In Focus by The Hindu

Earlier this month, Assam began a massive crackdown against child marriages in the State - so far, over 4,000 cases have been registered and over 3,000 people have been arrested. Protests have broken out in the State as young girls and children have been left with no wage earners in the family. Assam has high rates of child marriage -- while the all-India figure as per the latest National Family H...

Five states – Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh – have informed the Centre that they would be reverting to the Old Pension Scheme. Some analysts even believe that one of the reasons for the Congress victory in Himachal was its campaign promise to revert to the Old Pension Scheme. At the same time, the Centre has warned that this move spells fiscal irresponsibility. So...

This year’s Union Budget announced a scheme for the protection of natural resources that are fast degrading in the country: our wetlands. Amrit Dharohar, the scheme announced by the Finance Minister in the Union Budget this year, aims to protect and work towards the optimal use of wetlands. A separate scheme to protect mangroves was also announced. To mark 75 years of Independence last year, India...

It will soon be a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, or to use Moscow’s terminology, began a “special military operation” in Ukraine. A thick fog hangs over the progress of the war – information trickling in about the war continues to be unreliable. Some larger truths, however, are obvious. There are, so far, no victors in this war that has been joined in a proxy manner by NATO and the United Stat...

Last week the Reserve Bank of India raised its key repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.50%. This is the sixth rate hike since last May, for a total hike of 250 basis points in less than a year. The latest hike, while not entirely unexpected in some quarters, came as a surprise to those who were hoping for a pause in the consecutive rate hikes, especially given that inflation pressures were seen to b...

On February 6, an earthquake measuring a massive 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Southern Turkey and parts of Syria, followed by a second quake of the same magnitude a few hours later. The death toll from the earthquake has risen to 17,000 but there’s a fear that many more bodies are under the rubble, the death toll could rise sharply. The scale of the devastation has been immense- the worst such in...

It’s been a little more than two years since Myanmar’s generals staged a coup and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy from power. A bloody civil war is raging in the country, with independent estimates suggesting that the military junta had killed nearly 3,000 civilians and jailed another 18,000 since the 1st of February 2021. More than a third of Myanmar is not under the...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) promises 100 days of wage-based employment every year to rural households across the country. As per independent reports, demand for work under this scheme has been increasing. But in the 2023-24 Union Budget, the government has slashed allocation for this scheme to ₹61,032.65 crore, which is 30% less than the revised estimate of...

Last Saturday the United States shot down what it described as a Chinese “spy balloon” off the coast of South Carolina, raising tensions between the two countries. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who was scheduled to leave for China on Sunday, postponed his visit. He described the incident as an “unacceptable” violation of America’s sovereignty and said that the balloon had “undermined” t...

Pakistan’s last military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, has died in Dubai at the age of 79. I was in Islamabad as a correspondent for The Hindu when General Musharraf took power through a bloodless coup in October 1999. He was the presiding officer for the Kargil incursion but later turned peacemaker, signing a milestone agreement with then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in January 2004....

2023 is set to be a landmark year for India's population trajectory, as the country is predicted to overtake China to become the world's most populous nation. And India will remain in that position for several more years. The advantages, experts have pointed out, is the demographic dividend - we will have a massive number of young people in the working age group, and a relatively lower number of t...

Hindenburg Research, an American ‘activist’ short-seller, known for going after companies that they believed are excessively overvalued, has unleashed a storm in the markets and regulatory circles with a report on the Adani Group of companies. In its report, Hindenburg has accused the Adanis of pulling off “the most egregious corporate fraud” in history. The allegations include stock manipulation...

The United States, Germany and the UK have pledged to send modern main battle tanks (MBTs) to help Ukraine in the ongoing war with Russia. While the US has agreed to send 31 of its M1 Abrams tank, Germany will supply 88 Leopard 2 tanks, while the UK has pledged 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks. These are far short of the number demanded by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky—but it wasn’t an easy dec...

In this episode we are joined by Tanvi Srivastava, short story and fiction writer, who explains the experience of translating Asha San’s diary from Hindi to English.  The original book, a diary, recorded the teenager’s thoughts on the impact of World War II on ordinary people, her unbound admiration for Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and her unwavering love for her motherland in the language she knew...

The banking sector in India witnessed a return to relatively good health over the past few years. With more stringent norms set by regulator RBI NPAs have declined and bank balance sheets have shed much of their baggage of bad loans. Is this trend here to stay? Also as the country emerged from the pandemic and economic growth picked up, banks also saw healthy credit growth. Deposit growth, though,...

The appointment of judges to the higher judiciary continues to be mired in controversy. So much so, there have been some sharp, public comments by Law Minister Kiren Rijiju on the subject. He has written to the Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, suggesting that a Central government representative sit on the collegium of Supreme Court judges that makes appointments to the top court. On sever...

Private capital expenditure has been anaemic for a few years now, a state of affairs that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Business hates ambiguity and in the last three years, ambiguity alone has ruled our personal and professional lives. As we seek leave behind the pandemic impact and head into another Budget season, it’s time to review private sector investment...

The Election Commission, on December 28th, wrote to political parties asking them to attend a demo of a remote Electronic Voting Machine or RVM, which was held on January 16. The EC’s justification for mooting RVMs is to enable domestic migrant workers - who may be working in a state different from where they are on the voter list - to cast their ballot. It has claimed that this measure could reme...

It was only in 2022, after the third wave of COVID-19, that schools in India finally reopened fully, after two plus years of pandemic-related disruptions. Educationists had flagged concerns both about students potentially dropping out and about learning losses. The Annual Status of Education Report 2022, brought out by the NGO Pratham last week, reveals that at least one of these concerns may not...

As we begin our countdown to Budget 2023-24, India faces a tough global environment and volatile commodity prices, the latter posing upside risks to inflation. Economists see some bright spots in the economy as also some concerning metrics, especially to do with exports and recent Core Sector or IIP figures that have given no discernible trend in recent months.  Learn more about your ad choices. V...

On New Year's Day this year, the country was rocked by the news of a horrific accident in Delhi -- 20-year-old Anjali Singh, who was on a scooter, was hit by a car, and her body dragged for several kilometres. Soon after, news reports indicated that investigating officers may consider a lie detector test for the five main accused persons in the crime. This is not the first time a lie detector test...

The past few weeks have seen tremendous excitement around generative AI. Names like ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion are buzzing around, and start-ups in the Generative AI space are being flooded with multiple rounds of funding worth millions of dollars. Apparently, all you need to do is type a textual prompt, and you can have an original news article or a whole new painting ready in a matter...

Pakistan’s economic woes are not new. With dipping foreign exchange reserves and mounting debt, the country has a Himalayan climb ahead when it comes to getting its economy in order. Pakistan’s Prime Minister has just returned from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – two countries that have always been helpful to Islamabad in times of crisis. This time, too, they have promised to help out....

Artificial intelligence has helped take over some of the mundane tasks done by humans across sectors, in recent years. It has helped enhance the value that humans bring to their jobs. But there is also fear that automation may replace humans, leaving us without options for livelihoods. Shop-floor automation in manufacturing is an example that has given rise to such anxieties. Where does AI go from...

The town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district is sinking. More than 700 houses are known to have developed cracks and nearly 150 families have been moved to safer locations. The Uttarakhand and Central governments are scrambling to deal with a problem that is now a full-fledged crisis. Teams of scientists have been deployed to investigate reasons behind the sinking of the town. For years...