In Focus by The Hindu

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

It’s now exactly two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, so far 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have perished in the war. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced. The population in territories under Kyiv’s control has shrunk from 52 million to 30 million while the country’s economy has been devastated.As for Russia, after initial setbacks – likely caused by an underestimation of Ukraine’s capacity for resistance – it has modified its tactics and settled into a long-term war of attrition. Its economy is doing well, despite Western sanctions. In the meantime, there are question marks over the West’s will to continue its military aid to Ukraine with the same intensity.With no signs of the conflict ending any time soon, we look back at the past two years to understand what have been the gains and losses for all the sides in involved. What does the third year of this war have in store? Will it see one of the sides gaining a decisive advantage? And what needs to happen before either side decides that enough is enough?Guest: Stanly Johny, The Hindu’s International Affairs Editor.Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Housing is a basic requirement for dignity of life. But affordable decent housing remains a distant dream for most Indians, especially in urban India. Close to 17% of all households in urban India live in slums, with this percentage shooting up to 41% in a city like Mumbai and 29% in Chennai.Over the years, the government has taken many initiatives to address this problem, with schemes such as Indira Awas Yojana, and the ongoing Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), an interest subsidy scheme for lower and middle-income groups. But these subsidy schemes hardly seem to make a dent on the housing crisis. The gap between people’s incomes and price points of housing stock, especially for the aspirational classes, remains wide.Why is housing in India so expensive? Why do the prices never seem to come within reach for most? A recent research paper, titled ‘House prices in India: How high and how long?’ co-authored by three analysts from the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), Shishir Gupta, Nandini Agnihotri and Annie George, offers some insights on these questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most of us are familiar with the plastic waste crisis and public awareness campaigns on the need to recycle plastic. Now a new report by the Centre for Climate Integrity, an international non-profit, says that plastic producers have been lying to the public for more than 30 years – it says that they knew all along that plastic recycling was not a viable solution, either technically or economically, and yet kept they promoting it to protect their interests.How serious is the plastic waste problem? Why is plastic recycling not viable? And if recycling is not the answer, how do we address the mounting crisis of plastic waste? Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices