Podcasts about chief ministers

Opposition leaders have termed the 2024-25 Budget as the “Kursi Bachao Budget.” Chief Ministers have boycotted and walked out the NITI Aayog meeting chaired by the Prime Minister.There are allegations that Centre is discriminating against non-NDA States. This has renewed the interest in the debate about how resources are distributed amongst States. Here we discuss whether the Centre is being iniquitous in State transfers. Guests: Pinaki Chakraborty is visiting distinguished professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi; R Ramakumar teaches at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Host: Jasmin Nihalani.

In the run-up to the Union Budget, Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Ministers of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, respectively, who are in a position to decide the political fate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, have demanded special financial packages for their respective States. These packages could potentially increase the fiscal burden on the Centre and also on other States. Should States get special packages outside Finance Commission allocations? Here we discuss the question  Guests: Arun Kumar, former professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Pinaki Chakraborty, fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy Host: Prashanth Perumal 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

On a recent three-week tour of India, I had the pleasure of meeting a host of individuals making a huge impact on the country's health and wellness scene. Today, I'm thrilled to have a guest on the show who I knew was a kindred spirit from the moment I met him. Ritesh Bawri, a successful Indian businessman, shares my dedication to health by walking 10,000 steps daily, adhering to an ancestral sleep schedule, and opting for ghee over vegetable oil at restaurants. In this episode, you'll discover Ritesh's health journey, insights on managing India's air pollution, the value of Ayurveda, the impact of seed oils on health, spirituality's role in longevity, and much more. So, who is Ritesh exactly? Ritesh is a fourth-generation entrepreneur and the founder of Breathe Again, a global platform that helps successful people learn to live a long and healthy life. He has an impressive track record, having built and sold several businesses in the construction industry valued at over $1 billion. Eight years ago, Ritesh underwent a remarkable transformation. He lost 60 pounds and reversed type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and hyperacidity. Since then, he has been on a mission to transform the lives of over 10,000 people from over 20 countries. Ritesh's work has earned him recognition from the highest levels of government and the entertainment industry. He has worked with the Prime Minister of India and six Chief Ministers, as well as actors, actresses, and entrepreneurs. Ritesh is also the author of the book The Amazing Health Transformation, which launched at number two on Amazon's bestselling list, and the host of The Ritesh Bawri Show. For the full show notes, visit: bengreenfieldlife.com/ritesh Episode Sponsors: Ion Layer: Use code GREENFIELD at ionlayer.com/ben for $100 off your kit. Beekeeper's Naturals: Go to beekeepersnaturals.com/BEN or enter code BEN to get 20% off your order. Organifi Shilajit Gummies: Get them now for 20% off at organifi.com/Ben. CAROL Bike: Visit carolbike.com/ben today and get $250 off your order. KetoneIQ: Save 30% off your first subscription order of Ketone-IQ at Ketone.com/BENG.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.It's the 8th of February and here are the headlines.Hours ahead of the NDA government's tabling of a white paper in Parliament on the “mismanagement” of the economy in the UPA era, the Congress today released a “black paper” on the Narendra Modi government's tenure. Titled '10 Saal Anyay Kaal 2014-2024 (10 years of injustice)', the black paper says the country's economy has been “devastated”, unemployment “aggravated” and agriculture sector “destroyed” during the Modi regime, and that it has “abetted” crimes against women and “committed grave injustices” against minorities.In a sarcastic jibe at the Congress, PM Modi thanked Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge for coming out with a "black paper" against his government and referred to it as "kaala teeka" (to ward off the evil eye) in the midst of good work being done by his government. He gave his best wishes to all retiring members and expressed the hope that new generations will benefit from their experience.The Reserve Bank of India's clampdown on Paytm Payments Bank's business was a result of persistent non-compliance of the regulator's norms. Following the central bank's monetary policy review, RBI deputy governor Swaminathan J said at a press conference that the regulatory actions were taken after giving the firm sufficient time to comply. The RBI last week ordered Paytm Payments Bank to stop accepting new deposits in its accounts or popular digital wallets beginning March.Days after announcing that a fence would be constructed along the entire 1,643-km-long Myanmar border to facilitate better surveillance, Union Home Minister Amit Shah today said that that the Centre has decided the Free Movement Regime (FMR) between India and Myanmar will be scrapped to ensure the internal security of the country and to maintain the demographic structure of India's northeastern states bordering Myanmar. Under the FMR, every member of the hill tribes, who is either a citizen of India or Myanmar and who is a resident of any area within 16 km on either side of the border can cross over on production of a border pass with one-year validity and can stay up to two weeks.Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan led a protest against the Modi government over distribution of central funds to states at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar today. He said the blow to India's federal structure is coming from the Union eating into the states' financial resources. He also added that the rights of states are being trampled upon and that the ‘Centre is eating into our financial resources.' Chief Ministers of Delhi and Punjab, Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Maan respectively also joined him at the protest.This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.

SPECIAL PROGRAM | C ACHUTHA MENON Chelat Achutha Menon (13 January 1913 – 16 August 1991) was an Indian politician and lawyer who served as the 4th Chief Minister of Kerala from November 1969 to August 1970 and again from October 1970 to 1977. He is viewed as one of the most influential Chief Ministers of Kerala.

First, the Enforcement Directorate, has been attempting to summon Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren. But, both Chief Ministers have consistently refused to appear before the ED. To understand if individuals can simply refuse to appear before the ED, Indian Express' Deeptiman Tiwary joins us in this segment.Second, for nearly a century, debates have raged about the Indus valley Civilization's script's linguistic basis, the number of symbols it contains, and whether it is based on a language at all. To help us understand the challenges behind deciphering this script, Indian Express' Adrija Roychowdhury joins us in this segment.Lastly, a team at Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital has been developing an AI algorithm that specializes in detecting early-stage cancer. In this segment, The Indian Express' Rupsa Chakraborty joins us to talk about this new AI tool, and why we need it.Hosted by Rahel PhiliposeWritten and Produced by Shashank Bhargava, Niharika Nanda and Rahel PhiliposeEdited and Mixed by Suresh Pawar

