India Last Week #12
India Last Week #12
A round-up of research & reportage on India across climate, energy, foreign policy, politics & more over the last week
Climate, Energy & Environment -
“India’s third biennial report submitted to the UNFCCC in February 2021 said that the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sequestered 330.76 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2, which is about 15% of India’s total CO2 emissions from all sectors in 2016. It also said the forest and tree cover had increased to 807,276 sq km in 2019 from 802,088 sq km in 2017. The net change in the carbon stocks of forests was +42.6 Mt as per the report, which cites Forest Survey of India (FSI) data. Several experts and the UNFCCC have questioned FSI’s methodology for calculating forest cover. Increase in forest cover has happened outside the area classified in land records as "forests", a 2022 report by the Centre for Science and Environment says.” Read more: Sushmita, IndiaSpend
“India possesses the most robust automotive-component manufacturing sector among the three countries, consistently generating a trade surplus in recent years. Domestic firms account for roughly 70% of the automotive component sector’s revenue. However, India’s component sector is quite dependent on ICE-related components: in 2022, 54% of all component exports were accounted for by the categories “engine components” and “drive transmission & steering,” which were also the two product categories with the largest trade surpluses. Although there is a relative absence of locally owned lead firms in Brazil and South Africa, Indian OEMs such Tata Motors and Mahindra have strong capabilities and a large domestic market. This is a core reason why India has much better foundations for competing in the EV space than Brazil or South Africa.” Read more: Rasmus Lema, Tobias Wuttke, and Primoz Konda, Industrial and Corporate Change
“Adani Green Energy (AGEL), India’s largest renewable energy firm, has raised $400 million in financing from a consortium of international lenders for its under-construction 750 megawatt (Mw) solar power projects in Rajasthan and Gujarat, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The Rajasthan project, with a capacity of 500 Mw, has a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Solar Energy Corporation of India, while the 250 Mw Gujarat project is a standalone merchant power project being implemented at the world’s largest renewable energy cluster in Khavda, Gujarat.” Read more: Dev Chatterjee, Business Standard
“Using new administrative billing data and close-election regression discontinuities, I show that billed electricity consumption is lower for constituencies of the winning party by almost 40%, while actual consumption, measured by nighttime lights, is higher. I document the covert way in which politicians subsidize constituents by manipulating bills. These actions have substantial welfare implications, with an efficiency loss of $0.9 billion, leading to unreliable electricity supply and significant negative consequences for development.” Read more: Meera Mahadevan, American Economic Review
Economy [Budget special] -
“GoI’s [Government of India] expenditure on the social sector as a proportion of total expenditure has remained stagnant. In FY 14-15, the GoI spent 22 per cent of its total expenditure on the social sector, which decreased to 20 percent in FY 19-20. In FY 20-21, the share reached an all-time high of 30 per cent, driven mainly by an increase in expenditure on Food Subsidies. Post-pandemic, social sector expenditure share has been declining, accounting for 20 per cent in FY 22-23 and estimated to further decline to 19 per cent in FY 24-25 BEs.” Read more: Avani Kapur & Sharad Pandey, Foundation for Responsive Governance
“Rural distress does seem to be weighing on the government’s mind but it doesn’t appear to have a clue on alleviating policies. The Congress party had in its manifesto critiqued the government’s productivity-linked incentive scheme and promised to upgrade it to an employment-linked incentive scheme if it came to power. Sitharaman’s budget proposes to roll out no less than three schemes as part of the prime minister’s package for employment-linked incentives.” Read more: Puja Mehra, Mint
“Nomura estimates that requests from coalition partners could cost about 0.2 per cent of India’s GDP this year. Modi, a domineering leader known for bold, surprise announcements, has never ruled in a minority government. Investors are watching closely for an early indication of whether he can adapt to the compromises required of coalition politics, while continuing the fiscal consolidation and business-friendly reforms that he hopes will make India a global manufacturing and tech hub to rival China.” Read more: Benjamin Parkin, Jyotsna Singh & Chris Kay, Financial Times
“Another lesson which the 2024 election results have taught the BJP is that political returns from its asset generation-focused welfare programmes are subject to the law of diminishing marginal political utility. Among the most important headwinds for the BJP in these elections was from India’s educated unemployed who have been struggling to land well-paying jobs. The budget, in keeping with the Economic Survey’s prognosis, has once again hinted that the mainstay of job-creation will have to be in the realm of the private sector and not the public sector.” Read more: Roshan Kishore, Hindustan Times
