In democracies, we typically assume that public opinion on issues like jobs, the economy, and inflation matter for shaping policy and politics. But opinions on foreign policy are often treated as the preserve of elites, especially in a country like India.

Yet, it turns out that we know surprisingly little about what ordinary Indians think about foreign policy, how stable those views are, and whether they influence the choices that governments make.

A new short book, Indian Public Opinion toward the Major Powers, tackles these questions by examining more than six decades of Indian attitudes toward the United States, China, and Russia. The book draws on a wide range of survey data to ask how Indians view the major powers, how those views have shifted over time, and what they reveal about democracy, accountability, and foreign policy in India.

To discuss the book, co-authors Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland join Milan on the podcast this week. Aidan is an assistant professor of political science at Florida State University. Many moons ago, he was a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow with the Carnegie South Asia Program. Paul is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The trio discuss the treasure trove of data on Indian public opinion the authors stumbled upon, the characteristics of India’s “foreign policy public,” and the variation in Indian attitudes toward the United States, China, and Russia/the Soviet Union. Plus, the discuss why a respondent’s region emerges as a strong predictor of one’s foreign policy views.

Episode notes:

1. Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland, “Replication Archive: India Public Opinion Toward the Major Powers,” May 2026.
2. Paul Staniland, “The Indian ‘foreign policy public,’” paulstaniland.com (Blog), May 6, 2026.
3. Christine Huang, “Americans see India in positive light, but few have confidence in Modi,” Pew Research Center, June 21, 2023.
4. Paul Staniland and Vipin Narang, “Democratic Accountability and Foreign Security Policy: Theory and Evidence from India,” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 410-447.
5. Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland, "Indian Public Opinion toward the Major Powers," in Elements in Indo-Pacific Security, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026). (The piece is publicly available until June 15, 2026)

India’s relations with Europe are often viewed through the lens of Brussels, Paris, Berlin, or London. But in recent years, India has also been deepening its ties with another important set of partners: the Nordic countries.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Oslo for the third India-Nordic Summit, bringing together India and the five Nordic countries—Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark.

The agenda for the six countries was wide-ranging, covering trade, investment, green technology, maritime cooperation, the Arctic, and the Indo-Pacific.

The visit also marked the first official trip by an Indian prime minister to Norway in more than four decades. As a result of the summit, Norway and India have elevated their bilateral relationship with new agreements on climate, technology, science, and the blue economy.

To discuss what all of this means for India, Norway, and the changing global order, Milan is joined this week by May-Elin Stener, who serves as Ambassador of Norway to India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives.

Prior to taking up this position, Ambassador Stener was the Deputy Director General of the Regional department in the foreign ministry. She has served as Norway’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York as well as Deputy Head of the Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa. She has been a member of the Norwegian Foreign Service since 1995.

Milan and Ambassador Stener discuss the outcomes of the India-Nordic summit, the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), and the green technology partnership Norway envisions with India. Plus, the two discussed linkages between the Arctic and the Indo-Pacific and the controversy over a Norwegian journalist’s questioning of Indian officials in Oslo.

Episode notes:

1. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, “India-Norway Joint Statement,” May 18, 2026.
2. Government of Sweden, “Joint Statement: 3rd India-Nordic Summit, Oslo, 19 May 2026,” May 19, 2026.
3. Priyanka Shankar, “India-Nordic summit: Why is Modi wooing Northern Europe?” Al Jazeera, May 19, 2026.
4. “The India-Nordic Summit: What It Is and What Has Now Been Set in Motion,” India’s World, May 20, 2026.
5. Suhasini Haidar, “Commitment to democracy makes India, Nordic nations natural partners: Modi,” Hindu, May 20, 2026.

After the latest round of state elections, India’s political landscape looks more lopsided than at any time in the post-2014 era. The BJP claimed big wins in West Bengal and Assam—continuing its march across eastern India and solidifying its status as a hegemonic party.

But politics at home is only part of the story.