This episode we set the stage for one of the most momentous conflicts of the 6th century.  A lot of change is coming to the islands, and the outcome of the power struggles would determine just what shape that change would take. For more see our podcast webpage:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-90   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 90: Setting the Stage So when last we left off, the sovereign Nunakura Futodamashiki, aka Bidatsu Tennou, had passed away, and there had been some early flirting with Buddhism, which largely ended up pitting members of the relatively new Soga family against the powerful forces of the ancient Mononobe, as well as their allies, the Nakatomi.  It even got so bad that the heads of the two houses, Soga no Umako and Mononobe no Moriya, were openly mocking each other at the sovereign's funeral.  And unfortunately, things weren't getting better any time soon. In fact, I should probably warn you that around this point in the narrative we are really going to get all Game of Thrones on the archipelago.  Family against family, sibling against sibling, with deadly political intrigue.  And as we get into it, we should talk about a few things up front to help put everything in context. So let's come back up to speed on the situation, shall we?  In the late 6th century, the royal court was in its third dynasty.  The sovereign, Nunakura Futodamashiki, aka Bidatsu Tennou,  died from a plague that settled on the land.  Across the straits, the once small kingdom of Silla was on the rise, having gobbled up the small polities around it, including Yamato's apparent ally, Nimna.  Now the southern peninsula was largely divided between two kingdoms, Silla and Baekje.  Both were in contact with the Yamato court.  And then there is the far distant northern power of Goguryeo, pressing southward themselves. Yamato's involvement on the peninsula meant there was quite a bit of cross-strait intercourse—in more ways than one.  There were Wa on the peninsula, but there were also groups of Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo men and women who settled in the archipelago.  They brought with them various innovations and ways of thinking.  One of these things was the concept of corporate “Be” families.  Now, don't get me wrong, there clearly were families in the archipelago and had been for some time, but at some point we see the literal creation of the official families, the Uji: Groups of people who shared a similar job, gathered together under a family head, who in turn was given a place in the Yamato court.  The family then regulated the business of its members to the benefit of the court.  These created families, usually marked with the suffix of “Be”, became an outgrowth of the court's power, and they were in turn ranked with a collectivist title, or “kabane”.  The highest ranking uji were given the titles of “Muraji” and “Omi”, and the heads of those households were known as the “Ohomuraji” and the “Ohoomi”. One of the oldest of these families, on one side of this growing interal conflict, was known as the Mononobe.  They claimed a likely fictional descent from Nigi Hayahi, a “Heavenly grandchild”, similar to the ancestor of the royal family, Ninigi no Mikoto - an illustrious backstory that no doubt helped justify their position.  As for the rest, well, “Mononobe” literally translates to “the be of things” … and in this case, those things were weapons, reflecting a historical role of this important family as the enforcers and the heavyweights of the Yamato court.   Of course, they weren't the only ones with access to troops and weapons, as we've seen various families raising troops to go fight on the continent, and one can only assume that most powerful individuals at least had those they could call upon in case things got physical.  For all that administrative power was rooted in spiritual authority, physical power was also important, and we see this in the way that armor and swords were important elite grave goods, and not just for a single family. But few groups were so clearly tied to the exercise of martial power as were the Mononobe.  And they wielded that power on the behalf of the sovereign and the State.  Whether it was punishing rebels, or just executing the cruel whims of a violent and entitled ruler, the Mononobe were the ones, more often than not, knocking down your door in the middle of the night and dragging off those deemed enemies of the state. This position was such that you can see evidence of it in the earliest parts of the Chronicles.  For example, the Mononobe are connected to their ancestral shrine of Isonokami, one of the oldest shrines mentioned.  It was said to be the home of the sword that Susanoo no Mikoto, the wild brother of Amaterasu, used to slay the giant, 8-headed serpent, Yamata no Orochi, generally seen as a metaphor for Yamato conquering parts of Izumo.  Then there were the piles of swords made and stored at the shrine, which make it sound less like a place of spiritual worship and more like an armory—though let's face it, for some people those are basically one and the same. Add to that all of the times that the Mononobe were called upon to unalive some opponent to the throne, and we get a pretty clear picture of how they had for so long held a place at the very top of the court structure. On the other side is the Soga family, currently personified with Soga no Umako at their head.  While the Soga certainly traced their lineage back a respectable distance, including to Takechi no Sukune and others, at this point they are clearly relatively new, with their earliest mention coming in the reign of Wakatakiru, aka Yuryaku Tenno, in the late 5th century, about 100 years before,  and they had no clear spiritual center of note, at least in the Chronicles.  One source of their power and authority came through their connections with the continent, primarily with Baekje, and related families.  The other part was through their marriages, especially the daughters of Soga no Iname.  Up to this point, the descendants of Wohodo no Ohokimi, aka Keitai Tennō, had been ensuring that their queens were members of the previous dynasty.  This gave them and their offspring connections back to those other lineages helping bolster their claims to an unbroken lineage and their right to rule over Yamato.  While the sovereigns might marry daughters of other houses, those wouldn't typically be named as queens, although they might be expected to raise royal princes and maybe future queens.  Often these were political marriages that enhanced the court's connections to various regions.  A few particularly influential family names also appear, such as Katsuraki, Okinaga, and the Wani no Omi.  Still, the success of those families pales next to what Soga no Iname enjoyed in a single reign.  Soga no Iname had achieved what few others had.  He was the head of his family, one of the few of the Omi, or ministerial, kabane; and he had the personal title of Sukune, one of the highest honorifics attainable by an individual.  Both of those spoke to his power at court.  And when he passed away, he was succeeded in his post by his son, Soga no Umako, who was also made Ohoomi and who also held the honorific of Sukune.  Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Soga no Iname married two of his daughters (Umako's sisters), Kitashi Hime and Wonane Gimi, to Ame Kunioshi, that is, Kimmei Tennou.  Both of them had a number of sons who were also royal princes.  And one of Kitashi Hime's daughters, Kashikiya Hime, then went on to marry Ame Kunioshi's son and successor (and her own half-brother), Nunakura Futodamashiki, aka Bidatsu Tennou – and when Nunakura's own wife passed on, he elevated Kashikiya Hime to the rank of queen. Long story short, the immediate children and grandchildren of Soga no Iname were in a great position.  Soga no Umako was a powerful person at court, and brother and uncle not just to a number of the royal princes of Ame Kuniyoshi's line, but to Nunakura's queen as well, which gave him some powerful sway.  We are also told that he had taken as his wife the younger sister of Mononobe no Moriya, likely as an attempt to bring the two families closer together.  Spoiler alert:  it didn't. All of those royal princes of Soga descent would not have been eligible for the throne under normal circumstances.  But here's where things get a little dicey.  Nunakura had been the son of Ame Kunioshi and Ishi Hime, who was, herself, the daugther of former sovereign Takewo Hiro Kunioshi.  Of course Takewo's mother had come from the Owari no Muraji, a sister clan to the Mononobe, but the Nihon Shoki glosses over that by claiming Takewo was just holding the throne until his more legitimate brother was ready.  Still, long story short, Nunakura was the direct descendant of at least two previous sovereigns, so one would imagine that he would be succeeded by his son, Hikobito no Ohine, son of Nunakura and his previous Queen, Hiro Hime.  And yet, Hikobito was probably relatively young, and besides Nunakura there were numerous other sons of Ame Kunioshi – conveniently, for the Soga, through his Soga descended wives.  One was Kashikiya Hime's brother, Tachibana no Toyohi, and there were also her half-brothers from her aunt, Wonane Gimi, including Princes Hasetsukabe Anahobe no Miko and Hatsusebe—or just Hasebe—no Miko.  Remember that there is no such thing at this point as primogeniture—it doesn't matter if you are the oldest son of the previous sovereign, and the throne commonly passed to brothers before it went to sons and nephews. Finally, there is Kashikiya Hime herself, niece of Soga no Umako and newly elevated queen of Nunakura.  While some women may have been content to simply raise the future generation of sovereigns, there is plenty to indicate that Kashikiya Hime was a highly political animal in her own right.  On top of that, although her grandfather had passed away, her uncle, Soga no Umako, had taken his place at one of the top spots in court.  She was around 34 years old when she became queen, and 42 when Nunakura passed away.  She knew the ins and outs of the court, and she seems to have favored her uncle and her Soga family. And so, when Nunakura, aka Bidatsu Tennou, died of plague, the stage was set for a political challenge – to determine just who will be the next sovereign, and more than that, which family – and even which branch of which family – will take the reins in directing matters on the archipelago going forward. Now, before we get much further, I have to warn you, the sources we have are clearly biased when it comes to the events they were recording.  I mention this because many of the stories in this highly dynamic period and I don't want to keep caveating everything all the time. So let me get a lot of it out of the way now, before we get into the really juicy bits.  This also goes for some of the stuff in the last few episodes as well.  While the Chronicles were built from records that survived into the 8th century it is clear that not every family is equally represented, and it is also clear that the Chroniclers, who knew the outcome, were massaging the narrative in certain ways.  And so we get a narrative of how the Mononobe were enemies of Buddhism, attempting to stop it from spreading and trying to protect the indigenous worship of the kami.  They were assisted in this by the Nakatomi, a family of court ritualists, who no doubt were also out to stop Buddhism's progress.  As for the sovereigns, Ame Kunioshi, and Nunakura, while they weren't necessarily Buddhist, they are portrayed as essentially neutral, going back and forth between the advice of their ministers as they fought, internally. Most of this comes from the Nihon Shoki.  The Sendai Kuji Hongi gives a much more abbreviated version of the actual history, and the Kojiki is pretty much focused just on the lineages at this point.  By that point, a lot had happened, and neither the Soga nor the Mononobe were necessarily running things anymore. Michael Como, in his book, “Shotoku”, suggests that, in all probability, Ame Kunioshi and Nunakura were likewise hostile to this new religion, and I think I can see that.  After all, they had to realize it was a threat to their own authority as the dedicated interpreters of the will of their ancestral kami.  It may be that the positions put forth by the Mononobe and the Nakatomi were, indeed, their actual thoughts on the matter, but it isn't as if the Mononobe just went ahead and destroyed the Soga temples—twice!—on their own.  They first made sure to get an order from the sovereign, an order that may not have taken much arm twisting to issue. Como and others also point out that there is a problem with another often overlooked aspect of the struggles as they are portrayed.  The typical narrative pits the “foreign” religion of Buddhism against the “indigenous” religion of the way of the kami—what would eventually be known as Shinto, but at this point really didn't have any particular name.  The usual way of telling this story is that native religionists were simply pushing back against a foreign incursion, and even though Buddhism would thrive in the Japanese archipelago, and even come to be another tool of the state, there was a certain conflict that always remained, due in large part to the ceremonial role that the sovereign was supposed to inhabit. The problem is that there is nothing that clearly indicates that the so-called indigenous religions were appreciably less foreign to the islands.  Even the earliest stories that were recorded in the Nihon Shoki, which depicts Japan as a special place, formed by the kami themselves, there are clear connections to the continent.  In some cases, like with Ame no Hiboko and Himegoso, we have deities coming over directly from the continent as princes and princesses of foreign lands.  In others, like with some of the stories of Susano'o, we see the kami coming down from Heaven and first setting foot in the world on the Korean peninsula.  Combined with a plethora of other clues, at the very least we can assume that the ways of the kami, including stories and rituals, were heavily influenced by continental thoughts and ideas, some of which may have arrived more than a century earlier.  On the other hand, the use of horizontal tomb chambers is a pretty clear archaeological change that we can see happening.  We first saw this tomb design back in the 5th century in Kyūshū, and in the 6th century it had spread across the archipelago, becoming the dominant form.  But how does that connect to continental influence on indigenous spiritual and religious practice? I think we can generally agree that tombs, beyond the practical idea of not allowing corpses to just sit around above ground, rotting and breeding disease, were largely concerned with what we consider religious concepts about the afterlife.  Sure, there is the political capital achieved by reminding everyone just who's in charge, but it is designed around the needs of the rituals surrounding the treatment of the deceased.  Hence the grave goods, as well as the clay, stone, or even wood pillars and statues erected around them.  So when the burials go from relatively simple pits, dug in the top of these massive burial mounds to more complex chambers of giant stone blocks, which show evidence of people using multiple times, then we can gather that something changed in the rituals surrounding death and the afterlife.  Those changes are reflected in the stories about the kami, including stories about Izanagi and Izanami, about Susano'o, and even about Amaterasu in the Heavenly Rock Cave, which all have imagery associated with this new kind of burial practice.  That suggests that these stories either originated in a time when the horizontal burial chambers were prevalent, or at least they were changed and updated as ritual life also changed. And most of these changes can be traced back to the continent.  We can see evidence, there, of horizontal stone chambers, and then trace that influence as it makes its way to Kyūshū and then the rest of the archipelago. This isn't to say that there weren't elements that were conceived of on the archipelago itself.  Certainly local traditions evolved to meet the needs of the people, but not without outside influence.  Even today, modern Shintō includes concepts from Daoism, geomancy, and general Yin-Yang theory, among other things, while retaining its own character. The point is that the argument that the resistance to Buddhism was purely because of is foreign nature seems laughably false, and yet that has been the view reinforced within the cultural imaginary of the Japanese for centuries, and it would go on to define the separate roles of Shintō and Buddhism in relation to the State for most of that time. As we look at what takes place, however, just keep in mind that this was much more about sheer, naked, political power, regardless of how later generations tried to make it look.  Also, it is unlikely that were any clear villains or heroes, either.  Real people are complex, and motivations are rarely straight forward. And with that, let's get back to the funeral of Nunakura.  The throne was empty, except for the presence of the Queen, Kashikiya Hime, who continued to reside in the palace presumably receiving guests and whatever the Yamato version of funeral potatoes was—probably some kind of dried fish. The succession at this point wasn't exactly clear.  