Mint | We can expect more turbulence ahead in Indian diaspora politics

Diaspora politics is going to get a lot more complicated and recent turbulence is an indicator of the policy challenges ahead. Pro-Khalistan protests in the US, UK, Canada and Australia have descended into vandalism, arson, rioting, incitement to assassination and inter-group violence. Last year, there was Hindu-Muslim communal violence in Leicester. Hindu and Sikh communities got into fights in Australia. A parade in New Jersey featured a bulldozer celebrating Yogi Adityanath’s politics, attracting condemnation for its provocativeness and causing the Indian business association to issue an apology. Google and Big Tech companies in the US attracted criticism on being seen as insensitive to caste discrimination. This year, the Seattle City Council outlawed caste discrimination in response to advocacy by diaspora civil society groups. In May, a 19-year-old Indian-American crashed a truck near the White House, waved a Nazi flag, and declared that he wanted to kill the president, seize power and put an end to democracy in the US. Read the full article here.

ThePrint | At defence PSUs, bring new appraisal system. Job security doesn’t help national security

Some of the recently corporatised Defence Public Sector Undertakings such as the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited will be put to test by deals, including the production of the GE F414 jet engine. HAL’s record of productivity and quality assurance is far from encouraging and is perhaps illustrated in an interaction, a friend once told me, between the head of a foreign aircraft manufacturing company and the Chairman of the HAL. The foreigner was first given an impressive presentation of HAL at its Headquarters in Bengaluru and thereafter taken on a tour of the PSU’s extensive infrastructure facilities situated all over India. On returning to Bengaluru, he was asked by the chairman – ‘What are your impressions’? The foreign head replied – ‘Your infrastructure is extremely impressive; in comparison to yours, ours looks like poorly organised workshops. But why don’t you make aircraft?’ Read the full article here.

The Hindu | Will signing Artemis Accords benefit India?

The story so far:

On June 21, India became the 27th signatory to the Artemis Accords, a set of non-binding guidelines that underpin the Artemis programme, a U.S.-led project to return humans to the moon permanently.

Read the full article here.

Mint | Swish expressways must go with public education on using them

On 19 June, Navroze Contractor was riding back home as usual with his motorcycle group on a service road of Hosur Road (National Highway 44). The 80-year old fellow Bangalorean was a highly regarded filmmaker, photographer, music maven and motorcycle enthusiast. A champion of road safety, he was killed when three drunken motorcyclists riding at high speed on the wrong side of the road crashed into him. The staggering irony compounds the tragedy of lives lost as a result of wrongdoings that are, paradoxically, both avoidable and normalized. Erosion of norms is the fastest way to anarchy. Road safety in India will get worse unless they are addressed now. Read the full article here.

Times of India | How, finally, India is reaching for the Moon

On a remote patch of celestial wilderness near the moon’s south pole lies the wreck of the Chandrayaan-2 lander, a testament to the soaring ambitions of India’s lunar programme and the difficulties of achieving them. Its predecessor, the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, made history in 2008 by confirming the presence of water ice on the moon. The more audacious Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 was to deploy a lander called Vikram. However, Vikram crash landed in a spray of lunar dust, leaving it, and the small rover inside, inoperable. Read the full article here.

Telangana Today | Technology is the new glue

The Indo-US Joint Statement of 22 June 2023 makes it abundantly clear that technology is the new glue that will bind India-US relations for some time to come. It spans five of the six broad themes – defence, clean energy, economy, health, and technology itself. The last theme is a purely geopolitical one ie, strategic convergence. Whether this translates into opportunities for Indian investors and startups will remain a function of the confidence the Indian authorities can generate in the market in both countries. However, this is not the sole responsibility of the authorities – investors and startups too need to take the plunge if they want a share of the pie. Let us look at the opportunities emerging from this Joint Statement. Read the full article here.

ThePrint | Modi has signed the defence deals with US. Now DRDO, private sectors must deliver

Two major defence deals were signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s US visit, building on previous agreements since the nuclear framework agreement signed between PM Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in 2005. These deals are rooted in India’s geographic location and its growing economic and diplomatic clout in the context of the ongoing global geopolitical struggle. They also align with the US’s efforts to protect its global hegemony, which is couched in a security framework, and involve India in defending common interests against a rising and aggressive China. Read the full article here.

The Hindu | Explained | The problem with India’s new guidelines on genetically modified insects

India’s bioeconomy contributes 2.6% to the GDP. In April 2023, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) released its ‘Bioeconomy Report 2022’  report, envisioning this contribution to be closer to 5% by 2030. This ambitious leap – of $220 billion in eight years – will require aggressive investment and policy support. But neither funding for the DBT, India’s primary promoter of biotechnology, nor its recent policies reflect any serious intention to uplift this sector. Along with more money, policies that enable risk-taking appetite within Indian scientists will be required to create an ecosystem of innovation and industrial action. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | India mustn’t miss this chance to supercharge its electronic goods industry

India is caught up in a quarrel over tariffs on information and communication technology (ICT) goods. The EU filed a WTO dispute that India has applied tariffs up to 20 percent on certain ICT goods, such as mobile phones and accessories, which is against the Information Technology Agreement-1 (ITA-1), to which India is a signatory. Signatories to ITA-1 are obliged to levy a maximum tariff of zero percent on a set of pre-agreed ICT goods. India claims that the goods on which it levies a tariff are not covered under ITA-1. Besides the EU, Japan and Taiwan also filed similar cases against India. The WTO has ruled against India in all three disputes. Read the full article here.

The Hindu | Explained | India has signed the Artemis Accords. What is at stake?

