In Focus by The Hindu

By The HinduNews News Commentary

In Focus by The Hindu episodes

August 31 More sugar, different labels: How global food brands treat the Indian market
“Do you not want people to be healthy?” That was the question the Supreme Court put to the FSSAI earlier this month, while hearing a case over warning labels on the front of packaged food, for foods high in sugar, salt, and fat. The Court questioned why the regulator had delayed implementing stronger warnings, particularly when the issue directly concerns public health and children.The question becomes even more significant now, after a media investigation found that some of the world’s biggest food and beverage brands use substantially different formulations for their products in India and abroad, with Indian products containing higher levels of sugar, salt or fat, along with less prominent health warnings.So, what determines what consumers get on their shelves and how much protection do our food-safety rules really provide?
To understand this, today, on In Focus, we’re joined by Hyderabad-based paediatrician Dr. Sivaranjani Santosh, whose eight-year fight over the misleading use of “ORS” label on high-sugar electrolyte drinks eventually led to FSSAI banning the use of the term by products that do not follow the prescribed formulation.

Guest: Dr. Sivaranjani Santosh, Paediatrician
Host: Rishita Khanna
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian

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27 min
August 29 Weekend Bonus episode: The Mathematics and Loneliness of DD Kosambi w/Prof. Ram Ramaswamy
This is a special weekend crossover episode featuring the Hindu's Rearview podcast.
Did Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi solve the Riemann Hypothesis - one of mathematics's greatest puzzles? Was Kosambi, who wrote one of the most influential books on studying Indian history, ignored by both mathematicians and historians? Is he India's Alan Turing?
This week we interview Prof Ram Ramaswamy, whose biography of the remarkably eclectic DD Kosambi: DD Kosambi, One Life, Many Worlds, gives a dispassionate, scholarly and insightful look into this mathematician and historian who was also a Sanskrit scholar and avowed Marxist. Ramaswamy, who's taught at JNU, IIT Delhi and is a former Vice Chancellor at University of Hyderabad, has unearthed rich archival material to investigate the motivations, frustrations and sources of inspiration that shaped one of India's greatest polymaths.
Host: Jacob Koshy
Producer and editor: Jude Weston

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1 hr 1 min
August 28 What a waste: Can India get rid of its garbage mountains?
India has a waste management problem. Though we reportedly collect 90% of our municipal solid waste, nearly 40% does not enter formal processing. Due to this large share that is out of the formal processing system, most Indian cities have garbage mountains – open dump sites and landfills. These dump sites have been linked to groundwater contamination and other public health risks. Critically, they are massive sources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as Methane.How to eliminate or shrink these dump sites? How to ensure that waste segregation is followed all the way from the collection point till the end of the fresh-waste disposal chain? What are the chances India can reduce landfill methane emissions to zero?A new report, titled ‘Municipal Solid Waste Management in : Policy and Technology Pathways for Climate Action’, says that with the right reforms, can reduce waste sector methane emissions by 99% within 10–15 years.
Guests: Zerin Osho, Director of the Indian Program at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD), and Akshat Patni, Senior Adviser with IGSD.
Host: G. Sampath
Edited and produced by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian and Jude Weston

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39 min
August 27 In Focus-Parley | Is English a foreign language in India?
The Supreme Court has been discussing linguistics this month, while hearing challenges to the CBSE’s three-language formula, which mandates that two of the three must be native Indian languages, a category that does not include English. The Bench has been debating whether English should be considered a foreign language in India, given its long history in the country, and its role as a link language in governance and in higher education.
We discuss the same question in this week’s Parley, with Apoorvanand, a professor in the Hindi department of the University of Delhi, and Ganesh Devy, a former professor of English and the man behind the People’s Linguistic Survey of India project.
Host: Priscilla Jebaraj
Producer: Jude Weston

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42 min
August 26 Cash transfers for women: Do they challenge gender norms on unpaid care work?
Unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) for women have become extremely popular. So far, more than 14 states have done it, benefiting 120 million women. The monthly payouts range from Rs833 to Rs2,500. State governments spend more than Rs2 lakh crore annually on such schemes.
But at the same time, at least six such states projected a revenue deficit for 2025-26, pointing to the growing fiscal pressure due to the rapid expansion of women-centric cash transfers.
There is a raging debate on whether unconditional cash transfers are crowding out state expenditure on social infrastructure such as public health and education.
A new book by Prabha Kotiswaran, titled ‘Wages for Housework: ’s experiment with Unconditional cash transfers for women’ defends such payouts from a feminist perspective, and argues that they are a form of economic, social and political recognition of women’s unpaid domestic and care work.
Prabha Kotiswaran is Professor of Law and Social Justice at King’s College, and she joins us today for a discussion on women-centric UCTs.
Host: G Sampath, Social Affairs Editor
Producer: Shiksha Jural

