In Focus by The Hindu

The first round of the French Presidential elections got over last Sunday, and two candidates, President Emmanuel Macron, and leader of the far-right National Rally, Marine Le Pen emerged on top with the highest tally of votes. While Macron won the first round with 27.8% of the votes, Le Pen secured 23.2%, while the leftist politician Jean Luc Melenchon finished a close third with 22% of the votes. Interestingly, all the three candidates have bettered their first round performance from 2017, where Macron had received 24% of the votes, Le Pen had 21.3% and Melenchon had 19.6%.

The Presidential run-off, which is scheduled for April 24, will decide whether Macron gets a second term as President or Le Pen manages to unseat him.

So, as things stand today, what do the chances look like for either candidate? All those who did not vote for either Macron or Le Pen in the first round – who will they support in the second round? And what are the possible implications for Europe in case of either outcome – if Macron gets reelected, or if Le Pen manages to win?

Guest: Vaiju Naravane, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Ashoka University, and currently a visiting faculty at Sciences Po in France

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan

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If there is one story that defines India’s foreign policy after the 1998 nuclear tests, it is that of New Delhi’s engagement with Washington across Prime Ministers – Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and now Narendra Modi. The tango is yet to end and the dance masters remain committed to the relationship.

Despite India’s membership of mutually antagonistic clubs like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Quad, New Delhi found it need not make public choices till the February invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The situation today is dramatically altered – choices will have consequences.

While External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar pointed to India’s oil purchases from Russia as being minimal compared to Europe, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a pointed reference to human rights abuses at their recent press conference in Washington.

So, where is the Indo-U.S. relationship headed? We discuss in this episode.

Guest: Dr. Atul Bhardwaj, independent foreign policy researcher and author of ‘India-America Relations (1942-62): Rooted in the Liberal International Order’

Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan

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In its latest assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has laid out several scenarios on the steps that ought to be taken to keep temperatures below 2°C. It warned that even temporarily exceeding the warming level of 1.5°C over the next two decades would mean additional severe impact, some irreversible.

Arunabha Ghosh, founder and CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) discusses the latest report by the IPCC, its implications for India and what the Expert Groups strive to achieve.

Guest: Arunabha Ghosh, founder and CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water

Host: Jacob Koshy

Edited by Reenu Cyriac

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The lead headline in ‘The Indian Express’ newspaper after Pakistan’s National Assembly voted out a Prime Minister for the first time ever said it all. “Imran Khan goes, kicking & screaming”, it read.

Refusing to read the writing on the wall, Mr. Khan tried desperately to hang on to power even on the 9th of April, delaying a vote in the National Assembly after the country’s Supreme Court, in a unanimous verdict, had ordered that the no-confidence motion against him be taken up again.

Finally, in the early hours of the 10th of April, and after a dramatic resignation by Speaker Asad Qaiser, the National Assembly voted out Mr. Khan as Prime Minister. The Pakistan Muslim League (Noon) leader Shehbaz Sharif is expected to be elected the new Prime Minister. We discuss these developments in this episode.

Guest: Fahd Husain, columnist for the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, and anchor for the Dawn News television channel.

Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu, who worked as the newspaper’s correspondent in Pakistan from 1997 to 2000.

Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Delhi reaffirmed India’s decision not to join the sanctions regime against Russia, despite a string of emissaries from the US, EU and other countries calling on India to shift its position in the Ukraine crisis.

Guest: D.B. Venkatesh Verma, former Indian Ambassador to Moscow

Host: Suhasini Haidar, Diplomatic Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Reenu Cyriac

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Mortgage lender HDFC Ltd is all set to merge with HDFC Bank. Under the terms of the deal, which is one of the biggest in the Indian financial sector, HDFC Bank will be 100% owned by public shareholders, while existing shareholders of HDFC Ltd will own 41% stake in HDFC Bank. The news immediately led to a sharp spike in the share prices of both the companies.

So, what exactly is the financial rationale for this merger? How do either of these companies benefit from this deal? Given that this is a merger between two different kinds of companies – one is a retail bank and the other is a Non-Banking Financial Company – what are the implications for shareholders, employees and customers?

