In Focus by The Hindu

Three prime ministers in three months. That’s the political score for England just ahead of the T20 world cup. The old and mature democracy distinctly looks a bit Third Worldish. Just after saying she wasn’t a quitter, Liz Truss had to quit as Prime Minister on Thursday. It wasn’t really a surprise after she had to sack her Finance Minister and then lost her Home Minister as well. The new Finance...

The expected has happened. Mallikarjun Kharge is the new president of the Indian National Congress. His rival, diplomat turned politician Shashi Tharoor, garnered impressive thousand-odd votes against Kharge, who was considered to be the establishment candidate. The election does show that inner-party democracy in the Congress party is possible. By holding elections in a transparent way, the Congr...

This year’s Global Hunger Index, a peer-reviewed annual report that tracks hunger at the “global, regional, and country levels," has shown South Asia, and India in particular, as a hunger hot spot. India has been ranked 107th out of the 121 countries that were the subject of the report. India, whose child-wasting rate of 19.3% was the highest of any country, was ranked below countries such as Paki...

The Finance Minister recently addressed the Indian industry, urging them to step up investments in the country with confidence. She also asked them why they were like Lord Hanuman, who had to be reminded of his own strength. Why did she make this appeal? What is the status of private investment in this country? The government has budgeted for higher public spending this fiscal year, but could this...

Josep Borell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has triggered a controversy by saying that Europe was a garden and “most of the rest of the world” was a jungle. He warned in a speech at the European Diplomatic Academy on the 13th of October, that the “jungle could invade the garden”. He continued, “The gardeners should take care of it, but they will...

The RBI issued directions earlier this week to Indian banks on the provisions they ought to make against loans, if the entities to which they have lent funds in foreign currency have not hedged against risk of changes in the exchange rate. After all, if an Indian company had borrowed one dollar a year ago, and has to close the loan now, it would have to shell out more rupees today to close one dol...

 The mid-day meal scheme is considered to be one of the government's most successful initiatives. For thousands of children across the nation, this scheme guarantees that they get at least one meal a day. While this has led to increased school attendance, data and social audits reveal that the food being served is sometimes unhygienic, cold, contaminated, or nutritionally inadequate. Consequently,...

Chinese President and general secretary of China’s Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is all set to shred the two-term rule for the country’s top leader in the post Deng Xiaoping era. Xi will be the first leader in decades who is expected to hang for an unprecedented third term at the upcoming 20th Congress of the Communist Party.   So, what does this mean for China and its internal and external policie...

On October 6, India abstained from voting on a draft decision at the United National Human Rights Council that called for a debate on the “situation of human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Region” in China. By a narrow majority of 19 to 17, China and its allies ensured the defeat of a Western bloc of nations that were seeking a debate on the state of the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.  The very n...

If the Covid-19 pandemic turned our world upside down, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added to the global economic gloom. We thought it apt to now take a quick snapshot of major economies undergoing stress and of places where policy action is going against the grain. We also wanted to take a peek into nations that are doing rather well, when the rest of the world is surrounded by uncertainty. We...

Fifth generation telecom technology, or 5G, has been in the news lately. Spectrum that was recently auctioned to telecom firms for providing 5G services fetched the government about Rs. 1.5 lakh crore. Airtel has already unveiled services in 8 cities. Jio promises to follow suit by Deepavali this year, even as it targets pan India availability by December 2023.  Meanwhile, C-DoT or the Centre for...

 India’s foreign exchange reserves are lower by about $100 bn from a year ago. The rupee has also depreciated; it has seen a decline of more than 7% since the start of the financial year in April. Though the Reserve Bank has dipped into the reserves to help stem volatility in the rupee, that is not the only reason that the observed value of reserves has declined. Changes in valuation, given the do...

On September 13, 2022, India and China disengaged from a fifth friction point in Eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Both sides have now established five buffer zones since tensions began in April 2020, but the LAC crisis is far from over. In this episode, Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Reservation Foundation and author of “Understanding the India China Border...

The rupee weakened past 81 against the dollar for the first time ever last week. The RBI’s intervention in the forex market to help stem the volatility by selling dollars has meant that our forex reserves have fallen about $94 billion over the course of about 12 months to about $545 billion in mid September. How much lower can we afford to let our reserves go? Is there a ‘correct’ level for the ru...

Nothing seems to be going easy for the Congress. Even selecting and electing a non-Gandhi family member as the Congress president has proved to be a tall order.  Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot claimed that he didn’t know anything about a pro-incumbent revolt in the state legislature party even as Sachin Pilot waits in the wings to become Chief Minister.  After an apology to party president...

There is a minor storm in the chess world over alleged cheating. It all began on September 4 when a 19-year-old grandmaster named Hans Niemann defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen in an over-the-board game in a tournament in the US. Following this shocking loss to a player rated much lower, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament - something that almost never happens in a top event. He offered no e...

Following setbacks in his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a partial mobilisation of ‘reservists’ to bolster the war effort. He launched his so-called special military operation with 150,000 troops, but now he plans to raise an additional 300,000 troops. Simultaneously, he also announced that referendums will be held in four Russia-held regions of Ukraine. If the...

Zar. Zendegi. Azadi. Women. Life. Freedom. That’s the slogan given by Iranian women protesters after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being allegedly beaten in police custody for wearing her hijab improperly.  The other popular slogan is “death to the dictator”.  Over 40 persons have been killed in the protests in about 50 cities across Iran since Mahsa Amini’s death. The protests continue in th...

Adoption in India is known to be a rather long, tedious and painful process. Now, in an ostensible attempt to speed up the adoption process, the government has introduced some changes. It has notified the ‘Model Amendment Rules’ under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2021 and so, from September 1, instead of the courts, it is the District Magistrates who would...

On September 14, a two-judge bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli assented to several significant amendments to the BCCI Constitution. These amendments had been unanimously approved by the BCCI at its annual general body meeting in December 2019. But the BCCI needed the Supreme Court’s approval for its amendments to take effect, and now the approval has come. One of the most talked abou...

Quiet Quitting has recently captured the imagination of employers and employees alike. Is it a new concept or is it a new name for something that is as old as industry itself?  Quiet Quitters are described as those who continue to be employed in a company but just do their job and no more. They are not seen as going above and beyond. Some experts argue that that is all right. Others say, the level...

Bilateral meetings hogged the limelight at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – the ones that happened and even the ones that didn’t. The presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were watched closely. Especially the bits where Mr. Putin said that he understood Chinese and Indian concerns about the...

Spanish teenager Carlos Alcaraz, who won the US Open last week, has become the youngest male player to be ranked world number 1. There’s been plenty of buzz over the 19-year-old for some time now, and while many felt he would win a Grand Slam sooner or later, few expected him to claim both a Grand Slam title and the number 1 ranking this year itself. But former world number one Juan Carlos Ferrero...

Taliban authorities in Kabul have denied that wanted terrorist kingpin Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Muhammad was in Afghanistan. The denial came in the wake of a report in the Pakistani newspaper, The News, which claimed that Azhar was in Afghanistan. Masood Azhar, it may be recalled, was released by India following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in 1999. He was designated...

Western sanctions had initially threatened to derail the Russian economy ever since the country invaded Ukraine. However, Russia has shown a resilience that has surprised observers, and which has the potential to realign the global economic order. In a recent article for Business Line, Biswajit Dhar, Professor of Economics at the JNU, points out how observers’ projections for Russia’s GDP contract...