The Pragati Podcast

India's news houses are in crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, the dwindling circulation of print newspapers, and the loss of advertising revenue have all created a perfect storm for an already ailing news industry in India.

With press freedom rankings continuing to be abysmal and business-as-usual no longer working, what would it take to launch a truly mobile-first, online-only news enterprise that can be financially independent and do good journalism?

Prem Panicker joins host Pavan Srinath on Episode 138 of The Pragati Podcast to share what it takes to do this in 2020. Starting in 1995-96, Prem had helped build Rediff.com into an online news website at a time when only a few hundreds of people in India had working computers connected to the internet.

Prem is a journalist and an editor, who has worked at several print and online news houses, including Rediff, India Abroad, and as the Managing Editor for India at Yahoo! Prem also founded www.peepli.org, for deep reporting on environmental, water, climate change and refugees' issues.

Prem is on twitter at @prempanicker and writes regularly at prempanicker.wordpress.com.

Also listen to journalist Krishna Prasad on the state of Indian news media today over at BIC Talks: www.tinyurl.com/bictalks-kp

If you have any questions or comments, write to us at [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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Nearly a hundred vaccine candidates are being developed across the world. Award-winning medical scientist, Dr Gagandeep Kang talks to host Pavan Srinath about the development of vaccines, ongoing efforts on COVID-19, and the challenges of developing immunity and resistance against the virus, on Episode 137 of The Pragati Podcast.

This episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 8 of Bangalore International Centre's BIC Talks Podcast. Pavan is a consultant for BIC Talks, and also hosts this episode. Visit https://bangaloreinternationalcentre.org/watch-listen-read/audio/ to find all episodes of BIC Talks, and you can subscribe to BIC Talks on all podcast apps.

Dr. Gagandeep Kang is the Executive Director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute. She is a key contributor to the understanding of diarrhoeal diseases, rotavirus epidemiology and vaccinology, and is the Vice Chair for the Coalition of Epidemic
Preparedness and Innovations.

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The SARS-COV-2 virus started infecting humans in Wuhan in late 2019. How has the virus mutated and evolved so far? With 1-2 mutations occurring per month, researchers are now seeing a clade or a sub-type of the virus: A2a, becoming more common in COVID-19 infections across the world.

Partha Majumder, NIdhan Biswas and their colleagues at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics have done seminal work on analyzing the mutations and evolution of the SARS-COV-2 virus so far.

Partha Majumder, one of India's foremost researchers in statistical genomics and human genome variation, joins Pavan Srinath on Episode 136 of The Pragati Podcast to explain how to study viral evolution and understand the latest research on how SARS-COV-2 has mutated and evolved till date.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talk show on public affairs, economics, and international relations, hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Dr. Partha Pratim Majumder is the Founder and a Distinguished Professor at the National Institute for Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) at Kalyani, West Bengal, and is currently the President of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

His latest research on SARS-COV-2:
1. Biswas, N and Majumder, PP. Analysis of RNA Sequences of 3636 SARS-CoV-2 Collected from 55 Countries Reveals Selective Sweep of One Virus Type. Indian Journal of Medical Research. (In Press, April 28, 2020)

1. Bhattacharya, C. et al. Global Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Subtype with Spike Protein Mutation D614G is Shaped by Human Genomic Variations that Regulate Expression of TMPRSS2 and MX1 Genes. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.04.075911v1 (Preprint, May 05, 2020)

Partha's NIBMG profile: https://www.nibmg.ac.in/?q=content/ppm1-research
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=DUSA2ywAAAAJ&hl=en

If you have any questions or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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Can India's health and healthcare systems ramp up on mission mode to respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic? What should we know about India's messy public and private healthcare systems before we think about a pandemic response?

Yamini Aiyar discusses what India can do and how, on Episode 135 of The Pragati Podcast.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talkshow on public policy, economics and international relations. hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Delhi. Her research interests are in the field of social policy and development. In 2008, Yamini founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR, which has done pioneering work on governance, state capacity and social policy in India, and pioneered a new approach to tracking public expenditures. She is on Twitter at @AiyarYamini.

