On Semiconductors, India Needs to Reboot Trade Policies, Ecosystem to Build a TSMC

Talks have accelerated between India and Taiwan to build a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing unit in the country. Reports have indicated that officials from both sides have met regularly to discuss the possible outcomes of Taiwan investing in a fabrication facility in India. The Taiwanese government and its major foundries, which hold the lion’s share of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing supply, have reportedly agreed to invest $7.5 billion in India to set up a long-pending fab in the country.

In Quad’s Semiconductor Gambit against China, India Stands to Gain

Semiconductors gave become a domain of confrontation between the US and China. And then, the demand shock of COVID-19 led to a severe shortage of chips in automobiles, medical devices, and other sectors. And finally, fears of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan—which alone accounts for nearly 73 per cent of the world’s global contract chip manufacturing—have made countries scramble for alternatives. And so, from being at the margins of the technology policy agenda of several countries, semiconductors have become a primary focus area. Little wonder then that the first in-person Quad Summit meeting on September 24 had semiconductors on its agenda.

The Murky Waters of Kerala’s Knowledge Economy Mission

The Union, States, and other stakeholders can reap benefits from broad-based employment platforms like the Kerala Knowledge Economy Mission. But for such technological innovations to succeed, they require more nuance, engagement, and diversity at the design stage to cater to the needs of all of Kerala’s unemployed.

Read the article in The Bastion

As Quad focuses on Tech, the Debate on Standard Setting

Technology will be at the forefront of the first in-person Quad summit in the United States (US). The control of critical technologies and their supply chains remain essential for all States to project their geopolitical influence. However, having a grip on the governance mechanism of these critical technologies in the form of technical standards can be a gamechanger in the geostrategic field.A technical standard serves as a means for governance in the realm of a wide range of technologies. With several emerging fields such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, and 5G, there is a need to establish a common direction of functioning for all States and private companies undertaking research and development in the field of technology. While this remains the idea behind the setting up of technical standards, recent developments have broadened the scope of the necessity of these standards.

Swooping down on algorithms

China has pursued aggressive measures on the entire gamut of its tech sector in the past few months, ranging from strong-arming IPOs to limiting gaming hours for children. A host of legislative instruments are in the process of adoption. This includes the Personal Information Protection Law, the Cybersecurity Law, and the draft Internet Information Service Algorithmic Recommendation Management Provisions.Read the full article in The Hindu

China’s ‘Standards 2035’ Project Could Result in a Technological Cold War

The eventual decline of the West’s dominance in the standards domain has offered an opportunity for China to play a bigger role in finalizing and setting technology standards. The Chinese state has gradually increased its technical capabilities and has worked toward strengthening the technology sector in the country during the last two decades. The domestic private technology sector of China, supported by the state, has gained immense heft on the international stage. Now, it looks to play an active role in advocating for global technical standards and a worldwide governance mechanism for governing emerging technologies. In this way, China hopes to boost domestic economic growth and project geopolitical influence.

How India could get involved in the AUKUS alliance

The newly announced alliance appears to be intended a base for all three states to indulge in defense and technology cooperation and to collaborate on governing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and cyberspace.While India’s involvement in the Quad is needed, there are also pragmatic reasons for India to work with the AUKUS states to achieve their objectives. Modi’s first face-to-face meeting with Biden could help make India’s case for getting involved with AUKUS.Read the full article on Asia Times

Understanding China’s Draft Algorithm Regulations

Data and algorithms are the fundamental blocks of cyberspace, but while data practices are increasingly being regulated around the world algorithm regulation is relatively untouched. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for example, remains the groundbreaking model for data protection regulations in most parts of the world. However, there is a void in the regulation of algorithms.In August, China issued the Draft Internet Information Service Algorithmic Recommendation Management Provisions, with an interest in standard setting in this space. Read the full op-ed on The Diplomat. Views are personal and do not represent Takshashila's policy recommendations.