On June 21, 2023, India’s Ambassador to the U.S., Taranjit Sandhu, leaned over a table at Washington, D.C.’s historic Willard Hotel to sign the document confirming India’s acceptance of the Artemis Accords. It was a relatively modest event amid a pageantry-filled state visit that has seen a slew of deals on technological cooperation. Like those other deals, India’s signing of the Artemis Accords was undoubtedly the result of careful preparatory work and hard-nosed quid pro quos. Read the full article here.

Times of India | Swades sans sacrifice: How to rethink IIT brain drain puzzle

A new NBER working paper by Prithwiraj Choudhury et. al finds that among the top 1,000 scorers on the IIT-JEE 2010, 36% have migrated abroad. Moreover, of the top 100, as many as 62 have migrated abroad. The better a person’s IIT-JEE rank, the higher the chances they have already bid adieu to India. This paper sparked another conversation on the decades-old problem called ‘brain drain’. So, how do we think about highly skilled emigration from India circa 2023? Read the full article here.

Rajasthan Patrika | India-U.S Biotechnology Cooperation

Read the full article here.

Mint | Our PLI schemes are in need of a coherent trade policy

The recent spat between former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan and electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw over the former’s criticism of the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for semiconductors and other manufacturing sectors is part of an ongoing debate on India’s manufacturing policies. Rajan argues that PLI schemes alone do not add value to electronics and semiconductors, even though value addition is a key objective of the ministry’s 2022 vision document. It aims to increase India’s electronics exports to $300 billion by 2025-26 from $25.3 billion in 2022-23, and deepen integration with global value chains (GVCs). Read the full article here.

ThePrint | Defence PSUs are headless. Struggle for power hurting national security

In October 2021, the government announced a major reform in the production segment of the Defence Industrial Base ecosystem by corporatising the operations of the 41 factories hitherto under the Ordnance Factory Board. Seven Defence Public Sector Undertakings, based on the commonality of functions, were created — Munitions India Limited, Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited, Troop Comforts Limited, India Optel Limited, Gliders India Limited, and Yantra India Limited. Read the full article here.

The Hindu | China’s ‘developmental’ security approach

The story so far: Late in May this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced that the U.S. chip giant Micron, which had been under investigation by the Cybersecurity Review Office, failed to obtain a security clearance, and that its products posed a threat to national security. Consequently, business operators tied to critical information infrastructure were advised not to procure Micron products. This is the latest incident in a series of crackdowns by the Chinese government against American consultancies and domestic firms dealing with overseas clients. Read the full article here.

Mint | Free public transport for women could well transform Karnataka

The Siddaramaiah-Shivakumar government’s move to provide free basic public bus services to women could be a game changer for Karnataka’s development, if it follows up to make the investments necessary to make the policy a success over the medium-term. The economic case for subsidized transport is that it has positive externalities—for growth, environment and social development—that are massive in the Indian context, and thus private players alone will not sufficiently provide. Sure, conditional cash transfers might have been a more efficient way to deliver this subsidy, but a policy that is politically feasible and empirically effective is far better than one that is merely elegant. Read the full article here.

WION | Remembering Galwan and the China Challenge: Capabilities of the PLA Western Theatre Command

Three years on, the spectre of Galwan is looming large over India’s China policy. Amidst China’s unwillingness to back down and Indian forces’ intensifying willingness to hold their ground, we are likely to see more skirmishes similar to the one witnessed in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector in December last year, taking place. And in this light, an assessment of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) capacity-building close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the past three years indicates that China is not planning to concede its strategic entrenchment beyond India’s claim lines. Rather, it is attempting to create a new status quo with increased firepower available for ready use in anticipation of such potential skirmishes. Read the full article here.

ThePrint | General Electric jet deal will be a test of India-US trust. Critical tech at stake

Last week, media reports raised expectations that an important announcement on defence sector cooperation may occur during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States on 22 June. This announcement could be about manufacturing the General Electric F414 fighter engines in India, and the transfer of technology. White House has not commented on these news reports yet, but if they turn out to be true, India’s indigenous capacity to produce fighter aircraft would be boosted, and a major hurdle in its defence preparedness would be mitigated. It would also signify the growing level of trust rooted in global geopolitical considerations that could potentially strengthen strategic cooperation between India and the US, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | A road map to propel US-India chips push

Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi will travel to Washington DC on June 21 for his first official State visit. A prominent item on the agenda is technology cooperation. In May last year, the two governments elevated their strategic partnership by announcing an initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET). During this visit, the two sides will aim to announce concrete steps under this initiative. This article proposes a way forward on one of the main pillars of iCET: Resilient semiconductor supply chains. iCET’s readout explicitly mentioned enhanced cooperation in three areas: Supporting the development of a semiconductor design, manufacturing, and fabrication ecosystem in India; promoting the development of a skilled semiconductor workforce; and encouraging the development of fabs for mature technology nodes and packaging in India. Using iCET’s vision, we propose cooperation options in the three archetypal stages of the semiconductor supply chain: Design, manufacturing, and Outsourced Assembly and Test (OSAT).

MoneyControl | Government overreach in digital economy could end up with no commensurate benefit and serious distortions

History, it seems, tends to move in full circles. “Be Indian, Buy Indian”, a popular slogan from the bygone era has changed to “Vocal for Local”. Deliberate incursions by the government into the market, especially into the digital economy, are reminiscent of old Nehruvian socialist objectives despite all the blame Nehru gets for India’s economic problems. The government’s intervention into payment via the Unified Payments Interface (or UPI) was justified on the grounds that it is a public good (it isn’t) and that lowering transaction costs can benefit everybody (it can). But the justifications grow thinner when we consider other government run or backed enterprises in the digital economy, such as the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) (facilitate government procurement), mSeva app store (indigenous mobile app store), and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) among others. Read the full article here.