📰 Digital disconnect
Poor access to the Internet in many States must be bridged urgently to help e-learners
•The full report of the NSO’s survey of ‘Household Social Consumption on Education in India’, for July 2017-June 2018, highlights the poor state of computer and Internet access in several States. The disparities are glaring among different economic strata as well. The digital chasm that separates the privileged from the deprived remains unbridged years after the broadband policy of 2004, and its effects are painfully evident during the pandemic as students struggle to log on to online classes. While some poorly connected States may have improved since the survey period, the gaps are so stark that any development could only be modest. Only in Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala did the survey find Internet access exceeding 50% for urban and rural households taken together, while Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand exceeded 40%, unimpressive numbers still. Large States — Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka — had access below 20%. In today’s milieu, net access is critical, considering that even where mobile phones and laptops are available — some States provide them under student welfare programmes — they cannot be meaningfully used in its absence. If net connectivity is 5% to 10% in rural Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and West Bengal, only a slim minority can hope to do any academic work. Many remote locations have reliability problems and power deficits, making it a challenge to keep gadgets operational even offline.
•Prime Minister Modi has acknowledged the digital divide by announcing in his Independence Day address that all villages would be connected with optical fibre cable in 1,000 days. This target, reflecting enhanced ambition, follows the one set in 2011 to link panchayats through a national optical fibre network — to raise administrative capacities through information infrastructure. Evidently, successive governments have dropped the ball. States have not shown the alacrity to make a big leap either, and the deficit has now dealt a blow to students. To make up for lost time, connectivity for education must be prioritised. Mapping the needs of each district based on the NSO data will help identify areas where children do need equipment and connectivity. Such efforts have been launched globally in the wake of COVID-19, some in partnership with the telecom sector to leverage its capacity for surveys and mapping. Some companies in India have made the valuable suggestion that their used desktop computers could be refurbished and donated, for which governments need to open a programme. On the network technology front, a new gigabit speed ‘wireless fibre’ standard is being viewed in developed countries as a leapfrog option to link inaccessible areas; it involves high capacity spectrum (E and V bands), and is commercially not contentious. The government needs to look at all possibilities and go into overdrive to bridge the digital divide.
Missteps by India and China in the past rather than modern-day territorial expansion have resulted in the stalemate
•The “deep conversation” with China that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has indicated must be informed by the past but should be based on the changed global context as festering problems left over from colonialism tend to get re-framed (West Asia is an example), as new trade-offs emerge, and leadership matters.
•As civilisational states, neighbours and rising powers, India and China have a unique continuing process of diplomatic engagement, even as their militaries face off against each other, which is very different to the international relations theory developed in the West to explain something that had never happened before, the 200 year global colonial and post-colonial world and inapplicable to differences arising from colonial ambiguity.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion that ‘this is the age of development”, and former Generals of the Leh-based Corps pointing to the undemarcated border, suggesting a ‘practical’ boundary along the Karakoram watershed reframes the national interest. Combined with the recent shift by China from Line of Actual Control (LAC) to Claim Line, a new national debate on demarcating the border is needed.
Diplomatic positions
•The origin of different interpretations of the boundary is poorly surveyed ancient maps of uninhabited areas, visited only by traders and nomads, with even passes at an altitude above 13,000 feet. Commerce dominated economic activity and several trade routes converged on Leh. With settled agriculture limited to strips along the Indus in the west, Aksai Chin was a kind of no-man’s land, as there was no need for an administration.
•With the Treaty of Amritsar, in 1846, the British granted Gulab Singh Kashmir without specifying its eastern boundary in Aksai Chin. According to Article 2 of the Treaty, the boundary was to be “defined by a separate engagement after survey”. The first one, the Johnson-Ardagh Line surveyed in 1865, ran along the Kunlun Mountain, included Aksai Chin in Kashmir and was not communicated to China. Another survey, the McCartney-MacDonald Line, ran closer to the Karakoram Range, treating the Indus watershed as the border. The later survey, officially sent by the British to China in 1899, was not followed up, and the border remained ‘undefined’.
