Chetana Sabnis on The Intimacy Contract and the Indian State
Our third scholar in the series is Chetana Sabnis, who is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on how states regulate intimate relationships and construct hierarchies of familial belonging. We spoke about her job market paper titled, The Intimacy Contract in Action: How Indian Courts Determine which Extramarital Relationships Deserve Recognition. We talked about extramarital affairs, polygamous relationships, Uniform Civil Code, social versus legal acceptance, and much more. Recorded September 5th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. 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 (00:01:23) - How Courts Recognize “Family” (00:03:12) - Why This Paper? Rethinking “Family” (00:05:28) - India’s Legal Patchwork: Customs vs. Code (00:11:07) - Judicial Heuristics: Rituals, Cohabitation, Children (00:14:44) - Endogamy vs. Interfaith: Law, Bias, and Recognition (00:22:22) - How the State Views Children (00:25:27) - Welfare Logic & Gendered Maintenance (00:29:29) - UCC and the “Intimacy Contract” (00:35:48) - The Role of the State (00:42:30) - Contract vs. Sacrament (00:49:00) - Outro
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Sunny Rai on Using Large Language Models to Understand the Depiction of Shame and Pride in Bollywood versus Hollywood
Our second scholar in the series is Sunny Rai, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi. Her research focuses on misinformation, mental health and cross-cultural variations in human language. We spoke about her co-authored job market paper titled, Social Norms in Cinema: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Shame, Pride and Prejudice. We talked about depictions of shame and pride and heroism in Indian versus American films, the challenges with textual analysis of a visual medium, and much more. Recorded September 5th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. 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 (00:03:44) - Shame and Pride in Film (00:12:31) - Teaching Machines Norms (00:16:52) - Textual Analysis in a Visual Medium (00:18:26) - The Trouble with Subtitles and Scripts (00:27:41) - Self-Shaming vs. Other-Shaming (00:30:33) - LLM Alignment Needs a Culture Check (00:36:20) - Looking Ahead: A Final Reflection (00:37:01) - Outro
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Kartik Srivastava on Referral-Based Hiring, Caste Networks, and Breaking Barriers in India's Labor Markets
Our first scholar in the series is Kartik Srivastava, who is a PhD candidate at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Before this, he received his bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he majored in Economics and Engineering Sciences. His research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and political economy. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Familiar strangers: Evidence from referral-based hiring experiments in India. We talked his large-scale experiment at a footwear manufacturing firm in Delhi, on how referral-based hiring improve firm productivity, cohesion, and inclusion, differences in hiring between higher caste versus lower caste networks, feudalism and labor opportunities, and much more. Recorded August 28th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Kartik on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.
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Narayani Basu on K. M. Panikkar: India’s Impossible Man
Today my guest is Narayani Basu, who is a historian and the author of the latest book, A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K. M. Panikkar. Her last book was a biography of V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India. We talked about KM Panikkar, his comparison with VP Menon, the Indian nationalist movement in the interwar years, the origins of India’s diplomatic relationship with China, Pannikar’s Zionism and much more. Recorded August 1st, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Narayani on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:07) - The Elusive K. M. Panikkar (00:07:52) - Panikkar’s and the Indian National Movement (00:19:32) - Panikkar’s Intellectual Arc (00:26:45) - Unifying an Indian Identity (00:35:38) - India’s Princely States (00:40:19) - Panikkar and China (00:54:43) - Panikkar and the 1950s (00:59:43) - Panikkar’s Thought vs. His Government Work (01:08:35) - Panikkar’s Blind Spots (01:15:48) - Panikkar and Today’s India (01:18:27) - Outro
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1:20:03
Yamini Aiyar Schools Us on Education Policy in India
Today my guest is Yamini Aiyar, who is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the author of the recent book Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi’s Schools. Her main research interests are contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, and federalism. We talked about the challenges of education policy and welfare in India, the lack of agency experienced by school administrators and teachers, the role of local governments in education, Delhi’s experiment with education reforms, portable benefits and school vouchers, and much more. Recorded July 16th, 2025. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Yamini on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:27) - Delhi School Experiment (00:12:45) - Education in a Welfare State (00:28:34) - Incompetent Petty Tyrants (00:38:17) - Federalism and Education (00:50:18) - How to Build Empowerment (01:05:39) - Is the Delhi Experiment Generalizable? (01:18:52) - Portability and Education (01:28:15) - Outro
Through conversations with top thinkers in the social sciences and beyond, economist Shruti Rajagopalan explores the ideas that will propel India forward.
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