“To the credit of the government, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech seems to have internalised that there is indeed a jobs problem — there are few good jobs on offer, the emerging pool of workers is simply not skilled enough, and the youth is delaying joining the labour force… This is a laudable start but is unlikely to have much effect unless the more basic problems of fixing labour practices are addressed. Why will an employer who has set up an entire business on contract labour take the risk of hiring permanent labour in return for a Rs 3,000 monthly subsidy in EPFO contributions for two years? The question endures, for out beyond the myopia of a scheme here and a freebie there, it does not seem like the government has the consistency to see through fundamental structural changes in the economy.” Read more: Rohit Lamba, Indian Express
Foreign Policy & Security -
“As India sets to navigate the complexities of its relations with China and the US, its partnership with Taiwan is under the radar. Chinese analysts have resorted to cautioning both India and Taiwan against investing in the relationship, for reasons ranging from unsustainability of their approaches to trade, to the countermeasures China will be incited to take if India violates the ‘One-China Principle’.” Read more: Anushka Saxena, Takshashila Institution
“All of India’s major partners are talking to Beijing. Yet there is consternation when India makes an attempt to revive summit level contact, not with an adversary, but with a friend in Moscow. This is a world of double standards, and selective assertion of national security interests. All roads do seem to lead to Beijing. The question is where does India’s road lead to. If we were to follow the above footsteps, it should also lead to Beijing.” Read more: Pankaj Saran and Prateek Kapil, Natstrat
“India needs to accept that the world is dominated by competition between the US and China. And India’s desire to become one of several poles cannot be fulfilled if China’s bid for hegemony in Asia succeeds, so it needs US support. As the US has similar concerns regarding China, India must leverage this to cultivate deeper military and technological ties with America. That is how it can strengthen its position on the world stage.” Read more: Rahul Jaybhay, Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist
“India’s independent policy of close relations with Russia and calling for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war, both of which are frowned upon by the West, do not distract India from strengthening the Quad. Some Quad members and European countries are themselves enhancing their bilateral engagement with China, underlining their differing bilateral and regional compulsions. Against the backdrop of India’s enthusiastic engagement with Quad, its engagement with BRICS presents a different conundrum. India was an enthusiastic founder of BRICS… India’s participation in BRICS has fluctuated from enthusiastic to lukewarm. While BRICS’ initiatives such as New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement have been pioneering, the attempt by China to use BRICS to grandstand and push its world view on the Global South and now, to push back the West has made India wary of giving BRICS a higher profile.” Read more: T. S. Tirumurti, The Hindu
People & Politics -
“IAS officer Divya Mittal, whose transfer order in September 2023 had led to an outrage in Mirzapur, has been posted as district magistrate in eastern UP’s Deoria district. She had worked for months to get piped water delivered to Lahuria Dah village in Mirzapur. On August 30, 2023, after piped water reached the village, Mittal held a small “jal pujan”, where she opened a tap with running water for the first time in 70 years. This apparently didn’t go well with the local BJP leader Vipul Singh, who wrote to CM Yogi Adityanath, complaining about her. Subsequently, she was transferred on September 1 and then put on waitlist from September 4, 2023 to February 1, 2024.” Read more: Asad Rehman, Indian Express
“Researchers say that they can make reliable projections of national trends without up-to-date census data, but estimates become less reliable at the regional, state and local levels. “We have a fair idea as to how many people there are in India, but we have no idea where they are,” says Sen… Researchers are finding it especially difficult to study trends in fertility rates and internal migration, because there has been so much change in Indian society during the past decade. Since 2011, there has been rapid rural-to-urban migration, as well as a mass return of urban migrants to rural areas during the pandemic. “It’s hard to say what proportion of the Indian population is living in urban areas right now,” says Khera. She estimates that the use of outdated census data means that more than 100 million people in rural areas are excluded from government food subsidies.” Read more: Smriti Mallapaty, Nature
