Growth Is Good

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia sits down with Rick Rossow, India Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), for a wide-ranging conversation on how Americans actually think about India, why reform and market access have to move together, and what it would take for India to become a $20 trillion economy.Rossow traces his own path — from an entrepreneurial family in Michigan, to a comparative-advantage lecture in college, to landing in Washington D.C. in 1998 just as India’s reform story was entering its next chapter — and uses that vantage point to lay out a framework: Americans carry one of three pictures of India in their heads, the $400 billion India of a generation ago, the $4 trillion India of today, or the $20 trillion India he believes is coming by mid-century. Most, he argues, are still stuck on the first one.The conversation moves through why India’s IT boom succeeded almost by accident — a telecom reform, a surplus of IIT graduates, and an unplanned assist from Y2K — why manufacturing never got the same lift, and the political economy that leaves Indian cities "the fuel tank, but not the engine".

Zooming out, Rossow and Ahluwalia talk candidly about US trade policy, too: where the underlying complaints have real merit, where the execution has gone wrong, and why India’s best response either way is to keep getting more competitive on its own terms.Growth is Good is a podcast by the Foundation for Economic Development exploring the ideas, people, and policies behind India’s growth story.

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia sits down with Pravin Krishna, economist and Chung Ju Yung Distinguished Professor of International Economics and Business at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, for a wide-ranging conversation on trade, why no country should try to make everything, and why market access alone was never going to be enough. Krishna traces his own path from a childhood in License Raj-era Bombay — waiting a decade for a phone line, years for a scooter — to studying at Columbia in the 1990s, and uses that lens to unpack one of the more surprising facts in India's growth story: in 1991, India and China had virtually identical per capita income, and similarly open access to American and European markets. Three decades on, the two economies aren't in the same league. The conversation moves through what the 1991 reforms actually fixed, why Indian manufacturing never scaled the way policymakers hoped, and, zooming out, how trade politics in the US shows that this tension between open markets and domestic politics isn't unique to India.Growth is Good is a podcast by the Foundation for Economic Development exploring the ideas, people, and policies behind India's growth story.

Why do some industrial policies produce companies like TSMC, while others end up wasting public money? And why do successful Indian firms often fail to grow as large as they should?

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia speaks with Professor Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business about industrial policy, firm growth and some of the constraints holding back the Indian economy.

Drawing on his own experience working at Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute, Professor Hsieh explains how Taiwan went about building a semiconductor industry and eventually creating TSMC. For him, the important lesson is not simply that the government supported a strategic industry. It is that projects faced a clear test: could they become commercially viable businesses with customers willing to pay for what they produced?

They also discuss what happened after the 1991 reforms. As other constraints on Indian firms were removed, labour regulation became increasingly binding for larger firms. Contract labour eventually emerged as a way around this constraint, allowing firms to hire more workers but at an additional cost. Professor Hsieh describes this as a striking example of how businesses adapt to regulation even when the underlying friction remains.

Watch the full episode for a conversation on TSMC, industrial policy, labour regulation, firm growth, productivity and what India needs to do to become a much richer country.

Chapters
00:00 - Why industrial policy needs accountability
01:03 - Professor Hsieh’s personal connection to economic growth
05:35 - How Taiwan built its semiconductor industry and created TSMC
13:22 - The test every industrial policy should have: how do we know if it failed?
25:43 - Industrial policy cannot substitute for a well-functioning economy
27:45 - How economists diagnose what is going wrong in an economy
33:50 - Why labour and capital are misallocated across Indian firms
38:00 - How labour regulation became more binding after the 1991 reforms
43:03 - Contract labour as a costly workaround for regulation
44:30 - Why specific policies matter more than vague discussions about “institutions”
48:44 - What India should prioritise for the next 20–30 years

About Professor Chang-Tai Hsieh
Chang-Tai Hsieh is the Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and PCL Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research focuses on economic growth and development, including firm growth, productivity and the allocation of resources across firms.

Professor Hsieh’s profile:
University of Chicago Booth profile

Selected research relevant to this episode:

• Contract Labor and Establishment Growth in India

• The Life Cycle of Plants in India and Mexico

• Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India

Growth is Good is a podcast by the Foundation for Economic Development exploring the ideas, people and policies behind India’s growth story.

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#GrowthIsGood #ChangTaiHsieh #EconomicGrowth #IndustrialPolicy #TSMC #IndianEconomy #Productivity #EconomicReforms

In this episode of Growth is Good, Piyush Doshi sits down with Shashank Mani, Member of Parliament from Deoria and founder of Jagriti Yatra, to explore how economic growth can be built from India’s districts.They discuss why India’s next growth engines may lie beyond its largest cities, how local entrepreneurship can create jobs where people live, and what it would take to bring investment and labour-intensive manufacturing to districts such as Deoria.Drawing on his experience with Jagriti Yatra, Jagriti Udyam Kendra and Amrit Prayas, Shashank Mani explains his idea of “Middle of Diamond India”: an emerging middle of entrepreneurs and citizens who have enormous economic potential but limited institutional support. He shares examples of rural call centres, women-led enterprises and local businesses that are creating jobs in eastern Uttar Pradesh.The conversation also examines why district-level development requires government, society and the private sector to work together. Mani argues that ease of doing business must begin with a shift from control to trust, and explains how colonial-era administrative processes, excessive documentation and the absence of entrepreneurship-support institutions continue to constrain enterprise.Finally, they discuss Viksit Bharat, decentralisation, humanist economics and the “Banyan Revolution”: a movement to unlock human potential and build an entrepreneurial ecosystem across India’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 districts.Watch the full episode to understand how India’s districts can become engines of enterprise, employment and national growth.00:00 Introduction02:00 Why economic growth is personal for Shashank Mani03:38 Amrit Prayas: bringing growth into politics07:09 Jagriti Yatra and “Middle of Diamond India”11:00 Creating local jobs through entrepreneurship16:00 Bringing manufacturing to smaller districts18:54 Decentralisation and district-level development21:45 What should Viksit Bharat look like?26:29 Strengthening India’s emerging middle31:07 Deregulation, trust and ease of doing business37:15 Humanist economics and the Banyan Revolution#GrowthIsGood #EconomicGrowth #Entrepreneurship #Deregulation #ViksitBharat #India

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul Ahluwalia sits down with Dr Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, CEO of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, to unpack the relationship between science, technology, innovation and economic growth.They discuss why technology by itself does not create growth, how deep science becomes deep tech, and why research only matters for the economy when it turns into products, diffuses through society and raises productivity.The conversation also looks at India’s R&D challenge: why Indian industry has historically underinvested in research, why the industry-academia gap remains so wide, and what it will take for India to become a research and development powerhouse for the world.Dr Kalyanaraman explains how ANRF is trying to change India’s research ecosystem, including through greater ambition in academia, stronger industry partnerships, faster funding, and the ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund.Watch the full episode to understand how India can move from research to deep tech, from deep tech to products, and from products to growth.00:00 Introduction04:17 How science and technology drive economic growth09:03 Why research does not automatically become innovation12:38 India’s R&D challenge16:27 Building industry-academia collaboration24:30 ANRF, deep tech and solving India’s problems for the world40:15 How should developing countries approach R&D?#GrowthIsGood #EconomicGrowth #Research #Innovation #DeepTech #India