TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Speaker 1 (00:00.11)
This is Milan Vaishnav. I am the director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And this is Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. My name is Abhay Dandekar and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community. It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions, where each person can proudly say, trust me, I know what I'm doing.

Hi everyone, on this episode of Trust Me I Know What I'm Doing, we share a conversation with the director and senior fellow of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Milan Vashinov. Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:44.494)
you

Okay, so hopefully it's quite obvious, but I'm deeply honored that you're actively listening and so grateful for you right now. You made a choice and an effort to engage here with Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing and make it a part of your day and even a small part of your life. And guess what? Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing is free from any tariffs and 100 % organic. I appreciate everyone listening on all the podcast platforms, rating and writing reviews, following on those good old social media places, and sharing this with all your friends and family.

This episode, as always, is also available on YouTube, so please check out the full video there too. Now you've really got something to get off your chest, celebrate, or are just feeling friendly, send a message over to info at abhidharnadkar.com as I'd love to hear from you. Now speaking of tariffs, and in a 2025 where stability is evasive and disruptive change is potentially waiting around the corner, the world of geopolitics is a fascinating place right now, particularly as it relates to India and the US.

The political ebbs and flows of the diaspora at large is an evolving one that has important symbiosis and day-to-day relevance, of course, back in India. So it was helpful to chat and maybe process a bit of the moment we find ourselves in with Milan Vaishnav, the director and senior fellow of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity,

distributive politics, and electoral behavior. He also conducts research on the Indian diaspora and has cultivated extensive insights, especially on voting habits and political attitudes. Millen is widely published in both academic and popular media, and he's frequently sought for commentary on the interplay between India and the United States, diaspora voting behavior, South Asian geopolitics, and issues of trust in institutions and reform. His combination of rigorous scholarship and public engagement

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makes him a leading voice at the crossroads of policy, community, and cross-cultural understanding, and really the perfect person to distill academic roundtable conversation for a kitchen table novice like me. Now mind you, as I shared on the video version, that between the time we recorded this on Friday, August 7th, and you listening at this very moment, conditions may have shifted or changed. So as a start to the questions that I had for Millen, I asked him to actually share the questions that he was asking as an Indian American.

that reflect the current state that we find ourselves in, but also with the lens on elections coming up in the next two to four years. First of all, thanks for having me on. It's great to be with you. you know, the diaspora is something that feels very personal as a member of the diaspora, but it's also something that in my day job at the Carnegie Endowment, I've spent a lot of time the last four or five years trying to research, in part because I had questions about the diaspora and their behavior that my colleagues and I wanted to explore.

And so I think the questions that exist today are, there are a couple that are top of mind. With regard to our own politics in the United States, there's been a pretty interesting shift over the past four years in terms of the political allegiance of the diaspora. The Indian American diaspora, contrary to a lot of what you might hear, has been one of the most loyal

constituent groups in the Democratic Party going back at least to the mid 2000s, which is when we started to get really fine grain data on this. Up and down the ballot vote very strongly, overwhelmingly, I would say for the Democratic Party. In 2020, according to data that we collected, Indian Americans broke for Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a ratio of about 70-20. So 70 % for Joe Biden, 20 % for Donald Trump.

10 % either for a third party or didn't vote for some one reason or another. forward to 2024 and that breakdown looks somewhat different. Indian Americans still voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, but that 70-20 breakdown looks something closer to 60-30 now. So that net 50 point differential between the Democrats and Republicans has shrunk to a net 30 point. So there's been essentially a 10 percentage point shift.

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away from the Democrats towards the Republicans. And that's something that was really striking in the data because we've just not seen that level of shift in recent memory. there are a bunch of questions that we have about, you know, why did we see this shift? And I think what we're asking now, where we have six, seven months of this administration under our belt, is that shift sustainable? And are we going to see that say in next year's congressional midterms and in the presidential election after that? So I think

That's kind of one question. Another question is how Indian Americans relate to India. know, diasporas around the world navigate simultaneously to different cultural and often political context, right? They are still linked to their home country, but they also have, you know, where they live, which is their host country. So in this case, the United States. One of the things that we found is that

Indian Americans, even those who are in the second, third generation, so that means born in the United States or born to parents who were also born in the United States, still have a strong sense of Indian identity. And many of them have views on the domestic transformations underway in India. And what's interesting is that even though, as I just mentioned, Indian Americans overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party, which is the left of center party in the United States,

