India Last Week #42
A round-up of research & reportage on India across climate, energy, foreign policy, politics & more over the last week
Climate, Energy & Environment -
“India’s utility-scale renewable energy tendering market is reaching new heights, with record-breaking issuances in 2023 and 2024. In 2024, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) annual bidding plan, which mandates a minimum of 50GW of tendered capacity each year, primarily drove cumulative tender issuance to a record-high 73 gigawatts (GW)… In 2024, approximately 8.5GW of capacity in utility-scale renewable energy tenders was undersubscribed, five times higher than the undersubscription in 2023. This trend can be attributed to several factors, including complex tender designs (such as demand following FDRE), aggressive bidding during reverse auctions, and delays in the readiness of interstate transmission system (ISTS) infrastructure… From 2020 to 2024, 38.3GW of utility-scale renewable energy capacity was cancelled, accounting for about 19% of the total issued capacity during that period… Delays in project implementation pose a significant challenge to India’s renewable energy target for 2030. Ongoing issues with project realisation could deter investor interest in future renewable energy projects in India, potentially affecting the availability of low-cost financing from overseas large-scale investors.” Read more: Prabhakar Sharma, Ashita Srivastava, Deepalika Mehra & Vibhuti Garg, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
“Weeks after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sikkim cadre opposed an expert body’s approval to rebuild the Teesta III hydropower project in the state, a member of the state cadre has now moved court, challenging the decision to hand over the beleaguered project to renewable energy company Greenko. The dam was destroyed by a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in October 2023 but is proposed to be rebuilt in the fragile Himalayan state, despite several environmental risks… The approval by the centrally-appointed Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) to rebuild the Teesta III HEP came months after the acquisition by Greenko was accepted by the Competition Commission of India. The EAC gave its nod to rebuild the dam on January 10 this year… The petition raises serious allegations against the state government, claiming the cabinet ignored the central government’s recommendations in order to push the disinvestment through. Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang, however, has defended the decision and said, as per media reports, that the state government took this step to remain debt-free.” Read more: Simrin Sirur, Mongabay India
“India's imports of thermal coal - mainly used in power generation - fell for a sixth straight month in February, ship tracking data showed, as coal-fired power generation grew at a muted pace on the back of a slowdown in manufacturing activity. This is the longest such streak since February 2022, when imports declined for eight consecutive months. Manufacturing activity in the world's fastest growing major economy slowed to its weakest pace in over a year, stifling appetite for seaborne coal in the country and adding to pressure on declining on global thermal coal prices. Imports of thermal coal by India - the second largest importer in the world - fell 15.3% to 12.16 million metric tons in February, data from Indian consultancy Bigmint showed.” Read more: Sudarshan Varadhan, Reuters
“India stands at a critical juncture in wastewater management, with treated wastewater reuse emerging as a key solution to water scarcity… Haryana, with its dedicated Water Resources Authority, has made significant progress, whereas Uttar Pradesh lags due to the absence of a comprehensive reuse policy. However, nationwide adoption faces hurdles such as policy gaps, weak institutional coordination and financial constraints, which must be addressed to unlock wastewater reuse’s full potential. India’s wastewater management initially focused on sewage infrastructure and treatment plants, with little emphasis on the reuse of treated water. Over time, policies have shifted towards a circular economy approach, integrating wastewater reuse into urban water systems… Under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0, cities with over 100,000 people must recycle at least 20 per cent of their wastewater. However, as per CSE’s analysis, most ULBs lack the technical and financial capacity to integrate reuse into city water supply planning.” Read more: Faraz Ahmad & Sumita Singhal, Down to Earth
Economy -
“Only 28,141 interns accepted internship offers during 2024-2025… According to the PLFS, the unemployment rate went down from 6.1 per cent in 2017-2018 to 3.2 per cent in 2023-2024. A 3 per cent unemployment rate indicates hardly any unemployment… There are, however, two big loopholes. First, employment in agriculture, already uncomfortably high at 44.1 per cent in 2017-2018 (20.8 crore) has gone up further to 46.1 per cent in 2023-2024 (29.2 crore). Additionally, employment of 8.4 crore persons in agriculture only hides and aggravates existing massive hidden underemployment. Second, ‘unpaid labour in household enterprises’ workers (earn no wages, and it is wrong to categorise them as employed), part of self-employment jobs, increased from 13.6 per cent in 2017-2018 (6.4 crore) to 19.4 per cent in 2023-2024 (12.3 crore) contributing the creation of another 5.9 crore jobs… Thanks to automation and artificial intelligence, risk to jobs is massively increasing everywhere. The PLFS, the ELIs, and the Internship schemes may boost job statistics but provide no real jobs.” Read more: Subhash Chandra Garg, Deccan Herald
“Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was the net seller of over $36 billion between June and December to support the Indian Rupee, showed government’s written responses in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. Written replies by Minister of State in the Finance Ministry, Pankaj Chaudhary revealed that gross sale during 7 months of the current fiscal, starting June, by RBI was over $53 billion, while gross purchase was over $16.5 billion. This means that net sale was over $36 billion. However, this was not sufficient to stop the steep fall in rupee… Chaudhary admitted that the industries reliant on imported inputs may face cost pressures. However, besides exchange rate movements, exports and imports are determined by several other factors. For instance, global value chain integration necessities imports of intermediate goods for production and exports, and international prices of imported goods etc.” Read more: Shishir Sinha, The Hindu BusinessLine
“Real wages for salaried jobs were 1.7% lower in the 2024 June quarter (latest data available) compared to the pre-pandemic 2019 June quarter. Chart 1 shows the wages earned by salaried workers, adjusted for inflation. The workers’ real wages increased by 2% in June 2020 compared to the same quarter the previous year. But they dipped again by 6% in June 2021 and by 1% again in June 2022. Anamitra Roychowdhury, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, says that stagnation in the growth of real wages for salaried workers is “concerning” because there is more supply of labour than demand… After dipping during the pandemic, wages for casual labour have since increased. Real wages for casual labour were 12.3% higher in the 2024 June quarter compared to the pre-pandemic 2019 June quarter. In rural India, they increased by over 12% and in urban areas, by 11.4% in the same period. Professor Menon says, “Wages [for casual labour] may show an increase relative to other forms of work, but this is highly irregular and insecure work. An increase in wages for casual labour is not a net positive for the economy.” Read more: Samreen Wani, The Hindu
Foreign Policy & Security -
“It is quite telling that five months since the deal on disengagement, both sides are still working to pluck what are essentially low-hanging fruits. Two fundamental factors lie at the heart of the vexed nature of the India-China relationship. First, there is clearly a difference in how both sides view the nature of the standoff in Eastern Ladakh and the broader boundary issue… Beijing, meanwhile, has talked about its intent to work with India to “jointly preserve the peace and tranquillity in the border areas”. However, its officials have also said that “we should never allow bilateral relations to be defined by the boundary question, or let specific differences affect the overall picture of our bilateral ties.” Such compartmentalisation is inimical to ensuring stability and predictability in the relationship… For instance, reports have indicated that while India has been more open to Chinese investments, Beijing has cautioned its companies from investing in India. It has also actively blocked the transfer of equipment, machinery and technical personnel to India… This underscores that China continues to view India from the prism of competition.” Read more: Manoj Kewalramani, Indian Express
“The Dalai Lama’s successor will be born outside China, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism says in a new book, raising the stakes in a dispute with Beijing over control of the Himalayan region he fled more than six decades ago… He has previously said only that he could reincarnate outside Tibet, possibly in India where he lives in exile… Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled at the age of 23 to India with thousands of other Tibetans in 1959 after a failed uprising against the rule of Mao Zedong’s Communists. Beijing insists it will choose his successor, but the Dalai Lama has said any successor named by China would not be respected…. Beijing said in February it hoped the Dalai Lama would “return to the right path” and that it was open to discussing his future if he met such conditions as recognising that Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts of China, whose sole legal government is that of the People’s Republic of China. That proposal has been rejected by the Tibetan parliament-in-exile in India.” Read more: The Guardian
“Vice President JD Vance will travel to India later this month alongside Second Lady Usha Vance, according to three sources familiar with the plans. It marks Vance’s second foreign trip as vice president after making his world stage debut in France and Germany last month. Usha Vance’s parents emigrated from India to the U.S. It will be her first time visiting her ancestral country as second lady. The vice president’s first foreign trip was marked by a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference where he criticized European governments for their handling of illegal migration, ignoring religious freedoms, and overturning elections. The speech shook allies, who were expecting to hear about proposals to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine to end the war.” Read more: Dasha Burns & Jake Traylor, Politico
