Parley by The Hindu

The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns have made work from home an imperative for several industries. Clearly, some job profiles lend themselves to work from outside the office. Others, where human interaction is necessary, obviously do not. For those industries and job profiles for which work from home is possible, has the concept come to stay, is the question before us now… Running up...

In the midst of the massive protests that have erupted in the U.S., social media platform Twitter decided to do something it had avoided for several years: call out some of President Donald Trump's tweets as being incorrect information and as being against its policies. This prompted Mr. Trump to warn social media platforms of stricter controls via an Executive Order. It also prompted another soci...

India has never spent more than 2% of its GDP on healthcare. And healthcare facilities across the country straddle several levels of efficiency and sufficiency. The infrastructure facilities and services are at best patchy. While States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu fare better, the impact of a virulent COVID-19 has shaken even the States that traditionally have done well. With COVID-19 having put...

In the last few weeks, France and Australia have taken significant steps to make news aggregators such as Google pay for the re-use of news. The beneficiaries will be news publishers, who for years have been struggling to make the digital transition. While the competition regulator in France has effectively pushed Google into negotiating a remuneration deal with publishers, Australia has proposed...

This week, we discuss the global Coronavirus pandemic that has effectively brought normal life to a full stop in India through a Centre-enforced lockdown. The importance of social distancing cannot be stressed enough. But this also has huge repercussions on our livelihoods and the economy, which has already been suffering a slowdown over the last year. To discuss this, are Dr. Naushad Forbes (form...

On March 2, a 43-year-old Muslim man was charged with sedition after he allegedly chanted pro-Pakistan slogans in front of the mini Vidhan Soudha at Kundapur in Karnataka’s Udupi district. Last month, the police arrested a teacher and a parent in Bidar for an allegedly seditious play against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Over the last few months, many people protesting against the Citizenship Ame...

The massive restructuring of the military command structure has dismantled the old civil-military relationship, with far greater powers in decision-making now being bestowed on the armed forces. In a conversation moderated by Atul Aneja, Madanjit Singh and Anit Mukherjee weigh in on this highly complex transformation which is likely to lead to a complete overhaul of the military command structure....

After the Central government cited physical and physiological reasons for why women could not be given commanding positions in the Indian Army, the Supreme Court had last week observed that there was a need for a “change of mindset” and display of “administrative will”. In this episode of Parley, moderated by Dinakar Peri, Lieutenant Generals Syed Ata Hasnain (Chancellor, Kashmir University) and D...

Presenting the Union Budget for 2020-21 in Parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said it would boost common people’s income and enhance their purchasing power. Ananth Narayan (Professor of Finance, S.P. Jain Institute for Management Research) and veteran banker V. Srinivasan discuss whether the proposed changes in direct taxes and other measures are likely to spur consumption and investm...

The past few weeks have been the most polarising in recent memory with regard to freedom of expression norms. FIRs were registered against students for stating their political opinions even as political leaders actively indulged in hate speech. This brings into focus the tug-of-war between morality and state security, freedom and responsibility. Should statements by civil society and politicians b...

Over the past few weeks, several actors have spoken out against the Citizenship Amendment Act-National Population Register-National Register of Citizens (CAA-NPR-NRC) as well as the attack on students and faculty in Jawaharlal Nehru University. In a conversation moderated by Radhika Santhanam, Malayalam actor Parvathy Thiruvothu and communications consultant Dilip Cherian discuss why so many celeb...

Open Source has been part and parcel of software programming in India for a while now. Free sharing has been an ideal for a long time. But have Big Tech proprietary firms co-opted the open-source platforms along the way? Venkatesh Hariharan (Senior Fellow, IDFC Institute) and Sangeeta Gupta (VP, National Association of Software and Services Companies) discuss the history of the Open Source movemen...