Five Trends in India-China Ties a Year after the Galwan Valley clash

The June 2020 clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan Valley has frequently been termed as a watershed moment in the history of bilateral relations. The incident marked the first loss of life in conflict along the boundary between the two countries in over four decades. A year later, while some equations have shifted, there has not been a sudden break — rather, ties appear to be drifting towards greater contestation with a certain ambivalence evident on both sides. This is underscored by five key trends.Read the full article in the Quint here.

What the COVID-19 Second Wave tells us about Twitter

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

Govt owes Indians an Explanation. Or its Gag Order & Pension Rule can be seen as Blackmail

Gag orders are increasingly being issued globally in this information age and becoming fashionable even in democracies. India is also in this race. Former US President Donald Trump’s gag orders were directed at serving government officials and deemed illegal. India seems to be a step ahead of the US, as its latest gag orders have a particular category of retired officials as their target. The Union government’s new order bars retired civil servants who worked in India’s security and intelligence bodies from publishing “details involving the affairs of the organisation without clearance from the head of the organisation”. Violation of procedure will lead to stoppage of pension.

The gag order was issued on 31 May through a notification by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) that is directly under the PMO. The notification inserts an amendment to the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972, and is applicable only to the central services cadre, including the Indian Foreign Service. It is not applicable to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFS) because they belong to the All India Services. It also does not include the armed forces.Read the full article in ThePrint

Don’t rush into Sainik School public-private partnership. It can dilute and corrupt

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her 2021-22 Budget speech, announced the Narendra Modi government’s intention of setting up an additional 100 Sainik Schools in partnership with NGOs, private schools and states. The move was received positively. There is, however, a need for caution and further introspection.

The initiative renews India’s involvement with schools established with the intent to provide future military leaders. The first wave began in 1922 with the setting up of the Royal Indian Military College (RIMC), Dehradun, and was followed up by the five Royal Indian Military Schools (RMS). It was part of an effort to Indianise the officer cadre of the British Indian Army. The British believed that public school education would make them suitable for the rigours and self-discipline of Army life. These schools are now controlled, financed and administered by the Army.

Read the full article on ThePrint 

The banal geopolitical fallout of the laboratory leak hypothesis

On 11 September 2001, the US suffered four coordinated terrorist attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives, injured over 25,000 people and caused at least $10 billion in property damage. Within hours, the US National Security Agency had intercepted phone calls that led them to suspect Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda of having planned and carried out the attacks. On that same evening, the CIA director confirmed this assessment to the US president. In two weeks, the FBI identified the specific attackers, and by the end of the month had published photographs and nationalities of all 19 terrorists who carried out the attacks. Of them were 15 Saudis, two Emiratis, a Lebanese and an Egyptian. Bin Laden himself was a Saudi national and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, a key conspirator, was Pakistani. The US authorities knew Bin Laden and his outfit quite well, for they had together fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, along with the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies. So it is fair to say that one would have to have one’s head firmly buried in the sand to miss the glaring Saudi and Pakistani links to—and possible complicity in—the attacks.Read the full article in The Mint

Preparing for the waves

Just over a hundred years ago, the Spanish Flu pandemic devastated many parts of the world. An estimated 100 million people died; India accounted for 15-18 million of them. It was the second wave that was deadly. So far, the official death toll in India due to Covid-19 is over 330,000, and one can reasonably assume that the figure is undercounted. But it is, for sure, still a long way from the Spanish Flu figures.

With Covid-19, we don’t know for certain how many waves and types there will be. But looking at the devastation already wrought, we must prepare for more waves even as we deal with this one. We should have been doing far better than we have with the second wave. The State must identify and initiate the requisite measures to meet the disaster as a national emergency. Most importantly, this national disaster demands that crisis managers be not overly rule-bound and needlessly procedural.

Read the full article in Deccan Herald

US shifting its Tibet stance. When will India end its silence?

The Dalai Lama’s succession may be stirring the pot of Buddhism at the global geopolitical table. China’s sensitivity to Tibetan issues has long been viewed by some nations as having a high potential for leverage in the conduct of relations with it. But Donald Trump shook up the Tibetan pot in December 2020 when he signed into law the Tibetan Policy and Support Act 2020 or TPSA and changed the contours of the earlier US policy, which under the Barack Obama administration had sacrificed the region’s interests in order to foster better US-China relations.

The TPSA declares that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders are religious matters and all decisions pertaining to reincarnations rest solely with the Tibetan Buddhist faith community based on the instructions of the 14^th Dalai Lama and without interference by the government of the People’s Republic of China. The law also acknowledges the Central Tibetan Administration (the Government in Exile in Dharamshala) that is committed to peacefully negotiating its status as an autonomous entity within China. Last month, the Biden administration opted to continue the Trump policy.Read the full article in ThePrint

India’s gamble on China failed in Ladakh. But there’s a new risk worth taking

The deadlock on military de-escalation in Ladakh continues. It might turn out to be another example of China’s perfidy. India has had sufficient historical experience with China’s use of agreements for buying time and deceiving us. The 2018 agreement for defusing the crisis in Doklam and its subsequent military occupation of the rest of the Doklam plateau is fresh in memory. It should have warned us about the dangers of China getting India to withdraw from a tactically advantageous position at the Kailash Range in Ladakh and then using delay tactics to keep India under pressure.

