For more than a decade, India has steadily deepened its ties with the Gulf while trying to balance competing interests across the region. But today, that strategy is under strain—thanks to the Iran conflict, shifting regional alignments, a reemerging Pakistan.

How is India being impacted by the Iran crisis? And what do these geopolitical shifts mean for India’s West Asia policy?

To discuss these and other questions, Milan is joined on the show this week by Kabir Taneja. Kabir is the Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation’s Middle East office. He has worked extensively on India’s relations with the Middle East, examining domestic political dynamics, terrorism, non-state militant actors, and the region’s evolving security architecture. He is also the author of The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and Its Shadow on South Asia.

Milan and Kabir discuss India’s emerging political and strategic relationships in the Gulf, the risks the country faces from the Iran conflict, and the potential for India to play a larger regional security role in the Middle East. Plus, the two discuss Pakistan’s frenetic diplomatic maneuvering and the state of Afghanistan-India ties.

Episode notes:

1. Kabir Taneja, “Pak Is Finally Back In Middle East's 'Good Books'. But Can It Stay There?” NDTV, April 30, 2026.
2. Kabir Taneja, “How Air Power will Reshape Geopolitics in the Gulf,” ORF Middle East, April 17, 2026.
3. Kabir Taneja, “A West Asia security rethink amid America’s role,” Hindu, April 2, 2026.
4. Kabir Taneja, “Reading the tea leaves in the conflict in West Asia,” Hindustan Times, March 10, 2026.
5. Kabir Taneja, “Navigating Strategic Autonomy: India and the Middle East in a Multipolar World,” February 9, 2026.
6. Nicolas Blarel, “India Navigates a Divided Middle East,” in Milan Vaishnav, ed. India and a Changing Global Order: Foreign Policy in the Trump 2.0 Era (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2026).
7. Kabir Taneja, “Between New Delhi & Kabul, a fine balance,” Hindustan Times, October 13, 2025.

** NOTE TO LISTENERS: This week, we are releasing a special “flash episode” of Grand Tamasha to recap India’s recently concluded 2026 state assembly elections. As usual, we will still be publishing a new Grand Tamasha episode next Tuesday, May 12 at 9 pm ET, Wednesday 6:30 am IST.

It’s safe to say that India’s 2026 state assembly elections have scrambled many of the assumptions that have long shaped our understanding of Indian politics.

The BJP has finally captured West Bengal after decades of trying, secured a third consecutive victory in Assam, and made modest, but important gains in Kerala. With its allies, it also retained the union territory of Puducherry. In Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, the upstart TVK—led by the enigmatic actor Vijay—has disrupted a political duopoly that has defined the state for decades.

At a deeper level, across these elections, familiar assumptions about welfare, identity, institutions, and opposition politics have suddenly been called into question.

To make sense of these results—and what they might tell us about the road to 2029—Milan is joined today by two of the sharpest observers of Indian politics and political economy.

Neelanjan Sircar is an associate professor at Ahmedabad University and one of the country’s leading scholars of Indian politics. He has spent years studying party organizations, welfare politics, and electoral change across states—including West Bengal and Assam.

Yamini Aiyar is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and the Watson Institute at Brown University. She was previously president and CEO of the Centre for Policy Research, and is a leading expert on the Indian state, welfare delivery, and democratic accountability.

Milan, Yamini, and Neelanjan discuss the BJP’s historic win in West Bengal, the demise of the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee, and the Election Commission of India’s controversial revision of the electoral rolls. Plus, the trio discuss the rupture in Tamil politics, the Congress’ lone victory in Kerala, and the BJP’s strategy for 2029.

Episode notes:

1. Samanth Subramanian, “From Sea to Saffron Sea: Neelanjan Sircar,” Equator, May 6, 2026.
2. Roshan Kishore, “Terms of Trade: And then there were none,” Hindustan Times, May 4, 2026.
3. Neelanjan Sircar and Bhanu Joshi, “Party has left the building: The rise of parallel politics in Bengal,” Hindustan Times, May 4, 2026.
4. Neelanjan Sircar, “Verdict Bengal: Decisive win in a divided state,” Hindustan Times, May 4, 2026.
5. Bhanu Joshi, “DMK’s defeat proves it: Welfare is the floor, elections have moved to the ceiling,” Indian Express, May 4, 2026.
6. Neelanjan Sircar and Bhanu Joshi, “Beyond numbers, how West Bengal's voter roll revision is redrawing citizenship lines,” Hindustan Times, April 29, 2026.
7. Bhanu Joshi and Neelanjan Sircar, “In Bengal hinterland, poll victory might hinge on ground visibility,” Hindustan Times, April 23, 2026.

India hasn’t updated how political power is distributed across its states in five decades—and the consequences are mounting. At the heart of delimitation lies a fundamental tension: should representation follow population, or preserve a delicate federal balance? Successive governments chose to defer the question, freezing India’s electoral map even as demographic divides deepened. The Modi government’s recent push to overhaul the system brought these tensions into the open but ultimately failed to resolve them.

Recently, Milan sat down with Shruti Rajagopalan of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University for a wide-ranging webinar on delimitation, representation, and the reshaping of Indian democracy. The two discussed how India reached the present impasse—and what happens next. Milan and Shruti unpack the constitutional rules governing delimitation, the scale of malapportionment in the Lok Sabha, and the politics behind the Modi government’s failed 2026 push to overhaul the system. Plus, they discuss scenarios for the future.

On this week’s show, we present the audio and video from this recent conversation as a joint collaboration between Grand Tamasha and Shruti’s Ideas of India podcast.

Episode notes:

1. Shruti Rajagopalan, “India’s delimitation battles are costing its poorest voters,” Times of India, April 25, 2026.
2. Shruti Rajagopalan, “Delimitation: At heart of row, value of a vote, fiscal imbalance,” Indian Express, April 23, 2026.
3. M.R. Madhavan, “Implications of increasing the size of the Lok Sabha,” Hindu, April 16, 2024.
4. Shruti Rajagopalan, “Demography, Delimitation, and Democracy,” Get Down and Shruti (Substack), July 3, 2023.
5. Pranay Kotasthane, “India Policy Watch: Delimitation as an Opportunity for a Grand Bargain,” Anticipating the Unintended (Substack), June 18, 2023.
6. Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson, “India’s Emerging Crisis of Representation,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 14, 2019.