India Last Week #13
A round-up of research & reportage on India across climate, energy, foreign policy, politics & more over the last week
Climate, Energy & Environment -
“First set up in 2018, agromet units provided farmers free-of-cost weather advisory services, and crucial information related to sowing, use of fertilisers, harvesting and storing crops… These were vital services at a time when climate change is making farming in India more uncertain than ever, and incomes of farmers have barely risen, despite a promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016, and repeated in 2018, that farm incomes would double by 2022… The NITI Aayog suggested that district agromet services be privatised and monetised, according to the documents obtained under the right to information act (RTI) 2005, as opposed to the existing free services. Experts said that most farmers would not be able to afford to subscribe to a private service.” Read more: Rishika Pardikar, Article 14
“The Indian government has consistently argued, correctly, that mitigating climate change is the responsibility of developed countries whose emissions created the crisis… But as the economy of the world’s most populous nation grows, the government must focus on its own responsibilities to the poorest and most vulnerable people—those hurt most by climate change—both inside and outside the country… The extreme weather reinforces long-standing inequities of caste, class, and gender in marginalized communities. The poor starve for water and electricity during heat waves while luxury shopping malls are extravagantly lit and cooled through the night… To control the consequences of the climate crisis, India also needs to address glaring domestic inequities. Today, owning an air conditioner and a refrigerator is a matter of life and death—yet only 25 percent of Indians own an AC (though the number is growing), and about 37 percent own a refrigerator, according to the latest government data.” Read more: Vidya Krishnan, Harvard Public Health
“Filming a Malabar pit viper chowing down on a bush frog is not how you may spend your evenings, but this is just another Tuesday night for wildlife biologist Yatin Kalki (28). Armed with nothing but his smartphone, Kalki is among several Indian biologists making a run at content creation in the hope that more people will learn to love and eventually help conserve local species of reptiles and amphibians that are traditionally demonised and feared… But how can biologist-creators attempt to monetise online without eroding their audience’s trust? The answer, followers say, lies in creating content with a purpose beyond self-promotion.” Read more: Rhea Arora, Mongabay
“Ola Electric's $734 million initial public offering (IPO) was fully subscribed on the second day of bidding, reaching the target amid a sharp sell-off in global equity markets. The SoftBank-backed company's IPO, the first by an electric vehicle maker in India and also the country's biggest this year, has received bids worth about $447 million, 1.06 times the shares on offer, exchange data showed on Monday… Ola, founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, will use a major chunk of the IPO proceeds to invest in its in-house cell manufacturing which will be used to power its own scooters. This initiative, an India-first, would boost cost efficiency at the currently loss-making company. The IPO has also drawn interest from big institutions including Nomura, Norges Bank and a few domestic mutual funds, which bid for $2 billion worth of shares, six times the amount set aside for them.” Read more: Nandan Mandayam & Kashish Tandon, Reuters
Economy -
“India needs to develop capacity to deal with non-trade issues during free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal has said. He said that non-trade issues have increasingly been emerging in trade negotiations… The secretary observed that non-trade issues have increasingly been emerging in trade negotiations, raising the need for cross-disciplinary capacity building in FTA negotiations for India and other developing countries," the commerce ministry said. It added that the Centre is aiming to create a dedicated pool of legal experts who could provide technical inputs for enhancing India's participation in international trade and investment negotiations and dispute settlement.” Read more: Business Standard
“Those who think growth will automatically solve the job problem ignore that 50 years of NSSO surveys on employment and unemployment have made it clear that India’s job availability has not kept pace with the rate of economic growth… Estimates for giving jobs to, say, 20 million urban casual workers easily run to above Rs. 1 trillion. To get an idea of comparative magnitude, in September 2019 the Ministry of Finance in a single stroke substantially reduced the corporate tax rate that amounted to a revenue loss of Rs. 1.84 trillion rupees over the next two years – all this without any success in the purported objective of increasing private investment.” Read more: Pranab Bardhan, Ideas for India
“An Indian government panel tasked with revising the nation’s consumer price index is considering a substantial cut in the weighting of food, according to a person familiar with the matter, a move that could curb inflation spikes in the South Asian nation. The panel, under the statistics ministry, is discussing a proposal to reduce the weight of food in the consumer price basket by as much as 8 percentage points, according to the person, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are private. The food and beverage category makes up 54.2% of the current CPI basket. The CPI is currently based on consumer spending patterns surveyed in 2011-2012, which economists say are outdated and may be distorting the official inflation data the central bank uses to set interest rates.” Read more: Economic Times
“Adani’s dominance in key sectors of India’s economy makes it hard for global funds to overlook the group. With a total market capitalization of $213 billion across 10 listed units alone, the conglomerate controls vast swathes of the infrastructure that powers the nation’s growth and underpins the Asian expansion of companies from Apple Inc. to Amazon.com Inc. The Adani Group is India’s biggest importer of coal, its largest owner of solar farms and its second-biggest manufacturer of cement. Adani-owned ports carry almost half the country’s shipping containers, while more than 90 million people use its airports each year.” Read more: Anto Antony, Bloomberg
