As of February 1, 140 cases and four deaths due to Guillain- Barré Syndrome have been reported in Pune, Maharashtra.The outbreak has shocked the public – most people have never heard of this rare, autoimmune neurological disorder before. Guillain- Barré Syndrome or GBS leads to the immune system attacking the peripheral nervous system, causing weakness in the muscles, and in some cases, paralysis. At present, doctors have said the outbreak could be linked to a bacterial infection that many of th...
Feb 03, 2025•21 min
Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants has led to more than 3,500 arrests. In a related development, Colombia narrowly avoided a trade war with the US when it turned back American military planes bringing back Colombian migrants. India, in contrast, has repeatedly said that on the immigration issue, it will do the “right thing” by the US. How are undocumented immigrants affected by Trump’s recent moves changing the immigration re...
Jan 31, 2025•42 min
The government is slowly but steadily, increasing its focus on nuclear energy. India's nuclear power operator NPCIL invited proposals from industry to set up captive small nuclear reactors on December 31, 2024. This invite is in line with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's announcement that the government would support the use of SMRs to increase the share of nuclear power in India's energy basket. While presenting the Union Budget 2024-25 in July last year, Ms. Sitharaman announced tha...
Jan 30, 2025•38 min
It’s official now – the number of births in Kerala have hit an all-time low of about 3.9 lakh per year, a significant drop from the previous average of about 5.5 lakh per year. This ironically, has led to a spike in maternal mortality – not because more mothers are dying – Kerala has an excellent track record – but because fewer babies are being born. The State has led the demographic transition in south India – it was the first to achieve replacement levels of fertility and now has a total fert...
Jan 29, 2025•28 min
Will Arvind Kejriwal return to power once again in Delhi? Or, will the BJP build on the momentum of its recent victories in Haryana and Maharashtra to dislodge the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from power? What are the stakes for the Congress in these elections, given that its vote share in the last election had shrunk to less than 5%? These are some of the questions on people’s minds as the state gears up for the assembly polls, scheduled for February 5. In this episode of In Focus, we preview the chan...
Jan 27, 2025•35 min
Last month, The Hindu broke the story of 16 Indian workers trapped in ‘prison-like’ conditions at a cement factory in the Libyan city of Benghazi. Their phones and passports had been taken away, they hadn’t been paid their wages for months, and had been forced to work for much longer hours than what was specified in their contract. These workers, hailing from rural Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, are still awaiting repatriation back to India, which is expected to happen later this month. What led these...
Jan 22, 2025•1 hr 1 min
After more than 15 months of conflict and devastation, there is finally a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. The ceasefire will come into force on January 19. The agreement, brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and US officials, will unfold over three phases. It involves Hamas releasing Israeli captives, in exchange for Israel releasing thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel allowing a surge in humanitarian aid. A ceasefire that was elusive all through 2024 suddenly clicked into place a few days before t...
Jan 17, 2025•29 min
On January 20th, Donald Trump will take the oath of office as the United States’ President for the second time. There is a lot of speculation, and also apprehension, on what to expect from his administration: will there be mass deportations of undocumented migrants? Will we see a new tariff war as he raises import tariffs across the board? How will he deal with Iran and China? Will he break with the Biden administration’s foreign policy with regard to Europe, Ukraine and West Asia? What are the ...
Jan 16, 2025•39 min
After a long wait of sixteen months, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on January 3, 2025, unveiled the draft rules for implementing the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 —India’s first comprehensive data privacy legislation applicable across all sectors of commerce and industry. The government is currently inviting stakeholder feedback on the draft until February 18, 2025, with plans to commence implementation by mid-year. This episode offers a comprehensive...
Jan 13, 2025•37 min
Just as the New Year 2025 began, there was panic once again in the media. Reports of a supposedly new respiratory virus that had caused a surge of infections in China began to do the rounds, fuelling speculation about its entry into India. Suddenly HMPV, the human metapneumovirus became a buzzword – headlines were full of it, cases were being detected in India and there was alarm all around. Doctors and the Union Health Ministry have said over and over again that it is not a new virus, and it is...
