In Focus by The Hindu

Asim Munir is Pakistan’s new Army Chief. He was appointed on the 24th of November, putting at rest endless speculation of who would be chief and whether Qamar Jawed Bajwa might get yet another extension.There were also doubts that Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi, an Imran Khan appointee, may not sign off on General Munir’s appointment. But, mercifully, for Pakistan, that did not happen. The President signed off on the appointment but after flying to Lahore to meet Imran Khan.So, what kind of chief will General Munir make? Will he interfere in the country’s politics? Will he try and fix the popular Imran Khan whose massive public meetings continue to signal his imminent return to power?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second part of a two-part Deep Dive podcast on the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (DPDP Bill, 2022), which is the fourth draft of the Bill. In Part 1, we discussed various aspects of the Bill from the perspective of the data principal’s privacy rights.In this episode, we take a close look at how the Bill envisages the structure and independence of the Data Protection Board of India, the role of consent managers, and protections from surveillance, among other things.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In August this year, the government withdrew the draft Data Protection Bill, 2021, saying it would come up with a comprehensive legal framework in a new draft. Now the new draft, – the fourth overall, is out. Titled the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (DPDP Bill, 2022), the draft Bill is open for public comments and is expected to be introduced in Parliament in the Budget session of 2023.So, how different is the latest version from the earlier drafts? Does it do a better job of safeguarding the rights of users – or data principals, as they are called in legal parlance? In the first part of this two-part Deep Dive podcast, we take a detailed look at how well the Bill safeguards the rights of individual users.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, Haryana has been rocked by agitations and healthcare services have been disrupted, as medical students have been protesting against the State government's bond policy. Bond policies for students at government medical colleges, usually involve a mandated period of service at a State-run hospital for students after their graduation, failing which they pay a penalty amount. In Haryana, the government's original policy said MBBS candidates had to pay an annual bond of Rs. 10 lakh minus the fee, at the start of every academic year, which the government would repay, if the candidate obtained employment with the State. The service period with the State is seven years. Following the protests, the Chief Minister had said the bond need not be paid at the time of admission, instead students would have to sign a bond-cum-loan agreement with the college and a bank. However reports indicate the students are still unhappy with the policy.Many States have this policy for medical students, with the bond amount and the period of service varying from State to State. In general, the understanding is that since students at government medical colleges get an education subsidized by the State, they must provide service in return to the state, generally in rural areas where there may be a shortage of doctors.In August 2019, the Supreme Court upheld the bond policy put in place by several States but said that some seemed to have rigid conditions, and suggested to the Centre that the country have a uniform policy regarding this. Now, there are reports that the Union Health Ministry plans to create guidelines to scrap the bond policy altogether, based on recommendations from the National Medical Commision - and perhaps incorporate mandatory rural through a non-financial mechanism.While providing healthcare rurally is crucial - 75% of our healthcare infrastructure is concentrated in urban areas - students in parts of the country have complained of no State job guarantee once their degree is complete, and in some cases, no payment of salaries. So does the bond policy for medical students need to be relooked at? How can State governments provide healthcare where it is desperately needed, while ensuring a policy that is fair for students? How do other countries handle their rural healthcare systems? And what else can governments do to provide accessible, quality healthcare in our villages?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The killing of two persons inside Polish territory on November 15 by a missile strike had the world on edge till it became known that the likely culprit was a Ukrainian and not a Russian missile.A flurry of meetings took place and statements flew thick and fast. U.S. President Joe Biden convened an emergency meeting of like-minded Western nations on the sidelines of the G20 Bali summit.As NATO and Western statements suggested that it was a Ukrainian air defence missile that may have landed in Poland, tensions eased, but dangers lurk ahead as the Russia-Ukraine confrontation looks to go on and on.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This November marks 10 years of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, or the POCSO Act as it is commonly known. POCSO has been in the news recently - with two High Courts in India, the Karnataka High Court and the Delhi High Court dealing with cases of teenagers, under the age of 18, in consensual relationships. The Karnataka High Court said the Law Commission of India may have to rethink the age criteria in law for consensual sex to address the issue mutual love affairs amongst minor girls and boys, who are aged above 16 but are below 18. The POCSO Act defines a child as any person under the age of 18, and a child cannot consent. This is not the first time the debate about age of consent has come up -- in fact, the POCSO Bill when it was originally introduced had a clause recognising consent of minors between the ages of 16 and 18, but this was then removed after the Bill went through a Parliamentary Standing Committee. Studies have shown that a number of cases filed under the law are by parents, against boys who have eloped with their daughters - leading to many ramifications for the teenage couples, from girls being put into government homes, to boys being held in custody, to families having to go through the process of a case and trial, which can take months, or sometimes years. But while there are calls to take into consideration the consent of older teenagers, there are concerns too - how can young people be safeguarded from exploitative or unsafe relationships? Will lowering the age of consent be used to justify cases of child marriage or trafficking? How can evolving consent in adolescents be assessed appropriately? Does an act as broad as POCSO need a refocused look? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 22nd edition of the FIFA men’s World Cup will kick off in Qatar on November 20. The month-long tournament is one of biggest sporting events on the planet, followed by millions the world over. But this year’s event has been dogged by controversy ever since Qatar won hosting rights back in 2010.There have been allegations that Qatar bribed FIFA officials in order to win the bid. The host country has also faced criticism on its human rights track record, treatment of migrant workers, and restrictions on civil liberties. For their part, Qatari officials have termed all the criticism as unfair. So, how did a tiny Gulf nation with hardly any soccer tradition end up hosting the world cup? What’s in it for Qatar? Will the criticisms overshadow the event? And coming to the sport itself, how do the 32 teams stack up?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), among other things, also envisaged what is being called ‘assessment reform’ – that is, changing the way school students are assessed. With this objective in mind, it recommended setting up a centralized, national-level assessment regulator called PARAKH – Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development.The government invited international consultants to bid for a contract to help set up PARAKH, and now three global nonprofits – Educational Testing Services (ETS), American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) – have expressed interest. So, how will having a centralized assessment regulator change the way assessments are done in India? Why do need the help of foreign consultants for setting up PARAKH -- do we lack the expertise in India? How will PARAKH help secure better educational outcomes for our students?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 27th summit of the Conference of Parties (COP27) in Egypt comes on the back of extreme weather events that seem like a trailer of the climate catastrophe that awaits the planet: epic floods in Pakistan, heat waves in Europe, wildfires in Australia, to name a few. One theme has figured prominently so far: climate finance for mitigation and adaptation. Developing counties need about $2 trillion annually to cut their greenhouse emissions so that the world is on track to meet its net-zero targets. But will the rich counties, who account for 1/8th of the global population but half of all emissions, fulfill their moral responsibility? What happened to their promise to commit $100 billion annually from 2020?The other big theme of COP 27 is the impact of the Ukraine war, and a turn to new fossil fuel projects in different parts of the world – apparently as a temporary measure but which, if executed, could get locked in for a longer term. How are these issues playing out in COP 27?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Jo Biden met for over three hours on November 14, ahead of the G-20 meeting in Indonesia. It was their first face-to-face meeting as heads of state.Readouts from the two sides suggest that both Xi and Biden did some tough talking, reiterating old positions and supposed red lines. Both sides agreed to keep talking and resume engagement on climate change and issues related to global economic stability even as their differences persisted.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices