) - Other Research Interests

(00:47:39) - Outro

Our fourth scholar in the series is Asad Tariq, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with a particular interest in religion, politics and public service delivery in India. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Constituencies of Change: Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India.

We talked about the 2008 delimitation exercise, especially at the state level, gerrymandering, the median voter versus swing voters and ethnic groups, public service delivery for minorities, especially Muslims, and much more.

Recorded September 5th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:02:42) - Packing and Cracking

(00:05:10) - From Theory to Ballots

(00:06:40) - Median Voter Logic: A Mechanism in Play

(00:08:24) - Delimitation as an exogenous shock?

(00:19:06) - Does Identity of the elected leader matter?

(00:20:10) - Enter: Swing Voters

(00:23:07) - Schools, Roads, and Wires: Evidence on Public Goods

(00:26:21) - Crunching the Numbers

(00:29:44) - Drawing the Lines: Gerrymandering Then and Now

(00:37:40) - Policy Stakes and What's Next

(00:41:45) - Outro

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 extramarital affairs, polygamous relationships, Uniform Civil Code, social versus legal acceptance, and much more.

Recorded September 5th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:23) - How Courts Recognize "Family"

(00:03:12) - Why This Paper? Rethinking "Family"

(00:05:28) - India's Legal Patchwork: Customs vs. Code

(00:11:07) - Judicial Heuristics: Rituals, Cohabitation, Children

(00:14:44) - Endogamy vs. Interfaith: Law, Bias, and Recognition

(00:22:22) - How the State Views Children

(00:25:27) - Welfare Logic & Gendered Maintenance

(00:29:29) - UCC and the "Intimacy Contract"

(00:35:48) - The Role of the State

(00:42:30) - Contract vs. Sacrament

(00:49:00) - Outro

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 Analysis of Shame, Pride and Prejudice. We talked about depictions of shame and pride and heroism in Indian versus American films, the challenges with textual analysis of a visual medium, and much more.

Recorded September 5th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:44) - Shame and Pride in Film

(00:12:31) - Teaching Machines Norms

(00:16:52) - Textual Analysis in a Visual Medium

(00:18:26) - The Trouble with Subtitles and Scripts

(00:27:41) - Self-Shaming vs. Other-Shaming

(00:30:33) - LLM Alignment Needs a Culture Check

(00:36:20) - Looking Ahead: A Final Reflection

(00:37:01) - Outro

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 experiments in India. We talked his large-scale experiment at a footwear manufacturing firm in Delhi, on how referral-based hiring improve firm productivity, cohesion, and inclusion, differences in hiring between higher caste versus lower caste networks, feudalism and labor opportunities, and much more.

Recorded August 28th, 2025.

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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.

Recorded August 1st, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:07) - The Elusive K. M. Panikkar

(00:07:52) - Panikkar's and the Indian National Movement

(00:19:32) - Panikkar's Intellectual Arc

(00:26:45) - Unifying an Indian Identity

(00:35:38) - India's Princely States

(00:40:19) - Panikkar and China

(00:54:43) - Panikkar and the 1950s

(00:59:43) - Panikkar's Thought vs. His Government Work

(01:08:35) - Panikkar's Blind Spots

(01:15:48) - Panikkar and Today's India

(01:18:27) - Outro

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 school administrators and teachers, the role of local governments in education, Delhi's experiment with education reforms, portable benefits and school vouchers, and much more.

Recorded July 16th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:27) - Delhi School Experiment

(00:12:45) - Education in a Welfare State

(00:28:34) - Incompetent Petty Tyrants

(00:38:17) - Federalism and Education

(00:50:18) - How to Build Empowerment

(01:05:39) - Is the Delhi Experiment Generalizable?

(01:18:52) - Portability and Education

(01:28:15) - Outro