Why China is the Kautilya of international politics

This article was first published in ThePrintThe gameplay on the chessboard of global politics continues to cast its shadow on India’s relationships with the United States, China, nations of the sub-continent, and within its own federal units. For the skeptics of Kautilya’s continued relevance, the contemporary geopolitical chessboard underlines the chief tenets of Kautilyan rajamandala, or ‘circle of states’ – a concentric, geopolitical conception of the inter-state realm typifying friend-foe relationships.

Ironically, if there is one country that eminently exemplifies the Kautilyan template in international conduct, it is China – who was till the Ladakh episode, the quintessential madhyama (middle king) of the inter-state realm. A middle king is defined as “one with territory immediately proximate to those of the Ari (enemy) and the conqueror (hypothetically Pakistan and India respectively), capable of helping them when they are united or disunited and of suppressing them when they are disunited.” True to this definition, China had skilfully calibrated its dynamics with Pakistan and India. It had entered into a negotiated agreement (samdhi) with India (roughly co-equal then) through the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement of 1993 and several other agreements of 1996, 2003 and 2012, at a time when a stable neighbourhood was vital for its economic growth.

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The number game: Making sense of GDP estimates

This article was first published in Financial ExpressThe second advance estimates of GDP for the current year, along with the third quarter estimates, released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (Mospi) do not come as a surprise. The estimates of 1% GVA and 0.4% growth in GDP mark the end of the recessionary phase.As expected, agriculture continues to perform well. In fact, all the sectors except (i) mining and quarrying, (ii) trade, hotels, transport and communication services and (iii) public administration, defence and other services have recorded positive growth in the third quarter; even in other sectors, the contraction is lower by varying magnitudes. And industry as a whole too has moved into the positive territory. Services, which face higher restrictions due to social distancing norms, continued to shrink, but by just 1%. Significant improvement is seen in the performance of construction, up from -7.2% in Q2 to 6.2% in Q3, and financial and real estate sector (up from -9.5% in Q2 to 6.6% in Q3). The contraction in trade, hotels and transport continues to be high at -7.7% in Q3, though this is a significant improvement from -15.3% in Q2.Public administration, defence and other services performed better than the -9.3% growth recorded in Q2, but continued to contract at -1.5% in Q3. It was hoped that increase in the Centre’s spending after October would take it to positive growth. However, the state governments, which contribute to over 70% of public consumption spending, seem to continue their austerity given the revenue constraints. Sectors like education and healthcare too have not recovered to the pre-Covid levels. The increased GST collections of more than Rs 1 lakh crore and the record collection of Rs 1.2 lakh crore in January also indicated recovery.However, increased collections seem to as much due to an increase in consumption as due to better enforcement. With the technology platform stabilising, the government could use the data to undertake invoice matching to detect taking false input tax credit through fake invoicing. With businesses having turnovers of more than Rs 100 crore required to issue e-invoicing from January 2021, both enforcement and compliance of the tax are likely to show further improvement in the coming months.It is, however, too early to celebrate the news of the economy entering the positive growth phase. It is true that there has been a steady recovery of almost all the sectors, as indicated by the leading indicators. In fact, the median market expectation for the third quarter was a growth of 0.6%. While it is futile to quibble over a few decimal points, it is necessary to note that one reason for the lower than the expected growth is the significant downward revision in the third quarter growth of FY20. The GDP growth in the third quarter of FY20 was revised from 4.1% to 3.3%. There were large revisions in the growth of GVA for several sectors.If the whole year contraction of 8% as against the earlier estimate of 7.7% holds true, then the fourth-quarter estimate of GDP will be negative 1.1%, though the GVA will continue to be positive at 2.5%. The downward revision of GDP in the first quarter from 23.9% to 24.4%, even though there was a marginal upward revision in the second quarter, reduces the overall growth rate for the year as well as for the fourth quarter.Besides, as the GDP at constant prices is now estimated at market prices rather than factor cost, indirect taxes and subsidies also pull down the GDP estimate for the year as well as for the fourth quarter. It must be noted that the revised estimate of subsidies for FY21 is at Rs 5.9 lakh crore as against the budget estimate of Rs 2.5 lakh crore. This seems to be mainly due to the clearing of the off-budget liabilities on food subsidies arising from FCI borrowing from the NSSF.While it is a favourite pastime of economists to quibble on the growth rates on a few decimal point differences from what they had expected, it is important to note for the current year, all these estimates are likely to undergo substantial revisions. The revision in the first quarter estimate from 23.9% to 24.4% is not surprising. Even in normal years, significant revisions are made, as was seen in the case of Q3 in FY20, and in this abnormal year, as more information on the urban informal sectors become available, there would be further revisions. In the meantime, we will continue to characterise growth in terms of alphabets we choose—“V”, “K”, or “W”.The sector-wise estimate for the fourth quarter, deciphered from the estimates for the three quarters and the second advance estimate for the whole year, does not make much sense. Agriculture and allied sectors are estimated to grow just at about 1.9% in Q4, it has already registered an average growth of 3.4% in the three quarters, and the whole year growth of the sector is pegged at 3%! The mining sector is estimated to contract by 9.2% during the year and having progressively reduced the contraction from 18% in Q1 to 5.3% in Q3, it is estimated to contract by 16.3% in the fourth quarter!In contrast, the construction sector is estimated to show a negative growth of 10.3% during the year, and that would require it to register a positive growth of 12.5% in Q4. Even a sector like trade, hotels, transport and communication is estimated to register positive growth in Q4 at 1.8%. For the optimists, the good news is that in Q4, both agriculture, industry and services will see positive growth. It is difficult to make much sense of these estimates, but let us keep our fingers crossed.Perhaps we should wait for the provisional estimates of GDP, which are supposed to be released in May, to get a better sense of the recovery. 

