In Focus by The Hindu

The Tokyo Olympics is finally done and dusted. The Indian contingent has come back with its best ever Olympic haul – of one gold, two silver and four bronze medals. This edition of the Games has been historic for India not only for its highest ever medals tally but also for its first ever track and field gold. While these are great positives, there have also been near-misses, and some disappointme...

The Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2021 was passed in the Lok Sabha on August 3. Once it comes becomes law, it will replace the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance, 2021. The Bill, among other things, seeks to abolish several appellate tribunals, ranging from the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal and the Airports Appellate Tribunal to the Authority for Advanced Rul...

Host: Zubeda HamidSince March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic first struck India, a majority of our health resources have been allocated towards battling the virus. The country went through a first wave last year with an intense lockdown in place and faced a brutal second wave this year. But while we needed all available healthcare systems to fight COVID-19, what has happened to patients with oth...

Flood devastation is mostly associated with developing countries in tropical zones. But over the past fortnight, some of the world’s richest and technologically most advanced countries with sophisticated flood alert systems were devastated by flash floods. Nearly 200 people have died in floods in Germany and Belgium. There have been similar reports of flood devastation from Henan province in China...

Guest: Anurag Behar, CEO, Azim Premji Foundation Earlier this month, the Indian Council of Medical Research's director general, Dr Balram Bhargava, said that once the country begins to consider re-opening schools, it would be wise to open primary schools before secondary schools, provided all school teachers and staff were vaccinated. A vast majority of schools in India have been shut for over 15...

We are now past the halfway point of the Tokyo Olympics, which is a good time to pause and take stock. India started off well, with an early silver for Mirabai Chanu in weightlifting. But there were several disappointments thereafter, especially in shooting, and in boxing as well. In the run-up to the Games, many in India believed that this would be India’s best Olympics ever in terms of medal hau...

Basavaraj Bommai became Karnataka’s 30th Chief Minister of Karnataka on July 28. He went from being Home Minister in the Cabinet of B.S. Yediyurappa to displacing him as the Chief Minister in a matter of 48 hours. Several reasons have been trotted out as to why BJP felt the need to replace Yediyurappa – his age, the fact that dissidence against him was on the rise within the party, and that corrup...

On Wednesday, July 28, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited India and held key meetings with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, NSA Ajit Doval, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as representatives of civil society organisations. In this episode, we look at the main takeaways of the visit and ask where India U.S. relations are headed as they deal with shared concerns on Afghanis...

There has been considerable debate over the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2021, which is likely to be introduced in the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament. The objective of the Bill is “to prevent and counter trafficking in persons, especially women and children, to provide for care, protection, and rehabilitation to the victims, while respecting their r...

In this episode, we are examining the rise of what's being called China's wolf warrior Diplomacy, referring to an increasingly assertive brand of fiery diplomacy from many of Beijing's diplomats and foreign envoys. What exactly is wolf warrior diplomacy? Is this new diplomacy a change in merely style, or also a change in substance? What does history tell us about how domestic political trends in C...

With the Tokyo Olympics finally kicking off this week, one year late, there is both excitement as well as uncertainty around the event. Tokyo is still under a COVID emergency, and there are many who worry that the Olympics shouldn’t become a public health catastrophe. In Japan itself, public opinion is sharply divided. In fact, one of the biggest Olympic sponsors, Toyota, has said that they won’t...

During the recent Cabinet reshuffle, the government announced the creation of a Ministry of Cooperation. The Ministry’s mandate, the government says, “is to provide a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the co-operative movement in the country”. Opposition parties have called it an attempt by the Centre to take over a a domain that comes under the State government...

An international group of news publications are reporting that a spyware known as Pegasus has been used to spy on politicians, journalists, and activists in at least 10 countries. Reports from the group, which includes The Wire in India, The Guardian in the U.K., and Washington Post in the U.S. among others, suggest that in India, at least 40 journalists, sitting Cabinet Ministers, and holders of...

With less than a year to go for the Assembly elections, the infighting in the Punjab unit of the Congress party has been making the headlines. The two main protagonists are Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu. Punjab, incidentally, is one of the handful of states where the Congress has done well and the BJP is on a weak wicket. Capt. Amarinder is often touted as a rare Co...

Over the past few weeks, the debate on population control in India has been re-ignited. Uttar Pradesh, the most populous State in India, has introduced a draft bill that says that those with more than two children will be debarred from government-sponsored welfare schemes and from contesting in elections to local bodies, while incentives for those who adhere to the two-child norm include subsidies...

In this episode, we are looking at the battle unfolding in China between its big tech companies and Communist Party regulators in the wake of the latest tussle in this on-going tug-of-war. On June 30, the ride-hailing app Didi, which dominates the China market, raised $4.4 billion in its much-anticipated listing on the New York Stock Exchange, the biggest Chinese listing since Alibaba. Days later,...

As the second-wave of the COVID-19 pandemic raged this year, reports poured in of economic distress. Not only were thousands of Indians left without livelihoods due to the lockdowns, they also had to cope with the trauma and expenditure of a loved one who had contracted COVID-19. Media reports indicated that the costs ran into lakhs for hospitalisations, compounded by the desperate search for oxyg...

Can tennis as a sport do better for the lower-ranked players? This question has recently become a talking point for two reasons. First is the formation of the Professional Tennis Players Association, or the PTPA, by Novak Djokovic and Canadian player Vasek Pospisil. The PTPA hopes to get some more by way of collective bargaining power for the players. The second is a report published in the New Yo...

In this episode of the In Focus podcast, we try to understand the threat from drones and where the country stands in terms of preparedness On June 27, explosives were dropped inside the Jammu Air Force station, injuring two IAF personnel. They are believed to have been dropped using drones, the first such attack in the country. The threat from drones has been regularly flagged in the recent past a...

Nearly 20 years after invading Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the United States military on July 3 vacated Bagram, its biggest airfield in the country. Meanwhile, fighting raged amid the U.S. exit and the Taliban’s march through northern Afghanistan has continued to gain momentum with the capture of several districts. In this episode, we look at where Afghanistan is headed and exami...

The Consumer Affairs Ministry last month issued a set of new draft e-commerce rules that has some of the top e-commerce sites rather worried. According to the government, these rules seek to protect consumer interest, prevent unfair trade practices, and encourage fair competition. Among other things, the rules bar certain kinds of flash sales and mis-selling, and make it mandatory for them to appo...

Tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy died in custody on July 5, 2021, aged 84 and in the middle of a long battle for medical bail. Fr. Swamy, a Jesuit priest, had worked with tribals in Jharkhand for over five decades, organising them for land, water and forest rights. The National Investigation Agency accused him of having links with the Maoists and arrested him in connection with the 2018 Bh...

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs as they are known, have been around since 2017. But they suddenly went mainstream this year, attracting the attention of both crypto-currency traders and general investors. The sale of a tokenised digital art work titled ‘Everydays – The First 5000 Days’ by an artist called Beeple, for $69 million, appears to have unleashed an ‘NFT bubble’, with some analysts comparing...

In recent weeks, Canada has been rocked by the discovery of a large number of unmarked graves of indigenous children. In the last week of May, the remains of 215 children were found on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia. And last week, another 751 unmarked graves were found at the site of a similar residential school in the province of Saskatchewan. They graves point to...

On July 1, China's Communist Party turns 100. In this episode, we are looking at how the Communist Party of China got to this landmark and to where it is today, the evolution in its politics, its governing philosophy, its ideology, and increasingly, its turn to nationalism. We will look back, and forward, on this significant political anniversary for China, and examine how changing domestic priori...