“Our findings demonstrate that the toll of the pandemic was experienced unevenly within India. Whereas in most countries, losses to life expectancy were greater for males than females, we document a loss in life expectancy among females that is 1 year more than for males. A larger mortality increase among females relative to males is also evident in India’s vital statistics in subsample states that have high rates of male and female death registration. Among other factors, gender inequality in health care and allocation of resources within households may explain these patterns… We also find greater life expectancy declines among disadvantaged caste and religious groups relative to privileged social groups in the subsample… Before the pandemic began, each of these three groups faced large disadvantages in life expectancy at birth relative to high-caste Hindus. The pandemic exacerbated these disparities.” Read more: Aashish Gupta, Payal Hathi, Murad Banaji, Prankur Gupta, Ridhi Kashyap, Vipul Paikra, Kanika Sharma, Anmol Somanchi, Nikkil Sudharsan & Sangita Vyas, Science
“During the period between February 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022, medical crowdfunding on Ketto proved highly competitive, with the top 1% of campaigns gathering 24% of all funds raised. Conversely, the lowest 16% accounted for only 0.02% of the funding on the platform…. At its simplest level, we discern inequality in campaign creation - while SC and ST groups constitute nearly a quarter of India’s population, they account for only 10.2% of all campaigns initiated on Ketto. Additionally, inequality at a per-campaign level implies that SC and ST-led campaigns accumulate just 8.4% of the funds raised. Specifically, campaigns initiated by individuals from the OTHERS group typically raise 30% more than average SC campaigns and 10% more than average ST campaigns. This inequality persists despite considering various textual and visual factors related to the campaign and controlling for the time of the campaign launch and the recipient’s State.” Read more: Arpit Shah, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore Working Paper
Tech -
“Apple’s total annual sales in India jumped by 33% to nearly $8 billion, according to a Bloomberg report on Monday. Apple normally doesn’t disclose country-by-country sales figures, so it gives us a rare look at the company’s retail business on the subcontinent. To be clear, it’s still early days: India represents just 2% of Apple’s overall sales, and most estimates have Android controlling over 80% of the market. But those two figures show why India is so important to Apple: It’s a major market with plenty of room for growth.” Read more: Russell Brandom, Rest of World
“The Shakti microprocessors marked India’s entry into indigenous semiconductor manufacturing and advanced microprocessor technology… The project, which started at IIT Madras in 2014, was meant to reduce dependency on imported microchips, at least according to media reports at the time. But nearly six years after the announcements, we have yet to see any signs of it… Interestingly, companies such as Mindgrove Technologies and InCore Technologies have emerged from that ecosystem and have developed chips that they are now bringing to market.” Read more: Pritam Bordoloi, Analytics India Mag
“Last week, the state government said it would enforce up to 100% reservation for state natives in private-sector jobs. Following widespread outrage on social media, officials temporarily paused the plan. Later, the state government said it had received a proposal to increase the working hours for IT and ITES sector employees to 14 hours per day, triggering protests from the employees’ union… Perhaps most importantly, these moves could potentially impact the decisions of companies planning to invest in Bangalore. Rahul Sasi, CEO of CloudSEK, said in a LinkedIn post that companies will face significant challenges in finding the best talent, leading to a potential decline in innovation and competitiveness.” Read more: Prasanth Aby Thomas, CIO
“Welfare mechanisms may be geared towards benefitting the public but still fail to serve their interests. For instance, in 2020, the government blanketly imposed the use of the contact-tracing app Aarogya Setu during the pandemic, even as it raised a multitude of concerns around efficacy, data privacy, and consent… In another example, India’s recently enacted data protection law did not contain a standard exemption given to journalistic entities to protect their activities from arbitrary privacy claims. The government hasn’t clarified why such a provision, which found place in previous drafts, was removed from law.” Read more: Shashank Mohan & Sukriti, Tech Policy Press
Bonus -
“Scott R Stroud’s The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: An Intellectual Biography of B R Ambedkar seeks to offer something still unavailable in the otherwise burgeoning literature on Ambedkar: “a sustained or in-depth accounting of Ambedkar’s engagement with [John] Dewey’s pragmatism” (p 4). The term “accounting” is apt. We get not only an account, a story, of Ambedkar’s exposure to, reception of, and creative engagement with the ideas of Dewey but also an account, an inventory, of precisely those words and passages of Dewey, which Ambedkar cited, appropriated, or altered for his own purposes in his own writings and speeches.” Read more: Chiangmong Khiamniungan, Economic and Political Weekly