Further reading & listening:
1. [Podcast] Yamini Aiyar and Jishnu Das on health systems challenges and COVID-19. https://cprindia.org/news/8561

1. [Article] COVID-19: Centre and states must work together. https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/covid-19-centre-and-states-must-work-together/story-UFuvvR18MU54lzsIF3FkYJ.html

2. [Article] COVID-19 will test, reshape the state. https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/covid-19-will-test-reshape-the-state/story-IG0R8swKTZ1vO9FBEd1tIJ.html

3. [Research] Jishnu Das and Jeffrey Hammer on the Quality of Public & Private healthcare in Delhi. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=610346

4. [Research] Hammer, Aiyar and Samji on Panchayati Raj institutions and health services. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/108011468042305807/Bottoms-up-to-the-role-of-Panchayati-Raj-Institutions-in-health-and-health-services

5. [Research] Das et al on healthcare provider training and huge quality gaps in urban and rural India. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/108011468042305807/Bottoms-up-to-the-role-of-Panchayati-Raj-Institutions-in-health-and-health-services

If you have any questions or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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How can India make the most of the nation-wide lockdown to contain the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic? How can India rapidly ramp up testing and diagnostics? How can India's governments, private sector and civil society come together to halt the further spread of this highly contagious disease?

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw talks to V Ravichandar of the Bangalore International Centre and host Pavan Srinath about COVID-19 on Episode 134 of The Pragati Podcast.

This episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 1 of the BIC Talks Podcast by the Bangalore International Centre.

Bangalore International Centre is a an inclusive platform for informed conversations, arts and culture, and is a much-needed public space in the city of Bangalore. The BIC Talks Podcast is a bi-weekly show that will foster discussions, dialogue, ideas, cultural enterprise and more.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the Founder and Chairperson of Biocon and is a pioneering Biotech and Healthcare specialist in India. V Ravichandar is the honorary director of the Bangalore International Centre.

Learn more about the BIC Talks Podcast and listen to all episodes at https://bangaloreinternationalcentre.org/watch-listen-read/audio/

Suggested Listening:

1. Pragati Podcast #133: Modeling the Spread of Epidemics, with Srini Venkatramanan. https://ivmpodcasts.com/the-pragati-podcast

2. Thale-Harate Kannada Podcast #61: ಕೊರೋನ - ವೈದ್ಯ. A Private Practitioner & COVID-19, with Dr Srinand Srinivas. https://ivmpodcasts.com/harate-kannada-podcast-episode-list/2020/3/19/ep-61-a-private-practitioner-amp-covid-19

3. BIC Talks Podcast #2: Ramping up India's COVID-19 Testing, with Vijay Chandru. https://bangaloreinternationalcentre.org/audio/ramping-up-indias-covid-19-testing/

If you have any questions or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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How are infectious diseases and pandemics modeled? How can we model and estimate the spread of Influenza or Coronavirus Disease 2019? And most importantly, how can disease modeling help us design effective interventions that contain the spread of a pandemic like COVID-19?

Srini Venkatraman of the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia joins us on Episode 133 of The Pragati Podcast.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talkshow on public policy, economics and international relations hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Srini Venkatramanan is a research scientist at the Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia. Hailing from Chennai, Srini did his PhD at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. At the Biocomplexity Institute, he uses mathematical and computational models of human societies to study the spread of infectious diseases and ways to control them. You can reach on Twitter at @sriniv_venkat, and find his research on Google Scholar.

Suggested Links:
1. Using data-driven agent-based models for forecasting emerging infectious diseases (2018). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755436517300221

1. The Future of Influenza forecasts. (2019) https://www.pnas.org/content/116/8/2802

2. Modelling Disease Outbreaks in realistic urban social networks. (2004) http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2009-08UVM-300/docs/others/2004/eubank2004a.pdf

3. Biocomplexity Institute's COVID-19 Dashboard. https://covid19.biocomplexity.virginia.edu/

If you have any questions or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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Close to 200,000 people across 160 countries have been affected by COVID-19 or Coronavirus Disease 2019, and this has happened in just about three months. As of March 18, 2020, India has confirmed 148 cases of COVID-19 and three people have died so far.

