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.

1. VIDEO: “Indira Gandhi Overdid the ‘Foreign Hand’ but Some of Her Fears About the CIA were real ,” The Wire, November 21, 2024.
2. “Inside the Secret World of South Asia's Spies (with Adrian Levy),” Grand Tamasha, October 27, 2021.

Episode notes:

1. “What the Taliban Takeover Means for India (with Avinash Paliwal),” Grand Tamasha, September 15, 2021.

2. “Binalakshmi Nepram on the Realities of India’s Oft-Forgotten Northeast,” Grand Tamasha, June 3, 2020.

3. Avinash Paliwal, “Bangladesh on razor’s edge: Why India must wake up to the looming economic crisis and political instability to its east,” Indian Express, December 13, 2022.

1. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “Indian Americans at the Ballot Box: Results From the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 28, 2024.
2. VIDEO: “Deciphering the Indian American Vote,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 31, 2024.
3. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “How Will Indian Americans Vote? Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 14, 2020.
4. Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
5. Sara Sadhwani, “Asian American Mobilization: The Effect of Candidates and Districts on Asian American Voting Behavior,”Political Behavior 44 (2022):105–131.
6. Devesh Kapur, Nirvikar Singh, and Sanjoy Chakravorty, The Other One Percent: Indians in America(New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
7. “Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur Decode the 2020 Indian American Vote,” Grand Tamasha, October 14, 2020.

1. Gil Guerra and Sneha Puri, “Indian migrants at the U.S. border: What the data reveals,” Niskanen Center, September 16, 2024.
2. Gil Guerra, “Four countries that will shape migration in 2024 – and beyond,” Niskanen Center, April 1, 2024.
3. Sergio Martinez-Beltran, “Indian migrants drive surge in northern U.S. border crossings,” NPR, September 10, 2024.
4. Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh, The Other One Percent: Indians in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
5. Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, “Industrial Policy Needs an Immigration Policy,” Foreign Affairs, August 22, 2024.
6. Terry Milewski, Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project (New York: Harper Collins, 2021).
7. Aparna Pande, From Chanakya to Modi: Evolution of India's Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2017).
8. “Dr. S. Jaishankar on the Future of U.S.-India Relations,” Grand Tamasha, October 2, 2024.
9. “The India-Canada Conundrum (with Sanjay Ruparelia),” Grand Tamasha, November 8, 2023.