What does it mean to do development in India today — and who gets to define it?
In this episode, Aaswash Mahanta sits down with Anmol Somanchi — PhD researcher at the Paris School of Economics and Global Justice Coordinator at the World Inequality Lab — to talk about inequality, policy, and the politics of knowledge.
We unpack his landmark report “Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj”, co-authored with Thomas Piketty, Lucas Chancel, and Nitin Bharti — and explore the broader landscape of research, caste, access to higher education, and rethinking economics from the margins.
💡 Topics we cover:
- The structural flaws in India’s development model
- The rise of inequality and elite capture
- Doing heterodox economics and centering empathy in research
- Bridging the gap between academia and real-world policymaking
- Aadhaar, food security, and the politics of data
- Doing Academia in Europe and the many opportunities it offers