We should not forget the equity dimension of PSU privatization

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that “the government has no business to remain in business" is the clearest articulation of the reason why India must privatize the hundreds of public-sector enterprises that its Union and state governments run. In doing so, he departs from earlier prime ministers, who preferred incremental dilution of government shareholding, or a cautious one-by-one approach in the sale of public enterprises. The invention of the term ‘disinvestment’, which for two decades has been used to describe the privatization of public sector enterprises in India, showed both a lack of clarity of purpose on the part of previous governments and also their need to apologetically cloak the policy against criticism from ideologues across the political spectrum. It is to Modi’s credit that he has decided to use his political capital to declare that privatization of public sector enterprises is in the national interest and thus ought to be carried out whole-heartedly. This is a welcome break from the past.

To realize the ambition of raising over ₹2.5 trillion from the monetization and sale of state-owned businesses and assets, the Modi government will have to get two crucial things right.The first is well known: Process. After Niti Aayog recommends what to do with each of the 300-odd public enterprises, it will be examined by a committee of secretaries, then by a committee of ministers, before the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) puts it to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for ‘in-principle’ approval. Instead of this long route, either Niti Aayog or DIPAM should directly take it to the CCEA.The Union government currently does not have an administrative setup and sufficient talent with the professional skills needed to carry out what is at its core a corporate mergers and acquisitions role. What is more, good civil servants will hesitate from taking up the job for fear of a career- or retirement-ruining scandal. Outsourcing the job to private investment banks could bring greater efficiency to the process if done right, but opens up a host of conflict-of-interest issues that would be difficult to manage in the Indian context. The ideal setup is a special purpose department that has political sponsorship, administrative clout, professional talent, incentives for transparency, rewards for performance, and insulation from scandal. So it will have to be a new hybrid species of the genus Governmenta, incorporating many genes, functions and adaptations from the genus Privata. For if we continue with the current administrative machinery and processes, the gap between the country’s disinvestment targets and actual proceeds will yawn even more widely.The second issue is perhaps more important but gets a lot less attention: Equity. Not equity as in shares, but equity as in fairness. The Prime Minister mentioned stakeholder mapping in the context of transparency and competition in implementation. For privatization to be successful, widely accepted and in the public interest, stakeholder mapping should be vastly expanded to cover all sections of society that will be affected by the reforms.The government has done well to announce that the proceeds from the sale of public-sector enterprises will be routed “to public welfare schemes in areas like water and sanitation, education and healthcare." Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted that the money is "not being raised to fill acertain hole in the Consolidated Fund of India. The money being raised from disinvestment will go towards infrastructure." The promise that the sale of public assets will be used for long-term investments in human and physical infrastructure addresses the baseline equity issue. It will be a good idea to put legislative safeguards on this promise, to prevent governments from violating the compact in the future. Let’s recall that the National Investment Fund (NIF), set up in 2005 with similar intent, saw a withdrawal in 2009 “in view of the difficult economic situation caused by the global slowdown of 2008-09 and a severe drought in 2009-10".Next, there are misgivings that privatization will lead to job losses and that candidates entitled to job reservations will be worse off. The former can partly be addressed as part of the privatization agreement. The latter requires political engagement and policy solutions. One way is for the government to upgrade its investment in promoting Dalit entrepreneurship in particular. Equity considerations thus demand that public policy creates better upfront pathways for people to attain a higher socio-economic status than they stand to lose once public sector enterprises are privatized.Many public sector businesses were created by governments at a time when India was poorer, incomes were smaller, the tax base narrower and tax rates higher. They were financed using large parts of our parents’ and grandparents’ incomes. Is it not fair that the original investors should benefit from the sale of assets that the government created with their money? There is an argument for putting part of the proceeds in the retirement accounts and pensions of our oldest taxpayers, as a way to compensate them for the sacrifices they made to finance the socialist state. Their voice is not politically strong, their demands not strident, but recognizing their contribution is the right thing to do.This piece was originally published in The Mint