China’s strategic behaviour can only be interpreted if one views the military moves in Ladakh in the broader perspective of China-US geopolitical rivalry. China’s ambitions that generate its geopolitical compulsions are no longer being concealed. Xi Jinping is claiming that the US and China are now virtually equal powers and it is only a matter of time before China surpasses America economically and, if some Chinese claims are to be believed, even technologically. At the same time, China believes India can be an impediment to its ambitions. But only if India’s partnership with the US exploits a geographic reality steeped in the maritime domain and threatens China’s dreams of predominance at the global and regional geopolitical table.Read the full article in ThePrint

Focus on getting on most of India vaccinated as quickly as possible

Let’s say a Mr Melon Rusk, one of the world’s richest billionaires, approaches the Indian government and makes an offer to deliver 2 billion doses of a covid vaccine within 2 months for ₹2 trillion. At ₹1,000 per dose, Mr Rusk’s price is at least three times that of domestic vaccines, and would make an incredibly rich man with a flashy lifestyle even richer. Should the government take the offer?

The right answer is yes, it should. Mr Rusk’s wealth, opportunism and lifestyle choices are irrelevant details and ought not to cloud our mind. Last year, the Indian economy shrank 8% due to disruptions caused by the pandemic. By this estimate, the ₹195 trillion Indian economy might be currently losing ₹300 billion every week. The financial cost of vaccinating everyone will be ‘recovered’ by the Indian economy in less than two months. The government’s own ‘business case’ for vaccination is an open and shut affair. If the economy shrinks by 8% this year, the Union and states together would suffer a revenue loss of ₹2.3 trillion (as the overall tax-to-GDP ratio is around 15%). The government should thus pay Mr Rusk ₹2 trillion to avoid suffering a bigger revenue loss.These rough estimates highlight three important points. First, that it makes abundant sense for the government to finance the cost of universal vaccination. Second, at this time, how much the vaccine costs is less important than how much and how fast it is available. Third, it does not matter which government—Union or state—is paying, as long as the citizen gets the vaccine free.Unfortunately, a lot of the public and political discourse in India is still caught up with pricing, the level of profits that manufacturers are making, and which government should bear the fiscal burden. The behaviour and utterances of some vaccine manufacturers have not helped either. Most importantly, the Union government has not bothered to explain the rationale of its vaccination policy, thereby both isolating itself and preventing public debate from being more constructive.A democracy is only as good as its discourse. If it is misdirected, the political priorities go askew and public outcomes suffer. This is not a time to obsess about prices, image or narrative. The most important national priority is to vaccinate everyone as fast as possible. Like China, India can achieve 10 to 20 million jabs per day if we recognize our strengths and play to them. So how do we get that many doses, and how do we administer them fast?In the past few weeks, the government has taken the crucial step of opening the Indian market to all vaccines approved globally. The types of vaccines available has gone up from two to eight, and the government expects over 2 billion doses to be available by December. Given that there can be many a slip between the cup and the lip, the government must focus on making more vaccines available, and available faster.We need more than 300 million doses a month. Will compulsory licensing and patent waivers help? The historical discourse on this topic has been focused on lowering the cost of essential drugs. In our case and at this time, the issue is not cost, but quantity. It is unclear that compulsory licensing will by itself lead to additional manufacturing capacity coming online fast enough. But there is no harm in trying.There is a ready case for the government to let Covaxin be manufactured by more companies, with free licensing for domestic markets until the pandemic has ended. Bharat Biotech should be compensated if necessary. This will enable state governments and private manufacturers to explore how they can create or use existing plants to produce vaccines. The Indian government will be justified in doing the same for Oxford/AstraZeneca and other vaccines, but it is prudent to start with the partly-publicly funded indigenous vaccine.Some of the heartburn over the liberalized vaccination strategy is unwarranted. Equity considerations can and should be addressed by the government making vaccines available to everyone free of cost. As long as this baseline is ensured, there is no equity argument against private and decentralized vaccination. Also, the government’s vaccination programme can respond to epidemiological triggers by redirecting its supplies to where they are needed most.Finally, it is misplaced thinking that government channels alone can take us to 10 million jabs per day. Remember, large-scale covid testing took off only after private labs were allowed to carry them out. The Indian healthcare model is a mixture of the public and private, the Union, state, municipal, panchayat, NGO and, yes, unfortunately sometimes the shady and underhand. But now is not a time to pass judgement on it or attempt its reform—now is a time to put it to work. The government’s role is to enable the system, not fight it.Mr Melon Rusk, by the way, is a fictitious character. But if we agree that it is sensible to accept his offer, we need not begrudge paying our domestic manufacturers ₹300-400 per dose. For a billion people, the cost is a mere 0.4% of GDP and incurring it could allow the government to recover 2.5 times that amount in otherwise lost taxes this year.This article was originally published in ThePrint

