Times of India | Why resource distribution is creating a North-South divide

Over the last few days, there have been calls to form an economic alliance of southern states for equal resource distribution. Chief ministers from states such as Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu held demonstrations in New Delhi to express their discontent. The Karnataka chief minister claimed that the current system for distributing resources among states puts states like Karnataka at a disadvantage while favouring states in the North with uncontrolled population growth. While the states’ concerns are valid, this focus on the horizontal distribution of tax resources is misplaced. Instead, the states should advocate for an enlargement of the divisible pool by calling for a curtailment in Union cesses and surcharges. Here’s why: Read the full article here.

Economic & Political Weekly | On Regulating AI

The article titled “India’s Approach towards Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: Utilising the International Experience” by Jawahar Bhagwat and S Y Boldyreva (EPW, 30 December 2023)identifies three primary concerns regarding the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in India: job displacement, proliferation of misinformation, and preservation of research integrity. While legitimate, these are not necessarily the top concerns with respect to AI. The article lacks comprehensiveness and portrays AI in a predominantly negative light. The proposed recommendations are likely to substantially impede India’s contributions to the development of AI and severely restrict its ability to use AI for its benefit. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: America Can’t Rein In Trump, And The World May Have To Pay

Last weekend, America’s 21st century version of pre-1933 Adolf Hitler (minus the military service) — Donald Trump — said at an election rally that he once told a NATO leader that he will let Russian President Vladimir Putin “do whatever the hell he wants” to any NATO member that does not pay its full dues to the Americans. You know, protection money. Trump, by his own admission, told the president of a NATO ally, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (the Russians) to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” Read the full article here.

ThePrint | India can be a major drone hub—if it learns to take risks, accept losses

The multiplicity of roles that drones can undertake has been battle-tested and their utility has been convincingly established. Depending on the role, drones come in various sizes. At the higher end of lethality are the American MQ 9-Reaper and at the lower end of surveillance is the Black Hornet weighing less than 1.2 ounces. India is in the process of acquiring 31 higher-end MQ9B Predator armed drones from the United States at an approximate cost of Rs 2.5 lakh crore. The deal was announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in 2023. The Navy already operates two unarmed Predator drones, which are on lease, at the Rajali naval air station in Tamil Nadu. The new acquisitions will be apportioned to the three Services with the Navy getting the majority share. Apart from the political message of reliance on the US for major weapon systems, it also signals that Atmanirbharta is not currently feasible in this class of weapon systems. Read the full article here.

Defence & Security Alert | Navigating Personnel Costs and Capital Expenditure in the Indian Defence Budget

A year ago, in an article for the DSA magazine, Rakshith Shetty conducted a thorough analysis of the defence pension systems in India and the United States. This inquiry led to the identification of four crucial insights extracted from the intricate framework of the U.S. defence pension system. In the present discussion, he pivots towards a deeper exploration, shedding light on the challenges hindering the modernisation efforts of the Indian Armed Forces. Read the full article here.

The New Indian Express | Toll Plazas: Where FASTags have fallen short and why India's new dream might prove harder to realise

There was once a toll to driving through toll roads on highways. To help ease it came the pan-India rollout of a FASTag based system in December 2019. More than four years later, we are now talking of a next-gen Global Navigation Satellite System based toll plazas. But how much of a difference have we seen? I was wondering about this while being stuck at Mahasamudram Toll Plaza (MTS) on National Highway 4 (now renumbered as 69) in Andhra Pradesh. This is a key stop, located around 170 km east of the Karnataka capital on the Bengaluru-Chennai highway. With an ocean of vehicles waiting to pass, there was total chaos on January 13 during the Makar Sankranti weekend. Read the full article here.

South Asian Voices | Navigating the India-Maldives Diplomatic Spat

The Maldives, often depicted in the news as a tropical paradise, recently had a less idyllic appearance in the headlines. President Mohamed Muizzu’s government ruffled feathers in New Delhi by asking India to withdraw its military personnel by March 15, 2024, using their recent high-level core group meeting to deliberate upon a “mutually workable solution.” To persuade voters, Muizzu built on the “India Out” campaign, which portrayed the presence of Indian personnel as a threat to Maldivian sovereignty. He promised to remove Indian troops from the Maldives shores and balance trade relations with India, which he claimed were heavily tilted toward India’s favor. Muizzu’s new “Pro Maldives” strategy led to him win the elections with 54 percent of the votes in September 2023. Malé recently scrapped a key pact involving a water survey, and Muizzu chose China for one of his first overseas visits in January after becoming president. There, he signed 20 agreements, including one on tourism cooperation. Read the full article here.

