Grand Tamasha is Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced with the Hindustan Times, a leading Indian media house. For five years (and counting), Milan has interviewed authors, journalists, policymakers, and practitioners working on contemporary India to give listeners across the globe a glimpse into life in the world’s most populous country.

For the past two years, in anticipation of the show’s holiday hiatus, we’ve published an annual list of our favorite books featured on the podcast over the previous twelve months.

In keeping with this tradition, here—in no particular order—are Grand Tamasha’s top books of 2024.

Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
By Janaki Bakhle. Published by Princeton University Press.

Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance
By Karthik Muralidharan. Published by Penguin Viking India.

The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy (published in the United States and the UK as The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy)
By Rahul Bhatia. Published by Context (South Asia); Little, Brown (UK); and PublicAffairs (United States).

In this special bonus episode, Milan talks about why he loved each of these books and includes short clips from his conversations with Janaki, Karthik, and Rahul.

This is the final episode of our twelfth season. Thanks to our listeners to being such loyal followers of the show. We’re excited to kick off our thirteenth season in mid-January after taking a short holiday break.

1. “The Lessons of Gujarat Under Modi (with Christophe Jaffrelot),” Grand Tamasha, May 29, 2024.
2. Pradeep Chhibber and Adnan Naseemullah, “This is how Modi is different from other Right-wing populists like Trump, Erdogan & Duterte,” ThePrint, August 21, 2019.

1. “Paul Staniland on the Surprising Decline in Political Violence in South Asia,” Grand Tamasha, October 7, 2020.
2. Aditi Malik, “Playing with Fire: Parties and Political Violence in Kenya and India,” Fifteen Eighty Four (CUP) Blog, August 14, 2024.
3. Zack Beauchamp, “Narendra Modi is Celebrating his Scary Vision for India’s Future,” Vox, January 27, 2024.
4. Aditi Malik. “Hindu-Muslim Violence in Unexpected Places: Theory and Evidence from Rural India,” Politics, Groups, & Identities, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2021): 40-58.