Today my guest is Amol Agrawal, who is the author of History of Private Banking in South Canara District (1906-69). He teaches economics at Ahmedabad University and blogs at the excellent blog Mostly Economics.

We spoke about the colonial and post-colonial history of banking in India, the unique features of the South Canara district, and its bankers, inclusive banking by state and private banks, bank nationalization, and much more.

Recorded July 26th, 2024.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:21) - History of Private Banking in India

(00:12:06) - Lending and Deposits

(00:16:17) - Industrial Development and Banking

(00:21:24) - Bank Runs in India

(00:25:54) - Success of South Canara Banks

(00:28:38) - Systemic Risk in South Canara

(00:36:16) - Banking Castes?

(00:40:29) - What was the RBI so wrong about with South Canara banking?

(00:47:50) - Pigmy Deposit Scheme

(01:05:28) - Why Were India’s Banks Nationalized?

(01:23:35) - Outro

Today my guests are Amartya Lahiri and Devashish Mitra who are joining me to discuss their latest paper for the 1991 project titled India’s Development Policy Challenge. Amartya Lahiri is the Royal Bank Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Devashish Mitra the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. We spoke about structural transformation and increasing total factor productivity, manufacturing versus services led growth, industrial policy, export led growth, how to employ India’s youth in more productive sectors, and much more.

Recorded July 29th, 2024.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:27) - State of India’s Structural Transformation

(00:08:28) - Has India’s Growth Peaked?

(00:15:39) - Trade-, Export-, and Manufacturing-Led Growth

(00:27:50) - Manufacturing-Led or Services-Led Growth Model?

(00:47:16) - Scaling Manufacturing

(00:59:38) - Labor Productivity in India

(01:06:41) - Rising Protectionism

(01:19:44) - Monetary Policy and Trade Policy

(01:35:26) - Outro

Today my guest is Anirudh Burman. He is an associate research director and fellow at Carnegie Endowment India, and prior to that, he worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and the Centre for Policy Research, both in New Delhi. He has his master’s in law from Harvard Law School. We spoke about the dysfunctional land markets and the kinds of reforms required in land use policy, land sale and land transfers. We also talked about the various experiments with land pooling and leasing in India, how to think about eminent domain law, land titling, land title insurance and much more.

Recorded July 15th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:02:46) - How does India’s Land Market work?

(00:15:23) - Why do we have such bad regulation?

(00:23:519) - Land Transfer and Consolidation

(00:40:35) - Transitioning to an efficient land regulation system

(00:45:25) - Eminent Domain

(01:05:35) - Land Leasing

(01:11:01) - Land Pooling

(01:28:37) - Outro