The Indian rupee is on a downward trend. It logged its fifth straight monthly fall in February, weighed down by foreign portfolio outflows and increased hedging in the onshore and the non-deliverable forward market. Persistent outflows from the stock markets have also hit the rupee. Foreign investors have net sold over $14 billion worth of Indian stocks so far in 2025, playing a role in making the rupee one of Asia's worst-performing currencies.

The Reserve Bank of India has a mandate to address the volatility of the Rupee. It has intervened in the markets periodically to slow down the slide. It has many tools to do so. On February 28, the RBI conducted a dollar-rupee buy/sell swap auction for $10 billion with a three-year tenor. The auction was oversubscribed 1.62 times. A Reuters poll shows that analysts expect the rupee to weaken to 87.63 in six months. It suggests that sluggish economic growth, uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff, and the rising possibility of a global trade war have hit foreign investors' demand for Indian financial assets.

What can we expect the RBI to do? How does the RBI decide to intervene in the market? How is this volatility different from the volatile periods we’ve seen before? What’s the greater impact of this on our economy?

Guest: Smita Roy Trivedi, Associate Professor, National Institute of Bank Management, Pune (the views expressed are strictly personal)

Host: Nivedita V

Edited by Jude Francis Weston

Earlier this week, the United States recorded its first death due to measles after over 10 years. Why is this significant? The US had declared the eradication of measles, a highly infectious viral disease, from its country in the year 2000. Over 150 people, mostly children, are currently ill in Texas, and the outbreak has now spread to other States, as per US news reports. In Texas, all but 5 cases were in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. The country’s Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has a history of debunking vaccines, has now said that vaccines protect individual children and the community as a whole.

Why is one of the most vaccine-preventable diseases surging in a developed country? Is vaccine misinformation becoming a serious public health crisis? What is the situation in India like?

Guest: Dr. Rajib Dasgupta, professor of community health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Host: Zubeda Hamid

Edited by Jude Francis Weston

The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) has released documents showing that some voters in West Bengal have the same EPIC numbers as some voters in states like Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab. The elector photo identity card (EPIC) is a unique number, and the fact that it is unique is critical to avoid voter impersonation or other kinds of fraud.

The Election Commission has attributed the duplication of EPIC numbers to a manual, decentralised system of allotting EPIC system that predated the current electoral database platform called ERONET. But the TMC and other critics are not convinced by this explanation, and the EC’s own rules state that EPIC cards and numbers can only be issued to those on the electoral roll of a constituency, and can only be issued online, not manually.

So, how then was EPIC number issued manually? How did a voter from Gujarat constituency, who was not from a Bengal constituency, have the same alphabets in his EPIC number as someone who was from Bengal constituency? How robust is our existing system for registering new voters and deleting voters from electoral rolls?

Guest: MG Devasahayam, Coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections.

Host: G Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Jude Francis Weston

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. In the three years since, the US and Europe rallied around Ukraine, supplying it with military and financial support to take on the Russians. Russia was also placed under severe economic sanctions.

Russia, when it began its ‘special military operation’, may have hoped for a quick resolution by forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table. But the conflict dragged on, and as of today, Russia holds 20% of Ukrainian territory, and for the first time, the US has turned ‘neutral’ in the conflict. President Donald Trump has also made it clear to Ukraine that joining NATO is no longer on the table. At the same time, he has also said that the war could end in a matter of weeks.

What does the present conjuncture mean for Ukraine – which has paid the highest cost, in terms of lives lost, economic losses, and loss of territory? Can the US and Russia sit together and negotiate the end of the conflict, without Ukraine and Europe having a say? What lessons does this conflict hold for smaller countries caught in a proxy conflict between super-powers?

Guest: Stanly Johny, The Hindu’s International Affairs Editor.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.

About one month ago, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his country’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. This was not a completely unexpected decision – Mr. Trump had taken steps during his first term to do so too, but the Biden administration had chosen not to exit. The WHO has called for the US to reconsider its decision – the US is the largest contributor of funds to the WHO. In the weeks since Mr. Trump’s announcement, the WHO has said it plans to cut down on spending significantly – but the larger question remains of how this move is going to impact global health. 

Another hit to health has been Mr. Trump’s decision to temporarily suspend all USAID activity – USAID also works in the area of health in a number of countries – and this decision has thrown into turmoil programmes for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, vaccinations, hygiene and sanitation and others. What is the near future of global health going to look like? Is it possible the US will reconsider its decision? Is the world overly reliant on the US and is it now time for other countries to step up?

Guest: Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya a medical doctor and a specialist in global health, with nearly 17 years of professional work experience with the United Nations system including the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.

Host: Zubeda Hamid

Edited by Jude Francis Weston

The doping controversy over world no. 1 Jannik Sinner has divided the tennis world. In March 2024, Sinner tested positive for clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid. As per the rules of the International Tennis Integrity Agency and the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC), this would result in an automatic provisional suspension pending an appeal.

Sinner, however, appealed the provisional suspension, and an independent hearing convened by the ITIA found that he bore “no fault or negligence” for the positive tests. Subsequently, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed this ruling.