They have a very favorable opinion of Prime Minister Modi and his right to center BJP, which is the ruling party in India. And so that presents us a bit of a paradox, right? And a whole kind of cluster of people that have come to be known as Modi Democrats, People who support Prime Minister Modi in India, but vote consistently, know, center, center left in the United States. So what accounts for that, you know, what some people would call cognitive dissonance?

the ability to kind of have two different sets of political views, seemingly two different sets of political views in the same person. So I would just list those two as two things that are kind of taking up a lot of our brain time right now. Do you think that particularly because there are shifts in the last, you know, say four or five years, where there has been that shift away, particularly from the Democratic Party, not sizeably, but enough to

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be significant to ask that question. And perhaps even the Modi block and his victory in 2024 was not necessarily as sizable as it was in the past. Do you think that there is any sort of correlation with the movements of both of those at all? I don't think so. I think that we see something very distinctive in the data when you try to unpack Indian American political behavior. So

That 10 percentage point swing I mentioned of Indian Americans away from Democrats towards Republicans, when you look into that, almost the entirety of that shift can be explained by the behavior of Indian American men under the age of 40. In other words, women have not changed their political behavior in the United States between 2020 and 2024. Older Indian American men above 40 still basically vote

for the Democratic Party to the same extent they did. It is really a shift occurring amongst younger Indian American men, particularly Indian American men born in the United States. And what's interesting about that- the so-called Brown bro culture? Well, it's a phenomenon that transcends race, right? Because you see this among African American young men, you see this among Latino young men as well.

So there seems to be something that is driving this gender gap in our politics that is new and different from what we've seen before. Now, what I struggle with, and to be very transparent with you, our data isn't sufficiently granular enough to get into this. It's something that we want to study going forward is, what explains that? And I think there are three plausible hypotheses. I can't tell you that one is stronger than the other, but they could...

they could be working in conjunction, right? So one is there is this sense, and I think we've all been reading the same sets of stories in places like the New York Times about, you know, what's going on with young men? You know, why do they seem to be particularly anxious, worried about social mobility, worried about whether or not the American dream is out of reach for them? And is that something that is also part and parcel now of the Indian American male experience? think that's number one. Number two is, you know, there is a whole set of

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media podcasts, YouTube influencers, so on, who are targeting men and men seem to be getting a lot of information from a particular kind of information ecosystem, right? So this is kind of like the Joe Rogan effect. Right. Right. To what extent is that also playing a role in basically shaping how Indian Americans sort of view politics, Indian American men? And the third could be just, you know, a standard misogyny story, right? Which is a lot of men, the younger men may just may not be very comfortable with having a female president.

Again, it could be all three of these things. could be only one of them. It's hard to say, but I think this is a phenomenon that is not specific to the Indian American diaspora. Sure. Sure. It seems like the Indian American diaspora has sort of been following the other lanes that have been breaking in that same way, but you have a couple of movements here, right? mean, like separate out the Modi part for a second, just in the States, you have that resonance within the Indian American community.

which not so much may be breaking for Trump, but again, like you mentioned, like not necessarily voting for an Indian American democratic nominee. Certainly a president since then, who's, you know, whether or not there's this Brown bro phenomenon that transcends young men everywhere, but a president that's certainly shifted outwardly in various ways, either for or against India and those positions and popularity seem to constantly be fluctuating week to week, day to day.

And then again, you know, sort of affirmations of someone like Mamdani where you have, you know, some at least local proxy for, for what the community is feeling like at least. And there you have, you know, a very, very younger crowd that, that may be looking at this differently. Is it more obvious than ever that the questions are even more difficult to try and answer for Indian Americans? Is it a diversity or a mobility or?

You know, is there a segmentation and power that we have to look at a little bit differently, especially in the years to come? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, one of the interesting data points from our survey is, you know, we asked people in 2020, uh, to kind of self identify, put themselves on a scale from extremely liberal to extremely conservative and every point in between. Indian Americans generally settle at a place that's kind of on the center left.

