Stay safe and go back to the newspaper this pandemic

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.It is arguably easier to deal with the coronavirus than it is to deal with misinformation about it. The key difference is that when dealing with the former, you have your work cut out for you. Maintain social distancing, close borders, flatten the curve, and build capacity in the national healthcare system. When it comes to dealing with misinformation there is no one set of steps you can take to definitively win the battle.We did not need a global pandemic to realise how big a challenge misinformation is, but it helps. In India and abroad, we have seen some spectacular consequences of spreading misinformation. In the UK and Netherlands, conspiracy theorists spread misinformation claiming that 5G cell towers were spreading coronavirus. As a result of which, some 50 towers were burnt in the UK and 16 in the Netherlands.

 Closer to home, when PM Modi asked citizens to light candles and make noise for 10 minutes, WhatsApp was rife with networks of misinformation. People claimed that the rise in temperatures or the chance in decibel levels would kill the virus. Even if you have not been subject to any of these messages, you have likely heard that Indore locals or Muslim mobs attacked health staff and attacked doctors who went to treat them.  To put it mildly, it does not make any sense to attack doctors during a pandemic. Until you read Indian Express’ report that fake WhatsApp videos were circulated in localities claiming that healthy Muslims are being taken away and injected with the virus were doing the rounds of Tatpatti Bakhal and adjoining localities.Misinformation is so potent because social media is an excellent tool to spread narratives and reinforce beliefs, as opposed to television. Imagine a scenario when you are viewing protests live through news on a television screen. In all likelihood, all you can see is a hoard of people fighting with the police or marching down an aisle with slogans printed on charts.  The information you take in is largely what is visible on the charts or what the anchor at the time is saying.Compare that to how you observe a protest on social media. On Twitter, when you follow a trending hashtag, it will show you the video of the protestors or the slogans they carry. In addition, you will also be able to look at what most people are saying or thinking about during the protests. This helps absorb a narrative a lot more quickly than a news anchor would.In times of panic, like protests or a pandemic, the narratives thrive and get a larger audience. This leads to more engagement and more content. It is a vicious cycle that reinforces itself. That’s how it becomes easy to believe that 5G towers are spreading the virus or that doctors have come to inject you with the virus and not to treat you.It’s hard to say whether most misinformation is a result of malice or stupidity. But when it comes to tackling the infodemic, there are not a lot of generally accepted truths in the area.  The broad goal is clear. We need to re-evaluate the importance we afford to social media in our news diet. To anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock, it is evident that WhatsApp is not a credible source of information.In that spirit, it is easy to go to news sources that are free and convenient to access, such as Twitter and Facebook. It is even better when the news comes to you through push notifications on WhatsApp. However, when we rely on these sources for the news, there is no assurance that we actually get the news.Quality journalism and information that comes as a result of it is a commodity. Like most commodities, it might make sense to pay for it with money (not with privacy). Paying for the news is inherently not a foreign concept. We have paid for newspapers before, and a significant number of us still do so. It may not make sense to physically hold a newspaper everyday right now, but paid digital access is a more convenient and ironically, a more natural alternative.The trade-off is worth it. There is no end in sight to the lockdown and the pandemic. In times such as these, the value we attribute to information will increase on average. You may have a gripe with the editor about the stories s/he curates for you, but in a good news agency, there is genuine effort involved in fact checking and ensuring that consumers get both sides of a story. Any person who sends you a forward on WhatsApp will not go through any of these pains.So this lockdown, consider paying for the news or be critical of what you consume for free.As 5G towers in the UK and injured doctors in Indore will tell you, it is worth it. 

Dear young IRS officers, taxing the rich in Covid times is bad economics

The Narendra Modi government did well to promptly dismiss a proposal put up by a group of young Indian Revenue Service officers that recommended raising a number of taxes to make up for the government’s revenue shortfall amid higher spending requirements as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. A prompt and public rejection of the proposal was warranted because even the whiff of an increase in taxes can deepen the crisis and prolong the recovery, because the already-mauled individuals and businesses will choose to play it safe by holding back on spending and investment.

That said, the government should not have gone further and taken disciplinary action against the intrepid officers. They were clearly acting in good faith. Barking up the wrong tree is not an offence and should not be penalised. A crisis is an especially important time for top leaders and civil servants to keep ears and minds open, and encourage fresh thinking within the government’s ranks.