Jan 08, 2025•14 min
In this special year-ender episode of the In Focus podcast, our hosts discuss the key episodes from this past year. From environmental issues and health-related topics, to international affairs and legal developments within the country, this episode covers a range of diverse subjects that were discussed in In Focus this year. With six key episodes each, our hosts discuss a recap of these issues and recent developments. Tune in for an engaging recap of all the key subjects we discussed throughout...
Dec 31, 2024•1 hr
A recent study conducted in the U.K. found that paracetamol, a common, over-the-counter medication can have serious stomach, heart and kidney complications in senior citizens who take it repeatedly. Constant use of paracetamol was linked to a 24% risk of peptic ulcer bleeding, a 19% risk of chronic kidney disease and a 9% risk of heart failure. This is not the first time the overuse of paracetamol has been linked with adverse health effects but it continues to be a medication that is commonly bo...
Dec 24, 2024•30 min
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol has been impeached by the country’s National Assembly. His impeachment follows his sudden declaration of martial law on December 3, a move he was forced to withdraw in a few hours after the Parliament voted it down. Mr Yoon’s Presidential powers remain suspended as the impeachment goes to the Constitutional Court for review and a final verdict. In the interim period, Prime Minister Han Duck Soo will serve as the acting President. So, what prompted Mr Yoon to...
Dec 23, 2024•38 min
The Indian government fixes a Minimum Support Price or MSP for 22 crops - paddy, wheat, several pulses, oilseeds and millets are a part of this list. The objective of declaring MSP is to help farmers get a good price for their produce and to procure food grains for public distribution. However, recent data shows that the cost of production is rising. A recent report by Infomerics Ratings notes that the value of MSP for paddy has increased over time, reflecting the rising overall cost of producti...
Dec 17, 2024•38 min
The Great Nicober Island is the southernmost island in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. It is home to species of flora and fauna not found anywhere else on the earth. It is designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It is also the habitat of indigenous communities, including the Nicobarese and the Shompen, a ‘Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group’ (PVTG). The island is located on a seismically high-volatile zone, and experiences on an average one earth quake a week, of var...
Dec 16, 2024•49 min
After battling insurgency for 13 years, the Bashar al Assad regime has collapsed in Syria. Assad and his family have fled to Russia where they have been given asylum. An Al Qaida affiliate that today goes by the name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has taken control of the Syrian capital Damascus. The immediate future of Syria now depends on the leader of the HTS, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, a man who was handpicked by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish a branch in Syria. What were...
Dec 11, 2024•44 min
For the past month, the news has been filled with headlines about Delhi’s toxic air. Air quality levels deteriorated so sharply that a number of emergency measures had to be put in place, from shutting down school to halting construction activity, just to bring the levels down from ‘very poor’ to ‘poor’. But apart from the many respiratory issues that residents of Delhi, NCR and other parts of India face due to breathing in polluted air, did you know that air pollution could also lead to heart d...
Dec 06, 2024•25 min
Five people were killed and many were injured in clashes that followed protests over a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi, in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district. The police have arrested dozens of people and registered cases against 400 people. The UP government has ordered a judicial probe into the violence. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has described the survey and the violence as a “well-planned conspiracy aimed at hurting communal harmony”. There are also multiple versions of ...
Dec 05, 2024•30 min
The fifth meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) has ended without delivering a legally binding treaty to address global plastic pollution. The talks, which began in March 2022, were supposed to have produced a treaty by the end of 2024 but they haven’t. The discussions saw a sharp divide between two camps – a large coalition of about 100 countries that wanted caps on plastic production, and a smaller set of oil-producing nations that wanted to focus only on plastic ...
Dec 04, 2024•41 min
Today, we are discussing an important topic concerning the elections in Maharashtra. Now after the results that were announced on the 23rd of this month, we have seen that there have been several doubts which have been raised with respect to the results concerning the EVMs. Even today Maharashtra Congress president Nana P submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission speaking at an in-person hearing raising several doubts. We thought let us understand what the issues are let us understand ho...