Speaker 1 (12:13.846)
Right? So they identify as liberal, but not extremely liberal, but somewhat liberal, sort of edging towards moderates. That number is actually higher in 2024 than it was in 2020. But yet the vote shifted to Trump. And I think that's partly because Trump is such a unique political figure that he actually is not, in an ideological sense, easy to pin down. Right? But what does he claim to do? He claims to be an outsider.

who wants to change up the system. And so for me, it's actually kind of consistent that there could be a lot of Indian American support for Donald Trump and for Zohan Mubdani in New York, right? Who is clearly from the ideological left, but is also shares that characteristic of being an outsider who came into politics wanting to really change the system. And so I would not be surprised actually if in New York, where by the way,

There was a big shift towards Trump. Yes, it's such an overwhelming democratic place. The vast majority of the city did vote, but almost in every part of the city, all five boroughs, you saw a shift towards the Republican Party. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those voters who voted for Trump are going to vote Momdani in the New York City mayoral election this fall. Is that a kind of shift towards moderates who want disruption in a way that, again, you mentioned that most times

people are gonna identify as moderate left in the South Asian American community and the Indian American community, but specifically to your data, the Indian American community, and yet that craving for disruption. Do people just simply want change? Are they not necessarily anchored to the way they vote, but they're anchored to maybe their beliefs in the center, if that makes sense? Well, I mean, I think I wanna be very careful here in kind of being...

true to what the data show. mean, the data show that across a range of policy areas, Indian Americans hold views that are in line with the views held by members of the Democratic Party, right? So on a whole host of issues, again, contrary to I think what a lot of people have thought and have hypothesized,

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alignment is pretty strong. It's not perfect. It's never perfect for any group, but it's pretty close. But I think the one thing that we are seeing, and again, this is think a broader American story, is there is a lot of concern about the economy. in the 2024 election, there was a question about inflation.

And to what extent price rise and the cost of filling up a gas of tank or your groceries or your school supplies was actually shifting people's vote. And I think that's actually quite a powerful explanation. But I think, you know, what Mamdani has tapped into is something related, but slightly different, which is the affordability crisis. Right. So it's not just about a cyclical up or down in terms of the price of what's on the shelf. It's just that structurally, we have a problem in accessing affordable housing, you know, transportation.

getting a living wage if you're working in a blue collar position and so on and so forth. I think that my guess is that when Trump exits the scene, some of that shift that has gone towards the GOP could shift back. And in fact, I would venture to guess has already shifted back.

Given what we've seen in the first seven or eight months of this administration, and I don't think it's just because he's picked a fight with India I think that that's not gonna help but I think it actually is there lots of issues beyond that so it could be that we're kind of watching a blip or an aberration but again, it's it's it's really an open question, right because Sure, have a better sense I think of maybe where the Republican Party is heading but we really don't have any sense where the Democratic Party is heading right? mean, you're basically seeing now this period

leading up until 2028, where we're to see a massive amount, I think, of internal churn and contestation between the kind of leftist progressive faction, the sort of moderates between people who have had a lot of political experience and people who don't. And, I can't certainly, with my crystal ball figure out who's going to who's going to triumph in that conflict. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:30.39)
You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with Mila Neveshnov. Stay tuned.

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Conversation. It's the antidote to apathy and the catalyst for relationships. I'm Abhay Dhandekar and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Hi, I'm Vivek Murthy. I'm the 21st Surgeon General of the United States. And you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

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I am Congressman Raja Krishnaoorthi.

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Hi, I'm Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. Hi, I'm Suhas Subramanyam. And you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

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Welcome back to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's return to our conversation now with Milan Vaishnov. It seems like what you're also mentioning, and you tell me if I'm completely off base on this, that people really are questioning either their trust in institutions and therefore do they actually have faith or trust in reform? And you've studied this when it comes to political economies and even corruption in

particular economies in particular countries, given what you know and have written about and it does our diaspora, especially the Indian American diaspora have faith in that concept of reform or is it again, always tethered to kind of the current trust in the institution or, you know, again, the pendulum swinging in a little, in a way. Well, I think, you know, one of the lessons I think the Democrats have learned

from this last election going into this election, positioning themselves as the defenders of norms, of institutions, of kind of rule of law, is that a lot of Americans are actually unhappy with the functioning of institutions. so being seen as kind of the biggest defender on the block of institutions was not necessarily a badge of honor. It was perhaps the opposite, right? so I think that's, for instance, I think something that

you Mamdani has clearly tapped into to understand that like, you know, we have a system and we've got to kind of reform it, but we've got to accept that many of the things we've taken for granted actually haven't been working that the way that they should. I mean, I will say that I don't think that, you know, at least from what our data suggests that Indian Americans are necessarily asking for a revolution.

