Grand Tamasha

Milan Vaishnav talks about the aftermath of the recent conflict between India and Pakistan and its ramifications for India's domestic politics and foreign policy with Alyssa Ayres (Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations) and Rezaul Hasan Laskar (Foreign Editor, Hindustan Times). Although major hostilities have paused, tensions between the two neighbors remain high. But as India's election approaches, the domestic spin game has begun. The three discuss the government’s approach, the opposition’s positioning, and how international diplomacy fared during the crisis. Then, Milan speaks with Vipin Narang, associate professor of political science at MIT and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Narang is one of the few scholars to have thought deeply about when foreign policy actually matters for domestic politics in India. While the conventional wisdom holds that foreign policy is an elite issue that does not capture the imagination of the masses, Narang (and co-author Paul