Making State Finance Commissions work

State Finance Commissions (SFC), constitutional bodies that recommend allocating resources between state and local governments, have had a chequered history in India. In yet another attempt to revive these institutions, the Fifteenth Union Finance Commission (15th UFC) recommended that the submission of SFC reports be a precondition for local governments to receive additional grants. The intention here is to nudge state governments to take SFCs seriously. In this article, we look at how this attempt might play out.Read the full article in Deccan Herald

Killing the Slow Brain

This article was originally published in OPEN magazine.The proliferation of social media presents a clear danger to liberal democracy, free markets, political order and, indeed, to human civilisation. The threat is greater and more urgent than that presented by climate change, Artificial Intelligence, nuclear war, pandemics and terrorism. While we recognise many of the latter as constituting global threats and are aware of how to address them (even if we find it difficult to do so in practice), public opinion around the world is yet to fully recognise that not only is social media a threat to society, but also that the threat is existential in nature.To be sure, the rose-tinted view of the internet and social media that we entertained in the mid-2000s has given way to greater skepticism as the downsides of global interpersonal connectivity have come to fore. Techno-pessimism has grown as societies deal with diverse problems ranging from cyberbullying to surveillance capitalism, from internet-enabled terrorism to foreign interference in electoral politics. If the threat from social media and transnational technology platforms over which they run were limited to problems such as these, it would have been relatively easier for the world’s governments and societies to manage. The problem, unfortunately, is of a vastly different nature.For now, let us set aside the economic challenges, such as taxing digital transactions in a multi-crossborder setting and controversial business models employed by global tech platforms. Let us focus on the sociopolitical ones as they are more important.We confront these challenges at three levels. First, while popular attention is mostly focused on controversies around free speech and privacy, these are actually superficial in nature. More serious is the underlying second level, involving political power that technology platforms have come to wield through their ability to shape international and national narratives, to micro-target and influence human behaviour. But most serious of all is the third, deepest level concerning the effect of social media on how we process information, how we think and how we make judgements.Today, we are intensely caught up at the first level, amid passionate debates concerning online free speech. The debate here is about who should govern what is expressed on the platform; private corporations, national governments or civil societies. In the US, this debate centres around whether social media companies are publications that exercise editorial choice or platforms that do not. The companies have long enjoyed the protections of the latter and escaped legal responsibility for the content that is expressed on their networks. After all, unlike newspapers or television companies, they do not have editors deciding what gets published or broadcast. Yet, their claims to being mere platforms are questionable because even if they do not have human editors making decisions, they do employ computer algorithms that determine what users see. What you see on a Google search, Facebook feed or Twitter stream is neither random nor reverse-chronological. It is algorithmic. So if lawmakers in the US want to review the statute that treats them as platforms, they have a case. Meanwhile, Europe has long had rules prohibiting hate speech, which it seeks to impose more strongly on big tech companies that conveniently happen to be mostly American. In India, governments have long taken an elastic view of the constitutional restrictions on free speech, succumbing either to competitive intolerance or political partisanship. Indeed, one of the grounds for demanding that content be taken down under the Information Technology Act, 2000 is the bewildering offence of ‘blasphemy’ which is absurd in a secular state and ought to be unconstitutional. Yet, it remains on the books. In other words, whether it is in the US, Europe or India, governments are attempting to seize greater control over gatekeeping content from technology platforms. This is a battle that governments will eventually win. They will also win the battle over privacy norms.The world’s more deliberative political systems are paying greater attention to the second level issue: how to deal with the political power that tech platforms have come to acquire. Even if their ability to make or break political careers is overestimated, their extraordinary ability to shape the public narrative is no longer in doubt. The world’s nation-states, shaped as they were by the Industrial Age, lack effective mechanisms to deal with this new power centre. The old formula of separating legislative, judiciary, executive, monetary and religious authorities, and ensuring that the media is free and there is competition in the economy, does not work satisfactorily in the Information Age. Lacking suitable instruments, the world’s lawmakers are using what they have—anti-trust laws—to literally cut big technology firms down to size. A far more effective way would be to curb the narrative dominance of tech companies by compelling them to open up their platforms to competing algorithm providers. Even so, the broader task of accommodating information power centres and rebalancing power among social institutions is a task that all countries face.IT IS AT the third and deepest level that we confront the most serious threat from social media, because it hijacks our ability to think. Addictive and relentless, social media interferes with our ability to use the reflective, rational part of the mind—what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls the ‘slow brain’—and instead makes us leap from one instinctive reaction to the other. Instead of making our own judgements, we rely on social proof, ‘what others say’, even if it contradicts our own lived experience. We do not reflect. Indeed, we cannot reflect because the feed has refreshed and we must respond quickly. There is no time to reason. Yet, liberal democracy and free markets are based on the human capacity for reason. Take that away and the edifice of society stands on much weaker legs. It is not a coincidence that liberal democracies around the world have seen a weakening of liberal norms, the rise of demagogues and ceaseless moral panics over the past decade. The Right is currently not too concerned about this—and often celebrates it—as it is reaping the political benefits of the phenomenon. This is myopic. Nationalists, conservatives and traditionalists must be concerned too, for the whirlwind of unreason will not spare any political or social order. Liberal democratic order is merely the first victim. Social media undermines order itself and will not distinguish one form from the other. It is rapidly eating away at the cognitive machinery of humankind, at our capacity to think and use our better judgement. This is a path that leads to anarchy, authoritarianism or both. So even authoritarians cannot rest easy.We have no idea how to stop this slide. The world is getting more connected, data is getting cheaper, video is replacing text and literacy is no longer a hurdle. But we do not know how to get off the smartphone, nor, indeed, how to get our kids off it.The world’s governments will find that it is easier to sort out who gets to control free speech on the internet, and even to accommodate tech platforms into democratic power structures, than it is to unlock the stranglehold social media has over the human mind. As individuals, we can start acting now.