in America, right? But I think these are people who, like most Americans, are very focused on bread and butter issues, right? I mean, I think one of the things that we've learned through the process of doing this data collection is you hear a lot when you talk to diaspora members or groups or in various fora, you hear a lot about what Biden's policy on India is going to be and would Trump be better or not and so on and so forth. But what the data tell us is that when it comes to that

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ballot box on election day, most people are not thinking about is Trump going to be better friends with Modi than Harris would. They're really thinking about, you know, what can I afford? What's the situation of education? Do I feel more safe or less safe than I did? And who is going to essentially put us in a better place? Right. I think foreign policy at particular junctures can have a strong impact. And I'd say one...

This juncture we're in right now is one of them. But I think this is a group that is fairly moderate in their political beliefs. And we have to also remember that Indian Americans are distinguished by the fact that they are doing exceptionally well when it comes to any standard of media and household income, educational attainment, professional access on average. mean, obviously you're going to have people on both sides of have lots of people on the edges. Correct.

But I mean, I'm just, you know, taking and generalizing based on data we have from the census and so on and so forth. So these are people who have sort of done well. But, you know, when it comes to an issue like immigration, for instance, Indian Americans have been in many ways the poster children for America's skill based legal immigration regime. And so I do think that they, like many other immigrants, by the way, take Umbridge.

when it comes to people who seem to be skirting the system, right? And that's an issue in this past election, I think that did work for the Republican Party and worked against the Democratic Party. There's two things that you bring up that are striking to me. One, of course, like many that Indian Americans are going to vote for those kitchen table items, their pocketbook items and really what sort of personalizes an election for them. so identity.

itself may or may not factor in. So it's not necessarily isolated to someone like Kamala Harris, but you have Vic Ramaswamy, you have lots of Indian Americans who are in the Trump administration and visible for that matter, Kash Patel, et cetera, people in the health infrastructure also. And then you mentioned the kind of voting as a proxy for what the relationship of the American government's going to be like with the Modi government or with the Indian government, because that weighs back on anchors that

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Indian Americans might have. I mean, as we go forward and we see more and more Indian Americans in the civic space, and at the same time, we see a very tumultuous Indian American political or governmental relationship. How did both of those maybe weave over these next couple of years, you think, at least? Yeah. I mean, I think when it comes

The reason I think we might be in a different moment today is, you we're recording this the day after Trump slapped 50 % tariffs on Indian imports into the United States, which has really thrown this relationship into the biggest crisis it's experienced in over a quarter century. And I think that it has created a level of mistrust in India about the United States.

that is going to be very damaging in the long run. And I think the diaspora is very, very attuned to that. And I think we'd be very disappointed in that because by and large, again, it's speaking in generalizations, the diaspora has worked very hard over the past several decades to try and build a stronger bridge between our two countries, which had gone through a relatively extended period of estrangement during the Cold War for various historical reasons we don't have to get into.

The reason I think foreign policy has not been as much of an animating issue is because for the past 25, 30 years, there's essentially been a shared consensus between Democrats and Republicans. No matter if you were Mitt Romney or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or George W. Bush, that at the end of the day, it is in the U.S. interest to try and cultivate India as a strategic partner. there may be...

particular nuances in terms of emphasis of we're a conservative president may lean and a liberal president may lean, but by and large you're with a pretty narrow band of policy actions. But now Trump has really gone outside of that band, right? And so that may have the effect of making foreign policy a much more salient political issue. We'll have to see how this plays out. We could, by the time this is

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episode comes out, the 50 % tariffs could be zero, they could be 100, right? I mean, it's anyone's guess. But I do think that's why foreign policy could enter in this equation in a way that it hasn't, because we're now outside of the bounds of what's seen as like acceptable, plausible, realistic, so on. I think on the first question on identity, you know, I do think that some of the evidence we have from political science suggests that actually Indian Americans look quite favorably.

on other Indian Americans when they are on the ballot. And that actually can have an energizing effect, both in terms of their turnout and then in terms of their eventual vote choice. Yeah. However, I think given the previous discussion we've had about ideology, my sense is that Nikki Haley, who is seen as more of a moderate centrist Republican, would gather much more support than a Vic Rameswami, who's seen as a much more

right kind of MAGA political figure, right? And I think the same nationally could be true with equivalent people, you know, on the left as well. I think, I think Indian American identity is a powerful signal of coethnicity, of belonging, of likeness, but partisanship doesn't just disappear because identity enters the picture. Right, of course. Yeah.