Blaming the government’s pandemic response? Do it for the right reasons

The Union government has received a lot of flak over its management of the pandemic response, and deservedly so. But I want to look at three incorrect — or at least problematic — frames being used to blame the government’s pandemic response, inadequate and confused as it already is. The intention is to focus on questions that matter.Incorrect Frame #1: Blame Vaccine DiplomacyAs cases have skyrocketed and vaccine supplies have plummeted, India’s vaccine diplomacy has come under the scanner. Today’s dominant narrative is that by prioritising vaccine exports over domestic inoculation, India did a disservice to its people. I disagree. It’s not altruism but national self-interest that guides international humanitarian assistance efforts by all states. By giving away vaccines to smaller states in the subcontinent, India signalled the positive role it can play in the world order. Another way of thinking about vaccine diplomacy is to think of its opportunity cost. At the current vaccination rate, India would’ve had just five additional days of supplies had it not given any of the nearly 10.7 million doses as gifts to other countries. A majority of the deliveries (almost 35 million) have been under commercial terms between manufacturers and other countries. Moreover, had India blocked commercial exports earlier, India would’ve received much less enthusiastic support from other countries in this moment of crisis.Holding the Union government accountable for its mistakes is essential. Equally important is identifying what the exact error was. The original sin was not placing enough vaccine orders because the government was complacent about having conquered the virus. It calculated that the pandemic would peter out even with a snail-paced domestic vaccination campaign.By internalising that India was wrong in extending its help to other countries in its own time of predicament, we would be learning the wrong lesson. Such heuristics tend to stick around for long in the Indian strategic affairs community. Try arguing for developing overseas operations military capability of any kind, and the idea will be shot down, citing the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPFK) failure in Sri Lanka nearly three decades ago. Vaccine diplomacy mustn’t be perceived as another IPKF moment.Read the full article in Times of IndiaImage credits: Illustration by Freepik Storyset

India and Vietnam should improve their defence ties

India and Vietnam held their second maritime security dialogue recently. A press release by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stated that both countries discussed developments in the domain of “maritime security, regional cooperation activities and opportunities for cooperation between the two countries.” Multiple such discussions have taken place between India and Vietnam in recent years. But, the underlying question is - to what extent have these promises been turned into reality? Both India and Vietnam have highlighted the need to work towards achieving a peaceful, stable, secure, free, open, inclusive and rules-based Indo-Pacific region. It is crucial to look into what has been achieved to date and how India can elevate this relationship to promise a better security future for both nations.

A common threat

India and Vietnam both have long-standing territorial disputes with China. And Beijing’s increasing aggressive posture with regard to these is a concern for both countries. For instance, the ongoing standoff in Eastern Ladakh is an example of the tense relationship between Beijing and New Delhi. With complete disengagement and de-escalation unlikely in the near terms, India’s focus should be equally directed towards protecting its maritime domain and, more importantly, upholding its vision of a rule-based, free, open and secure region.

Similarly, conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS) have been a point of contention between Vietnam and China for a long time. It is only accelerating as Beijing is becoming more aggressive in its approaches and claims of sovereignty. The recent controversy surrounding Chinese vessels present in the Whitsun Reef is an example of this. Chinese vessels are increasing activity in other islands too. A spokesperson from Hanoi recently said, “The activities of Chinese vessels within the territorial sea around of Sinh Ton Dong in Vietnams Truong Sa Islands violate Vietnams sovereignty and the provisions of UNCLOS”. Vietnam was sharply critical of Chinese actions in this regard. For India, the SCS is also an important trading route. About $200 billion worth of trade passes through the region with many citizens working and investing in ASEAN countries, like China and Japan. Any aggression by Beijing in the region directly impacts India’s economic interests. This necessitates India to work with partners in the region like Vietnam.

Naval and security cooperation has seen positive success

India and Vietnam have made significant progress on agreements related to elevating defence and naval cooperation. Yet, more needs to be done to materialise these goals. Since upgrading their partnership to a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ (CSP) in 2016,  a wide range of institutionalised dialogues have taken place, with many agreements being signed. Some include; the 7th Strategic Dialogue held in April 2018 and the first India-Vietnam Maritime Security Dialogue held in March 2019.  A recent summit in December 2020 was noteworthy, as both Prime Ministers signed a Plan of Action for 2021-2023. In their joint statement, the two leaders expressed satisfaction over the successful implementation of the High-Speed Guard Boat (HSGB) Manufacturing Project for Vietnam Border Guard Command under the US$ 100 million Defence Line of Credit extended by the Government of India to Vietnam.

Naval cooperation in the form of joint exercises, training and friendly port visits has seen considerable progress. In December 2020, the navies of India and Vietnam commenced a series of exercises in the South China Sea to develop maritime interoperability. Vietnamese ships have participated in multilateral naval exercises hosted by India, such as MILAN and the Indian Navy hosted an international fleet review held in Visakhapatnam in 2016. Furthermore, coastguards and naval officers from both sides have been in regular dialogue over the years and continue to do so.

Limitations in the supply of defence equipment

In terms of defence procurements, the two countries are faced with some level of ambiguity. In 2014, India offered the BrahMos, an anti-ship cruise missile to Vietnam. But no real progress has been seen since then, apart from intermittent talks. Lack of funding has been stated as a reason for the deal not being materialised. Another reason being speculated is a fear of Beijing. In the wake of China strengthening ties with India’s adversaries, like Pakistan, the latter seems to be hesitant to accelerate equipment supply to immediate neighbourhood countries. However, the latest hurdle comes with the US’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions or CAATSA, which can halt sales through arbitrary embargoes. As the BrahMos cruise missiles are locally manufactured in collaboration with Russia, it depends on Moscow’s critical components, liable to sanctions under CAATSA. Such sanctions could halt the Indian governments move of a fast-track export of such missiles to the recipient countries, namely Vietnam. India needs to effectively deal with such obstacles if it wants to boost its material exports fivefold to $5 billion by 2025.

