Episodes
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A deadly terrorist attack in Moscow on March 22 left more than 130 people dead and nearly 200 injured. This was the deadliest mass shooting incident in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege. The Islamic State—Khorasan Province (IS-KP) has claimed responsibility for the attack.
President Vladimir Putin has said that radical Islamists were behind the attack, and hinted at Ukraine’s involvement.
So, why are radical Islamists, and the Islamic State in particular, targeting Russia, and why now?
G. Sampath is joined by MK Bhadrakumar, a strategic analyst and former diplomat who has served in West Asia. -
It’s hard to imagine a world without plastic now – plastic exists in almost every sphere of our life. Microplastics, the tiny toxic particles that plastics shed and that are scattered across the environment have been found everywhere – from clouds, to the bottom of the ocean, in Antarctica and even in our bodies – we swallow them and we breathe them in. In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine however, researchers found microplastics and nanoplastics – which are even smaller particles – inside our innermost organ -- in the fatty deposits or plaques that can accumulate in the blood vessels of the heart. They also found that those with these plastics in their blood vessels had a greater risk of experiencing heart attacks, strokes or death. However, they have cautioned this was only a link and not proof that plastics led to bad health – much more research is needed to establish how plastics really affect our health.
The study comes at a time when the world and India is attempting to ban plastic and encourage people towards sustainable, plastic-free options – but this is happening very slowly, as we can see all around us, in daily life and in the massive landfills in our city.
What can micro and nanoplastics do to the human body? What is the direction research into this must take? And how can we minimise our exposure to plastic pollution?
Guest: Dr Sanjay Rajagopalan, one of the authors of the study and Chief, Cardiovascular Medicine and Chief Academic and Scientific Officer at University Hospitals, Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute, Ohio, United States
Host: Zubeda Hamid -
Episodes manquant?
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After repeated prodding from the Supreme Court, the State Bank of India has finally disclosed the full details of the electoral bonds bought and redeemed. The Election Commission has made the data public. This comes in the wake of the electoral bond being established as patently unconstitutional, a mode of political funding susceptible to corrupt practices.
Now that the details of who gave how much to which party is in the public domain, what do the numbers reveal? Were the fears of ‘quid pro quo’ between donors and recipients justified? Are there sufficient grounds to call for a full-fledged anti-corruption investigation?
Guest: Vignesh Radhakrishnan from The Hindu’s data team.
Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editors, The Hindu.
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. -
Pre-dawn air strikes by Pakistan on Afghan territory targeting Tehreek-e-Taliban, or TTP, militants on the 19th of March mark a new low in relations between Kabul and Islamabad. Pakistan claims that it retaliated against TTP strongholds in Afghanistan following a terror strike in North Waziristan on the 16th of March in which 7 Pakistani security personnel were killed.
The Taliban claim that eight women and children were killed in the Pakistani air raids. A spokesman for the group warned of dire consequences even as Taliban border forces attacked Pakistani positions.
What do these events spell for Pakistan-Taliban relations? Has the wheel come full circle for Rawalpindi which was responsible for the creation of the Taliban and was vociferous in welcoming the return of the group to Kabul in 2021? What can we expect in the weeks and months ahead? -
The 2024 Lok Sabha polls will be held from April 19 in seven phases across the country. In Bihar, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh, voting will take place in all the seven phases. Assembly elections will also be held simultaneously in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. The last phase of voting will be on June 1 and counting will take place on June 4.
This parliamentary election will be the second longest polling exercise in India’s electoral history. The longest one was the country’s first general election, which was held over a five-month period from September 1951 to February 1952. But the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, for instance, were held in four phases – between April 20 and May 10 – they were over in 20 days. The 1998 elections took place in just three phases – on February 16, 22nd and 28th – over two weeks.
So what has changed between 1998 or 2004, and 2024 -- that we seem to have become so much slower?
Why does India need seven phases and one-and-a-half months to hold general elections? How do other big democracies like Indonesia manage it in one day? And what are the pros and cons of having a multi-phase election?
To discuss, we are joined by MG Devasahayam, a former IAS officer who is also Coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections. -
It’s that time of the year again, when exams are looming, and students are stressed. Most students in India write a number of exams -- from the final boards at schools to the multiple competitive tests that are attempted to try and get a seat at coveted medical or engineering colleges. The process is so difficult – lakhs of students competing for a few thousand seats that coaching them for these exams has become a massive business at several cities across the country. Kota in Rajasthan, one of these hubs has been in the news recently over student suicides – 26 students died by suicide last year, and this year there have already been six deaths.
How can the mental health of students be protected at a challenging time in their lives? What should the role of parents, teachers and other stakeholders be? What can be done to bring down the number of deaths by suicide? And what happened to the National Suicide Prevention Strategy that the Indian government announced in 2022?
