Commentary
Find our newspaper columns, blogs, and other commentary pieces in this section. Our research focuses on Advanced Biology, High-Tech Geopolitics, Strategic Studies, Indo-Pacific Studies & Economic Policy
Data is not national wealth, must not be regulated in same manner
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Over the last few years in tech policy, one thing has been clear. There is a strong tendency within the Government to view the data as a national asset, akin to say, the Indian Railways. This has been an inherent line of reasoning in multiple draft and actual policies. Former Foreign Secretary said something similar in a G20 summit last year in a G20 summit, claiming that data is a new form of wealth.The idea broadly is that data is the new oil (an analogy that I am not a fan of). Thanks to our large population size, India generates a lot of data. Hence, that data must be protected, controlled, and utilised by Indian companies for our development.
The final-year exam fiasco
The University Grants Commission is the top boss governing policies of all universities in India. It oversees about 800 universities encompassing about 40,000 colleges. Of these, 49 are central universities, i.e. run by funds from the central government, 367 are state universities run by state government funding and 123 are deemed universities, i.e. UGC has blessed them with that status, although they are largely run with their own funds. The rest are private universities, established under laws passed by respective state legislatures. Until 1976, education was on the States’ List as per the Constitution of India. So all policies were governed by state governments. Due to an amendment passed during the Emergency, education was shifted to the Concurrent List, which meant that the central government could now legislate policies that would be binding on all.Of course, the UGC has existed since 1956, with a mandate to maintain the standard of higher education in the country. It provides grants and funds, and also regulation to maintain standards. Its decisions are binding on all universities of all states and Union Territories.Read More
ICMR should fast track coronavirus vaccine, not for 15 August but for science
There is absolutely no doubt that the world needs a vaccine for the novel coronavirus or SARS-nCOV-2 fast and the country that acquires one first will not only secure health and economic benefits but gain a geopolitical window of opportunity that it can exploit. For strategic reasons, therefore, I have previously argued that “India must accelerate efforts to develop an indigenous vaccine” and that “We should be prepared to manufacture sufficient doses for our own population and export large volumes to the rest of the world.”
To the extent that the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) controversial letter to certain hospitals to “launch a vaccine for public health use latest by 15th August 2020 after completion of all clinical trials” indicates that the Narendra Modi government is serious about running the vaccine race, it is a good sign. However, as Warren Buffett once said, “No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” In fact, ICMR’s hope, demand, or injunction — whatever it was — is logically impossible to satisfy: all clinical trials simply cannot be completed by 15 August. It seems to have acknowledged this in its subsequent clarification.
The opening up of India’s space sector is a big bang policy reform
Banning TikTok is another nail on coffin of internet exceptionalism
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.This has been a busy week for the internet. Earlier this week, India banned TikTok (along with 58 other apps from China). This was followed by Airtel and Jio blocking access to DuckDuckGo (a privacy-first search engine). If we zoom out, there is a strong argument to be made that both of these developments are part of a larger pattern. That is, both these developments are detrimental to the special status we have afforded the internet for so long.
The California caste atrocity
The constitution of the United States does not recognise discrimination based on caste. It bars discrimination based on race, religion, gender, ethnic or national origin, and even sexual orientation, but not on the basis of caste. Why so? Because caste as a category was unknown to the founders of the American republic. That is now to be changed thanks to a landmark case last week.The California State Department of Fair Employment and Housing has filed a lawsuit against a Silicon Valley giant, Cisco Corporation. It has charged the company with caste-based discrimination. Cisco and others in Silicon Valley employ thousands of engineers and professionals from India. The department has said that Ciscoviolated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and also California’s own Fair Employment Act. The lawsuit also names two engineer managers who used to work at Cisco, and who discriminated against a fellow employee at Cisco, who is a Dalit. The two defendants are Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella. As per the charges, they being uppercaste, denied the Dalit employee his promotion, and gave him lesser pay and opportunities. They revealed his ‘Dalit’ caste to their co-workers at Cisco and also that he had got admission to IIT based on the caste quota. They were trying to enforce caste hierarchy at the workplace. When these complaints were taken to the HR department in Cisco, they ignored these. The state charges that Cisco failed to protect the employee against harassment, discrimination, and humiliation. If you ask around in private conversations or hushed whispers, such caste discrimination is quite widespread if not rampant in America.Read More
Arriving at a new normal in India-China relations
This article was first published in The Hindustan Times.The ongoing stand-off between the Indian and Chinese forces in eastern Ladakh is a fork in the road, fundamentally reshaping the direction of the bilateral relationship. Over the last few years, the architects of the gradual thaw and developing partnership between the two sides, which began in 1988, had been warning about the withering of old mechanisms that had kept the peace on the disputed boundary.Despite the pageantry of informal summitry, the strategic guidance provided by the leaders to their respective militaries has clearly not succeeded in stemming incidents. In November 2019, the minister of state for defence, Shripad Naik, told Parliament that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had transgressed into Indian territory 1,025 times between 2016 and 2018. Roughly a third of these incidents took place in 2018. In April that year, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping held the first of their two informal summits. Recent reports suggest that the number of transgressions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) increased significantly in 2019.
