Ideas of India

By: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
  • Summary

  • 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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Episodes
  • Deepti Sharma on Survey Methods and the Hidden Biases in Economic Data
    Nov 21 2024

    Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app.

    I spoke with Deepti Sharma, who's an Assistant Professor at Ahmedabad University. She completed her PhD in public policy from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Management of Health Services at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Her current research focus is empirical methods, applied microeconomics, public health and gender studies. We discussed her job market paper, Does it matter who you ask for Time Use Data? We talked about the systematic bias in proxy reporting when compared to self-reporting in time use surveys, some techniques used to fix those biases, the gendered nature of these biases, policy implications of using these time use surveys and much more.

    Recorded September 12th, 2024.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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    Timestamps

    (00:00:00) - Intro

    (00:01:12) - Grand Tamasha

    (00:02:42) - Proxy-Reporting Versus Self-Reporting in Time-Use Surveys

    (00:07:16) - Gender Bias and Systematic Bias in Proxy-Reported Data

    (00:10:27) - How Cultural Norms and Gender Perceptions Shape Reporting

    (00:16:59) - Challenges in Collecting Accurate Time-Use Data

    (00:19:34) - Methodological Approaches to Working with Proxy-Reported Data

    (00:24:43) - Suggested Approaches to Conducting Time-Use Surveys

    (00:31:21) - Impact of Climate Change on Gendered Agricultural Work

    (00:33:17) - Hysterectomy Rates and Health Insurance Policies in India

    (00:36:03) - Outro

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    37 mins
  • Kushagr Bakshi on Constitutional Interpretation and the Transformation of Federalism
    Nov 14 2024

    Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app.

    I spoke with Kushagr Bakshi is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and an SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, where he also received his LLM. He received his first law degree from NUJS in West Bengal. We discussed a chapter of his dissertation called “The Country Without a Post Office: Jammu and Kashmir and the Imaginations of Freedom Within a Federation. We talked about assymetrical federalism versus hetererarchy, constitutional values and imagination for federalism in India, and much more.

    Recorded October 24th, 2024.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

    Connect with Ideas of India

    Follow us on X

    Follow Shruti on X

    Follow Kushagr on X

    Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

    Timestamps

    (00:00:00) - Intro

    (00:01:06) - Grand Tamasha

    (00:04:12) - Asymmetric Versus Heterarchical Federalism

    (00:19:37) - Isn’t this Asymmetric Federalism?

    (00:31:39) - Democracy in Local Governments

    (00:43:27) - Rethinking the Rajya Sabha

    (00:53:30) - Outro

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    54 mins
  • Aarushi Kalra on Digital Polarization and Toxicity, Understanding User Behavior, Social Media Algorithms, and Platform Incentives
    Nov 7 2024

    Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app.

    I spoke with Aarushi Kalra Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Brown University. We discussed her job market paper, “Hate in the Time of Algorithms: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment on Online Behavior.” We talked about the demand and supply of toxicity against minorities on social media platforms, user behavior, platform behavior, real world segregation due to ethnic violence, and much more.

    Recorded October 24th, 2024.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

    Connect with Ideas of India

    Follow us on X

    Follow Shruti on X

    Follow Aarushi on X

    Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

    Timestamps

    (00:00:00) - Intro

    (00:00:58) - Grand Tamasha

    (00:02:31) - Exploring How Social Media Users Engage with Toxic Content

    (00:06:06) - Understanding the Drivers of Toxic Speech on the Internet

    (00:08:50) - Definitions of Toxic Content

    (00:11:05) - Scale of Data and Choice of Language

    (00:12:23) - Impact of Recommendation Algorithms on User Engagement

    (00:16:27) - Key Findings on Toxic Content Exposure and Sharing

    (00:22:08) - Interpreting How Personalization Shapes Engagement in Toxic Social Media Content

    (00:25:31) - How Recognizing the Agency and Sophistication of Users Shapes Interpretive Models

    (00:31:45) - The Challenges of Platform Regulation

    (00:34:04) - The Challenges of Creating Interventions to Address Toxic Content

    (00:35:46) - Social Media as Normalizing Toxic Speech

    (00:38:09) - The Route of the Ram Rath Yatra As Lens on Segregation

    (00:48:58) - Outro

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    50 mins

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