“Among the sea of supporters welcoming former Nepal king Gyanendra Shah to Kathmandu on Sunday – days after he had made his first direct appeal to the people since his ouster in 2008, seeking “support if they wanted to secure the nation’s future” – one face stood out. That of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. In Nepal’s volatile politics, an Adityanath poster was, unsurprisingly, a lightning rod. The BJP leader is a known supporter of Nepal’s deposed monarchy, and Gyanendra’s Kathmandu rally is being seen as his biggest challenge yet to the increasingly unpopular K P Sharma Oli government, battered by allegations of corruption. Oli’s supporters described Adityanath’s poster as evidence of “India hand” behind Gyanendra, raising questions over the credibility of Sunday’s rally. The pro-Gyanendra parties shot back alleging that Adityanath’s posters had been “planted”, and calling it a conspiracy by the Oli government. As per the rally’s organisers, the use of Adityanath’s image neither had official sanction nor did they know about it, with the only instruction to participants being to use the national flag and Gyanendra’s portrait.” Read more: Yubaraj Ghimire, Indian Express
People & Politics -
“Once known for its robust internal democratic structure and conventions, the saffron party is currently struggling to conduct its presidential elections on time, because of which its national executive has allowed Nadda to retain his position well beyond after his term ended in January 2023… A large part of the delay, apart from the leadership’s general indifference towards organisational elections, is that the party has been able to finish organisational polls in only 12 of its state units…. B.L.Santosh, one of the national general secretaries, has been struggling to keep the party infighting in different states under control, so that a new president can be elected… However, the scenario is much more complicated in electorally important states like Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Kerala and Telangana. Reportedly, multiple lobbies in Uttar Pradesh are working to get their representative elected, which led Santosh to send warning signals to the state unit in January 2025 to complete organisational polls immediately.” Read more: Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta, The Wire
“The dominance of a few super-bureaucrats belies a dysfunctional culture of governance in which expertise has been systematically devalued. In several ministries, ad hoc consultants know more about policy issues than IAS officers… Things aren’t any better in state secretariats. Transfers are more frequent, and tenures very short. An officer has scarcely any time to develop expertise in an area. Consultants tend to be even more insecure about their jobs… One way to build expertise in governance would be to break up the IAS into two divisions — a field division (IAS-F) and a policy analysis division (IAS-P).The IAS-P division should have more liberal norms of entry and exit, so that people with relevant skills from academia or the private sector can become part of this cadre… People from other central services, such as the Indian Economic Service (IES) and the Indian Statistical Service (ISS), should also be allowed to crossover to the IAS-P cadre.” Read more: Pramit Bhattacharya, Hindustan Times
“In March 2021, at the India Today Conclave, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar openly dismissed international democracy rankings. To Jaishankar, these rankings were not some neutral measure of governance. They were political tools wielded against countries that refused to follow Western-defined standards… In early 2020, Cabinet Secretary Rajeev Gauba set up a high-level committee of secretaries with a specific mission: track India’s performance across 32 major global indices and find ways to improve it… The Democracy Index was also on this list, assigned to the Law Ministry… Ministers debated the need to track journalists and categorise them—separating those who were supportive from those who needed handling. They discussed how to systematically promote positive influencers while ensuring dissenting voices were pushed to the margins. There was agreement that messages from ministries, embassies, and political leaders had to be streamlined, so that there aren’t that many contradictions.” Read more: Anisha Dutta, The Plank
“Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale has pitched for calling India ‘Bharat’ only, saying questions should be raised on why the country should have two names, one in Hindi and another in English… “It is India in English and Bharat in Hindi. Can this happen anywhere else in the world?” he asked. Hosabale noted that the Constitution of India is called ‘Bharat ka samvidhan’ in Hindi and the Reserve Bank of India is also called Bharatiya Reserve Bank. “Why do we have to do this everywhere?” he asked… Hosabale said everybody should move in the right direction in the system of society, family and other areas. That is why subjects of study are gradually changing in the universities. Only those subjects that provide employment should be taught, he said.” Read more: ThePrint
“The body is one of the 8,057 local courts that are delivering cheap and timely justice across Bihar in cases involving matters ranging from petty theft and small land disputes to cattle trespass and family feuds. While these courts were first set-up in the 1950s and have their roots in 1947’s Bihar Panchayati Raj Act, they ceased functioning by the late 1970s. Conversations about reinstituting them began again in the 1990s after the 73rd constitutional amendment was passed, which established the framework for the panchayat system across the country… A 2022 study by the non-profit Sigma Foundation and the Azim Premji University further found that in the 15 gram kachcheris they had studied in depth, 80% of the cases were disposed of within six weeks of the case being filed, as stipulated in the 2006 act. In contrast, data from the National Judicial Data Grid indicates that more than 72% of cases in the country’s district courts and more than 79% in the high courts are more than a year old… It is not only litigants who have found gram kachcheris to be beneficial. Many who have worked within the system, particularly women, also find it an enriching experience.” Read more: Anuradha Nagaraj, Scroll
