Akshay Jaitly on India's Energy Sector Challenges, Reforms, and Future Pathways
Release Date: 03/13/2025
Karthik Narayan on Measuring the Effects of Unscheduled vs. Scheduled Monetary Policy Announcements
Ideas of India
Our fifth scholar in the series is , 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, 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. Read a enhanced with...
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Asad Tariq on Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India
Ideas of India
Our fourth scholar in the series is , 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, . 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. Read...
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Chetana Sabnis on The Intimacy Contract and the Indian State
Ideas of India
Our third scholar in the series is , 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, . We talked about extramarital affairs, polygamous relationships, Uniform Civil Code, social versus legal acceptance, and much more. Recorded September 5th, 2025. Read a enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow on X Click for the...
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Sunny Rai on Using Large Language Models to Understand the Depiction of Shame and Pride in Bollywood versus Hollywood
Ideas of India
Our second scholar in the series is , who is a 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, . 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. Read a enhanced with...
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Kartik Srivastava on Referral-Based Hiring, Caste Networks, and Breaking Barriers in India's Labor Markets
Ideas of India
Our first scholar in the series is , 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, . 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...
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Narayani Basu on K. M. Panikkar: India’s Impossible Man
Ideas of India
Today my guest is Narayani Basu, who is a historian and the author of the latest book, . Her last book was a biography of . 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. Read a enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow on X Follow on X Click for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps...
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Yamini Aiyar Schools Us on Education Policy in India
Ideas of India
Today my guest is , 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 . 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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Rathin Roy on How India Slices the Fiscal Pie
Ideas of India
Today my guest is , who's a Distinguished Fellow at the Kautilya School of Public Policy and a Visiting Senior Fellow at ODI Global. His main research interests are political economy, public finance, and development economics, and he also served on the 13th Finance Commission. We talked about India's fiscal resources are distributed across states and between the union and state governments, the divergence between rich and poor states, compensatory welfare and its consequences and much more. Recorded July 8th, 2025. Read a enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of...
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Chitrakshi Jain and Prashant Reddy T. on the Dysfunction in India's District Courts
Ideas of India
Today my guests are legal scholars and , the authors of the recent book . We talked about the dysfunction in India’s lower courts, opacity in the evaluation of district court judges, the problems with judicial data, and much more. Recorded July 1st, 2025. Read a enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow on X Follow on X Follow on X Click for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.
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M.R. Sharan Examines Decentralization and Local Representation in India
Ideas of India
Today my guest is , 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 . His main research interests are development economics and political economy. We talked about his research on local government in India, incentives of various political actors and the power structures they inhibit, fiscal federalism, and much more. Recorded May 21st, 2025. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the . Connect with Ideas of India Follow on X Follow on X...
info_outlineToday my guest is Akshay Jaitly, one of the founders of Trilegal, one of India’s leading law firms. He 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 the top-down nature of electricity regulation and pricing in India, the dysfunctional DISCOMS, the reforms required for an energy transition towards renewables and nuclear energy, and much more.
Recorded February 11th, 2025.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:06 - Electricity in India
00:15:31 - DISCOMs
00:41:26 - Open Access
00:44:31 - Expanding Capacity
00:46:52 - Renewable Energy
00:50:04 - Technology Diffusion
00:59:11 - Nuclear Power
01:17:18 - Outro