Modi govt’s silence on China gave ‘satellite warriors’ a free run. India will rue the damages
The Ladakh stand-off has boosted transparency, for it has given greater visibility to a species of information soldiers who could be described as ‘Satellite Warriors’. These individuals, who are mostly housed in either think tanks or media, are increasingly the main sources of satellite imagery, informing the Indian and international public about China’s military moves. Their interpretations based on commercially available satellite imagery often vary from the official descriptions of the situation on the ground. Without any official interpretations contradicting their claim, the satellite warriors are having a free run while Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statements, even if they refer only to Galwan, are increasingly looking like lies attempting to hide in plain sight. You can find the article here
Is China's Western Theatre Command Confident Enough to Challenge India?
In 2013, during the Third Plenum of the18th Central Committee, it was announced by Xi Jinping that China would introduce widespread military reforms. This shift in policy came a year after Xi Jinping had succeeded Hu Jintao as General Secretary and at the beginning of his program of consolidating his faction’s hold over the Chinese Communist Party. Amid other reforms, including announcements on the economy, the Third Plenum specifically identified the People’s Liberation Army leadership, command and force structures, institutions, and civil-military integration as key areas for major reforms.
Xi initiated the reform process two years later in 2015 with the ambitious goal to make the PLA a fully mechanised force by 2020, informatised by 2035 with the key aim of turning it into a world-class army by 2050. These reforms included changes to the Central Military Commission’s bureaucratic structure, the creation of newer forces like the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) and the PLA Joint Logistic Support Force (JLSF), and the formation of theatre commands for improving effectiveness between the various branches. Alongside these institutional reforms, Xi Jinping also prioritised weapons modernisation with the deployment of newer weapon systems.
The formation of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command (WTC) in 2016 saw the replacement of the old Chengdu and Lanzhou Military Regions and established a single unified command structure across Xinjiang, Tibet, and along the border of key states from Afghanistan and India. The impetus to modernise the PLA was accelerated after the 2017 Doklam stand-off which saw Indian and Chinese troops face-off in Bhutan. This along with amplified military training has helped the People’s Liberation Army to improve its firepower and develop its combat readiness, making it now more confident to challenge India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
After the Indian Ban on 59 Chinese Apps, What Comes Next?
As the clock ticked towards 9 PM on the night of June 29, the talk of Internet in India was the Ministry of Electronics and IT’s press release indicating that 59 apps would be banned. The stated reason for this ban was that they were engaged in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India.The common thread among these apps is that they are of ‘Chinese origin’ even though that isn’t explicitly mentioned in the government’s banning order.How it could be implementedFor now, let’s set aside the question of whether the ban is a fitting response to the killing of 20 Indian soldiers in Galwan, Ladakh on June 15, and whether it is justified or not. What is likely to happen from here is that the Google Play Store and iOS App Store will be asked to de-list the apps from their Indian storefronts. There is precedent for this when a ban on TikTok was ordered by the Madras High Court.Read more
India could afford to overlook economic inequality until now. Covid has changed that
Apple v Basecamp: We need to separate gatekeeper from toll collector
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle.In his book Super Pumped (a biography of Uber), Mike Isaac argues that App Store and Play Store give Apple and Google, respectively, the power to destroy multi-billion dollar companies. So when Travis Kalanick (then CEO of Uber) was charged with breaking some of the rules of App Store, and he managed to survive a meeting with Tim Cook without getting Uber kicked out of App Store, he felt like he could survive anything. When it comes to App Store, and the millions of developers and apps working on it, Apple is god.
How Ramdev’s Coronil makes social media’s fight against misinformation more difficult
This article was first published in The Print.Even as scientists around the world struggle to come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus, Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda announced this week that it has developed a ‘cure’ for Covid-19. According to Ramdev, ‘Coronil and Swasari’ medicine has shown promising results and ‘cured’ all coronavirus patients not on ventilator support who were part of the trial.The introduction of a ‘cure’ and the resulting reaction — the Narendra Modi government’s AYUSH Ministry has asked Patanjali to stop advertising Coronil, and the Uttarakhand Ayurveda Department has said the company did not mention ‘coronavirus’ in its application seeking licence — raises an important debate on information disorder on social media platforms. And the question of what medical misinformation constitutes during times of a pandemic and otherwise.
