India Last Week #27
Shreyas Shende
Researcher and policy analyst focusing on South Asian security & India's energy and public policy landscape.
A round-up of research & reportage on India across climate, energy, foreign policy, politics & more over the last week
Climate, Energy & Environment -
“The average AQI in Delhi on Monday was 292, the second highest daily reading recorded by the Central Pollution Control Board since the measure was introduced in 2015. Yet, international apps such as IQAir were showing AQI readings of over 1600 during the afternoon. Which of the two counts is correct? The short answer is, both. India’s AQI scale has been capped at 500… When the index was being devised it was felt that having values above 500 couldn’t be of practical use since health impacts plateau after a certain threshold, experts said. However, on days such as Monday, when the 24-hour average (at 5 pm) at as many as 15 stations in the city had maxed out at 500, perhaps there’s a case for providing AQI scores above 500 for driving home the seriousness of the capital’s air crisis.” Read more: Amit Bhattacharya, Times of India
“Asia’s imports of jet fuel from India are set to hit multi-year highs in November ahead of peak winter demand after refinery outages and lower exports from China crimped supplies, according to industry sources and ship-tracking data. Indian refiners have been processing large volumes of cheap Russian crude since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 and have the flexibility of boosting fuel exports to either Europe or Asia depending on arbitrage economics.” Read more: Trixie Sher Li Yap, Reuters
“While Rajasthan and Gujarat have been at the forefront of renewable energy deployment in the country, some corrective actions in their policies can accelerate the momentum and keep playing a central role in India’s energy transition, a new briefing note by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) states… The note recommends that both states integrate green budgeting into their fiscal planning. Green budgeting will allow Rajasthan and Gujarat to prioritise investments in renewable energy and green technologies,” says Rana. Rajasthan and Gujarat are among the better-performing states in India regarding distributed solar installed capacity. However, given that Rajasthan and Gujarat only have about 7% and 15%, respectively, of their total renewable energy capacity (including large hydro) to distributed solar, there remains substantial untapped potential. The note recommends that both states increase their efforts to promote distributed renewable energy (DRE).” Read more: Vibhuti Garg and Tanya Rana , Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
“In the agricultural countries of the Global South, such as India, Mexico, and Pakistan, energy supply for groundwater pumping is either free or highly subsidised, driving over withdrawal. The solution lies in pricing energy for groundwater extraction, which could also promote more efficient use of both water and energy, arrest groundwater depletion, and make irrigation more sustainable. However, implementing this approach is challenging, as water is often viewed as a public good, and free energy for irrigation has become deeply entrenched in the political economy... The cost of inaction – if water is not used efficiently and reallocated for other social and economic uses – can be substantial, with potential economic losses estimated at USD 2.5 trillion by 2050 for India alone, according to analysis by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).” Read more: Nitin Bassi , CarbonCopy
Economy -
“India might undershoot its capex target of 11.1 trillion rupees ($131.72 billion) for fiscal year 2024-25 by around 5%, a top finance ministry official said on Wednesday. The Indian government’s infrastructure spending, critical to one of the world's fastest economic growth rates, has been slow in the current year due to national elections. "Even last year, it (capital expenditure) was budgeted at 10 (trillion rupees), and expenditure was about 95%. I see even this year we should be around the same percentage," economic affairs secretary Ajay Seth said at an event in New Delhi… Some goods and services may not have grown at the same pace as last year in the July-September quarter, but the government sees no downside risks to its growth projection of 6.5%-7% for fiscal year 2024-25, Seth said… Food prices are a problem area but, other than that, inflation poses no challenge, Seth said. Retail inflation in India soared to its highest level in 14 months in October, partly due to high prices of edible oils, onions and tomatoes.” Read more: Reuters
“Agriculture’s share in GDP (gross domestic product) today is only 15%, while it still accounts for as much as 45% of the workforce. This implies that a worker outside of agriculture is about five times more productive than a worker in agriculture. It would seem, therefore, that ‘too much’ labour is locked into agriculture… In the Indian context, informal enterprises accounted for 43% of non-farm GDP in 2017. In the same year, 68% of all non-farm employment was informal. This is strikingly similar to the disparity between agriculture’s share of employment and its share of GDP… The informal non-farm sector is not much more productive than the agricultural sector. A worker in the formal non-farm sector is substantially more productive than an agricultural worker or a worker in the informal non-farm sector. The small or negligible productivity gap between agriculture and the informal non-farm sector is consistent with free labour mobility between these sectors.” Read more: Rajveer Jat and Bharat Ramaswami, Ideas for India
