The Education Ministry has released the pre-draft of the National Curriculum Framework for school education, or NCF-2023, for public feedback and comments. The document, which was last revised in 2005, has a critical role to play in determining pedagogical approaches and how textbooks are designed. Some key recommendations of NCF-2023 that have made headlines include: board exams twice a year, a semester system for Class 12, and giving students the option of pursuing a mix of courses from scienc...
Apr 19, 2023•36 min
The mafia-style execution of former legislator Atiq Ahmed and his brother, Khalid Azim, by three assailants on the night of April 15 in Prayagraj, while speaking to reporters on camera has again turned the spotlight on the absence of the rule of law in Uttar Pradesh. Two days earlier, on the 13th of April, Atiq’s son, Asad Ahmed, was killed in an alleged encounter with the police in Jhansi. The killings come days after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told the State Assembly that he ...
Apr 18, 2023•22 min
It's back in the news and it's back everywhere. Covid-19, which seemed to be going away, has had a resurgence in India recently, with the data as of April 14, showing that over 11,000 new cases have been recorded. While this particular sub-variant, XBB.1.16, is believed to be mild and not as virulent as last 2021's Delta variant, the government is taking the surge in cases seriously, and has asked States to remain prepared, in terms of beds, oxygen and adequate testing kits. The country has so f...
Apr 14, 2023•22 min
In May 2022, Finland, along with its Nordic neighbor Sweden, applied for NATO membership. It took less than a year for it to formally become NATO’s 31st member. With this, NATO’s border with Russia has more than doubled – from 1,200 km to 2,500 km. How does this development change the security architecture of Europe? Will it lead to a militarization of the Russia-Finland border? How big a strategic setback is this for Russian President Vladimir Putin? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...
Apr 13, 2023•32 min
There have been some dire predictions about how hazardous the heat is going to be this summer. India this year experienced its warmest February since 1877, and in November last year, the World Bank warned that India could become one of the first places in the world where wet-bulb temperatures could increase beyond the survivability threshold of 35°C. Furthermore, last month, Peter Dynes, chief strategy officer at Mirrors for Earth's Energy Rebalancing (MEER), tweeted that India this summer is at...
Apr 12, 2023•31 min
By quashing the Information & Broadcasting Ministry’s order ceasing operations of the Malayalam news channel, Media One, the Supreme Court appears to have sent a clear message to the government of the day – that the freedom of the press is a key pillar of Indian democracy. At a time when the press is under pressure to toe the Government’s line, the judgment is also a signal to members of the media – that they should do their job without fear or favour. The press, the Supreme Court held, had ...
Apr 11, 2023•27 min
A survey of nearly 10,000 people carried out for the Status of Policing in India Report 2023 suggests a high level of support for certain forms of government surveillance but reveals a lack of public awareness regarding critical issues such as the Pegasus spying scandal. The report, prepared by the NGO Common Cause and Lokniti, CSDS, finds that three out of four people believe CCTVs can help monitor and reduce crime. The poor, Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims are the least trusting of the police. In...
Apr 10, 2023•25 min
Last month, Rajasthan became the first state to enact a Right to Health Act. The legislation sparked massive protests from the medical community, with the protests finally being called off on April 4, after an agreement was reached, on the applicability of the law. The Act gives every resident of Rajasthan the right to emergency treatment care without prepayment of fees at designated health centres -- a provision that was contentious. The private healthcare sector had called the Act "draconian" ...
Apr 06, 2023•31 min
All four persons, who had been given the death sentence by a trial court for the May 2008 Jaipur bomb blasts that killed 71 persons, were acquitted by the Rajasthan High Court on the 30th of March. Those acquitted of all charges were: Mohammed Saif, Mohammed Salman, Saifur and Mohammed Sarver Azmi. The State of Rajasthan plans to file an appeal against the acquittal in the Supreme Court. The two-judge bench ruled that the prosecution had been unable to establish a conspiracy between the now-acqu...
Apr 04, 2023•31 min
March 21, was single parents day, commemorating mothers and fathers, who parent alone. And while in India, families are still widely seen as that of two biological parents and their children, this is rapidly changing: families can come in all sorts of forms – from single parents, to parents who are not married but live together, adoptive parents, step-families, queer families and more. However, while some laws and court judgements are clearing the path towards easier access to procedures and sys...
Apr 03, 2023•25 min
India’s women boxers have created history by winning four golds at the IBA World Boxing Championships that just concluded in Delhi. India topped the medals table, matching its best ever performance of 2006. The golden girls this time around were Nitu Ghangas (48 kg), Nikhat Zareen (50 kg), Lovlina Borgohain (75kg), and Saweety Boora (81kg). What is the significance of India’s performance in the context of the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games, and the 2024 Paris Olympics? Can India replicate this ou...
Mar 31, 2023•30 min
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposals for a judicial overhaul that would limit the powers of the Supreme Court have triggered massive protests in the country. More than 100,000 protesters gathered in front of the Israeli Parliament or the Knesset, and as the country’s most powerful trade unions called a general strike, there were flight cancellations at Tel Aviv international airport, and municipality workers, tech workers, government bureaucrats, and most significantly, even ar...
Mar 30, 2023•30 min
The phenomenon of Amritpal Singh has taken Punjab by storm. In a daring act, his supporters ransacked a police station in Ajnala and freed some of his associates in February. From a businessman in Dubai till September last year, Amritpal has become Punjab’s leading practitioner of separatist politics, telling Frontline magazine in a recent interview that he does not recognize the Indian Constitution as it doesn’t see Sikhism as a separate religion. He has inherited Waris Punjab De, an organisati...
Mar 29, 2023•31 min
Last week the Supreme Court asked the Centre for data that could point to a more dignified, less painful, and socially acceptable method of executing prisoners other than death by hanging. A Bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha even mooted the setting up of an expert committee to relook at India’s method of carrying out the death penalty. The alternatives that were discussed included death by lethal injection, lethal gas, and firing squad, among others. The...
Mar 28, 2023•26 min
Rahul Gandhi was disqualified as a member of Parliament from Wayanad constituency in Kerala on the 24th of March, a day after a Surat court convicted him on criminal defamation charges. Mr. Gandhi was sentenced to a maximum two-year jail term. The decision sent shockwaves through the country’s polity. A two-year jail term in a criminal case means that a legislator is automatically disqualified on conviction. It would appear that the only relief available to a disqualified legislator is if a supe...
Mar 27, 2023•17 min
By postponing elections to the provincial assemblies in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa beyond a constitutionally-mandated period, the Election Commission of Pakistan has strayed into uncharted territory that could imperil democracy in the country yet again. This comes after a same-page show by the Army chief Asim Munir and the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in trying to tackle the common threat they perceive from the person of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan. The court...
Mar 24, 2023•26 min
The Wagner Group has been at the forefront of Russian gains in eastern Ukraine, especially in the battle for the town of Bakhmut. It was also in the news over attempts by members of the U.S. Congress to label it as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO), but strangely enough, the Biden administration is opposed to such a labelling. In another related development, President Vladimir Putin has just signed a new law criminalising the spreading of “fake” or “discrediting” information about the Wagne...
Mar 22, 2023•32 min
By issuing a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the International Criminal Court has upped the ante in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. It sets a bar from which retreat will be a trapeze act for the West. American President Joe Biden has hailed the ICC decision even as Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to Moscow to meet President Putin. What impact will this have on the war in Ukraine? How does this affect international relations? And, finally, how will it affect th...
Mar 21, 2023•25 min
A Constitution Bench judgement of the Indian Supreme Court on March 2 took the appointment of Election Commissioners out of the sole hands of the political executive and assigned it to a three-member committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice and the leader of the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha. Appointments will take place through this panel till a law is made on this subject by Parliament. The bench headed by Justice K.M. Joseph said in its judgement that a person wh...
Mar 20, 2023•20 min
Last week, California-based Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the United States, collapsed, sending shock waves through the start-up universe. Then two more banks – the crypto-currency focussed Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital – shut down, sparking fears of wider financial contagion, similar to how the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 triggered a global crisis. The American government and the Federal Reserve acted fast to try and avoid precisely such a scenario by announcing ...
