2026 Asian Games: Can India improve on its best ever medals tally from 2023?

The 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou saw India’s best ever performance – we came back with 107 medals, including 28 gold medals, and we finished fourth on the medals table, behind only China, Japan and South Korea. The 2026 Asian Games will officially kick off in from September 19, and the big question is: can improve on its performance? In this episode, we preview ’s prospects, and joining us is Uthra Ganesan from The Hindu’s Sports Bureau. Host: G Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu Producer: Jude Weston Editor: Jude Weston and Shiksha Jural Video: Tayyab Hussain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a strong pushback against unilateral western sanctions; criticism of Israel over the killing of civilians, the attacks on Lebanon, and the forced occupation of Palestinian territory; and support for United Nations reform as well as a BRICS payment mechanism, the New Delhi Declaration of 2026 has been likened to India’s foreign policy from its non-aligned past. But was it a compromise by New Delhi in order to build a consensus, or will the statement, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s close engagement with the leaders of Iran, Russia, and China, have a bearing on India’s future foreign policy? Guests: Ajay Bisaria and Happymon Jacob Host: Suhasini Haidar Edited and produced by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Western Ghats in India is a mountain range that is considered next only to the Himalayas in terms of being a biological treasure trove with a high degree of endemism and scenic beauty. It has also been declared as one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity. However, in recent times, it has been in the news for threats to its unique ecosystem, especially with every episode of an ecological disaster. Yet, every attempt that has proposed to address these problems - be it the Gadgil committee report or the Kasturirangan report - has met with opposition. The latest in this list is the draft notification issued by the Centre proposing the Eco-Sensitive Area (ESA) that would cover a 20,668 square kilometre area spread across 1,449 villages in Karnataka, which has been vehemently opposed by the Karnataka government. In the first of this two-part podcast, AS Ponnanna, Political Secretary to the Chief Minister of Karnataka and MLA from Virajpet in Kodagu, nestled in the Western Ghats, talks about the concerns the Karnataka government has with the Kasturirangan report and the Centre’s latest draft notification. In Part 2, we will have TV Ramachandra from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, who was also the local expert who gave his inputs to the Kasturirangan committee. Host: K C Deepika. The Hindu Producer and editor: Jude Weston Video: Ravichandran N Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The recent BRICS summit in New Delhi, held under India’s presidency, brought together an expanded grouping at a time of major geopolitical and economic shifts. The summit sought to deepen cooperation among its members while navigating their often divergent strategic interests. West Asia, in particular, posed a significant diplomatic challenge. The New Delhi Declaration addressed the situation in Gaza, the Iran conflict and the wider instability in the region, while India also sought to facilitate dialogue between Iran and the UAE. So, what were the key takeaways of the Delhi summit? How did BRICS handle the conflicts in West Asia? And why was the grouping able to find greater consensus on Palestine than on the Iran conflict?  Guest: Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor, The Hindu Host: Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Edited and published by Sharmada Venkatausbramanian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Security Council is paralysed, and Superpowers haven’t recognized there are limits to their power says UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in his most scathing comments about the culture of “impunity” and divisiveness that besets global leadership. This episode, we have an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, the UNSG, who demits office at the end of the year weighed in on a number of issues, including UN reform, the election for his successor, the latest developments in the West Asia war, Israel’s war in Gaza, India’s efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war, and the latest controversy of a new UN resolution on the world map. Guest: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres Host: Suhasini Haider Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doomsday scenarios of an ‘AI takeover’ have been part of popular lore for a long time. Skynet, Terminator, and Agent Smith are fictional icons of this narrative. What may seem a paranoid fantasy appears to have unfolded in real life, with the recent hacking incident involving AI infrastructure platform, Hugging Face. OpenAI was conducting a cyber-evaluation of some of its AI models, and according to a report put out by MERT and Redwood Research, AI safety experts, about 1,200 AI agents, who were supposed to be isolated from one another, colluded and collaborated through an unsanctioned message board. They cheated on their task, and covered their tracks by falsifying their logs. It was as a part of this ‘rogue’ action that 700 of them attacked Hugging Face. The report says that more than a thousand agents carried out a massive, unsanctioned, collaborative project over months, before being discovered and shut down. OpenAI’s own report revealed that after the Hugging Face attack, the ‘rogue’ agents even took over a cluster of OpenAI’s own computers. What does this entire incident mean for AI safety? Are fears of an AI takeover justified? How to ensure that frontier AI research is properly regulated and doesn’t endanger humanity itself? Joining us today is Sayash Kapoor, incoming professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and co-author of the book, ‘AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence can do, what it can’t, and how to tell the difference’. Host: G Sampath Producer: Shiksha Jural Video: Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Iran war has entered another dangerous phase, with the confrontation between Tehran and Washington increasingly spilling into the Persian Gulf. Iran has stepped up attacks on shipping around the Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. has intensified efforts to restrict Iranian oil exports. At the same time, questions over Iran’s nuclear programme remain unresolved, and tensions are rising across Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. So, what is Iran trying to achieve with this escalation? What remains of Iran’s nuclear programme? Is the conflict turning into a wider regional war, and is Lebanon becoming its next major front? Guest: Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor, The Hindu Host: Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Edited and produced by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a one-year moratorium on generative AI tools for public school students through Class 8 for the 2026-27 academic year. Officials argued that young children require human connection and independent problem-solving skills instead of relying on algorithms. Should the use of Gen AI be banned among younger students?   Guests: Lavina Jaswani and Deepa Jacob Host: Priscilla Jebaraj Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Western Ghats in India is a mountain range that is considered next only to the Himalayas in terms of being a biological treasure trove with a high degree of endemism and scenic beauty. It has also been declared as one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity. However, in recent times, it has been in the news for threats to its unique ecosystem, especially with every episode of an ecological disaster. Yet, every attempt that has proposed to address these problems - be it the Gadgil committee report or the Kasturirangan report - has met with opposition. The latest in this list is the draft notification issued by the Centre proposing the Eco-Sensitive Area (ESA) that would cover a 20,668 square kilometre area spread across 1,449 villages in Karnataka, which has been vehemently opposed by the Karnataka government. AS Ponnanna, Political Secretary to the Chief Minister of Karnataka and MLA from Virajpet in Kodagu, nestled in the Western Ghats, talks about the concerns the Karnataka government has with the Kasturirangan report and the Centre’s latest draft notification. Host: K. C. Deepika, City Editor, The Hindu, Bengaluru Producer: Shiksha Jural Video: Ravichandran N Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The implementation of the creamy layer doctrine for OBC reservations has been beset with complications. A Supreme Court judgement on March 11 essentially held that Union government has been doing it all wrong all these years, and that their income/wealth test was subjecting a section of OBC applicants to “hostile discrimination”. The Supreme court gave the government six months to implement its order with regard to the litigants. But the government has told the court that it will be too complicated to implement its order retrospectively. For instance, one immediate concern: what happens with the results of the 2025 civil services exams that were declared on March 6? With the court set to hear the matter again on September 17, we unpack the complex history of creamy layer implementation. How effective has it been -- in remedying the hogging of OBC reservations by a few select groups? Isn’t sub-categorisation a better approach compared to the creamy layer doctrine – when it comes to ensuring opportunities for under-represented communities within OBCs? Guest: Abhinay Lakshman from The Hindu’s bureau Host: G. Sampath Edited and produced by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices