Hindustan Times | MEA needs more hands on deck quickly. It must consider surge hiring

March was a busy month for Indian diplomacy. The first week featured an Italy State visit, the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting, the Raisina Dialogue, and as many as 33 bilateral engagements. The pace continued in April with the visit of the King of Bhutan to India, the 100th meeting under the G20 framework, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) defence minister’s meeting, and a mammoth rescue operation from war-torn Sudan. May likely will bring more action.

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Mint | We have a historic opportunity to shape tomorrow’s world order

It is easy to feel disoriented amid the increasingly intense debates over artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy transition, autonomous vehicles, platforms, genomics, quantum computing and other technological marvels of our times. Over the past six months, technology policy has overtaken China and the Indo-Pacific as the primary topics that foreign visitors to Takshashila want to discuss. Over a decade ago, I escaped from the tech policy world into what I thought was the more exciting world of geopolitics and international relations. Today, I find it hard to distinguish the boundaries between those disciplines.

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The Quint | Is Trust a Foregone Conclusion in India-Russia Relations? It's All About China

Of late, observers in India have expressed growing concern regarding Russia’s continued drift toward Beijing, especially following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Moscow visit where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in late March. For instance, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran recently opined that Russia’s vulnerable position vis-a-vis China empowers the latter to restrict the former’s engagement with India. While the possibility of such a prospect should certainly inform Indian policymakers, the issue is slightly more complex than what is highlighted.

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The Quint | A Gap in Strategic Planning: Why India Needs a National Security Doctrine

Japan’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released in December 2022, defied convention and chose to identify China and Russia by name as strategic threats. It also recommended that the country double its defence budget. Several other major powers, such as the United States, France, and Russia, also release similar documents. However, despite being the second most populous country, the fifth largest economy, and a nuclear power with one of the world’s most powerful militaries, India does not publish any such document.

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ThePrint | Poonch ambush had unmistakable Pakistani hand. But here’s why Indian govt is downplaying it

Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir reared its ugly head yet again on 20 April 2023 with the ambush of an Army vehicle near the Line of Control in Mendhar tehsil of Poonch district, resulting in the death of five Rashtriya Rifles soldiers. No group has so far claimed responsibility. Many questions about the incident remain unanswered, and the truth may never be publicly known. But that should not prevent concerted efforts to situate the incident in the context of the dynamics that have emerged since the August 2019 revocation of J&K’s special status and its bifurcation into two Union territories.

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ThePrint | MoD protecting Army in Nagaland killings gratifying. SIT acted as handmaiden of state govt

Encounters between perceived insurgents/terrorists and the Indian Armed Forces invariably trigger the bugle of human rights violations and calls for justice. The killing of six innocent miners on 4 December 2021 at Oting in Mon district of Nagaland was one such case. A detachment of India’s elite Para Special Forces led by a Major laid an ambush based on intelligence received from the headquarters and fired at an approaching pick-up truck carrying eight miners returning home from work.

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Managing Fault Lines

Since independence, India’s military leadership has faced formidable challenges in dealing with the country’s religious diversity and colonial heritage. Avoiding the seepage of communal disharmony into the military’s cultural fabric requires a multi-dimensional approach that prioritises education, information tools, and the preservation of institutional values.

This article appeared in the April-June 2023 issue of the Raksha Anirveda magazine. Read the full article here.

What the milk shortage saga tells us about letting government control prices

The milk supply chain has been in trouble in several states over the last few months. Industry leaders expect shortages and price hikes to continue until winter. Besides making your next cup of filter kaapi or chai hard on the pocket, this situation reveals a lot about the consequences of government intervention and price distortions.

Missing in India’s AI growth plan is private investment

On artificial intelligence (AI), the government appears to be moving at a frenetic pace. This month, plans were announced to make large public datasets available to Indian businesses. The government also wants to embed AI in different parts of India Stack, and fund three centres of excellence for AI, housed within leading academic institutions.

E-pharmacy regulation needs nuanced policies

Candlemakers and other people involved in the lighting industry in France petitioned the government to protect them from the unfair competition imposed by the sun, wrote Frederic Bastiat in 1845. Bastiat’s sarcastic observation highlighted the tendency of incumbent businesses to turn to the government for protection from competition.

India needs quick transition ability from ‘No War No Peace’ to ‘limited war’. Is CDS ready?

The smooth and efficient functioning of the military organisation is to a great extent determined by the state of relationships between commanders in the chain of command. Fairly often, the dynamics of relationships transpires in an ambience that is often fraught with uncertainty, ambiguity, danger and fear. However, when combined with institutionalised and professional civil-military relations, military effectiveness gets maximised. The institution of the post of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and creation of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) in December 2019 were clearly designed to enhance military effectiveness. The mandate assigned to create the Theatre Command system was a recognition of the need to change the prevailing structures so as to strengthen jointness among the three Services and improve civil-military relations.