Guest: Dr Soumitra Pathare, director, Centre for Mental Health, Law & Policy
Host: Zubeda Hamid
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. -
NITI Aayog B.V.R. Subrahmanyam recently claimed that less than 5% of Indians now live below the poverty line. He made the claim based on the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), 2022-23. Mr. Subrahmanyam argued that the average consumption expenditure in the bottom 5% of India’s population, as estimated by the survey, is about the same as the poverty line in India, suggesting that the poverty rate in India is somewhere in the range of 0 to 5%.
Has poverty really dropped to 5% in India? Here we discuss the question. -
The resignation of Arun Goel as Election Commissioner just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has created ripples in Indian politics. For the first time since 1993, a single-member Election Commission is currently supervising poll preparations in the world’s largest democracy. There is no word on why Mr. Goel, who was handpicked by the BJP government, quit but some media reports point to differences with the Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar.
So, what does Mr. Goel’s resignation spell? Will the Government rush to appoint two Election Commissioners under the new law that gives the political executive a majority in the selection process? Do Election Commissioners grow a spine after taking office?
Guest: Nilanjan Mukhopadyay is a senior journalist and author, whose latest book is The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India (2021). He has also authored The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right (2019) and Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times (2013).
Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. -
With peak summer approaching, Bengaluru is already facing a water crisis. The city, which is dependent on the Cauvery river and groundwater for its freshwater needs, remains vulnerable to drought in the dry seasons and flooding in the monsoon months. With its bore wells having to contend with receding water tables, and tankers having to travel increasingly longer distances to fetch water, there is a big question mark over the city’s water security.
This was not always the case -- India’s IT capital used to have a system of tanks and parks that gave it water resilience. What happened to this infrastructure? How much water does the city need? What is the shortfall? And how can the shortfall be bridged in a sustainable way? -
The 164 member world trade organisation holds what it calls a Ministerial Conference – a once in two years meeting of all its member countries to discuss, negotiate and address global trade rules. WTO’s thirteenth ministerial conference, or MC13 – took place in Abu Dhabi in late February this year, but it failed to make headway on key agenda items. Such failures in negotiations have come to plague the WTO lately. Yet, despite this, failed outcomes are often touted as major victories by member counties. Like in India’s case, where Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal claimed a win for the country’s farmers, when India’s position on demanding sovereignty over public stock holding of food, and providing largely artesanal fishing nations, subsidies for fisheries failed to reach consensus.
Two more demands of developing countries – the first – lifting the moratorium on levying customs duty on e-commerce, and second, a reconstitution of the WTO’s dispute settlement appellate body, remained unresolved as well. And yet, why are these key wins for developing nations?
Guest: Ranja Sengupta from the global non-profit – Third World Network
Host: Kunal Shankar, The Hindu’s Deputy Business Editor
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. -
Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has his task cut out for him. From steering the economy out of choppy waters to dealing with a belligerent opposition that continues to contest the results of February’s general elections, Mr. Sharif has to show that he is up to the job.
As Cabinet formation and election of a new President await Pakistan, Mr. Sharif will also be watched for his ability to deal with the country’s permanent establishment – the Army.
Will the fact that he has more patience than his brother Nawaz Sharif allow for political stability in governance?
To discuss these issues, I am joined from Karachi by Shahzeb Jillani, co-host of Dawn TV’s current affairs show, Zara Hut Kay. -
Earlier this week, a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that MPs and MLAs are not immune to criminal prosecution on bribery charges related to their votes or speech in Parliament or state assemblies.
This judgement overturns an earlier ruling of the Supreme Court in the 1998 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) case. In this case, the majority opinion had held that MPs and MLAs enjoyed immunity from prosecution with regard to how they vote or speak in the House.
Article 105 (2) of the Constitution confers on MPs immunity from prosecution in respect of their speech or voting in Parliament. Article 194 (2) grants the same protection to MLAs. So what prompted the Supreme Court to strip MPs and MLAs of this immunity? What was the original case that set off the chain of events culminating in this judgement? And what are the implications of this verdict? Tune in to find out. -
The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act was passed in 2021, but over two years later, it continues to be mired in some amount of confusion and on-going cases in the Supreme Court. Brought in to ban commercial surrogacy, it allows only for altruistic surrogacy under certain conditions, and aims to regulate surrogacy clinics, part of the huge infertility health sector in the country. Last month, the Central government brought in a modification to the surrogacy rules – it allowed married couples to use donor eggs or donor sperm to avail of surrogacy. This overturned the government’s own rules that had earlier banned the use of donor gametes. The rules now state that if one person of the intending couple has a medical complication that does not allow them to use their own gametes, then a donor gamete can be used for the surrogate baby. However, a genetic link is still a must – the other partner must provide the egg or sperm as the case may be. This means that divorced and widowed women, who are allowed to avail of surrogacy, have to use their own eggs. The law also bars single unmarried women, those in live-in relationships and those in queer relationships from its ambit – a provision being currently challenged in court by an unmarried woman.