Tech -
“The government is reportedly considering a proposal to reinstate merchant discount rate (MDR) charges on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay-powered debit card transactions, particularly for large merchants, according to two senior banking officials, reported ET. MDR, a fee paid by merchants to banks for processing real-time payments, is currently not levied on transactions made via UPI and RuPay debit cards. However, banking industry representatives have formally submitted a proposal to the Union government, recommending the reintroduction of MDR for businesses with an annual Goods and Services Tax (GST)-linked turnover exceeding Rs 40 lakh… Fintech executives raised concerns about revenue losses from free UPI services in a recent meeting with the new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor, Sanjay Malhotra. They argue that the cost of maintaining digital payment infrastructure is not sufficiently covered by government subsidies.” Read more: Financial Express
“Satellite internet connectivity, or SAT-G as Bharti Enterprises’ founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal calls it, may be closer to being a reality in India than perhaps we realise. The SpaceX owned Starlink internet company has signed agreements with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. The idea is not just technology sharing, but also leveraging the retail presence of two of India’s leading telecom players. The critical detail here is, Starlink is yet to receive the necessary regulatory approvals in the country. That means Starlink, apart from announcing the partnerships with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, cannot list the products for pre-orders or for sale, cannot direction any active satellite beams within India’s geographical boundaries, and also cannot list any possible pricing structure for subscriptions… In 2022, Starlink was asked by Indian authorities to close pre-orders for the satellite service, and refund pre-orders received till then. Starlink, in 2021, had begun to accept preorders from potential buyers in India, for US$99 (around ₹7,200 based on currency conversion rates at the time). The promise then, was of a priority slot with installation and activated once services went live.” Read more: Vishal Mathur, Hindustan Times
“Paper leaks, given their nature, occur on a very short timeline and lead to an acute crisis. When they occur, they need to be dealt with immediately. This leads states to utilise extreme preventative measures. This has taken form in internet shutdowns. These internet shutdowns can vary in terms of duration and their extensiveness. While some states initiate a shutdown only during the duration of the examination, some states suspend the internet from the morning itself… Currently, numerous state governments shut the internet down before and during examinations to prevent leaks and ensure fairness. However, this measure is not proportional to the issue—a notion concurred by the Supreme Court—and brings with it several drawbacks… An internet shutdown brings a hefty economic setback, quantified at $186,332 an hour in 2017 for India.” Read more: Sanyam Mahajan, Policy Notes
Bonus -
““It is an open secret in the film industry that 70-80 percent of the reviews are paid reviews,” a senior executive with Yash Raj Films (YRF), Bollywood’s venerable production house known for hits like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity. “Paid reviews are very much a part of this business as any other business,” he added… Most agreed that reviews can’t turn duds into hits, but said that reviews can boost or shrink a film’s business by 10-15 percent in the first week, especially now when reviews go viral before a film’s release… Al Jazeera accessed some “rate cards” sent to producers and filmmakers by the PR and marketing firms engaged to handle a film’s publicity. These include the fees charged by some of India’s top news organisations, entertainment portals, trade analysts, social media reviewers and content creators… Bollywood has been struggling for the past six to seven years as most of its ambitious, big-budget films have flopped. The top-grossing films in that period came from Southern production houses and directors. But instead of putting its resources into making better films, Bollywood has been investing in creating the illusion that all is well.” Read more: Suparna Sharma, Al Jazeera
“Union Minister Amit Shah on Sunday laid the foundation stone of the Rs 316.82 crore 'Para High Performance Centre' in Gandhinagar virtually and reiterated India's resolve to host the 2036 Olympics. He said 10 big stadiums are going to be built at the Sardar Patel Sports Complex, located next to the Narendra Modi Cricket Stadium, he said. "India has resolved to hold the 2036 Olympic Games in these 10 complexes. Gujarat has already started preparations for this event," Shah said. The Para High Performance Centre will play an important role in providing world-class training to Gujarat's para athletes through excellent infrastructure for state-level, national-level, and international competitions, Shah said.” Read more: The Economic Times
Watch/Listen -
Six Years of Balakot: A Military Failure, But Political Success? | Samvad with Ashutosh | Conversation with Sushant Singh | The Wire