“The pace of subsidy payout to eligible companies under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme continues to remain in the slow lane even as the government’s flagship scheme to boost manufacturing entered its fourth year in the financial year 2024-2025 (FY25). The government has disbursed close to INR4,000 crore or around a fourth of its annual subsidy payment estimate to the eligible beneficiaries under the 14 PLI schemes, a person aware of the matter said… While lesser incentive claims could be an indication of slow progress in the scheme, government officials have maintained that since investment flow has been as per target, lower incentive claims may not necessarily be a cause of concern at the moment… Earlier this year, a high-level government committee raised concerns over the continued delay in the payment of eligible claims to the companies under the scheme, and called for an urgent need to take corrective steps for its smooth implementation.” Read more: Shreya N. , Business Standard
“This paper studies how liquidity constraints caused by currency shortages affect firm-level exports. To do so, we leverage the quasi-experimental variation in cash shortages generated by an unanticipated policy announcement in India: the 2016 “Demonetization” episode when the Government of India, in a surprise announcement, mandated that large currency bills – accounting for 86 percent of currency in circulation in India – would be rendered illegal tender within hours. Following this event, the economy was characterized by widespread currency shortages, which were especially problematic in India due to its high dependence on currency notes as the medium of exchange… [W]e find that firm exports significantly decline in response to destination district shocks. In contrast, exports remain statistically unchanged in response to own-district or source-district shocks. We interpret these results as indicating that currency shortages negatively affect firm exports only indirectly through domestic supply chains, especially when there are shocks in destination districts, i.e., in districts where their domestic customers are located. In essence, we find that when domestic customer firms get negatively affected by cash shortages, it indirectly affects exporters connected to them. Our analysis points to a causal relationship between liquidity constraints and exports that arise due to their linkages to domestic supply chains. Specifically, when the economy faces currency shortages, exporters can encounter liquidity issues due to delayed payments by domestic buyers, which then inhibits their ability to cover input costs and forces them to reduce output and exports.” Read more: Ritam Chaurey , Ryan Kim, and Pravin Krishna , National Bureau of Economic Research
“Agriculture employs just under half of India's workers or 280 million people, while industry employs 150 million and services 180 million people (including a small pandemic-era resurgence in agricultural employment, with migrant workers temporarily moving home from shuttered cities to work in fields), as Abhishek estimates in his piece on employment for Data For India. The share of Indian workers in agriculture is higher than in countries with similar contexts that Abhishek looks at, including China, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Agriculture now accounts for 18% of GDP but 46% of jobs, while services account for 54% of GDP and 30% of jobs… From the 1970s to the 2000s, India's services boom was driven by trade and hospitality, where the share in employment largely matched the share in economic output. But in recent decades, the services sub-sectors driving economic growth employ relatively far fewer people; real estate, for instance, accounts for 7% of GDP, but employs just 0.2% of the workforce.” Read more: Rukmini S , Data for India
Foreign Policy & Security -
“India’s goods trade deficit with China surged 13 per cent in the first seven months of the fiscal, underlining persistent dependence on Chinese imports despite efforts to diversify supply chains and curtail imports of certain products. The deficit widened to $57.83 billion between April and October compared with $51.12 billion a year earlier, according to government data. October alone saw a deficit of $8.46 billion, slightly higher than the $8.27 billion reported during the same month in 2023. China retained its position as India’s largest import source, far outpacing Russia and the UAE… Electronics, telecom equipment and electric vehicles remain critical sectors heavily reliant on Chinese inputs, including lithium-ion batteries essential for India’s green energy ambitions.” Read more: R. Suryamurthy, Telegraph
“On Sunday, India announced that the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had successfully test-flown a long-range, hypersonic missile that all three services can use to strike targets up to 1,500 kilometres away. Any contemporary list of cutting-edge military technologies has hypersonic, air-breathing, scramjet missiles close to the very top. Only three countries – Russia, USA and China – have flown vehicles in the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds: six times the speed of sound (Mach 6), or two kilometres (km) per second. After three decades of technological effort, India is poised to join that elite group… Despite the critical advantages that would accrue from a fleet of hypersonic aircraft and missiles, it has taken the DRDO almost 30 years to develop and test-fly a preliminary hypersonic missile at its flagship missile laboratory – the Defence R&D Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad… The Americans, Chinese, Russians and French have demonstrated hypersonic flight for no more than a few seconds. India is still working on a 20-30 second programme.” Read more: Ajai Shukla, Broadsword
