Firstpost | Agentic AI: The next frontier in artificial intelligence

Agentic artificial intelligence follows the natural evolution of AI and a logical technological trajectory. These are new types of systems that can proactively identify problems, create plans, and execute complex tasks across digital environments with minimal human supervision. Regulatory response to these developments has to keep up.

By Arindam Goswami

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Moneycontrol | From Technological Rivalry to Global Governance: The path forward

The current geopolitical landscape is shaped by technological nationalism, driven by competition in AI and semiconductors. However, game theory and historical examples suggest that this phase will evolve into co-operative frameworks, balancing national interests with global technological cooperation

By Arindam Goswami

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Moneycontrol | Four takeaways from Raisina Dialogue on contemporary geopolitics

From Ukraine to information warfare, discussions at the Raisina Dialogue revealed insights about the shifts in contemporary geopolitics that India would do well to adapt to

By Lokendra Sharma

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Deccan Herald | Mapping India’s geospatial intelligence

India must prioritise geospatial advancements to counter strategic challenges, unlock security benefits

By Swathi Kalyani

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The Wire | India Navigates Relations With Taliban Amid Tensions With Pakistan

From a previously cautious stance toward the Taliban, India’s seemingly proactive diplomacy can be understood through the prisms of strategic pragmatism and strategic opportunism. The first entails adopting a nuanced approach aimed at balancing national interests while setting aside ideological absolutism and the second refers to leveraging opportunities while keeping Pakistan firmly in the calculation. Notably, the timing of this month’s meeting, occurring amidst strained relations between the traditional allies, Pakistan and the Taliban, can widely be perceived as India’s willingness to exploit these tensions.

By Aishwaria Sonavane

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Firstpost | How Trump’s tariffs can be opportunity in crisis for India

While Trump’s tariffs aren’t designed to help India, they may inadvertently provide the external catalyst needed for India’s economic transformation. Sometimes, the most valuable gifts come in the most unexpected packages.

The Donald Trump administration’s recent imposition of tariffs on Indian goods could have a silver lining if India can seize the opportunity. In conditions reminiscent of the 1991 crisis that opened up India’s economy, India could use this opportunity for its long-overdue economic transformation by fostering a more export-oriented economy. This is an opportunity to shift the domestic Overton window on protectionism, albeit under pressure.

By Arindam Goswami

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Moneycontrol | Why India should keep out TikTok in the age of information warfare

Even as some Chinese apps make their comeback in the country, TikTok should not be allowed in India due to cognitive autonomy concerns. Its algorithm can be potentially used to amplify or de-amplify content to suit ByteDance's, and thereby Chinese Communist Party's, objectives

By Lokendra Sharma

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Indian Express | More delivery and payment apps will not make India a tech leader

While India celebrates its unicorn boom, a troubling innovation gap separates us from true technological leadership. Despite boasting of the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem and a massive pool of technical talent, India needs to do a lot more when it comes to cutting-edge DeepTech innovation. Its unicorns solve distribution problems rather than scientific ones. Its brightest minds build payment apps, not quantum computers. India’s venture capital flows to the next food delivery service, not fusion energy. This paradox demands explanation — and action.

By Arindam Goswami

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Moneycontrol | Lessons from China's support for local startups — a path to innovation for India

China's local governments drive innovation through fiscal autonomy, incentives, and policy experimentation. India can adopt similar reforms by enhancing fiscal power, creating innovation zones, and aligning municipal leaders’ incentives with startup growth to foster a competitive, innovative economy

By Arindam Goswami

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India’s World | Towards techno-strategic autonomy: India should spearhead an Open Technology Maitri

In face of supply chain warfare and security concerns, India should create an Open Technology Maitri, a multistakeholder initiative for realising the vision of techno-strategic autonomy by advancing legal and policy pathways for open tech deployment and uptake in developing countries.