I want to back up and really focus on you for a second because I'm curious for you, were some of those, given what you've studied and what you can certainly so eloquently speak about, what were some of those accelerators for you to, for that matter, aim and get motivated to be a political economy expert on India? And of course, with a real joy, obviously, of studying

the diaspora, but then also issues around corruption and governance and also kind of the connections of the diaspora to all of that. Please tell me you saw some sort of psychic or a palm reader that, you know, told you that this would be your path or-

Speaker 1 (26:21.856)
Maybe this is a matrix blue pill, red pill moment. I'm not sure. No, I mean, I had a very, to be honest with you had a very roundabout way. mean, you know, growing up in an Indian American household in Houston, Texas, with a family that over time became much, much more integrated with the broader Indian American and Gujarati American community, which was at that point in time, the largest subset. think that's changed with, with, the changing immigration. I looked.

at India as something that I had a cultural affinity for, and you know, we would travel there as a family and so on and so forth, but never really took seriously as a subject of inquiry. think in part because, and I think this is true for a lot of children of immigrants, you fear being typecast or you fear you look at your own culture or your heritage and say, well, that's not.

exotic enough, right? I want to do something. I want to say Latin America. want to say the Middle East, you know, something out. And it really wasn't until I got to graduate school and at this point I was, you know, 25, 26, 27 and enrolled in a PhD program when I sort of had this eureka moment where I was, it was sort of, I was sent to India by a professor who was doing research on India with some other collaborators, including an Indian collaborator and had asked a friend,

friend, the two of us were sent over by this shared professor and we spent a summer living in Delhi. And I think I just, it was a real eye opening moment for me because I realized number one, despite this cultural affinity, I really didn't know the first thing about Indian politics, history, the economy, you name it, foreign policy. Number two,

As somebody who was always interested in questions around democracy and governance and representation accountability, there's really no bigger or better place to study some of these things than India because there was just so much that we don't, still don't know. mean, relative to say China, India is still under study in the United States to this day. And number three, know, doing a PhD is a

Speaker 1 (28:32.544)
It's a long slog, right? I something that takes in political science six, seven years. And so I remember encountering a colleague in my graduate program who was working on civil wars in Africa and feared going to do research because it wasn't safe. It wasn't fun. was really a difficult place to work. I thought, you know, what for me would be a personally and professionally rewarding, enriching, fun place to do research?

And India just kind of floated to the top. so after that summer in Delhi, this was in summer of 2008, I just kind of went all in. my parents to this day, I mean, now, you know, here we are 16, 17 years later, are still puzzled saying like, I don't understand. The first quarter century of your life, you would want nothing to do with this. And then now that's all you sleep, eat, live, breathe, you know, so, but I think it really was that coming together.

of experiences. And also, I think a sense of maybe maturity, thinking like, okay, I had been looking at this in a very childish sort of way. But when I stop and actually think more analytically about it, you know, India is makes a lot of sense. I mean, you know, the the ingredients with which you know, things have to happen, they have to, you know, be the right timing, the right setting, and really pique people's interest. But it sounds like especially for you, you hit your stride. And of course, there's the natural

laboratory of being in India, which has just sparked so many questions and so much work to do, especially as it tethers back to what we experience globally and particularly in the United States. Given that, and given the time when you were studying there, you continue to study and continue to lead in this space. I do have a thought at least about the Modi government and kind of what you've felt.

at least in this past year, what would you say, particularly when it comes to some areas of expertise for you when it comes to corruption and governance, what would you say is objectively a strength when it comes to policy and corruption and reform for the Modi government and you know that they could be legitimately praised for? And then also what's a just still glowing blind spot that has just not been addressed and

Speaker 1 (30:50.25)
has been potentially promised to be addressed. Yeah, so great. It's a super question. I think a very important question. I think on the first part, mean, anybody who has stepped foot in India in the past 10 years will inevitably experience the dramatic revolution in the digital payments infrastructure in India. mean, India has gone from being a completely cash-based economy to something that is kind of a leading pioneer.