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50 min
August 25 Can you get dementia from long-term exposure to traffic noise?
Road traffic noise is a major environmental pollutant. Indian cities are cacophonous. They are not designed to insulate residents from sustained exposure to traffic noise. A new research paper has found a worrying link between traffic noise exposure and dementia, and also cognitive impairment. The paper, titled ‘Association of road traffic noise exposure with dementia or cognitive impairment – A systematic review of longitudinal cohort studies’, has been co-authored by Emil Basil Scaria and Nisha Dhanda, and was published on PLOS Global Public Health earlier this year.
We speak with the lead author of the study.

Guest: Emil Basil Scaria, a public health researcher and physician based in Dubai
Host: G. Sampath
Edited and produced by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian

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40 min
August 24 How water stressed are Indian cities?
This year, residents in several Indian cities -from Mumbai to Bengaluru - have experienced a shortage in water supply. India's big cities are expanding in terms of size and population. This has also meant a strain on existing resources such as land and water. We have already seen cities such as Bengaluru attempting to implement restrictions on use of potable water for non-potable purposes. But do our cities need more than that to ensure water security for the future? How water stressed are Indian cities?
Guest: Priyanka Jamwal, Programme Leader and Senior Fellow, Water and Society Programme, ATREE
Raj Bhagat, Senior Program Manager, Geo Analytics for Sustainable Cities & Transport program, WRI India
Host: K. C. Deepika, City Editor, The Hindu, Bengaluru
Producer: Shiksha Jural

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47 min
August 22 Chronic kidney disease: Why has a Parliamentary committee called for mandatory testing?
It’s one of those conditions that has no symptoms during its early stages, meaning that by the time it is diagnosed, it could be very late: chronic kidney diseases, or CKD, has been in the news recently after a Parliamentary Standing Committee tabled a report on this condition in the Rajya Sabha earlier this month, and made a series of 66 recommendations. Significantly, the committee recommended diagnosis methodologies, called for a national CKD screening protocol and a registry, highlighted CKD of unknown etiology in certain States especially among agricultural workers and recommended greater use of peritoneal dialysis.
So what is chronic kidney disease, why and how does it take place, what does it to the body, and who needs to be tested and when?

Guest: Dr Rajan Ravichandran, Director, Nephrology, MIOT Hospital, Chennai and Chairman, Sapiens Health Foundation
Host: Zubeda Hamid
Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian

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24 min
August 21 Are IAS officers in key positions the biggest hurdle to police reforms?
“The biggest hurdle to police reforms comes from the bureaucracy itself – IAS officers who hold key positions at the Centre and in all departments of the governments and local bodies in the states,” writes Yashovardhan Azad in his new book, ‘Policing the Republic: An Inside View of How India Fights Corruption and Crime, and Protects Rights.’
Mr Azad, a former IPS officer who has served as special director at the Intelligence bureau and Central Information Commissioner, argues in his book that corruption and the breakdown of institutional credibility are two major challenges hobbling the India story.
In this episode, we discuss, among other things, police reforms, the politics of corruption, and how tough life can be for a upright civil servant.
Host: G Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu
Producer: Jude Weston

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57 min
August 20 In Focus-Parley | Can free public technology break the private coaching industry?
In his 2026 Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the government will roll out free online coaching for competitive exams using India’s digital public infrastructure. The announcement was made in a bid to reach out to the Gen-Z youth, especially following the widespread student protests against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) paper leak. The objective of the PM’s announcement was to save poor and middle-class families thousands of crores while also helping students prepare without leaving their homes.
However, can govt. coaching classes break the private coaching industry? Here we discuss the question.
Guests: Buddha Chandrasekhar, Chief Coordinating Officer of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and CEO, Anuvadini AI run under the Ministry of Education; Anubhav Shrivastava, Co-founder of Theory of Physics
Host: Maitri Porecha
Producer: Jude Weston

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1 hr 1 min