Overseas, India is facing a turbulent moment—from the Iran war and Pakistan’s diplomatic resurgence to Trump 2.0’s approach to China and the uncertain future of the Quad.

To talk about the BJP’s dominance, the opposition’s crisis, and India’s positioning in a rapidly shifting world, Milan is joined this week by Grand Tamasha regulars, Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan.

Sadanand is a senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Tanvi Madan is a senior fellow in the Center for Asia Policy Studies in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.

The trio discuss whether India is becoming a “one-party state,” the current state of the opposition, and the headwinds facing the Indian economy. Plus, the three discuss Pakistan’s diplomatic moment, Trump’s recent China trip, and Marco Rubio’s visit to India.

Episode notes:

1. Sadanand Dhume, “Why Would Anyone Trust Pakistan to Mediate With Iran?” Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2026.
2. Sadanand Dhume, “India’s Ruling Party Beats the Odds,” Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2026.
3. Sadanand Dhume, “Pakistan Has Put Itself Back on the Diplomatic Map,” Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2026.
4. [Audio] “Flash Episode: India's 2026 Elections Explained (with Yamini Aiyar and Neelanjan Sircar),” Grand Tamasha, May 8, 2026.
5. Tanvi Madan, “India’s China Strategy in an Uncertain Strategic Environment,” in Milan Vaishnav, ed., India and a Changing Global Order: Foreign Policy in the Trump 2.0 Era (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2026)
6. [Video] “Udit Misra Explains | Forex Fears? What PM Modi’s Big Appeal Actually Says About India’s Economy,” Indian Express, May 12, 2026.
7. “From UP to Karnataka: Six Routes Around the 1991 Places of Worship Act,” The Wire, May 17, 2026.

India’s growth numbers shape how we understand everything from jobs to investment to global standing. But what if those numbers don’t tell the full story?

New research suggests India may have both underestimated and overestimated growth at different moments over the past two decades. That insight opens the door to a broader conversation about India’s macroeconomic choices, from exchange rate policy to electricity pricing to the quiet persistence of trade barriers.

To discuss these issues and many more, Abhishek Anand joins Milan on the podcast this week. Abhishek is the Founder and Managing Director of Insignia Policy Research and a Visiting Fellow at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. He’s previously worked as an Economist at the World Bank and was a member of the Indian Economic Service, working in key positions throughout the Indian Ministry of Finance.

Together, with Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman, Abhishek is the author of a new working paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics titled “India's 20 Years of GDP Misestimation: New Evidence.”

Abhishek and Milan discuss the controversy over India’s GDP estimates, important reforms within India’s statistics ministry, and the debate over the Reserve Bank of India’s policies to defend the rupee. Plus, the two discuss Abhishek’s work on power sector reform and the embrace of non-tariff barriers that stymie the spirit of India’s new bilateral trade agreements.

Episode notes:

1. Abhishek Anand, Josh Felman, and Arvind Subramanian, “India's 20 years of GDP misestimation: New evidence,” Peterson Institute of International Economics Working Paper 26-3, March 2026.
2. Abhishek Anand, Arvind Subramanian, and Josh Felman, “How GDP data misread the economy, complicated policy,” Indian Express, March 14, 2026.
3. Abhishek Anand and Naveen Thomas, “Free Trade on Paper, Protection in Practice: How India’s Policy Interventions Hollow Out Trade Liberalisation,” O.P. Jindal Global University, January 2026.
4. Abhishek Anand, Arvind Subramanian, and Josh Felman, “Going forward, RBI’s rupee policy must not repeat errors of recent history,” Indian Express, December 29, 2025.
5. Abhishek Anand, Praveen Ravi, Navneeraj Sharma, and Arvind Subramanian, “To help India’s economy, unleash the power sector,” Indian Express, August 27, 2025.

For more than a decade, India has steadily deepened its ties with the Gulf while trying to balance competing interests across the region. But today, that strategy is under strain—thanks to the Iran conflict, shifting regional alignments, a reemerging Pakistan.

