The conflict between ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and the military junta in Myanmar has created a serious humanitarian crisis, which the United Nations Security Council took up for discussion on July 3. Some experts on Myanmar have called for India to review its policy and establish channels with the EAOs to help the affected civilians. Should…

The Constitution is seemingly at the centre of political rhetoric and symbolism in India right now. Opposition leaders have held up copies of the Constitution while walking into Parliament. They have waved these in the Prime Minister’s face. They have also held these copies while taking oath. Some argue that this is the Opposition’s tip to the mand…

India’s road transport sector contributes about 12% to the country’s CO2 emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, making it the third most greenhouse gas emitting sector after energy and agriculture. The Union government has been attempting to fast track decarbonising transport for almost a decade with the introduction of the Faster…

Until the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 282 seats and Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode to power, India had had coalition governments for 21 years. Ten years later, the BJP has 240 seats in the Lok Sabha and India once again has a coalition government in power. Fitch had stated that coalition politics and a wea…

On May 22, the Election Commission of India (ECI) asked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress to desist from raising divisive issues in the campaign. In recent years, and particularly during the campaign to the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, critics of the ECI have accused the body of being late or ineffective or partial in responding to …

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that advocates cannot be held liable under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, for deficiency in service. The Court also indicated that its 1995 decision that held medical professionals accountable under the Act may need to be revisited. It suggested that the definition of the term ‘services’ under the Act…

During his election campaign, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has often used the slogan ‘Jitni abadi, utna haq’ (the rights of a group are proportionate to the group’s share in the total population). The Prime Minister has lashed out at him for the slogan and others have argued that it is against the spirit of the Constitution. Should reservation in j…

In 2022, a Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)-Lokniti survey in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung showed that TV channels dominate as the news source in India, despite poor trust levels in them. In 2023, a Global Fact 10 research report showed that more and more Indians are now placing their trust in YouTube and WhatsAp…

Ayushman Bharat, the government’s flagship programme to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), was launched in 2018. The scheme has two inter-related components: health and wellness centres and the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) that aims to provide a health cover of ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalis…

The Green Credit Programme, announced by the Environment Ministry in October 2023, is a market-based mechanism where individuals and companies can claim incentives called ‘green credits’ for contributions to environmental and ecological restoration. However, there is criticism that these initiatives may be used to circumvent existing laws, particul…

Earlier this month, following a report in The Guardian stating that the Indian government had killed about 20 people in Pakistan since 2020 as part of a broader plan to eliminate terrorists on foreign soil, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh responded that India will enter Pakistan to kill terrorists. A few days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too…

Bengaluru, often celebrated for being a ‘garden city’, the ‘IT capital’ of the country, and its pleasant weather, has been making headlines this year for facing a severe water crisis following the drought of 2023. The water crisis is also likely to hit other urban centres and rural areas. According to a recent weekly bulletin by the Central Water C…

Many companies that faced regulatory action from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) or Income Tax (IT) Department donated electoral bonds worth crores of rupees to ruling parties via the electoral bonds route, show data submitted by the State Bank of India (SBI) to the Election Commission of India (ECI). Some companies which got huge government contr…

Recently, hours after resigning as a judge of the Calcutta High Court, Abhijit Gangopadhyay announced that he was joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The judge’s decision to join politics and the manner in which it was taken has raised questions of judicial impropriety. Some people disapprove of the practice of judges holding official posts a…

NITI Aayog B.V.R. Subrahmanyam recently claimed that less than 5% of Indians now live below the poverty line. He made the claim based on the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), 2022-23. Mr. Subrahmanyam argued that the average consumption expenditure in the bottom 5% of India’s population, as estimated by the survey, is…

On February 13, groups of farmers began a march to New Delhi, to press for fulfilment of their demands, which include a legal guarantee for purchasing crops at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and India’s withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO) which, they allege, places pressure on the Centre for drafting policies for procurement and MSP. Wh…

Recently, music composer A.R. Rahman tweeted that the song Thimiri Yezhuda from the Tamil film Lal Salaam uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to recreate the voices of singers Bamba Bakya and Shahul Hameed. Bakya died in September 2022 at the age of 42 and has sung songs in films including 2.0 and Bigil. Hameed, who died in 1998, worked e…

India’s growing private coaching industry has long been plagued by student suicides, fire incidents, complaints of poor infrastructure and teaching, exorbitant fees, and false promises. The spate of student suicides in Kota, Rajasthan, has spurred the Ministry of Education to issue new guidelines, which state that coaching centres cannot enrol stud…

On February 1, the BJP-led government will place its Interim Budget in Parliament, seeking a vote on account. Has the NDA government’s economic performance in its second term fared better than its first? Here we discuss the question.By TheHindu

On December 27, 2023, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its backer Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement. The NYT has alleged that OpenAI used thousands of its articles to train ChatGPT, a large language model, without permission or compensation. The lawsuit says that this has positioned ChatGPT as a competing sourc…

The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) recently found that over half of the nearly 10,000 hospital patients surveyed for a study were given antibiotics to prevent, rather than treat, infection. The survey mapped patients treated on one to five days each at 20 tertiary care institutes across 15 States and two Union Territories between Novemb…

According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate among graduates is higher than in many other developing countries. Students who enrolled in college during the pandemic have now graduated and there are concerns over their employability and the quality of online education. Is higher education in India out of touch with the skill …

Recently, Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam, far-right populist, won the general elections in the Netherlands. In Argentina, the far-right politician, Javier Milei, won the presidential elections. In 2022, Marine Le Pen finished a close second in the French presidential elections; and a party with roots in the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement won the…

Recently, President Droupadi Murmu suggested that an All-India Judicial Service (AIJS) will help diversify the judiciary. In the same way that the Union Public Service Commission conducts a central recruitment exam and assigns successful candidates to cadres, the recruitment of judges of the district judiciary is being proposed to be made central, …

In a historic first, all 198 signatories to the 28th United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP28) adopted to “transition away” from “all fossil fuels” as opposed to only coal, as was agreed upon at COP26, in Glasgow. India had played a pivotal role in Glasgow in modifying the language from “phasing out” coal to “phasing it down”. Unsurprisingl…