All Things Policy
Ever wondered how automation will change the world? Maybe you puzzle over what India could do to ease traffic congestion, or how China's aircraft carriers will transform Indian Ocean geopolitics? All Things Policy, a daily podcast brought to you by the Takshashila Institution, brings you all the answers. Every weekday, our researchers break down complex economic and geopolitical ideas through the lens of current events. For everyone from the busy executive to the curious student, All Things Policy is all you'll need to understand the world (and appreciate your breakfast) better.
How Can Biotechnology Strengthen Military Resilience?
Biotechnology is more likely to shape warfare through improvements in health protection, sensing, and distributed manufacturing than through exotic ‘super soldier’ technologies. In this episode, Shambhavi Naik discusses with Sarthak Pradhan how biotechnology can make a difference at the individual soldier, operational unit, and theatre levels.
The episode is based on Shambhavi's recent paper - www.ippr.in/index.php/ippr/article/view/535, published in the Indian Public Policy Review.
All Things Policy is a daily podcast on public policy brought to you by the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru.Find out more on our research and other work here: https://takshashila.org.in/research-areas
Check out our public policy courses here: https://school.tak
Japan’s Defence Transformation
Japan spent most of the last eighty years as the textbook case of a pacifist state. A constitution that renounces war, a one percent cap on defence spending, a ban on selling weapons abroad. That picture is now changing fast. Tokyo has built counterstrike missiles, started exporting lethal equipment, and set out to double its defence budget. Join Arindam Goswami and Vanshika Saraf in this episode of All Things Policy as we talk about what has changed, what hasn't, and why a country can rearm without ever rewriting the rule that says it can't.
Vanshika has just w...
India's Orbit Problem Isn't Pakistan
A recent investigation argues that Pakistan, with Chinese support, has rapidly expanded its Earth-observation satellite network, creating the ability to monitor Indian territory with increasing frequency. At the same time, India is building its own ambitious space-based surveillance architecture. So what should we really be worried about? Is this a story about satellites? About data? About military preparedness? Or about our ability to convert information into a strategic advantage? To help unpack this, (Sowmya Prabhakar) is in conversation with Ashwin Prasad.
All Things Policy is a daily podcast on public policy brought to you by t...
How Securitised is the Quad?
How relevant or securitised is the Quad? Is the Quad doing enough? These are recurrent questions that dominate the narrative around the grouping. When the foreign ministers of the four countries gathered recently for their 11th meeting in New Delhi, these questions again made headlines. And the criticism isn’t without substance.
Tune in to this episode of ATP, where Bhumika Sevakani is joined by Amit Kumar to discuss the question: How security-focused is the Quad?.
Do check out our dashboard, QUAD Monitor - quadmonitor.amitkumar-ak.com/ ,which tracks all of Quad's initiatives - by do...
India’s Push for Drone Procurement
After Operation Sindoor, there was a significant push to increase the use of drones in India’s military operations. Since then, drones have been used extensively in conflicts globally, giving us a chance to see how they can be deployed and a front-row seat to the rapid evolution of drone technology. In light of the pace of these developments, Adya Madhavan and Ashwin Prasad Rao unpack the unique challenges of drone procurement and what countries should focus on to address them.
All Things Policy is a daily podcast on public policy brought to you by...
Why India Hit Pause on Starlink
Days before SpaceX's record-breaking IPO, India froze Starlink's launch in the country.
In this episode, hosted by Adya Madhavan, Ashwin Prasad Rao, co-author of the Takshashila Institution's April paper "Starlink and Risks for India", explains what satellite internet actually is, and why the world's most impressive constellation comes with a problem no regulation can fix. This is the story of risks mapped in April that, by June, sounded strikingly familiar.
The paper, the explainer, and Bloomberg's report are linked in the show notes.
https://takshashila.org.in/content/publications/20260412-Starlink-and-Risks-For-India.html
h...
Street Dogs: Public Safety or State Failure?
India has 3.7 million dog bites a year. It accounts for 36% of global rabies deaths. In May 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that civic authorities may euthanise rabid or demonstrably aggressive stray dogs, calling the right to walk public spaces without fear a fundamental right under Article 21. Is this a landmark ruling or a shortcut that papers over 65 years of governance failure?
Malathi Renati (Takshashila Institution) speaks with Samyukta Hornad, founder of Praana Animal Foundation, a popular Kannada actor and someone who has been doing the unglamorous work of animal welfare since the age of 16.