Case for an India-led Southeast Asian Solar Alliance

“Code Red” is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned humanity when it came out with its sixth Assessment Report on August 9. Nation-states across the globe have responded to the doomsday prediction with claims of working toward reducing their carbon emissions.The spotlight has indeed been put on alternative sources of energy, with the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, calling for a complete eradication of further investment in fossil fuels and transferring all future capital into renewable sources. This has elevated the necessity and importance of solar energy across the world.

Algorithmic audits are necessary to protect India’s gig workers

In the past few weeks, anonymous Twitter accounts such as Swiggy DE and DeliveryBhoy have made allegations regarding issues faced by delivery partners of food delivery apps. These include low payouts, opaque payout calculations and alleged cheating, unexplained differences in surge rates, order clubbing and assignments to avoid incentive pay, and zone extensions to avoid return bonuses.Swiggy and Zomato, which offer delivery work to more than 360,000 gig workers, have responded to these allegations by insisting that earnings per order are much higher than alleged, and that full-time delivery personnel earn over ₹20,000 per month.India’s gig economy is among the few sectors offering flexible work to unemployed millions. In her 2021 Union Budget speech, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned the creation of a database of gig workers and extending social security to them. It is important, therefore, to examine these grievances and design policy mechanisms that protect worker rights.Read the full article on Hindustan Times

What Should India Hope to Get Out of its 5Gi Standard Experiment?

While the world was reeling under the COVID-19 pandemic for the majority of 2020, it was a landmark year for the Indian telecommunication industry when the country managed to get a crucial approval from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialised UN body responsible for everything related to information and communication technologies, for its in-house standards on 5G technology.The locally curated standards, 5Gi, were developed in the hope of expanding 5G coverage in rural India by using a unique feature called Low Mobility Large Cell (LMLC) which significantly enhances the signal transmission range of a base station for a service provider.The first-ever presence of India in influencing global communication standards which were predominantly controlled by Europe, the US, and more recently China is a welcome change for the strategic community in the country.

Digital health cooperation with Israel is in India’s health interest

By Shambhavi Naik and Gedaliah AftermanIndia’s dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases has refocused the local debate on the mismatch between demand and supply of medical services across the country. This discrepancy is aggravated by local lockdowns impeding access to doctors and fear of infection, as people are encouraged to seek medical attention at home. Pleas on social media have demonstrated the need to use digital tools to address issues of information asymmetry and access of health services in non-urban areas.Noticeably, countries have been able to direct their existing digital health solutions to augment their health infrastructure to respond quickly to COVID-19. Israel, which this week removed most COVID-19 related restrictions, is an excellent example of deploying digital health solutions. India can collaborate strategically with Israel to develop capacity in digital health, in preparation for future pandemics.India’s experiments in recent years with adopting digital health have led to mixed responses. Challenges include lack of digital infrastructure in non-urban areas, language barriers, and the absence of basic health services in remote areas. Thus, a blanket one-size-fits-all approach to digital health adoption is unlikely to work in India.Instead, a tiered approach or ground up building of infrastructure is required. Nonetheless, it is important to build to this goal, as digital health tools can help close several current gaps in healthcare. Electronic health records (EHR) maintained in an inter-operable manner, as envisioned under India’s Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), can reduce diagnostic costs and ease access to a patient’s health history for medical professionals. Such records can also form the basis for health information exchange, where EHR from remote areas can be sent to specialist doctors for their opinion.Telemedicine can be used by doctors to patients or consult amongst his peers. COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of developing telemedicine services even in urban centers, so that patients can continue receiving health services without endangering their lives. In addition, diagnostic tools such as wearables can enable real-time monitoring of patient’s health data, leading to more effective decision-making by medical professionals.While these tools cannot replace core medical functions, they can supplement operations and increase medical outreach. The implementation process is however accompanied by concerns about consent mechanisms for data acquisition, storage, and possible cybersecurity threats. Successful implementation of digital health therefore depends on an ecosystem that fosters not only innovation, but also trust and an adequate formulation of appropriate policies to govern digital health.Extending the India-Israel partnershipTo effectively plan and implement digital health policies, governments can learn from each other and work together. Furthermore, only by creating long-lasting cooperative structures and partnerships can they effectively prepare for future crises. Israel and India offer a particular case in point.Israel has actively engaged digital health tools in its public health service and is well placed to share its experience and knowhow with international partners. Under the aegis of Healthcare Israel, it has already provided professional assessments on health care programs in Africa, Asia, and Europe.Israel has successfully deployed digital health tools, but its population and infrastructural challenges are relatively small. On the other hand, India’s adoption of digital tools is still in its infancy, and choosing the right partner can help it expedite this growth. Both stand to benefit from increased cooperation in this field: India can provide an opportunity for Israel to trial technologies at scale in preparation for their international deployment. An effective way to achieve this, while safeguarding rights and health of Indian citizens, would be to create “regulatory sandboxes,” where innovators can trial promising solutions in a controlled environment under a regulator’s supervision. In exchange, Israel’s innovative capabilities make it a highly suitable partner for India.A good starting point for such a collaboration would be to map technologies for preventive healthcare. Point-of-care diagnostics and screening, as just one example, can help in the early detection of cancer and early intervention, which would not only save lives but also reduce the demand for tertiary healthcare and the costs of surgical treatments. Collectively gathered population-level data could inform on developing infectious disease outbreaks, underpinning a health response to prevent further spread. Such preventive strategies would provide relief to strained health resources and allow their effective use, even as India builds up more capacity.Increased investment in health infrastructure, legislation safeguarding the privacy of citizens, and the strengthening of the health regulator are three key actions that are critical for the successful adoption of digital health in both Israel and India. Creating this ecosystem can not only enable government-to-government collaboration, but also facilitate the growth of the domestic and international private sectors providing digital health services. Private sector participation will underline greater outreach of health services, contributing to improved health outcomes.The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated the urgency of increased international cooperation to protect global health interests. No country can be safe from a pandemic unless all countries have adequate, accessible, and affordable healthcare. Therefore, it is a national and global interest for India, Israel, and others to use this opportunity to collaborate and lead the way in creating world-class products and services that can benefit all.Download this article as a pdf.Authors: Shambhavi Naik (PhD) is the Head of Research at the Takshashila Institution  Gedaliah Afterman (PhD) is Head of the Asia Policy Program at the Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy.

What Pegasus says about Cyber Power and our National Security

Public discourse around the Pegasus reports alleging government surveillance of politicians, media persons, public officials and business people is understandably focused on its political and civil liberties dimensions. Yet, the affair also has crucial national security and geopolitical dimensions that must enter the national debate. The 130-year-old governance mindset and administrative processes that the Indian state employs in such matters is not tenable in the Information Age. Pegasus is another reminder that the Indian republic is more vulnerable than ever to information offensives by adversaries.

Information governance in liberal democracies has two key goals: first, to protect the fundamental rights (privacy included) of citizens; and second, to defend the national information sphere from hostile state and non-state adversaries. These goals are sometimes in conflict. There is a trade-off between liberty and national security. Liberal democracies achieve a balance by codifying the trade-off, placing limits on the state’s powers, defining due processes, and subjecting government actions to parliamentary and judicial review. While the Indian state has managed a balance in many areas, privacy and surveillance have remained in a grey zone since the Constitution came into force.Read the full article in The Mint

E-commerce: Don’t let Protectionism Drive Policy

It is hard to imagine how prohibiting high discounts and attractive offers is supposed to protect consumer interests. It is easier, however, to imagine how this move can help the “offline” stores in their competition against the online ones