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Get India back at work to secure the economy and employment

As we near the end of an extended national lockdown, our policy discourse must broaden from containing the outbreak to addressing the three ‘R’s for the economy as well: of relief, revival and reconstruction. While the pandemic will haunt us for a few years, it is also true that complete lockdowns will harm Indian society as much—if not more—than the disease.

Unlike rich countries, India’s government simply does not have the resources to pay people to stay at home. Most businesses are staring at insolvency after having to keep and pay employees over the past four weeks. Even if they manage to stay afloat, their distress will compound our unemployment crisis. According to Mahesh Vyas of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, 140 million people, or 14% of India’s working age population, have lost their jobs during the lockdown. Both urban and rural India have been hit hard.

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COVID-19: Localise efforts to tackle water shortage

This article is written by Rohan Seth and Rashi Sharma, was first published in Deccan Herald. There have been plenty of debates and discussions around what is being done to manage the threat of coronavirus. A lot of that attention has been focused on using technology to deal with the problem. Apple and Google announced that they will be working on developing software to enable contact tracing in phones. In a similar vein, the Indian government has rolled out its own contact tracing application in Aarogya Setu. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while extending the nationwide lockdown, urged the public to download the app. While most of the discourse has been focused on how technology fits into the picture, we have ended up missing more fundamental means of coping with the problem. Ubiquitous elements, particularly water, have been overlooked and taken for granted. Water is going to be an essential part of any country’s strategy when dealing with COVID-19. If you are reading this, there is a significant chance you have been told about the importance of washing hands or have watched a video of how to do so properly. Healthcare professionals, essential workers, and law enforcement have and will be subject to a higher risk of exposure to the virus. As our most important line of defence against the pandemic, they will need to sanitise themselves regularly. This involves washing their clothes and taking regular showers. Unfortunately for India, in recent years, the country has been dealing with acute water shortages. While major Indian cities have increased in size and their water consumption, villages lack water for basic sanitation, bearing witness to lowering levels of groundwater. Keeping in mind the lack of access to clean water for nearly 163 million people in 2018,  the Union Government created the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019 to integrate water resource management efforts. Under the Jal Shakti Abhiyan, the Ministry plans to ensure the availability of running tap water for domestic purposes in all households across the country. While the mission of the Ministry of Jal Shakti has been off to a promising start, there is only so much it has been able to accomplish in a year. Due to lack of both administrative will and centre-state politics, much of the water projects could not be successfully completed before the outbreak of the virus. COVID-19 and the water crisis A summer induced water crisis is not a new phenomenon for India. The depleted water levels and the already exploited government managed resources have made India rank 13 of the 17 water-stressed countries. Access to freshwater is now important and urgent. Without water to sanitise, villages once exposed to COVID-19, will find it harder to recover and to contain the virus. In the recent past, an inexorable rise in the population residing in clustered areas makes self-isolation a privilege that not many can afford. Given the historically limited state capacity, necessary demands for social distancing, and a time-sensitive situation, it is going to be a lot harder to ensure clean tap water reaches water-scarce areas. The lack of adequate supply, particularly during a lockdown, will prevent households from ensuring domestic sanitisation and lead to an increase in open defecation during this period. This socio-economic standing of the larger Indian community is a ticking time bomb which may be scheduled to explode at Stage 3 of social transmission of the virus. Importance of finding local solutions This brings us to what should be done to mitigate the crisis. There have been some attempts to allocate scarce resources amongst states across the world. Most notably, the Federal Government in the US created competition among states, creating a bidding war for medical equipment. As a result, it created an environment where medical equipment was not distributed based on need but on the purchasing power of states. Of course, a bidding war for medical equipment leaves open the risk for poor areas impacted by the disease not getting enough medical supplies to manage the spread. Learning from the US, and instead of turning to a market to mitigate an impending water crisis, it might make sense to take a different approach. The stakes now have abruptly been raised. What the spread of the pandemic has done is to leave the inadequacies in Indian infrastructure exposed. They needed to be fixed yesterday, and they need to be fixed now. Communities must mobilise their efforts to find solutions to the water crisis locally. The Union government cannot be expected to build adequate infrastructure overnight if doing so has not been possible in over 70 years. Given the social distancing requirements, time and capital constraints, these inadequacies cannot be fixed using a top-down approach. Instead, changes need to be made at the grassroot level so that the water available is optimised for usage. Along with local efforts, nudges towards desired behavioural changes for water optimisation might be the most viable option. Water optimisation thus, involves promoting the usage of greywater for irrigation, and when possible, collecting rainwater in previously built infrastructures. Along with revisiting traditional methods of preserving water, reusing already existing structures like dried-up ponds, reservoirs, tube-wells etc. can also be a low-cost source of clean water. At this point May 3, 2020 is a line in the sand. The pandemic will not end on May 4, neither will the need for water across India. Local efforts may not be enough to meet the surged demands, but steps taken today should contribute to a better scenario tomorrow. (Rohan Seth is a technology policy analyst at the Takshashila Institution and Rashi Sharma is a research assistant at the Observer Research Foundation)