<...Heat: An Invisible Threat to National Security
In this episode, host Devyani Rao interviews Dr Y. Nithyanandam, professor and head of the Geospatial Research Program at the Takshashila Institution, about one of India's most underestimated policy challenges: extreme heat.
They explore why heat is a spatial problem, the gaps in India's heat action plans, and how geospatial intelligence can better protect vulnerable communities, making the case that extreme heat is no longer just a seasonal discomfort but a growing national security threat.
All Things Policy is a daily podcast on public policy brought to you by the Takshashila Institution...
India’s West Asian War Tightrope
When the US and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran in late February 2026, India's abstract strategic interests in West Asia transformed into an immediate, high-stakes emergency. With nine million nationals in the Gulf, forty billion dollars in annual remittances on the line, and oil prices surging past a hundred and twenty dollars a barrel, New Delhi found itself walking a razor-thin diplomatic tightrope.
In this episode, host Kavya Rai sits down with Takshashila's Geostrategy experts Vanshika Saraf and Raja Karthikeya to dissect the real cost of India’s signature "multi-alignment" strategy during a region-wide co...
India-China Cooperation on Climate Adaptation
Can India and China cooperate on climate change despite ongoing geopolitical tensions? In this episode of All Things Policy, Bhumika Sevkani, Research Analyst at the Takshashila Institution, is joined by Pooja Ramamurthi and Shruti Jargad from the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, to explore the prospects for climate and clean energy cooperation between the world’s two largest developing economies and among the largest emitters. Tune in to the conversation, understand the countries' shared interests in climate adaptation, clean technology, and economic growth, the challenges posed by India's dependence on Chinese green supply chains, and what a pragmatic st...
The Strait and Narrow
The Strait of Hormuz has become central to global conversations with the War in West Asia and Iran’s closure of the Strait. Global supplies of oil and other commodities such as Urea and petrochemicals hang in the balance. Iran continues to control the flow of tankers and ships despite an American counter-blockade. Why is the Strait so hard to navigate and control? In this episode of All Things Policy, Anisree Suresh and Adya Madhavan try to answer this question, and discuss the unique geographical and hydrological characteristics of the Strait of Hormuz. They also explore the conflicting interpretations of...
Industrialising Sugarcane
In this episode of All Things Policy, Anwesha Sen and Anisree Suresh examine the draft sugarcane (control) order 2026 released by the Department of Food and Public Distribution against India’s US$ 300 billion bioeconomy aspirations. They discuss the definitional changes in the draft and the impact of price controls and spatial monopolies on the bioeconomy sector. To read more about this, subscribe to Takshashila’s newsletter: https://thebiologic.substack.com/p/2-scaling-up-from-agriculture-to
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no further than Takshashila's Post Graduate Progr...
Reading the Quad Between the Lines
In this episode, Brigadier Anil Raman (Retd), Lokendra Sharma and Ashwin Prasad Rao sit down to make sense of the Quad partnership that's sending confusing signals. The Quad foreign ministers met in New Delhi on 26 May, but the optics were hard to read: no leaders' summit, Trump fresh off calling Xi a "great leader" in Beijing, and a year of tariffs on America's own partners.
So the episode traces the Quad across its past, present and future—what the grouping actually is, how it got here, and where it's headed. Along the way they read between the li...
The Indian interest in US-China AI Chips Tango
Should the US sell advanced AI chips to China? This is a question that has animated US technological and political circles for years now. But looking beyond the US-China tango, what is the Indian interest in all of this? Given India’s strengths in the applications layer, which shape and form of the global AI landscape would maximise New Delhi’s options? To unpack answers to these questions, tech geopolitics researcher Lokendra Sharma converses with Pranay Kotasthane, chair of Takshashila’s High-Tech Geopolitics programme, who recently authored an issue brief on this very theme.
Are yo...
Governing AI Distillation
Chinese AI labs stand accused of distilling frontier models from American AI companies. The concern has escalated fast, with a new executive order calling for action against adversarial distillation. Anwesha and Bharath are joined by Anthropic's Claude to make the case for and against the crackdown.
If questions around AI geopolitics and governance interest you as well, join our 5-week Politics and Policy of AI course, starting in August! - takshashila.org.in/pages/policy-school/ecc-artificial-intelligence.html
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for...
Dissecting Quad Foreign Ministers Meet
In this episode of the All Things Policy podcast, Vanshika Saraf and Abhishek Kadiyala examine the outcomes of the Quad Foreign Ministers Meeting held in New Delhi on 26 May 2025. The conversation highlights a structural shift in the Quad's orientation, away from the security-forward posture of the Biden era and toward an economic security and supply chain framework shaped by the second Trump administration's approach to great-power competition. Vanshika Saraf and Abhishek Kadiyala analyse key outcomes, including the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Cooperation Initiative, the Ports of the Future project in Fiji, and the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Framework. They argue that...
Energy Realism for India
Amidst the escalating conflict in West Asia and the resulting constriction of oil and gas supply, the urgency to deploy renewable energy for enhanced energy security has grown. However, emerging economies like India must adopt a pragmatic approach to reconcile their increasing energy demands with their decarbonisation commitments.
Join Bhumika Sevkani, Research Analyst with the Geostrategy Programme, and Shambhavi Naik, Chairperson of the Advanced Biology Programme at Takshashila, as they discuss the potential of renewables to offer economies resilience against energy supply shocks.
Are you passionate about shaping India's...
Decoding the American Strategy towards US-China Competition
In this episode, we unpack the evolving contours of U.S.–China strategic competition through first-hand insights from Yusuf Unjhawala, after a recent visit to the United States. Drawing on engagements across the country, the conversation explores how different arms of the American system are interpreting the China challenge. It also interrogates how the United States understands China’s domestic political economy and global ambitions, and whether its current approach is coherent or fragmented.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no further than Taks...
The Iran Brief: Regional Order Unravelling
Drawing on the evolving trajectory of the US–Iran war and the wider regional transformations it has triggered, this episode of All Things Policy features Brigadier Anil Raman in conversation with Will Todman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The discussion examines how the Middle East changed between Trump’s return to office and the eventual US–Israeli decision to strike Iran, tracing the shifting positions of Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Syria, and the Houthis within an increasingly fragmented regional order. The episode argues that the war did not emerge suddenly, but from accumulating structural pressu...
Deciphering China and Japan's Rivalry
How should we understand the growing rivalry between two 'tigers', Japan and China? The tension between both countries reached a critical point following Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s November 2025 declaration that a Chinese attack on Taiwan constitutes a "survival-threatening situation". Such developments, inter alia, demonstrate how Japan's military and diplomatic engagement with China is significantly being altered. Join Kripa Koshy (Staff Programme Manager) and Vanshika Saraf (Geostrategy Programme Research Analyst) as they break down how this newfound assertiveness is playing out in the Indo-Pacific and what it means for the future of Indian foreign policy.
A...
Agentic AI and the Future of Governance
Despite exclusion errors and privacy concerns, the JAM trinity has fundamentally transformed public service delivery in India. Now, with AI becoming increasingly embedded in everyday life, a new idea is emerging: Agentic AI for governance and citizen services. How might AI agents reshape citizens’ interactions with the state? What problems could they solve? And what new risks and challenges might they create?
In this episode of All Things Policy, Bharath Reddy and Suman Joshi explore the promises, trade-offs, and policy questions surrounding AI-powered public infrastructure in India.
Additional Reading: ht...
Unlocking India’s Seaweed Economy
Seaweed is not just a coastal livelihood activity. It sits at the intersection of industrial biotechnology, climate strategy, coastal development, and import resilience, and countries around the world are investing in seaweed-based value chains. In this episode, Sarthak Pradhan speaks with Shambhavi Naik and Devleena Bhattacharjee about India’s emerging seaweed economy, the sector’s major policy gaps, and how a lease-based tenure framework for seaweed cultivation sites can help India leverage the opportunities in this space.
This is the paper discussed in the episode - https://takshashila.org.in/content/publications/20260401-India-seaweed-opportunity.html
Are...
What did Trump's China trip achieve?
After a gap of nearly 9 years, and a recent postponement due to the Iran war, a US president finally visited China. Trump traveled with a large contingent including his cabinet members and business and tech leaders. But what did the trip achieve, beyond the optics of Trump praising the Chinese leader? Join Lokendra Sharma and Amit Kumar from the Takshashila Institution as they discuss the key highlights and takeaways of the trip and disentangle the Taiwan, Iran and technology aspects of US-China relationship.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most...
The Myth Of ISRO's Frugal Engineering Model
In this episode of All Things Policy, Shobhankita Reddy sits down with Ashwin Prasad Rao to discuss his latest book chapter published in The Hindu's book on the Indian Space Program. Ashwin unpacks the stubborn tag of "frugal engineering" associated with ISRO and frames it as a trap for India's current circumstances and outer space ambitions. What, then, is the way forward? Tune in to find out.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no further than Takshashila's Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy. T...