The new rules also mandate e-commerce companies to provide a domestic alternative for any imported goods or services offered for sale. Consumer protection rules imposed on e-commerce firms should not be used for the atmanirbhar and swadeshi drive.Perhaps the most contentious rule, which highlights a misunderstanding of how marketplaces work, is the “fallback liability” clause. In short, this clause makes the e-commerce entity responsible for the goods and services sold by sellers registered on the platform. This is not dissimilar to holding a mall responsible for the products sold by individual retail shops within it. This is impractical and unfair to the marketplace.Further, there is an array of rules that increase compliance requirements, such as registering with the department for promotion of industry and internal trade, mandatory partnering with the National Consumer Helpline, and the appointment of compliance officers. Every e-commerce platform must appoint a chief compliance officer (who will be liable for third party information on the platform), nodal contact person (to coordinate with law enforcement), and a grievance officer.In the final analysis, though, these rules will fail the test of necessity and proportionality. Most e-commerce firms have fairly robust systems of customer care, which consumers can approach for grievance redressal. Further, e-commerce platforms facilitate refunds and returns in cases where customers are dissatisfied with the products. Beyond that, they have built a network where users rate and review both products and sellers of the products that can provide crucial information to any potential customers.

It would behove the government to withdraw most of these proposed rule changes, as the veneer of consumer protection peels away rather easily to reveal the underlying protectionist motivations.Read the full article here

Deniability is Pegasus Scandal’s Strongest Suit. And National Security is the Biggest Price

The storm of the recent Pegasus spyware episode raging in the international and domestic media discourses could have varied consequences for diverse constituencies. The revelations, led by Amnesty International, has India keeping company with Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Togo, and the United Arab Emirates. The list was promptly denied by the NSO Group — the Israeli corporate entity that marketed the spyware. Deniability revealed itself as the strongest suit of Pegasus.

Amnesty’s efforts cannot provide the sinews for legal challenges but they will fan political storms in democracies and India is the only one on the list. This should be a matter of concern. The heart of the issue is the possibility of abusing power in the garb of national security. The abuse lies in the feasibility of illegal deprivation of human rights, especially the right to privacy. Illegal, because snooping is supposedly being done without the due process of law.Read the full article in ThePrint

‘Gray zone’ intrigue may derail Russia-Japan cooperation

Read the Full Text of the Article on Asia Times Rightly or wrongly, Moscow may interpret recent events as ‘war by other means’ waged by US ally JapanRussia and its adversaries are equally obsessed with a full spectrum of “gray zone” activities, including high-tech military, industrial and corporate espionage. While Russia does not see Japan as an adversary, it feels uncomfortable with Japan’s close ties to the US.The contemporary Russia-Japan relationship is complicated, with worrying trends signaling possible derailment of their bilateral ties in some fields.While the direction of great-power relations is rightly gauged from policy moves and summits, the shadowy world of espionage and spies, while overtly aligned with policy and polity, covertly operates to secure national interests, making no concessions, even to allies.Over the past few weeks, a curious case of alleged espionage has been grabbing headlines in Japan. Kazuo Miyasaka, the 70-year-old former owner of a technical research firm, was reportedly apprehended by the police for allegedly passing on high-tech military secrets to a member of the Russian trade representative mission in Japan.Miyasaka is believed to have betrayed secrets related to the US Space Force’s unmanned X-37B spacecraft, among other advanced systems.Read the Full Text of the Article on Asia Times All views are personal and do not reflect the recommendations of the Takshashila Institution 

How to Beat China in the High-Tech Race

The near-daily cadence of reports highlighting China's growing technology prowess has set the cat among the pigeons in many democracies. In response, these countries are now offering higher subsidies and fatter incentives to increase the competitiveness of their own technology industries.

The US Senate, for instance, passed a $250 billion Innovation and Competition bill on 8th June aimed at outpacing China. The Indian government, since last year, has launched Product Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes for 13 sectors worth ₹2 trillion, some of them targeted at high-tech industries such as semiconductors, telecom, and networking. Earlier this month, a draft growth strategy of the Japanese government also promised generous financial incentives to attract cutting-edge chip-making facilities. Not to be left behind, the EU, too, has announced a €145 billion plan to upgrade its semiconductor and electronics manufacturing.

