Quad Needs a More Near-Term, Outcomes-Focussed Approach

Ever since its revitalisation, the Quad grouping, comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia, has evolved an ambitious agenda. Over the past two years, the Quad has established six leader-level working groups, covering domains like the COVID-19 Response and Global Health Security, Climate, Critical and Emerging Technologies, Cyber, Space, and Infrastructure. These are long-term agenda items that have primarily focussed on establishing frameworks and standards, boosting sharing of information and best practices, identifying vulnerabilities and discussing pathways to address them. The two most visible products of the Quad’s engagement so far have been the COVID-19 vaccine partnership and the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). These also underscore a desire to be near-term outcomes-focussed, while working on longer term challenges.

Red China blues by Dikotter: an account of the country’s developments during Xi Jinping era

Ensuring strict control over the historical narrative is a key aspect of the Communist Party of China (CPC) toolkit to maintain legitimacy. One way in which the party has done this is through the adoption of official resolutions, which argue that “both the facts of history and the reality of today prove that without the CPC, there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation”. 

Frank Dikotter’s China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower, however, punctures this narrative. The book offers a granular and engrossing account of the key economic and political developments in China, starting from 1976 till the era of Xi Jinping. In telling the story of over four decades of tumult, the author primarily relies on over 600 documents from China’s municipal and provincial archives along with newspaper reports and unpublished memoirs of key party members, such as the diary of Mao’s personal secretary Li Rui.

Akhand Bharat shouldn’t enter Indian military gates. Army can’t afford to lose focus

In 1999, Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore. It symbolised the Indian State’s acceptance of Pakistan’s sovereignty. On 1 December 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, writing on the occasion of India assuming G20 presidency, emphasised the lasting appeal of spiritual traditions that advocate the fundamental oneness of us all. He reiterated ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, or  ‘The world is one family’.

Let's talk about India's invisible emergency – suicide

India is beating most other economies; we are self-sufficient in food; and our post-Covid economy is showing greater resilience than even China's. Here is the sobering statistic, though: we have the highest number of suicides for any country in the world. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there were approximately eight lakh deaths by suicide globally in 2021, up from a little over seven lakh deaths the previous year. India accounted for over 20% per cent of those deaths -- 164,033 -- up by over 7% from the previous year. India's suicide rate per one lakh population is 12, ranking it 41 in the list of countries with the highest such statistic.

What unrest and anger in China’s cities reveal

Cities across China have witnessed protests over the past week, as people have demonstrated their anger and frustration with the persistence and costs of the zero-Covid policy. What triggered the protests was an apartment fire in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which led to the death of 10 people. Reports of the Covid-19 lockdown in the city hampering rescue efforts ignited widespread anger on social media. Soon, this anger, fuelled further by official denials and online censorship, spilled onto the streets of major cities in the country. In Shanghai, hundreds gathered along Wulumuqi Road, named after Urumqi, demanded the lifting of lockdowns and basic human rights, and carried blank pieces of paper to protest the lack of freedom of expression. Similar protests have since been seen in cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu, Beijing, and Nanjing, among others. In some instances, protesters have gone beyond simply demanding an end to lockdowns and mass testing to call for freedom, respect for universal values, and for Xi Jinping to step down.

Indian military leaders must speak with caution, media twisting Army’s PoK remark

India regaining Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir is a topic that makes periodic appearances in India’s domestic and foreign policy discourses. On 22 November, Northern Army Commander Lt General Upendra Dwivedi, while answering a question about the Army’s position on defence minister Rajnath Singh’s statements on reclaiming PoK, said this: “As you are aware, a parliamentary resolution exists on the subject and therefore it is nothing new. As far as the Indian Army is concerned, it will carry out any order given by the government of India, and whenever such orders are given, we will always be ready for it.”

India’s Anti-Manual Scavenging Drive is Faltering, Needs Immediate Intervention

Social ostracism and lack of opportunities have forced generations of lower caste families to continue indulging in manual scavenging as their daily job.

Not often discussed in mainstream media, however, is that over 95 percent of India’s 1.3 million manual scavengers are women. In spite of such overwhelming numbers and enough evidence pointing to serious health consequences directly resulting from this kind of work, government authorities have failed to implement available laws and programmes. Manual scavenging is a degrading profession and it needs solutions that are technologically pertinent, economically driven, socially responsible, and sensitive.

Govt filled Armed Forces Tribunal posts but didn’t consider the members’ usefulness criteria

The Narendra Modi government has approved the appointment of 11 judicial and 12 administrative members in the Armed Forces Tribunal on 15 November. The approval derives its powers and procedures from the Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2021 passed by both the Houses of Parliament in August 2021.

The Bill, part of a broader ongoing tussle between the judiciary and the executive/legislature, is being contested in the Supreme Court. In essence, the issue is about the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. At its core, it is about the institutional control of the various tribunals that have been established to relieve the high courts of the heavy burden cast on them by large numbers of pending cases. However, the focus here is on the AFT in the context of the larger tussle.

Effective altruism is a useful way to go about giving back to society

Whenever professionals and corporate executives tell me that they are considering volunteer work or a career switch in order to “give back" to society, I advise them to continue in their current careers and donate money to promising non-profit organizations instead. This is often not what they want to hear, but is based on sound economic reasoning. If you have a comparative advantage in developing software and making money, it is better that you do that than social work. Everyone is better off if you earn more money and give away a portion of that to someone who is better at, say, administering deworming tablets than at building apps.