By Lokendra Sharma and Pranay Kotasthane

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Loksatta | Mumbai's Traffic Congestion Woes: Is Proof-of-Parking the Solution?

Mumbai, one of the most vehicle-dense cities in the country, is considering policy solutions to tackle growing traffic congestion. One of the solutions that the Maharashtra government is considering is to mandate a parking space to buy a car.  In this proposed policy, an individual must own or secure a private or public parking space to buy a car. The Maharashtra Government is considering deploying this policy in the next 100 days, taking inspiration from the Japanese-certified parking area policy, which banned free street parking to create a market for parking spaces and reduce car ownership in cities. However, it is unclear how this policy will address road congestion when it only applies when buying cars and not restricting where the vehicles are parked once bought. The policy comes with other challenges - its high state capacity requirements make it difficult to execute, and potential consequences, such as rent-seeking and false certifications, might follow. The policy's success will depend on whether it can create a market for parking spaces in the city.  

Vehicular congestion is increasingly becoming a problem in Indian cities. Although Mumbai reduced its average travel time by 20 seconds, it slipped from 39th in 2023 to 52nd in 2024 in its average travel time position worldwide as per the TomTom Traffic Index. Bengaluru ranked 1st and Mumbai 6th on congestion in megacities (population greater than 8 million) worldwide. It is well established in economic theory that one vehicle on the road causes a negative externality on every other vehicle. Pollution and the probability of accidents also increase as cars increase. An ITDP report states that congestion in Mumbai causes the city productivity and fuel losses of more than Rs 36000 crores and time losses of about 85 minutes a day. This is even though only 19 per cent of trips in Mumbai are made using taxis and private vehicles, compared to 51 per cent by walking and cycling and 30 per cent via public transport. These problems stem from Mumbai's 2300 cars/km car density, the highest among the Indian cities. Private cars occupy almost 50 per cent of Mumbai's road space. The parking shortage is a symptom of this density, hence the proposed policy. 

This policy was inspired by a similar one introduced in Japan in the 1950s, and to some extent, it was successful.  However, this will be tricky to execute in India. Firstly, it would require the individuals to showcase parking space availability before purchasing a car. This may lead to rent-seeking behaviour, providing false certificates, etc. 

Secondly, mandating space requirements doesn’t solve congestion due to street parking. Japan outlawed free street parking and leased those spaces to car owners to show as proof. People also might provide proof of a parking space in non-congested areas and use cars in congested ones. 

Thirdly, the demand for in-built parking space could increase the cost of urban real estate, making homes unaffordable for many. In India, it is already mandated that apartment buildings provide parking spaces. A policy like this could come with increased mandates, which have been shown to distort land markets. In Japan, such parking mandates excluded small buildings and were purposefully low (approximately one parking space per 3230 sq ft). Moreover, the parking space supply might not meet the vehicles already on the road in a land-scarce city. 

Finally, this proposed policy would require massive state capacity. It would require a comprehensive survey to identify available parking spaces, assigning them unique identifiers linked to specific vehicles via registration numbers. Additionally, vehicles registered outside the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) would incur a daily fee to operate in Mumbai under the proposed policy. This necessitates significant human and technological resources to execute the policy effectively.

A better and simpler alternative is congestion pricing, a toll on the most congested roads in the city. It has been shown to reduce congestion and car ownership. Studies have already been done to implement this in Mumbai, and large cities like Singapore, London, Tokyo, New York, etc., already implement such charges. India's FASTag toll collection system can be used for this purpose. The government isn't opposed to this and is trying to develop congestion pricing as a package deal with the proof-of-parking system. Surveys suggest that a significant majority of Mumbaikars, around 75%, support congestion pricing. The critical difference between a proof-of-parking policy and a congestion price is that the latter doesn’t disincentivise one from buying a car but just from using it on congested roads. Solutions to better control traffic management, including real-time traffic mapping, dynamic signals, and Tokyo-style visual mapping to inform traffic management, can also be considered.  

