Ideas of India Mercatus Center Podcasts

Shruti spoke with Vani Swarupa Murali a PhD. Candidate and an instructor at the South Asian Studies Department in the National University of Singapore (NUS). She has a Masters in Asian Studies from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Her research lies at the intersection of political science and agricultural policy and environmental governance. We spoke about “When Sowing is not Reaping: Decentralisation, Groundwater Extraction and Agrarian Livelihoods in Tamil Nadu.” We talked about the overly centralized administrative, political, and fiscal Indian state, its impact on farmers’ livelihood, groundwater depletion and other environmental consequences, and more.
Recorded August 31st, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Kartikeya Batra, who is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Maryland and has a master’s in international affairs from The Fletcher School.
His research lies at the intersection of political economy, development economics, and economic history. They discussed his job market paper titled “Long-Run Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from India,” and talked about the erstwhile Zamindari or Taluqdari system and its impact on modern day Uttar Pradesh, land titling versus land redistribution in India, the importance of property rights, relationship between land owning castes and socioeconomic outcomes, and much more.
Recorded September 19th, 2023.
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In this episode, Shruti spoke with Vatsal Khandelwal, who is a junior research fellow at Merton College and an associate member of the Department of Economics at University of Oxford. His main research interest are development and behavioral economics, with a focus on social and economic networks.
They discussed his job market paper titled “Silent Networks: The Role of Inaccurate Beliefs in Reducing Useful Social Interactions,” (coauthored with Ronak Jain). They spoke about pessimistic beliefs and their impact on individual’s well-being, the methods to correct incorrect beliefs about social norms, the importance of social networks, support groups, students’ expectations’ impact on performance more.
Recorded September 21st, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Sarath Pillai, who is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School, a MA in history from the University of Delhi, and a Postgraduate Diploma in archives and records management from the National Archives of India, Delhi.
They discussed his job market paper titled “German Lessons: Comparative Constitutionalism, States’ Rights, and Federalist Imaginaries in Interwar India,” recently published in “Comparative Studies in Society and History.” They spoke about how the views of the princely states on federalism and constitutionalism are different from the view of the Indian nationalists; the influence of German thought on India in the early twentieth century; subnationalism and federalism in modern day India and more.
Recorded September 6th, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Rithika Kumar, who is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in August 2023.
Her research lies at the intersection of gender, urbanization and politics in India. Shruti and Rithika discussed her job market paper titled “Left Behind or Left Ahead?” and the feminization of politics, political and social impact of migration, norms holding back women, and much more.
Recorded September 6th, 2023.
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Shruti spoke with Vanisha Sharma who is a Ph.D. candidate at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. She earned her BA in economics with a double minor in psychology and sociology at the University of Hong Kong. She is also the co-editor-in-chief for the blog Economics That Really Matters, which encourages early researchers to share development economics research.
Vanisha's research involves estimating effects of internet expansion in developing, rural communities. We discussed her job market paper titled “Social (Media) Learning: Experimental Evidence from Indian Farmers.” Shruti and Vanisha talked about how farmers learn through social media, how it impacts their farm expenditure, their battle against pests and weather shocks and more. 
Recorded August 31st, 2023.
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