While the intent is encouraging, it's interesting to note that all these plans are qualitatively quite similar to China's 'Made in China 2025' — a state-led industrial policy for technology. Released in 2015, it was labelled as a threat to global trade for channelling state subsidies to achieve import substitution. But now, many countries seem to be following a similar approach. Of course, China's subsidies are often discriminatory and place extreme restrictions on foreign investment. Even so, all these policies mirror China's at their core — they are all about using old-style industrial policy instruments such as subsidies and incentives to achieve high-tech self-sufficiency.Read the full article in Times of India. Views are personal

Cyber Threats now sit alongside Nuclear Ones

The US-Russian meeting in Geneva on 15 June signified an attempt by both sides to arrest the pace of a worsening relationship. The US, as the aggrieved party, accused the Russians of cyberattacks. US President Joe Biden handed over a list of 16 ‘critical infrastructure’ entities and warned that if they were attacked, the US will respond in a ‘cyber way’. Russian President Vladimir Putin denied culpability for any attacks and held the US responsible for several malicious cyber campaigns in Russia. Both parties have, however, agreed to the creation of working groups for urgent arms control and cyber issues.

Cyber now sits alongside nuclear threats, and it is definitely a promotion in the value chain of strategic affairs. The US is concerned and there are good reasons for it. India should be too.

Read the full article in ThePrint

What the COVID-19 Second Wave tells us about Twitter

The Covid-19 pandemic has given us several painful images in the last two years. During the first wave, the image that stayed with us was of migrant workers walking inhuman distances in the wake of an arbitrary national lockdown.During the second wave, the enduring image has been that of our social media feeds awash with desperate calls for help. Yet, amidst the shortage of critical medical equipment and the overflowing of cremation grounds, one cannot help but be struck by the great altruism and activism of thousands of regular social media users.Read the full article on Indian Express

Has the world of work changed forever?

This article was first published in Deccan Herald. Views are personal.We are so far into this pandemic that I, along with most people around me, seem to have forgotten what the world looked like before the apocalypse. The Seth household (like a lot of other people) is pretty dependent on Netflix and Amazon Prime for entertainment. Every so often, while binging a TV show, we come across a scene that seems like it belongs in a different reality. Last week, while streaming The Office, I found it hard to imagine working from a common shared space with my colleagues. I have commuted to and from offices for most of my professional life and have sat in more meetings than I can count. Meetings are one thing I do not miss from before the pandemic. When in an office, meetings can stretch for hours on end. Sometimes they serve as a direct proxy to how productive your colleagues perceive you to be. They also required you to be physically present with your expressions visible and did not leave a lot of scope for you to get other work done. I distinctly remember a colleague saying to me in Delhi’s scorching heat, “Hum log office kaam karne ke liye nahi aate, meetings karne ke liye aate hain. Kaam to ghar pe karna hota hai” (We don’t come to the office to work, we come here to attend meetings. You are supposed to get work done on your own time). Enter 2020, and the world was thrust into the largest work from home experiment in the history of civilisation. Commutes became non-existent, and meetings became long conference calls on Zoom and MS Teams. You no longer had to drop everything to attend meetings, no longer had to show your face and expressions to colleagues throughout, could turn cameras and mics off, and perhaps most importantly, work in the background until someone called your name. Working from home during the pandemic, the new meeting culture has given me more control over my schedule. This made me question whether I was the only one going through this transition. Thankfully, research by the Harvard Business Review was able to provide me with some answers. (A slight caveat here; the data used in the study is from 2013 and 2020, but it has not explicitly not focused on India, and while I do not think it undermines its application, we should take it with a pinch of salt). The pandemic seems to be a net positive for knowledge workers. We are spending 12% less time being drawn into meetings and participating in 50% more activities through personal choice. The number of tasks rated as tiresome has also dropped from 27%-12%, meaning we are picking our battles better. This also means that on the flip side, we are finding it harder to start new initiatives or focus on personal development. In short, we have more control over our calendars and the message from knowledge workers here seems to be, “Stop! Stop! It hurts so good”. As with so many things from the pandemic, I hope that we take our learnings from this experience into our future. When I read about the future of work, many people talk in binaries of 0s and 1s on whether we will go back to offices or continue to work from home. I do not claim to know the answer. What I do know, however, is that we seem to prefer the current arrangement of meetings over the previous status quo. And if there is one thing we should take into our post-pandemic future of work, it is that people be given more freedom on how to use their time, starting with meetings.