What the milk shortage saga tells us about letting government control prices

The milk supply chain has been in trouble in several states over the last few months. Industry leaders expect shortages and price hikes to continue until winter. Besides making your next cup of filter kaapi or chai hard on the pocket, this situation reveals a lot about the consequences of government intervention and price distortions.

Missing in India’s AI growth plan is private investment

On artificial intelligence (AI), the government appears to be moving at a frenetic pace. This month, plans were announced to make large public datasets available to Indian businesses. The government also wants to embed AI in different parts of India Stack, and fund three centres of excellence for AI, housed within leading academic institutions.

E-pharmacy regulation needs nuanced policies

Candlemakers and other people involved in the lighting industry in France petitioned the government to protect them from the unfair competition imposed by the sun, wrote Frederic Bastiat in 1845. Bastiat’s sarcastic observation highlighted the tendency of incumbent businesses to turn to the government for protection from competition.

India needs quick transition ability from ‘No War No Peace’ to ‘limited war’. Is CDS ready?

The smooth and efficient functioning of the military organisation is to a great extent determined by the state of relationships between commanders in the chain of command. Fairly often, the dynamics of relationships transpires in an ambience that is often fraught with uncertainty, ambiguity, danger and fear. However, when combined with institutionalised and professional civil-military relations, military effectiveness gets maximised. The institution of the post of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and creation of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) in December 2019 were clearly designed to enhance military effectiveness. The mandate assigned to create the Theatre Command system was a recognition of the need to change the prevailing structures so as to strengthen jointness among the three Services and improve civil-military relations.

Let’s insist on full disclosure and consent for AI and algorithm use

One of the many recent mysteries is why hundreds of extremely intelligent and rich people think that a moratorium on further development of artificial intelligence is feasible, or that a six month hiatus is sufficient for us to figure out what to do about it. Technology development is a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ with millions of competing participants making it impossible to get everyone to cooperate. Top-tier competitors are more likely to cheat on the moratorium in the expectation that others will do so, which will render such as moratorium useless, and worse, drive the industry underground.

Analysing China’s threat perception of India-United States relations

As India and China are engaged in continued dialogue on resolving the boundary issue, including through the recently conducted high-level meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs, China faces a challenging theatre in its neighbourhood — the India-US alliance. Due to its threat perception of increasing proximity between India and the US, China inflates narratives of discord between the two countries, while also hyping up the nature of the challenge it faces, in order to arm-twist India into maintaining a more autonomous policy.

CPC’s tryst with private regulatory interventionism

The ‘Two Sessions’—China’s annual plenary sessions with close to 3,000 delegates participating in meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)—have recently come to an end, and reports from the event carry significant implications for Chinese economic policy in the months to come.

Should India make tactical nukes to counter China? Delhi’s no-first-use rule has no room for it

On 25 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow’s intention to deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons or TNWs in Belarus. He added that Russia was doing what has been a norm for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Periodically, during the Ukraine war, Putin and some members of Russia’s senior hierarchy have been bringing up the topic of nuclear weapons to keep the nuclear threat alive. The strategic effect sought to be achieved is to warn NATO member countries and reduce their role in the war. The Russian nuclear threats have probably not had their intended effects, considering the increase in the supply of military wherewithal to Ukraine, including offensive weapons like fighter aircraft, tanks, and missiles. The Belarus deployment is probably indicative of Russia adopting a different route to achieve the same intention. From the reaction of the NATO, it seems this threat would also not work to the degree that Russia expects.

India's Policy Towards China Must Leverage Latter's Two-Front Situation

While a ‘two-front’ dilemma has posed a critical security challenge to India for quite some time, China fears a similar situation, which hasn’t received enough attention within Indian strategic circles. China first grew anxious about a developing two-front threat in the early 1950s. After the Communist Party of China won the civil war against the Guomindang (GMD) nationalist government and forced the latter to flee to Taiwan in 1949, it feared a US-backed GMD invasion from the east. On its western front along the Himalayas, China was wary of Indian interference in Tibet and accused it of colluding with the US to instigate secessionist tendencies during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Fiscal Priorities for Sikkim

In a recent speech, Chief Minister of Sikkim, Prem Singh Tamang (Golay) announced the integration of more developmental projects in the upcoming budget. The successful execution of public projects and the effective implementation of government policies are contingent on the state's healthy fiscal situation. As the Sikkim Government prepares to present the budget, here is a look at the state's financial situation.

