A Question of Critical Tech, And Where Does India Stand?
What is common between the United States, Australia, Japan, the EU, and the United Kingdom as far as tech is concerned? The answer is pretty simple: they have all announced lists of technologies they deem critical for their national interests. These lists are a public signal of governmental priorities and will potentially shape their policy direction.
Meanwhile, India does not have a list of critical technologies. Critical technologies include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum, biotechnologies, etc, and the criteria for identifying them as “critical” are national security, economic prosperity, and social cohesion. Yet, even as more such lists become publicly known, there is little clarity on what exactly is a “critical technology” and what governmental action it should elicit.
So, what do we do? Takshashila’s head of research, Shambhavi Naik, has a paper that proposes a framework to identify critical technologies and drive further public policy actions from an Indian perspective.
First, Shambhavi says, we have to understand and define what ‘critical’ means. She says it must indicate a threat to routine operations if the critical component is missing.
“There are three key conditions that govern criticality:
1. There is an actual or perceived threat
2. The absence of the technology would lead to a gap in responding to the threat
3. There is a market failure that prevents the private sector from addressing the gap.
The presence of a threat, the absence of a solution, and market failure mean that the government identifying a technology as critical would formulate follow-up public policy action to build domestic competency. The policy would be dependent on which of the three criteria needs to be strengthened.”
Shambhavi’s framework takes this idea forward and proposes a possible solution to India’s conundrum of framing its critical tech policy.
For example, she writes:
A prerequisite of criticality has to be that a crisis or problem situation would ensue if the critical technology is not appropriated. As seen in previous uses of the word “critical”, the technology should be central to some form of domestic security. In contrast to previous uses, which have been primarily applied in the application of military and defence security, the scope of security has now expanded to account for current geopolitical challenges. For critical technologies, security may include:
A. National military security, including international and domestic.
B. Health security, including nutritional security, sanitation, disease prevention and treatment, pandemic preparedness, and climate change mitigation.
C. Energy security, including securing supplies for India’s energy needs
D. Data security, including technology for the protection of personal data, including personal identifiers, financial data, and health data.
The full paper is both perceptive as well as provides a kind of ready reckoner for India’s policy makers on critical tech. Read it here.
And What About Space?
If India has any ambition of becoming a world leader in space technology, the year 2024 has to be a crucial one. On May 3, space regulator Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) released new guidelines and procedures for space activity. According to Takshashila’s Ashwin Prasad, “These guidelines may have a detrimental effect on India’s emerging private space sector.”
He writes:
“The guidelines describe the process of this authorisation for the different areas of space-based technologies such as satellite communication, rocket launch services, and earth observation. Yet key areas such as scientific missions, and positioning, navigation, and timing services, which enable GPS and air traffic control, are missing from the guidelines. For unappraised areas, companies are tasked with learning and adhering to the global best practices. These should be handled by IN-SPACe, not the private entities. This shifting of responsibility to the private sector suggests a lack of capacity on IN-SPACe’s part.”
Problematic they may be, but there is a way out, opines Ashwin.
“In order to fix these inconsistencies and create a fair regulatory environment for the private sector, IN-SPACe must be given legal authority, and the guidelines must be codified into a law. The government should separate IN-SPACe's regulatory functions from its promotional ones. Its regulatory half also needs to be independent of the DoS to ensure independence and impartiality in its functions. An IN-SPACe Act must be put in place along the lines of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992, and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997. The Act should also create an adjudicatory and appellate tribunal to handle appeals and disputes between the private sector and IN-SPACe.”
Read Ashwin’s op-ed in the Deccan Herald here.
When The Going Gets Tough For The Army…
In his latest column for The Print, Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon writes evocatively on the political pressures on the Indian army and how, when faced with a choice between religious and constitutional values, the Indian military must defend its secular and apolitical nature.
He writes:
“Manifestations of cultural shifts in the institutional character of the military are best identified by the military leadership. These manifestations are reflected in the values, rituals, heroes and symbols that are embraced. Symbols represent the most superficial and values the deepest manifestations of culture. Words, gestures, pictures or objects carrying a particular meaning could all be considered symbols.
The political winds blowing in India, as reflected in the ongoing electoral campaign, should provide an insight into the military leadership, and the scope and nature of the challenges to its basic values. Violations of symbolic restrictions are easily curbed through personal examples and strict imposition of orders. Upholding the Army’s secular and apolitical character is the responsibility of the military’s top leadership. When necessary, if military leaders don’t show a willingness to sacrifice their careers to protect core institutional values, the struggle to withstand the internal political onslaught of religious polarisation may not achieve much. The challenge is to find a path between dealing with the enemies of the gods one worships and protecting the constitutional values that the military has sworn to defend.”