Consumers should get the benefit of falling oil prices

At a time when even deficit hawks are clamouring for an expansive fiscal policy to fight the severe economic consequences of Covid-19, it will be tempting for the government to exploit every opportunity to fund the welfare programmes. When oil prices first dropped to less than $30 per barrel, the Modi government had promptly increased the central excise duty. However, this will not result in increased revenue due to the enforced lockdowns and halting of economic activity.If the objective is to help the economy rebound and bolster government finances, there are better ways than raising petrol taxes. In fact, lowering it will increase the disposable income of consumers, who will go out and spend more on other goods and services. Apart from increasing incomes, it will also help the government collect higher indirect taxes. Many businesses, which are reliant on petrol, such as transport and logistics, will get a much-needed fillip by reduced petrol prices.Since the price of oil has a cascading effect on the general price level in the economy, maintaining petrol and diesel prices at the same level or increasing it can lead to higher inflation and can further dampen their demand. Moreover, additional revenue gained by the government is offset by increased subsidy payments and revenue foregone from sectors dependent on oil. Further, since petrol is outside the purview of GST, states will want their fair share as well and will competitively increase VAT on petrol.The additional amount that can be raised by petrol taxes is about Rs 30,000 crore, which will not make a dent to the Rs 8-10 lakh crore required for the post-pandemic economic revival package. It’s time to pass on the benefit to the consumers.This appeared in The Print's Talkpoint

Use the oil price crash to boost India’s strategic reserves

One area in which India can definitely use the lower oil prices to its advantage is to stock up on the commodity for future use. Like many other countries, India maintains strategic petroleum reserves (SPR), which is an inventory of oil for emergency purposes. To mitigate supply-side risks and cover for vulnerability to external oil shocks, India holds an emergency oil stockpile in underground salt caverns, which can provide around 4.5 days of import cover. There is additional capacity for five days of oil import cover, which must be filled up at this time when oil prices are at historic lows. Indian petroleum refineries hold an additional 65 days of import cover.India has been delaying the start of phase two of its SPR plans, which was to add another 12 days of oil storage capacity. This was to be done in partnership with either ADNOC (Abu Dhabi) or Saudi Arabia’s Aramco. It is probably the right time now to get this off the drawing board.Alternatively, we can also look at options outside India. We could persuade the Sri Lanka government to kick-start the utilisation of oil storage facilities at Trincomalee. This could be done in a mutually beneficial manner. We could also shop around for storage space in Oman (Ras Markaz) or the United Arab Emirates (Fujairah). Right now, we are in a bizarre situation where the storage space is more expensive than the commodity itself, but things will revert, and any investments now will help India in the long run when oil prices rise again.Finally, the private sector should look at this as an opportunity to lock into long-term contracts with oil suppliers based at current prices. The government can help the struggling Indian airline industry, for instance, by providing it lines of credit to enter into or renegotiate oil contracts.Here's the full article 

COVID-19 Is a Unique Test of National Decision Making the Modi Govt Can't Afford to Fail

By General Prakash Menon

India enters a new phase in its battle against COVID-19 when it eases its lockdown selectively after 26 days of an extremely stringent lockdown.

Given the enormous uncertainty, national-level decision making on the scope and scale of relaxations and restrictions is best described as dharam sankat.