How is India being impacted by the Iran crisis? And what do these geopolitical shifts mean for India’s West Asia policy?

To discuss these and other questions, Milan is joined on the show this week by Kabir Taneja. Kabir is the Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation’s Middle East office. He has worked extensively on India’s relations with the Middle East, examining domestic political dynamics, terrorism, non-state militant actors, and the region’s evolving security architecture. He is also the author of The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and Its Shadow on South Asia.

Milan and Kabir discuss India’s emerging political and strategic relationships in the Gulf, the risks the country faces from the Iran conflict, and the potential for India to play a larger regional security role in the Middle East. Plus, the two discuss Pakistan’s frenetic diplomatic maneuvering and the state of Afghanistan-India ties.

Episode notes:

1. Kabir Taneja, “Pak Is Finally Back In Middle East's 'Good Books'. But Can It Stay There?” NDTV, April 30, 2026.
2. Kabir Taneja, “How Air Power will Reshape Geopolitics in the Gulf,” ORF Middle East, April 17, 2026.
3. Kabir Taneja, “A West Asia security rethink amid America’s role,” Hindu, April 2, 2026.
4. Kabir Taneja, “Reading the tea leaves in the conflict in West Asia,” Hindustan Times, March 10, 2026.
5. Kabir Taneja, “Navigating Strategic Autonomy: India and the Middle East in a Multipolar World,” February 9, 2026.
6. Nicolas Blarel, “India Navigates a Divided Middle East,” in Milan Vaishnav, ed. India and a Changing Global Order: Foreign Policy in the Trump 2.0 Era (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2026).
7. Kabir Taneja, “Between New Delhi & Kabul, a fine balance,” Hindustan Times, October 13, 2025.

** NOTE TO LISTENERS: This week, we are releasing a special “flash episode” of Grand Tamasha to recap India’s recently concluded 2026 state assembly elections. As usual, we will still be publishing a new Grand Tamasha episode next Tuesday, May 12 at 9 pm ET, Wednesday 6:30 am IST.

It’s safe to say that India’s 2026 state assembly elections have scrambled many of the assumptions that have long shaped our understanding of Indian politics.

The BJP has finally captured West Bengal after decades of trying, secured a third consecutive victory in Assam, and made modest, but important gains in Kerala. With its allies, it also retained the union territory of Puducherry. In Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, the upstart TVK—led by the enigmatic actor Vijay—has disrupted a political duopoly that has defined the state for decades.

At a deeper level, across these elections, familiar assumptions about welfare, identity, institutions, and opposition politics have suddenly been called into question.

To make sense of these results—and what they might tell us about the road to 2029—Milan is joined today by two of the sharpest observers of Indian politics and political economy.

Neelanjan Sircar is an associate professor at Ahmedabad University and one of the country’s leading scholars of Indian politics. He has spent years studying party organizations, welfare politics, and electoral change across states—including West Bengal and Assam.

Yamini Aiyar is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and the Watson Institute at Brown University. She was previously president and CEO of the Centre for Policy Research, and is a leading expert on the Indian state, welfare delivery, and democratic accountability.

Milan, Yamini, and Neelanjan discuss the BJP’s historic win in West Bengal, the demise of the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee, and the Election Commission of India’s controversial revision of the electoral rolls. Plus, the trio discuss the rupture in Tamil politics, the Congress’ lone victory in Kerala, and the BJP’s strategy for 2029.