I'm in terms of digital innovation, right? And I think that that powerful combination of financial inclusion of mobile banking, biometric authentication taken together, they're known as the India stack, because they kind of layer upon each other. It has many detractors because it's not perfect. And it does have errors, both of inclusion and of exclusions. And I'm aware of that, but I think

by and large has been a force for positive change in numerous ways, right? But the one way I think the government gets a lot of credit and should is the way in which, for instance, it has used this entire ecosystem to help reshape the welfare state and allow for direct benefits to be transferred to households through their bank accounts, cash directly to people without an intermediary.

through.

Speaker 1 (32:18.536)
And I think that is a really big shift. And I think for a lot of people has, I don't want to say eliminated because I think there's still lots of ways of corruption and middlemen to show up in the system. But I think shrunk the space for that kind of corruption and leakage should take place. think we have to be careful not to think of technology as a substitute for state capacity, because I think it really helps to augment state capacity. But I think net-net it's been very positive. And I think...

this government gets a lot of credit, not because the ideas were theirs. The ideas had been in the ecosystem. Many of them had been pioneered by the Congress government of Manmohan Singh, but they really took them seriously. And rather than discarding them because they were seeded by their political predecessor, decided to double down and really implement them. And I do think like in 10 years, the change is pretty palpable. So I think on the question of kind of the digital payments plus welfare, I think they get a lot of credit.

I think on a place where I feel like they've not really done very well is on the, on the, on the, I'm just going to stick within the lane of corruption here since that's where you asked is, is on the question of campaign finance, which I think is universally acknowledged as the kind of wellspring of corruption in India. Campaigns and politics, the funding behind them is highly opaque. It's very murky. Whatever disclosures do exist, no one takes very seriously because so much of

of the money that switches hands is done behind closed doors. The Modi government implemented a big change in 2017, 2018, when they ushered in a new mode of political giving called electoral bonds. And electoral bonds, just to make it very simple for your listeners, is basically a bond that any individual or company or association can purchase from the State Bank of India, which is a

big public sector bank and buy a bond in any denomination and deposit that bond in the bank account of a political party. And that is basically how the donation would flow from say me to the Congress or from you to the BJP or anything like that. But the real twist is that neither the donor nor the recipient would have to disclose that transaction.

Speaker 1 (34:32.33)
And so this solved one problem, but created a bunch of other problems. The problem it solved is, okay, now we're not wheeling suitcases of cash around. We're actually doing this through the banking system. But nobody, no voter, no journalists and no civil society member, no media house would be able to connect the dots. And so if you were to come to power, having been supported by a massive amount of electoral bonds, and then you took decisions in my favor,

as the purchaser of those bonds, no one would be able to connect the dots. Completely opaque. Completely opaque. so the Supreme Court in, I think it February of last year, struck that down as unconstitutional saying the voter actually has a right to know who's funding politicians and political parties. So that's a place where I think actually they moved the discussion backwards. And now we're back at the status quo, which is not a great status quo. The status quo of cash in suitcases is bad, but I feel this is a place where

Modi had so much political capital to really transform the system. And I think shows a particular route that didn't do away with corruption. It just did away with scandal. Yeah. The corruption still exists, but you can't actually point, connect the dots between, you can't do the quid pro quo. Yeah. And so you went from a situation of a lot of corruption with a lot of scandal and a lot of headlines. Situation with...

Probably a lot of corruption, but not a lot of scandal because by design. Yeah. Or at least, you know, to some degree controlled scandal, right? Like the idea of being able to control that narrative. You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with the director and senior fellow of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Milan Bechnev. Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (36:25.334)
Every story told is a lesson learned and every lesson learned is a story waiting to be told. I'm Abhay Dhandekar and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Speaker 2 (37:02.2)
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Hi there, I'm Abhay Dandekar and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with Milan Vaishnav. Given that backdrop of trying to sort of, you know, prioritize the wins and prioritize growth and there's been such a tremendous, you know, over the last 10 years, growth of economy and growth of scale and India really taking a much more of a center stage approach or at least

growing into that role a little bit more. Does that kind of seeming inevitability of India's rise as a global power, whether that's through economic or cultural influences or even regional influence that it's had for a long time, but seems to be more visible, especially in kind of counterbalancing China or Russia. Does that relevance actually have to come at a cost that might even be a painful cost to the rest of the global economy or the rest of the world?

