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
Tech-Tonic: Who Scrubs Your Feeds?
This article was first published in Deccan Herald.Given how 2020 has been so far, if I were to ask you your favourite month of the year, you would rightfully hang up on me and then call me names, not in that order. However, since football was back last month, I would say September was when I was happiest. It’s great to look forward to football matches after a drought. I love the feeling when I get a notification on my phone that says line-ups are available. It is when my tinfoil hat is at its largest.For me, the only way to make sense of who is playing is to look at who is not playing. Let me explain. If I look at the starting eleven, all of it makes sense to me. For example, if in a game, Messi, Coutinho, Fati, and Griezmann are starting, I would not question it. But, when I look at the bench and see Dembele, I come to know of the trade-off the coach had to make to come to this preferred line-up.
The Bangladesh comparison
India was a midwife in the birth of Bangladesh. She sent in her army to liberate the newly born independent nation and even stood up to threats from the world’s mightiest power, the United States, which had sent its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal. Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, contemptuously referred to an infant Bangladesh as a “basket case”, meaning it would be hopelessly mired in poverty, hunger, and disease. India welcomed and gave refuge to almost ten million refugees from the newly forming nation, as they fled military atrocity, hunger, and deprivation.Bangladesh from the very beginning was counted among the least developed nations as per the United Nations and enjoyed the generosity of foreign aid in its development. It also had other concessions like the generalised system of preferences (GSP), which meant that its exports had duty-free access to western nations. India lost its GSP status recently. Bangladesh got interest-free long-term loans from development banks like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.Read More
Breathe new life into public health. Far too many Indians rely on Baba Ramdev, Akshay Kumar
Media headlines and public discourse might not reflect it, but one of the most important policy priorities for India now and over the next decade is health. The immediate task, of course, is ensuring that we bring the pandemic under control within the next year. The longer-term challenge is to create a health care and public health system that will form the basis of our future growth and development.
Public policies designed to bring about better health outcomes are desirable in and of themselves. But in the post-pandemic world, investment in health is important for an instrumental reason as well — to revive the Indian economy in the short-term and create a new engine of growth that the country desperately needs. Despite the beating the system has received due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian healthcare sector has the potential and the opportunity to become a globally competitive hub for quality, affordable healthcare. The crisis is an opportunity for a comprehensive review of how India has approached its health policy and lay the foundations for something that is a whole lot better. Over the next few weeks, this column will focus on new dimensions and angles in developing health policy for the future.
China’s new data security initiative has implications for India
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Recently, the Chinese government announced the launch of a new Data Security Initiative. Outlining its components, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he hoped that China can provide a “blueprint” for the formulation of international rules for digital security.The Chinese initiative entails eight broad principles, which include a call for supply chain stability, pledges against data theft and surveillance, norms for data storage and access, and a requirement for technology companies to not abuse their market dominance.
Wang’s announcement came a month after the United States launched its new Clean Network program in early August.The US initiative explicitly seeks to exclude Chinese telecommunications firms, apps, cloud service providers, and undersea cables from internet infrastructure used by the US and partner countries. The initiative draws upon a range of different standards, such as the Prague Proposals and the European Union’s 5G Toolbox.