Episode notes:

1. Samanth Subramanian, “From Sea to Saffron Sea: Neelanjan Sircar,” Equator, May 6, 2026.
2. Roshan Kishore, “Terms of Trade: And then there were none,” Hindustan Times, May 4, 2026.
3. Neelanjan Sircar and Bhanu Joshi, “Party has left the building: The rise of parallel politics in Bengal,” Hindustan Times, May 4, 2026.
4. Neelanjan Sircar, “Verdict Bengal: Decisive win in a divided state,” Hindustan Times, May 4, 2026.
5. Bhanu Joshi, “DMK’s defeat proves it: Welfare is the floor, elections have moved to the ceiling,” Indian Express, May 4, 2026.
6. Neelanjan Sircar and Bhanu Joshi, “Beyond numbers, how West Bengal's voter roll revision is redrawing citizenship lines,” Hindustan Times, April 29, 2026.
7. Bhanu Joshi and Neelanjan Sircar, “In Bengal hinterland, poll victory might hinge on ground visibility,” Hindustan Times, April 23, 2026.

India hasn’t updated how political power is distributed across its states in five decades—and the consequences are mounting. At the heart of delimitation lies a fundamental tension: should representation follow population, or preserve a delicate federal balance? Successive governments chose to defer the question, freezing India’s electoral map even as demographic divides deepened. The Modi government’s recent push to overhaul the system brought these tensions into the open but ultimately failed to resolve them.

Recently, Milan sat down with Shruti Rajagopalan of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University for a wide-ranging webinar on delimitation, representation, and the reshaping of Indian democracy. The two discussed how India reached the present impasse—and what happens next. Milan and Shruti unpack the constitutional rules governing delimitation, the scale of malapportionment in the Lok Sabha, and the politics behind the Modi government’s failed 2026 push to overhaul the system. Plus, they discuss scenarios for the future.

On this week’s show, we present the audio and video from this recent conversation as a joint collaboration between Grand Tamasha and Shruti’s Ideas of India podcast.

Episode notes:

1. Shruti Rajagopalan, “India’s delimitation battles are costing its poorest voters,” Times of India, April 25, 2026.
2. Shruti Rajagopalan, “Delimitation: At heart of row, value of a vote, fiscal imbalance,” Indian Express, April 23, 2026.
3. M.R. Madhavan, “Implications of increasing the size of the Lok Sabha,” Hindu, April 16, 2024.
4. Shruti Rajagopalan, “Demography, Delimitation, and Democracy,” Get Down and Shruti (Substack), July 3, 2023.
5. Pranay Kotasthane, “India Policy Watch: Delimitation as an Opportunity for a Grand Bargain,” Anticipating the Unintended (Substack), June 18, 2023.
6. Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson, “India’s Emerging Crisis of Representation,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 14, 2019.

For more than three decades, India’s growth story has rested on the promise of a large and youthful workforce—but whether that promise is being realized remains an open question.

A new report published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University—State of Working India 2026—takes a comprehensive look at how young Indians move from education into the labor market—and asks whether India is successfully converting its demographic dividend into an economic one.

The report documents a striking paradox: even as educational attainment has expanded dramatically, the transition to stable, gainful employment remains uncertain—with high graduate unemployment, limited job creation outside agriculture, and persistent gaps between aspirations and opportunities.

To discuss the report, this week on the show Milan speaks with the report’s lead author Rosa Abraham, who heads theCentre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University. Her research focuses on informal work and women’s employment, with a particular interest in issues at the intersection of labor statistics and women’s work. Prior to joining the university, she worked as a researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment and as a lecturer at the Madras School of Economics.

Milan and Rosa discuss the state of India’s mythical “demographic dividend,” the quality and quantity of higher education, and India’s stalled structural transformation. Plus, the two discuss the high unemployment rate for college graduates, trends in internal migration, and the loosening of caste-based occupational segregation.

Episode notes:

1. “India’s Middle Class Hits a Breaking Point (with Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa),” Grand Tamasha, April 15, 2026.
2. Rishita Khanna, “‘We are not overproducing graduates, we are underproducing good jobs,’” Hindu, March 25, 2026.
3. Soutik Biswas, “India's young are more educated than ever. So why are so many jobless?” BBC, March 19, 2026.
4. Karthik Madhavapeddi, “‘For 1st Time In 4 Decades, Young Men Are Withdrawing From Education,’” IndiaSpend, March 27, 2026.