In Focus by The Hindu

We’re talking today about the big international story that’s dominated this week and that's the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Palestine. There is very little that I need to say by way of introduction, even as we record despite some truce efforts the conflict between the two sides only seems to be escalating and there's real danger now that this could be a long drawn-out affair that could spiral out of control. The number of casualties is already high. So, in this episode we’re going to look at the immediate triggers for this conflict, look at where things stand between the two sides now and as we always do on this podcast, we will pan out and look at how various geopolitical factors have brought us to this point. Guest: Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor, The Hindu

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The border crisis with China in eastern Ladakh that began in early May 2020 is nowhere near resolution after one year of tensions, even if the stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has faded from newspaper front pages amid India's coronavirus crisis.

In this episode, we look at the LAC situation one year on, and ask what it means for relations with China and the broader security challenges it poses for India.

What is the state of play now at the LAC? How has the past year and the Ladakh crisis changed how the Indian Armed Forces approach guarding the frontiers and deployments along the border? What are the demands on India's resources? Is India ready to face a two-front challenge as the LAC turns "live" and a deepening China-Pakistan relationship? What options does India have as it seeks to mitigate the two-front threat?

Guest: Sushant Singh, Senior Fellow, Centre For Policy Research, New Delhi

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On this episode we discuss China’s once-in-a-decade population census, the results of which were released today (May 11). The numbers show that China has recorded a slowing population growth rate that will likely see its population peak - and be overtaken by India’s - by as early as 2025, according to experts, with the number of births falling for the fourth consecutive year.

This seventh census, released on Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in Beijing, noted 12 million babies were born last year, the lowest number since 1961, a year when China was in the midst of a four-year famine unleashed by Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward policy in 1958 that devastated the farm sector and claimed millions of lives.

So there is a lot to breakdown in this episode, to understand how China got to these numbers, what is says now about the changing composition of China’s demographics and what will be its long term economic impact. There is the overarching question also of what this means for the comparison with India and the window of time in which a demographic dividend could come into play. We’re joined by the Hindu’s China correspondent Ananth Krishnan to discuss.

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Hosted by G. Sampath

The Covid-19 crisis continues to dominate our news coverage, as it rightly should, and while we’ve doing many episodes on the pandemic, a couple of deep dives into policy issues, which is a trademark of this podcast, got lost along the way. We recorded this podcast last month, just after former RBI governor M. Narasimham passed away, with the aim of understanding his legacy in the context of the current challenges facing the banking sector.

Narasimham is perhaps the most influential banker of post-independent India. The reports prepared by the two Committees that he chaired – the Narasimham Committee on Financial System (1991) and the Narasimham Committee on Banking Sector Reforms (1998) – are still the foundational documents for any discussion on banking sector reforms and banking policy. He is also credited with paving the way for epochal moves such as bank mergers, the emergence of new generation private banks, and asset reconstruction companies.

But more than two decades after the two Nararimham Committees gave their reports and recommendations, India’s banking sector remains plagued by a host of problems, from high NPAs to poor governance, and a disconnect from developmental priorities. So what has been the legacy of Narasimham and the two committees that he chaired? How will India’s banking history view his role and contribution to India’s banking sector? To throw light on these questions, we spoke with Amol Agrawal, an economic historian and faculty at Ahmedabad University.

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The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic is raging in India. Hospitals are overflowing, oxygen is in short supply in some parts of the country, patients are prescribed with a number of drugs and patients' relatives are desperately looking for drugs that are also running in short in some cases. What works in the treatment for Covid-19 and what should our treating protocol be? Does plasma therapy work? Are drugs like Remdesivir useful? And what will happen if the many antibiotics taken now lead to antimicrobial resistance in the future? To speak to us about this, we have Dr. Anup Aggarwal. He is the lead author of the ICMR-led Trial on convalescent plasma (PLACID trial) and is a physician at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital Healthcare Services, Gallup, New Mexico, U.S.

Hosted by Zubeda Hamid 

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On this news update podcast today, we discuss various aspects of the coronavirus crisis that the country is still very much in the grip of. We focus particularly on the quality of data that the government is using as it plans its way forward. The big question on everyone's minds now is when this deadly second wave will peak, and cases will see a downturn. However, there are already projections for a third wave later in the year. Our ability to navigate that depends very much on vaccinations, which are still progressing at an alarmingly slow rate.

Guest: Jacob Koshy, Deputy Science Editor, The Hindu

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We recorded this episode to coincide with a series of articles that we will carry in The Hindu over the course of this week explaining the verdicts in the four States — West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam — and the Union Territory of Puducherry that went to the polls in March-April 2021. These articles are part of post poll survey done by the polling and research organisation, CSDS-Lokniti that tracks the specificities in each State that shaped the result. These post poll surveys have been a feature of our recent election coverage and allow us to reflect on the data and piece together a larger trajectory of how politics in the country is evolving.

You can read more from that series, which started on May 4, here. But over the course of the conversation today we’ll go over some aspects of the voter data that we have, both from the CSDS poll as well as from the research that out data team here at the Hindu has done and we hope it’ll help you go beyond the headlines of the recently concluded elections.

Guest: Srinivasan Ramani, Deputy National Editor, The Hindu

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In this episode we’re discussing fire safety rules in public buildings, including hospitals. Over the past few weeks there have been deadly fires in hospital buildings, including those treating COVID-19 patients, compounding what is already a severe crisis that the country is facing.

The most recent incident was on May 1, when at least 18 people died after a fire broke out in a COVID hospital in Bharuch in Gujarat. A spate of recent hospital fires has also been reported from Maharashtra, at Virar, a suburb of Mumbai, and Mumbra near Thane and earlier in the year at Nagpur.

Fires breaking out in buildings, big and small across India is not a new phenomenon. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says 330 people died in commercial building fires in 2019, while fatalities for residential or dwelling buildings were much higher at 6,329. Electrical faults are cited as the leading cause of fires, but State governments are also widely criticised for being lax with building safety laws and for failing to equip public buildings with modern technology.

What are the laws and regulations regarding fire safety and how much or how little various State governments comply with them? In this episode we try and answer the question of whether these incidents have been avoided with better compliance of the laws and what can be done in the future to prevent them.

Guest: G Ananthakrishnan, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu

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The Covid-19 crisis continues to dominate our news coverage, as it rightly should, and on this podcast and elsewhere in The Hindu we are working to get you the most relevant news and the best reporting. However, we switch focus on the podcast briefly today to look at international affairs. We’re going to be discussing something that happened in 1915 during the course of the First World War -- the mass killing of about 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire. Over the last weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden formally recognised this act of mass killing as a genocide. In doing so, he was fulfilling a long-standing American promise that his predecessors had failed to act on. In 2019, both Houses of the U.S. Congress passed resolutions calling the slaughter as genocide but the then President Donald Trump stopped short of a formal recognition, mainly because of Turkish opposition. Turkey, America’s NATO ally and the successor of the Ottoman empire, has never acknowledged that a genocide took place, and it sees a mention of it as an insult or a moral stain.

Today, we’re going to speak about what happened to the Armenians in 1915, and why they were targeted for these killings. We’ll then talk about the timing of President Biden’s move to recognise the killings as a genocide and what it says about a changing geopolitical picture, especially when it comes to Turkey. I’m joined by The Hindu’s International Affairs Editor Stanly Johny.

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In our last episode we looked in detail at the foreign assistance now pouring in for India by way of critical medical supplies and whether this would help us tackle the current coronavirus crisis that we face. Today we look at how things are shaping up with the logistics of managing the crisis domestically. Shortages of medical oxygen continue to be reported from across the country and as registration opens up for all adults in the country to get a vaccine shot there is still the big question to address; will there be enough supply to get it to everyone? We discuss all that and the trend lines with the latest coronavirus numbers with The Hindu’s Deputy Science Editor Jacob Koshy.

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