India’s local governments must do far better in raising revenues
Covid hospital, not coastal road
Mumbai is the richest municipality in India with a budget whose size dwarfs many state government budgets. For instance, it is 50 per cent larger than the state budget of Goa. It can legitimately brag about many excellent hospitals, which provide highly subsidised healthcare services to the poor and vulnerable. Patients flock to Mumbai’s hospitals from across the country, and the city does not discriminate against anybody. The doctors, nurses, ward staff are all dedicated and constantly fighting uphill battles against rising caseloads, inadequate infrastructure, long working hours, and funding shortage.Wait a minute. Is Mumbai not the richest civic body in the country? And it has funds shortage? Despite sitting on real estate whose value is greater than gold? How come?Read More
India’s Covid data like counting potholes under streetlights. There are far more in the dark
There are two ways to deal with the uncertainties arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. The first is to take them as they come, and as I wrote in an earlier column, deal with the daily developments with a Stoic mind. To play the stroke according to the ball that comes your way. The second way is to try to get a sense of how things are likely to pan out, and prepare for them in advance to the extent possible. To have a game plan, but still be Stoic about it because things might not go the way you want. Most people can choose either way. But those who have to make personal, business or policy decisions that involve a longer horizon need some way to look beyond the here and the now. In other words, we need information that helps us estimate what might happen in the future. And this is where the problem lies.Read More
Facebook services integration comes with trade-offs
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In case you are interested in technology policy, you might have heard rumours about Facebook trying to merge its services, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for a few years now. The very idea of the move has proven to be controversial since its inception.Earlier this week, Facebook allowed select users on Messenger and Instagram to message from one app to the other, and we got one of our first glimpses on what integration of Facebook platforms might look like.As I hinted in the introduction, there is some historical context to this. The idea has been in the works for a few years now. The progress on this has also been chronicled well by Steven Levy in his book, Facebook: The Inside Story. It is an excellent read, but if you do not have the time, here is a short summary.
Police reforms still a distant dream
The Rashomon effect is named after a 1950 movie made by Akira Kurosawa. In the movie, a murder is described by four witnesses in contradictory ways. Their description reflects their own subjective interpretation and vested interests rather than the objective truth. If their testimonies are used as evidence in a litigation, this can result in the unravelling of the case due to inconsistency. Many famous cases recently have resulted in zero indictment for either lack of evidence, contradictions or hostile witnesses. The 2G scam or Babri demolition are two well known cases, which resulted in all acquittals. This failure could also be because the prosecution did not build a watertight case, or the investigation was shoddy. Was the investigation or prosecution shoddy deliberately orbecause of a lack of training and resources with the officers?These questions come to mind as we witness the evolving case of a brutal gangrape and murder of a young woman in Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. The police say they filed a first information report on the same day as the incident. The woman died more than two weeks later as she was moved from one hospital to another, due to her serious injury. Before she died, she identified the group that savagely assaulted her. She was cremated hastily by the police in the middle of the night, and even her family was denied the right to claim her body. Now the police say that the rape charge was after a week, when she was in hospital, casting a doubt on her. Senior officers are saying that forensic evidence shows there was no rape. A second post-mortem was not allowed or conducted.Read More
WHO’s COVAX Vaccine Access Initiative Won’t Succeed Without India’s Help
by Ruturaj Gowaikar and Shambhavi NaikDespite multiple lockdowns, forms of treatment and therapies, and intermittently aggressive contact-tracing, countries around the world have failed to arrest the spread of the novel coronavirus to the extent they had intended. A vaccine administered to 70-80% of the global population seems now to be the only path to normalcy.While this is an ideal figure, the whole world – much less any individual country – doesn’t have the capacity to manufacture and distribute these doses in a reasonable time frame. Further, the expertise to develop, test, manufacture and distribute the vaccine is scattered around the world. So in the face of an international pandemic, it is imperative that countries work together to share their expertise and abilities to deliver adequate quantities of a reliable and tested vaccine to everyone.
The COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX), an initiative of 172 countries is one platform to exchange expertise and enable equitable access to the vaccine. COVAX plans to pool economic resources of its member countries to achieve two objectives: enable vaccine developers to make high-risk investments for the development of vaccines, and subsidise vaccine costs for middle- and low-income countries. (Read more)
The need for anti-trust reform
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Earlier this month, the Competition Commission of India dismissed an anti-trust case against Amazon. Here is some context. The Dutch apparel company Beverly Hills Polo Club (BHPC) approached CCI, claiming that Amazon had been indulging in anti-competitive practices. They had plenty of allegations, and strong evidence to support their claim. Let me go through them one at a time.1. BHPC claimed that they do not sell on Amazon and rely on their own website (and Tata Cliq) for selling their products. However, Amazon offers similar products at a deeply discounted rate which makes it unviable for BHPC to compete with the prices being offered. Sacrificing profit for market share has long been Amazon’s approach to business and its deep pockets give it the financial muscle to do that.