Mar 17, 2023•40 min
Next month, the Supreme Court of India, will listen to final hearings on the issue of legal recognition for same sex marriages in India. A number of petitions have been filed, seeking this recognition. The case follows the landmark Puttuswamy judgement of 2017, affirming the right to privacy as a fundamental right, and then the Navtej Johar judgement of 2018, which decriminalised same sex relationships. The Centre however, has opposed same sex marriages, stating that marriages in India are holy ...
Mar 16, 2023•23 min
For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas. On March 4, a draft international agreement, called the UN High Seas Treaty, was finalised to govern the conduct of governments in ‘open seas’ – the major part of the world’s oceans – two-thirds of it – which lie beyond the jurisdiction of any one country. Once ratified by the signatory countries, the agreement will become legally binding. The treaty, dubbed the ‘Paris Agreement f...
Mar 15, 2023•27 min
In a rare moment for Chinese diplomacy, Beijing used its good offices to broker an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia that should see the two warring West Asian nations re-establishing diplomatic relations and re-opening their embassies within two months. China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, who is a signatory to the “joint trilateral statement”, said the agreement showed that Beijing was a “reliable mediator”. The joint trilateral statement itself said the accord was the consequence of a “noble ...
Mar 14, 2023•22 min
The Indian rupee has had an interesting run these past few weeks. It strengthened in response to investor inflows into the markets but started losing steam soon after the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimony to the U.S. Congress in which he said controlling inflation would continue to be the focus area. Does the RBI have a choice beyond keeping step with the Fed in raising interest rates further? What does it mean for our forex reserves? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...
Mar 13, 2023•25 min
The National Stock Exchange (NSE), one of India’s leading stock exchanges, has tweaked the constituents of its major indices such that three Adani Group companies are all set to enter key Nifty indices from March 31. The Adani stocks being included in Nifty indices include Adani Wilmar, which has been added to Nifty Next 50 and Nifty 100, Adani Total gas, which has been added to Nifty Shariah 25, and Adani Power, which has been added to ten different indices. The move has raised concerns given t...
Mar 09, 2023•33 min
COVID-19 and the fear around it may have gone away, but over the past few weeks, India has been rocked by cases of fever and intense coughs. People across States have been falling sick, and some have even had to be hospitalised. Last week, the Indian Council of Medical Research said these cases are linked to Influenza A, the H3N2 subtype virus that causes flu. The Council said surveillance data had shown a spike in these cases in India. So what is the H3N2 virus? Who is vulnerable to it and what...
Mar 08, 2023•22 min
2023 is a busy year for state elections, with a total of nine state elections scheduled to take place. We are in March now, and three of those assembly polls have concluded. In all three – Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya – the incumbents have been returned to power. The BJP was voted back in Tripura, although with a reduced vote share, while in Nagaland, the alliance of the National Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and the BJP are back in power. In Meghalaya, interestingly, in its election ca...
Mar 07, 2023•25 min
A few days ago, the results of an interesting study were published. The study, conducted in the United Kingdom saw 61 companies and 2,900 employees take part in the reduction of the work-day week, from the standard five days, to four days. At the end of the six-month experiment, employees were less stressed, had better work-life balance and were absent on fewer days. Companies reported no impact on productivity, while revenues remained the same and in some cases, even increased. But can this sys...
Mar 06, 2023•23 min
On February 24th, the Supreme refused to entertain a PIL seeking period leave for students and working women. The three-judge Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, observed that the issue had “different” dimensions and asked the petitioner to approach the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development to frame a policy. The court also took note of a caveat filed by a law student, which said that compelling employers to grant menstrual pain leave could act as a “disincentive” f...
Mar 03, 2023•24 min
GDP data for India in the Oct-Dec 2022 quarter has given out mixed signals. Of concern are a contraction in manufacturing despite a let up in input costs as well as the slowing growth in the high-contact services sectors. Still, the government seems confident of 7% growth in FY23 despite a revised growth rate data put out for FY22 at 9.1%. What does the near future hold for India? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Mar 01, 2023•31 min
