TIF Talkies

In Episode 6 on the business of news in India, Ramanathan S and Rohan Venkat speak with Jaya Oberoi, who currently runs digital content distribution for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in India and Sri Lanka, about selling branded content and more. Before moving to a foreign publisher, Oberoi spent many years in the Indian news media, focusing on the advertising side of businesses.

On Episode 5 of 'The Business of News', Rohan Venkat and Jayant Sriram speak with Ritu Kapur, co-founder and CEO of 'The Quint', an award-winning digital news organisation that has carved out a unique voice in India’s media space about building a digital business and staying the course on advertising revenue.

Vikash Keshri, a medical doctor with expertise in public health and health policy, joins Kiran Kumbhar in this episode to speak on MBBS and MPH training systems in India, focusing specifically on the discipline of community medicine (also known as preventive and social medicine), its role in the medical education system, existing challenges and areas of potential reform, and its relationship with the broader the public health system in the country.

The Hindu took the bold step of introducing online subscriptions long before any other major newspaper did in India. The model has been a lighthouse example of business acumen for many news publishers. Ramanathan Subramanian and Jayant Sriram speak with LV Navaneeth, CEO of The Hindu Group on the process and challenges faced by a legacy newspaper in transforming into a thriving digital news publisher.

Jayant Sriram speaks with Nikhil Kanekal and Vignesh Vellore, co-founder of The News Minute, on collaborations among media organisations, joint strategy for achieving growth, and the way forward.

Kiran Kumbhar speaks with Veena Shatrugna on the challenges of anaemia and undernutrition in India, on recent attempts to dilute the diagnostic standards for anaemia, and on decolonisation in global health. Dr Shatrugna is a medical doctor, public health researcher, and former Deputy Director of the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.

Foreign aid, especially American aid, to India has always been a testy matter. We speak to Gaurav Garg, assistant professor of History at Ashoka University, on why foreign aid has a chequered history, and a plan to convert Calcutta into Pittsburgh.

Rohan Venkat speaks with Gaurav Arora, Chief Operating Officer at Jagran New Media and Ramanathan S, head of revenue and product at The News Minute, on how programmatic ads and brand studios have evolved and what challenges are anticipated over the coming years.

Does news in India have a viable model today? Jayant Sriram and Rohan Venkat begin this RePivot podcast series on the Business of News by discussing different revenue trends in news organisations today.

Kiran Kumbhar speaks with Amar Jesani on the discipline of bioethics, on ethical issues in the medical publishing world, and on activism and action in healthcare reform. Dr. Jesani is a bioethicist, health analyst and activist, and editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics.

Sudha Rajagopalan, historian of Russian culture at the University of Amsterdam, talks about how Bollywood films, Soviet books, and gestures of camaraderie shaped how Indians and Russians came to see each other as firm friends.

In this episode host Kiran Kumbhar discusses metrics, statistics, and numbers in public health and demography with Aashish Gupta who is a sociologist, demographer, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford.

A conversation with Aashique Ahmed Iqbal on India's early experiments with flying, why we haven't mastered manufacturing aeroplanes, and what the past can tell us about the future of aviation.

Public health researcher Indira Chakravarthi speaks about the private healthcare sector, public-private partnerships (PPPs), Ayushman Bharat, and right to health, with host Kiran Kumbhar.

In the last episode of this season exploring films, we speak with Prof SV Srinivas about the recent discussions surrounding hypermasculinity and violence in films like Kabir Singh and Pushpa. Prof Srinivas teaches at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, and is the author of two books on south Indian stars called Megastar and Politics as Performance.

In the third episode of our latest podcast season exploring films, Madhava Prasad discusses 'cinepolitics' in south India. Mr Madhava Prasad is a cultural theorist and film scholar, whose worked as a Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies in The English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad.

In the second episode of our fourth season exploring themes related to films, we speak with Ritika Kaushik about the state's role in film-making and distribution in India, specifically taking a deeper look at the histories of the Films Division of India and the National Films Archive. Ritika Kaushik is a doctoral scholar at the University of Chicago and her research interests include film history, documentary films, and archival practices.

In the first episode of our new season exploring films, we speak with Shrayana Bhattacharya about what film icons and fandoms can tell us about intimacy and women's independence. 

In this episode on finance and data privacy, Rohan Jahagirdar, an independent fintech consultant working with organisations specifically in the banking industry, discusses regulation of data collected by fintech companies, the recent introduction of the Account Aggregator system, as well as the Non-banking Financial Company–Account Aggregator Framework introduced by RBI in 2016.

