Hindustan Times | In the chip war, US has the edge over China

As a countermeasure to a series of US-led tech restrictions, China’s ministry of commerce and general administration of customs recently announced export controls on industrial products and materials containing two critical elements — Gallium (Ga) and Germanium (Ge). The export of these elements will now be subject to governmental clearance. The ministry justified the restriction on national security grounds, owing to the elements’ dual-use nature. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | Don’t rush to mimic Rajasthan gig workers law

The devil, as they often say, is in the details. And so it is with the The Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act 2023, passed in the Rajasthan Assembly on July 24 to nearly universal fanfare. The need for some form of social security measures for gig workers was so acutely felt that this Act is currently lauded with messianic zeal just for the good intentions behind the law. There is a good chance that other states will follow suit and therefore, a closer scrutiny can instruct areas for improvement. Read the full article here.

Mint | Indian gig workers ought to get a well-crafted social security net

Rajasthan’s new law governing the welfare of gig workers has much to commend it. Not only is it necessary to support India’s growing 21st century workforce, it also offers us a way to reform our 18th century labour law regime. As Takshashila Institution’s Anupam Manur puts it, the term ‘gig work’ is a misnomer in our country—for most of the people driving taxis, delivering food or household services via online aggregator platforms, that is their main occupation. Employment in this segment is growing. The Niti Aayog expects 200% growth in gig employment by 2030. Based on possibilities I see emerging from what is happening in Bengaluru, I think that is a conservative estimate. While the fates of individual aggregator platforms may rise and fall, the gig model is an important part of how India creates mass employment. Read the full article here.

WION | The ASEAN's tryst with US-China contestation

On July 13 and 14, Wang Yi, the newly re-appointed Chinese Foreign Minister visited Jakarta to attend the 56th ASEAN Regional Forum and the 13th East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers' Meetings. During these meetings, Wang held several bilateral exchanges, including with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He also participated in an ‘ASEAN+3’ meeting, with representatives from the ten countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as Japan and South Korea. His engagements aimed at assuaging regional anxieties surrounding China’s belligerent rise and its intensifying rivalry with the US. However, his meeting with Blinken said otherwise. Read the full article here.

Centre on Asia and Globalisation | Confronting Trade-offs for India’s Electronics Manufacturing Success

The improving performance of India’s electronics manufacturing sector has been a topic of intense policy interest in the country. Electronics exports saw a spectacular growth of almost 50 percent in FY23, reaching $25.3 billion. Electronics is now India’s sixth largest merchandise export, overtaking readymade garments. Encouraged by these successes, the Indian government is confident of achieving its target of $140 billion in electronics exports and 1 million new jobs by FY26. This sector’s success is now portrayed as a vindication of the Indian government’s flagship industrial policy instrument: the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. Policy debates surrounding the PLI have primarily focused on its design, effectiveness, and potential pitfalls. But the elephant in the room is the crucial role of Chinese companies in India’s electronics manufacturing story. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | Qin’s removal reveals a messy portrait of China

The standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), China’s top legislature, on Tuesday, announced the removal of Qin Gang as the country’s foreign minister. The decision came during a previously unplanned and abruptly announced daylong meeting of the body. Conventionally, NPCSC meets on a bimonthly basis. Meeting dates and agenda are usually announced far in advance. This departure from set norms in a country where tradition and discipline are valued above all, and where small deviations and changes are all the signs one gets of upheavals within, has set off speculation. Read the full article here.

Indian Express | Internal Security in India: Violence, Order and The State reveals how most forms of violence are on a downward slide in India

Most of us rely on social media, television, newspapers and conversations with our friends to get a sense of what is happening in the world around us. News, however, suffers from a systematic negativity bias — the bad and the abnormal get more coverage than the good and the normal. In addition, our minds tend to confuse the frequency of news items with its actual prevalence. Then there are regular moral panics and outrage cycles, all of which end up giving us a distorted perception of the state of the world, often making us anxious, depressed and despondent. Read the full book review.

Firstpost | Franco-Indian collaboration in Indian Ocean Region: How India-France partnership has taken centre stage in the IOR

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to France, France and India spelt out their commitments to the Indo-Pacific region. In a first, the two democracies published a roadmap for their bilateral and regional cooperation. The roadmap outlines the alignment between the two countries’ vision for the region, with cooperation extending across the domains of defence, security, economics, connectivity, infrastructure, sustainability, and human-centric development. Read the full article here.

Takshashila Blog | China Challenge: Transatlantic Divergence

It is a truism that the rise of China poses a serious challenge to the US and Europe. However, there are differences in terms of their understanding of the nature of the challenge. For instance, there has long been a debate among them – the US and Europe, that is – whether China poses a strategic challenge, or is an indispensable partner in dealing with global challenges, or whether it is an economic threat or opportunity. Read the full blog here.

The Hindu | The risk of small States’ heavy reliance on the Union government

The fiscal situation of India’s States has garnered significant attention in recent times. Despite ample data on State finances, most of the analysis is centred around larger States. There needs to be more discussion on the fiscal position of small States (i.e. States with a population of less than 1 crore). Most of these small States have distinctive characteristics that limit revenue mobilisation. Recognising these disabilities, the Constitution has provided mechanisms to address them. But these States continue to rely heavily on the Union government for revenue. This dependence creates vulnerabilities for the States as well as the Union. Read the full article here.

ThePrint | Why is Indian Army keeping the martial race theory alive? The British left 76 years ago

Even after 75 years of Independence, India still subscribes to the martial race theory in the manning of some of its combat and combat support segments of the Army. Nepal’s repeated blocking of recruitment of Gorkhas under the Agnipath scheme could have been used by India to dissociate itself from this British belief of separating races based on their physical and behavioural characteristics as well as climatic conditions. But India continues to see substance in the theory birthed by the First War of Independence in 1857. Read the full article here.