Mint | Science fiction must escape its dystopic trap and foster hope

There was a big controversy in the science-fiction community last month when it emerged that the 2023 Hugo Awards, decided in October at the world convention in Chengdu, China, had inexplicably disqualified a few prominent entries from the list of nominations. Those quietly dropped included R.F. Kuang’s bestselling Babel and Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow, prompting suspicion that they might have triggered Beijing’s censorship filters. Even an entry by the legendary Neil Gaiman was disqualified. A couple of heads have rolled since then, but the mystery remains. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | GoI’s Rs 10,000 crore plan for a ‘sovereign AI’ computing infrastructure needs a rethink

The union government has recently announced plans for an ambitious Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing mission with a budget of Rs 10,000 crore. This initiative seeks to create a ‘sovereign AI’ computing infrastructure that can provide computing resources as a service to Indian startups, particularly in the sectors of agriculture, healthcare, and education. AI is undeniably a technology of immense transformative potential with many applications. However, the government's strategy to build the necessary computational infrastructure is not the best use of public funds. The aim of harnessing the benefits of AI for Indians will be better served if the government concentrates its efforts and resources on areas that are not typically addressed by the private sector. Read the full article here.

Fulcrum | India and China’s Volatile New Status Quo

In early January, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke at a symposium on the country’s foreign relations. The speech touched upon the churn in China’s ties with several countries. While India was not included in that list, the Sino-Indian relationship remained abnormal since their standoff in Eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020. It bears repeating that this would have repercussions for Southeast Asia and the wider region. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | Karnataka’s plan to fix prices for Uber-Ola cabs is going to boomerang badly

There’s ridiculous and then, there’s this! In a long list of antagonist policy decisions taken against cab-aggregators by Indian state governments, the latest one by the Karnataka government takes the cake. In a policy that plans to emulate the pricing structure of the city’s autos, the Karnataka government plans to fix prices for all taxis in the state. In the new fare structure, all taxis will be categorised into three segments based on the purchase value of the vehicle and the prices will be fixed for each segment. Read the full article here.

The Diplomat | India Has Good Reason to Be Concerned About China’s Maritime Research Vessels

In September 2019, the Indian Navy drove away the Shiyan 1, a Chinese research vessel that had been caught operating without authorization in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coast of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This move was undertaken in line with Article 246 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which prohibits any country from conducting marine scientific research in the EEZ of a coastal state without consent. It also stipulates that such consent should be ideally granted in “normal circumstances.” But given the context – China’s research activities in the South China Sea, as well as the larger Chinese strategy of military-civil fusion, which has blurred the line between the scientific and military-related activities of its vessels – the circumstances were hardly normal. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | Why Budget 2024 will rank as a good budget

Ceteris paribus, a boring budget is a good budget and this one definitely fits the bill. The impressive part was the resistance on part of the government to introduce any big, populist measures aimed at strengthening their position before the upcoming elections. As the name suggests, this is an interim plan until the real deal in July 2024, which the Finance Minister seemed very confident of being the one to present. The interim budget speech by the Finance Minister for 2024-25 sounded largely like a report card of past achievements rather than a plan proposal for the upcoming year. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: Forget Trump, Biden Has A Bigger Problem — A West Asia Conflagration

At the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, the Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature was awarded to British filmmaker James Marsh, whose masterpiece ‘Man on Wire’ had enthralled audiences the world over since its release the previous year. The movie features maverick Frenchman Philippe Petit who, in 1974, performed what was then perhaps the most dangerous stunt you could ever conceive of — a highwire walk 1312 feet above the ground on a 200kg steel cable that connected the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. He accomplished that with just a 30-foot, 25 kg balancing pole, with no protective gear whatsoever. He walked for 45 minutes, and made eight passes along the wire, during which he even danced and sat down on the wire to salute the crowd below. He was later arrested, but released on the promise that he will perform for kids in a much safer setting (which he not only did, but he has been living in New York ever since). Read the full article here.

