In Focus by The Hindu

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 about the same as the poverty line in India, suggesting that the poverty rate in India is somewhere in the range of 0 to 5%.Has poverty really dropped to 5% in India? Here we discuss the question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The resignation of Arun Goel as Election Commissioner just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has created ripples in Indian politics. For the first time since 1993, a single-member Election Commission is currently supervising poll preparations in the world’s largest democracy. There is no word on why Mr. Goel, who was handpicked by the BJP government, quit but some media reports point to differences with the Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar.So, what does Mr. Goel’s resignation spell? Will the Government rush to appoint two Election Commissioners under the new law that gives the political executive a majority in the selection process? Do Election Commissioners grow a spine after taking office?Guest: Nilanjan Mukhopadyay is a senior journalist and author, whose latest book is The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India (2021). He has also authored The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right (2019) and Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times (2013).Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor, The HinduEdited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With peak summer approaching, Bengaluru is already facing a water crisis. The city, which is dependent on the Cauvery river and groundwater for its freshwater needs, remains vulnerable to drought in the dry seasons and flooding in the monsoon months. With its bore wells having to contend with receding water tables, and tankers having to travel increasingly longer distances to fetch water, there is a big question mark over the city’s water security.This was not always the case -- India’s IT capital used to have a system of tanks and parks that gave it water resilience. What happened to this infrastructure? How much water does the city need? What is the shortfall? And how can the shortfall be bridged in a sustainable way? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 164 member world trade organisation holds what it calls a Ministerial Conference – a once in two years meeting of all its member countries to discuss, negotiate and address global trade rules. WTO’s thirteenth ministerial conference, or MC13 – took place in Abu Dhabi in late February this year, but it failed to make headway on key agenda items. Such failures in negotiations have come to plague the WTO lately. Yet, despite this, failed outcomes are often touted as major victories by member counties. Like in India’s case, where Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal claimed a win for the country’s farmers, when India’s position on demanding sovereignty over public stock holding of food, and providing largely artesanal fishing nations, subsidies for fisheries failed to reach consensus. Two more demands of developing countries – the first – lifting the moratorium on levying customs duty on e-commerce, and second, a reconstitution of the WTO’s dispute settlement appellate body, remained unresolved as well. And yet, why are these key wins for developing nations? Guest: Ranja Sengupta from the global non-profit – Third World NetworkHost: Kunal Shankar, The Hindu’s Deputy Business EditorEdited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has his task cut out for him. From steering the economy out of choppy waters to dealing with a belligerent opposition that continues to contest the results of February’s general elections, Mr. Sharif has to show that he is up to the job.  As Cabinet formation and election of a new President await Pakistan, Mr. Sharif will also be watched for his ability to deal with the country’s permanent establishment – the Army. Will the fact that he has more patience than his brother Nawaz Sharif allow for political stability in governance? To discuss these issues, I am joined from Karachi by Shahzeb Jillani, co-host of Dawn TV’s current affairs show, Zara Hut Kay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that MPs and MLAs are not immune to criminal prosecution on bribery charges related to their votes or speech in Parliament or state assemblies.This judgement overturns an earlier ruling of the Supreme Court in the 1998 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) case. In this case, the majority opinion had held that MPs and MLAs enjoyed immunity from prosecution with regard to how they vote or speak in the House.Article 105 (2) of the Constitution confers on MPs immunity from prosecution in respect of their speech or voting in Parliament. Article 194 (2) grants the same protection to MLAs. So what prompted the Supreme Court to strip MPs and MLAs of this immunity? What was the original case that set off the chain of events culminating in this judgement? And what are the implications of this verdict? Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act was passed in 2021, but over two years later, it continues to be mired in some amount of confusion and on-going cases in the Supreme Court. Brought in to ban commercial surrogacy, it allows only for altruistic surrogacy under certain conditions, and aims to regulate surrogacy clinics, part of the huge infertility health sector in the country. Last month, the Central government brought in a modification to the surrogacy rules – it allowed married couples to use donor eggs or donor sperm to avail of surrogacy. This overturned the government’s own rules that had earlier banned the use of donor gametes. The rules now state that if one person of the intending couple has a medical complication that does not allow them to use their own gametes, then a donor gamete can be used for the surrogate baby. However, a genetic link is still a must – the other partner must provide the egg or sperm as the case may be. This means that divorced and widowed women, who are allowed to avail of surrogacy, have to use their own eggs. The law also bars single unmarried women, those in live-in relationships and those in queer relationships from its ambit – a provision being currently challenged in court by an unmarried woman.How will the new amendment change things for prospective parents? How can donor gametes be obtained when their sale is banned and the donation is strictly regulated? Has the Act met its goal of regulating surrogacy clinics and protecting surrogate rights? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since the English cricket team arrived in India, ‘Bazball’ is on the lips of every cricket buff. It is a unique style of play that paid rich dividends for the English team --until the India tour. England is trailing the five-match Test series 1-3, and there is a lot of debate around whether ‘Bazball’ has been overhyped, and if England has failed to adapt it to Indian conditions.What are the elements of Bazball? How did it develop? Has India finally exposed its limitations? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Engineered cross-voting to win extra seats in the Rajya Sabha and organized defection to bring down duly-elected State Governments appear to have been normalized in Indian politics.The additional two seats that accrued to the BJP in Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh recently is a case in point. Though six cross-voting MLAs have been disqualified in Himachal Pradesh, the defeat of senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Sanghvi points to the dangers that lie ahead for the Congress government in the state.Previously, the Congress lost three state governments in Goa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, to organized defections.So, is this a phenomenon that we will have to live with in Indian politics?Guest: Radhika Ramaseshan, political analyst and columnist.Host: Amit Baruah, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu.Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From time to time, stories of the commercial dealings in organs, or cash for kidney scams, surface in the media. In December, one such possible organ racket was in the news, involving people from Myanmar, who had come to a private hospital in Delhi for transplant procedures. Organ transplants have been taking place in India since the 1970s, and after multiple instances of the commercial sale of organs, India brought in the Transplantation of Human Organ and Tissues Act, 1994. This law banned the sale of organs and only allowed organs to be given between close family members, or for altruistic reasons, with no money exchanging hands.Over the last decade or so, some cities in India have increasingly become major hubs for life-saving transplant surgeries of several organs including the kidneys, heart, liver, lungs and pancreas. The deceased donor programme, where organs are harvested from brain-dead donors, has also taken off in some parts of the country.As of 2022, India performed just over 13,300 living transplants and about 2,700 deceased donor transplants. And still, the country has over 3 lakh patients on the waiting list for organs and 20 people dying each day for want of an organ.How do the transplant laws work, and do they have loopholes that need to be plugged? What are the laws in place for foreigners? How can donor rights be protected more stringently to weed out exploitation? And can the transplant programme be scaled up to meet the country’s needs? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices