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Patanjali Ayurveda’s claimed cure for COVID-19 has been criticised for making unsubstantiated claims of efficacy. However, can Ayurveda, or alternative medicine in general, be evaluated in the same way as modern medicine?Host: Jacob Koshy Guests: Dr. Bhavana Prasher, senior scientist at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. Dr. S.P. Kalantri is a Professor at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, WardhaSearch for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

The COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted the academic year, cancelled classes and examinations across the country. To ensure that students do not miss out on their studies, schools moved classes online, forcing students to attend lectures via their gadgets. However, this has also sparked a debate on whether the increased amount of screen time helps students learn or if it impedes their progress. While Maharashtra has banned online classes from pre-primary to Class II, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have extended the ban till Class V. Here's a look at the pros and cons of online learning. Host: Puja Pednekar Guests: Kiran Bhatty is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Reeta Sonawat is an Executive Director at the Early Childhood AssociationSearch for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

The border clashes with China and the COVID-19 pandemic have reignited questions about India’s dependence on Chinese manufacturing. India’s imports from China in 2019-2020 reached $65 billion, out of $81 billion two-way trade. Is the pandemic, as Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said last month, a “blessing in disguise” for Indian manufacturing? Will companies be able to move deeply integrated supply chains out of China? And if so, will they choose India? In a discussion moderated by Ananth Krishnan, Biswajit Dhar, and Amitendu Palit, discuss India’s options and the challenges ahead in India’s efforts to boost manufacturing at home. Host: Ananth Krishnan, China Correspondent, The HinduGuests: Amitendu Palit, Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore; Biswajit Dhar, Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University.Search for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns have made work from home an imperative for several industries. Clearly, some job profiles lend themselves to work from outside the office. Others, where human interaction is necessary, obviously do not.For those industries and job profiles for which work from home is possible, has the concept come to stay, is the question before us now…Running up to 2025, a large IT services firm in India has said it would have about 75% of its 4.5 lakh employees globally to work from home, up from the industry average of 20% today. It has gone out on a limb and said it did not believe it needed more than 25% of its workforce at its facilities in order to be 100% productive.Will this trend catch on and become permanent? What does it mean for fissures that are already evident in today’s workplace? The digital divide? The gender divide? Transnational sensibilities? How do you build trust in a world where turning up for work is perceived as a mark of commitment?Host: Bharat Kumar K, Senior Deputy Editor - Business of The HinduGuests:Ashwini Deshpande, whose PhD and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India.Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, who is the President of the 184-year old Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) and also the Chairman and Managing Director of Cognizant India, one of the largest employers in India, with over 200,000 full-time employees of which over 75,000 are women.Search for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

In the midst of the massive protests that have erupted in the U.S., social media platform Twitter decided to do something it had avoided for several years: call out some of President Donald Trump's tweets as being incorrect information and as being against its policies.This prompted Mr. Trump to warn social media platforms of stricter controls via an Executive Order. It also prompted another social media giant, Facebook, to state that they did not want to take similar action since they did not want to be 'arbiters of truth'.These developments bring into focus the level of involvement the social media giants have in the dissemination of the public discourse and raises questions on how these platforms should behave.Guests: Mishi Choudhary, Legal Director of the Software Freedom Law Centre in New York; and Rishab Bailey, Legal Consultant for Technology Policy at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi.Host: P.J. George, Deputy Internet Editor, The HinduSearch for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

India has never spent more than 2% of its GDP on healthcare. And healthcare facilities across the country straddle several levels of efficiency and sufficiency. The infrastructure facilities and services are at best patchy. While States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu fare better, the impact of a virulent COVID-19 has shaken even the States that traditionally have done well.With COVID-19 having put the country’s heathcare system to the test, Dr. Abhay Shukla, national convener of the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan and Senior Program Coordinator of Sathi; and Prof. T. Sundararaman, former executive director, National Health Systems Resource Center, and global co-ordinator of the People’s Health Movement discuss whether the time is ripe to push the agenda of healthcare as a fundamental right for all citizens.You can now find The Hindu’s podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. Search for Parley by The Hindu.Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

In the last few weeks, France and Australia have taken significant steps to make news aggregators such as Google pay for the re-use of news. The beneficiaries will be news publishers, who for years have been struggling to make the digital transition. While the competition regulator in France has effectively pushed Google into negotiating a remuneration deal with publishers, Australia has proposed to make platforms pay for the use of news.Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism; and Parminder Jeet Singh, Executive Director, IT for Change, weigh in on whether governments should intervene in correcting lopsided relationships between platforms and publishers.Search for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

This week, we discuss the global Coronavirus pandemic that has effectively brought normal life to a full stop in India through a Centre-enforced lockdown. The importance of social distancing cannot be stressed enough. But this also has huge repercussions on our livelihoods and the economy, which has already been suffering a slowdown over the last year.To discuss this, are Dr. Naushad Forbes (former president, Confederation of Indian Industry; co-chair, Forbes Marshall) and M. Govinda Rao (economist, former member of 14th Finance Commission).Search for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

On March 2, a 43-year-old Muslim man was charged with sedition after he allegedly chanted pro-Pakistan slogans in front of the mini Vidhan Soudha at Kundapur in Karnataka’s Udupi district. Last month, the police arrested a teacher and a parent in Bidar for an allegedly seditious play against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Over the last few months, many people protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act have been charged with sedition all across the country.Senior Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde and Delhi government’s addition standing counsel (criminal) Nandita Rao discuss why Section 124A (sedition) still exists in the statute books, its misuse, and whether it should be done away with.Also Read: Should the sedition law be scrapped?Search for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

The massive restructuring of the military command structure has dismantled the old civil-military relationship, with far greater powers in decision-making now being bestowed on the armed forces. In a conversation moderated by Atul Aneja, Madanjit Singh and Anit Mukherjee weigh in on this highly complex transformation which is likely to lead to a complete overhaul of the military command structure.(Madanjit Singh is Vice Admiral (retd.), former head of the Western Naval Command and member of the task force for the review of the management of defence, set up after the 1999 Kargil War. Anit Mukherjee is a former Navy officer and assistant professor at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.)Search for Parley by The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in