Ideas of India

Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme. 
Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi, a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co-author of - Missing in Action: Why Should You Care About Public Policy, When the Chips are Down, and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens.  
We spoke about rare earths and critical minerals, China's dominance, the gap between India's ambitions and opportunities, the potential for recycling, and much and more.
Recorded February 2nd, 2026.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - 1991 Fellowship
(00:01:11) - Intro
(00:02:59) - Rare Earths versus Critical Minerals
(00:10:15) - Why Are Rare Earths and Critical Minerals So Important Now?
(00:29:29) - Geopolitical Uncertainty
(00:33:14) - China's Process Advantage
(00:44:10) - Industrial Policy
(00:48:10) - India's Critical Elements Mission
(00:53:00) - Auctions
(00:56:53) - India's Position in the Value Chain
(01:04:36) - Recycling
(01:34:04) - Law of One Price
(01:41:28) - Pakistan and Rare Earth Reserves
(01:46:26) - Outro

Today my guest is Nachiket Mor, a health economist whose work focuses on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a visiting scientist at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore, and a commissioner and author on the Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India's Health System, which published its final report in The Lancet in January 2026.
We talked about the different layers of the Indian healthcare system, the design and policy failures in both public and private sector healthcare, the role of community workers, the health insurance and regulation market, and much more. 
Recorded January 29th, 2026.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - 1991 Fellowship
(00:01:11) - Intro
(00:02:32) - Policy Design Failure in India's Healthcare System
(00:07:43) - Layers of Indian Healthcare
(00:14:04) - ASHA Workers
(00:23:59) - State Capacity
(00:26:47) - The Exit to the Private Sector
(00:34:00) - Getting Ambitious with ASHA Workers
(00:37:54) - Stacking Healthcare
(00:51:53) - India's Private Sector Healthcare
(01:05:14) - Government Insurance Instruments
(01:13:10) - Insurance Regulation in India
(01:41:09) - Outro

Today my guest is Akshay Jaitly, the author of the recent book, Trilegal: The Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm. He is one of the founders of Trilegal and specializes in advising on energy and infrastructure projects. His research interests include power sector reform, the energy transition and public-private contracting.
We talked about how Trilegal grew in the context of India's market liberalization and sectoral reforms, different partnership structures, delegated legislation, regulatory capture, the alchemy between the founding partners, and much more.
Recorded January 6th, 2026.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - 1991 Fellowship
(00:01:11) - Intro
(00:02:20) - In the Shadow of Liberalization
(00:07:28) - Specialization
(00:20:55) - Delegated Legislation
(00:28:35) - Managing Risk
(00:33:30) - Dispute Resolution
(00:38:44) - Trilegal's Partnership Structure
(00:51:57) - Scaling
(00:59:42) - Design or Alchemy?
(01:05:08) - Regulatory Capture
(01:11:27) - Foreign Law Firms
(01:19:08) - Outro

Today my guest is Renuka Sane who is the managing director of Managing Director of Trustbridge. An institution that seeks to improve India's business environment by improving the rule of law. Renuka was a member of many expert committees including: the Task Force of Experts set up by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation; the research team of the Bankruptcy Legislative Reforms Commission; the Pension Advisory Committee of the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority; and the Working Group on personal insolvency at the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. She received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New South Wales. 
We talked about the old, new, and unified pension scheme and related reforms over the last few decades in India, India's broader financial regulation framework, separation of powers in regulatory authorities, the way regulatory orders are written, and much more. 
Recorded December 17th, 2025.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - The 1991 Fellowship
(00:01:09) - Intro
(00:02:49) - India's Pension System
(00:35:42) - Private Sector Pension Schemes
(01:06:28) - Regulatory Orders
(01:24:03) - Improving Transparency at the Reserve Bank of India
(01:34:57) - Outro

Today my guest is Snigdha Poonam who is a journalist and writer. She is the author of the new book Scamlands and also the author of the 2018 award winning book Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World.
We talked about the scam industrial complex in different states like Jharkhand,  Assam and Tamil Nadu in India, the interaction between the scam economy and the formal economy, the transnational scams in China and Cambodia and how they are connected to India, the aspirations and traumas of the scam work force and much more. 
Recorded November 17th, 2025.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Learn more about The 1991 Fellowship.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:13) - The Scam-Industrial Complex
(00:03:48) - On Jamtara and the Economics of Joining a Scam
(00:09:12) - The Moral Logic of Scamming
(00:13:31) - How the State Enables the Scam Economy
(00:15:54) - Inside Assam's Paperwork and Insurance Scams
(00:23:04) - The Politics of Legibility in Assam
(00:32:47) - Women in the Scam Economy
(00:38:32) - How Scammers Get Trapped Inside the System
(00:46:18) - From Local Scams to Transnational Cybercrime
(00:52:18) - Scam Slavery in Southeast Asia
(01:02:15) - Reporting on the Shadow Economy
(01:10:49) - Starting the Story
(01:16:54) - From Aspiration to Desperation
(01:21:56) - Closing Reflections
(01:27:08) - Outro