The Ideas Page: Amid a widening Gulf, the need for a bridge between India and South Korea 11 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2026 JOURNALISM of COURAGE KOLKATA, LATE CITY, 54 PAGES ₹6.00 (₹12 in North East states, ₹20 in Andaman) l www.indianexpress.com DA I LY F R O M : A H M E DA B A D , C H A N D I GA R H , D E L H I , j A I P U R , KO L K ATA , L U C K N O W , M U M B A I , N AG P U R , PAT N A , P U N E , VA D O DA R A 40-MINUTE PHONE CALL CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BILLS CIRCULATED fOR THREE-DAY SESSION Trump dials Modi again, Women’s quota: govt for house at discusses keeping Strait 850, delimitation on 2011 census of Hormuz open, secure Bill sets stage Delimitation Deeptiman Tiwary & Damini Nath New Delhi, April 14 New Delhi, April 14 »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Happening today lINDIA’S CUTTING-EDGE defence tech, including the BrahMos and Akash missile systems, and Pinaka Multiple Launch Rocket System, will be displayed at an exhibition in Bihar. lPRESIDENT DROUPADI Murmu will be in Maharashtra to attend the second convocation ceremony of AIIMS Nagpur. TRACK THESE AND MORE ON www.INDIANExPrEss.cOm ThE BIg PIcTURE 6’ 4’’ of powEr pAgE 9 INsIDE pAgES 7,8 BEforE U.p. wAgE hIkE, cm yogI’S LAtE-NIght SIgNoff wAgEhIkEfor NrEgSworkErS hALtEd Liz Mathew, Vikas Pathak & Jatin Anand New Delhi, April 14 Shubhajit Roy A DAY after he ordered a US naval blockade of Iran’s ports and coastal areas, President Donald Trump called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday who said they “discussed the situation in West Asia and stressed the importance of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and secure”. The phone call, which lasted around 40 minutes, was the first conversation between thetwoleadersaftertheUSand Iran announced a conditional ceasefire last week. In a post on X after the call, Modi said, “Received a call from my friend President Donald Trump. We reviewed the substantial progress achieved in our bilateral cooperation in divide:Stalin, Revanthraise alarm,TDP backsCentre for delimitation panel with civil court’s powers Big-ticket items to be announced over next few days or weeks, says envoy Gor A second round of talks could happen ‘over the next two days’ in Islamabad, US President Donald Trump said. AP US wants 20-yr freeze on n-plan, Iran for 5; moves to resume talks David E Sanger & Tyler Pager Washington, April 14 JUST BEFORE Vice President J D Vance left Islamabad early Sunday morning, he described Iran and the United States as worlds apart, chiefly on the question of assurances that Iran can never build a nuclear weapon — “not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term.” It turns out that the Trump administration’s ideaofthelongtermis20years. AsdetailsofVance’s21-hour visit to Pakistan spilled out, peoplefamiliarwiththenegotiations said the US position was not a permanent ban on »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ExPrEssinvestigation IN ASSOCIATION WITH ICIJ THE GOVERNMENT Tuesday circulated three Bills to pave the way for fresh delimitation based on “such Census, as Parliament may by law determine, of which the relevant figures havebeenpublished”,likelythe 2011count;raisethestrengthof LokSabhafromthecurrent543 to 850 members; and operationalise one-third reservation of seats for women in Parliament and state Assemblies. Thelegislativepackagecomprises the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-First Amendment) Bill, 2026, the Delimitation Bill, 2026, and the UnionTerritoriesLaws(Amendment) Bill, 2025. It builds on the Constitution(OneHundredand Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, whichhadintroducedwomen’s reservationbutlinkeditsimplementation to a future Census and delimitation exercise. Atthecoreofthemoveisthe removalofthedecades-oldconstitutional freeze on readjustmentofseats,whichhadpegged representation to the 1971 Census. The new amendment »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 PM Narendra Modi with Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge at an event to mark Dr B R Ambedkar’s birth anniversary in Parliament complex, Tuesday. Vice President C P Radhakrishnan is also present. ANI Bill proposes to end mandatory delimitation after every Census Damini Nath, Vikas Pathak, Deeptiman Tiwary & Amitabh Sinha New Delhi, April 14 DEALING WITH delimitation of constituencies for early implementation of women’s reservation in Parliament and stateAssemblies,thethreeBills that the government proposes tobringintheextendedBudget session of Parliament later this week answer many questions even