Digitising the Count: A Governance Experiment
In this episode of All Things Policy, Sowmya Prabhakar is in conversation with Y Nithiyanandam to unpack the self-enumeration exercise. What happens when a policy assumes participation without communication? Can digital governance succeed with weak execution? And when data collection becomes a tech exercise, where does trust fit in?
From poor public awareness and awkwardly framed questions to data collection glitches during peak summer travel season, this episode explores the fascinating gap between policy design and lived reality.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges...
Parasport, Medicine and Policy
In this episode of All Things Policy, Malathi Renati speaks with Dr. (Maj) Ameya Kagali, Chief Team Physician for the Indian Paralympic contingent, about what it really takes to support para-athletes — on the field, in medical systems, and through policy design. From classification to women para-athletes’ health needs, career pathways, and the future of India’s para-sport ecosystem, this conversation asks a simple but urgent question: is India treating para-sport as a welfare add-on or as a serious national priority? At a time when India’s sports policy and governance reforms are evolving, this episode is a reminder that access a...
From Chips to LLMs: How Fast Is China Catching Up?
DeepSeek recently released a preview version of V4, a 1.6-trillion-parameter AI model trained and capable of being deployed entirely on Chinese homegrown Huawei Ascend 950 and Cambricon chips, without any NVIDIA hardware.
In this episode of All Things Policy, Satya Sahu, Associate at The Asia Group's South Asia practice, joins Amit Kumar, Staff Research Analyst with Takshashila's Geostrategy Programme, to discuss what these developments mean for the larger US-China competition.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no further than...
No Shortcut to Military Power
Wars are expensive. And there's a seductive idea going around — that maybe they don't have to be anymore. That drones, loitering munitions, and precision missiles have changed the game so fundamentally that you don't need the big, costly, traditional military machine to project power or win conflicts. Ukraine, Azerbaijan, even Iran — people are pointing to these wars and saying, look, the future is cheap, autonomous, and expendable.
Join Arindam Goswami and Yusuf Unjhawala in this episode of All Things Policy, as we push back hard on that idea. Yusuf Unjhawala has spent years tracking India's defence ecosystem and...
The Iran Brief: Beyond the Ayatollahs
How much do we really understand about one of the world's most scrutinised, and possibly the most misread political systems? In this episode, Aishwaria Sonavane, Research Analyst, Geostrategy Programme, sits down with Raja Karthikeya, former Political Affairs Officer at the UN Secretariat and drafter of the Security Council's official historical record on the nuclear programme debates, to understand the internal dynamics of this regime. From the layered realities of public sentiment and factional elite competition, to the IRGC's sprawling economic empire and the unintended consequences of decades of sanctions, Raja helps us understand how power actually works in Tehran...
The Iran Brief: The Democratisation of Drone Warfare?
Today, drones have become front and centre in modern warfare. Despite having lost much of its military infrastructure to the war in West Asia, Iran has managed to utilise missiles and cost-effective drones such as the Shahed to carry out its own air campaign in retaliation for American and Israeli strikes. Anushka Saxena explains how Iran managed to produce and utilise low-cost drones such as the Shahed amid global sanctions, in this conversation with Adya Madhavan.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no...
Why India's DISCOMs Are Trapped in a Doom Spiral
Power cuts have become so routine that we've stopped noticing them. But this normalisation of unreliability has a cost — and it's a cost that shows up not on your electricity bill, but in your diesel expenses, your inverter battery, and your lost productive hours. But why is our electricity so unreliable?
In this episode of All Things Policy, Anwesha Sen speaks to Sarthak Pradhan, Assistant Professor at the Takshashila Institution, about the reasons for this unreliability and what it would take to fix it. Sarthak has recently written about this in The Print as well, do ch...
The Iran Brief: US Blockade as a Leverage
Six weeks of US-Israel strikes on Iran destroyed infrastructure, eliminated leadership, and degraded Iran's missile arsenal. Yet when peace talks in Islamabad collapsed in April, the US still lacked the leverage to bring Iran to the table on its terms. Enter the naval blockade of Iranian ports. In this episode, host Kavya Rai speaks with Abhishek Kadiyala, Research Analyst at the Takshashila Institution's Geostrategy Programme, about why the Strait of Hormuz has become Trump's most powerful card against Iran, how the blockade is reshaping the economics of the conflict, and whether maximum pressure can actually deliver a deal.