Guest: Suresh Seshadri, Business Editor, The Hindu

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

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As anticipated by many, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan did not go by the book and ensured that his handpicked Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri did not put the pending vote of no-confidence against him to vote on April 3. Instead, the Prime Minister advised Pakistani President Arif Alvi to dissolve the country’s National Assembly and four provincial assemblies, which was done with lightning speed.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Umar Ata Bandial, has taken suo motu cognizance of this development and will rule on the constitutionality of the Deputy Speaker’s actions. Opposition parties, meanwhile, have elected their own Speaker and are proceeding with their vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly.

Mr. Imran Khan said that an “outside conspiracy” fueled by bags of money could not decide the fate of Pakistan while the Army clarified that it had nothing to do with the day’s developments.

Guest: Murtaza Solangi, Executive Editor, Nayadaur Media, and former Director-General of Radio Pakistan.

Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor and former Pakistan correspondent, The Hindu.

Edited by Reenu Cyriac

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Up until January this year, only two people were ever reported cured of HIV/AIDS. And now, researchers have said there may be a third case -- an African American woman, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2013, and started on anti-retroviral therapy. In 2017, she was diagnosed with leukaemia and received embryonic stem cells, in the form of cord blood, from a donor who had a rare mutation that naturally blocks HIV from infecting the body’s cells. She also received adult blood stem cells from a relative. Now, doctors say, the woman shows no signs of HIV in her blood and has no detectable antibodies either, making the 60-year-old woman possibly the third case of a person who has been cured of the virus -- the other two cases, both men, received bone marrow transplants as well, from donors with the rare mutation. Unlike the other two cases, however, the woman did not develop graft vs host disease -- a condition where the donor stem cells attack the recipient. Could this be because of the use of embryonic stem cells with adult stem cells? Her doctors believe this may possibly be a factor.

Stem cell therapy, exciting as it is in the field of medicine, is not accessible or possible in the case of a vast majority of persons living with HIV/AIDS in the world. Anti-retroviral therapy or ART, however, has ensured that those with access to the medicines now have long lifespans, comparable to those without HIV/AIDS. A vaccine against the virus would be an ideal solution, offering a potential cure, but close to 40 years since researchers first began to study it, the world still does not have a vaccine for this virus, though there are recent reports of a potential vaccine based on the mRNA platform.

In India, as of 2019, an estimated 23.48 lakh people live with HIV/AIDS -- the prevalence among adult males is estimated at 0.24% of the population and among adult females, the prevalence is 0.20%. Worldwide, over 37 million people live with HIV/AIDS.

So what is the potential stem cell ‘cure’ all about? What is the rare mutation that naturally blocks HIV from entering cells? Why is a vaccine so hard to make, and does the mRNA platform, first used for a COVID-19 vaccine, offer hope?

Guest: Dr Akhil C Banerjea, emeritus professor, National Institute of Immunology and former director, Institute of Advanced Virology, Kerala

Host: Zubeda Hamid

Edited by Reenu Cyriac

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On March 28, the government introduced a new Bill in the Lok Sabha – the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022. The Opposition vehemently opposed it, going so far as to seek a division of votes. But it failed to defeat the introduction of the Bill, as it could muster only 58 votes against, with 120 votes in favour of the Bill.

On the face of it, the Bill proposes to empower police and prison authorities to take “measurements of convicts and other persons for the purposes of identification and investigation in criminal matters”. The term “measurements” includes finger-impressions, palm-print impressions, foot-print impressions, photographs, iris and retina scan, and even biological samples.

Criticism from the Opposition has broadly followed two strands. One thread argues that the Bill violates certain constitutional principles and guarantees and that it goes beyond the House’s “legislative competence”. The other set of criticisms dwell on the fact that it gives too much power to the executive, with very little accountability, raising the temptation for abuse of this law’s provisions.

So, does India really need a Bill of this kind, and how does the current draft of the Bill fare when assessed against constitutional norms?

Guest: Apar Gupta, Executive Director at the Internet Freedom Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit that conducts advocacy on digital rights and liberties

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan

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Earlier this week, on March 27 and 28th, the Negev desert in Israel saw a summit of foreign ministers from six countries. Along with Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, also in attendance were the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain.

Hailed as a ‘historic summit’ by Israel, the meeting is widely seen as an attempt to present a unified front against Iran. But why this summit now, and what are its implications in the context of the ongoing Ukraine war, and the negotiations over a possible resurrection of the Iran deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Guest: Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan

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