Nunakura had a son, Hikobito, who was no doubt the heir presumptive, but there is nothing explicitly stating as much.  Ame Kunioshi had been quite prolific, and many of Nunakura's brothers or half brothers were still running around.  In addition, though unstated in the Chronicles, Hikobito was not the son of Kashikiya Hime, and so it remains unclear just how motivated she was to help him ascend the throne. The first to act to resolve this uncertainty was a Prince that was neither a direct sibling of Nunakura nor of Kashikiya Hime.  It was Hatsusekabe Anahobe no Miko.  Like Kashikiya Hime, he was a grandchild of the illustrious Soga no Iname, except that he descended through Iname's younger daughter, Wonane Gimi. Anahobe seemed to have clear designs on the throne.  He marched straight up to the Palace of interment, and demanded entry to see his half sister.  This was the location, it would seem, where Nunakura's body was lying in state, prior to burial.  However, given some of the accompanying statements, I suspect they may have been using Nunakura's own Palace for this purpose, and his queen, Kashikiya Hime, was likewise residing there, possibly out of loyalty and expectations, but also because where else was she to go on short notice? The steward in charge of the Palace at that time was a man by the name of Miwa no Kimi no Sakahe, also just known as Sakahe no Kimi.  He was suspicious of Anahobe, and his intentions.  After all, it wouldn't take much for Anahobe to force his way in, force himself on Nunakura's queen, claim they were married and therefore he deserved to rule.  It wouldn't be the first time that a sovereign had married the queen, out at least a consort or daughter, of the former ruler to strengthen their own claim.  Kashikiya was double prized as she was born the daughter of Ame Kunioshi and the Queen of Nunakura. Sakahe no Kimi want about to let that happen, however.  We are told that he had faithfully served the royal family up to that point, and it didn't look like he was about to just lay down now, not even for a prince of the blood. This pissed off Anahobe to no end.  He left, incensed, and started talking smack about Sakahe no Kimi to anyone who would listen.  In particular, he complained to the two Great Ministers, which I can only assume to mean Soga no Umako and Mononobe no Moriya, the Ohomi and Ohomuraji of the court.  He mentioned how, at the eulogy, Sakahe had said that the court of Nunakura would not be left desolate, and that he, Sakahe, would keep it pure as the surface of a mirror.  Who was he to make such a bold claim to be the defender of Nunakura's virtue, especially when there were so many total princes and the court Ministers themselves?  And on top of that, he had the temerity to deny Anahobe access to the Palace of interment seven times.  For such insolence, he demanded the authority to put Sakahe no Kimi to death.  They both agreed, and next thing you know, prince Anahobe grabbed a bunch of troops, along with Mononobe no Moriya, the King's Hand of the ancient Yamato Court, and put together a posse to go bring justice, in the form of a quick sword to the back of the neck, to Sakahe no Kimi. This was not exactly a quiet affair, however, and when the assembled forces of the aggrieved princes rolled up on the home of Sakahe no Kimi, in Ikenobe, in Iware, he had already split, hightailing it up Mt. Miwa.  He then climbed down in the night and made straightaway for Kashikiya Hime's country house in Tsubaki-ichi.  There he went to hide out and lay low, as Kashikiya Hime still had his back. However, it wasn't only the royal family that had some people with divided loyalties, and two of Sakahe's own relatives, Shiratsutsumi and Yokoyama, decided to turn him in, apparently trying to cozy up with Anahobe, whose star appeared to be on the rise. Knowing where Sakahe was hiding out, Anahobe and his brother, Hasebe, ordered Mononobe no Moriya to head out and treat Sakahe as though he were being played by none other than Sean Bean himself.  Not only that, they were to kill his sons as well, ending his direct line.  Moriya accepted this duty without hesitation, once again gathering a large force and setting out. I would point out at this point that Sakahe was clearly a close confidant of the previous sovereign, Nunakura, and he was seeking refuge at Queen Kashikiya Hime's summer cottage—we aren't told if she was there, or still at the palace of interment, but either way, Moriya's forces were moving against her property. As Soga no Umako heard about this, he quickly came to the conclusion that going after Sakahe, and invading the Queen's residence to do so, was one of those Really Bad Ideas.  Sure, he may have initially agreed to Sakahe being punished, because there was an order to things, and no doubt Sakahe's actions threatened that order—though it is also possible that the two “Chief Ministers” mentioned in the text were others, as nobody is specifically named, so it is possible he was just learning about this for the first time, but doubtful.  Still, he was now against it.  Perhaps it was the clear involvement of Kashikiya Hime, or maybe it was the thought of killing the innocent kids.  Or possibly Umako had come to realize the truth—that this was simply an excuse for Anahobe to take the throne for himself. Whatever the reason, Umako went to his nephew Anahobe and pleaded with him not to go out with Moriya.  He suggested that, at the very least, it would be unseemly for him to go himself.  Anahobe was determined, however, and so he headed out to meet Mononobe no Moriya and to see to Sakahe's end, personally. Here the Chronicles diverge, giving us two slightly different accounts.  In one story, Umako tagged along, and eventually he was able to persuade Anahobe not to go himself, and Anahobe finally relented.  However, shortly thereafter, Moriya returned with news that he had executed Sakahe no Kimi and the others. In the other account, it is Anahobe himself who ended Sakahe no Kimi and his line, demonstrating that he was not afraid to get his hands dirty. Either way, Soga no Umako realized that this was not the end of it, and that there would likely be more violence.  He was clearly upset that Anahobe hadn't listened to him to call the whole thing off, and Kashikiya Hime, well, I think we can see why she may not have been happy.  The Chronicles say they both conceived enmity against Prince Anahobe, even though he was their nephew and cousin, respectively. Now this was all happening shortly after Nunakura's death—Nunakura died in 585, and this is all taking place between then and late 586 – and clearly it's related to a question of succession.  However, the Chronicles try to claim that there was, in fact, a sitting sovereign at that time.  That honor went to none other than Kashikiya Hime's own full brother, Tachibana no Toyohi, aka Youmei Tennou.  So given what we've discussed about Anahobe's antics in trying to marry Kashikiya, what's up with that, and where did Toyohi come from? Why Toyohi was selected, or even how he was selected, is a bit strange.  We are told that he was the fourth child of Ame Kunioshi, and as I mentioned, he was the full brother of Kashikiya Hime, making him a son of Kitashi Hime and a grandson of Soga no Iname.  We are also told that he believed in the Law of the Buddha and also Revered the Way of the Kami.  Finally, we are told that his capital was set in Iware—specifically at the Ikenobe no Namitsuki no Miya.  If that sounds familiar, it is because Ikenobe, in Iware, was also the location of our Sean Bean stand-in, Miwa no Kimi no Sakahe's, house as well—a strange coincidence in a tumultuous time. Toyohi wasn't long on the throne.  During the feast of first fruits, the Niinamesai, which was performed on a riverbank in Iware, Toyohi took ill.  The Niinamesai is typically observed on or about the 23rd day of the 11th month of the old lunisolar calendar, which could have been as late as December or even early January, meaning that it was likely cold, and possibly even cold and wet, especially along a riverbank.  It brings to mind the story of US President William Henry Harrison, who gave his inaugural address on a cold and wet day, and ended up catching pneumonia weeks later, passing away shortly thereafter.  In a similar vein, Toyohi's illness grew worse and worse, and so he requested that he be able to give worship to the Three Precious Things, which is to say Buddhism, likely hoping that worshipping the Buddha would cure him.  Obviously, Soga no Umako was in favor of this, having tried to get his own temple started in the previous reign, but both Mononobe no Moriya and Nakatomi no Katsumi both opposed it, claiming he would be turning his back on the kami of the Japanese archipelago.  It was déjà vu all over again. The tie breaker in this case came from what might seem an unusual source.  It was Prince Anahobe himself who found a priest and brought him to his elder half-brother's side.  The records simply state that it was Toyohi's “younger brother”, but a note in the Nihon Shoki explains that Prince Anahobe is assumed to be the one they mean.  This is bolstered, somewhat, by the fact that Toyohi is said to have been married to *Princess* Hasetsukabe Anahobe no Himemiko.  That's right, Toyohi had married Anahobe's sister, which may have also made them closer than even normal bonds of kinship would account for.  Thus, whatever designs Anahobe had on the throne seem to have been overcome by his desire to help his half-brother, an apparently touching moment. Unfortunately, it didn't help.  Toyohi grew worse and worse and eventually it was clear that he wasn't going to make it.  Kuratsukuri Be no Tasuna, a son of Shiba Tattou, offered to become a monk on Toyohi's behalf and help make merit for him.  Shiba Tattou had been the one to help Soga no Umako with his first attempt at setting up a temple, including having his daughter ordained as a nun, so this seems rather on brand for him.  It is interesting that Tasuna is mentioned as a member of the Kuratsukuri Be, however—the guild of saddle makers.  Once again, related to horses and thus back to Baekje and the continent. Tasuna offered to make a Buddha image that was about 16 feet high, and to build a temple.  The Chronicles say that this temple, along with its attendant Boddhisatvas, was still around several centuries later at the temple of Sakata in Minabuchi, which would appear to place it in the region of Asuka, the Soga family stronghold. Toyohi's reign was extremely short—assuming, of course, that he reigned at all.  As we've already discussed with Anahobe's Game of Thrones antics, it seems like things were generally still up in the air, though it is quite possible that since Toyohi was Kashikiya Hime's full brother, she deferred to him and helped him take the throne as everything else was going on.  It is just as likely, though, that the Chroniclers needed someone to fill the space, and he fit the bill.  There are a couple of things that suggest this interpretation.  First off are his offspring, specifically two.  One was Nukade Hime, who he made the Ise Princess, which is to say the Royal Princess, or Himemiko, who was assigned to the shrine of Amaterasu in Ise.  There is some question about the actual importance of Ise at this point, but there wouldn't be by the 8th century, and so to the Chroniclers this would have been an important point to make, even though there is some scholarly thought that Ise really wasn't that big of a deal until around the time of the Temmu dynasty. The other child of Tachibana no Toyohi is very important – someone we've touched on briefly, and I'll probably go into a whole episode on in not too much longer:  Prince Umayado.  Aka the Prince of the Kamitsu Palace, or Kamitsumiya.  He's better known as Shotoku Taishi, and he holds a special place in Japan's cultural identity about itself and Buddhism. For anyone who hasn't heard of Shotoku Taishi, I'll try to break it down quickly.  As I said, we need to do at least one episode on him at some point.  “Shotoku Taishi” is the single individual most credited with spreading Buddhism in Japan – the most mentioned, though he wasn't the first.  The problem is that this means there are a lot of stories around him and his accomplishments, such that it is hard to pull out fact from fiction.  Much like Yamato Takeru, Shotoku Taishi's legend had already grown by the time the Nihon Shoki was being written, to the point that different temples were almost fighting over who got to write the narratives about him and whose stories were taken as factual.  Think about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and you get the picture of the kinds of cultural imaginaries that get attached to Prince Shotoku. And so it is little wonder that this very important figure's father, Tachibana no Toyohi, gets credited with at least a few years on the throne, whether or not he ever actually sat as the ruler.  It provides even that much more legitimacy to Prince Umayado's later accomplishments—or at least the accomplishments that were attributed to him.  It also might explain why Toyohi's own story centers so much on his belief in Buddhism as well.  There is a point made of talking about the fact that Toyohi believed in Buddhism, and he is the first sovereign we have to actively seek out the worship of Buddhism.  Once again, it is hard to know if he was truly sovereign—I tend to feel like this whole period was one of the periods where the court couldn't initially get united behind a single person, and what we are seeing is more after-the-fact ascensions to boost the lineage.  But the dispute over Buddhism is clearly the centerpiece here for something much greater. But we haven't gone full family-on-family war yet, which brings us back to Mononobe no Moriya.  He was clearly not happy about the whole situation with the sovereign ignoring his advice and performing more Buddhist worship, and it didn't help that the powerful prince Anahobe had stepped in on the side of the pro-Buddhist faction.  They had just been out murdering people together, and now Anahobe turned his back on him.  Moriya likely felt tossed aside. I've seen some suggestion that the Mononobe house and the Soga house at this time were equals.  Sure, the Nihon Shoki uses the “Omi” and “Muraji” kabane, with “Omi” having a distinctly more prominent feel, but it is possible that the two families were actually of equal rank. There's the fact that the text at one time references “The Two Oho-omi”, which is generally taken to just mean the two “Chief Ministers”, Umako and Moriya, but which could also be seen as acknowledging that Moriya stood on equal footing with Umako.  There is also a note in the Sendai Kuji Hongi that suggests that Moriya was made both Ohomuraji—that is, head of the house—and also a high Minister, or Omi.  It is unclear what this means, but probably similarly placed him on equal footing with Umako. Certainly in the discussions up to this point, the Mononobe often had the favor of the court over the wishes of the Soga, especially when it came to burning down their Buddhist establishments. Now, however, the Soga were clearly ascendant.  The grandsons of Soga no Iname were Royal Princes, and that shifted the power dynamics.  Even Anahobe was a Soga descendant.  It is easy to see how Moriya was likely feeling isolated and even belittled by the court.  Enter Iago… I mean Oshisakabe no Kekuso, who bent Moriya's ear and convinced him that all of the other ministers were now plotting against him.  More than that, they were about to ambush him and take him out of the picture altogether. And was that so strange?  Hadn't something similar just happened with Sakahe no Kimi when the powerful people of the court found him too troublesome?  Moriya himself had helped carry that out and bring it about.  This was not exactly a time where one was innocent until proven guilty, and if you wanted someone out of the picture, well, it was hard for them to tell their story from inside a massive burial mound.  This was a dangerous time to be on the political outs. And so we are told that Mononobe no Moriya retired.  He left the court and went to Ato, where he had his own country-house.  This would have been in a Mononobe stronghold.  It is often thought to have meant somewhere on the Kawachi plain, around Yao, on southeastern edge of the modern metropolis of Ohosaka, and outside of the Nara Basin.  There he gathered a force of troops around him, presumably for his own protection.  Allies, such as Nakatomi no Katsumi, came to his aid. As Umako had predicted, this whole thing was not going to end well.  The two most powerful ministers at court had been feuding since the death of the previous sovereign.  They had broken on policy, on religion, and even on threats to the throne. And now one of them had holed up in their own stronghold and was building an army.  Meanwhile you still had a bunch of princes running around, all of them possibly eligible to ascend and take the throne of Yamato for themselves.   The storm clouds of war had gathered, and people were taking sides.  Whatever happened, its clear that it would have momentous consequences for everyone involved—at least, if they lived to see it through. Until next time, thank you for listening and for all of your support.  If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