The unbearable burden of oil tax
On April 20 there was a historic drop in oil prices in Texas. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude dropped all the way, not just to zero, but $37 below zero. That means the seller was giving money to the buyer to buy oil. Unthinkable and unprecedented.Since then oil prices have recovered and WTI is trading at around $38+ per barrel. Its European cousin, called Brent Crude, is priced at $41 per barrel. This is roughly the import price that India pays. When the price was near zero, why didn’t we simply book an order for the entire year’s requirement? That’s called booking a future(delivery) contract. Alas, it doesn’t quite work that way. Besides, India’s oil refining companies, which import crude, aren’t really geared up for doing such sophisticated futures contracting. For instance, if they book a large futures contract at a low price, who’s to say the price won’t fall even further? The manager who booked such an advance contract may be hauled up by the anti-corruption vigilance guys for having defrauded the company. So India’s oil imports are done somewhat old-fashioned way, without too much speculation into the future. So whenever crude oil prices change in the world, the oil refining companies in India pay less or more depending on the fluctuation. Obviously, since the cost of refining crude oil into petrol or diesel is fixed, the price that they should ask at the petrol pump should also fluctuate according to global oil movements.Read More
Viewing Contemporary India Through the Kautilyan Lens
Daunting challenges stare at contemporary India. It is time for introspection and course correction that demands the highest quality of statecraft. According to Kautilya, knowledge is the bedrock of statecraft and foreign policy is crafted on the concept of ‘correlation of forces’, a metric that takes into account everything that determines relative power.So, how does India fare from this Kautilyan perspective?You can find the article here
India can resist China by acting in concert with its adversaries
At an emergency cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister indicated that the border fighting did not constitute a threat to India. The strategic Chinese threat, he maintained, lies in the rapidly increasing industrial power base of China as well as the building of military bases in Tibet. The only Indian answer, he continued, is the most rapid possible development of the Indian economy to provide a national power base capable of resisting a possible eventual Chinese military move." Arthur Cohen of the United States’s Central Intelligence Agency wrote this in his 1963 study of border skirmishes that occurred in Ladakh in 1959. The Prime Minister he refers to was Jawaharlal Nehru.Read moreThis is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at:
The global upheaval caused by China’s premature power games
Power is the only currency that will work in dealing with China
In January 2016, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China—a position that outranks his commonly used job title of president—made an important speech assessing the global situation. China, in his view, was faced with “three unprecedented situations" and “three dangers". On the opportunity side of the ledger, it was “closer than ever before to being the centre of the world stage", he said; “It is closer to achieving its goals, and it now has the ability and the self-confidence to achieve its objectives." The dangers he spoke of were external aggression and internal division, an economic slowdown and political challenges to the party’s supremacy.Read moreThis is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at
Public lockdown discipline fast eroding, India risks becoming lax in Covid fight
India is in a crucial and especially dangerous phase of the coronavirus pandemic. With the relaxation of the national lockdown, public attention, media focus and the priorities of political leaders have shifted to other things. There is a sense — strengthened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement — that the lifting of the lockdown is progressive and linear, and Unlock 2 is sure to follow Unlock 1.
Cases are rising almost everywhere in the country, and the doubling rate is back to 18 days. Now, lifting the lockdown was necessary for reasons of survival, but it demanded that the administrative focus expand to ensure adequate physical and social distancing, hygiene, and contact traceability. It also demanded that people be put on notice that in case the course of the pandemic worsens, we should expect more containment zones and lockdowns. These did not happen. So while an admirably large number of people and businesses are acting responsibly, our encounters with non-mask-wearing people and crowded public places are increasing. The public discipline of the lockdown period is fast eroding and way too prematurely.
Encouraging small sellers to get online must be a policy priority
The article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal. At least 20% of Indian retailers were likely to wind up their business in the coming months. Because of restrictions in movement, it is hard for small sellers to maintain demand, and the only possible solution to that is to move online. Doing so at a national scale will expand the consumer base and better equip retailers to handle logistics.While moving online is a widely accepted solution for sellers, it comes at a monetary and compliance cost. If small retailers are to survive the pandemic, costs of moving online will need to be mitigated. Currently, instead of an incentive to move online, the pre-COVID tax regime has inadvertently installed exist entry barriers that act as a deterrent.