Needed: Price Assurance
One silver lining to the 24 per cent fall in quarterly GDP between April and June was that growth in the agriculture sector was positive at 3.4 per cent. This is the first time in India’s history that we are experiencing a steep recession without any adverse shock of drought or a failed monsoon affecting agriculture. Another notable positive was the robust procurement of the spring harvest (Rabi crop), especially of wheat. Not just the frontrunners like Punjab andHaryana, but also states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh had a good Rabi procurement via the Food Corporation of India. When FCI does procurement, usually through its designated agencies, based in various states, it means that the farmer gets the assured price called the Minimum Support Price (MSP). That was over Rs 1,900 per quintal this time.The MSP is determined as a political decision, based on inputs given by the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). This commission was set up nearly 60 years ago, and provides a logical and scienti¦c basis to costs, and hence what is a reasonable price to be paid for the crops. Due to input cost escalation for seeds, pesticides, diesel, credit, fertilisers etc, the MSP too needs to go up, so that the farmer receives an adequate return. Otherwise, it is a loss-making proposition. In the past 50 years, the average escalation in MSP has been about 6 per cent per yearfor wheat and similarly for paddy. But the actual procurement by the government agency has gone up nearly 70 to 80 times during this period.Read More
Modi govt mustn’t hesitate to make Covid vaccine free for Indians. It only costs Rs 80,000 cr
Adar Poonawalla’s recent tweet prompted some discussion on India’s vaccination strategy. The CEO of the Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, asked if “the government of India will have 80,000 crore available, over the next one year” to pay for the purchase and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine to everyone in the country. My own colleagues estimate that it will cost between Rs 50,000-250,000 crore (depending on the vaccine) to vaccinate 80 percent of India’s population within a year.Read MoreYou can read the article in Hindi here.
Heed Napoleon’s words as China fancies its odds of taking Taiwan
The ongoing confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops along the Himalayan frontiers is serious, but pales in comparison with the situation across the Taiwan Strait. Over the weekend of 18-19 September, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and Navy (PLAN) flew 37 aircraft—including fighters and bombers—across the centre line that has served as the informal boundary between the mainland and Taiwan. One of the intruding pilots declared to Taiwanese defenders on the radio that “there is no median line in the Taiwan Strait." Beijing’s intrusions coincided with and were certainly a reaction to a US state department official’s visit to Taipei. As an intimidatory tactic, China’s move is highly risky. One miscalculation by a pilot or an air defence operator could spark a conflict that could well draw in the United States and its allies into a bigger war.Read more
Don’t ask the SC for loan waiver
If you have borrowed money as a home or business loan, you are bound by contract to repay that loan. Repayment is over a period of time, so you also pay the time value of money, i.e. interest. Due to the lockdown, the GDP for three months of April to June was down 24 per cent. For many people there was no income. As per CMIE data, 12 crore people lost jobs in the month of April. Imagine if you were running a restaurant.Suddenly there were zero customers. You still have to pay rent, electricity and salaries. And of course you have to pay interest and EMI on your loan, which is needed to run the business.Imagine if you were making unbranded shirts to supply to a large retail chain. You bought the cloth, buttons, collars, thread and made 10,000 shirts for delivery.Read More
Why we need to rethink how we disagree online
This article originally appeared in the Deccan Herald. An excerpt is reproduced here.Intentions as well as consequences are important in the information ecosystem. In July, an anonymous Twitter handle that purportedly offers ‘unpopular unapologetic truths’ distastefully advised its male followers to "only marry virgins". A quick Twitter search suggests that this wasn't the first time this account had engaged in such rhetoric, it wasn't the last either – but on this particular occasion it broke out from its regular set of followers to garner wider attention.Understandably, there was outrage. Some of the account's past content was called out, regular followers of the account were called out, both the tweets in question and the account were reported in unison by multiple users and more. However, two days later the account itself declared victory stating that interest in its content had increased and 'weak' followers had been cleared out.Earlier in the year, efforts by the campaign 'Stop Funding Hate' led to a movie streaming service, a business school and an ad-network excluding a far-right Indian website from their ad programs. However, the website itself claimed an increase in voluntary contributions 'upto 700 per cent' and also stated that there was no drop in advertising revenues.And in an ongoing instance, in late August, a news anchor tweeted out a ‘teaser’ video of an upcoming