<...Across the Strait: KMT-CPC Ties and the Future of Taiwan
The recent meeting between Taiwanese Kuomintang party Chairwoman Cheng Li-Wun and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing marked a new effort between the two sides to renew ties and talk about the future of Taiwan. But what were the signals from the meeting speaking to China’s view of KMT’s role? How is KMT placed politically within Taiwan to be able to effect change? Finally, how does the Taiwanese public view the KMT and the DPP’s China policies?
In this episode of All Things Policy, Anushka Saxena quizzes Dr. Roger Liu of the Na...
The Iran Brief: Impact on the Indian Economy
In this episode of All Things Policy, Bhumika Sevkani and Anisree Suresh examine the impact of the war in Iran on the Indian economy, tracing how the conflict is transmitting through India's energy, currency, fiscal, and labour markets, and what the cost of a prolonged conflict in the region would be.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no further than Takshashila's Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy. This 48-weekend programme will equip you with the knowledge, skills, and network needed to pivot to...
The Iran Brief: Airpower Paradox
In this episode of All Things Policy, Brigadier Anil Rahman and Air Marshal P.D. Joseph are joined by Dr. Kelly Grieco, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington D.C., to assess whether U.S. air operations in the Iran conflict constitute a coherent theory of limited war. Drawing on Thomas Schelling's coercion framework, the episode asks whether air power alone can compel a regime fighting for survival to yield. Dr. Grieco argues that the initial U.S. aim of regime change through aerial decapitation collapsed within 72 hours, giving way to intermediate military objectives targeting Iran's Navy...
The Iran Brief: US Congress and Trump
In this episode of the All Things Policy podcast, Abhishek Kadiyala and Brigadier Anil Raman speak with Soren Dayton about why the U.S. Congress has repeatedly failed to restrain President Donald Trump's military operations against Iran, even as the 60-day clock under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 continues to tick. The conversation examines the structural weaknesses of the War Powers Resolution and how it has failed to keep pace with shifts in military technology, constitutional interpretation, and geopolitical reality. Tracing legislative precedents from President Harry Truman's Korea to President Barack Obama's Libya intervention in 2011, the episode maps how...
India’s Critical Minerals Challenge
The global conversation on power is evolving, from energy security to supply chain resilience, and now to the minerals that underpin modern technology.
Despite significant geological potential, India remains a marginal player in global rare earth production. The gap between what exists and what is extracted raises deeper questions.
In this episode, Shobhankita Reddy and Shreya Ramakrishnan of the Takshashila Institution examine the biggest barriers in India’s rare earth and critical minerals ecosystem, and trace the historical forces that have shaped the policies, incentives, and mining systems we see today.
...
Inside China’s Energy Fortress
China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), formalised, inter alia, its "dual-track" energy strategy investing in coal and renewable energy in tandem. How does this approach sit within the country's current energy security landscape? How has the diversification of supply played into China's energy needs and how prepared is China to manage the energy implications of the war in West Asia? To unpack all this and more, join Kripa Koshy (Staff Programme Manager) in conversation with Bhumika Sevkani (Research Analyst, Geostrategy Team).
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing ch...
The Iran Brief: Pakistan's Moment in West Asia
Pakistan finds itself in a critical mediatory position as the US and Iran navigate a fragile ceasefire, and add to that, decades of mistrust. Pakistan's Field Marshal Asim Munir is engaging across Washington, Tehran, Riyadh, and Beijing, even as Islamabad manages complex dynamics with neighbours like Afghanistan and India.
In this episode of The Iran Brief, Aishwaria Sonavane speaks with Anand Arni to unpack the drivers behind Pakistan’s mediation push, the strategic gains it seeks, and the limits of its leverage. What does this moment mean for its longer ties with the US, Gulf security dynamics, an...
Trust Before Policy: Why Communities Matter
In a society marked by a trust deficit, even the best solutions run into limits. This episode explores how intentional, hyper-local communities can lower transaction costs, unlock participation, and improve public outcomes.
Malathi Renati and Sowmya Prabhakar unpack the role of culture, community, and grassroots action in building social capital and why, without it, policy alone rarely delivers.
Are you passionate about shaping India's future? Keen to find solutions for India's most pressing challenges? Look no further than Takshashila's Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy. This 48-weekend programme will equip you with...