Could the Quad Help With India’s Space Station Dreams?

Last month, China launched its Long March 5B heavy-lift rocket into low Earth orbit, carrying the final module for the Tiangong space station. The significance of the completion of China’s space station was somewhat lost, however, as much of the attention was taken away by the uncontrolled re-entry of the Long March 5 B’s main body

The Skyroot of our final frontier: Vikram-S’s successful launch will boost both private Indian space firms and Isro’s ambitions

Three years ago, if you walked up to a space enthusiast and told them that a private space company would launch a rocket from an Isro facility in the near future, they would probably laugh at you and tell you that your space prognostication would never take off, let alone rockets.

Fast forward to the present – Skyroot Aerospace, a space startup based in Hyderabad, conducted the first test of its Vikram-S rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre yesterday. Soon to follow is AgniKul Cosmos, based out of Chennai, who will launch their first rocket by the end of the year. Both of the rockets are tech demonstrators. This is a milestone for India and its space sector, as less than three years ago, one could not fathom that these small startups would have the freedom and support to achieve their ambitions.

Bengaluru needs out-of-pothole thinking

The Karnataka High Court’s proceedings on Bengaluru’s pothole epidemic have raised hopes that the shameful state of our city roads may, at last, get some attention. So appalling is the state of our roads, and so brazen is the authorities’ disregard for the needs of its citizens, that Bengalurians are calling for the prime minister himself to visit their neighbourhoods so that the roads may be properly resurfaced.

The joke is a sign of despair.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s biggest strength lies in its weakness. That’s tempting for army

On 3 November 2022, when I first heard that Imran Khan had been shot, my instinctive conclusion was that the Pakistan Army must have orchestrated it. When it was quickly followed up by an assurance that he had suffered only minor bullet injuries to his leg, my instincts discounted the involvement of the Pakistan Army as the attempt did not reflect its professional competence in such matters. Later, as details trickled in, the attempt seemed amateurish. Accusations toward the Shehbaz Sharif government and the Inter-Services intelligence by Khan and his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, followed, while a few in the ruling coalition described the incident as staged.

Results of the US midterm elections and what it means for India

With only a few seats left to be declared, the 2022 US midterm election is like the cliffhanger scene from the penultimate episode of a thrilling whodunnit. The predicted red wave did not lash America, but the Republicans did manage a ripple, and flipped some seats in the US House of Representatives, the lower house of the American Congress.

Should India look closely at these elections from a foreign policy lens? Not generally, but there will be some specific impact as we shall see in a while.

SC refused to abolish domestic work for Army Sahayaks. But Agniveer era can end it

On 31 October, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court refused to entertain a Public Interest Litigation that sought to abolish the ‘Sahayak system’ in the Indian Army. In 2009, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence described the practice of employing ‘Sahayaks’ as shameful that should have no place in independent India and recommended its abolition. The Committee said it expected the Ministry of Defence to stop the practice and hoped that the Ministry of Home Affairs would take similar action in respect of paramilitary and other organisations.

We Should Confront the Global Polycrisis with Revitalised Hope

Framing the contemporary coincidence of economic shocks, rising political violence, extreme weather events, the covid pandemic and intensifying geopolitical tensions as “the polycrisis", Adam Tooze writes that “the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts. At times one feels as if one is losing one’s sense of reality."

Gujarat is India’s economic hub. But basing key military infrastructure makes us vulnerable

The increasing range, speed, accuracy and destructive capability of firepower has been unremittingly on display in the Russia-Ukraine war for nearly eight months. The lethality of weapons is often displayed by their effect on civilian infrastructure—wrecked buildings, cratered roads, twisted electric poles and corpses of civilians. Missiles, drones and artillery constitute the predominant vectors that bring destruction and damage on permanent structures that can be easily identified and targeted.

Road Ahead for UPI: Free Public Infrastructure or Yet Another Payment Mechanism?

With its widespread adoption, UPI is now here to stay. Regulators must now switch their focus on ensuring fair competition in the digital payments space. The zero-charge framework gives UPI an advantage over other digital payments and a big task for regulators is to determine how it can be phased out going forward. With the market currently dominated by a handful of players at the front-end (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm) and monopolised by NPCI and banks at the back-end, enabling competition in each layer of UPI to tackle this would be the sensible direction to take for UPI to sustain on its own.

The US and China are battling for semiconductor supremacy

Hindustan Times, Oct 29, 2022. The geopolitical impact of the new controls is perhaps the most significant. The US and China’s semiconductor ecosystems might recover, but this move is a critical juncture in technology geopolitics.

Theatre commands to defence university, why Indian security interests need a political push

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat in May 2020 made self-reliance a policy goal for the Ministry of Defence. Despite decades of effort, India’s defence industrial ecosystem has failed to achieve substantive progress and indigenous research, development and production capabilities remain a challenge. Time will reveal whether the slogan has been matched by accomplishment. However, even if Atmanirbhartha is accomplished to any acceptable degree, India’s military effectiveness will require the fulfilment of two other crucial reform initiatives – defence university and theatre commands.