Ultimately, any policies that try to reduce the number of cars on the road must be accompanied by expansion in public transportation. Many cities in India have seen a fall in the share of public transport use, fuelled by a massive rise in private vehicles. India faces an acute shortage of buses in cities. Even though most attention is grabbed by metros, buses are essential to urban transportation. As Enrique Penalosa, Bogota's ex-mayor, once said, "An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport".

By Miheer Karandikar & Anisree Suresh

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NDTV | Let 'Thermodynamics' Teach You Something About AI

As the Paris AI Action Summit 2025 descended into a cacophony of competing national interests and corporate agendas, it offered a perfect illustration of entropy in action: a system of global governance dissolving into disorder without sufficient organising energy to maintain coherence. This collapse of international cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) standards reveals a fundamental truth applicable far beyond the diplomatic sphere: without intentional intervention, our AI ecosystems will naturally trend toward maximum chaos.

By Arindam Goswami

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FirstPost | What Trump 2.0 means for Taiwan and its future

More than narratives of friendship and cooperation, what is likely to work for Taiwan is ensuring reciprocal benefits for the US in economic and technological domains as Trump endeavours to nip China in the bud.

By Anushka Saxena

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The Hindu | AI infrastructure, the key to global AI supremacy

For countries such as India, the diverse approaches by lead AI players such as the U.S, the European Union and China offer lessons.

The United States has made a bold move in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race with its new federal AI infrastructure policy. What appears to be a domestic initiative to establish AI data centres across federal lands, is actually a well-thought-out strategy to maintain America’s technological supremacy in this field. Other countries have also developed their own AI infrastructure strategies to face this competition. India faces resource constraints. The challenge for India, therefore, lies in adopting a strategy which will work without the deep financial reserves of the U.S. or China.

By Arindam Goswami

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Deccan Herald | Curiosity in the age of AI

Are people using AI-driven technologies like ChatGPT correctly, or have they impacted the level of creativity? This is not to say that people should completely shun these mediums or dismiss that they have expedited efficiency. They do come with a lot. They do come with a lot of perks. However, this growing reliance on AI can be concerning.

By Sourav Mannaraprayil & Wini Fred Gurung

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Moneycontrol | A framework for technological sovereignty without being insular

Technological sovereignty emphasises national control over critical technologies while balancing security, innovation, and international cooperation, avoiding corporate dominance and ensuring citizens' rights within a fair global technological framework

By Arindam Goswami

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The Diplomat | China Revises PLA Regulations to Focus on ‘Conscious Discipline’

As a code of conduct for the PLA, the revised regulations are further expected to emphasize combat effectiveness as the military’s top priority.

By Anushka Saxena

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Money Control | Locust invasion threat demands India-Pakistan co-operation

As the locust breeding season approaches, both India and Pakistan must depoliticise locust management and prioritise it as a humanitarian imperative. Using technology like drones, weather models, and AI predictions to track, forecast and control the movements of locusts to protect crops

By Rakshith Shetty and Keerthi Shree

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Indian Express | The colonial era of AI is here — India must chart its own course

The Paris AI Action Summit, with its impressive array of declarations and initiatives, could not mask a deeper geopolitical reality: We have entered the colonial era of artificial intelligence, where corporate sovereignty increasingly trumps national sovereignty, and global governance and ethics have been put on the backburner while still being paid lip service. The final declaration by the real power players— the US and the UK — speaks volumes. They are the tech giants who have effectively colonised the digital frontier.

By Arindam Goswami

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Moneycontrol | India rolls out the red carpet for private nuclear firms

France and India last week declared an intent to partner each other to develop advanced modular nuclear reactors and SMRs. Juxtaposed with the recent union budget’s proposals to rework India’s legal framework for nuclear energy and set a rather ambitious capacity addition target, there’s a clear signal to the private sector to step in.

By Lokendra Sharma

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