series that claimed it would unearth a conspiracy enabling minorities to occupy a disproportionate number of civil services posts in the country. An indicative analysis, using the tool Hoaxy, seemed to show that a lot of the initial engagement came from tweets that were meant to call out the nature of the content via quote tweets.Often, many of these accounts had a large number of followers themselves.Around the same time, an analysis by Kate Starbird, an eminent crisis informatics researcher, showed a misleading tweet by Donald Trump spreading “much farther” through quote tweets than through retweets. She also pointed out that a lot of the early quote tweets were critical in nature and calling on the platform to take action.While the matter of this particular series itself is sub judice, let’s focus on the days just after the tweet in question. In four days, the anchor’s follower count had grown nearly five per cent. In the ensuing period there have also been multiple hashtag campaigns professing their support both for the anchor and channel.What is common in each of these situations is that efforts to call out problematic content may have inadvertently benefitted the content creators by galvanising their supporters (in-group), propagating the content on digital platforms (algorithmic reward) and perhaps even recruiting new supporters who were inclined to agree with the content but are only choosing to participate as a result of the amplification and/or perceived attacks against their points-of-view or beliefs (disagreement with the out-group).
Read more.
GST compensation delay put onus on states to mobilise funds from their own sources better. Here’s what they can do
At the end of a recently held Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting, the finance minister signalled the Union government’s inability to pay compensation to the states, describing the revenue shortfall as an ‘Act of God’ caused by the pandemic. The Union abdicating its responsibility and leaving the states on its own is problematic on many grounds. In the last few weeks many commentators have succinctly explained this. But one question still remains unanswered: Can states do anything on their own to hedge against similar risks in the future?The Union has provided two options to the states – either borrow from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or from the open market. But both these measures create liabilities. A question worth considering is whether states can mobilise their own resources without creating liabilities.Read More
Does Lakshman have a right to know?
This article was first published in Deccan Herald. Views are personal.Earlier this week, I decided to scratch an itch that had been bothering me for a while. I took out some time in my calendar after work, dimmed the lights in my room, opened Netflix and started playing Main Hoon Na. I was halfway through the movie; at the point where Lakshman (Zayed Khan) is hanging from a ledge, all my knowledge about data protection came rushing at me.
With ARM in kitty, Nvidia most impressive firm you never heard of
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Listening to Pivot podcast earlier this week, I came across this quote from Professor Scott Galloway, “Nvidia is the most impressive company you have never heard of”. Up until last week, I would have argued that you could make a stronger case for this statement to be applied to ARM Holdings. But considering that Nvidia bought ARM Holdings from Softbank this week, Prof Galloway is right.In case you do not track the semiconductor space, there is a chance that you are yet to hear about this deal. Or in case you have heard about this, you do not understand why it is important. I discussed in a previous column that while we have been looking elsewhere in the past few months, the US and China have been involved in a high tech geopolitical rivalry around the semiconductor space. The US has been placing sanctions on Chinese companies. The most high profile of which resulted in cutting off Huawei’s access to the world’s leading foundry, making it harder for the Chinese giant to procure chips.
Science and State Power in China
In May 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping placed an ambitious proposition before the leaders of the country’s scientific community. He called on them to “aim for the frontiers of science and technology” and emerge as the “vanguards in innovation in the new era.” The overarching objective, he said, was for China to become a “major world centre for science and innovation.” This, for Xi, is one of the “responsibilities bestowed by history” upon China’s scientific community. For him, the development of science and technology is a strategic imperative. It’s what will drive future growth and ensure China’s security, overall competitiveness and global standing.At the heart of Xi’s emphasis on and investment in science and technology, therefore, is the goal of enhancing state power. This perspective is not exclusive to the current Chinese leadership. It is the product of historical debate over the role of science and technology in Chinese society. The origins of this conversation can be dated back to the last few decades of the Qing Dynasty, which ended in 1912. Since then, while strengthening state power has remained the core objective of the pursuit of scientific advancement, each generation of leaders has adopted a different pathway. [Read More...]