Mint | We need to build social capital for a better quality of urban life

Five years after Bengaluru’s Church Street received a facelift, it is struggling with dumped garbage, broken pavements, damaged street lights, brazen illegal parking and inadequate maintenance in general. It has been painful to observe this deterioration right outside my office. At this point, you are perhaps rolling your eyes and saying “what’s new?", since we all know about the corruption in local government, incompetence of city authorities and the ‘lack of civic sense’ among our people. Read the full article here.

Times of India | Republic Day reminder: Let’s reclaim the right to economic freedom

Let’s get the basics out of the way — we celebrate the Republic because it prohibits any majority from running roughshod based on its numerical strength. The Constitution limits the power of governments and groups to protect the minority of One, i.e. every individual. The Republic grants fundamental rights to individuals to live, trade, work and protest peacefully. Yet, among these freedoms, the one that governments most readily and frequently trample upon — with little or no opposition—is the right to economic freedom. We can endlessly debate the current state of political or religious freedom and the decline of the freedom of expression, and that is partly the point — there is at least a debate. Read the full article here.

Le Grand Continent | The Future of the Sino-Indian Rivalry

“China+1: this is the name given to the diversification strategy adopted by a number of countries and companies to reduce their dependence on China as a single manufacturing or supply center. This approach involves exploring alternative locations beyond China to transform the geography of supply chains and minimize the risks associated with over-reliance on a single supplier. It reflects a broader effort by countries and businesses to counterbalance China's economic dominance and adapt to changes in global power relations. Analyzes of trade and investment data over the past three years indicate that the European Union, Mexico, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam have become the main beneficiaries of the China+1 strategy in sectors such as machine tools, automobiles, transportation equipment and electrical equipment.

India is also seeking to capitalize on concern over China's dominance of global supply chains by reforming its economic and regulatory framework with a view to boosting its attractiveness. India's strategy thus includes three components: reducing its dependence on China, attracting investments from those seeking to diversify their trade relations and adopting a protectionist policy by introducing customs duties on imports.”

This article was originally published in French, Italian and Spanish by the Le Grand Continent. The unedited English version of the article can be found here.

Bol India Bol | Why Neither Vivek Nor Nikki Can Out-Trump Trump?

Sometime in 2003, India’s Left leaders went to meet then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to convince him to not send the nation’s troops to Iraq to fight the ‘War of Terrorism’ that the United States had initiated in retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks. The US had created a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and President George W. Bush wanted India to be part of it. Vajpayee was dead against it, but he had two major concerns: One, refusing the US would be diplomatically awkward; and two, some of his senior cabinet ministers, led by LK Advani, and the country’s intelligentsia, including leading editors in New Delhi, were goading the Prime Minister to send our soldiers to Baghdad and exhorting him to be “on the right side of history”. Read the full article here.

The Hindu | The need to overhaul a semiconductor scheme

The mid-term appraisal of the semiconductor Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme is due soon. Since its announcement, the DLI scheme has approved only seven start-ups, markedly short of its target of supporting 100 over five years. This impact assessment, therefore, presents an opportunity for policymakers to appraise and revamp the scheme. India’s $10 billion Semicon India Program has had mixed results, at best. There are three goals of India’s semiconductor strategy. The first is to reduce dependence on semiconductor imports, particularly from China, and especially in strategic and emerging sectors, ranging from defence applications to Artificial Intelligence development. The second is to build supply chain resilience by integrating into the semiconductor global value chain (GVC). The third is to double down on India’s comparative advantage: India already plays host to the design houses of every major global semiconductor industry player and Indian chip design engineers are an indispensable part of the semiconductor GVC. Read the full article here.

The Diplomat | Playing the Long Game: Ukraine’s Approach to China

Multiple news articles report Beijing snubbing Ukraine during the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Switzerland, with Chinese Premier Li Qiang refusing to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In response, Zelenskyy clarified that he never wanted to meet Li, suggesting that the latter was not high-ranking enough to be worth meeting. “There is a Chinese premier – then our prime minister will meet with him. I would love to meet with the leader of China,” the Ukrainian president said. “As far as I know, [in China] Xi Jinping makes decisions, and in Ukraine, I make decisions. I don’t need just any dialogues; I need important decisions from the leaders who make these decisions.” Read the full article here.