The problem with China’s new coastguard law

China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed a law on January 22, 2021, authorising its coastguards to open-fire on foreign vessels in the contested waters around its periphery. The law empowers its coastguards to use all necessary means to stop or prevent threats from foreign vessels and details the circumstances for using different weapons - hand-held, shipborne and airborne.

Read the full article in Deccan Herald

Private sector can be govt’s useful ally in Covid vaccination, not an adversary

Despite being the second-fastest country to vaccinate over 10 million people and currently having the third-highest number of people vaccinated against Covid-19, it is fair to say that India’s vaccination programme has gotten off to a slow start. At around 300,000 per day, the current vaccination rate is only a quarter of the 1.3 million per day that was estimated by the government in January. As Naushad Forbes, co-chairman of Forbes Marshall, pointed out in Business Standard a few days ago, at this rate it could take up to 17 years to administer two doses to 800 million adults.

In other words, the current pace of India’s vaccination programme is, paradoxically, both impressive and inadequate. To be effective, it must be ramped up 10-20 times, so that 80 per cent of the population can be protected by the end of the year. Speed is important for many reasons: the faster the population is immunised, the quicker the economic recovery, the smaller the risk of new strains, and lower the human cost.Read the full article on ThePrint

STIP2020: A wish-list, not a policy

This article first appeared in IndiaTogetherThe COVID-19 experience has brought attention to the importance of science, technology and innovation. Researchers facilitated the rapid understanding of a new virus. Technology underpinned efforts for curbing the spread of the disease. Entrepreneurship led to quick production of diagnostics, treatment and vaccines. But within this global picture, there are vast differences between countries. Only some nations have been able to marshal the science and the resources to respond to the pandemic.What about India? The country has significant manufacturing capacity, but the lack of homegrown vaccines as well as a generally weak public health system are major obstacles, and reaching vaccines and treatment to our large population will not be swift. We simply haven't invested enough in the past - in science as well as in healthcare - to be able to do what is needed today. [Read more]

LAC Row: Strategic options, post-Ladakh

The disengagement process in Ladakh is hopefully the concluding scene of another military episode in India-China relations. Political and strategic relationships, especially those involving neighbours with whom we have disputes, are in reality an unending mind game, with the parties concerned competing for advantages aimed to protect, preserve and promote their vital interests. In this episode, China threatened India’s territorial integrity, India reacted firmly, and if the disengagement goes according to plan, India would seem to have quite successfully defended its interests for the time being.A deepened military mind game can be expected to endure in the form of military preparations. The scene now shifts to where it finally matters the most – in the minds of the opposing political leaderships, which will be reflected in the future politico-diplomatic manoeuvres.China’s military aggressiveness in the Himalayas must be viewed as part of the big picture of the larger global geopolitical contestation. A rising China that is economically buoyant, politically authoritarian, assertive and aggressive, is being increasingly opposed by the US, which is slipping from its status as the lone Superpower.Read the full article in ThePrint

Unless China changes thinking, any border agreement is a perishable good

It should not come as a surprise that the Narendra Modi government and some in the media and strategic community have projected the military agreement to disengage on both banks of the Pangong Tso in Ladakh as a triumph. The footage of Chinese forces dismantling their forward stations and retreating behind the agreed positions supports this contention.

It should also not come as a surprise that the Opposition has criticised the agreement as a defeat, with Congress’ Rahul Gandhi accusing the prime minister of “ceding” territory to the Chinese. The fact that Indian troops can no longer patrol the areas between Fingers 4 and 8 — that the Chinese previously recognised as outside their claim, and that the Indian Army used to regularly patrol before the 2020 standoff — lends credence to this criticism.

Read the full article on ThePrint 

In its centenary year, the CCP’s revisionist history

In July, the Communist Party of China (CCP) will celebrate its centenary. This is the most important event in the CCP’s political calendar. It presents an opportunity for the leadership to highlight developmental achievements, which are seen as critical to its legitimacy. Economic development, however, is one of many factors that feed the algorithm of legitimacy. Viewing the question of legitimacy simply from a transactional prism of the party ensuring developmental outcomes in exchange for obedience is reductive, resulting in a misunderstanding of what sustains CCP rule in China. History, or more precisely, building and guiding a supportive historical narrative is crucial too.Read the full article in Hindustan Times here.

House defence panel must ask 4 key questions — from lower expenditure to pension bill

When the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence meets this week to discuss the Budget allocations made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, we hope to get some clarity on the provisions made towards India’s national security. That’s because on defence, the Union Budget for FY2021-22 hides more than it reveals. Not only was ‘defence’ conspicuous by its absence in the finance minister’s Budget speech for the second consecutive year, the component-wise budgetary allocation also raises more questions than answers.

As the Committee examines the Demand for Grants of the defence ministry, we believe there are at least four important questions that the panel should ask.Read the full article on ThePrint

Responding to Southeast Asian concerns will raise our influence

An annual survey of Southeast Asia’s policy elite throws up three striking findings. First, despite being both the most influential power in Southeast Asia and providing the most help to ASEAN countries during the covid pandemic, China is increasingly distrusted in the region. Second, despite its insignificant political, strategic and economic influence in the region and posing little threat to any country, most respondents do not have confidence that India will “do the right thing" to contribute to peace, security, prosperity and governance. Third, a mere change of guard in Washington has turned around the region’s view of the United States, which is now looked towards with greater confidence and positivity.Read the full article on The Mint

India shouldn’t worry, Myanmar needs us more to prevent China domination

International reactions to military coups fall into two broad categories — “we demand the immediate restoration of democracy” or “the generals might be bastards, but they are our bastards”. The two responses appear mutually exclusive, but to astute practitioners of statecraft, they are not. One way to accomplish this is to say one thing and do the other. A more sophisticated way is to say and do both things simultaneously. If we were to employ such methods in our personal and domestic lives, it would be rightly considered duplicitous, hypocritical, and immoral. In the amoral world of international relations, however, the same value judgements don’t readily apply. What matters is how well you secure your national interest.Read the full article on ThePrint

