Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Today my guest is Yamini Aiyar (https://saxena.watson.brown.edu/people/yamini-aiyar) , who is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the author of the recent book Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi's Schools (academic.oup.com/book/58819) . Her main research interests are contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, and federalism.
We talked about the challenges of education policy and welfare in India, the lack of agency experienced by school administrators and teachers, the role of local governments in education, Delhi's experiment with education reforms, portable benefits and school vouchers, and much more.
Recorded July 16th, 2025.
Read a full transcript (mercatus.org/ideasofindia/yamini-aiyar-schools-us-education-policy-india) enhanced with helpful links.
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Follow Shruti (twitter.com/srajagopalan) on X
Follow Yamini (https://x.com/AiyarYamini) on X
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:27) - Delhi School Experiment
(00:12:45) - Education in a Welfare State
(00:28:34) - Incompetent Petty Tyrants
(00:38:17) - Federalism and Education
(00:50:18) - How to Build Empowerment
(01:05:39) - Is the Delhi Experiment Generalizable?
(01:18:52) - Portability and Education
(01:28:15) - Outro
Today my guest is Yamini Aiyar (https://saxena.watson.brown.edu/people/yamini-aiyar) , who is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the author of the recent book Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi's Schools (academic.oup.com/book/58819) . Her main research interests are contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, and federalism.
We talked about the challenges of education policy and welfare in India, the lack of agency experienced by school administrators and teachers, the role of local governments in education, Delhi's experiment with education reforms, portable benefits and school vouchers, and much more.
Recorded July 16th, 2025.
Read a full transcript (mercatus.org/ideasofindia/yamini-aiyar-schools-us-education-policy-india) enhanced with helpful links.
Connect with Ideas of India
Follow us on X (twitter.com/ideasofindia)
Follow Shruti (twitter.com/srajagopalan) on X
Follow Yamini (https://x.com/AiyarYamini) on X
Click here (mercatus.tfaforms.net/5060934) for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:27) - Delhi School Experiment
(00:12:45) - Education in a Welfare State
(00:28:34) - Incompetent Petty Tyrants
(00:38:17) - Federalism and Education
(00:50:18) - How to Build Empowerment
(01:05:39) - Is the Delhi Experiment Generalizable?
(01:18:52) - Portability and Education
(01:28:15) - Outro