Is India's rise and growth in power and influence always going to be at a cost of someone? And is that someone going to necessarily be the United States? I mean, I don't think so. And I think, you know, one of the fundamental assumptions of our politics in the United States over the past 25 years has been that India's rise is inherently in America's interest. And if India becomes more secure,

and more prosperous and more capable, that is going to redound to America's benefits in numerous ways. Right? Number one is it will represent, you know, the biggest consumer market in the world, which will be a place where American companies and American exporters can do a lot of business and make a lot of investments. But it is also a place that given the geopolitical realities of the Asia Pacific,

Speaker 1 (39:13.944)
where you have a choice between a democratic model in India and an authoritarian model in China, also provides a kind of beacon of support for the kind of democratic world, right? Which I think is also very powerful and very important. And so I don't see it at all as zero sum. And to be very blunt with you, what I find so disappointing about the most recent policy measures that Donald Trump has taken is that it takes this into a very zero sum.

sense that India's rise is inherently not in America's interest. And I don't believe that. I don't mean to suggest that there won't be adjustment and dislocation. There's a lot of controversy around outsourcing, around H1B workers, around double standards and so on and so forth. I get all of that. But I think when you look at it at a macro level, to me it's...

clearer as a win-win as we can have. And I actually think it's worth pausing on this for a moment because there are very few things in Washington that Democrats and Republicans can agree on. They basically disagree on every single issue under the sun. But for 25 years, they have agreed on this. And that agreement actually survived even the first Trump administration despite all of the...

the change in the volatility and turmoil, right? So I think that was not a mirage or a mistake. I actually think it was built on a shared understanding, both of US interests, as well as what was best for the globe as a whole. So in thinking about that, I asked that question on purpose because it is striking, right? That why would you, why would anyone, even in the posturing standpoint,

Why would anyone want to, in fact, disrupt that counterbalance, you know, so much of that progress that's been made or move it backwards in a way? Do you have any postulation as to what the motivation may be behind that aside from the grandstanding and the posturing to be able to strike deals? But that's, there seems to be, you know, it can't just seemingly be such a whim like that, that is there something to this movement? Are we seeing a temporary blip here? Again, if you have that crystal ball out,

Speaker 1 (41:34.818)
then that's great. But well, I think there's, I think there's a there's some structural things that have gone on. And then I think there's some idiosyncrasies of the president. And the two are somewhat intertwined. But I think the first is that the president appears to be very frustrated by his inability to bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to an end. And I think felt very deeply that as soon as he was president, because he considered Vladimir Putin to be not just

an ally, but potentially a friend, that he would be able to prevail on Putin essentially to bring this war to a negotiated settlement. And that has not happened. And Putin has shown very little interest in that. In his frustration, he has sought out ways of clamping down. And because India has become a significant purchaser of Russian crude, it is a soft target.

Now, there's a lot of hypocrisy in this. Europe is a big importer of Russian liquefied natural gas. We continue to import all sorts of things from Russia, uranium and other rare earths. But India was an easy target, which he assessed didn't have leverage necessarily to fight back. So I think that's one part of it. I think the second part of it that is more structural is that we...

no longer have in Washington a consensus about what our China policy should be. We had a consensus again for the past several decades that China was going to be a strategic competitor, that yes, we had to trade and do business with them, but we have to do so in ways that American companies and American people are not getting fleeced or taking advantage of. And so you saw in the Biden administration, the throwing up of all kinds of curbs on investment in strategic tech and so on and so forth.

Today, I think you have a president who feels that perhaps he can cut a deal with Xi Jinping, and that would deal with a lot of the irritants in the US-China relationship. But part of the glue that kept the US and India together in a strategic sense was a common skepticism about Chinese expansionism and the Chinese threat. if you take that away, then the logic, I think, appears less clear. And then finally, back on the kind of idiosyncratic side,

Speaker 1 (43:55.392)
We had this very brief, but very intense conflict between India and Pakistan that was resolved after a few days temporarily. And President Trump believes that he is due his fair share of the credit for bringing that ceasefire to pass. And India has not given him that. And I think has had a longstanding policy for 75 years of not wanting or encouraging third party mediation in what they see as a

very clear bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan. But this particular president, I think, has taken umbrage at that. And so we're in a place where I think with this particular occupant of the White House, the kind of geopolitics and the personal politics have really switched. Now, that doesn't mean that India is stuck forever, but I do think it's going to take some creativity for them to come out of this. You know, they're really stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

You know, we've been talking a lot about so many dots that are connected here and yet so much, so much out there that's unknown. so for those unknowns, you've taught at the university level and do some very deep academic work on exploring India and the diaspora and how to connect all those dots. yet institutional scholarship right now, especially in America is being disrupted and questioned and it's under some assaults and attacks. When it comes to public.