“The recent flurry of reports on India coming close to allowing Taliban-appointed representatives to take up key diplomatic posts in Delhi and Mumbai highlights a major policy shift, pushed through by the prevailing political realities in Kabul. Taliban officials were in New Delhi recently for a multilateral event hosted by India’s telecom regulator. The Taliban is here to stay for now, and for the neighbourhood, ignoring them long-term is unrealistic. They have made a relatively successful push to seek out political recognition across the board. From China to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a number of States have accepted appointments by the Taliban’s interim government in a more open form… A core aim of Pakistani military and intelligence post-2021, which is keeping India out of Kabul, has failed. But this unsurprising flatlining of Pakistani strategy cannot be a theme of celebration within Indian security circles for too long, and waving jubilantly at Pakistan from Kabul is not a long-term strategy… More broadly, engagement with the Taliban on an official footing can have repercussions for India’s own push against countering terrorism. Many at the top of the Taliban’s interim government structure continue to be on most-wanted lists and UN travel ban advisories for terrorism.” Read more: Kabir Taneja , Hindustan Times
“The Union Home Ministry will deploy 50 additional companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), comprising around 5,000 personnel, in the next few days amid violence and killings in Manipur. The 20 additional companies, of around 2,000 personnel, that were sanctioned last week will arrive in the State on Tuesday, officials said. At least 22 people have been killed in the State in fresh round of violence since November 7. Union Home Minister Amit Shah reviewed the security situation for the second consecutive day… On Monday (November 18, 2024), the body of a 25-year-old woman, likely the sixth victim from the Meitei family that was abducted by armed miscreants on November 11 from Jiribam was found floating in Barak river in Assam, an official said. The bodies of other five members, including an eight-month-old boy and a two-year-old boy, were recovered between November 14-17 and an autopsy was conducted on Monday at Silchar Medical College in Assam… Three cases of violent crimes against women and children that have been reported in the State since November 7 have been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for a probe. The cases include the killing of a 31-year-old Hmar woman in Jiribam who was burnt to death on November 7 in Jiribam, the abduction and killing of three women and three children by armed militants on November 11 during an encounter with security forces in Jiribam and the killing of a woman farmer in Bishnupur on November 9.” Read more: Vijaita Singh , The Hindu
“Delays in commissioning of the ?1.08 lakh crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train have prompted India to explore alternatives to Japan as the Union government is keen to launch the ambitious project in 2026, ahead of the Gujarat polls the following year, three people aware of the development said. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR) project was approved by the Cabinet on December 2015. While a section in the government is keen to complete it before the Gujarat assembly elections expected in November 2027, the Japanese suppliers and technology providers are unwilling to commit to the deadline. This has forced New Delhi to consider alternatives in Europe, the three people added requesting anonymity… One concern of such a change in technology and equipment providers is cost escalation as an additional cost of about ?15,000 crore would be incurred if Japanese technological specifications are replaced with the European standards, the first person added. Significant infrastructure has been built as per the Japanese specification including hundreds of kms of pier foundation, pier construction and girder casting, this person said.” Read more: Rajeev Jayaswal & Rezaul Hasan Laskar , Hindustan Times
People & Politics -
“A day before the Maharashtra Assembly elections, BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde was accused by the rival Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) of distributing cash for votes. BVA leader Hitendra Thakur accused Tawde of distributing money to voters in a constituency in Palghar district. The Election Commission has filed an FIR against Tawde. Speaking to reporters, Thakur claimed, "Some BJP leaders informed me that BJP general secretary Vinod Tawde is coming to Virar to disburse Rs 5 crore to influence voters. I thought a national leader like him would not stoop to such a level. But I saw him here. I urge the Election Commission to take action against him and the BJP."… The BVA claimed that Tawde was caught red-handed distributing money to party workers and voters in Vasai-Virar, Mumbai. They alleged that he was found with Rs 5 crore in cash at a hotel.” Read more: New Indian Express