For a nuclear power, dealing with unimaginable uncertainties where the stakes have to do with your very existence is a scenario that is enacted during national-level war games. There too, it is always a dharam sankat.

Continue reading the article here

Should You Download Aarogya Setu?

This week of the pandemic has focused significantly on around Aarogya Setu and contact tracing. So much so that during his speech extending the lockdown, PM Modi urged people to download the app.The idea is for the Government to use the app to know where you are and who you have been in contact with, enabling contact tracing.The app’s privacy policy has been under fire since its release and has been updated recently with improved protections. Because the app is to be used for contact tracing as well as quarantine enforcement, it will collect huge amounts of personal and sensitive data. For instance, signing up to the app requires you to put in your name, age, gender, phone number, and profession.Once you have registered, the app will begin to use Bluetooth to check who you have been in contact with. In case you test positive, the information might come in handy to notify people who may have also been infected. However, the Bluetooth itself does not give away your location.The way it works is if the Bluetooth on your phone detects another phone in range, the pair will exchange keys and keep a record of the interaction.The app will use the GPS inbuilt on your phone to monitor your location, enabling it to determine whether you are adhering to the quarantine with significant accuracy. The phone will take note of your location every 15 minutes and only share the information with the Government server if you test positive.Normally, you would have found the data collected by the app to be extremely invasive. But then again, these are not normal times. You could make the argument that the measures are necessary and proportional.There are some technical shortcomings and slightly concerning macro trends with the concept. Firstly, the usage of Bluetooth. Bluetooth is fairly trustworthy over 6 ft (the norm for physical distancing). However, the same things that stop coronavirus from spreading do not apply to Bluetooth. As put by Casey Newton, Bluetooth can recognise two devices kept 10 ft and an apartment wall apart while the coronavirus may not transmit through walls.Situations like these are likely to lead to a lot of false positives.  Secondly, the context here matters. India faces different challenges as compared to the developed world. Earlier this month, when Apple and Google came up with the idea to enable contact tracing, it led to plenty of debate around wealth distribution being strongly correlated with OS distribution.The idea is that if you wanted to check where in the world wealth was concentrated, you could look at a map of iOS users around the world. Android, on the other hand, runs on a lot more smartphones than iOS, and not all of them have Bluetooth-LE, which is needed to enable contact tracing. Here, it is the poor who lose out.In India’s case, the poor currently lose out because they own feature phones and not smartphones. While Medianama reports that the Government is working on a feature phone version of the app, the poor will continue to remain at a disadvantage until it is released.Should you download the app? Yes. The updated privacy policy is a marked improvement upon the previous one. Most data collected by the app is stored on the device locally or 30 days, after which it is deleted. Data that is shared with the Government will be deleted after 45 days.However, in case you are unfortunate enough to test positive, the information shared with the Government will be deleted two months after the individual is cured.Broadly speaking, this policy is a step towards better data management practices. While protections could have been made better through open sourcing the app and disclosing the encryption, the current version of the app is reasonable in its approach and mandate.  More importantly, perhaps, in last week’s column, I made the point that the liberties we give up today may end up becoming the norm tomorrow.This very much applies to Aarogya Setu. Even with an updated privacy policy, in regular times, the app would have been considered invasive to personal privacy.The hallmark of a good policy/programme is that it ceases to exist once it has achieved its goal. What the app does need is an end date so that it does not inadvertently set a new normal. This also applies to measures such as facial recognition techniques being used to enforce quarantines as well as any other means that collect, store or process data.The pandemic will hopefully come to an end sometime. Keeping that in mind, so should the technology measures that are used to contain it. In that regard, Aarogya Setu should lead the way. A new, worse normal in privacy is the last thing the world needs. This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.

