india

Updated: May 23, 2020 16:47 IST

This week on Grand Tamasha, Milan Vaishnav (Director of the South Asia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) sits down with Kumar Uttam (Associate Editor, Hindustan Times) to discuss the state of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the heels of its second consecutive election victory.

Uttam and Milan discuss the role that Amit Shah, the longtime confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and newly inaugurated Union Home Minister, will play in the Modi 2.0 government.

Uttam also shares his insights into the future of the BJP party organization, the makeup of the Cabinet, and the government’s early priorities.

Then, Milan talks with Ashley J. Tellis, who holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Milan asks Ashley about the foreign policy challenges facing the new government, as laid out in Tellis’ new Carnegie essay, “Troubles Aplenty: Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next Indian Government.”

Tellis also assesses Modi’s first-term foreign policy record and the current turmoil in US-India relations. Milan ends the conversation by asking Tellis to reflect on Modi’s choice of Dr S Jaishankar as the new External Affairs Minister.