WADA’s appeal was supposed to have come up for hearing at the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) on April 16-17, 2025. But now the WADA appeal will not be heard because Sinner and WADA have reached a case resolution agreement.

Under this settlement, instead of the one to two-year ban that WADA had wanted, Sinner will serve out a three-month ban, from February 9 to May 4. This means he will not miss any Grand Slams, despite committing a doping offence that, in the case of other players, has caused them to serve out a ban of one to several years.

Is tennis’s anti-doping process “broken” as the likes of Stan Wawrinka and Nick Kyrgios have said? Are there double standards in this process - with top players benefiting while the lower ranked players don’t get the same treatment or benefit of doubt? How transparent is a process where a player can negotiate a “settlement” for a doping offence?

Guest: N Sudarshan from The Hindu’s Sports Bureau.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made a spectacular entry into Delhi politics in 2013. It rode the wave of an anti-corruption movement, and connected with Delhi’s middle classes by positioning itself as an anti-political force. It cashed in on a general disgust with self-serving career politicians. Once in power, it built a formidable support base on the back of welfare initiatives in school education, health, electricity, water supply, and free bus rides for women.

Now, after nearly a decade in power, it has been voted out. The BJP is back in power at the assembly level in Delhi after a gap of 26 years. It won 48 seats while AAP’s seat share plummeted from 62 to 22 seats. Analysts have blamed anti-incumbency and the AAP’s governance failure for its loss. They have also blamed the corruption allegations against Kejriwal, his excessive spending on the Chief Minister’s official residence, the alleged liquor scam, and so on.

But some basic questions remain: Did the AAP lose because the BJP out-promised it on the welfare front? On the corruption aspect: did it lose because it was perceived as more corrupt than its rivals, or because it is held to a higher stand of probity given its provenance in anti-corruption movement? Does the AAP really need an ideological core if it needs to survive, as some are arguing? And what does this outcome mean for the ‘alternative politics’ that the AAP had promised?

Guest: Professor KK Kailash from the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.

Four days after N Biren Singh resigned as chief minister of Manipur, President’s rule has been imposed in the state.

Singh’s resignation is seen as a belated one by many. Since May 2023 when violence flared up, more than 250 people have been killed and 60,000 have been displaced and unable to return to their homes. There has also been a huge proliferation of armed groups running amok. Given Singh’s abject failure in the past 21 months to quell the violence, what took him so long to resign? Will President’s rule bring back normalcy in the state? And what options can the government explore to restore trust among the divided communities and bring back normalcy?

Guest: Pradip Phanjoubam, editor with the Imphal Review of Arts and Politics.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.

Ahead of the Budget, there was an expectation that the government would provide some relief for the middle class, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered. 

In her budget speech, she announced that there would be no income tax for incomes up to ₹12 lakh. Of course, this stole the show, but it wasn't the ONLY big news. The Union Budget 2025 had several schemes, tax reforms and initiatives to improve infrastructure, ease of doing business, and financial inclusion. 

Guest: Prof. Bhagwan Das, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Economics of Loyola College, Chennai. 

Host: Nivedita V 

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian. 

Two weeks ago, the World Health Organization released a set of guidelines recommending the use of the lower-sodium salt substitutes. These products reduce the amount of sodium chloride in the salt, replacing it with potassium chloride. Reducing salt intake – or sodium intake, has long been held by experts as one of the easiest and cheapest ways to reduce our burden of non-communicable diseases. The WHO’s recommendation is 5 grams of salt a day but Indians eat far more than this at around 8 grams per day. Think about this – an estimated 1.89 million deaths every year globally are associated with consuming too much sodium. And India bears a huge burden of these deaths.

So what are lower sodium salt substitutes, and how can they help? Do we need to reduce the salt used while cooking food? What about food outside the home, and ultra processed food available in supermarkets? What are the costs of lower sodium salt substitutes and does India need a country-wide programme to help people make this modification to their diets?

Guest: Dr Vivekanand Jha, executive director, George Institute for Global Health, India and past president, International Society of Nephrology

Host: Zubeda Hamid

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.

Five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen and the chess world’s governing body FIDE were embroiled in a public spat until a few days ago. Carlsen, in collaboration with a German businessman, Jan Henric Buettner, has launched a new chess tour, titled the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, and FIDE objected to their use of the term ‘Word Championship’, which it believes undermines FIDE’s exclusive right to that sort of branding. Things got ugly as they exchanged allegations and counter-allegations on social media.

But the conflict, for the time being, has been put on pause, with the Freestyle organisers agreeing not to use the term ‘world championship’ for the first ten months. The Freestyle Tour, which will see a different format of games compared to classical chess, kicked off on February 7 in Weissenhaus, Germany.

What is the Freestyle Grand Slam all about? What is at stake here for Carlsen, FIDE and the other major entities in the chess world? Is there a chance of this new format displacing classical chess in the future?

Guest: P.K. Ajithkumar from The Hindu’s Sports Bureau.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Jude Francis Weston