Vidya Krishnan joins Episode 132 of The Pragati Podcast to talk about the pandemic and how India has been responding to COVID-19 so far. This episode was recorded on March 17, 2020.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talkshow on public policy, economics and international relations hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Vidya Krishnan is a health journalist based in Goa. Her first book, on the rise of antibiotic resistance and the threat to global health security, is slated to be published in 2020. Vidya has been reporting on COVID-19 for The Caravan, and you can find all her published articles here.

Do read:

Mar 13: Public-health experts raise concerns about India’s restricted testing for COVID-19 (https://caravanmagazine.in/health/public-health-experts-raise-concerns-about-india-restricted-testing-covid-19)
Mar 14: WHO categorises India as having local transmission of Coronavirus, but government downplays it(https://caravanmagazine.in/health/who-declares-local-transmission-of-coronavirus-in-india)
Mar 16: Lack of testing kits, understaffed hospitals: COVID exposes India’s crumbling healthcare system (https://caravanmagazine.in/health/lack-testing-kits-understaffed-hospitals-covid-exposes-india-crumbling-healthcare-system)

If you have any questions or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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Two years ago, four senior judges of the Supreme Court of India held an unprecedented press conference to tell the public that there was an ongoing crisis in the Supreme Court of India. Since then, one of the four judges even went on to become the Chief Justice of India. How does the Supreme Court of India, both the highest appellate court and the highest constitutional court in the country, fare today?

Alok Prasanna Kumar returns to Episode 131 of The Pragati Podcast helps us understand what has broken down in one of India's most vital institutions.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talkshow on public policy, economics and international relations hosted by Pavan Srinath (https://twitter.com/zeusisdead)

Alok Prasanna Kumar (https://vidhilegalpolicy.in/alok-prasanna/) is a Senior Resident Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a former Supreme Court lawyer and co-host of Ganatantra Podcast.

Also check out:
Pragati Podcast #105: The Anti-Defection Law. (https://ivmpodcasts.com/the-pragati-podcast-episode-list/2019/7/25/ep-105-the-anti-defection-law)

Pragati Podcast #27: The Supreme Court in Crisis. (https://ivmpodcasts.com/the-pragati-podcast-episode-list/2018/1/18/ep-27-the-supreme-court-in-crisis)

If you have any questions or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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This is a rebroadcast of Episode 37 of The Pragati Podcast, first released on March 29, 2018. Brand new episodes of The Pragati Podcast will return from next week.

Is it illegal to do the Pragati podcast on radio? Why do large Indian cities have so few FM stations, and why do they all sound the same?

In Episode 37 of the Pragati Podcast, Amit Doshi joins host Pavan Srinath to talk about talk-radio and podcasts. Amit is the Founder of the IVM Podcast Network, and a co-host of Shunya One, a podcast on tech and entrepreneurship.

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We hear about the all-powerful District Collector or Deputy Commissioner in every district in India, but what do they really do? How was the Government of India's first successful health insurance scheme launched? What is the relationship between civil servants and politicians? Anil Swarup talks about his stellar career as an IAS Officer on Episode 90 of The Pragati Podcast.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly show on public policy, economics and international relations hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Mr. Anil Swarup is a former Secretary, Government of India, a retired IAS officer and the author of Not Just a Civil Servant, where he chronicles his 38 years working for Governments of India and Uttar Pradesh.

In his career, Mr. Swarup has handled India's Coal auctions in the aftermath of the Coal Scam. He has served as Secretary, School Education, and while working in the Labour Ministry, helped conceive and launch the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, a government-funded health insurance scheme for poor workers and their families.

Not Just a Civil Servant is available in hardcover and on Amazon Kindle: https://www.amazon.in/JUST-CIVIL-SERVANT-Anil-Swarup/dp/8178064790

New Podcast Alert! Hamsini Hariharan, long-time co-host of The Pragati Podcast has now started a new foreign policy podcast called States of Anarchy on the IVM Podcast Network. Available on all your favourite podcast apps. Listen to the podcast here: http://ivmpodcasts.com/states-of-anarchy

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