With the rise in instances of tension, and even stand-offs, between State governments and Governors, there is once again a debate on the role of the Raj Bhavan. In a discussion moderated by Sonam Saigal, Margaret Alva and M.R. Madhavan discuss the role and conduct of Governors, the relation of Governors with the Centre and State government, and whether Chief Ministers should have a say in the appointment of Governors in their respective States. Guests: Margaret Alva is a former Minister and belonged to the Congress party. She also served as Governor of Rajasthan, Goa, Uttarakhand and Gujarat. She was the Opposition's candidate for the 2022 election for the post of Vice-President of India; M.R. Madhavan is the president and co-founder of PRS Legislative Research, an independent public policy research institution

State and Territory Premiers and Chief Ministers will meet at national cabinet on Wednesday, and one of the topics on the agenda is whether the mandatory COVID isolation period should be cut from seven days to five. Joining the show to give us an expert opinion on that is head of epidemiological modelling at Monash University Professor James Trauer.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the pandemic started the Prime Minister, Premiers, and Chief Ministers got together to form the National Cabinet. But what is it and how does it operate? What is the legal and constitutional basis for the National Cabinet? In this episode I explore its purpose and examine the shared responsibilities when it comes to health, vaccines, borders, lockdowns, quarantine, which things are federal or which are state powers and of course: some history too. Support the channel on patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/AuspolExplained Like Auspol Explained on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Auspol-Explained-107892180702388 Get a copy of the script with citations here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KFNoredrwoOfEJaxczb6c_6V-evBGuO2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102352521871694219008&rtpof=true&sd=true Auspol Explained would like to acknowledge the Whadjuk Nyoongar people and their Elders as the owners and custodians of the Land that the video was filmed and edited on. This Land was stolen and never ceded. It always was and always will be Aboriginal Land.