Foreign Policy & Security -
“The sudden fall of Sheikh Hasina after 15 years as prime minister has generated a sense of disbelief, relief and euphoria in Bangladesh. Across the border, however, there is a conspicuous silence. India, which surrounds Bangladesh on three sides, has maintained a studied reticence for over 24 hours as it grapples with the fast-changing developments, trying to understand the new polity and its attitude towards New Delhi… There is broad consensus that India, like Bangladeshis themselves, was caught off guard by the speed of the change in Dhaka.” Read more: Devirupa Mitra, The Wire
“Hasina was a longstanding ally of New Delhi and went to great lengths to protect Indian interests along the eastern frontiers. So, would her sudden departure from Bangladeshi politics threaten these interests again? Is the Northeast suddenly vulnerable to a fresh set of cross-border threats? What are the contingencies here?… Hasina’s abrupt flight should make India nervous. It creates a power vacuum that certain organisations and political factions hostile to India, mostly those allied to the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), could rush in to fill. For India, this could revive the ghosts of the 1990s and early 2000s. Subversive networks, including those linked to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), could now regain ground.” Read more: Angshuman Choudhury, Hindustan Times
“To avoid falling into the trap of cyclical claims about India leading or losing the neighbourhood every few months, New Delhi would be wise to invest far more resources—both within the government and the research ecosystem—to equip itself with expert knowledge on the increasingly complex politics and economics of this volatile neighbourhood. So while Prime Minister Hasina’s fall from power was not ‘made in India’, it still represents a major setback for Indian interests. She delivered what no other Bangladeshi leader was willing or able to—she terminated safe havens for anti-India insurgents, extradited terrorists, and finalised the land boundary agreement. While engaging China and other countries in a dangerous balancing game, Hasina always ensured not to cross New Delhi’s red lines.” Read more: Constantino Xavier, The Print
“Like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, India aims to explore all prospects of cooperation in a changing global order without being ‘locked’ into a single set of alliances. But unlike the Gulf states, New Delhi views China as a systemic rival – even more so than Europeans, as the two share a long and highly disputed border. New Delhi therefore has a strong interest in containing Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region and in developing countries more broadly… India’s rivalry with China is another major reason for India’s participation in IMEC. New Delhi has never participated in the BRI, despite India being the second-largest shareholder of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Instead, India experiences the BRI’s growing reach in south Asia as encirclement and has gradually begun to push back against Beijing. IMEC would contribute to this.” Read more: Alberto Rizzi, European Council on Foreign Relations
“With the rise of Houthi maritime attacks in late 2023, the Indian Navy has taken a proactive stance, conducting more frequent, intensive and comprehensive patrols. This proactive approach has been widely appreciated by both domestic and international actors, showcasing the Indian Navy’s commitment to safeguarding maritime interests in the region… The broader strategic implications of the PLAN’s and IN’s activities in the IOR need to be discussed at the highest levels. This includes the impact of these activities on regional power dynamics, alliances and the overall maritime security architecture in the region. Based on current trends, considering the future trajectory of PLAN’s involvement in the IOR and outlining potential future roles and strategies for the IN would be beneficial.” Read more: Siddhant Hira, Natstrat
People & Politics -
“Since 1997, when the NHRC began maintaining a database on police killings, at least 3,584 people have died in police shootouts in the country. The state of U.P. tops this list, with 1,114 killings. From January 2017 to April 2023, the U.P. police said, 183 people were killed in 10,900 police shootouts throughout the state. The state also witnessed an exponential rise in “half-encounters,” when police inflict non-life-threatening injuries on alleged criminals, for example by shooting them in the leg. Over 5,000 people were injured this way during this period… Human rights activists and families of victims have claimed that most of these police actions are “fake encounters,” a term used to describe extrajudicial killings. They allege that, contrary to the police’s claims that these incidents were “spontaneous confrontations,” most of them were planned… The investigation also concluded that the 2014 guidelines issued by India’s Supreme Court on investigations into police shootouts had proved ineffective. The police used loopholes in the laws and guidelines to grant themselves impunity.” Read more: Saurav Das, New Lines Magazine
“The economy of Mumbai is growing, but the city is neither sustainable nor entirely liveable except for those at the top of the economic pyramid. Detaching the economy from the quality of life for the working millions in a city of nearly 21 million and delinking it from its natural ecological template—an estuary, an archipelago—only sets it up for worse times ahead… The political economy of Mumbai—the corporates, the real estate czars, the fintech outfits, the unicorn startups, the education cartels, the infrastructure builders—prefers it this way: allow the blitzkrieg of glamour to build the perception of the city and cover up its gritty underbelly with grandiose announcements. To this deadly mix another layer has been added in recent years: the quiet spiriting away of some of its defining industries by the BJP-led government at the Centre and in the State. Several diamond trading businesses, housed in Pancharatna in south Mumbai and later in the Bharat Diamond Bourse in the BKC, opened or shifted offices to the massive Surat Diamond Bourse last year… Four major projects worth nearly Rs.1.8 lakh crore were moved out of Maharashtra as soon as the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government assumed charge in 2022.” Read more: Smruti Koppikar, Frontline
