In Focus by The Hindu

On this news update podcast today, we discuss various aspects of the coronavirus crisis that the country is still very much in the grip of. We focus particularly on the quality of data that the government is using as it plans its way forward. The big question on everyone's minds now is when this deadly second wave will peak, and cases will see a downturn. However, there are already projections for a third wave later in the year. Our ability to navigate that depends very much on vaccinations, which are still progressing at an alarmingly slow rate.Guest: Jacob Koshy, Deputy Science Editor, The Hindu JS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We recorded this episode to coincide with a series of articles that we will carry in The Hindu over the course of this week explaining the verdicts in the four States — West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam — and the Union Territory of Puducherry that went to the polls in March-April 2021. These articles are part of post poll survey done by the polling and research organisation, CSDS-Lokniti that tracks the specificities in each State that shaped the result. These post poll surveys have been a feature of our recent election coverage and allow us to reflect on the data and piece together a larger trajectory of how politics in the country is evolving.You can read more from that series, which started on May 4, here. But over the course of the conversation today we’ll go over some aspects of the voter data that we have, both from the CSDS poll as well as from the research that out data team here at the Hindu has done and we hope it’ll help you go beyond the headlines of the recently concluded elections.Guest: Srinivasan Ramani, Deputy National Editor, The Hindu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we’re discussing fire safety rules in public buildings, including hospitals. Over the past few weeks there have been deadly fires in hospital buildings, including those treating COVID-19 patients, compounding what is already a severe crisis that the country is facing.The most recent incident was on May 1, when at least 18 people died after a fire broke out in a COVID hospital in Bharuch in Gujarat. A spate of recent hospital fires has also been reported from Maharashtra, at Virar, a suburb of Mumbai, and Mumbra near Thane and earlier in the year at Nagpur.Fires breaking out in buildings, big and small across India is not a new phenomenon. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says 330 people died in commercial building fires in 2019, while fatalities for residential or dwelling buildings were much higher at 6,329. Electrical faults are cited as the leading cause of fires, but State governments are also widely criticised for being lax with building safety laws and for failing to equip public buildings with modern technology.What are the laws and regulations regarding fire safety and how much or how little various State governments comply with them? In this episode we try and answer the question of whether these incidents have been avoided with better compliance of the laws and what can be done in the future to prevent them.Guest: G Ananthakrishnan, Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Covid-19 crisis continues to dominate our news coverage, as it rightly should, and on this podcast and elsewhere in The Hindu we are working to get you the most relevant news and the best reporting. However, we switch focus on the podcast briefly today to look at international affairs. We’re going to be discussing something that happened in 1915 during the course of the First World War -- the mass killing of about 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire. Over the last weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden formally recognised this act of mass killing as a genocide. In doing so, he was fulfilling a long-standing American promise that his predecessors had failed to act on. In 2019, both Houses of the U.S. Congress passed resolutions calling the slaughter as genocide but the then President Donald Trump stopped short of a formal recognition, mainly because of Turkish opposition. Turkey, America’s NATO ally and the successor of the Ottoman empire, has never acknowledged that a genocide took place, and it sees a mention of it as an insult or a moral stain.Today, we’re going to speak about what happened to the Armenians in 1915, and why they were targeted for these killings. We’ll then talk about the timing of President Biden’s move to recognise the killings as a genocide and what it says about a changing geopolitical picture, especially when it comes to Turkey. I’m joined by The Hindu’s International Affairs Editor Stanly Johny. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our last episode we looked in detail at the foreign assistance now pouring in for India by way of critical medical supplies and whether this would help us tackle the current coronavirus crisis that we face. Today we look at how things are shaping up with the logistics of managing the crisis domestically. Shortages of medical oxygen continue to be reported from across the country and as registration opens up for all adults in the country to get a vaccine shot there is still the big question to address; will there be enough supply to get it to everyone? We discuss all that and the trend lines with the latest coronavirus numbers with The Hindu’s Deputy Science Editor Jacob Koshy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the next couple of episodes, we turn our attention to the coronavirus emergency in the country and we look at the crucial question of medical supplies. On all fronts now the country seems to be grappling with major shortages but even as we are looking to ramp up domestic production over the weekend various countries around the world have expressed support and have pledged to send urgent medical aid. What can we expect over the next week or so and what are the critical areas that the government hopes to address? We’ll get the details in this episode from The Hindu’s National and Diplomatic Affairs Editor Suhasini Haidar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this weekend edition of In Focus we discuss sports and look at the controversial rise and rapid implosion of the European super league.Right off the bat, there are a couple of odd things about this story. The first is that it seemed to run an entire cycle in just a few days. Plans for the super league or ESL as it was dubbed, were announced last weekend. The backlash by players, fans, pundits, nearly everyone involved in football was so intense and so immediate that it became clear in just a couple of days that this was a non starter and would have to be wound up.The other unique thing about this story is that in an era of corporate control over sport this was a huge and clear victory for fans, for the intrinsically local sentiment in football prevailing over this attempt to create a closed league of superpowers.So what was the ESL, why did it fail, what has been the fallout of that failure and is the idea now dead or could it rear its head again in the future? These are the questions we’ll take up in this episode.Guest: Ashwin Achal, Sports Correspondent, The Hindu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode we discuss the Iran nuclear deal and look at where things stand with regard to its possible revival. The Iran nuclear deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was an agreement struck under the Obama administration in 2015 and which the US then withdrew from in 2018 under President Donald Trump. That withdrawal had huge geopolitical consequences as does the question now of whether talks taking place in Vienna between delegation led by the US and other members of the 2015 deal, including Iran will be successful in bringing the deal back to the table. The larger backdrop to the whole issue, or a kind of ticking clock, whichever way you see it, is that Iran will go in for elections in June and there is the possibility of a more hardline leadership coming in that can scuttle any such. So what is the Iran Nuclear Deal, what does it mean for various players in the region and why is its revival important now? Guest: Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor, The Hindu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The second wave of COVID-19 infections in India has seen record-highs of over 2,000 deaths and nearly 3 lakh cases recorded on a single day. Health systems in many parts of the country are completely overwhelmed, reports of oxygen shortage are pouring in, and as cases surge, some States have imposed local lockdowns. How is the second wave in India, which began this year, much later than second waves in other parts of the world, different? Did we miss data that pointed to what was coming? When can we expect to see a decline in cases? And what steps can the country take, to ensure that we battle the pandemic without another economically-crippling national lockdown.To answer these questions, we have with us today, Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, professor of epidemiology and chair of biostatistics at the University of Michigan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we’re discussing the withdrawal of U.S troops from Afghanistan and how that will affect India and more broadly, what it means for the region around us. U.S. president Joe Biden has declared that he will withdraw all remaining U.S troops from Afghanistan by September 11. It's been 20 years since the terror attack on U.S. soil that precipitated their war in Afghanistan. Biden has said that the U.S. cannot continue to pour resources into an intractable war and expect different results and it does appear there is significant political support in America for ending these forever wars that the U.S is engaged in in the middle east.At the same time, in the intervening years, Afghanistan has only become a more complicated place. The peace process has been a long and messy affair and several threads of it remain unresolved, with the possibility very high now that the Taliban could be back in the ascendancy. And while the US may be leaving, that would leave the region in a rather worrying state of flux and instability. What does this all mean for India as we move forward? We will alternate in this episode between giving you a broader context on the withdrawal of troops and the peace process as a whole and discussing the reasons why this should be of particular concern now to India.Guest: Suhasini Haidar, National and Diplomatic Affairs Editor, The HinduStanly Johny, International Affairs Editor, The Hindu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices