Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program and the host of the Grand Tamasha podcast at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behavior. He also conducts research on the Indian diaspora.
He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press and HarperCollins India, 2017), which was awarded the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay New India Foundation book prize for the best non-fiction book on contemporary India published in 2017. He is also co-editor (with Devesh Kapur) of Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India (Oxford University Press, 2018) and (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur) of Rethinking Public Institutions in India (Oxford University Press, 2017). His work has been published in scholarly journals such as American Journal of Political Science, Asian Survey, Governance, India Review, Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Studies in Indian Politics. He is a regular contributor to several Indian publications.
Previously, he worked at the Center for Global Development, where he served as a postdoctoral research fellow, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (currently on leave) and has previously taught at Columbia and George Washington Universities. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.
Milan welcomes scholar Hilal Ahmed joins the show to discuss his new book, "A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India," a nuanced perspective on India's Muslim community using political science, theory, and history.
Support for President-elect Donald Trump is strong in India. In the hometown of Kamala Harris’ mother, Indian men say they believe Trump will bring peace.
Paul McGarr joins Milan Vaishnav to discuss the history of foreign intelligence operations in India and their domestic implications, drawing on McGarr's new book, Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India’s Secret Cold War.
Looking at the case against multi-millionaire Gautam Adani who along with several other executives, faces allegations that he attempted to bribe Indian officials to secure solar power contracts.
Author Avinash Paliwal joins Milan Vaishnav to discuss his new book, "India's Near East: A New History," a unique history of New Delhi's relations with its neighbors Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan join Milan Vaishnav to unpack the results of the U.S. election and what a second Trump presidency will mean for U.S.-India relations.
America’s presidential elections are over, but the existential challenges for its democracy and governance have just begun.
As the 2024 election cycle closes out, Milan Vaishnav welcomes Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur to explore how Indian Americans might vote, using findings from the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey.
A discussion about the political inclinations of Indian Americans in the leadup to the 2024 election
A conversation about how Indian Americans will be voting in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.