Welcome to Ideas of India, where we examine academic ideas that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan, and I am a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today my guests are Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah, who are my colleagues at the Mercatus Center and research scholars working with me on the 1991 Project.

We spoke about the kinds of policy change we would like to see in the coalition government led by Modi’s in his third term. We talked about the research Shreyas, Kadambari and I have been working on in the areas of competition policy, regulating India’s digital marketplace, labor law reforms, scaling India’s manufacturing, streamlining GST, and much more.

Recorded July 1st, 2024.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:31) - Past Budgets Announcements and Upcoming Budget

(00:09:38) - Restarting reforms

(00:22:56) - The Tinkering of Government

(00:27:08) - Regulation of Big Tech Companies

(00:51:35) - India’s Labor Regulations

(01:10:33) - Solutions to India’s Regulatory Environment

(01:20:27) - Outro

Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform.

We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report. written by Sajith and his co-authors, Anurag Pagaria, Nachammai Savithiri both at Blume Ventures; the many countries that make up the country of India; bifurcated between India1, 2, and 3; gross fixed capital formation, fintechs, the consumption led boom that India is experiencing, the space industry, and much more.

Recorded June 25th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:09:16) - Private Consumption and Fixed Capital Formation

(00:14:15) - Gross Fixed Capital Formation

(00:22:39) - Regime Uncertainty

(00:26:51) - The Indian Consumer

(00:35:10) - Bottlenecks and Reforms

(00:42:18) - Mutual Funds Savings Model

(00:47:33) - Path from Seed to IPO

(00:55:40) - India's Foreign Investors

(01:00:57) - India's Fintechs

(01:11:09) - Space Tech in India

(01:17:36) - What's on Pai's Bookshelf?

(01:23:39) - Outro

Today my guest is Anne O Krueger. She is a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She served World Bank’s Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy managing director at the IMF from 2001 to 2006. We talked about her famous 1974 paper “The Political Economy of a Rent Seeking Society” on its 50th anniversary, her experience understanding the license permit raj system in India, the 1991 trade liberalization, the Washington consensus, decline of the WTO, the new protectionism in the US, reforming Argentina and much more.

Recorded May 17th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:24) - Rent-Seeking in Turkey and India

(00:10:49) - Professional Influences

(00:15:35) - South Korean Miracle

(00:18:53) - Korea vs. India

(00:26:19) - Import Substitution and Rent

(00:29:15) - Turning Around the World Bank

(00:38:59) - The Krueger Consensus

(00:42:18) - Africa

(00:45:39) - India's 1991 Reforms

(00:50:52) - World Trade Organization

(00:53:53) - United States and Free Trade

(01:02:14) - License Permit Raj in the US

(01:04:36) - International Monetary Fund

(01:06:47) - Hope for Milei and Argentina

(01:11:30) - Looking Back on Success

(01:13:31) - Outro