Coronavirus lockdown has given us a blank slate. We can write a new world when it lifts

A fact that strikes my public policy students — mostly working professionals from various backgrounds — quite early in their course is that most of India’s problems are hard to solve because they are log-jammed. The status quo is often a sub-optimal equilibrium, but an equilibrium nevertheless. Even if you try to change things, they fall back into the rut.Here’s an example that might appear familiar to you. The traffic junction is congested because of several interconnected reasons: there are too many vehicles, the road alignment is bad, the bus informally stops at the street corner blocking traffic, the auto-rickshaw stand is at a point that prevents vehicles from easily making a U-turn, pedestrians walk on the street because the footpath is blocked by vendors and so on. In the pre-pandemic normal, everyone knew that this was a problem, but were more interested in merely keeping the traffic moving. Some minor repairs here, some police ‘enforcement’ there, used to be all that could be done. While most people were unhappy with the state of affairs, it was rational for all of them to do nothing about it.The coronavirus pandemic has thrown this status quo up in the air. The lockdown offers several weeks wherein urban infrastructure can be put in place because there is little traffic on the streets. Junctions can be realigned. Bus stops and routes can be changed to make public transport more accessible. Motorists can be better regulated and habituated to follow traffic rules. The whole area can be cleaned up and new norms evolved against spitting and public urination. By no means a silver bullet, the pandemic and the resultant lockdown relax some of the acute constraints that previously made reform impossible.Read more

COVID-19 and Geo-political Implications

It is perhaps too early to judge the scope and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the geopolitical landscape. What is not in doubt, however, is the certainty that there will be global political and strategic effects. Presently, the dominant emotion that runs across the global population is the ascendant fear that stems from the known and unknown aspects relating to the coronavirus. While it is known how the virus spreads and what its symptoms are, no known cure has been discovered nor is a vaccine likely before 12-18 months, if at all. One of the major challenges in containing its spread though is its ability to transmit, even during the incubation period. Herd immunity1 is said to theoretically provide the best available defence against the virus, but it comes at a major cost in terms of human lives and the infection quantum. You can find the full article here

Grain Mountain Amidst Food Insecurity

The official stock of food-grain with the Food Corporation of India stood at 77.7 million tonnes as of March 1. This includes 27.5 million tonnes of wheat and 50.2 million tonnes of rice. The rice estimate includes a significant quantity of unmilled paddy. This mountain of grain is among the highest level that the government has held in its stock. It is far in excess of what is required by the norms defined by the government itself. And this large stock is prior to the coming rabi harvest, which is expected to be bumper, and will add further to the stock. The coexistence of high stocks with the government amidst rising hunger and starvation, is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon, and this is not the first time such an anomaly needs to be highlighted. Food-grain procurement and the public distribution system (PDS) are designed to meet three objectives: food security, food price stability and adequate remuneration to farmers with minimum support prices. There is an inherent inadequacy in using just one instrument to achieve all three objectives. Add to it, the other factors like inefficiency of large bureaucracies, lack of coordination between Central and State agencies, pilferage and wastage, lack of storage capacity, knee jerk policy responses like imports and exports of food, it is no wonder that this elaborate system has failed to address the problems of hunger and nutrition.Read more 

Perennial Lockdown Is Not a Remedy. India Must Isolate and Insulate

Since March 25, India has been adopted a lockdown strategy in its ‘war’ on COVID-19 and continues to put its faith in it. This fact was confirmed on April 14, when the prime minister in his third address to the nation announced the decision to extend the national lockdown till May 3.The decision, he claimed, was based on the advice of several chief ministers and public health experts. There is no doubt that the decision was an extremely difficult one especially since it meant the prolongation of economic inactivity that is bound to have severe consequences for all, especially for the unorganised sector which constitutes the bulk of India’s poor.You can find the full article here

To meet world average, India must add at least 10 lakh doctors to healthcare force

India has long been short of doctors, nurses and hospital beds. And a recent working paper by Shruti Rajagopalan and Abishek Choutagunta of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center reminds us of that. Compared to the world average of 150 doctors per 100,000 people, India has only 86 doctors registered for practice. The actual number of doctors available for practice, as Basant Potnuru shows, is even lower: we probably have only around 64 doctors per 100,000 people, well below half the world average. Of course, the national average does not tell the whole story: southern states and urban areas are vastly better served than other parts of India. The picture with regard to nurses is relatively better, but there is still a shortage, regional variation and differences in skill levels.

We could take any indicator of healthcare capacity and find that as a country, we are short of it. Public expenditure on healthcare is low — our Union and state governments together spend around 1.5 per cent of GDP on health — and most of India relies on private, mostly out-of-pocket healthcare. Even as we point fingers at the government for spending too little on health, consider that only 20 per cent of the population has medical insurance. Perhaps it is yatha praja, tatha raja, and we have been collectively casual about our health.

