Create a Nitipath for the civil service

At the heart of the Indian republic’s inability to deliver basic public services to its citizens is its chronic inability to address the shortfall in administrative capacity. In the past two decades, political leaders and policy analysts have chosen to side-step the complex problem of administrative reform and instead, used innovative methods like privatisation, public-private partnerships and technology to deliver public services. At the same time, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have stepped in to provide a variety of public services — schooling, healthcare, nutrition, skill development and social security — that the state ought to have provided, but is unable to.

The Chip4 Alliance Might Work on Paper, But Problems Will Persist

U.S. President Joe Biden recently added his signature to the CHIPS and Science Act 2022, officially enacting legislation on emerging technologies, especially semiconductors. Apart from focusing on building the United States’ semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, the legislation makes a note of the U.S. cooperating with like-minded allies to build a robust semiconductor supply chain. One such alliance is speculated to be the Chip4 Alliance, which would comprise the U.S., Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, a partnership proposed by Washington in March. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent meeting with semiconductor industry leaders in Taiwan has accelerated conversations about this new U.S.-Asian semiconductor partnership.

Lessons from the Past on the Threat of a Nuclear War

As Russian tanks moved into Ukraine on February 24, President Vladimir Putin warned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that any attempt to intervene could lead to “consequences they have never seen”. Days later, Russia changed the alert status of its nuclear forces in a symbolic yet ominous move. The Russia-Ukraine war is one symptom of a changing international system, with a public nonchalance toward nuclear weapons. That disregard is in contrast to 40 years ago.

India must look China in the eye at Vostok 2022. Retain presence, but signal distance

India’s participation in multinational military exercises often reflects the imperative for it to walk a tightrope across the global geopolitical divide. However, the deepening and expanding friction points of the global divide are posing greater challenges for India’s ability to maintain a strategic posture that seeks context and issue-based cooperation. For more than two decades, India has carried out bilateral and multilateral military exercises with the US, China, Russia and a long list of nations mainly from Europe and Asia. It is no surprise that as the three-week-long, 13th Indo-US Joint Special Forces Exercise Vajra Prahar 2022 is underway in Himachal Pradesh, there are unconfirmed reports of India’s participation in the Russian-hosted Vostok 2022 slated from 30 August to 5 September.

India@75: How India’s Health Report Since Independence Has Been Creditworthy

We are now in the third decade of the 21st century, seventy-five years after India gained Independence. In these years, the country has progressed in more sectors than one. The improvements across several health indicators are tremendous. These stories have been a result of conscious efforts towards achieving the goal of “Health for all”. As India heads towards becoming a superpower, it is important to look at the advancements we have made in the health sector.

Raising air power violation is China’s mind game. India’s challenge is to call the bluff

Concerns of air power violations in Ladakh entered the doors of military talks between India and China in early August 2022. Both sides blamed each other of violating the 1996 Agreement on Confidence-Building Measures along the Line of Actual Control. The agreement stipulates that combat aircraft, which includes fighter, bomber, reconnaissance, military trainer, armed helicopter and other armed aircraft, shall not fly within 10 km of the LAC. In order to control escalation, establishing a separate hotline or leveraging existing ones is going to be explored as the way forward. However, to expect that a hotline can cope with the speed of fighter aircraft is an illusion. At best, it can serve as a mechanism to exchange information, after the incident.

What a Taiwan Crisis Means for the Global Chip Race

With the Chinese state showcasing aggressive responses to Nancy Pelosi’s recent Taiwan visit, one begins to wonder whether another Taiwan Straits Crisis is on the horizon. A question to address in case of another crisis is the effect it might have on the global semiconductor and electronics supply chain. With the world slowly recovering from a chip shortage and the industry ramping up supply to pre-pandemic levels, can we afford another supply chain shock to the industry? With Taiwan and China being integral aspects of the global semiconductor ecosystem, how will increased cross-strait tensions affect the industry? If there is eventually a military offensive launched, what will the end result look like for the industry?

Nation Building Lessons from a Bollywood Song

Perhaps the most inspiring lines celebrating India, as evergreen as they are rousing, are from a Hindi film made just 13 years after Independence. In the title song of Ram Mukherjee’s Hum Hindustani (1960), Usha Khanna, Prem Dhawan and Mukesh earnestly persuade us Indians to forget the tired old matters of the past, and shape a collective new narrative for a new era. “Chhodo kal ki batein, kal ki baat purani/Naye daur mein likhenge, mil kar nayi kahaani, hum Hindustani!".

SMIC’s New 7nm Chip Should Worry West — But There’s A Way Out

There were recent reports that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s biggest semiconductor foundry and fabrication facility has developed a chip using a 7nm technology node indigenously. The new chip, a leading-edge node (in terms of the number of transistors fitted on the chip itself) as per the TechInsights report, has been developed by SMIC for MinerVa Semiconductor, a semiconductor design company registered in Canada but with Chinese directors at the helm. The chip has been specifically designed and manufactured for the mining of the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. The report also suggests that SMIC plans to use the process technology to develop other products at the same node in the future.

SPARSH Will Make Defence Pension Digital, but Problems Won’t Disappear

The management of defence pensions has been taxing the capabilities of the Ministry of Defence for decades. The implementation of the One Rank One Pension or OROP) scheme has turned into a legal and bureaucratic battleground. Some ex-Servicemen have locked horns with the Executive and the Judiciary, but justice remains elusive. Even the refixing of pension every five years that was due in 2019 has not been done. The reasons for the delay are revealing of the awkward consequences brought about by the interplay of multiple actors.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD), it is said, has not refixed the pensions on the due date since the issue was sub-judice. An unrepresentative group of ex-Servicemen had filed a case in the Supreme Court that the MoD was violating the OROP principle by replacing it with ‘One rank multiple pensions’ for persons with the same length of service. On 16 March 2022, the court dismissed the case and directed the re-fixation to be carried out from 1 July 2019 and arrears paid within three months.

