Sukrit Puri on the Entanglement between Business and Politics in India

Ideas of India

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This is the 2024 job market series where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about the latest research in India.

I spoke with Sukrit Puri, who is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT and an Elinor Ostrom fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research focus is on the entanglement between business and politics in emerging economies, and his dissertation focuses on family firms in India. We discussed his job market paper, Corporate Kinship: Political Attachments of the Family Firm, we talked about how family firms differ from management and expert run businesses in India, whether it is in their firm structure or their political giving, whether family firms are most strategic or expressive in politics, the differences in the nature of the quid pro quo for a family firm versus a management run firm, the latest electoral bond scheme, and much more.

Recorded September 11th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:16) - Grand Tamasha

(00:03:05) - Analyzing Family-Run Firms and Campaign Donations

(00:07:06) - How Family Businesses Donate Politically in Relation to Corporations and Individuals

(00:10:17) - Distinctions Between Family-Run and Non-Family-Run Firms

(00:14:48) - Political Donations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Overlap or Distinct Strategies?

(00:19:35) - The Hidden Side of Campaign Contributions

(00:25:56) - Ethnic Identity in Relation to Expressive Giving

(00:28:59) - Challenges in Measuring Quid Pro Quo Arrangements

(00:35:55) - The Impact of Demonetization on Political Donations

(00:37:06) - Assessing the Reaction to the Information Shock from Mandated Disclosures

(00:45:22) - Understanding the Reputational Impact of Political Donations

(00:51:15) - Is Uncertainty a Factor?

(00:57:11) - Outro