In this week's episode on reproductive health surveillance, we’re joined by Ambika Tandon who is a researcher with the Centre for Internet and Society.

In this episode on health information systems, we’re joined by Aayush Rathi who is a researcher with the Center for Internet and Society, and has previously written on welfare systems and digitisation. He discusses health surveillance, India's track records with electronic health records, and the recently announced Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. 

Kicking off the new season of TIF Talkies, Srinivas Kodali talks about digital infrastructures like Aadhaar, the National Population Register, the National Register of Citizens, and more recently, the turn towards facial recognition technology. 

At COP 26, India announced 5 promises to work towards a greener future. But there remains some confusion as to how these will actually be achieved. In this concluding episode for season 2, we're joined by Aditya Pillai who speaks about climate institutions in India and their importance in discussions on climate action. Aditya Pillai is an associate fellow at the Initiative for Climate, Energy and Environment at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

In this episode we discuss a component of climate action that was particularly highlighted at the COP 26, that is, the importance of traditional/local knowledge in meeting and forming climate goals. For this, we’re joined by Dr Deepti Chatti who is Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice at the Humboldt State University in California. Dr Chatti has researched and written widely on political ecology, development studies, and environmental justice.

In this episode we’ll be discussing a crucial component of climate action and one that was kept at the centre of the recently concluded COP 26: climate financing. For this, we’re joined by Prof T Jayaraman who is the Senior Fellow for Climate Change at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. He was previously affiliated with Tata Institute of Social Sciences and has written widely on climate policy, finance and environment.

For the first episode of this season, Professor Navroz Dubash discusses India's pledges at the recently concluded COP 26. Prof Navroz Dubash is associated with the Centre for Policy Research, where he conducts research and writes widely on climate change, energy, and policy regulation. He is also a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Sixth Assessment), and is the editor of a recent book titled 'India in A Warming World'.

In the concluding episode for this season, Ajay Vir Jakhar talks about the ongoing farmers' protests and what we can do to end the farming crisis in India. Jakhar is a citrus farmer himself, and is also the Chairman of Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmers' advocacy organisation. 

This season we’ve been discussing the ongoing farmers’ protests, and so far we’ve addressed how the new farm laws have tackled the MSP, mandi rules, and changing ecologies.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Satendra Kumar, Assistant Professor at G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, about how the ongoing protests have revived farmer identity and what they mean for the future of state politics.

Farmers’ face the twin vulnerabilities of uncertain production environment and unpredictable markets. In light of this, the government’s proposals to empower farmers and ambitiously double their incomes has so far included three farm bills, weather apps, and Agristack. But are the remedies prescribed actually helpful to aid the bleeding agrarian economy? We speak with Richa Kumar, Associate Professor of Sociology and Policy Studies at IIT, Delhi, about changing ecologies, cultivation practices and how the current government hopes to tackle these real threats to farmers' livelihoods. 

In the second episode, we speak with Dr Mekhala Krishnamurthy about agricultural market regulation and the changes to Mandi rules under the new farm laws. This has been a crucial point of contention in the ongoing farmers' protests. Dr Krishnamurthy is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Over the last decade, she has done extensive fieldwork on agriculture and agricultural markets across different states in India.

Welcome to the first season of The India Forum’s new podcast series, TIF Talkies, where we'll be engaging with the farmers’ protests that have been ongoing since the past year, and probing into the stalemate between the government and the farmers which persists despite several rounds of talks.

A short people’s history of the influenza epidemic in colonial India (27 August 2021).

Listen to Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor of Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, speak about the crisis of agriculture in Punjab & its future (31 May 2021)

Listen to Aditi Priya speak about marginalised students in India’s higher education institutions. (22 February 2021)

Listen to Sanjay Barbora, Associate Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences' Guwahati campus, speak about Northeast India, its history and discontent. (12 December 2020)

Listen to Sudha Narayanan, Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Mumbai, speak about India's farm laws and agriculture market. (4 November 2020)

Listen to R. Nagaraj, the well-known economist and commentator, speak about the Indian economy after the pandemic and how to revive growth. (26 October 2020)

Listen to Prem Chandavarkar speak about the proposed redevelopment of New Delhi's Central Vista. (28 August 2020)

Listen to Happymon Jacob speak about recent developments in India's relations with Pakistan. (7 August 2020)

Listen to Radhicka Kapoor speak about the labour market in India. (20 July 2020)