“The Supreme Court may have deemed bulldozer justice “totally unconstitutional” and equated it a “lawless state of affairs” but that has not deterred Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath from warning of their use in future. Wrapping up his election campaign in Jharkhand on November 18, Adityanath hinted at the use of bulldozers against political opponents if the Bharatiya Janata Party was voted to power in the state. In fact, just five days after the apex court stated that the government would not be allowed to demolish the property of an accused person without following due process of law, bulldozers were parked at the venue of at least two public meetings addressed by Adityanath in Jharkhand on November 18… The bulldozers also featured in his rally in Rajmahal. But he did not refer to them in the rally. However, in a post made later on social media site X (formerly Twitter), Adityanath shared a picture of the rally in Rajmahal showing his supporters perched on three bulldozers. Two of the bulldozers had supporters holding large saffron flags (shaped as stacked triangles). Adityanath referred to the use of bulldozers in a recent rally in Koderma, where he gloated about the impact demolitions through bulldozers had in his state UP ever since he assumed power.” Read more: Omar Rashid, The Wire
“Hours before Maharashtra went to polls on November 20, 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) posted at least three fake AI generated audio clips on their official X (formerly Twitter) handle. These clips, shared late on November 19, claimed to be recorded conversations involving opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) leaders Supriya Sule (NCP), Nana Patole (Congress), IPS officer Amitabh Gupta, and an employee of an audit firm, Gaurav Mehta. The BJP alleged these recordings were “proof” of opposition leaders Supriya Sule (NCP Sharad Pawar) and Nano Patole (Congress) misappropriating bitcoins from a 2018 cryptocurrency fraud case to fund the ongoing state elections… BOOM found that the voice notes posted by BJP are fake and generated using generative AI technology. We tested the audio clips using TrueMedia.org's deepfake detection tool available to journalists and researchers. Three of the four audio clips showed substantial evidence of being AI generated. One of the voice notes, only five seconds long, showed little evidence of being manipulated most likely due to its short duration.” Read more: Nivedita N. , Boom
“Weeks before two beneficiaries of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) died allegedly after angioplasty at Khyati Multispeciality Hospital in Ahmedabad, the Gujarat Medical Council (GMC) on October 4 had barred a Rajkot-based pediatrician from medical practice for one year after allegations that he falsely admitted newborn babies to his hospital by manipulating their medical records to illegally claim benefits of the national health scheme. After the action against Dr Hiren Natwarlal Mashru, the accused, his hospital — Nihit Babycare Children Hospital — was also de-empanelled from the PMJAY and a penalty of Rs 6.54 crore was imposed… A total of 116 claims uploaded by Dr Mashru, to the tune of Rs 65,47,950 on the PMJAY website, were subsequently rejected. The GMC action came at the fag end of a longer investigation into financial and insurance frauds linked to the Rajkot-based doctor, and also his unethical behaviour. He was accused of admitting healthy children to his NICU to illegally claim reimbursement from the PMJAY, the flagship health insurance scheme of the central government.” Read more: Brendan Dabhi , Indian Express
“A newborn rescued from a fire that engulfed a children's ward at a government hospital in Jhansi died due to illness on Sunday, officials said. With this, 11 newborns who were admitted to the NICU at Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College have died. Ten of them died after the fire broke out in the ward on Friday night… The DM further said that the bodies of the newborns who died in the fire have been handed over to their families… The Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday formed a four-member committee to investigate the hospital fire. The committee has been tasked with identifying the cause of the fire and determining whether there was any negligence. The government has sought its report within seven days.” Read more: NDTV
Tech -
“The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued summons to OpenAI in a suit filed by the Asian News International (ANI) over alleged unauthorized use of its content by the American artificial intelligence company to train and operate ChatGPT. Justice Amit Bansal also recorded OpenAI's statement that ANI's official website has been already been blocked by it to ensure that its content - as available on the portal - is not used by ChatGPT. Considering the importance of the issue particularly related to the copyright and use of publicly available content by AI models like ChatGPT, the Court said it would appoint an amicus curiae in the case… ANI's suit is the first instance where an Indian media house has sued OpenAI for alleged copyright violation. In the recent past, New York Times had sued OpenAI for the unauthorized use of its content to train its platforms. Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Bard AI have also faced lawsuits over the same issue.” Read more: Bhavini Srivastava, Bar and Bench