Deccan Herald | A case for marriage equality

On March 13, the Supreme Court of India referred a batch of petitions seeking legal recognition for same-sex marriages (or marriage equality) to a constitution bench. The Union government opposed these petitions, stating that it is not comparable to the Indian family unit, and that recognition of marriages is a legislative function, not a judicial one. Legal scholars have argued that not granting legal recognition to same-sex marriages violates fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, such as Articles 14, 15, 19, and 21. They cite the NALSA judgment (2014), the Puttaswamy judgment (2017), and the Navtej Singh Johar judgment (2018) as the most consequential in this regard. While marriage equality has a strong constitutional case, socio-cultural consensus is also important.

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Resolve HR issues in Navy, Army, Air Force on 3 levels. Then bring in Theatre Command System

The issue of Human Resources in the Indian armed forces is likely to throw up progressively increasing challenges when the Theatre Command System becomes operational. It has, therefore, become absolutely necessary to resolve those issues before the restructuring gets underway. This article seeks to examine three HR issues that have lingered and defied resolution despite their manifestation since long in the integrated tri-Services structures such as Andaman & Nicobar Command, Strategic Forces Command, and several other establishments. Resolution of these issues can no longer be ignored lest solutions emerge in more painful ways.

Mint | The entry of foreign firms should herald more legal sector reforms

In a surprise move, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has taken a reformatory step towards allowing foreign lawyers and foreign law firms to practise and set up offices in India. This comes after multiple rounds of litigation before various high courts and the Supreme Court of India, where the BCI and several bar associations had opposed the move.

‘Two Sessions’ Later, How China's Contradictory Policies Will Impact India

China’s ‘two sessions’ – the congregation of its two topmost deliberative bodies namely, the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top advisory body, recently concluded in Beijing.

We mustn’t let young minds live in constant fear of an apocalypse

Prominent ‘tech bros’ are now predicting a catastrophic financial crisis in the US leading to hyperinflation and apocalypse. It’s funny how people who took zero interest rates for granted, made fantastic predictions about techno-utopias but failed to plan for something as predictable as changes in interest rates are now forecasting the end of the world as we know it. They are not alone.

A look at the fiscal health of Goa

Goa Chief Minister has announced that the upcoming  state budget will be "futuristic & realistic" and has hinted at focused attention to specific sectors. The successful implementation of various budgetary proposals depends on the state's fiscal health - the ability of the state to mobilise enough revenues and spend it efficiently. Thus, it is imperative to look at the fiscal performance of Goa. This article attempts to analyse the state's fiscal concerns and seeks to figure out solutions.

Lessons for RBI from its mandate that made recurring payments a nightmare

The frustrating experience of a recurring card payment to a foreign merchant failing and the card being declined is one which is all too familiar for most of us. Every now and then, you can find someone complaining about failed card payments on social media. This is largely due to the onerous regulations put forth by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI had mandated that from October 1, 2021, for every recurring transaction below Rs 5,000, banks must send a notification at least 24 hours before the renewal date. For amounts over Rs 5,000, a one-time password was required to authorise every transaction.

Why Theatre Commands must be accompanied by a Uniform Military Code

The Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Bill 2023 was introduced in the Lok Sabha last week. The Bill empowers the Commander-in-Chief or the Officers-in-Command of inter-Services organisations to exercise administrative and disciplinary powers as laid down, over persons of individual services in their establishments. Disciplinary action would, however, only be taken under the Army, Navy and Air Force Act as applicable to an individual. Hitherto, the practice has been that if a naval officer/other rank were to commit an offence at the Defence Services Staff College Wellington, an inter-Service institution, the Commandant, a three star General, would repatriate the officer/rating to a naval organisation, where he would be tried under the Navy Act 1957.

For India’s AI ambitions, the time to act is now

On May 17, 2017, AlphaGo, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system built by Google’s DeepMind, defeated Ke Jie, China’s leading player in the board game, Go. In his book AI Superpowers, Kai-Fu Lee cites this as the seminal moment in China’s AI awakening. Considered the hardest game to master, Go’s dominance by a computer roused the government into action. Within a few months, Beijing announced plans to dominate AI by 2030.

It is time to ask if the panchayati raj model really works for India

We have had three decades of decentralized local governments. Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of panchayati raj, when the 73rd and 74th amendments gave Constitutional status to rural panchayats and urban municipal councils. The conventional wisdom is that panchayati raj is a great idea, the amendments were faulty and while local government has created tens of thousands of local politicians, improvements in local governance itself have been marginal.