Global Policy Watch #1: The Man Who Broke Capitalism?Global policy issues relevant for India- RSJOver the last couple of years, I have run through a list of books in what I call the ‘crisis in liberalism’ genre. There is a template that most of these books follow – begin with the fall of the Berlin wall, remind readers about Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’ paper, run through the mistakes that a triumphal liberal order made through the next two decades, talk about capitalism running amok leading to the global financial crisis and then build a grand theory for the populist backlash we saw in the last few years.I wrote about these books on these pages. The list is long – The Globalisation Paradox, Radical Uncertainty, Radical Markets, The Light That Failed, The Code of Capital and maybe you could add the various Piketty books in here too. There’s a cottage industry that’s built up here and you can say I’m a huge patron of their artisanal products. Well, the good news is there’s a new addition to this genre this week. “The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America--And How to Undo His Legacy” by David Gelles. The title is a mouthful, but it is also convenient. It says everything it has to say in its unwieldy length. There’s not a lot more in the book except trying to retrofit all kinds of ills of capitalism seen today by the author back to Jack Welch. Gelles is all over the media this week (here, here) talking up the book and making the same points over and over again. And it got me thinking on two counts. One, why business management research and literature is almost always garbage? And two, why do we get public policy on managing business and capital wrong so often?On the book itself, I will try and summarise (in deliberate broad strokes) the three key arguments Gelles makes:There was some kind of a ‘golden age of capitalism’ in the thirty years after WW2. Companies took care of their people, distributed wealth equally, happily paid the taxes and employed people for life. Businesses saw themselves as more than profit maximising engines. There was a feeling of loyalty to the country, a fraternal sense of belonging to a community and a wider obligation to the supporting the government. All quite nice.Then in the early 70s, Friedman wrote that shareholder value maximisation paper (“The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”) and the world was never the same again. Businesses focused more on their profits and soon lobbied for lower taxes and greater freedom in conducting their affairs. Reagan and the conservative revolution of small government followed. Into this mix came in Jack Welch as the CEO of GE, the iconic American institution. Welch singlehandedly destroyed capitalism as we knew it. He laid off people, shut factories, offshored jobs, built a shadow bank called GE Capital that reaped the benefits of financialisation, obsessed over meeting quarterly EPS numbers, stack ranked the employees in a bell curve, created the cult of CEO worship and initiated everything that you find wrong today in business. Quite an extraordinary feat in doing bad things at work. In Gelles’ words: “He's on the Mount Rushmore of men who screwed up this country.” The book then goes onto show how Welch’s long shadow still haunts corporate America despite obvious evidence that he got it all wrong. GE is among the worst-performing stock in the last two decades. It announced last year it plans to split itself into three different businesses to unlock shareholder value. GE Capital, the engine that Welch built, is defunct. Yet, business leaders worship at the altar of quarterly earnings, force ranking employees, financial engineering, building personal brands and negotiating ever increase compensation packages for themselves.  So, what’s the solution? I’m not sure if I understood it from the book. Gelles isn’t advocating for socialism surely. But he does throw around words like stakeholder capitalism and praises the current CEO of Unilever and the founder of WEF that holds an annual event at Davos for their efforts to build compassionate capitalism. Some kind of a future where we don’t measure companies on shareholder value but another set of metrics involving all stakeholders that rein in the single-minded pursuit of profits is his solution. All quite fuzzy because he seems to run out of steam by the end of the book. All that Welch bashing is tiring.Let me digress a bit here.When I started my career, the ‘GE way’ was a rage in corporate India. I remember picking up a pirated version of Welch’s autobiography from a streetside vendor at Kala Ghoda. Everyone I knew was reading it. Except for the parts about his growing up that were written with some honesty, the book was terrible. All the stories followed the same pattern. Welch gets a call and goes down to a factory floor or to a customer site. There he hears or notices something small that gets him thinking. Then he finds someone young who reminds him of his younger self – direct, analytical and abrasive. Welch decides either on shutting down or buying a new business based on his gut. He gives this young man (almost always a man) the mandate to do it. Young man does the magic and Welch basks in his foresightedness.Interspersed between these familiar stories, I got Welch’s views on lifelong employability (not employment), how to be tough but fair, his views on the future of business and, of course, six sigma.Ah, Six Sigma.You couldn’t ignore Six Sigma in India during those days. Welch had elevated it into some kind of a religion at GE. Everyone had to follow it. There were weekly Yellow belt and Green belt training programmes in every company where employees would be taught some basic statistics, and something called the DMAIC model. If you did well, you would then go on to a rigorous Black belt certification programme. The ultimate big daddy of them all was the Master Black belt - a Shaolin master with scores of Black belts in his stable who could be unleashed on any problem. All Master Black Belts came from GE and for them, the answer to every single problem was a Six Sigma project. Complaints about canteen food in the office? Run a Six Sigma project. Spending too much on office stationery? Why, Six Sigma can help. People quitting because the work is drudgery? No problem, Six Sigma will solve it. I even remember a training programme where a Six Sigma expert told us he could solve the Israel-Palestine problem using Six Sigma if only they invited him. To me the whole thing, as it was run in India, was a charade. There was no new idea or insight that came out following it. It was just bureaucracy with some babus lording over us because they were certified in this nonsense. Japan was always shown as a shining example of the success of such techniques. I guess no one had heard about Japan’s lost decade.Anyway, reading the book and seeing the success GE had then under Welch, I was convinced of two things. One, he foresaw the two trends of globalisation and financialisation way earlier than others. He figured both the threats and opportunities they presented and moulded GE to take advantage of them. He did this better than anyone else who was running a large business then. Two, he realised that running a diversified, globally distributed enterprise requires a certain ‘way’. So, he codified it - bell curve for ranking employees, global training centres for creating a kind of manager, Six Sigma as the common language to solve everyday problems and a common scorecard to rate business performance. In his scheme of things, process and order were more important than individual enterprise and innovation. GE probably didn’t produce a single world-beating product during his time but they did make truckloads of money for shareholders by being more efficient and faster to market than their competitors. And that didn’t happen by just mindless shutting down of plants or fudging the books as Gelles seems to allege.    Coming back to the book, I have three problems with it.First, there’s no pause to consider the counterfactual turn of events. Had Welch not done what he did at GE, what would have been the alternative history? It was clear by the early 80s that cheaper, and often better, consumer durables and industrial products were coming into America from Japan and the Tiger economies of the far east. American labour was getting more expensive, especially the retirement funds of workers that were run often on a defined benefit programme. Remember the great American motor companies had to be bailed out after the GFC in 2009 because they couldn’t fund the pension benefits of their ex-employees anymore. Welch was realistic enough to understand there wasn’t going to be any breakthrough technology that could change the businesses that were cash cows of GE. A refrigerator is a refrigerator. They had become commodities. Welch took a hard look at it and asked why couldn’t GE take the battle to the challengers? Why couldn’t GE outdo them in being more efficient, using the same sources of labour as them and getting into newer businesses? The breakup of the USSR and the opening up of economies around the world helped him to go overseas. So did the steep fall in telecom rates that powered the BPO revolution. He also figured he could use the large cash flows his core businesses generate to build a financial institution. And he created a behemoth in GE Capital.These two decisions extended the lifespan of GE and, perhaps, saved a lot of jobs. GE might be thinking of splitting itself into three today but these are still reasonably profitable businesses employing thousands of workers. The graveyard of corporate America is packed with companies who once competed with GE in sectors as varied as electricals (Westinghouse, Whirlpool), packaging and plastics (Tyco), and household goods (Xerox, Kodak)…the list is long. They died because they didn’t do what GE did then. You can accuse Welch of being just a manager who got a couple of trends right and rode them but who didn’t innovate and build genre-defining products. That’s fine. Not being a gifted innovator isn’t really a moral failure. But Welch ran a management template that worked for its time. A lot that was good in that has helped other enterprises manage scale and complexity. He overdid things for sure and that toxic legacy of being obsessed over quarterly EPS targets, financial re-engineering to meet them and treating people as expenses is uniquely his too. But, on balance, he was responding to the incentives that he and GE had during that time.The problem with a lot of business management books is that they use the hindsight of success or failure to go back and find reasons for it. This is a useful exercise in history. And it should be only read as history. As one version or interpretation of events. The trouble is many of these books start peddling these as some kind of deeply researched scientific material. It is not science because every single one of them will fail the falsification principle of Popper to demarcate science from non-science. Pick any book that teaches the Toyota way or the Netflix method of managing people and apply them in another context. The success rate of any such application, however generously you may use the term, is still quite low. In fact, the moment I see a book written on the unique way a company does something, I realise the company has jumped the shark. Gelles’ argument about Welch being the one man responsible for breaking capitalism is as flawed as the many books urging companies to follow the GE way a couple of decades back. There’s no science or verifiable truth here.Second, the book has an America centric view of how Welch made things worse. Sure, Welch shut down plants and shipped jobs offshore. And you could argue that made lives of American workers worse. But that trend was already inevitable. I don’t know about you but I don’t think the pre-Welch era, say of the 70s, was some kind of golden age for capitalism. People were still protesting against inequality, wars and seeking global brotherhood. Inflation was high. Diversity in corporates was low. Politicians were being voted out of power because of how they fared on economy. Doesn’t sound like a golden age to me.Gelles blames Welch for hollowing out the industrial belt and increasing inequality in the American society. Maybe it is true. But what about the countries where Welch set up new shops? Without Welch, there wouldn’t have been millions of jobs created in places like India, China, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. In the mid-90s, GE was the biggest customer of the then-fledgling Indian IT companies. The likes of TCS, Wipro and Infosys scaled on back of GE business that at various times accounted for about a third of their revenues. By the late 90s, GE began the BPO boom in India and other companies followed. Almost every company would visit the GECIS centre in Gurgaon to see what’s possible to outsource in India. You could claim with some confidence that he created the most jobs in the history of independent India. I witnessed this first hand. An entire generation made a good living and gained global experience because of the platform GE created in India. There is a good argument then that he might have actually reduced global inequality because of his actions. GE was a global enterprise. Why should only American workers and equality in American society matter in judging his legacy?Lastly, it is easy to diss Friedman and his famous paper on maximising shareholder value without understanding him fully. Friedman didn’t advocate some kind of cut-throat capitalism where nothing else except profits mattered. He was a better thinker than that. I wrote about this a couple of years ago on the 50th anniversary of that Friedman paper and Raghuram Rajan’s assessment of it:Over the years it has been attacked and its central message discredited in the light of the global financial crisis. Even businesses are reluctant these days to invoke shareholder value maximisation as their goal. There have been calls for societal value maximisation, stakeholder wealth creation and conscious capitalism to replace the Friedman doctrine. All good intentions aside, nothing has truly replaced it in how businesses operate. What explains its enduring appeal? Three reasons:A simple and measurable metric: The shareholder value maximisation goal is easy to set and monitor. It helps that there is a common understanding of the metric. The alternatives are amorphous. It is difficult to understand what does maximising societal value entail, for instance. Who will define what society wants? Are societal objectives of India and the US similar?Rewarding the risk-takers: The shareholders invest risk capital in an enterprise. This willingness to take risks is what leads entrepreneurs to build new products, satisfy the consumers and create new jobs. The shareholders deserve the pursuit of maximum return by the firms for this risk they undertake. It is up to them what they do with these returns. They can invest it in newer enterprises or use it to improve the society as they deem fit. The management or anyone else should have no claim on how to invest the returns that belong to the shareholders.Shareholders are the residual claimants: Everyone who contributes to the value creation of an enterprise – the employees, the management and the customers – get their fixed claim on the value through compensation for their efforts, stock options and the value derived from the products or services offered by the enterprise. Only when these fixed claimants are served well, the value for the residual claimant (the shareholder) is maximised. So, the pursuit of shareholder value will by itself serve the other stakeholders well.Any kind of over-indexing on input metrics (like environment or society) instead of a residual metric like shareholder value runs the risk of the measure becoming a target and ceasing to be a good measure (Goodhart’s Law). The recent events around ESG investing and greenwashing are examples of this. See the Deutsche Bank story on this. More will follow.And to quote Friedman from his original article:“But the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book “Capitalism and Freedom,” I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception fraud.”   There is always a desire to ‘manage’ the economic system in a way that it allocates resources and rewards most efficiently. As we have seen over a few centuries now, this is a noble but flawed pursuit. It generates worse outcomes than a system that builds itself on fundamentals of human enterprise, behaviour and its response to incentives. There are many economic concepts that sound evil or counter-intuitive: efficient market mechanism, free trade, comparative advantage or Ricardian equivalence. But they work. There are reasons for market failures and there are extended periods of time when these failures are allowed to persist. But the beauty of spontaneous order is that the correction to its excesses is also built in. The correction is the time to learn from past mistakes and improve it. Not to call for discarding the system itself in favour of some kind of ‘planned design’. Welch was a remarkable manager – both a product of his times and someone who shaped his time. He pushed the boundaries in ways good and bad. That which was bad is already interred with his bones. The good must survive. India Policy Watch: Missing Pieces in the Jigsaw PuzzleInsights on burning policy issues in India— Pranay KotasthaneA popular way to think about strengthening the Indian Republic is to ponder on improving its institutions. However, this route often ends up in mere despondence over our many underperforming institutions. While confronting these demons is an absolute necessity, here’s another way to think about this issue: what are the meta-institutions that the Indian Republic is missing altogether?We aren’t talking here about institutions that don’t work, but institutions that don’t exist at all. And I’m not talking about the likes of a new sectoral regulator for cryptocurrencies, but about more important institutions, ones that could improve decision-making in governments across spheres.I don’t have a comprehensive list yet. However, there are at least three that I’ve heard many experts talk about.1. Parliament’s own think tankOf all the roles parliamentarians end up donning, our current structure equips them the least for the very function they exist: making well-designed laws in their constituents' interests. India’s MPs are not assigned any research budget or research personnel. Combine this congenital defect with the curse of the anti-defection law, and you get a structure that’s subservient to political party interests. Of course, some MPs do stand out despite these constraints, but it does appear that the odds are heavily stacked against them.Thankfully, a solution has emerged from civil society to fill this gaping hole: PRS Legislative Research — a 17-year old non-profit organisation that aims to provide independent and non-partisan research to the parliamentarians.However, just one such institution is not sufficient for an India-scale entity. What we need, in addition, is another much bigger research think tank of the Parliament, that’s paid from the Consolidated Fund of India and has researchers who develop deep expertise in specific areas over the years. Consider, for instance, the Congressional Research Service in the US. This federally-funded agency has over 600 employees who are specialists in a variety of policy domains.As the size of the Parliament increases after delimitation, and as policy issues keep getting more specialised, it’s imperative for India to invest in this missing institution.2. An independent fiscal councilThis institutional gap has been highlighted by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Finance Commissions. While India has an institution (the Comptroller and Accountant General) to audit policies that are already in action, there is no institution that makes an independent financial evaluation of government policies before they receive the final approval.The result is that tall promises of handouts in electoral manifestos of parties often become government policies swiftly, without any regard to the fiscal sustainability or opportunity cost assessments. A recent example is the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme which was implemented in 2015 after appearing in the 2014 election manifestos of both the major national parties.An independent fiscal council then is an institution that is supposed to do three things. One, evaluate the quality of budget forecasts given how there is a wide gap between budgeted estimates and actual expenditures. Two, develop cost estimates of budgetary proposals ex-ante. Ang three, monitor if fiscal rules are being adhered to.Dr Govinda Rao writes in The Hindu that the global experience with such institutions has been largely positive:A study by the IMF (“The Functions and Impact of Fiscal Councils”, July 2013), documents that the existence of IFIs is associated with stronger primary balances; countries with IFIs tend to have more accurate macroeconomic and budgetary forecasts; IFIs are likely to raise public awareness and raise the level of public debate on fiscal policy. Case studies in Belgium, Chile and the United Kingdom show that IFIs have significantly contributed to improved fiscal performances.In Belgium, the government is legally required to adopt the macroeconomic forecasts of the Federal Planning Bureau and this has significantly helped to reduce bias in these estimates. In Chile, the existence of two independent bodies on Trend GDP and Reference Copper Price has greatly helped to improve Budget forecasts. In the U.K., the Office for Budget Responsibility has been important in restoring fiscal sustainability. Cross-country evidence shows that fiscal councils exert a strong influence on fiscal performances, particularly when they have formal guarantees of independence.Clearly a meta-institution we are missing.3. An institution for vertical and horizontal bargainingThis idea again comes from Dr Govinda Rao. He writes in his recent book Studies of Indian Public Finance that India lacks an institution that can act as a credible umpire between various states, and between the states as a whole on one side and the union government on the other. The National Development Council created for this purpose is defunct, the Inter-State Council is a part of the union government, the Rajya Sabha is no longer the council of states in reality, and finance commissions are dissolved after making their recommendations. The result is that there is no institution that can truly champion cooperative federalism. The GST Council perhaps performs acts as a bargaining and negotiation platform in the limited area of indirect taxation. To manage India’s heterogeneity, a meta-institution that is dedicated to horizontal and vertical balance is imperative.Another big lesson here is that the view that India’s government is oversized is inaccurate. The Indian State is quite anaemic when it comes to staffing for its core functions. We need more institutions, not fewer.What are some more missing meta-institutions in the Indian Republic? Leave a comment.India Policy Watch: The Paradiplomacy OpportunityInsights on burning policy issues in India— Pranay KotasthaneNote these two developments over the last few weeks: Tamil Nadu was first off the blocks to send a relief consignment to the crisis-stricken Sri Lanka. And as many as three Chief Ministers—besides the sons of two other CMs—made their presence felt at the World Economic Forum in Davos.Moreover, chief ministerial visits to business capitals of the world are now commonplace. Virtually every Indian state now has its own global investor summit. And yes, two states (Punjab and Kerala) already have departments for non-resident Indians.Put all these developments together and it becomes clear that Indian states are also geopolitical and geoeconomic entities. In the past, I’ve written how Australia gets around its low diplomatic corps strength by allowing its states to have their own trade and investment offices in other countries. India too should take this path, and encourage state governments to have permanent trade and investment desks in important business centres of the world.This view is not a popular one. The policy orthodoxy believes that since foreign affairs is under the Union List of the Seventh Schedule in the constitution, states have no role to play. Besides, state governments having their own foreign policy is at odds with the popular “one nation, one X” idea.But in my view, economic diplomacy by Indian states can be beneficial to all relevant stakeholders. It is in the states’ interest because they understand their comparative advantages, needs and challenges far better than the union government. Thus, they can choose to invest in external economic relations that are suited to their conditions.Economic paradiplomacy can also benefit the investors as they get to directly engage with the entity that controls crucial variables for running businesses, such as land, labour, electricity, and law and order.And finally, this strategy can benefit the union government as well. It frees up the already strained capacity of the external affairs and commerce ministries for broader issues. The role of states in the India-Israel relationship demonstrates that there is also a political utility:“Full diplomatic ties were established between India and Israel in 1992. Even after this move, collaboration with Israel was seen as a hot potato issue in India. The domestic implications of taking sides in what was essentially a religious conflict was a significant impediment to the ties taking off. A few Members of Parliament criticised this step on humanitarian grounds, arguing that New Delhi should have waited until an independent Palestinian state came into being. Some members of the ruling Indian National Congress feared that this step would be detrimental to their electoral appeal to the Indian Muslim community. The Babri Masjid riots further thickened the plot and the Indian government slowed down the pace of the partnership.It was under these circumstances that the Indian states were allowed to expand Indian collaboration with Israel. Traditionally, Indian states were kept out of India’s foreign policy debates. Even the Constitution assigned all matters of legislation related to foreign policy exclusively to the Union government. Consequently, the proliferation of collaboration between Indian states with Israel was a bold and unique experiment by the PV Narasimha Rao government. While this allowed relations to prosper, it also avoided the politico-religious undertones that would have been hard to suppress had this engagement been anchored by the Union government alone.”And so, economic diplomacy by the states is a win-win-win. For an India with global interests, its states have to come to the party. Should they be invited?HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Book] Dr Govinda Rao’s Studies in Indian Public Finance is a must-read for policy enthusiasts. I really hope OUP prices it such that the common Public can Finance the book purchase. Nevertheless, the book links to some classics in public finance. Here’s the compilation: Public Principles of Public Debt by James Buchanan, Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State by James Buchanan and Richard Musgrave, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olson, Public Finance in Theory and Practice by Richard and Peggy Musgrave, The Power to Tax: Analytic Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution by Brennan and Buchanan, The Calculus of Consent by James Buchanan, The Road to Serfdom by Hayek, and Democracy, Dictatorship, and Development by Mancur Olson.[Prediction Market] We’ve written previously about the utility of prediction markets in foreign policy. Check out this US-government project that is explicitly meant to ‘build a collective foresight capability that can provide U.S. Government policymakers with an accurate and nuanced rendering of the future’.[Report] Putting the Periphery at the Center by Happymon Jacob makes some excellent recommendations on Indian Paradiplomacy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