How will the new amendment change things for prospective parents? How can donor gametes be obtained when their sale is banned and the donation is strictly regulated? Has the Act met its goal of regulating surrogacy clinics and protecting surrogate rights? -
Ever since the English cricket team arrived in India, ‘Bazball’ is on the lips of every cricket buff. It is a unique style of play that paid rich dividends for the English team --until the India tour. England is trailing the five-match Test series 1-3, and there is a lot of debate around whether ‘Bazball’ has been overhyped, and if England has failed to adapt it to Indian conditions.
What are the elements of Bazball? How did it develop? Has India finally exposed its limitations? -
Engineered cross-voting to win extra seats in the Rajya Sabha and organized defection to bring down duly-elected State Governments appear to have been normalized in Indian politics.
The additional two seats that accrued to the BJP in Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh recently is a case in point. Though six cross-voting MLAs have been disqualified in Himachal Pradesh, the defeat of senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Sanghvi points to the dangers that lie ahead for the Congress government in the state.
Previously, the Congress lost three state governments in Goa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, to organized defections.
So, is this a phenomenon that we will have to live with in Indian politics?
Guest: Radhika Ramaseshan, political analyst and columnist.
Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu.
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. -
From time to time, stories of the commercial dealings in organs, or cash for kidney scams, surface in the media. In December, one such possible organ racket was in the news, involving people from Myanmar, who had come to a private hospital in Delhi for transplant procedures. Organ transplants have been taking place in India since the 1970s, and after multiple instances of the commercial sale of organs, India brought in the Transplantation of Human Organ and Tissues Act, 1994. This law banned the sale of organs and only allowed organs to be given between close family members, or for altruistic reasons, with no money exchanging hands.
Over the last decade or so, some cities in India have increasingly become major hubs for life-saving transplant surgeries of several organs including the kidneys, heart, liver, lungs and pancreas. The deceased donor programme, where organs are harvested from brain-dead donors, has also taken off in some parts of the country.
As of 2022, India performed just over 13,300 living transplants and about 2,700 deceased donor transplants. And still, the country has over 3 lakh patients on the waiting list for organs and 20 people dying each day for want of an organ.
How do the transplant laws work, and do they have loopholes that need to be plugged? What are the laws in place for foreigners? How can donor rights be protected more stringently to weed out exploitation? And can the transplant programme be scaled up to meet the country’s needs? -
It’s now exactly two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, so far 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have perished in the war. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced. The population in territories under Kyiv’s control has shrunk from 52 million to 30 million while the country’s economy has been devastated.
As for Russia, after initial setbacks – likely caused by an underestimation of Ukraine’s capacity for resistance – it has modified its tactics and settled into a long-term war of attrition. Its economy is doing well, despite Western sanctions. In the meantime, there are question marks over the West’s will to continue its military aid to Ukraine with the same intensity.
With no signs of the conflict ending any time soon, we look back at the past two years to understand what have been the gains and losses for all the sides in involved. What does the third year of this war have in store? Will it see one of the sides gaining a decisive advantage? And what needs to happen before either side decides that enough is enough?
Guest: Stanly Johny, The Hindu’s International Affairs Editor.
Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. -
Housing is a basic requirement for dignity of life. But affordable decent housing remains a distant dream for most Indians, especially in urban India. Close to 17% of all households in urban India live in slums, with this percentage shooting up to 41% in a city like Mumbai and 29% in Chennai.
Over the years, the government has taken many initiatives to address this problem, with schemes such as Indira Awas Yojana, and the ongoing Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), an interest subsidy scheme for lower and middle-income groups. But these subsidy schemes hardly seem to make a dent on the housing crisis. The gap between people’s incomes and price points of housing stock, especially for the aspirational classes, remains wide.
Why is housing in India so expensive? Why do the prices never seem to come within reach for most? A recent research paper, titled ‘House prices in India: How high and how long?’ co-authored by three analysts from the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), Shishir Gupta, Nandini Agnihotri and Annie George, offers some insights on these questions. -
Most of us are familiar with the plastic waste crisis and public awareness campaigns on the need to recycle plastic. Now a new report by the Centre for Climate Integrity, an international non-profit, says that plastic producers have been lying to the public for more than 30 years – it says that they knew all along that plastic recycling was not a viable solution, either technically or economically, and yet kept they promoting it to protect their interests.
How serious is the plastic waste problem? Why is plastic recycling not viable? And if recycling is not the answer, how do we address the mounting crisis of plastic waste? Tune in to find out. -
The headline in a recent article was arresting – India fears losing out to China in smartphone exports race. Another broke the news that Mexico had overtaken China for the first time in 20 years as the largest exporter to the US. One more said – loud and clear at t that – that India should realise that Vietnam, and not China, was the major competitor.
There are a few dots we can connect to see a common thread in all these that should interest us – The world wants to move away from China but that cannot be done in entirety overnight because of the scale that the country has built. But there are some parts of the global supply chain that are indeed moving. Is India poised to benefit from this? What lessons does the China model hold for India? And what is it that countries such as Vietnam are doing right to bolster foreign investments that are in turn spurring those countries’ exports?
Guest: Biswajit Dhar, Distinguished Professor, Centre for Social Development.
Host: K. Bharat Kumar
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. - Montre plus