In Focus by The Hindu

The pandemic wasn’t kind to school children. Two years of lockdown has meant a huge setback in terms of learning outcomes. While children from privileged backgrounds could do online classes, poorer children could not. It has been reported that, post-pandemic, children from marginalised communities have even forgotten what they had learned two years earlier. Now a new research study titled ‘Where a...

The Parliament has passed the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2023. This law amends the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. While the government claims that the aim of this law is to help fight climate change by promoting afforestation, conservationists have panned the Act. They say it is actually promoting deforestation. Why are environmentalists so worried about this Bill? Does it really take aw...

Over the past few years, we’ve heard the names of a lot of new diseases – we had the Zika virus, the Nipah virus and even an Ebola scare, while the coronavirus pandemic rocked the country. Scientists estimate that about 60% of all known infectious diseases are zoonotic, meaning they spread from animals to people. India has a huge population, with large numbers of livestock reared and the additiona...

18-year-old chess prodigy R Praggnanandhaa has finished as runner-up in the FIDE Chess World Cup held at Baku, Azerbaijan. He held world No 1 Magnus Carlsen to two consecutive draws in classical chess. The match then went to a tie-break, where Carlsen won 1.5-0.5. This is the first time since V Anand that an Indian has reached the final of the Chess World Cup, and Praggnanandhaa is the third young...

India is staring at a strange problem: malnutrition among children has not gone away, but at the same time, there is an increasing burden of childhood obesity. Simply put, obesity happens when children eat and drink more calories than they burn off. The latest National Family Health Survey reported that 33 States and Union Territories in the country registered a spike in the number of overweight c...

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill was passed in Parliament earlier this month. The government says the law will help improve ‘ease of doing business’. It will amend 183 provisions in 42 different laws. These amendments aim to eliminate imprisonment or excessive fines for minor offences. While this sounds good, the Bill has drawn criticism for the amendments it makes to the Drugs and C...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had granted a bailout of $3 billion to Sri Lanka in March this year. The IMF had imposed nine conditions for agreeing to the bailout. Next month, the global lender will conduct its first review -- before the next tranche of funds under the bailout are released. What are the conditions that Sri Lanka has to fulfil? What has been the public response to the auste...

Doctors and MBBS students, in various fields of specialisation, across various age-groups, from diverse geographies, say they believe that while common entrance examination for medical seats is a necessity, the coaching industry skewed it in favour of urban and richer students. Unaffordability of quality coaching classes and the luxury that richer students have to drop a year to prepare for the ex...

On August 3, the Indian government brought in import restrictions for laptops, tablets and servers. The import of these products would be allowed against a valid licence for restricted imports. Following some strong reactions from industry, it has deferred the effective date to Nov 1.  But to begin with, what did the government aim to achieve with these curbs? Shore up national security by having...

It sounds like a science fiction movie, but it’s all real: scientists managed to revive a pair of roundworms that had been buried deep in the Siberian permafrost 46,000 years ago. The roundworms, called nematodes, were thawed in a lab and came alive again, reproduced several generations, and then died. These nematodes first existed when the woolly mammoths did, managed to survive in the harshest o...

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 has been passed in both houses of the Parliament. The Bill has gone through many versions. Despite this, the version that has been passed has left most independent data privacy experts disappointed. It has come in for even more criticism from Right to Information (RTI) activists, who have charged that the Bill amends the RTI Act, 2005 and weakens it....

Seventeen-year-old grandmaster D Gukesh has become the highest-rated Indian player in FIDE rankings. He shot past his idol Viswanathan Anand when he defeated Azerbaijan’s Misratdin Iskandarov in the ongoing World Cup in Baku. With this victory, Gukesh’s live rating went up to 2755.9, higher than Anand’s 2754. As Gukesh climbed up to become world No. 9, Anand slipped to the 10th spot. This is a big...

In this episode, we are discussing the new book “The Importance of Shinzo Abe: India, Japan and the Indo-Pacific”, a collection of essays, edited by Sanjaya Baru, examining the legacy of the former Japanese leader who was the country’s longest serving Prime Minister in history. Abe stepped down in 2020 citing health reasons, and his shock assassination in 2022 stunned the world. In this podcast, w...

The Rajya Sabha on July 27 passed the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023. This bill, among other things, brings in age-based certification for films and stringent penalties for piracy. It also provides for separate certification for the exhibition of films on TV and ‘other media’ So, what was the need for these changes to the Cinematograph Act, 1952? How will the age-based certification work and...

Last month, the Lok Sabha passed a Bill that was aimed at improving the ease of doing business in India. This Jan Vishwas Bill, passed by the Rajya Sabha, this month brought in amendments to 42 different laws, including amendments to two sections of The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. These drug law changes have sparked a controversy: health activists have said that it essentially decriminalises th...

On July 24, Israel’s coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu passed a key part of its proposed judicial reforms. The reforms, which essentially aim to give the executive control over the judiciary, had sparked massive protests both inside and outside the Knesset. The Opposition staged a walkout when the Bill came up for vote, and it was passed with 64 votes in favour and zero...

The Rajasthan government on July 21 passed the Right to Minimum Guaranteed Income Bill, 2023, a legislation that has been hailed as a ‘historic’ step towards the fulfilment of a state’s social security obligations towards citizens. The Bill has three key elements: a right to guaranteed employment, right to a minimum guaranteed income – which is not to be confused with a minimum income guarantee, o...

President Xi Jinping has dismissed Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang after just seven months in office. Qin has been replaced by former Foreign Minister Wang Yi. This development comes a month after Qin disappeared mysteriously from public view, sparking feverish speculations about his fate. A career diplomat, Qin rose rapidly through the ranks, and was seen as close to President Xi Jinping. In Ma...

There has been extreme civil strife in Manipur for nearly three months. Two major ethnic groups – the Valley-dwelling Meiteis and the hill-dwelling Kukis – seem to have completely lost even the bare minimum of mutual trust essential to co-exist peacefully. The barbaric sexual assault of Kuki-Zomi women on May 4, a viral video of which emerged recently, brought to national consciousness the depth,...

It’s World Hepatitis Day this week, on July 28, and perhaps an apt time to look at conditions associated with the liver. One of the first things that comes to mind is alcohol and the liver. Across the world, people have believed for decades now that a moderate amount of alcohol consumption may be good for you – that it could potentially protect you against heart disease. A study published earlier...

While still frowned upon in most parts of the country, live-in relationships are becoming increasingly common. Couples can choose not to get married for a number of reasons and still stay together, share a household and possibly children. So how legal are these relationships in India?  In a recent judgement, the Allahabad High Court refused to grant protection to an inter-faith couple in a live-in...

The Biden administration has taken a decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions as part of military aid for its ongoing war with Russia. This has evoked concern among human rights watchdogs, as cluster munitions are known to be a deadly cause of civilian casualties. More than 120 countries have signed a treaty that bans the production, use, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions. As...

Last month, the Union government stopped the sale of rice and wheat from the Central pool under the Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS). This has provoked sharp reactions from state governments led by Opposition parties, especially Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, who have accused the Centre of “playing politics” and of being “anti-poor”. State such as Tamil Nadu, which have a universal Public Distribution Sy...

Every headline over the past few weeks has been of the staggering rise in prices of not just tomatoes, but also of potatoes, onions, rice, wheat, tur dal and milk. The steep hike in prices is affecting residents across the country, changing the amount of food we can afford to buy, what we cook and what we put on our plates and finally eat. Nutritionists and doctors have long called for healthy die...

July 16 is World Snake Day. When you have a day dedicated to something, it typically denotes a call to care for, or draw attention to, the welfare of the entity to which the day is dedicated. That’s how it is with Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and so on. But with World Snake Day, things get a little complicated, as the first thing that comes to mind when you mention ‘snakes’ is the fear of snake bite...