First, Indian Express' Deeptiman Tiwary joins host Shashank Bhargava to talk about what senior BJP leaders and Chief Ministers, including Yogi Adityanath, said during a recent RSS-affiliated event.Next, Indian Express' Tora Agarwala tells us about the kind of devastation that floods and landslides have caused in Assam, and the possible reasons behind it (11:44).And in the end, Indian Express' Anonna Dutt explains how concerned we should be about a new omicron sub-variant being detected in India (20:32).

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has changed five Chief Ministers in four States this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home State, Gujarat, is the latest to see a change of guard. Are these changes a sign of anti-incumbency or are they a sign of concentration of power in the hands of the Central leadership? Here we discuss the issue. Guests: Sudheendra Kulkarni, political commentator; Harish Khare, senior journalist and former Editor of The Tribune Host: Sandeep Phukan Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

First, Indian Express' Liz Mathew talks about how the BJP has changed its strategy of picking Chief Ministers, and what it means for its central leadership.Next, Indian Express' Jignasa Sinha talks about the status of the Hathras gangrape case after one year, and how the victim's family has been dealing with its aftermath (12:10). And in the end, Indian Express' Nihal Koshie talks about why Neeraj Chopra's coach was fired by the Athletics Federation of India (18:00).

Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia, has written to Chief Ministers of Telangana and Meghalaya, requesting their personal intervention in expediting various matters for strengthening aviation infrastructure in these states. While writing to K Chandrashekar Rao, the Chief Minister of Telangana, Scindia drew his attention to the issue of extension of period of Concession Agreement for Hyderabad International Airport Limited (HIAL). He mentioned that a Concession Agreement (CA) dated December 20, 2004 had been executed between the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India and HIAL for development, construction, operation and maintenance of Hyderabad International Airport and urged him to look at extending it. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/chsushilrao/message

Steve Price speaks with Executive Director of Small Business Australia, Bill Lang, on the impact continuing lockdowns is having on businesses and why State Premiers and Chief Ministers need to stick to the reopening plan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday spoke with Chief Ministers of Punjab, Karnataka, Bihar, and Uttarakhand over the situation.As many as 40 serving and retired faculty members and several non-teaching staffers of the Aligarh Muslim University succumbed to Covid19.West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee urged PM Narendra Modi to exempt COVID-related life-saving drugs and equipment from GST and customs duty, to eliminate any supply constraints, amid the second wave of COVID 19. For more live news download Etv Bharat Download ETV Bharat on App store – https://apps.apple.com/in/app/etv-bharat/id1453416186 Play Store – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.etvbharat.android Or watch us live on – www.etvbharat.com ETV Bharat is a Division of Ushodaya Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. , is a comprehensive digital national news platform conceived to deliver seamless news and information services, using video-centric Mobile App and Web Portals. It is first-of-its kind offering in India in terms of diversity and depth, dedicated journalists network, reach of 24 states with services in 13 languages i.e.– Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Assamese, Odia and English. ETV Bharat is the latest initiative of the five-decade old multi-dimensional Ramoji Group. The Group's highly successful media endeavors include : Eenadu - one of the largely circulated language dailies in the country , and ETV Network with Telugu general entertainment, infotainment and news channels. With a strong lineage of the most trusted media house, ETV Bharat would draw on its strengths of decades' long experience and innovation. ETV Bharat will combine the new technologies of mobile and digital media to engage news and information seekers in a new connected world. It will be driven by well-established news gathering setup, technology specialists and other professionals.

"Data and facts which have been collected by the Gaikwad Commission ...indicate that Marathas are neither socially nor educationally backward" That was just one of the views expressed by a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court on 5 May when it struck down the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Act of 2018, also known as SEBC, which extended reservations to the Maratha community in public education and employment in excess of the ceiling limit of 50% fixed by the apex court. The Devendra Fadnavis government in 2018 had approved a 16% reservation for Marathas in jobs and education after statewide protests...that ended up increasing the 50% cap on reservation that was set by the Supreme Court, that's how the matter landed up there.The Maratha community which constitutes 32 percent of the Maharashtra's population has historically been a socially and politically dominant class with 12 of the 18 Chief Ministers of the state coming from the community, and over 60% of all the members of Legislative Assemblies of Maharashtra have been Marathas since 1962.Which prompts the question, why is this community seeking reservation in the first place? The Supreme Court's quashing of the Maratha reservation quota, also casts a shadow on the Uddhav Thackeray administration, since the Maratha community vote swung the votes for the NCP party in the 2019 Assembly Elections. Not just that, the Supreme Court also may have led itself to muddled waters as it not only challenged past rulings on the excess reservation but whether it has the power to set any limit on reservations in India? To unpack all of these issues, for today's episode, I spoke with Member of Parliament Chhatrapati Sambhaji Raje, who is one of the leaders for the demand of Maratha reservation, and with Smruti Koppikar, a Mumbai-based senior journalist and columnist.Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram Guest: Chhatrapati Sambhaji Raje, Member of Parliament from Kolhapur and Smruti Koppikar, Mumbai-based senior journalist and columnist. Editor: Shelly Walia Music: Big Bang FuzzListen to The Big Story podcast on:Apple: https://apple.co/2AYdLIl Saavn: http://bit.ly/2oix78C Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/2ntMV7S Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IyLAUQ Deezer: http://bit.ly/2Vrf5Ng Castbox: http://bit.ly/2VqZ9ur

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chief Ministers of States and Administrators of Union Territories virtually today to discuss the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the country. He was concerned that around 70 districts registered a 150 per cent growth in cases in the last few weeks, and urged States 'test, track and treat' to tackle the increase in cases. Here are three important takeaways from the meet. Listen to the podcast. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-line/message

Mamata Banerjee releases party's Manifesto for upcoming assembly elections. National Investigative Agency confirmed that the person, seen in a CCTV grab walking near Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani's residence on February 25 night was Sachin Waze. Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Chief Ministers of all States to increase the number of vaccination centres.For more live news download Etv Bharat Download ETV Bharat on App store – https://apps.apple.com/in/app/etv-bharat/id1453416186 Play Store – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.etvbharat.android Or watch us live on – www.etvbharat.com ETV Bharat is a Division of Ushodaya Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. , is a comprehensive digital national news platform conceived to deliver seamless news and information services, using video-centric Mobile App and Web Portals. It is first-of-its kind offering in India in terms of diversity and depth, dedicated journalists network, reach of 24 states with services in 13 languages i.e.– Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Assamese, Odia and English. ETV Bharat is the latest initiative of the five-decade old multi-dimensional Ramoji Group. The Group's highly successful media endeavors include : Eenadu - one of the largely circulated language dailies in the country , and ETV Network with Telugu general entertainment, infotainment and news channels. With a strong lineage of the most trusted media house, ETV Bharat would draw on its strengths of decades' long experience and innovation. ETV Bharat will combine the new technologies of mobile and digital media to engage news and information seekers in a new connected world. It will be driven by well-established news gathering setup, technology specialists and other professionals.

Just days shorts of realising four years in power, Trivendra Singh Rawat submitted his resignation as chief minister of Uttarakhand to Governor Baby Rani Maurya on 9 March. Speaking to the media after submitting his resignation, he said his party had given him the golden opportunity to serve as chief minister of Uttarakhand. He said, “I come from humble beginnings, from a small village and the family of a soldier. No one could have imagined I would get the opportunity to serve as chief minister of the state for four years.”And in a surprise move on 10 March, BJP's state legislative party chose Garhwal MP Tirath Singh Rawat as the new CM, a name that was not among those being discussed for the post. Trivendra Rawat, who was handpicked by the BJP party leadership in 2017 following the election win, had the cloud of resignation looming over him for the past few days as many state leaders had been objecting to his style of chief ministership. Concealed divisions were formed within the party and ultimately, MLAs voiced their dismay in Delhi, some even threatening to resign.While the resignation may not come as a surprise given the resentment against him within the party, plucking a chief minister just a year before Assembly elections does signal that the BJP is reassessing its campaign strategy. In today's episode, we will analyse the state's political history, what reasons may have led to the resignation of Trivendra Singh Rawat and what's in store for the new CM as the countdown for 2022 elections begin.Host and Producer: Himmat ShaligramGuest:Aditya Menon, Political Editor at The Quint. Editor: Shelly Walia Music: Big Bang FuzzListen to The Big Story podcast on:Apple: https://apple.co/2AYdLIl Saavn: http://bit.ly/2oix78C Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/2ntMV7S Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IyLAUQ Deezer: http://bit.ly/2Vrf5Ng Castbox: http://bit.ly/2VqZ9ur

About Speaker: Mr. Anirudh Gupta is a leading Edupreneur, an Eminent Writer and an enthusiastic Social Worker. He is an Environmental Engineer by qualification and has done his Masters in International Trade and Finance. Mr. Gupta is the CEO of the renowned D.C.M Group of Schools, which has off-shoots in various parts of North India and is a leading organization serving the cause of education since 1946. He has attended several National and International Conferences in the field of Education in U.K, Australia, Finland, UAE, USA, China, France, Japan and other countries and regularly speaks at various national/international forums on diverse topics like Industrial Revolution 4.0, School Education Sector, Safety & Security in Schools, Regulation & Autonomy – Maintaining Balance, Leadership & Teacher Development - Capacity building, Technology & Education etc. Mr. Gupta is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, USA. He heads the North Chair of FICCI ARISE which is a collegium of leading stakeholders who represent different facets of School Education in India.He also heads the Education Committee of PHD Chamber of Commerce (Chandigarh Region) and is an Advisor (Quality) to National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA) which represents over 65000 budget schools in 22 States of India. At an early age, Mr. Gupta scaled glorious heights of success and is endowed with lots of rare qualities of head and heart. He has recently earned the honour of being rated and featured amongst the top 21 Indian Leaders Transforming the Indian Education landscape. Mr. Gupta has been awarded as Edupreneur of the Year 2019 by World Education Summit followed by Edupreneur of the Year 2019 Award by World Didactic Association during the Asian Summit on Education & Skills 2019 held in Bengaluru.His previous roll of honours include numerous prestigious awards like Educational Entrepreneur of the Year -2016 by Indian Education Congress, National Education Excellence Award by Global Leaders Foundation, National Award for Excellence in Education by Indian Economic Research and Development Council, Indian Award of Excellence in Education, Young Entrepreneur Award,Most Distinguished Leader of the Year 2018 by Digital Learning and Exceptional Educator by American Leadership Board. Besides this, he has been bestowed with appreciation awards by the Chief Ministers of Punjab, Delhi and Gujarat for various philanthropic works.Mr. Gupta was featured amongst the “33 Top Edupreneurs of India” in the “Education World” magazine and has also been featured in several other leading magazines like Digital Learning, Brainfeed, Mentor etc. as a force to reckon within the ‘K-12'segment in the country. Mr. Gupta is also an Eminent Writer, an eloquent speaker and a trainer. He has already written hundreds of photo features and articles for various newspapers and Magazines including Press Trust of India and The Tribune and regularly speaks at various national and international forums. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/future-school-leaders/message

Life should move on, said the Supreme Court almost 10 days back as it dismissed petitions to postpone the JEE Main and NEET UG entrance exams. But there's no end to demands from students and parents to not conduct the exams on the scheduled dates in September. Joining them now are politicians from across parties – from Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi to Mamata Banerjee and Uddhav Thackerey who want to approach India's top court again –– to postpone the exams. On 26 August, in fact, Congress' interim president Sonia Gandhi hosted an online meeting with state Chief Ministers, including West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren and Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel, to help the engineering and medical aspirants of the country who are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.While some suggested that they approach the court, some said a delegation should be sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Even as the debate rages on, #PostponeJEEandNEETexams and #AntiStudentModiGovt are trending online. They are also planning a protest on 27 August, from their homes, with "black Flags, tie black bands on arms or foreheads, wear black masks, and turn their profile pictures black". On its part, the National Testing Agency has assured all precautionary measures to be exercised to protect students during the conduct of the exams. Meanwhile, there are those who're asking if not now, then when? How long do we postpone these exams for? Can the government afford to declare this academic year as a 'zero' year as the protesting students suggest? Tune in to The Big Story!Producer and Host: Shorbori PurkayasthaGuest: PJ Narayanan, The Director of IIT Hyderabad Editor: Shelly Walia Music: Big Bang FuzzListen to The Big Story podcast on: Apple: https://apple.co/2AYdLIl Saavn: http://bit.ly/2oix78C Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/2ntMV7S Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IyLAUQ Deezer: http://bit.ly/2Vrf5Ng Castbox: http://bit.ly/2VqZ9ur

अहिले सबै भन्दा बढी कोरोना संक्रमण बढेको प्रदेश २ र प्रदेश १ को अवस्था के छ ? संक्रमण रोकथाम र नियन्त्रणका लागि प्रदेशस्तरका पहल कदमी कस्ता छन् ? संक्रमणको जोखिम बढ्दै गए अवस्था कस्तो हुन्छ ? केन्द्र र प्रदेश सरकारबीचको समन्वय वास्तवमा कस्तो छ ? अनि स्वास्थ्य क्षेत्रका विज्ञ र विषेशज्ञहरुका सुझावहरुलाई सरकारले कति ख्याल गरेको छ ? संक्रमणको जोखिमबाट बच्न अवस्थामा सरकारले, र स्वयं नागरिकले के कस्तो सावधानी अपनाउनुपर्छ ? यस्तै प्रश्नको जवाफ खोज्न आजको संवादमा मसँग प्रदेश १ का मुख्यमन्त्री शेरधन राई र प्रदेश २ का मुख्यमन्त्री लालबाबु राउत जोडिनुहुनेछ भने स्टुडियोमा मलाई साथ दिँदै हुनुहुन्छ जनस्वास्थ्यविद् प्रा. डा. शरदराज वन्त । आउनुहोस् स्वागत गरौ । आजका मेरा सबै अतिथीहरुलाई ।

