Parley by The Hindu TheHindu

The Green Credit Programme, announced by the Environment Ministry in October 2023, is a market-based mechanism where individuals and companies can claim incentives called ‘green credits’ for contributions to environmental and ecological restoration. However, there is criticism that these initiatives may be used to circumvent existing laws, particularly those that deal with forest conservation. 

Jacob Koshy is joined by Vaibhav Chaturvedi, Fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water and Debadityo Sinha, Senior Resident Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

Earlier this month, following a report in The Guardian stating that the Indian government had killed about 20 people in Pakistan since 2020 as part of a broader plan to eliminate terrorists on foreign soil, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh responded that India will enter Pakistan to kill terrorists. A few days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, said that under a strong government, “atankwadiyon ko ghar mein ghus ke mare jata hai (terrorists are being killed in their homes)”.
Is the Indian government justified in targeting terrorists outside the border? Here we discuss the question.
Guests: Rakesh Sood, a former diplomat who served as Ambassador to Afghanistan, France, and Nepal. He was also Special Envoy of the Prime Minister on Disarmament and Nonproliferation until 2014; Tara Kartha, the director for research at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. She spent 17 years at the National Security Council Secretariat, which sits at the apex of India’s national security architecture
Host: Suhasini Haidar.

Bengaluru, often celebrated for being a ‘garden city’, the ‘IT capital’ of the country, and its pleasant weather, has been making headlines this year for facing a severe water crisis following the drought of 2023. The water crisis is also likely to hit other urban centres and rural areas. According to a recent weekly bulletin by the Central Water Commission, even as peak summer is around the corner, most of the major reservoirs in the southern States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana are filled to only 25% of their capacity or less.
Is the urban water system breaking? Here we discuss the question.
Guests: T.V. Ramachandra, Coordinator of the Energy and Wetlands Research Group, Centre for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science; S. Vishwanath, a water conservationist
Host: K.C. Deepika

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Many companies that faced regulatory action from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) or Income Tax (IT) Department donated electoral bonds worth crores of rupees to ruling parties via the electoral bonds route, show data submitted by the State Bank of India (SBI) to the Election Commission of India (ECI). Some companies which got huge government contracts purchased bonds for large amounts. Some new companies, which were incorporated during the COVID-19 pandemic, purchased bonds worth crores of rupees just months after starting out. 
Was the electoral bonds scheme used as an extortion tool? Here we discuss this question. 
Guests: Subhash Chandra Garg, former Finance and Economic Affairs Secretary, Government of India; Anjali Bhardwaj, a Right To Information activist and founder of Satark Nagrik Sangathan, a citizens’ group working to promote transparency and accountability in government functioning
Host: Vignesh Radhakrishnan
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Recently, hours after resigning as a judge of the Calcutta High Court, Abhijit Gangopadhyay announced that he was joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The judge’s decision to join politics and the manner in which it was taken has raised questions of judicial impropriety. Some people disapprove of the practice of judges holding official posts after retirement; they believe that this may impinge upon the independence of the judiciary. Others, including those in the government, have pointed out that such posts often require judicial personnel of the highest integrity and there is no Constitution bar to this effect. 
Should judges accept official posts after retirement? Here we discuss the question
Guests: Justice Deepak Gupta, a former judge of the Supreme Court; Sanjay Hedge, a senior advocate based in Delhi
Host: Aaratrika Bhaumik
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NITI Aayog B.V.R. Subrahmanyam recently claimed that less than 5% of Indians now live below the poverty line. He made the claim based on the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), 2022-23. Mr. Subrahmanyam argued that the average consumption expenditure in the bottom 5% of India’s population, as estimated by the survey, is about the same as the poverty line in India, suggesting that the poverty rate in India is somewhere in the range of 0 to 5%.
Has poverty really dropped to 5% in India? Here we discuss the question.
Guests: Surjit Bhalla is a former member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council; Jayati Ghosh is a development economist and author of ‘The Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic in India’
Host: Prashanth Perumal