In Fight Against Monkeypox, Covid, Indoor Ventilation is a Key Tool in Reducing Risk of Infection

We are facing an ever increasing caseload of Covid-19, which has reached 20,000 new cases every day. There is also an additional threat of monkeypox, which has been detected in India and has been declared a Global Health Emergency. Countries such as India and the UK have even advised airborne precautions pointing towards a risk of easy spread through respiratory droplets. Although, not as easily as Covid-19.

Masks, social distancing and vaccinations are existing tools, which are helping us fight Covid-19 and monkeypox. One important tool that we as a country have not used is indoor ventilation. Indoor ventilation means putting outdoor air inside and removing indoor air to reduce the risk of infection.

The Coming Battle for Taiwan

A very good way to get a handle on the geopolitical developments in the Indo Pacific—and the current Taiwan crisis—is to pay attention to what the Communist Party of China’s leaders have been declaring for decades. They want to reunify the country both to recover from two centuries of humiliation by Western powers and to finish the civil war that started nearly a hundred years ago. China will then retake its rightful place as a global power. Presumably, this will be within an international order where it is the peerless Middle Kingdom surrounded by tributaries whose fortunes depend on Beijing’s goodwill.

For India-US iCET Partnership, China Is One of Many Challenges

Recently, two of the world’s established technological powers, the United States (US) and India, decided to further bolster their positions by enhancing cooperation in the technology domain. US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting resulted in the announcement of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) to expand the existing partnership between the two states in specific strategic technology sectors. The concept of building tech alliances with the help of like-minded techno-democracies has brought together multiple states in the recent past. The iCET looks like just an extension of the existing bilateral cooperation in the technology sector between the two countries.

Xi’S Power Base in the Communist Party Central Committee

Mao's often-quoted expression “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” remains as critical to understanding the dynamics of power in China today as it was in the late 1920s. Xi Jinping, soon after assuming the position of Party General Secretary in late 2012, moved quickly to exert his control over the ‘gun’ — i.e., the People's Liberation Army (PLA). He has spent the past decade reshaping the PLA and forging loyalty, from the military-political work conference in Gutian in 2014 and an anti-corruption campaign (which targeted some of the highest-ranking PLA officials), to initiating major structural reforms.

What we Should Learn from China's Use of Technology as a Tool of Foreign Policy

Immense state support, coupled with the rise of domestic technology giants, has made China a major power competing to secure technological space with other powers like the US and Europe. There is also the issue of how the Chinese state has been actively promoting and exporting its technology infrastructure beyond its borders, thereby increasing its sphere of influence. This expansion of the technology-oriented Sinosphere has made other states take cognisance and try to increase their diplomatic outreach to counter China’s ever-increasing growth. But how has China been so successful in utilising technology as a credible foreign tool? What lessons does China’s aggressive ‘techplomacy’ offer to other technological powers?

Har Ghar Tiranga is a good idea, but not every Indian has the means to follow Flag Code

In the 75th year of India’s Independence, the Indian citizen has formally and finally been entrusted with the individual responsibility to honour and preserve the dignity of the National Flag. Though the right to fly the flag was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2002, two recent amendments to the Flag Code have expanded its scope in terms of time and availability. Earlier, it was only allowed to be hoisted between sunrise and sunset and had to be made of khadi. Now, the flag can be flown at any time and can be machine made of cotton, polyester, wool or silk.

In India, the Dangers of a Single Farming Strategy

Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi recently lauded the benefits of natural farming while addressing a natural farming conclave in Surat and indicated that the central government will help expand clusters of natural farms and extend incentives for adoption of the technique. While this is a noble sentiment and there are benefits, India should ensure that the push doesn’t end up becoming an investment in a single farming strategy. Sri Lanka has recently demonstrated how investing in a single solution can result in disastrous results.

We Need to Stop our Minds from Being Hacked

Over the last four decades, we have found that human rationality is not what it was cranked up to be. For three centuries, it was generally held that humans employ their mind to the merits of the issue before them, weigh the pros and cons, and then decide accordingly. From this understanding followed the idea of the primacy of the individual, the importance of human rights, the morality of liberal democracy and of free markets. We also constructed the academic disciplines of economics, sociology, philosophy and politics based on the rationality of humans. Liberal democracies must move to reduce the vulnerability of their citizens’ minds to being ‘hacked’.

The New CHIPS Bill Raises More Questions Than it Answers for the US

Last week, the US Senate decided to advance a bill to promote and support semiconductor chip manufacturing in the country. The bill, known as the CHIPS Act, is an extension to the previous year’s legislation passed by the Senate which approved a $250 billion bill to reinforce US chip-making to compete with the growing clout of China. But how much can the CHIPS Act achieve the goals and objectives that the US government intends to? Will there be any unintended consequences and unfavourable effects that might arise from the Act itself?

AFSPA wives’ SC petition is embarrassing for Modi govt. MoD, Army must get their act together

A setback happened in December 2021, when 13 innocent civilian lives were lost in a counter-insurgency operation by a detachment led by a Major of 21 Para (Special Forces) in the Mon district of Nagaland. Justice has been awaiting deliverance. On 20 July, the Supreme Court, after hearing a petition filed by the wives of the army personnel, stayed all further legal proceedings that were based on the report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the state police. It evoked a legal necessity enshrined in the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that prosecution can be carried out only with the Central government’s sanction. Such a sanction was requested by Nagaland in April 2022 but has, thus far, met with silence from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).