In Focus by The Hindu

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...

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...

Farmers are back at the barricades, this time they have been stopped by the Haryana police at the Punjab-Haryana border. Twenty-two-year-old Shubhkaran Singh has died in the protests. Farmer leaders have suspended their protest till February 29 when they will announce their next course of action. The agitating farmers are firm that there should be a legal guarantee for MSP purchases but the Centre...

Controlling a computer with just your thoughts seems to be something straight out of a science fiction movie, but that’s exactly what scientific experiments are now doing. This week Elon Musk, founder of the startup Neuralink which implanted a brain chip, called Telepathy, into a human being last month, said that the patient’s progress has been good, and the patient is now able to move a mouse on...

The Lok Sabha elections of 2024 are round the corner. The season of defections is also upon us. Party hopping has commenced in earnest. An India Today poll suggested earlier in February that the NDA would win 335 seats in 2024 down from 353 in 2019. The Congress tally was put at 71. A YouGov-Mint-CPR survey, also published in February, said that 51 per cent believed that construction of the Ram Ma...

A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down the Centre’s electoral bond scheme. Electoral bonds enabled anonymous political donations, which the apex court has termed as “unconstitutional”. It stated categorically that the scheme violates the right to information under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. What was the reasoning behind for this verdict,...

The Uttarakhand assembly passed the State’s Uniform Civil Code last week. Titled ‘The Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand, 2024’, the Bill was one of the BJP’s poll promises during the 2022 Assembly election campaign. Although its applicability is supposed to be uniform, the law exempts tribal populations, and also the Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) from its purview. What’s the legal history and backg...

The Union Finance Ministry has come out with a ‘White Paper’ on the changes in the Indian economy in the past 20 years. In the 58-page document, which it presented in Parliament, the government compares the 10 years of UPA-rule from 2004 to 2014 with 10 years of NDA rule from 2014 to 2024. It claims that the NDA government in 2014 inherited a “deeply damaged economy” marked by “governance, economi...

The people of Pakistan have spoken. They have reposed their faith in democracy and cast their vote against the establishment’s efforts to decimate the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Independents backed by his party, PTI as it’s known, have won 93 seats in a House of 264, with the Muslim League Nawaz notching up 75. The Pakistan People’s Party has won 54 seats....

For anyone who drives a vehicle in this country, the nightmare scenario is the same: an accident involving another person. India has one of the worst road accident rates in the world – in 2022, the country reported over 4,60,000 road accidents, with over half taking place on national and State highways. Clearly, road safety is an area of huge concern. Recently, new provisions related to hit-and-ru...

India and Iran have deep cultural and historical connections. But relations between the two nations have atrophied in recent times. US sanctions on Iran have been a big factor, leading to India largely curtailing its engagements with the country. But recent developments – visa-free travel for Indians, and Iran’s entry into BRICS -- seem to provide reason for cautious optimism. What are the key con...

The RBI has imposed major restrictions on the operations of Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL). It has directed Paytm Payments Bank to stop accepting deposits or top-ups in customer accounts, wallets, FASTags, and other instruments after February 29. An RBI circular stated that this action follows an audit report and a compliance validation report by external auditors, which revealed “persistent non-c...

If you or your child has a bad cough, the first thing you’ll probably do is reach for a cough syrup. It’s easy, it's available over the counter and there’s no fuss about taking it. But does it work? Is it at all effective to help your cough go away? Last year, a panel of the US Food and Drug Administration came to the agreement that phenylephrine, a common ingredient used in a number of cough and...

Pakistan goes to the polls on the 8th of February to elect members of what will be its 16th lower House or National Assembly. The polls come just as former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been convicted in two successive cases and stands debarred from contesting elections. His party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, or PTI as it is known, is fighting with its back to the wall. Pakistan Muslim League l...

In the past few weeks, there has been a surge of complaints from passengers about Digiyatra. Their main complaint is about security personnel and airport staff collecting their biometrics for the app, using coercion and deception. According to travellers, CISF personnel at the entry gates were asking them to scan their boarding pass and capturing their photos, and then enrolling them in the Digi Y...

This is a crossover episode On February 1, the BJP-led government will place its Interim Budget in Parliament, seeking a vote on account. Has the NDA government’s economic performance in its second term fared better than its first? Here we discuss the question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Australian Open likes to call itself ‘the Happy Slam’ and this year’s edition sure turned out to be a happy one for India. Rohan Bopanna became a Men’s Doubles Grand Slam champion for the first time and claimed the World No. 1 ranking at the age of 43. In Men’s Singles, Sumit Nagal made it to the main draw after coming through three qualifying rounds and scored an upset victory over 31st seed...

This year’s Annual Status of Education Report or ASER, ‘Beyond Basics’, surveyed over 34,000 young people aged between 14 and 18, in 28 districts across the country, to get an inkling into: what are the young people of India currently doing? What are their basic maths and reading abilities like? And how do they navigate the digital world through smartphone use? The results were perhaps not very su...

India’s public distribution system – its ration shops – through which subsidised food grains are distributed to the poor is the largest such welfare programme in the world. It is a lifeline that saves millions from hunger. But for the past few years, the Union government has been running pilot projects where fortified rice --- rice enhanced with iron and vitamins – is being distributed instead of...

What began on October 7 as a conflict between Israel and Hamas seems to be spreading across the entire region. Even after 100 days of a conflict that has already claimed the lives of more than 25,000 people, Israel’s military assault on Gaza continues. But this war has sprouted many secondary plot-lines: Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shia group backed by Iran, has been exchanging fire with the Isra...

A new paper released by the NITI Aayog has claimed that multidimensional poverty (MDI) has declined from 29.17% in 2013-14 to 11.28% in 2022-23, and that 24.82 crore people “escaped” from multidimensional poverty during this 9-year period. Titled ‘Multidimensional Poverty in India since 2005-06: A Discussion Paper’, the NITI Aayog report claims that India is well on track to achieve the Sustainabl...

Having a loved one in intensive care at a hospital is an experience many of us have gone through, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a stressful time, what with the strain of a relative being ill, the decisions you may have to take, and the costs you have to tackle. What should ICU care look like in India? The Union Health Ministry recently released a list of guidelines that list out cri...

Relations between India and Maldives seem to have hit a rough patch. First came some controversial remarks from Maldivian politicians on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lakshadweep visit, prompting a ‘boycott Maldives’ campaign on Indian social media. Then came a joint press communiqué with China, which committed to “elevating strategic cooperation” between Maldives and China. This was followed by...

The Telecommunications Act, 2023 was passed by Parliament in the Winter Session of Parliament last year. The Act consolidates much of the telecom laws that existed beforehand, and repeals colonial-era laws that have been updated over the course of over 137 years.  While the Act is short in length at just over 45 pages, much of its implementation will be done through notifications and orders that w...

For at least a year and a half now, most of us have relegated Covid-19 to the back of our minds. Cases of the virus had drastically reduced, it was not mentioned in headlines any more, and life seemed to have got somewhat back to normal as we learnt to live with Covid. It’s difficult however to ignore the news of yet another coronavirus mutation – this latest sub-variant, JN.1, a descendent of the...