The making of India’s Constitution is usually told as the story of the few hundred prominent lawyers, politicians, and intellectuals who comprised the Constituent Assembly—the body tasked with drafting this historic document between 1946 and 1949.

But a new book by the scholars Rohit De and Ornit Shani, Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History, argues this familiar account captures only part of the story.

Drawing on a remarkable range of archival material, the book shows that constitution-making was not confined to the halls of the Constituent Assembly alone. It also played out in provincial legislatures, princely states, government offices, civic associations, and communities across India. Ordinary citizens debated the constitution, petitioned its authors, organized around it, and creatively sought to shape its provisions.

To discuss the book and its relevance for our understanding of India’s democratic evolution, Rohit and Ornit join Milan on the show this week. Rohit is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic. Ornit is an associate professor of Asian Studies at Haifa University. She is the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise.

The trio discuss the serendipitous origins of the book, the authors’ unusual writing process, and the gaps in the conventional account of India’s constitution-making. Plus, the three talk about overlooked constitution-making efforts in the princely states and the forgotten story of Manipur’s democratic experiment.

Episode notes:

1. “India’s Hidden Treatise on Statecraft (with Rahul Sagar),” Grand Tamasha, November 2, 2022.
2. Rohit De, A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
3. Ornit Shani, How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
4. Rohit De and Ornit Shani, “Assembling India’s Constitution: Towards a New History* Open Access,” Past & Present 263, no. 1 (May 2024): 205-248.
5. Video: “How India Became Democratic (with Ornit Shani),” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 25, 2018.

For decades, the H-1B visa program has been the centerpiece of America’s high-skilled immigration system.

To its defenders, it is a vital pipeline that brings talented workers from around the world to power the U.S. economy. But, to its critics, it is a system rife with abuse—one that can undermine American workers while also trapping foreign workers in exploitative arrangements.

A new book, Wild Wild East: Exiled Americans, Enslaved Indians and the Systemic Abuse of the H-1B Visa Programme, takes readers inside one especially shadowy corner of this world: the universe of so-called “desi consultancies.” These companies—also known as H-1B “body shops”— connect Indian tech workers to American employers through a maze of recruiters, subcontractors, universities, and corporate clients.

The book follows the lives of Indian H-1B seekers, displaced American tech workers, and the firms that profit from a deeply broken system. It is at a story about immigration, labor exploitation, globalization, and the darker side of the U.S.-India tech corridor.

To talk more about the book, Milan is joined on the show this week by its author, Tanul Thakur. Tanul is an award-winning journalist and film critic. In 2015, he won the National Film Award for Best Film Critic—the youngest critic to receive the honor. Wild Wild East is his first book.

Milan and Tanul discuss the latter’s firsthand experience with a “desi consultancy,” the exploitation many H-1B workers endure, and the role U.S. higher education plays in this ecosystem. Plus, the two discuss how Andhra Pradesh and Telangana became the epicenter of H-1B-related fraud and the ways in which the H-1B program can be reformed.

Episode notes:

1. Aditya Mani Jha, “The human cost of H1-B dream: Review of Tanul Thakur’s Wild Wild East,” Hindu, June 11, 2026.

2. Tanul Thakur, “‘Heads they won, tails he lost’: How ‘desi consultancies’ prey on Indian grads in America,” NewsLaundry, May 24, 2026.

3. Anant Gupta, “Indians slam MAGA ‘war’ over H-1B skilled-worker visas as ‘racist,’” Washington Post, January 7, 2025.

The audio of this podcast was optimized using Adobe Podcast Enhancer AI. No alterations were made to the substance of the conversation.

In democracies, we typically assume that public opinion on issues like jobs, the economy, and inflation matter for shaping policy and politics. But opinions on foreign policy are often treated as the preserve of elites, especially in a country like India.

Yet, it turns out that we know surprisingly little about what ordinary Indians think about foreign policy, how stable those views are, and whether they influence the choices that governments make.

A new short book, Indian Public Opinion toward the Major Powers, tackles these questions by examining more than six decades of Indian attitudes toward the United States, China, and Russia. The book draws on a wide range of survey data to ask how Indians view the major powers, how those views have shifted over time, and what they reveal about democracy, accountability, and foreign policy in India.

To discuss the book, co-authors Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland join Milan on the podcast this week. Aidan is an assistant professor of political science at Florida State University. Many moons ago, he was a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow with the Carnegie South Asia Program. Paul is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The trio discuss the treasure trove of data on Indian public opinion the authors stumbled upon, the characteristics of India’s “foreign policy public,” and the variation in Indian attitudes toward the United States, China, and Russia/the Soviet Union. Plus, the discuss why a respondent’s region emerges as a strong predictor of one’s foreign policy views.

Episode notes:

1. Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland, “Replication Archive: India Public Opinion Toward the Major Powers,” May 2026.
2. Paul Staniland, “The Indian ‘foreign policy public,’” paulstaniland.com (Blog), May 6, 2026.
3. Christine Huang, “Americans see India in positive light, but few have confidence in Modi,” Pew Research Center, June 21, 2023.
4. Paul Staniland and Vipin Narang, “Democratic Accountability and Foreign Security Policy: Theory and Evidence from India,” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 410-447.
5. Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland, "Indian Public Opinion toward the Major Powers," in Elements in Indo-Pacific Security, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026). (The piece is publicly available until June 15, 2026)