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
Avoid that sink(ing) feeling before you do the dishes. Dishwasher is the new washing machine
After booming sales over the past couple of months, dishwashers are in short supply in many Indian cities. The waiting period for some of the reputed brands is as long as two months. Dishwasher detergents have disappeared from supermarket shelves and online retailers. The Covid-19 pandemic has given the dishwasher its moment in India. If it leads to a greater adoption of dishwashers in Indian households, it will be a good thing for Indian society.
It’s easy enough to understand why the demand for dishwashers has surged. The lockdown and social distancing considerations have increased the number of meals cooked and eaten at home. At the same time, access to domestic workers is limited. The additional load of cooking and eating at home has literally piled up the dirty dishes in and around the kitchen sink. Many people have come to realise that dirty dishes don’t get cleaned merely because they have been left near the sink — someone needs to do them. If the falling apple triggered Isaac Newton to theorise about gravity, it could be unwashed dishes that led him to his first law of motion, or Émilie du Châtelet to the law of conservation of energy.
India should deploy naval power to acquire leverage over China
The Personal Data Protection Bill in the context of the Twitter hack
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In case you have not been following the news, earlier this week, Twitter was the subject of a very public data breach. A lot of very high profile accounts were hacked, including Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Apple. There is, of course, wider context to it. The hack itself is a symptom of malicious user behaviour on Twitter and historically lax responses to it. In case you want to know more about this, Casey Newton’s newsletter ‘The Interface’ is a great place to start.The short of the matter is that hacks are relatively common on the platform, as is spying. Twitter has a chequered history with cybersecurity. There have been several bitcoin-related scams as well as spying missions that were carried out on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I wish I could say that Twitter is the only company that undergoes these trials, but sadly that is not the truth. Cybersecurity incidents are fairly common and do not make the news as often as they should.
India’s struggle to impose a ‘Google Tax’
India introduced a tax on e-commerce companies in the February Union Budget. What’s unusual about it? Don’t all companies have to pay a tax on their profits? Yes, but this is about e-commerce companies, which do not have a permanent establishment in India. For tax purposes, they are non-residents and hence not subject to income tax. Obviously we are not talking about Flipkart, Big Basket, Swiggy or Zomato, which are all desi companies with a presence in India – although it is possible that they ‘moved’ their head office out of the country after getting acquired by global giants. We are talking about companies like Google, Amazon and Netflix. All of them happen to be American companies. Hence the new tax, which is actually called a ‘levy’, is often referred to as the ‘Google Tax’. It is 2 per cent of revenues, if your aggregate revenue from India is more than Rs 2 crore.A company like Google makes money from advertisements, which show up on the right-hand side of your search. Or when you watch YouTube. Or sometimes even in Gmail. For users all these services, and many more such as Google Maps, are free. But the company makes money from those tiny ads that keep popping up now and then. Their customer is the advertiser, not you, the user of those services. In fact, a company like Google is selling you, or rather your ‘eyeballs’, to the advertiser. Since the ads can be small and truly micro-targeted, i.e. they show up only based on what you are searching, the ad rates are small.Read More
Understanding Implications of Hong Kong’s Tech Ecosystem Changes for India
This article was first published in Deccan Herald. Views are personal.While the pandemic rages on, the Chinese leadership in Beijing has tightened its control over Hong Kong. Earlier in 2019, the region saw fierce protests take place regarding an extradition bill. Now, Chinese lawmakers have voted to adopt the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.The law came into force by being added to Annex III of the Basic Law (de facto Constitution of Hong Kong) and hence was not debated in Hong Kong’s legislature. There had been plenty of speculation about the dynamics of the move and how that reflects on China itself. But since the law has been put into place, it has met with sharp responses, especially within the tech community.
Radio, Buddies & More: Alternatives For Students Without Internet
With the COVID-19 pandemic’s requirement for social distancing, it will be difficult to physically reopen schools. When schools in Israel reopened, clusters of COVID-19 cases were reported from them and all schools had to be closed again. Thus, keeping schools closed is a wise option. The current situation has certainly increased the demand for virtual learning and in the same direction, the Government of Maharashtra has announced the beginning of the new academic year for state board schools with online classes. While that seems like a logical decision, especially in Maharashtra which accounts for 30% of COVID-19 cases in India, it does not account for the digital disparity. Not all students have access to smartphones/internet and therefore, it is imperative to find alternatives to online learning so that all students are able to access education.Read more
Capacity is not what’s hindering India’s testing rate, government price caps are
India cannot control the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic unless the governmental authorities stay in mission mode and get better at the ‘test, trace and isolate’ strategy, as I wrote in my column a couple of weeks ago. The first and most important part of the epidemic control strategy is testing, for only when you test lots of people and get the results quickly will you be able to trace their contacts and isolate them all.
Covid-19 cases across India are rising because the country is just not testing enough people, and test reports are taking too long to come out. And the main reason why India is falling far short of its capacity to test is that governments have failed to engage private laboratories and healthcare facilities in a reasonable manner. How else can you explain the fact that while there are abundant numbers of test kits available in the country, India ranks among the lowest in terms of tests per capita? Philippines, Malaysia, Rwanda and Cuba test more people per day relative to population than India does.
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
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
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.
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.