Since 2016, Vietnam and India have been in talks regarding the potential sale of the Varunastra Torpedo. Finally, in 2018, the anti-submarine torpedo was inducted into the Indian Navy. Still, the development process took more time than expected, according to the Navy chief admiral Sunil Lamba and DRDO chief S Christopher. "We need to work towards a reasonable time-frame from concept to realisation to address our capability gap in time,’’ the former said. Several other reasons listed for the delay included the availability of ships and submarines to test numerous aspects of technology. When Vietnam will receive the vessel is still unclear, though.

 The Indian government must carefully overlook such lapses and effectively carry out defence exports if it intends to strengthen its defence partnership with Vietnam to the fullest. With China ramping up its Belt and Road Initiative, it is time for India to maintain a coherent export policy with Asia to transform its ‘Act East Policy’.

This article first appeared in Asia Times.

A top Army doctor transferred in middle of pandemic says a lot about India’s civil-military ties

In India’s military history, sacking a field commander during the course of a battle has been rare. Even if done, it is usually the judgement call of the top military leadership and not of a politician. That norm has now been shaken in a different type of war – by the sudden removal of Major General Vasu Vardhan, the Commandant of Delhi’s Army Base Hospital, who was a critical field commander in the military’s battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The authority to take such a decision rests with the defence minister. The official justification that it is a routine transfer and merely a part of a larger human resource management exercise will not fool anyone and is an insult to basic intelligence. The medical pedigree of Maj. Gen. Vardhan is impeccable. He is the topmost pulmonologist in the Army, a branch of medicine at the forefront of the war against the pandemic. His professional competence was not in question and he had only three more months to go before retirement. Some attempts are being made on social media to tarnish the image of Maj. Gen. Vardhan by questioning his administrative abilities.

From my personal interaction with several recovered Covid patients, it is clear that the Base Hospital’s handling of this challenging situation has been commendable. The performance of the hard-pressed staff has been widely praised.There is definitely more than what meets the eye.

What about military ethics?

It is well known that the Commandant was faced with a severe shortage of beds, medical support facilities and staff. It is possible that the Commandant’s transfer was provoked by his resistance to accommodate non-entitled persons or provide critical medicines in short supply to persons not authorised but who perhaps were being sent by the Ministry of Defence with the Directorate General of Armed Forces Medical Service (DGAFMS) acting as a conduit. Such unreasonable demands could also have been made by the military. Whatever the actual detail, Maj. Gen. Vardhan stood his moral ground when asked to carry out actions that were unauthorised and violated ethical and professional standards.The Commandant could have crossed paths with the Army brass, the political leadership, or both. If it was only with the Army, the Ministry of Defence would have certainly questioned the removal, and the file would never have been processed and cleared with such speed. Postings of Major Generals and above require the defence minister’s signature. Even if the Army leadership had objected to the move, they must have been overruled. But the military’s top leadership can be exculpated, only if they have put their objections in writing and tried to hold the hand of a subordinate who has taken an ethical stand. If the military has not objected in writing or the Ministry of Defence has decided despite written objections, then the matter suggests a certain degree of politicisation of the military and exposes the merging of military ethics with that of the civil society.It can be reasonably assumed that after being Commandant of the Army Base Hospital for 18 months and with only three months to retire, it is a punishment posting. A tool that is well known and used to put people in their place, and which politicians routinely use to keep the civil services in check. Percolation of such practices into the armed forces would be severely harmful to its institutional culture, which is on a different plane altogether.If the above explanation is indeed true, the Ministry of Defence’s actions are ethically questionable and bring to the fore the pathologies that afflict India’s civil-military relations.

An ethical failure

As explained in my column last week, the danger wrought by politicisation of India’s military is not so much of a coup, but one in which the constitutional gap between the military and party in power is narrowed and misused. Parenthetically, the medical component of the armed forces under the DGAFMS is placed directly under the defence secretary in the Department of Defence and all attempts to place it under the Integrated Defence Staff have been successfully thwarted. It is an open secret that due to structural proximity, over a period of time, the higher military medical fraternity has established a reciprocal and cosy relationship with the civilian power centres in the Ministry of Defence. The civilians are believed to be provided mostly unauthorised access to medical care especially in the premier Research & Referral (R&R) Hospital in Delhi. Reciprocally, postings, promotions and approval for premature retirement are taken care of.

The structural relationship of the medical services exposes the pathologies of the proximity and control in civil-military interactions. The recently created Department of Military Affairs (DMA) and induction of uniformed personnel in integrated civil organisations like the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) could be similarly infected if lessons learnt from the medical services experience is ignored. For, eventually, the ethical fibre of the uniform should not fray when blended with civilian moral values, which are far less stringent.The Ministry of Defence has taken an action and is hiding behind a body of seeming falsehoods. Since the official reason is that it is a routine move, the file contents can be known through RTI. If the Army has not objected and the Ministry of Defence has also not questioned the move, the falsehood stands exposed. It also exposed if the Army has objected and the Ministry of Defence has overruled. Agreeably, once the defence minister has authorised the posting, the Armed Forces have no option but to implement it. Regrettably, it seems that the military leadership has opted to be part of the cover-up and this is reflected in its detailed official statement. The defence ministry and the Army’s reaction to the transfer of Maj. Gen. Vasu Vardhan signals to all others the price that they will have to pay if they do not bend even though their stand upholds the highest and precious value of the uniform – its ethical rectitude. The politico-military reaction is an ethical failure, the resonance of which will reverberate down the line.