“In textbooks of constitutional theory, constitutions bring closure – the peaceful ever after following upheavals. They end revolutions. In India, there was no revolution to end. But there was one to be prevented. From where the constitution makers stood, this future “revolution” had two possible incarnations. It could take the shape of a violent uprising of the disaffected masses, fueled by inequality, exploitation, and unfulfilled aspirations for freedom, causing “insurrections and bloodshed”. Alternatively, it could be a thoroughgoing transformation of the socio-economic conditions, carefully planned and managed. Their challenge was authoring a revolution of the second kind, to avoid a revolution of the first kind authored in the streets.” Read more: Sandipto Dasgupta, Scroll
Tech -
“The creation of a sustainable semiconductor ecosystem for India may require looking at four key elements: (1) consistent government support; (2) strategic positioning of the domestic semiconductor industry when targeting global semiconductor firms; (3) strategic spending of taxpayer money; and (4) the need to set up more industrial/science parks for overseas entrepreneurs, especially those from Taiwan… It is worth noting that India is not yet truly competing in advanced fabrication facilities. The Indian government’s professed strategy is to encourage mature nodes of more than 40 nm, where it has identified more potential for growth. Here, overseas semiconductor firms have found potential in, and also a way to stay connected to, the Indian market.” Read more: Konark Bhandari, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
“Recent elections have shown that digital media can serve as a critical alternative space for creators and commentators to scrutinise government policies and demand accountability. It can enable dissenting voices that don’t find traction in mainstream media and help organise counter-narratives around critical issues — all vital for a well-functioning and vibrant democracy. The Broadcasting Services Bill threatens to disrupt this dynamic. The draft Bill reimagines the term “broadcaster” to include digital news broadcasters, defining them as anyone who “systematically” broadcasts news and current affairs online, including on social media platforms via text, video or audio. What this means is that commentators on YouTube, Twitter, blogging portals or podcasts discussing current affairs and socio-political issues will all get covered under the Bill. Digital news broadcasters with a certain threshold of subscribers/viewers must notify the government, conform to a Programme Code, set up a grievance redressal mechanism, and adhere to a three-tier regulatory structure.” Read more: Rohit Kumar & Srijan Rai, Indian Express
“A decade ago, Urban Company emerged as a beacon of hope for women wanting to gain economic independence in a country with one of the lowest numbers of female workers in the world — on their own terms and in their own time. But as the years have passed, workers say the company has stripped away their flexibility and autonomy… In June, dozens of women workers protested outside Urban Company’s office in the southern city of Bengaluru over divisive policies, including the rating system… Workers say the company is tantamount to a monopoly in India, which means that without a game-changing strike or government regulation, women will continue to feel trapped by the app.” Read more: Rest of World
Bonus [on Vinesh Phogat] -
“Hours after Indian grappler Vinesh Phogat was disqualified from the Paris Olympics after she was found to be above the required weight for her 50 kg wrestling category match, Union sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya in a statement in the Lok Sabha said that the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has lodged a strong protest with the International Wrestling Federation. In his six-minute speech, Mandaviya however devoted only about two and a half minutes to the events that transpired before Phogat was disqualified and the steps being taken to address the issue, and spent the remaining approximately four minutes detailing the financial assistance given to the grappler by the Indian government for her training.” Read more: Sravasti Dasgupta, The Wire
“If Paris 2024 must find an exemplar in its push for gender parity, respect and inclusion they need look no further than this fighter of fire, ice and unshakeable belief. It is what has brought Vinesh Phogat into the gold medal round at the Paris Olympics. She reminded everyone in India - those who tried to crush her, those who believed in her - that no matter what colour the medal, she will not go quietly… A central figure in the wrestlers' protests against the alleged venality and violence of federation boss Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Vinesh the athlete transported herself from the ring out into public life over the last year. During the many nights and days spent on the pavements of Delhi in the heat and cold, Vinesh has found herself growing, strengthening.” Read more: Sharda Ugra, ESPN
“Vinesh Phogat has won before. Vinesh has lost before. Her wins have been glorious and joyful, her defeats have been painful and heartbreaking, and they have always been public. Her victories, her fights with the system have always been followed by millions. Her lowest moments have also come in front of prying eyes… For reasons beyond her control, Vinesh had to wrestle in the women’s 50kg category at the Paris Olympics. She wanted to compete in the still manageable 53kg category but a younger rival - Antim Panghal - had claimed that spot. Vinesh desperately asked for trials to determine who would represent India at the Olympics for that weight. The federation didn’t budge. If she had to go to the Olympics, Vinesh had to wrestle at 50kg or she wouldn’t get to wrestle at all.” Read more: Jonathan Selvaraj, Sportstar