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To open or not to open India up: a dilemma that need not be one

As India decides what next after the 21-day national lockdown ends on 14 April, opinions are divided among those who want a phased lifting and those who want to extend it. This reflects underlying differences between those who believe it is worth taking calculated risks to forestall widespread suffering on account of lost livelihoods, and those who are concerned taking such risks could cause the pandemic to spiral out of control.

Bold as it was, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to impose a lockdown on 24 March was easier compared to what he has on his plate now. At that time, the consequences of the pandemic were clear, whereas those of the lockdown both unknown and in the future. It is almost the opposite now, and the moral dilemma appears far more acute. The prime minister has to weigh the real suffering of hundreds of millions of people caught in the lockdown against the millions who might catch the disease if the lockdown is lifted and the pandemic spreads. It’s not an easy decision, but there are ways to make it less difficult.Read more

Overcorrection at the cost of privacy during coronavirus is problematic

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal. There are three pillars of crisis management, according to NYU professor Scott Galloway. First, the top guy/girl takes responsibility. Second, acknowledging the issue. Third, overcorrect. When you read it out loud, it seems reasonably straightforward but is a process that should not be taken for granted.It has taken governments and leaders around the world multiple attempts to take responsibility and acknowledge the issue. Finally, time has come to overcorrect. Six months from now when things are back to relatively normal, measures taken now may look drastic, but that is the point.However, it is not going to be easy to overcorrect. Even governments have to follow social distancing and may already have limited capacity to deal with a pandemic of this size. Given the pervasive nature of modern technology, it is no wonder that government administrations around the world are going to try and use digital methods to aid their efforts.China has been ahead of the curve on this. The government has begun using the Alipay app to assign citizens with QR codes based on their risk of exposure to regulate citizen movement. A green QR code means that you are free to move around. A yellow code means a one week quarantine while a red QR code refers to a two week quarantine. In Tamil Nadu, the Police is now using facial recognition to track people in quarantine. At a larger scale, the Union Government of India is using the Aarogya Setu app to help connect Indian citizens to health services.To most people, it might not make sense to talk about privacy in such times. And on one level, they would be right. It is hard to overstate the seriousness of the situation and dealing with the pandemic comes first. In such emergencies, concerns about privacy come second. Moreover, as a fundamental right in India, privacy exists with reasonable restrictions. Erosions of privacy must be necessary, legal, and proportional. Instead of being suspended, this standard should be upheld. Because as the Union Government (and the larger international community) use facial recognition, or apps such as the one deployed in China, it is crucial to keep in mind that such techniques have the potential to set a new normal by resetting our expectations on personal privacy.Rahul Matthan has an excellent analysis backed by observations regarding this. Before 26/11, hotels in India would let you drive to the entrance and hand over your keys to the valet. Post the Mumbai attacks, vehicles are mandatorily screened, as are people and the contents of their baggage. As a practice, it seemed important and urgent at the time, and has now become routine.More than a decade from now, doing so has become the expectation, and it is probably for the best. However, that was 2008, and the difference between now and then is that the liberties yielded today will be a lot more invasive than just vehicle checking at hotels.For instance, in case of CoBuddy (the app bring used in Tamil Nadu to track people), the app has constant access to the phone’s GPS and continuously checks the location of the phone. The app automatically sends an alert to the Police as soon as the person moves out of the geofence. The Police also sends users prompts 2-3 times a day to verify their faces.Not all data is created equal. While both facial data and location data are personal and sensitive, the former tends to be more invasive. This is because facial information is permanent and cannot be easily changed. While constant access to people’s location can help determine where they live and their movement patterns, it is easier to change where you go compared to how you look.The Aarogya Setu app, while admittedly better than (now discontinued) Corona Cavach when it comes to privacy, still collects your name, phone number, age, sex, profession, countries visited in the last 30 days and whether or not you are a smoker (apart from constant access to your location). Compare this with the Singapore government’s app, Trace Together, that only stores your mobile number and a randomly generated ID. Not only are we being subject to invasive apps, lists of infected people with their names and addresses have been made publicly available without their consent.Given the nature of the crisis and the tech response we have seen, it is evident that two things are happening here. Firstly, there is little regard to data minimization. Governments in India and across the world are collecting more data and accessing increased data points to get a better sense of people’s movements during the crisis. Once your name, age, facial data is shared with the government, it is unlikely to change. Instead, once this crisis is over, the data can be used for purposes it wasn’t collected for.Secondly, violations of personal privacy are becoming the norm and not the exception. It is now somehow okay to post lists of infected people on WhatsApp groups and to provide facial data to the police 2-3 times a day. Much like the vehicle checks at hotels post the 26/11 attacks, our expectations of privacy are being reset. Only this time, it is being done at scale.It is fair to say that we live in unprecedented times. But just because we do, does not mean that the necessity and proportionality standards for eroding personal privacy should be suspended. If anything, they should instead be upheld. Because the liberties we give up today, may end up becoming the norm tomorrow.