Between obedience and conformity

The ultimate strength of India’s armed forces is its spirit of sacrifice, and of unfailingly placing the nation before self. While soldiers on the front line are duty-bound to risk their lives, the military leadership is expected to play a role as exemplars who protect the military institution from the negotiable morals that are frequently observed to be the normal fare in our society. It finally boils down to their willingness to sacrifice personal gain in terms of promotions and postings, which the civilians control.The heart of the problem is the growing ability of politico-bureaucratic authorities to bend the rules and the simultaneous failure of the military leadership to stand their moral ground. Though Maj. Gen. Vardhan’s case can easily be dismissed as sui generis even as the official explanation passes it off as a routine HR move, the warning signs may be ominous. Over a period of time, such signals from the top hierarchy can only weaken the military’s ethical fabric leading to the moral factor losing its weight to reflect in personal behaviour. What requires to be understood is that obedience to authority and conforming to questionable morals are two entirely different things.The potential toxic combination is of the political leadership’s inappropriate actions being supported by the ethical frailty of the higher military leadership. The combination could be dealt with by appointing a defence minister with a military background who is known for their ethical credentials and professional competence. In the existing ambience, the civil-military module requires political support to deliver quick and effective results. Fortuitously, unlike the dynamics of civil society, military’s special legal provisions and disciplined character make it feasible to rein in ethical weakness that could have seeped into its institutional culture. All it requires is for the higher military leadership to set an example and ruthlessly implement it.There is indeed a fine line between obedience and conformity in civil-military relations. Obedience is mandatory but conformity by the military to the ethical value system of civil society could be deleterious to India.Lt Gen Prakash Menon (retd) is Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution, and former military adviser, National Security Council Secretariat. Views are personal. This article first appeared in ThePrint

Has the world of work changed forever?

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

Finnish intel review sheds light on relations with Russia

Finland is wary of a possible Russian clash with NATO in the Baltic region

The Finnish Defense Forces (FDF) have come out with their first-ever Military Intelligence Review. It is a comprehensive document with due regard to the global security picture and legal caveats in the Finnish security apparatus.The presumable goal of the document, however, is to highlight priorities, set or conform to lexicon and engage in subliminal strategic signaling.The review designates Finland’s military operating environment or area of concern naturally as Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea region, where “freedom of navigation, security of supply and commerce” are paramount to Finland’s prosperity.

The bear looms large

As Finland’s largest neighbor and a potent military power, Russia occupies an important place in its strategic assessments. With a direct reference to Russia, the review expresses concerns about the ability and likelihood of states achieving their goals through military means in the Baltic Sea region.The concern is in all probability a reference to Russia’s force posture and political rhetoric against the Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A conflict between Russia and NATO in the region would have ramifications on Finland’s security and prosperity because of geographical proximity to terrain and waters where hostilities might break out.

Bilaterally, the contemporary relationship between Finland and Russia is that of strategic restraint and avoiding direct antagonism, with some major exceptions. One such exception is the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, or SUPO (which is in charge of counterintelligence for Finland’s homeland security), calling Russia the paramount threat in its December 2019 report.In 2018, there were raids by Finnish forces on Sakkiluoto, a southwestern Finnish island that according to reports has “nine piers and one helipad.” These facilities could plausibly be used for supporting gray-zone activities in and around Finland. Some believe such places could potentially serve as bases for shadowy agents of the Russian state who could use the facilities on these islands for asymmetric actions.

Read the full text at Asia Times

Modi’s only respite now is to adopt Kautilya’s doctrine. But first, own up your mistake

India is in the midst of a national health emergency of an unprecedented scale. Once again, it shines a spotlight on decision-making of the political leadership, and once again, the political elites could do well by taking a leaf out of Kautilya’s Arthashastra.

The catastrophic scale of the Covid-19 second wave calls into question the State’s basic duty of providing raksha (security) and palana (welfare). Rajdharma (duty of the king), as espoused in the ancient treatise, throws light on a scientific process of decision-making with an ethical underpinning, looped together by the text’s philosophical foundation (Anvikshiki). This, perhaps, is the need of the hour.

Right decisions at the right time is Kautilya’s mantra of success. He ranks good counsel (mantrashakti) higher than the State’s armed might (prabhavashakti), and the power of bravery (utsahshakti). But, how should one arrive at a decision, and for what end?

The four core sciences outlined in the treatise are Philosophy (Anvikshiki), Vedas (Trayi), Economics (Varta), and Political Science (Dandaniti), and they broadly correspond to the text’s trivarga, or three aims — artha (material well-being), dharma (spiritual good) and kama (pleasures). Each of the sciences lends value to efficient statecraft but it is Anvikshiki (science of inquiry), the lamp of all sciences, that illuminates the worth of the branches of knowledge and their relative weight in a given concrete situation. It is the power of critical thinking and reasoning alone through enumeration in Sankhya, breaking down, synthesis in Yoga, and pure empiricism in Lokayat that shapes a sound decision.

One wheel alone does not turn

Rulership can be carried out with the help of associates. The final decision taken by the sovereign is the last step of a systematic and logical process of policy-making. A matter of critical importance is discussed with the ‘councillors’ and ‘council of ministers’ and the king decides on the course of action based on what the majority among them declare or what is favourable to the success of the work.The opinion of the ministers is important for two reasons. One, they are responsible for the successful execution of all undertakings, protection against calamities, and overall development of settled lands. Two, they are the ‘go-to’ source for credible information gathering. The role of the ministers, as the ‘eyes’ of the ruler, is clearly outlined – providing knowledge of the unperceived, corroborating what is known, removing doubt in case of two possible alternatives, and furnishing complete information on a partly known fact. The preceptors and ministers were also tasked with providing checks and balances for the ruler who may potentially err in performing his duties by ‘pricking him with the goad’.The other set of inputs in decision-making was provided by the ‘councillors’. All undertakings were preceded by consultations with three or four councillors who would give their opinion individually and jointly, along with reasoned justification for holding them. This helps bring about the threefold affairs of the king: directly perceived (by the king), unperceived (through the ministers), and inferred (evidence-based deductions).