Nov 30, 2024•47 min
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, the Maha Vikas Agadi (MVA) won 30 out of the 48 seats, while the Maha Yuti could get only 17 seats. But in the just concluded Assembly elections, the Maha Yuti won a landslide, with 235 out of the 288 seats. The Maha Yuti alliance’s main constituent, the BJP alone won 132 seats, with the other two, the (Ajit Pawar-led) NCP and the (Eknath Shinde-led) Shiv Sena garnering 41 and 57 seats respectively. None of the MVA parties could win enough seats to...
Nov 28, 2024•37 min
The connection between the gut and the brain has for long been established, but recent research is increasingly finding that problems in the gut are linked to problems in the brain. A paper published by researchers from Harvard Medical School along with others, for instance, has found that the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease was 76 percent higher among those with damage to the lining of their upper gastrointestinal tract than among those without such damage. In fact, the researchers found...
Nov 27, 2024•27 min
The COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan has concluded without a proper agreement on the New Quantified Collective Goal (NCQG) on climate finance. NCQG refers to the money that would be given by the developed countries to developing countries to meet their climate mitigation and adaptation transition goals. Instead of an NCQG deal, the rich nations have agreed to pledge $300 billion annually as a base figure to lead efforts – including by developing countries -- to raise $1.3 trillion an...
Nov 26, 2024•43 min
The Chief Advisor of Bangladesh’s interim government Muhammad Yunus has said that his country will seek the extradition of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina. The former Bangladesh prime minister fled to India on August 5th, and has been living Delhi in a safe house ever since. But now Yunus has said in an interview with The Hindu, that she has been continuing her political activities from India, which is a “problem”. A special tribunal set up in Bangladesh for ‘crimes against humanity’ has also asked ...
Nov 25, 2024•39 min
The National People’s Power (NPP), the ruling alliance led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has secured a historic mandate in Sri Lanka’s parliamentary elections. By winning 159 seats in the 225-member Parliament, it has secured two-thirds majority, a feat never achieved before in Sri Lanka’s proportionate representation system. This victory, coming two months after his election as President, leaves Dissanayake supremely well-placed to fulfil the expectations of a people exhausted by econom...
Nov 20, 2024•49 min
Donald Trump is going to Make America Great Again again. He is all set to take oath in January 2025 as the 47th President of the United States. The media and opinion polls had predicted an exceptionally close presidential race. But Trump won by some distance, winning 301 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226. The Republicans now control the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House. Trump has achieved this on the back of the most divisive, abusive, racist, and gynist campaign in ...
Nov 18, 2024•43 min
Exploitative work conditions faced by Indians in the Middle East is not new, but the recent reports emerging from Saudi Arabia’s ambitious $500 billion Neom project are shocking: a recent documentary alleges that 21,000 foreign workers have died and 1,00,000 have gone missing since 2017, while working on projects that are part of the country’s Vision 2030 initiative. Earlier this week Nadhmi al-Nasr, the long-time chief executive of the Neom project departed, and while there was no reason stated...
Nov 15, 2024•38 min
Negotiators, government representatives, and activists from across the world will assemble in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 for COP29, this year's U.N. climate summit. This COP or Conference of Parties is dubbed the "climate finance COP" as it has a big goal - setting a new climate financing target. Negotiators will discuss ways to set up a fund to help developing countries fight against climate change. But, the issues of climate financing are not just about setting a target; it is about in...
Nov 08, 2024•34 min
The much-delayed Census may finally be conducted next year, with the process being completed in 2026. Following the Census the Central government may go ahead with a delimitation exercise – re-drafting constituencies, based on updated population numbers. This seems to have sparked concern amongst some south Indian States, who believe that the number of seats they represent in Parliament could decrease, as their populations are lower than those of certain States in the north, as they have achieve...
Nov 05, 2024•23 min
Americans are all set to pick their 47th President on November 5. The campaigning has been one of the most fractious in US history, and the stakes have perhaps never been higher. With the Trump campaign focussed on immigration and Harris on women’s rights, whose narrative has won? With just a couple of days of campaigning left, where do the candidates stand with regard to key constituencies such as Latinos, Blacks, especially Black men, Arab/Muslim communities, and women? And who is ahead in the...
Nov 04, 2024•40 min