opinion and when it comes to the public's perception of academic knowledge, that constant assault on that and sowing public distrust and disdain sometimes even, and you see that backlash occasionally happen. What vehicles for dialogue and building trust and strengthening that relationship of faith between the public and academic pursuits and being able to break issues down like you so elegantly have done, what further bridges

need to happen. What kind of work do you need to do personally? And does the community need to do to repair that and build that trust and make it so that, you know, kitchen table conversations can bridge the academic conversations and make it seem like they're worthy and valued and can have a role for every American family? Yeah, it's just the Indian American. Yeah, it's a really big question. I'm not sure that I'm capable of answering it, but I mean, I'll try. I mean, I think

Speaker 1 (46:21.454)
The first is, you know, and I think here the onus is on those of us who are in the research community, whether at an academic institution or a think tank like I am, of really striving to meet the highest levels of transparency, right, in terms of how we work and how we're funded. And I think the public deserves to know that and that we, there should be scrutiny of, you know, who provides funding, not because we want to demonize.

George Soros for funding a think tank, but because you people I think have the right to know and they can factor that in to their opinions on the quality of the work, you know, if there's somebody writing a report about the F-35 fighter and they're being funded by the US military or by you know, a major defense contractor, I think that's something that's worth disclosing, right? And I think there's been rampant abuse in that. think not necessarily just in the think tank world, but I think also in academia.

So I think that's one. think the second is, do think that one of the reasons that I joined a think tank and that I enjoy working there so much is because a lot of what we do involves public engagement, right? It involves doing podcasts like this, interacting with the media, putting on events, convenings. And I think one of the things which I think is a positive signal, I've seen many more of my colleagues do that around the country.

So take advantage of the fact that like you can go to a place like Albuquerque, New Mexico, where there is a world affairs council or Tulsa, Oklahoma or Spokane, Washington. And these are just ordinary places where ordinary Americans live, right? Outside of our kind of bubbles. And I think it's really important to have that kind of engagement. And I think in my own field of political science, what I worry about is that there are no professional incentives to engage at all with the public.

You need to hit your benchmarks on journal articles and your book manuscript and that's it. mean, frankly, even teaching isn't necessarily considered rated as an important determinant of whether or not you get tenure or not. Right. And so I think there are ways, I think, to shift that, to show that our mission at the end of the day as researchers isn't just to sort of sit in the ivory tower, but we actually have a public engagement role. And frankly,

Speaker 1 (48:43.572)
My experience has been with the academics that I know of my generation, eagerness to do that, but they feel oftentimes held back because of how they might be judged by their peers and by their superiors as being someone frankly, who is not very serious. And I think that really has had a really deleterious impact on this thing. So I think those are a few things that we can do, but I think we also have to have a bit of a mind shift in our country.

about the ways in which

Government and university and research collaboration has powered so much of what has made this country amazing, right? I mean, I just look at what's happening now to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and so on and so forth. And it really fills me with sorrow, but also anxiety because as I'm thinking about the future, I mean, you're a...

you're a medical doctor, I mean, that the future cures for things like cancer or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or things that are at the cutting edge or new vaccinations and so on and so forth are, you know, are not just being shut down, but they're going to be undermined for a long time to come because of decisions we're making today, right? And so I think there has to be just greater awareness through, I think, collective action of, you know, really telling the

these stories, which I think many of us, and I put myself in this category, have taken for granted because it's just always been this way. And most of us have not paid attention to the fact that it really was the coming together of the state and civil society to make this happen. Right. It really wasn't one or the other government can't do this on its own, but neither can Harvard. Right. It's really been the unique symbiosis of the two. Yeah. Well, I think it's a reminder that you and you're certainly embodying this, that

Speaker 1 (50:44.022)
You can have academic rigor and great intellectual scholarly pursuit and marry that to social engagement because it still matters again at the kitchen table. We're so grateful that you were able to join us today, Milan. Thank you so much. And I hope we can share another conversation down the road. I would love to. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks so much, Milan. And the links to Milan's work and the Grand Tamasha podcast are in the show notes. Don't forget to subscribe or write a kind review wherever you're listening or watching. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.

And case you're wondering, in a world of lafoufous, just be a la boo boo. Till next time, I'm a bhajdanakar.