Let’s insist on full disclosure and consent for AI and algorithm use

One of the many recent mysteries is why hundreds of extremely intelligent and rich people think that a moratorium on further development of artificial intelligence is feasible, or that a six month hiatus is sufficient for us to figure out what to do about it. Technology development is a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ with millions of competing participants making it impossible to get everyone to cooperate. Top-tier competitors are more likely to cheat on the moratorium in the expectation that others will do so, which will render such as moratorium useless, and worse, drive the industry underground.

Analysing China’s threat perception of India-United States relations

As India and China are engaged in continued dialogue on resolving the boundary issue, including through the recently conducted high-level meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs, China faces a challenging theatre in its neighbourhood — the India-US alliance. Due to its threat perception of increasing proximity between India and the US, China inflates narratives of discord between the two countries, while also hyping up the nature of the challenge it faces, in order to arm-twist India into maintaining a more autonomous policy.

CPC’s tryst with private regulatory interventionism

The ‘Two Sessions’—China’s annual plenary sessions with close to 3,000 delegates participating in meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)—have recently come to an end, and reports from the event carry significant implications for Chinese economic policy in the months to come.

Should India make tactical nukes to counter China? Delhi’s no-first-use rule has no room for it

On 25 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow’s intention to deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons or TNWs in Belarus. He added that Russia was doing what has been a norm for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Periodically, during the Ukraine war, Putin and some members of Russia’s senior hierarchy have been bringing up the topic of nuclear weapons to keep the nuclear threat alive. The strategic effect sought to be achieved is to warn NATO member countries and reduce their role in the war. The Russian nuclear threats have probably not had their intended effects, considering the increase in the supply of military wherewithal to Ukraine, including offensive weapons like fighter aircraft, tanks, and missiles. The Belarus deployment is probably indicative of Russia adopting a different route to achieve the same intention. From the reaction of the NATO, it seems this threat would also not work to the degree that Russia expects.

India's Policy Towards China Must Leverage Latter's Two-Front Situation

While a ‘two-front’ dilemma has posed a critical security challenge to India for quite some time, China fears a similar situation, which hasn’t received enough attention within Indian strategic circles. China first grew anxious about a developing two-front threat in the early 1950s. After the Communist Party of China won the civil war against the Guomindang (GMD) nationalist government and forced the latter to flee to Taiwan in 1949, it feared a US-backed GMD invasion from the east. On its western front along the Himalayas, China was wary of Indian interference in Tibet and accused it of colluding with the US to instigate secessionist tendencies during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Fiscal Priorities for Sikkim

In a recent speech, Chief Minister of Sikkim, Prem Singh Tamang (Golay) announced the integration of more developmental projects in the upcoming budget. The successful execution of public projects and the effective implementation of government policies are contingent on the state's healthy fiscal situation. As the Sikkim Government prepares to present the budget, here is a look at the state's financial situation.

Deccan Herald | A case for marriage equality

On March 13, the Supreme Court of India referred a batch of petitions seeking legal recognition for same-sex marriages (or marriage equality) to a constitution bench. The Union government opposed these petitions, stating that it is not comparable to the Indian family unit, and that recognition of marriages is a legislative function, not a judicial one. Legal scholars have argued that not granting legal recognition to same-sex marriages violates fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, such as Articles 14, 15, 19, and 21. They cite the NALSA judgment (2014), the Puttaswamy judgment (2017), and the Navtej Singh Johar judgment (2018) as the most consequential in this regard. While marriage equality has a strong constitutional case, socio-cultural consensus is also important.

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Resolve HR issues in Navy, Army, Air Force on 3 levels. Then bring in Theatre Command System

The issue of Human Resources in the Indian armed forces is likely to throw up progressively increasing challenges when the Theatre Command System becomes operational. It has, therefore, become absolutely necessary to resolve those issues before the restructuring gets underway. This article seeks to examine three HR issues that have lingered and defied resolution despite their manifestation since long in the integrated tri-Services structures such as Andaman & Nicobar Command, Strategic Forces Command, and several other establishments. Resolution of these issues can no longer be ignored lest solutions emerge in more painful ways.

Mint | The entry of foreign firms should herald more legal sector reforms

In a surprise move, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has taken a reformatory step towards allowing foreign lawyers and foreign law firms to practise and set up offices in India. This comes after multiple rounds of litigation before various high courts and the Supreme Court of India, where the BCI and several bar associations had opposed the move.