You can read the full piece here.
What should earthlings really be worried about
The head of a global philanthropic foundation recently told Takshashila co-founder and director Nitin Pai that his board had decided to focus exclusively on funding causes concerned with combating climate change. Nitin was a little confused. The foundation had previously supported work on nuclear disarmament and international security, so why the change? The chief’s reply left Nitin bemused. “Climate change,” Nitin recalls the foundation’s head telling him, “is a long-term existential threat to humanity.”
Nitin writes in his latest piece for Mint:
“I have seen climate change activists roll their eyes when the conversation turns to geopolitics. To the extent that they engage with the subject at all, it is to argue that international politics is a major hurdle to achieving emissions targets and other climate goals. They do not sufficiently recognise that war is perhaps the most undesirable source of carbon emissions. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts (PERAC) in 2022, but environmental impact of war remains at the margins of the international discourse on climate change. That is a expensive mistake.”
He adds:
“At a time when people in developing countries are being asked to sacrifice their growth prospects to achieve global climate goals, it is a cruel joke to witness such thoughtless and wasteful emissions from extended wars. The world cannot prevent wars, but it can — and has shown itself capable of — reducing their duration, limiting their intensity and environmental damage.”
You can read his piece here.
India vs China on consumption metrics throw up interesting numbers
In 2023, India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous country. The development came against the backdrop of a declining birth rate (6.4 births per 1,000 people) and total fertility rate (~1%) in China. China also recorded a negative population growth rate for the first time in six decades. This means a rising dependency ratio, which is projected to increase over time.
In contrast, India’s population, despite reaching replacement levels (total fertility rate of 2.1), is expected to grow and peak around 2060. These developments have significant consequences on domestic consumption in the two countries.
Consequently, it becomes imperative to compare their consumption figures and strengths/weaknesses. A cross-comparison also assumes significance owing to the two countries' contrasting experiences in their respective geopolitical landscapes.
In his latest op-ed for The Hindu, Takshashila’s Amit Kumar compares the two countries on hard consumption numbers. The insights are both surprising as well as eye-opening. But why should we reveal the plotline here? Head over to this link and find out yourself.
Wait, there a lot more!
Rakshith Shetty writes in The Diplomat about how both China and the US are looking to tariffs and other trade barriers to protect their clean energy industries. The outcome is likely to be a more protectionist world economy, he says. Read the piece here.
In our pick for the All Things Policy podcast episode of the week, we are joined by Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO of GoSports Foundation, a National award-winning non-profit that supports elite and emerging athletes across Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. Under her leadership in 2019, GoSports was bestowed with the prestigious ‘Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar’ – National Sports Encouragement Award for identifying and nurturing budding young talent. Listen to her ideas on sports as an accelerator of social change here.
From Takshashila’s internal conference on social media and democracy, here are two research papers by Bharat Sharma, Sachin Kalbag and Satya Sahu on how tech has been instrumental in changing politics, political perceptions and indeed decision-making. Read them here.
If you have been on X (formerly Twitter) lately, you might have come across the viral video of a Taiwanese parliamentarian literally running away with a bill to prevent it from being enacted into law. Moreover, an incident involving a physical fight between lawmakers, which resulted in the hospitalisation of five of them, also came to light. So, what is going on lately in the island nation with a geopolitical significance? Anushka Saxena explains the situation in an op-ed for the Times of India and you can read it here.
Takshashila recently announced its new cohort of the Network for Advanced Study of Pakistan (NASP). If you are interested in producing top-class research papers on Pakistan, head onto this page for the details and how to apply.
Finally, here is a fascinating piece by Takshashila’s Councillor, M Govinda Rao, on the structural reforms the Indian economy needs. In Deccan Herald, the former director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and member of the 14th Finance Commission writes about the reforms needed to reach 9.5% annual growth until 2047. Read all about it here.
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Corrigendum: In last week’s edition, an article titled ‘There’s a reason why the Indian stock market seems to love the BJP’ was incorrectly attributed to Nitin Pai. The author is Vivek Kaul, and you can find the article here. We have corrected the error on our Substack page. We regret the error.
That’s all from us this week. Take care.