Shops will be open, inter-state movement will be allowed, private offices will be operational — the fourth phase of the lockdown or lockdown 4.0 has begun and as promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it's going to be different from the previous phases.While the Ministry of Home Affairs has released a new list of dos and don'ts for the next two weeks, states are likely to add their own restrictions and relaxations unique to their situation.The big change in lockdown 4.0 is that states will be allowed a fair amount of autonomy in deciding the zones. So far, the MHA has been categorizing the zones and that has been a cause of great distress for the cash-strapped states which are looking for ways to restart the economy.In the last meeting between the PM and the states, Chief Ministers of some states like Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Tamil Nadu  had stressed on how states should have some flexibility in micro-planning after factoring in the local issues.Keeping within the parameters of the MHA guidelines, states can now define what constitutes a red zone now.So what are the new rules in lockdown 4.0? Tune in for The Big Story! Producer and Host: Shorbori PurkayasthaEditor: Shelly Walia Music: Big Bang FuzzAlso Listen to: Aarogya Setu App Row: Health Surveillance or State Surveillance? Listen to The Big Story podcast on:Apple: https://apple.co/2AYdLIl Saavn: http://bit.ly/2oix78C Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/2ntMV7S Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IyLAUQ Deezer: http://bit.ly/2Vrf5Ng Castbox: http://bit.ly/2VqZ9ur

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's fifth video call with Chief Ministers to discuss life after the lockdown and possible extensions was still ongoing while we were recording this episode, but we are able to bring you the major highlights and themes. We also give you an update on the huge spike in coronavirus numbers over the last 24 hours and developments on antibody tests, strategy for community surveillance and vaccine development by the ICMR. Guests: Suhasini Haidar, National Editor, The Hindu; Jacob Koshy, Deputy Science Editor, The Hindu. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) announced that Narendra Modi will hold the fifth video-conference. On tackling the coronavirus outbreak with the chief ministers at 3 pm on Monday. According to a Hindustan Times report, in today's meet. PM Narendra Modi is expected to discuss the further increase in economic activity in the country while containing the spread of the infections. The discussion is expected to be lengthy and will also take note of the rising coronavirus cases in India, particularly in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and other places. The return of the migrant workers to their hometowns, which may cause a problem to restart the economy will also be discussed today. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/latestnewssuno/support

1. Standalone shops to open in rural areas: Transport Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary - The State Cabinet has decided to open shops, but not markets or haats, in rural areas across the districts that have been tagged as ‘Green' and ‘Orange' zones. This apart, the inter-district movement in the State has been extended up to May 2. State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said that standalone shops in rural areas in the ‘Green' and ‘Orange' zone districts except the containment areas will open during the ongoing nationwide lockdown. The Assam State Cabinet has decided to open shops, but not markets or haats, in rural areas across the districts that have been tagged as ‘Green' and ‘Orange' zones. This apart, the inter-district movement in the State has been extended up to May 2. 2. North-eastern States for extending nationwide lockdown beyond May 3 - Most of the north-eastern States are in favour of extending the nationwide lockdown beyond May 3 with relaxations in economic activities and public services in the ‘Green Zones'. After the meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi via video link, on Monday the Chief Ministers of eight NE States tweeted their views vowing to strengthen the collective fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. 3. Over 20 lakh people may become jobless in Assam, says AMDB Chairman Mominul Aowal - Around 20 to 25 lakh people may become jobless across the State till the lockdown is over, said Assam Minority Development Board Chairman Mominul Aowal on Monday. Talking to The Sentinel, Aowal said that the lockdown has shackled the economy of the State and lakhs of people have lost their sources of income. 4. Drinking water schemes to resume immediately in Assam: Minister Rihon Daimari - All schemes related to safe drinking water across the State will be resumed with immediate effect following the government guidelines related to new Coronavirus. The direction in this regard was issued to the Department officers by Public Health Engineering Minister Rihon Daimari on Monday. Owing to lockdown, many ongoing works worth approximately Rs 400 crore remained suspended in this ‘Essential Services' sector. 5. Six high-risk contacts of Corona positive case from Dima Hasao released - The people of Dima Hasao breathed sigh of relief as the six high-risk contacts of the new Coronavirus positive case from Dima Hasao were discharged officially in presence of Executive Member, N C Hills Autonomous Council in-charge medical, Samuel Changsan, Deputy Commissioner Amitabh Rajkhowa, Additional SP Dr Manabendra Gogoi, Joint Director of Health Services Dipali Barman and other dignitaries on Monday. 6. Assam Police arrested 3,242 people across State for violating lockdown norms - 3,242 people have been arrested across the State for the violation of lockdown and Rs. 1,39,00,600 has been relalized as fine, stated Assam Police in its daily report. The department has seized a total of 20,498 vehicles till Monday. Out of the total seized vehicles, 18,544 are two wheelers, 1,645 are four wheelers and 275 are three wheelers. Along with the vehicles, the department has also seized 20 country boats and 5 machine boats. 7. Bar Council to provide financial assistance to advocates who are affected due to lockdown - The Bar Council of Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim have taken an initiative to provide financial assistance to advocates who are affected due to the coronavirus pandemic. An amount up to Rs. 5,000 would be given as a one-time measure of financial assistance to the affected people.

1. After chairing a meeting of Council of Ministers at Janata Bhawan, Guwahati, some decisions have been taken on implementation of lockdown in Guwahati.“In Green Zone districts, standalone shops in rural areas will be open from April 28. However, markets will remain closed. Moreover, no lockdown relaxation in Red Zone districts – Dhubri, Golaghat, Nalbari, Morigaon & Goalpara and their adjoining areas within 5 km radius,” tweeted Sarbanada Sonowal, CM of Assam. 2. Assam govt. will extend inter-district travel for stranded people within state until Apr 30. The dates provided earlier were from 25 to 27 April during which permission for movements were granted. Thousands of people had reached home within Assam due to this service provided by the Assam government. 3. Nagaland which has no COVID-19 cases within the state has decided to relax some rules amid lockdown. Shops that fall under municipalities and town councils, such as, neighborhood shops, stand alone shops, shops in residential complexes will be open. Malls will stay shut. Home deliveries from food outlets have been permitted. 50% workforce can be employed in such venues where proper hygiene standards need to be maintained. 4. 391 students from Kota reached Guwahati amid lockdown. Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had sent out tweets on this.Sarma had said that the Assam students who will return to the state from Rajasthan's Kota will be screened and quarantined as per COVID-19 prevention procedure 5. Arunachal Pradesh's Chief Minister Pema Khandu has thanked PM Narendra Modi in fighting COVID-19 situation in the country.The Arunachal Pradesh government has also provided a list of numbers of respective district control rooms where people can call with queries on COVID-19. Also, No masks, no fuel rule has been implemented in Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh. People working at petrol depots and gas agencies have been directed to not provide fuel to customers who arrive without wearing masks. 6. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has not made payments to companies whose test kits were found faulty, informed Government. ICMR had asked States to stop usage of rapid testing kits of COVID-19 for at least two days as they were giving inaccurate results.When West Bengal accused the ICMR of sending faulty kits, it refuted the charges saying the kits should be stored in below 20 degree Celsius temperature to get accurate results. It also said if the variation in results was not big then there was no need to worry. But now the ICMR has said any new observation about the testing kits would not be taken lightly and would be cross-checked thoroughly.Meanwhile, as of now, 6,184 people have been cured from coronavirus with a recovery rate of 22.17%. Since yesterday, an increase of 1396 new cases has been reported. A total of 27,892 people have been confirmed positive as of now for COVID-19 in India 7. Serum institute in Pune will start producing COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University. The process will start in a few weeks and the vaccine will come to the market by October if human trials become successful. 8. In PM Modi's interaction with Chief Ministers of various states, he said that COVID-19 patients should not be treated as criminals. This is his fourth such interaction with CMs of various states organised to get an update on the coronavirus situation in the country. Modi asked the CMs to take care of areas where the virus is spreading and help people deal with mental stress in such a situation. Modi also said that in case any state reports more number of coronavirus cases then they will not be held guilty but it is important for states to implement lockdown rules strictly to contain the situation.

As the last week of the 40-day lockdown begins, the Prime Minister held a video conference with Chief Ministers on April 27, and indicated that any exit from the lockdown would be gradational in terms of resuming economic activity, with particular emphasis still being placed on bringing down the case load in ‘red zones'. The ICMR, meanwhile, has asked States to stop using antibody test kits supplied by two Chinese companies. We will discuss that with National Editor Suhasini Haidar, who has also interviewed India's ambassador to China. Plus, a quick update on Tamil Nadu imposing more stringent lockdown measures in five cities and the reasoning behind it with T.N. Bureau Chief Ramya Kannan. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

As India joins the final week of nationwide lockdown, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets the chief ministers today through a video conference to discuss the road forward. The total number of coronavirus cases has hiked to 27892 today, according to the ministry of health and welfare. This will be the fourth such conference between PM Narendra Modi and state chief ministers since the outbreak emerged. The high-level meeting is supposed to discuss the "graded" exit strategy from the lockdown, according to a report in PTI. India is following a nationwide lockdown till May 3 to decrease the spread of the virus. Observing the record surge in coronavirus cases in the last few days, several states are planning to extend the lockdown until the middle of the next month. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/latestnewssuno/support

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in a cloth mask during a video conference. With chief ministers to discuss the lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/latestnewssuno/support

1. Social distancing in Assam Glaring violations! - The most powerful weapon that can ensure man's win over coronavirus is the strictest adherence to social distancing. However, during the lockdown in Assam social distancing has been going for a toss on a number of occasions! The State government has made certain relaxations in the lockdown, especially for essential commodities, including free of cost rice to the needy people. However, with a view to availing these facilities, some sections of the public have been violating social distancing norms. Various district administrations in the State are also not that prompt to enforce social distancing to the letter. 2. Coronavirus Infected woman from Tripura visited Guwahati; panic grips residents - Detection of the first COVID-19 positive case in Tripura has sent the Assam capital's city into a tizzy. The infected person, Gita Rani Karmakar (45), had visited the city before reaching her home State (Tripura) and testing positive for the dangerous coronavirus. Karmakar arrived at the Guwahati Railway Station on March 15 and then went straight to the historic Kamakhya temple premises atop the Nilachal Hills here. 3. Assam Govt. show cause notice to Juria BDO & two suspended panchayat secretaries - The State government has issued a show cause notice to Juria BDO Mainul Haque Choudhury and suspended two panchayat secretaries – Pompi Deka and Asadus Zaman – on the charge of anomalies in the selection of beneficiaries of various schemes. 4. Coronavirus scare: Shutdown to stay, indicates Prime Minister Narendra Modi - Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday told all the floor leaders of various parties in the Parliament that the kind of response and suggestions he has received does not indicate that the lockdown should be lifted, said sources. The Prime Minister is also slated to meet the Chief Ministers of all the States and Union Territories on April 11, through video conference, where a final decision on the issue is slated to be made. This will be the third such conference with the CMs. 5. Krishna Upadhyay Senior journalist of Tinsukia assaulted by unknown people - Krishna Upadhyay, a senior journalist of Tinsukia, was allegedly physically assaulted by two unknown persons in presence of his wife, who was also manhandled, in front of his residence at Kuhmar Patty located at GNB Road on Wednesday afternoon. 6. Assam Tea Tribe Students' Association demands release of full wages to tea garden workers - The central committee of Assam Tea Tribe Students' Association has expressed vehement resentment over the reluctance of some tea garden management to release the full wage and due ration for tea garden workers for the period of lockdown. In this regard, the organization strongly demanded the tea garden management to release full daily wage to them along with the due ration for the period concerned in accordance with the government's instruction or to face agitation. 7. Kamrup Metro District Administration permits five Garages for maintenance of vehicles - The District Administration has given permission to five Garage and Tyre Repairing Centres in Kamrup Metropolitan District for maintenance of Government on-duty vehicles as we as private vehicles carrying essential commodities. 8. In view of Coronavirus outbreak & lockdown vegetable vendors permitted for online delivery - In view of the outbreak of novel and lockdown situation in the city, the following vendors have been permitted for home delivery of vegetables through online mode.