The Wire | Compensation for Accident Victims Isn’t a ‘Favour’ – and the State Must Be More Accountable

The death of our fellow citizens by accident is a matter of routine. Turning the daily newspaper to the city pages inevitably brings news of deaths from accidents of various kinds – a stray bike rider here, a lone bicyclist there, two people sleeping on the pavement, and so on. Every so often, reports of accidents that have a higher count of casualties make it to the front pages, sometimes as the lead story. These describe a bus falling into a gorge or catching fire, a train smashing into another, and on occasion, a boat overturning. Other forms of accidents – bridge or building collapses, stampedes, fires and such – are rarer, but still feature multiple times a year. In India, there is no end to the news of accidental death. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | NRF is a game changer. But it needs more clarity

The National Research Foundation (NRF) is India’s largest government programme to fund research till date. India’s gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) is currently 0.6-0.8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), quite low when compared with that of the United States (US) (3.36%), China (2.14%), and Israel (4.9%). A significant infusion of funding, steered by a clear implementation strategy, is required for India to become a science leader. The NRF bill is an excellent start to driving India’s research agenda but it needs to clarify its objectives and create capacity for their achievement. Read the full article here.

Mint | We can expect more turbulence ahead in Indian diaspora politics

Diaspora politics is going to get a lot more complicated and recent turbulence is an indicator of the policy challenges ahead. Pro-Khalistan protests in the US, UK, Canada and Australia have descended into vandalism, arson, rioting, incitement to assassination and inter-group violence. Last year, there was Hindu-Muslim communal violence in Leicester. Hindu and Sikh communities got into fights in Australia. A parade in New Jersey featured a bulldozer celebrating Yogi Adityanath’s politics, attracting condemnation for its provocativeness and causing the Indian business association to issue an apology. Google and Big Tech companies in the US attracted criticism on being seen as insensitive to caste discrimination. This year, the Seattle City Council outlawed caste discrimination in response to advocacy by diaspora civil society groups. In May, a 19-year-old Indian-American crashed a truck near the White House, waved a Nazi flag, and declared that he wanted to kill the president, seize power and put an end to democracy in the US. Read the full article here.

ThePrint | At defence PSUs, bring new appraisal system. Job security doesn’t help national security

Some of the recently corporatised Defence Public Sector Undertakings such as the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited will be put to test by deals, including the production of the GE F414 jet engine. HAL’s record of productivity and quality assurance is far from encouraging and is perhaps illustrated in an interaction, a friend once told me, between the head of a foreign aircraft manufacturing company and the Chairman of the HAL. The foreigner was first given an impressive presentation of HAL at its Headquarters in Bengaluru and thereafter taken on a tour of the PSU’s extensive infrastructure facilities situated all over India. On returning to Bengaluru, he was asked by the chairman – ‘What are your impressions’? The foreign head replied – ‘Your infrastructure is extremely impressive; in comparison to yours, ours looks like poorly organised workshops. But why don’t you make aircraft?’ Read the full article here.

The Hindu | Will signing Artemis Accords benefit India?

The story so far:

On June 21, India became the 27th signatory to the Artemis Accords, a set of non-binding guidelines that underpin the Artemis programme, a U.S.-led project to return humans to the moon permanently.

Read the full article here.

Mint | Swish expressways must go with public education on using them

On 19 June, Navroze Contractor was riding back home as usual with his motorcycle group on a service road of Hosur Road (National Highway 44). The 80-year old fellow Bangalorean was a highly regarded filmmaker, photographer, music maven and motorcycle enthusiast. A champion of road safety, he was killed when three drunken motorcyclists riding at high speed on the wrong side of the road crashed into him. The staggering irony compounds the tragedy of lives lost as a result of wrongdoings that are, paradoxically, both avoidable and normalized. Erosion of norms is the fastest way to anarchy. Road safety in India will get worse unless they are addressed now. Read the full article here.

Times of India | How, finally, India is reaching for the Moon

On a remote patch of celestial wilderness near the moon’s south pole lies the wreck of the Chandrayaan-2 lander, a testament to the soaring ambitions of India’s lunar programme and the difficulties of achieving them. Its predecessor, the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, made history in 2008 by confirming the presence of water ice on the moon. The more audacious Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 was to deploy a lander called Vikram. However, Vikram crash landed in a spray of lunar dust, leaving it, and the small rover inside, inoperable. Read the full article here.

Telangana Today | Technology is the new glue

The Indo-US Joint Statement of 22 June 2023 makes it abundantly clear that technology is the new glue that will bind India-US relations for some time to come. It spans five of the six broad themes – defence, clean energy, economy, health, and technology itself. The last theme is a purely geopolitical one ie, strategic convergence. Whether this translates into opportunities for Indian investors and startups will remain a function of the confidence the Indian authorities can generate in the market in both countries. However, this is not the sole responsibility of the authorities – investors and startups too need to take the plunge if they want a share of the pie. Let us look at the opportunities emerging from this Joint Statement. Read the full article here.

ThePrint | Modi has signed the defence deals with US. Now DRDO, private sectors must deliver

Two major defence deals were signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s US visit, building on previous agreements since the nuclear framework agreement signed between PM Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in 2005. These deals are rooted in India’s geographic location and its growing economic and diplomatic clout in the context of the ongoing global geopolitical struggle. They also align with the US’s efforts to protect its global hegemony, which is couched in a security framework, and involve India in defending common interests against a rising and aggressive China. Read the full article here.