“The BJP and the Congress, and even regional parties, knew what was at stake in this digital boom, and allotted a substantial chunk of their 2024 political advertising funds to YouTube and Instagram campaigns. The Google Ads Transparency Center reported that in the crucial electioneering months between February and May, the Congress spent Rs 24.5 crore on Google ads for video content and the BJP Rs 50.4 crore and, reportedly, even more through surrogates with the sole aim of dominating the YouTube–Instagram space. And yet, unlike on TV, the BJP couldn’t set a unidirectional agenda on social media. “The growth of YouTube content is so organic that no single entity can control this revolution,” said a digital marketing executive. One of the most visible faces of this revolution is 49-year-old Ravish Kumar, a former NDTV anchor and winner of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for journalism in 2019… In a period of personal trauma – his mother in Patna was critically ill – Kumar found staunch supporters in the loyal viewers of his flagship NDTV show. Within ten days of his breaking into the YouTube universe, he acquired a staggering 2.3 million subscribers. By the time the 2024 election cycle began, the number had crossed 10 million.” Read more: Rajdeep Sardesai , Scroll
“Addressing the Conference of Directors of Private Sector Banks in Mumbai, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor Swaminathan J suggested the banking industry should focus on risk management and data integrity along with cybersecurity in the digital age… Swaminathan advocated for the establishment of ‘robust data systems’ to enhance data integrity and provide real-time insights for detecting potential issues. Such systems would also allow tracking trends in non-performing assets, and identifying timely “warning signs in market or liquidity conditions,” he added. Swaminathan claimed that such governance measures also help keep banks “resilient.” Additionally, he advised banks to expand the scope of stress testing tools to tackle a broader range of specific risks like operational, cyber, and liquidity risks… The Deputy Governor also mentioned the risks associated with third-party partnerships and emphasised the importance of transparency and accountability to prevent unforeseen disruptions. He believed such prerequisites could safeguard critical customer data handled by third-party relationships or vendors.” Read more: Ishika Gupta, Medianama
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday told the Union government that labour and social security rights for gig workers and app-based service providers cannot be denied under the guise of a “policy decision” if a statutory regime provides for such protections. A bench comprising justices Dipankar Datta and Prashant Kumar Mishra expressed displeasure over the Centre’s delay in filing a response to a 2020 petition seeking social security measures, including insurance, provident fund, gratuity, and maternity benefits for gig workers. Granting a final opportunity to file a response by December 17, the bench said: “This is a petition pending since 2021. They are seeking implementation of statutory provisions. Why have you not filed any response till date.” A lawyer appearing for the Centre pointed out that since the matter involves a “policy decision”, they would require some more time… The court was hearing a petition, moved by the Indian Federation of Application-Based Transport Workers (IFAT), that has argued for gig workers to be recognised as “unorganised workers” and to be extended statutory benefits such as health insurance and pensions.” Read more: Abraham Thomas, Hindustan Times
Bonus -
“In some Indian languages, the word for “language” is bhasha—the vowels long and warm, as in “car” or “tar.” It has a formal weight and a refined spirit. It comes to us from the classical heights of Sanskrit, and it evokes a language with a script and a literature, with newspapers and codified grammar and chauvinists and textbooks. But there is another word, boli. It, too, refers to language, but its more accurate meaning is “that which is spoken.” In its sense of the oral, it hints at colloquialisms, hybridity, and a demotic that belongs to the streets… For more than forty years, the distance between these two words has preoccupied the literary scholar Ganesh Devy. He knows precisely when it all began. In 1979, as he was completing his Ph.D. in English literature at Shivaji University, in the Indian city of Kolhapur, he found in the library a commentary on India’s censuses. The 1961 census had identified sixteen hundred and fifty-two “mother tongues”—many of them, like Betuli or Khawathlang, with speakers numbering in the single digits. But the 1971 census listed only a hundred and eight; the hundred-and-ninth entry was “all others.” That made Devy wonder: What had happened to the other fifteen-hundred-odd languages, the various boli deemed too unimportant to name? … Linguistic plurality, by itself, is no guarantor of peace or prosperity—and it may even devolve into a fetish for numbers, Sharma said. But he reads Devy’s enterprise as a democratic one—as a way to steel the spines of people who endeavor to resist. When many languages thrive, Sharma told me, there is the possibility that “the smallest language, the most innocuous dialect, might contain the potential of saying that all-important word: ‘No’.” Read more: Samanth Subramanian , The New Yorker
Watch/Listen -