The buck stops here – swamin 

Kautilya lays a premium on the political performance of the ruler (swamin); the king and his rule is the sum-total of the constituents of the State. Therefore, the very first book of the treatise is dedicated to the training of the ruler – casting out of the group six enemies (lust, anger, greed, pride, arrogance, and foolhardiness) for cognitive clarity, cultivating intellect through association with elders, acquiring discipline and a scientific temper (through intentness on truth, reflection, rejection of false views, and understanding through retention), keeping a watchful eye by means of spies, securing the well-being of the subjects, and maintaining the duties of the subjects by performing his own duties.

Perhaps, the two most important aspects of Kautilyan rulership, which are imparted through training in science, are logic and ethics. In a consideration regarding calamity of the king and kingship, a ruler deviating from science is a graver misfortune than a blind king; the latter may be well advised by his associates but the former ruins the kingdom and himself through injustice.

But what holds the key in a calamity is a timely decision; not impulsive, but quick. The king is advised to hear an urgent matter and not put it off because an affair postponed becomes difficult, or even impossible, to settle.How Prime Minister Narendra Modi has fared in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and the related challenges will finally be judged by the people in the next Lok Sabha election, which is more than three years away. Currently, it seems that he has kept his distance from the Kautilyan precepts. The quality of advice from the ministers and councillors is questionable. The other is one of misidentification. The ruled are identified and dealt with according to their support to the ruling party, rather than garnering the support of all through reasoned, rational actions. Permitting the Kumbh Mela tells the story. This is fine for electoral politics but is out of place for governance. Because governance requires the pursuit of Yogakshema, the welfare of all its citizens through righteous conduct strongly predicated on empirical soundness.Furthermore, decision-making should not equate the opposition to the enemy of the State and deal with them as such. The pervasive use of the National Security Act being the prime example. People are being denied access to the truth by a media that has acquired a reputation for pliancy. Controlling informational access and purveying the facts has not been dented even during the health emergency. Attempts to hide and contest the extent of governance failure will surely sully India’s image both abroad and among its own citizens.It is perhaps overdue that India’s ‘swamin’ acknowledges that the buck stops with him and owns up to mistakes in decision-making, even if he is not directly responsible, due to poor advice or other unknown and uncontrollable reasons produced by a virus that is mutating and spreading at a speed beyond human ability to check. Such an admission will allow for altering the course of future actions and hopefully assist India to recover better from the ongoing tragedy.Kautilya rightly reminds us that in the happiness of the subject lies the happiness of the king and what is beneficial to the subjects is to his own benefit. Admitting to mistakes along with embrace of objective and sound decision-making will generate better quality of interventions. More importantly, it may repair and arrest the waning confidence of Indians in their swamin at a time of a grave national catastrophe.Dr Kajari Kamal is Research Faculty at Takshashila Institution. Lt Gen Prakash Menon is Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution, and former military adviser, National Security Council Secretariat. Views are personal.This article was first published in ThePrint

With 16% of global population having cornered 60% of vaccines, patent waiver is welcome

This article was first published in National HeraldLast October, India and South Africa proposed in the World Trade Organization that intellectual property rights of Covid-related drugs and vaccines be suspended. This proposal was supported by 60 countries. However, the United States, still under the Trump administration and the EU were opposed to the proposal.The then presidential candidate Joe Biden in early July itself had said that he supported such a proposal. So, there was expectation, but the pressure from the pharma lobby was intense too. Besides, abruptly curtailing patent rights is against the basic sanctity of contracts. You can’t renege on a sovereign promise, which is what patent rights are.

Then in April last month more than 100 Nobel Prize winners, and several prominent world leaders, including former heads of State, urged the United States to support a waiver of the TRIPS (Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) clause in the WTO. Such a waiver they said, would vastly increase innoculation rates, and would legally allow developing countries to make their own vaccines, which were currently developed and produced by global pharma companies.The signed letter also said that vaccine knowhow and technology should be shared openly, and industry monopolies should not be allowed to create artificial supply shortages. This is seen as essential to winning the war against the pandemic. Winning over US support for a patent waiver is crucial because it entails taking on the might of major pharma companies like Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca.

Of course, there is the argument, which has been examined by India as well, that the current TRIPS regime of the WTO has a escape clause in case of emergencies. This is called compulsory licensing, wherein a company can be forced to disclose and license its patents to others, for the sake of national emergencies. But developing countries have been reluctant to use this clause for fear of displeasing the United States, which could counter the move with some other diplomatic or economic punitive measures.It must be remembered that during the anthrax scare of 2001, the Canadian government had threatened to break the patent protection of Bayer, and use compulsory licensing to produce ciprofloxacin on a mass scale through a small company. Bayer however settled the matter with the Canadian government by donating large amounts of ciprofloxacin and offering more in case of an emergency. This led the Canadian government to agree to acquire cipro exclusively from Bayer for the duration of the patent agreement.So, there is a precedent, but many developing countries of Africa have been reluctant to use this route, even for genuine national emergencies like AIDS. An interesting success story without breaking any patent rules was that of CIPLA, an Indian pharma company which in 1993 developed and sold a drug at one tenth the then prevailing price. By 2001, CIPLA had developed an anti-AIDS drug cocktail and sold it at a very low cost, upending the hitherto monopolies, and vastly contributed to the effort to combat and control AIDS.So, in the present context of Covid, the compulsory licensing avenue is only of academic interest. Besides the US has been increasingly under diplomatic pressure to relax the restrictions on export of vaccines which lie unutilised.This week President Biden announced that he would support a TRIPS waiver at the WTO. This is a historic decision. It comes after surmounting the challenges and pressures mounted by the pharma lobby, including the scare that the Russians and Chinese would get the American pharma technology, and that if there was an indiscriminately large production of vaccines all around the world, it would create a big stress on supply chains.As of this writing 120 out of 164 member countries in the WTO are supporting the TRIPS waiver for vaccine patents. Added to this is the statistical evidence that 60 percent of the world’s supplies have been cornered by the rich countries, or only about 16 percent of the world’s population. There is excess stock sitting around in the US which will remain unutilised.

Sure enough the US decision was opposed by many pharma companies and leaders like Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said that patents were not the limiting factor responsible for the vaccine shortage. It was production capacities and high quality standards. But she surely misses the point, that patent waiver allows production to happen on a massive scale, so that the current capacities are no longer the bottleneck, since newer capacities will come up, without fear of infringing on patents.A German company BioNTech also echoed similar sentiments, saying that replicating the manufacturing process and mastering that technology can take years. It also added that it was committed to selling the mRNA vaccine to developing countries on a no-profit basis. But that no-profit price surely has the value of the patent, which itself makes it prohibitive. Strangely even Brazil has opposed the patent waiver proposed by Biden, and so has Bill Gates. Of course, if Covid vaccine patents are going to be breached now, the world has to find a way to compensate the pharma companies for the breach of contract.How this waiver proposal will travel through the WTO’s voting process remains to be seen. Crucial time may be lost, so India cannot count on this proposal to help its cause. It needs to rapidly ramp up vaccine production and imports, and immediately go for universal and free vaccinations. It should not only depend on “app” based booking, because given the great digital divide, it puts the poor and underprivileged at a great disadvantage. Imagine the areas where telecom connectivity is poor, digital literacy is low (can you do a captcha in 20 seconds), and when the Cowin website open slot is as elusive as a passing comet in the sky.The issue of the TRIPS waiver for Covid vaccines is also the right time to examine excessive patent protection, and overall exorbitant monopoly drug prices. There is now abundant research which shows that the maxim “no patents, no drugs” is false. And the billions in dollars needed to develop a new drug is mostly due to costs incurred on stage 2 and stage 3 clinical trials, which are actually in the nature of “public goods”. That’s because once the safety and reliability of the new drug is established in those trials, it deserves to be public knowledge. Hence that cost should simply be reimbursed, and patent-induced monopoly rights should be drastically reduced. This is a longer-term plan. Right now the Covid vaccines are on the agenda.Dr.Ajit Ranade is an economist and Senior Fellow, Takshashila Institution

We need to reengineer India’s entire system of administration

This article was first published in The Mint.Following Adar Poonawalla’s statements to the British media, on 3 May India’s government issued a media release stating that it had placed new orders for 110 million doses of Covishield and 50 million doses of Covaxin from Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, to be delivered over the next three months. Refuting allegations that fresh orders had not been placed, the government revealed that these purchases had been paid for in advance in the last week of April. The release also noted the government’s previous order of 100 million and 20 million doses of the two respective vaccines, of which 87% and 44% had been fulfilled as on that date. The earliest order was perhaps placed in January, after vaccines received regulatory approval and before India’s vaccination programme started in the middle of that month.

In contrast, the British government ordered 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine as early as May 2020, enough to cover 67% of its population. The same month, the US government ordered 300 million doses, adequate for 46% of its population. By September 2020, Japan, the EU, Australia, Canada, Germany and Brazil had all placed significant orders. Now here’s the most important part—all these countries placed orders for a vaccine that didn’t exist back then. These were not purchases. They were bets. Of course, by placing such large bets, they reduced their risks as more money raises the likelihood of the development of a successful vaccine.

Can the Indian government purchase things that do not yet exist? The answer, of course, is yes. It is very powerful. Both the Constitution and extant rules can be interpreted or changed for it to do what it wants. That’s the theory. But the practical question is this: Which public official, minister or civil servant would want to sign off on such a purchase? It would take a very courageous joint secretary (in the Humphrey Applebyan sense) to even recommend as much. In case the purchased non-existent vaccine fails to materialize, not only would careers come to a premature end, jail terms would beckon. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent an ambitious government auditor or opportunistic politician from raking up a ‘scam’ years later, long after people have forgotten the context.

