I came across an excellent podcast on economics in Marathi recently. A friend had sent me the link about a month ago (and apologies, friend, because I promptly forgot all about it!), but in a happy coincidence, that same podcast linked to one of my posts, and it served as a useful reminder to check it out.

And it is excellent! Here is the post through which I was served the reminder, and here is a brief introduction to the blog itself:

And that also made me think about making it simpler for people at large. Economics and finance are English language topics, by default, due to their design and complexities around the world. But I wanted to bring some change to that by communicating in a regional Indian language, Marathi. That is the reason I have also created ‘econGully Marathi Podcast’. Here, I release three episodes a week and talk about different things happening around the world. Topics covered so far are broad in scope. From Srilanka’s economic crisis to LGBTQ economy and from the commodities market to climate change, the podcast tries to convey new developments and historical references affecting our lives directly or indirectly.

https://econgullyblog.wordpress.com/about/

I want my career to be about helping more people learn about, and fall in love with, economics. But I’m chopping off my own legs, as it were, by writing only in English. All the more reason for me to admire the work that Swapnil is doing, and if you are familiar with the Marathi language, I strongly encourage you to subscribe to his podcast.

On a related note, do also subscribe to Puliyabaazi, a (mostly) Hindi podcast on matters related to public policy. And if you are familiar with Tamil, consider reading Alex Thomas’ excellent textbook on macroeconomics in the Tamil language.

It’s bad enough that people are turned off from learning economics because of badly written textbooks, bored professors and outdated syllabi. But the very thought that lack of accessible material in your mother tongue might be a stumbling block is an especially painful one. All the more reason to celebrate the work that people like Swapnil Karkare, Alex M. Thomas, Pranay Kotasthane and Saurabh Chandra are doing. And there must be many, many more, of course!

Speaking of the many more, a request: if you happen to know of work being done to help spread knowledge of economics (and related fields) in India’s many local languages, please do let me know.