as they raise doubts that may be debated in Parliament. The capping of elected members at 815 is a 50% increase on the existing strength of 543 in the Lok Sabha. The Lok Sabha chamberinthenewParliament building has a seating capacity for 888 members — expandable to 1,272 members for a joint session. It is, however, not clear what will be the formula for seat allocation in each state based onpopulation.Inpublic statementsondelimitation,the government has promised to maintain the proportion E. To lower cost burden, oncologists suggest 13 killed, 20 injured in boiler blast smaller doses, but at Vedanta plant in Chhattisgarh Keytruda says no »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 AS THE government on Tuesday shared the texts of three Bills it proposes to introduce in Parliament — during the extended three-day Budget SessionstartingThursday—on the delimitation of constituencies for early implementation of women’s reservation in Parliament and state Assemblies, differences among southernstatescametothefore. While Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin warned the BJP-ledCentreagainstbulldozing “through a Constitutional amendment” in the midst of Assembly elections and said his state would protest if the “political power of northern states” goes up disproportionately, his Telangana counterpartRevanthReddypushedfor “broad-based consultations and consensus building”. BJP ally TDP, which is in power in AndhraPradesh,however,said the government’s moves were along the lines discussed with Opposition floor leaders and that seats across states would »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Jayprakash S Naidu Raipur, April 14 Anonna Dutt & Nayonika Bose of them agreed that with Keytruda's generic competition expectedonlyby2028,thewayforNew Delhi, Mumbai, April 14 ward for patients is a FROM ALTERING recom- combinationofreduceddosing, mended doses to shifting vial shortertreatmentduration,vial sizes, US-based pharma major sharing and pooled procureMerck & Co (MSD) has taken ment. Keytrudawasfirstapproved several steps to maximise returns from its best-selling by the US Food and Drug Administration cancer drug Key(FDA) in 2014 for truda but most of metastatic skin them, experts in cancer and is now India say, have used across a host driven up the cost of cancers, raking of cancer care and resulted in paTHE CANCER in $29.5 billion in 2024. Last year, it tients receiving was added as a significantlymore of the drug than first-line treatPART-III required. ment for metastatic TheIndianExpressspoketo non-small cell lung cancer, cerleading specialist oncologists vical cancer and colorectal across the country as part of its cancertoWHO’smodellistofesinvestigation in association sential medicines — a list used with the International Consor- bycountriestoensureavailabiltium of Investigative Journal- ity of key medicines at public ists (ICIJ) into how a company health facilities and guide govmandate for standardised high ernment procurement and indosing and a opaque multi- surance reimbursement. layeredaccessforpatientshave The high cost, however, led to a growing multi-city »CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 counterfeit racket in Keytruda. Many of the specialists were tomorrow: rAcE oN for not willing to be named, but all chEApEr vErSIoN calculus l ULTRA-PROCESSED FOODS BANNED, ALL GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS NOW HAVE THIRTEEN PEOPLE, mostly labourers, were killed and 20 injured when superheated steam generated from a boiler tube blast rained on them at a Vedanta Limited power plant in Chhattisgarh’s Sakti district on Tuesday afternoon. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident, saidSaktiCollectorAmritVikas »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Outgoing Bihar CM Nitish Kumar with Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary and Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Patna, Tuesday. EXPRESS Smoke rises from the Vedanta power plant in Chhattisgarh’s Sakti district after the explosion, Tuesday. PTI ED says I-PAC laundered Rs 50 cr, summons Pratik’s brother, wife Mahender Singh Manral New Delhi, April 14 A DAY after arresting Vinesh Chandel, a director and cofounderofI-PAC,inconnection with a money laundering case linked to alleged coal smuggling, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said the political consultancy firm was involved inlaunderingproceedsofcrime to the tune of crores of rupees and the amount detected so far I-PAC co-founder & director Vinesh Chandel in New Delhi on Tuesday. He was sent to 10-day custody of ED. ANI is about Rs 50 crore. The ED on Tuesday summonedPulkitJain,brotherof IPAC co-founder and director Pratik Jain, and Barbie Jain. Bothhavebeenaskedtoappear before the ED officials on April 15 at its headquarters in Delhi in connection with alleged hawala transactions linked to IPAC case.BarbieisPratik’swife. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 rELAtEd rEportS: p 4, 6 Samrat set to be Bihar Chief Minister, both Deputy CMs from JDU Meets Governor to stake claim, swearing-in today Business as Usual By EP UNNY Santosh Singh Patna, April 14 MARKING THE end of a political era in Bihar, Nitish Kumar resigned as the state’s Chief Minister on Tuesday, paving the way for BJP leader Samrat Choudhary to succeed him. Choudharywasfirstelected the BJP legislature party leader and then the leader of the NDA legislature party, clearing the decks for him to become the first Bihar CM from the BJP. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 KITCHEN GARDENS FOR INGREDIENTS USED TO PREPARE MEALS FOR STUDENTS Future perfect: Rio schools grow food to help kids break hunger trap, dream of sports Rinku Ghosh fruit beds in the school’s farm, helping her five-year-old students learn to not just eat their “BANANA LEAVES are like the school meals fresh off the land skin of the soil, they protect it. but grow vegetables so that There’slesswaterintheland,so they can run like superheroes. “Hey, look, there’s the let’s bury the banana stems in the earth because they hold so pumpkin we grew. But today it much water. The soil can drink is beetroot bread and chickpea it up. Meanwhile you can have spread for lunch,” says a talkathe fruit while the beetroot can tive five-year-old, his hands soiled from planting grow big,” says PAGE 1 seeds. He leads the Laura, a food educaway to the school tor at the governkitchen, which proment-run EDI GabrielaMistralPrimarySchoolin vides free, low-sugar, nutrientthe south zone of Rio de Ja- rich meals, and links food conneiro, Brazil. The indigenous sumption to creating an teacher is taking her outdoor emotional relationship with class among rows of flower and nature’s produce. “We prevent Rio de Janeiro, April 14 anchor exposure to intense flavours of processed foods by helping them take pride in eating what theyhavegrownthemselves.In fact, we grow edible flowers, so they get educated on what can be seasoning, flavouring and food. All of these are medicinal too,” says Laura as another of her students chews on a cosmos flower, calling it a “chewing gum of the forest” and leaving the pollens beneath a tree “for the bees.” The children from this government school in an abandonedbathhousehavenotonly improved their health indices, courtesy the Rio school meal programme that takes care of Students with a food educator at the farm of a government-run school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. RINKU GHOSH both their breakfast and lunch, they could be future soccer stars like Ronaldo or Olympic athlete Giovanna Pedroso. In a bid to curb malnutrition in the low-income slum clusters or favelas and prevent childhood obesity and diabetes, the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro passed a law in 2023 to ban the sale and distribution of ultra-processedfoods(UPFs)in public schools, while disallowing access to foods with high sugar, salt and fat such as cookies, candy and soft drinks. It also disallows fast food vendors outside schools to keep children away from high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks that Kolkata canbuildaddictivefoodbehaviourintheirfoundationalyears. Instead, all government schools now have a kitchen garden for growing ingredients forschoolmeals.“Weareteachingchildrenthatplantingfruits and vegetables is more about our culture than just consumption, eating is just part of the cycle,” says principal Renata Neves. Brazil’s National School Feeding Programme already provides at least 30 per cent of daily nutritional needs of students, ensuring regular access to beans, vegetables and fruit, which has reduced iron deficiency and improved diet quality over the years. Now, according to Daniel Soranz, MunicipalHealthSecretary,RioDe Janeiro, public schools are also using30-40percentoffundsto source supplies from small localproducers,whofeelincentivizedandinvestedingrowing fresh ingredients, easing nutritional access to children. Notonlythat.There’sdrastic monitoring of the children’s health.“WeuseAIandcommunity health agents to map families in vulnerable situations, proactively connecting them with public services and lookingintonutritionalneedsof children.Unlesshealthsystems »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2