So it should not surprise us that India ordered its first vaccines in January, after they came into existence. It should also not surprise us that the order quantities were small, for without a directive from the top political level, the system dare not commit to more than the production capabilities of manufacturers.None of this is to absolve political lapses. But if we are to secure better governance outcomes, we must understand the limitations of our administrative structures and decision-making culture. As we saw over the past decade, it is a comforting myth that enacting a legislation, securing a Supreme Court verdict or electing different leaders will change outcomes. Unless we reform how India is governed, the structures, processes and culture of government, we will continue to be disappointed by what the system actually delivers.Take another case. Given that healthcare capacity is exhausted in many places and families and civil society groups are frantically arranging vital supplies from across the country and abroad, it would be prudent to remove all duties, taxes and bureaucratic friction on them until the pandemic is under control. Yet, while the finance ministry waived customs duties on many medical goods, GST is a different matter. Many goods received as donation for free distribution are tax exempt until 30 June, but firms and non-profit organizations that buy them even for free distribution are not automatically exempt. Chief secretaries of states have been asked to appoint nodal officers so that “entities desirous of importing COVID relief material for free distribution may approach them for certification". I am sure that ministers and civil servants know that the best thing to do at this time is to waive GST and paperwork on anything remotely related to healthcare, and not sit in judgement on whether the item is useful for covid treatment or not. Yet, they find this extremely difficult to do, for the rate structure is not the only thing that is complicated about the GST framework.If a system works, it is because the outcomes of the actions of its good people outweigh those of the bad ones. If those good people do not have the power, authority and incentives to act, then the system does not deliver. We cannot depend on exceptional, courageous, heroic and career-suicidal officers. All officials should be able to exercise judgement within their scope of duties and act in the public interest. The pandemic highlights the need for a fundamental rethink of our administrative goals, structures and processes. From national defence to public health, India has been let down by the inability of our government to act early, take necessary risks and procure what’s needed.Political responsibility is easy to identify, and in elections we have a regular accountability mechanism. Whether and how citizens choose to exercise it is another matter. What is less obvious is the task of re-engineering government that has been overdue for two decades or more. It would be a shame if the immense pain and suffering we are now going through does not push us to pay attention to it.

A defence minister with military background — a risk India needs to take

In December 2019, a long-pending and critical evolutionary process of structural reforms in defence was unleashed by the Narendra Modi government. It was a commendable PMO-driven initiative. It encompassed the creation of the post of Chief of Defence Staff, triple hatted as military adviser to the defence minister, the permanent chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the head of the newly created Department of Military Affairs. Notably, the position has mandated the CDS to establish the Theatre/Joint Commands.

The fact that defence reforms were required to be driven by the PMO reflects the platitude that India requires a strong PMO to override narrow interests of individual central ministries and state governments in order to serve national objectives. It is never the ideal solution, but has been found to be an effective method in a diverse and complex country inhabited by a plethora of domestic power centres. Post-Kargil, the creation of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), directly under the PMO to act as the think tank for it, has strengthened its ability for policy formulation. However, the downside is the human proclivity to pander to perceived desires of strong prime ministers. Such a possibility will be perennial. In the case of this round of defence reforms under the Modi government, national security interests seem to be the predominant driver.Read the full article on ThePrint

In India’s Covid-19 challenge, China’s hopes and anxieties

The second wave of Covid-19 in India has been among the biggest international stories being covered across the Chinese media. The coverage reflects a sense of anxiety and opportunity.In terms of the former, there is concern about the spread of the so-called double mutant, or B.1.617 strain of the virus across the region and into China. A fresh wave of domestic outbreaks would be deeply damaging for the Communist Party, which declared victory against the virus last year, and would take a toll on China’s economic recovery. Likewise, a massive public health crisis across the Indian subcontinent, at the minimum, would hurt Chinese commercial interests and investments. At worst, it could result in a humanitarian catastrophe with the potential to stoke socio-political instability along China’s periphery.At the same time, the situation in India presents opportunities for Beijing. At the bare minimum, there is a commercial opportunity, given the shortage of emergency supplies, equipment and therapeutics. But, at a deeper level, there are geopolitical opportunities. This is reflected in the Chinese media’s critical coverage of the delayed response by the Joe Biden administration, the emphasis on China’s manufacturing prowess and its centrality to key supply chains, and foreign minister Wang Yi’s summit with his South Asian counterparts, which focused on health supplies and vaccines.

Read the full article in the Hindustan Times.

Facebook Says It Inadvertently Restricted A Hashtag. Now It Needs To Tell Us Exactly How And Why

This article originally appeared on Medianama. An excerpt is reproduced here:

An explanation

The presence of a political context surrounding these cases also raises the question of how Facebook is responding to the possible weaponisation of its community reporting. We know from Facebook’s August 2020 CIB report that it took against a network engaged in mass reporting. What principles does it use to define thresholds for action? How is such coordinated activity that falls below its self-defined threshold of Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour handled? Knowledge about the specifics of thresholds become essential when they make the difference between publicly disclosed and internal actions, as the Sophie Zhang – Guardian series demonstrated in the Indian context.Facebook — this applies to other networks too, but Facebook is by far the largest in India — needs to put forward more meaningful explanations in such cases. Ones that amount to more than ‘Oops!’ or ‘Look! We fixed it!’. There are, after all, no secret blocking rules stopping it from explaining its own mistakes. These explanations don’t have to be immediate. Issues can be complex, requiring detailed analysis. Set a definite timeline, and deliver. No doubt, this already happens for internal purposes. And then, actually show progress. Reduce the trust deficit, don’t feed it.This does raise concerns of being drawn into distracted by narrow content-specific conversations or being distracted by ‘transparency theater’, thereby missing the forest for the trees. These are legitimate risks and need to be navigated carefully. The micro-level focus can be about specific types of content or actions on a particular platform. At the macro-level, it is about impact on public discourse and society. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive and what we learn from one level should inform the others, in pursuit of greater accountability. To read more visit: Facebook says it inadvertently restricted a hashtag. Now it needs to tell us exactly how and why | MediaNama