Ep 22: Street vendors are not encroachers! | Prashant Narang on public spaces, property rights, and who decides
Prashant Narang believes that street vendors are not encroachers. He argues that the state has wrongly cast honest vendors as illegal, and that a vendor who sells on a footpath is simply free enterprise at work. He goes further still: a vendor who has held the same spot for years has earned a real claim to it, and the state should protect that claim rather than evict them.
But is vending a legitimate use of public land? Should we reward encroachers with property rights? And how do we decide how public land is to be used?
Prashant is a lawyer. He was a senior fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, and is now Deputy Program Director at the TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation.
He has worked on the rights of street vendors for more than a decade, since 2013, and he writes and litigates on free markets, property, and the rule of law.
12 Aug 2026
Ep 21: Do we care about poverty? | Usha Ramanathan on the law, the state, and people in poverty
Usha Ramanathan believes that we have failed people in poverty. The state has systematically constructed them as illegal: encroachers, beggars, vagrants and defaulters, and we, the citizens, have looked away.
But should we trade liberty for the sake of the poor? Haven't liberalized markets lifted more Indians out of poverty than any welfare program ever has? And if the state is the enemy, then how can we also enlist it to protect the poor?
Usha is one of India's most respected legal scholars. She holds a PhD in law from Delhi University, is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and teaches environmental, labour, and consumer law at the Indian Law Institute. She has worked on the Bhopal gas survivors, the Narmada valley displacements, and the criminalisation of beggary, and has been the most persistent critic of India's Aadhaar programme since 2009.
12 Jun 2026
Ep 20: Has history un-ended? | Lant Pritchett on the end of history, and what follows the liberal idea
Lant Pritchett believes that the post-1990 promise—that every country could converge on becoming democratic, capable, and liberal—was always more fragile than its champions admitted.
But what does the end of history actually look like? Why have some developing countries rejected western liberal ideas? And what happens to development without liberalism?
Lant is one of the most important development economists of the last few decades. He holds a PhD in economics from MIT, spent nineteen years at the World Bank, and taught at the Harvard Kennedy School for nearly twenty years. He is now Research Director at Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) and a leading voice on state capability, institutional reform, and the case for letting more people move across borders.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
1,427,989
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Spotify
4.6 / 5
9 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 44 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
39
Social presence
0
YouTube
93
Engagement
31
Contact Deepak Disagrees
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Deepak Disagrees?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
