Today my guest is Rakesh Mohan. He is the President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. He has previously served as Executive Director on the Board of the International Monetary Fund and as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

We talked about his work with the Government of India since the 1980s, especially dismantling the infamous License Permit Raj during the 1991 reforms, his work on urbanization and infrastructure, the kinds of structural reforms India still needs to undertake, and much more.

Recorded April 25th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Connect with Ideas of India

Follow us on X

Follow Shruti on X

Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:13) - Labyrinth of Control

(00:23:55) - Dismantling the Licensing System

(00:48:27) - Regrets

(01:07:31) - The Infrastructure Report

(01:28:05) - Structural Transformation

(01:46:23) - Outro

Today my guest is environmental scholar, historian and biographer Ramachandra Guha. He is the author of a number of books, including a two-volume biography of Gandhi and the award-winning book “India After Gandhi.”

Recorded May 7th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Connect with Ideas of India

Follow us on X

Follow Shruti on X

Follow Ram on X

Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:08 - Speaking with Nature

00:08:42 - Unquiet Woods

00:38:29 - Science and Progress of Environmentalism

00:47:33 - Radhakamal Mukerjee

00:55:06 - K. M. Munshi

01:03:38 - Technological Progress and Tradeoffs

01:11:22 - Jayaprakash Narayan

01:19:39 - Outro

Today’s episode is the second part of my conversation with Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need. He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until he retirement in 2022. His most recent initiative is We Are One Humanity (WAOH), a writers collective responding to the worldwide thrusts against democracy and equality.

We spoke about his reflections on communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, revenge and reconciliation in South Asia, Sikhs and Buddhists, differences between north and south India, constitutional values, and much more.

Recorded April 17th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Connect with Ideas of India

Follow us on X

Follow Shruti on X

Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.