Besides the obvious news point in the Prime Minister's video address on Friday, there's more to discuss about the staggered exit from the 21-day lockdown that the PM discussed with Chief Ministers on Thursday, and we'll give you a broad overview of the factors that need to be taken into consideration in this regard. Our Tamil Nadu Chief of Bureau Ramya Kannan joins us in this discussion. We also have an update on the latest COVID-19 numbers in India and a quick explainer from our Deputy Science Editor Jacob Koshy on whether the BCG vaccine could indeed give us an immunological advantage in the battle against the novel coronavirus, as an academic study has claimed. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

1. Coronavirus positive case rises to 20 in Northeast region: officials - The total number of corona positive cases in the entire region went up to 20 on Thursday, officials said. 2. Adopt community approach against coronavirus: PM Narendra Modi to States - Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday interacted with Chief Ministers via video conferencing to discuss measures to combat coronavirus. The Prime Minister thanked the States for supporting the decision of lockdown due to which India has achieved some success in limiting the spread of coronavirus. 3. Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma inaugurates 54 new Intensive Care Units in GMCH - With the help of the public, the State administration has been able to establish communication with 488 of the 503 people who have returned from the religious congregation at Nizamuddin Dargah in New Delhi recently. With this development, only 15 Nizamuddin returnees are still to be traced. 4. Dispur-Mathura Nagar Jame Masjid Committee prohibits entry of Tablighi Jamaats - In the wake of the controversy regarding Tablighi Jamaat in holding its religious congregation at Nizamuddin Dargah in New Delhi, the Dispur-Mathura Nagar Jame Masjid Committee has prohibited the entry of Tablighi Jamaats in the masjid. 5. Entry and exit of vegetable carriers prohibited in Tinsukia - To prevent the spread of coronavirus in Tinsukia district, Pranabjit Kakoti, Additional District Magistrate, by an order under 144 CrPC prohibited entry of all vegetable carriers from other districts and exit of all vegetable carriers from Tinsukia district to outside the district. 6. ONGC functioning 24×7 to combat coronavirus crisis at Sivasagar - The outbreak of coronavirus pandemic in India and across the world is a matter of great concern for the entire human race. While the entire nation is fighting against the spread of coronavirus by staying at home and maintaining social distancing, ONGC and its energy soldiers are functioning 24×7 to ensure production and delivery of oil and gas. 7. Cotton University Students' Union, Line Mime Theatre organizes coronavirus awareness competition - In view of nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus outbreak and the Cotton University Students' Union in association with Line Mime Theatre comes out with the first of its kind competition. 8. IIT Guwahati alumni develop drones for spraying disinfectants in public spaces - A start-up, Marut Dronetech Private Limited, founded by IIT Guwahati alumni has developed and deployed drones for spraying disinfectants in public spaces to prevent Coronavirus. To control coronavirus situation, drones have proved to be of great use as seen in countries like China and South Korea. 9. Coronavirus impact: Publication Board Assam to donate a day's salaries to Arogya Nidhi - The employees of the Publication Board Assam have announced that they will donate a day's salaries to the Arogya Nidhi for the fight against coronavirus, Board Secretary Promod Kalita said this. 10. Sub-inspector of food and civil supplies Kamrup (Metro) spelt out rules for fair price shops - The sub-inspector of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs, Kamrup (Metro) district, Bichitra Kumar Nath has spelt out certain rules for each and every fair price shop to obey. 11. Regulation of Gauhati High Court work extended till April 19, 2020 in view of lockdown - The regulation of working in the Gauhati High Court that was imposed on March 24, 2020 has been extended till April 19, 2020 in view of the lockdown issued by the Government of India.

To start off the 14th episode of our daily updates on COVID-19, U.S. Correspondent Sriram Lakshman describes the alarming numbers being reported in the United States — over 120,000 cases, with New York City death toll alone passing 1,000 — the response of the Trump administration and the economic impact that is already being felt by millions. We round it with quick updates by National Editor Suhasini Haidar on Prime Minister Modi's call with Chief Ministers on Thursday to discuss a coordinated strategy for coming out of the 21-day lockdown, and Strategic Affairs Editor Atul Aneja, who is reporting on a looming problem in the Gulf countries — 23 Indians were diagnosed with COVId-19 in Kuwait on Thursday. Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

Assam records first coronavirus positive case: Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma - Assam, on Tuesday, recorded the first coronavirus positive case on Tuesday. The person, whose condition is stated to be stable, hails from Karimganj district, informed Health Minster Himanta Biswa Sarma. No relaxation of 21-day nationwide lockdown norms: CM Sarbananda Sonowal - Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Tuesday said that norms of the 21-day nationwide lockdown have not been relaxed in Assam by the State government. 456 persons from Assam were in Nizamuddin Dargah meet: Himanta Biswa Sarma - Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said that 456 people from the State had taken part in the recently held religious congregation at Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi. Coronavirus: CMs, student body concerned over racial bias against North East people - Chief Ministers of the north-eastern States and North East Students' Organisation have raised serious concern over the alleged incidents of racial discrimination in different parts of the country against the people of the region, officials said on Tuesday. Organizations Needed Permission to distribute relief materials - The Tinsukia district administration has requested all political and non-political organizations, NGOs and other establishments to refrain from distributing relief materials among the public, stated a press release, adding that necessary permission had to be obtained if desirous to distribute relief materials among public. One dead, three critical after consuming spirit with cold drink - One person died and three are in a serious condition after consuming spirit (thinner) with cold drinks in Tarajan area under Jorhat Police Station, said police sources. The deceased has been identified as Sube Rajak, a plumber, while three others are Vicky Rajak, Manoj Rajak and Jitrendra Rajak. Assam Agricultural University donates to Assam Arogya Nidhi - The Assam Agricultural University teachers and employees have joined hands with the Government of Assam in its fight against coronavirus by donating one day's salary amounting to Rs 52, 50,000 to Assam Arogya Nidhi, said Dr. Ranjit Kumar Saud, the PRO of AAU. Coronavirus outbreak: 41 UTPs released from Sivasagar Jail - In an effort to decongest the jails to fight the coronavirus outbreak, the Sivasagar district jail released 16 under trial prisoners on personal recognized bond on March 30. The jail authorities dropped the inmates at their respective homes due to the lockdown. SBI Officers Association NE Circle calls for safety measures in view of coronavirus - The State Bank of India Officers Association (North Eastern Circle), on Monday, appealed to the government and the administration to initiate corrective measures and provide safety equipment at various branches in the north-eastern region at the earliest to tackle the risks associated with the outbreak of coronavirus. Scribe killed in a road accident at Guwahati - A female journalist named Dimpi Baishya lost her life in an accident, in Guwahati on Monday. According to sources Baishya lost control of her scooter and rammed into an electric post in Sundarpur area. She was heading to her residence in Beltola from her office and her colleague was riding pillion, who sustained injuries. She was admitted to the Apollo Hospital; however, she succumbed to her injuries at around 11:30 PM.

This press conference outlines the outcomes of the National Cabinet meeting between the Prime Minister, Premiers and Chief Ministers - includes new social gathering restrictions and public school changes  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal along with other important dignitaries attended a banquet hosted in honour of President of the United States of American Donald Trump. Chief Ministers of Karnataka CM B. S. Yediyurappa, Telengana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao and Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar were alos invited for the event. Border Security Force (BSF) seized at least 8,000 kg of sandalwood worth Rs 25 crore from Arundhutinagar Industrial Estate area in a joint operation led by BSF, Tripura forest department, police and civil administration. Shakti Kant Singh, the West Tripura district forest officer said that they received some information from the BSF suspecting something illegal was stored inside a room in the Arundhutinagar Industrial Estate area. Between 2015 and Januaruy this year, 20,765 people have been arrested by the state police for entering Mizoram without Inner Line Permit (ILP), Mizoram Home Minister Lalchamliana informed the state Assembly. Within the same period, 5,53,321 ILPs were issued to outsiders visiting the state. The state government is also in the process of upgrading the ILP format within the state. In 2019 December, the government launched an online ILP portal in the state. There is ILP Enforcer mobile apps for state police as well as ILP Mizoram mobile apps for NGOs and public to ensure that ILP can be well implemented in the state. The second edition of “Jonaki” film festival organized by the Department of Communication and Journalism at Gauhati University from February 28 at Phanidhar Dutta Memorial Hall and AT Hall. The two-day festival will conclude on February 29. This year a total of 12 films will be screened at the festival. The festival has received films from beyond the Northeast. The festival will also organise a short film competition, cine quiz competition, and a workshop on an animation film. In wake of violence in Delhi, Delhi High Court told Delhi police that there should be no delay in lodging FIRs over alleged hate speeches. Congress party interim president Sonia Gandhi said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah must resign. At press conference in Delhi, Gandhi said that the riots were a “well-planned conspiracy.” The Congress also questioned the manner in which the riots were handled. The Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has called for the intervention of the army to control the situation in Delhi. Yesterday, Kejriwal had called for sealing the city's border in areas that witnessed violence over the amended citizenship act to prevent “outsiders” from entering the national capital and creating a commotion. So far 20 people have died and hundreds have been injured in the violence that broke out in the city. The clashes between pro and anti CAA group have now taken the shape of full-fledged riots. After several journalists were attacked during the riots in Delhi, the Editors Guild of India has issued a statement asking the Home Ministry to investigate such incidents and punish the guilty. “The Guild notes that journalists being attacked is tantamount to a direct assault on press freedom and those guilty of having indulged in such violence must be brought to book” according to the statement. Amid coronavirus threat, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India has issued a travel advisory for Indian citizens. “Indians are advised to refrain from non-essential travel to Republic of Korea, Iran and Italy. People coming from Republic of Korea, Iran and Italy or having such travel history since February 10, 2020 may be quarantined for 14 days on arrival to India,” according to the advisory.

*Warning* This episode contains mature and potentially emotionally disturbing topics for some listeners. In this episode, we talk to Mrs Vicki Dunne MLA, Territory Member for Ginninderra and Shadow Minister for Health, and Shadow Minister for Arts, about engaging the Australian voters in the political discourse. Topics covered include: - The Modern Slavery Act - How state and territory members can influence federal policy through party structures - What makes news and the drawbacks of a 24 hour news cycle - How politicians can work together more collaboratively to create meaningful change - The advantages and disadvantages of a Hare-Clark political system - The benefits of having a slim majority in Parliament - How previous politicians shape future politicians - The excitement of sitting days - What makes people interested in politics vs those who are not - How lucky we are that we live in a democratic country - How every moment of life as a politician encompasses politics - The outcome of of the 2019 Federal Election - What might happen at the 2020 ACT Election - The issues with the health system in the ACT - What it means to be the Shadow Minister for Arts - The need for more political engagement in the voting community - The dangers of being too young to be overly committed to political engagement About Mrs Dunne: Vicki was born in Lismore, NSW, and can trace her heritage back to the pioneering Italian families that settled near Lismore in the 1880s. She studied at St Carthage's School and St Mary's College in NSW, before moving to the University of New England, Armidale, where she obtained a BA and Dip Ed studying languages and history. Since those early days, Vicki has been committed and active in community affairs. She has been involved in community radio for over thirty years, a commitment she keeps to this day as a weekend presenter for Canberra's Radio for the Print Handicapped, 1RPH (1125 on the AM dial). Vicki was a commonwealth public servant between 1979 and 1995, and served previous Chief Ministers of the ACT. Vicki is married and she and her husband Lyle have 5 children, ranging in age from 9 to 27 years. Her personal story has given her insights into the challenges facing many families. Educating 5 children through both the government and non-government school systems, as appropriate to needs of each child, has shown her the strengths of each system. Having 2 children with cystic fibrosis, she knows the pain of any need to wait to comfort a suffering child. She has a strong interest and activity in local issues, such as her long term struggle for school communities against school closures, and her understanding and pursuit of environmental issues that can help every resident everyday.