The race to map the ocean deep

India is falling behind efforts to map the undersea environment of the Indo-Pacific regionMajor powers are investing time and money deploying UUVs in these waters because of the valuable oceanographic and hydrographic data they provide. Oceanography is the study of the physical and biological aspects of the oceans. Hydrography is the process by which the ocean bed is surveyed and navigation aids and charts are produced, providing ships the maritime equivalent of roadmaps and road signs.Oceanography and hydrography have clear civilian applications: scientific research into climate and marine ecology, surveying the ocean floors to ensure safer navigation of merchant vessels, and collecting information for oil and gas or other seabed mining activities.However, there are also equally clear naval applications: Hydrographic data ease the movement of naval surface ships. More important, they provide crucial information for submarines and for those tasked with hunting them. Over the coming years, the study of the oceans and the seabed is likely to become a source of power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region.Read the full article on Asia Times

COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy: India’s opportunity to regain leadership in the neighbourhood

COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy: India’s opportunity to regain leadership in the neighbourhoodBy Pranathi Rao

In early 2020, India responded to COVID-19 with a strict lockdown, mask mandates, and a broad shutdown of schools and recreational centers. The disease burden- as the country with the second highest number of total COVID-19 cases- meant that India spent much of the year battling internal issues, but current lack of global leadership from the US and the EU means that India can no longer afford to focus inwards. Rather, the government must aim to export more vaccines and provide greater aid to struggling nations around the world.Science diplomacy is defined, nebulously, as a series of interactions that occur in the intersection of the two fields of science and diplomacy. A subset of science diplomacy is called vaccine diplomacy, which involves the convergence of vaccine development, import and export for furthering a country’s diplomatic goals. India has no specific framework for this particular kind of diplomacy, but are not hesitating to use vaccine diplomacy to drum up international support and goodwill.Read the full article on Firstpost.

Does the budget meet India’s Defence requirements?

Until 2019, defence spending made headlines around just two events in a year. The first was when the Union budget was tabled in Parliament, and the second was when the Swedish thinktank, SIPRI, released its formidable comparative military expenditure report. That scenario changed in FY 2020-21. China’s incursions in Ladakh highlighted the urgent and long-term need to prioritise defence. It brought home the point that the central focus of military planning should be China, not Pakistan. This need for prioritisation came even as the pandemic caused a drop in both economic activity and government revenue. Given this backdrop, the government had a challenging task on its hands. There are four key takeaways from the Union Budget 2021-22 for defence.Read the full article on Hindustan Times

An analysis of Social Security Measures : Union Budget 2021-22

This is a draft version of the article published in Prajavani, which is accessible here.

The COVID19 pandemic and its economic impact clearly showed that India's social protection measures were not enough. An analysis of the social security measures in the Union Budget 2021-22 can help us understand the Governments' priorities. The most important questions to be asked - Has the Union government prioritised social protection in the Budget? If yes, what is the realistic outcome it wants to achieve?

Read the full draft here.

Budget’s disinvestment targets are heroic. Modi govt must show unprecedented transparency

More than macroeconomic numbers like fiscal deficits, outlays and revenue targets, we can get a good sense of the Budget by looking at the tax rates. If there are new or higher taxes, or more complicated tax rules, it is usually a bad Budget. If there are lower taxes and compliance simplified, it’s a great Budget. And if, like the Budget Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented Monday, where the taxes remain unchanged amid an attempt to simplify their administration, then it’s a decent Budget. Considering that the Narendra Modi government does not intend to raise direct taxes amid the additional spending in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, by the tax-rate yardstick, we can grant that it is a fairly good Budget.Read the full article on ThePrint

What we must regulate when we regulate social media platforms

The global debate over how to govern Big Tech has intensified after Twitter, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon de-platformed former US President Donald Trump and some of his supporters in the wake of the mob raid on the US Capitol on 6 January. Clearly, transnational technology platforms not only influence politics and markets through actions of users they don’t control, but directly wield political power themselves. Human society has yet to completely adjust to these new power centres of the Information Age, and all states—from autocracies to liberal democracies—are in their own ways contending with the challenges of how to limit, constrain, regulate and harness them.Read the full article in The Mint