Dealing with adverse impact of COVID-19 on India's Military planning

Author: Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd)India’s military planning will be severely challenged by the inevitable and adverse economic impact of COVID 19. It also exacerbates the long term and unresolved problem of competing demands for military modernisation being overwhelmed by inadequacies of financial resources. The silver lining in the situation is the recent creation of the CDS and the Department of Military Affairs (DMA). This is so because there is now greater institutional singularity in the form of the CDS being both a head of department in the MoD and the Permanent Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee (PC-COSC).Continue reading the article here.

Learn to be positive in coronavirus pandemic from this Vietnam war US navy pilot

During the Vietnam War, James Stockdale, a US navy pilot, was taken prisoner-of-war (POW) in 1965 and imprisoned in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for eight years, much of it in solitary confinement. As the author Jim Collins tells it in Good to Great, Stockdale was tortured “over 20 times…and lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda.”Writing in 1999-2000, Collins knew that Stockdale survived the ordeal, was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1976, led the Naval War College and was Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 US presidential election. But he was struck by “how on earth did (Stockdale) deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?(emphasis in the original)”

We are in a similar situation today. ...Read more

Lockdown Stopped Two Thirds Of World Economy

Despite bitter political bickering, the United States passed its highest ever relief package to support the economy. It is valued at 2.2 trillion dollars, and another one trillion is coming, if not more. That would make it nearly 15 percent of the US GDP, as against 0.8 percent announced by India’s Finance Minister last week. And even that meagre announcement of India had items which had already been budgeted for, and hence were not part of the new relief spending. Keep in mind that the political bickering in the US Senate and Congress was not about the size of the package, but its composition. The Democrats claimed that the earlier proposal was too generous to corporations and too stingy to workers. Hence the revised proposal had a provision for a direct cash payment to every adult in America, barring a small minority earning a very high income. There were also tax breaks and loan incentives to companies to not retrench workers, and keep them on the payroll.Read More 

Kautilya and COVID-19

Author: Dr Kajari Kamal, Research Faculty, Takshashila Institution.Why is it that Kautilyan principles are invoked only when India tries to outdo its neighbor through an unconventional military endeavour (recent India-Pakistan conflict), or when devising novel ways to upgrade India’s modern warfare capabilities, or when the nation witnesses a dramatic twist  in domestic politics, often by resort to clever means? Surely, the expansion and maintenance of a political entity as large as the Mauryan Empire would have necessitated a wider, more comprehensive, understanding of governance and statecraft.Continue reading the article here

As Chorus of 'Chinese Virus' Rings Loudly in India, Is the Stage Set For an Info-Ops Tussle?

This article was originally published on The WireUsers of Indian Twitter, for want of a better term, will not have been able to escape the term ‘Chinese virus’ trending on the platform in the form of different hashtags over the last 10 days.What seemingly started off as agitprop by the American right has transcended boundaries and resonated in India as well, echoing sentiment that Beijing and the Chinese should be severely penalised for the COVID-19 pandemic.This sentiment was backed by what appeared to be some coordinated activity on Twitter from March 24 onward, around the time of India’s lockdown, all with the purpose of taking aim at China.#ChineseVirus19, #ChineseBioterrorisn, #Chinaliedpeopledied and #ChineseVirusCorona were some of the hashtags being used in favour of this narrative around March 24 and March 25.Read more