•The dispute continues to be which watershed defines the boundary. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, according to the official transcript of the boundary talks with Premier Chou-en-lai [Zhou Enlai] in April 1960, argued that ‘it is true that the boundary is not marked on the ground; but if delimitation can take place by definition of high mountain areas and watershed and if it is a normally accepted principle of demarcation, then it is precisely defined in the past’, his reference was to the Kun Lun range. Premier Chou’s position was ‘we do not recognise the McMahon line but that we were willing to take a realistic view with Burma and India. It is easy to see that the national boundary between China and India is the Karakoram watershed. This extends from Kilik Pass, passes through the Karakoram Pass to Kongka Pass. Broadly speaking, rivers and streams to the south and west of this belong to India while those to the north and east of it are on China’s side’. Both sides could only agree there was no demarcation on the ground.
Ghosts of old
•Three missteps by both countries have resulted in the current stalemate. First, two civilisational states establishing their identity were ill-advised by poorly informed experts. India issued new maps in 1954 removing the ‘un-demarcated territory’ tag and China in 1957 also showed Aksai Chin with the only traffic artery between Tibet and Xinjiang in its new map. A cartographic ambiguity was converted into clashing sovereignty, with unwarranted inherent notions of ‘concession’ and ‘aggression’.
•Second, further reliance placed on experts to assist the diplomatic process in reconciling records and custom obfuscated the political nature of the settlement. In 1960, the history and tradition of the area were to be examined by a joint expert group which could not produce an agreed report as earlier maps considered basin boundaries, and not who had exercised control over territory. These deliberations only confirmed that trust, the essential element of a negotiation, was missing.
•Third, despite the system of engagement from 1993 for “meaningful and mutually acceptable adjustments to their respective positions on the boundary question”, militaries remain tasked with defending borders where ‘grey areas’ and maximum restraint in ‘face to face’ situations have inherent limitations. Infrastructure development increases the potential for action and then reflection, and that process has outlived its utility. The Special Representatives of India and China, set up to resolve the boundary issue and diplomats have had to step in on border management.
•The missteps extended into the operational sphere. China constructed its strategic highway unhindered, as regular patrolling till all the border passes was not undertaken between 1954 and 1959, when a clash took place near the Kongka Pass, south of the Galwan valley, galvanising hectic diplomatic activity. On the Chinese side also, in 1960, their experts showed Indian experts a new map of the Chinese-claimed ‘traditional customary line’ which was at points well to the west of the alignment of the same area which Premier Chou en-lai had earlier described to Jawaharlal Nehru.
•Then, as now, public opinion had a disproportionate role and a furore arose when the term territory “administered” by India was used. The Soviet Union (Russia), as in the case of the Galwan face-off, resorted to quiet diplomacy, with a tilt towards India impacting on the disengagement.
Re-framing differences
•The context is no longer newly independent countries unsure of themselves, but neighbours confident in their national power seeking ‘accommodation’. Lt. General P.J.S. Pannu, who commanded the Leh-based Corps, has advocated a boundary settlement laying stress on the difficulties in holding ground ‘divided by this history’, with military clashes inevitable as the LAC is not marked on the ground (https://bit.ly/35jNEfj). Lt. General N.S. Brar, a former chief of staff of the Leh-based Corps, has advocated a ‘sober handling of national security issues’ by ‘accepting Chou-en-lai’s proposal as ‘a practical and honourable accommodation with China’ (https://bit.ly/32eZ42h). National security is more than the military posture.
•Wedded to the questionable line of 1865, on the Kunlun Range, India has not claimed the more legitimate line of 1899 on the Karakoram watershed (communicated by the British to the Chinese) and which China has accepted as the boundary with Pakistan, and fully covers our patrolling points and strategic heights we now occupy. This translates to the Indus watershed lying within India, with the area to its east in China, including its strategic highway G219.
•Another new development is the guidance from the Modi-Xi summit, held in Wuhan in 2018, that the boundary question should be considered from the ‘strategic perspective of India-China relations’. The debate should really be whether the Wuhan Spirit, expected to create conditions for the Asian century, Asia with two poles, is still relevant. This marks a shift from India’s earlier stand agreeing with China that problems left over from history be left for another generation.
•There are indications that Jawaharlal Nehru was inclined towards negotiation but feared his Home Minister, Govind Ballabh Pant, would play the national card to oust him. Prime Minister Modi is secure, within the party and the national trust in him. He should audit the past, explain colonial ambiguity, establish the Himalayan watershed as border, and take a giant step for the $5-trillion economy.
📰 Rethinking the defence doctrine
The ongoing border crisis with China calls for a strategic shift from punitive retaliation to prevention
•Over four months ago, the Chinese army entered territory that India has long considered its own, and never left. In effect, the multiple incursions have changed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and India has lost territory, at least for the time being. How could this happen?
•In part, it was a failure of the warning-intelligence system. Either Indian intelligence services did not collect sufficient data of Chinese intentions and early moves, or they did not interpret it correctly, or their policy and military customers failed to take the warning seriously. Wherever the fault lay, the system apparently failed.
•In part, however, the problem also lay in the Army’s concepts for defending the country’s borders. It is, as the current crisis shows, simply not postured or prepared for the type of security threat China presents.
•As I argued in a recent research study for Carnegie India, the Army’s prevailing doctrine is designed to deter and defend against major conventional invasions. This determines how the Army is organised, what equipment it operates, and where it is deployed. The Army expects to win wars, against Pakistan or China, by launching its own punitive offensives after an enemy attack, to either destroy enemy forces or seize enemy land.
•In this mindset, the Army expected that any Chinese bid to capture Indian territory would come as a major conventional invasion, as it did in 1962. The Indian response would accordingly involve large formations, with planning and command decisions made at the Corps headquarters or higher.
•But the Chinese army’s initial forays in April and May did not look like a guns-blazing invasion. It crossed the LAC in several places nearly simultaneously, and in larger numbers than usual. Still, the Indian Army probably expected the stand-off would repeat the pattern of years past: China would make its point with a temporary transgression and retreat after talks. In the meantime, Indian forces would reinforce their positions but hold back. Indian forces were under strict instructions from New Delhi that any aggressive response must be avoided as it would inflame the situation.
•It is now clear that the national security leadership and the Army miscalculated. China has no interest in launching a major conventional invasion, but this is not just a typical probe either. Rather, its quick land grab looks increasingly permanent, like an attempt to change the border without triggering war. This fait accompli leaves India with two awful choices: either start a war by launching its own reprisal attack, or do nothing and accept a new status quo.
•Addressing this type of security threat requires preventing, not reversing, such fait accompli land grabs. This requires a fundamental shift in the Army’s doctrinal thinking, from strategies revolving around punishing the adversary, to strategies that prevent its adventurism in the first place.
Speed is of the essence
•In practice, this does not mean an unbroken picket of soldiers all along the border. It does, however, mean a greater investment in persistent wide-area surveillance to detect and track adversary moves, devolved command authority to respond to enemy aggression, and rehearsed procedures for an immediate local response without higher commanders’ approval.
•In countering China’s ‘grey zone’ tactics of quick land grabs, speed is of the essence. The military must be able to detect adversary action and react quickly, even pre-emptively, to stop attempted aggression from becoming a fait accompli. In peacetime, local commanders must have the authority and gumption to take anticipatory action and go on the offensive or fill forward defensive positions. The late-August incident at Chushul demonstrates how this can and should work. Indian special forces troops took position on previously unoccupied heights south of Pangong Tso. In so doing they have complicated future Chinese moves to consolidate their position, and may even hold some Chinese positions at risk. The country’s attempts to seize more ground have been foiled.
•Unfortunately, China was not foiled in its initial seizure of Indian territory. Reversing that occupation will require a remarkable feat of Indian statecraft. A military solution is decreasingly likely as China reinforces its deployments. Taking strident offensive actions now, amidst a heavily militarised crisis, may be hazardous because it carries new risks of unintended escalation. The challenge for India is to learn the right lessons and be alert to similar tactics in other regions, like the Indian Ocean. It must not rely on doctrines forged in wars half a century ago.
📰 The twisted trajectory of Bt cotton
Despite finding huge favour in India, the GM crop has only brought modest benefits
•Cotton has been woven and used in India for thousands of years. Cotton fabric from around 3,000 BCE has been excavated from the ruins of Mohenjo-daro, and archaeological findings in Mehrgarh, Pakistan, show that cotton was used in the subcontinent as far back as 5,000 BCE. Indian cotton fabrics dominated the world trade during the succeeding millennia and were exported to many places, including Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, Assyria and parts of Asia.
•Much of the cotton cultivated until the 20th century was of the indigenous ‘desi’ variety,Gossypium arboreum. From the 1990s, hybrid varieties ofG. hirsutumwere promoted. These hybrids cannot resist a variety of local pests and require more fertilizers and pesticides. Cotton suffers from plenty of infestation from moth pests(Lepidopteran)such as the Pink Bollworm (PBW) and sap-sucking(Hemipteran) pests such as aphids and mealy bugs. With increasing pressure to buy hybrid seeds, the indigenous varieties have lost out over the years. But recently, there has been some resurgence of interest.
•The increasing use of synthetic pyrethroids (group of man-made pesticides) to control pests and the rising acreage under the American long-duration cotton led to the emergence of resistant pests. Resistant Pink and even American Bollworm (ABW), a minor pest in the past, began increasing, leading to a growing use of a variety of pesticides. Rising debts and reducing yields, coupled with increasing insect resistance, worsened the plight of cotton farmers. It was in this setting that Bt cotton was introduced in India in 2002.
•Genetically modified (GM) cotton, the plant containing the pesticide gene from the bacteriaBacillus thuringiensis(Bt), has been grown in India for about twenty years. This pesticide, now produced in each Bt plant cell, ought to protect the plant from bollworm, thereby increasing yields and reducing insecticide spraying on the cotton plant. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, from 2005, adoption of Bt cotton rose to 81% in 2007, and up to 93% in 2011. Many short-duration studies examining Bt cotton, in the early years, pronounced that Bt was a panacea for dwindling yields and pesticide expenses. The two-decade mark now provides an opportunity to review GM cotton in India more comprehensively.
Broad review
•In March this year, K.R. Kranthi and Glenn Davis Stone published a review in the scientific journalNature Plants, analysing the entire picture of the use of Bt cotton in India. Earlier studies had attributed to Bt the tripling of cotton yield between 2002-2014 in India. However, one detail that sullied such a conclusion was that yield differences between farmers who were the early adopters of Bt cotton and those who were not suffered from selection bias.
•Controlling for such bias showed (in 2012) that the contribution of Bt cotton to yield increase was only about 4% each year; still, since yields vary annually by over 10%, the benefits claimed were dubious. Kranthi and Stone’s review examines data over 20 years, studying each State separately and correcting for illegal Bt cotton planting.
•There are discrepancies between yield and the deployment of Bt cotton. For instance, the Bt acreage was only 3.4% of the total cotton area in 2003, not sufficient to credit it for the 61% increase in yield in 2003-2004. Furthermore, with only 15.7% Bt cotton coverage by 2005, yield increases were over 90% over 2002 levels. While Bt cotton adoption corresponded to a drop in spraying for bollworms, the study states, “countrywide yields stagnated after 2007 even as more farmers began to grow Bt. By 2018, yields were lower than in the years of rapid Bt adoption.”
•Individual State data are more helpful in understanding subnational trends. In Maharashtra, yields climbed in the decade after 2000, with no change in the rate of increase when Bt cotton was introduced. In Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as well, there is no correlation between the adoption of the variety and increase in yields. For instance, Gujarat’s surge in cotton yields was 138% in 2003, even as Bt cotton was used only for 5% of land under cotton. Similar findings are seen in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, where yield increase is incongruous with the spread of Bt cotton.
•The rise in cotton yields can be explained by improvements in irrigation, for instance in Gujarat, and a dramatic growth across the country in the use of fertilizers. Gross fertilizer use for cotton more than doubled from 2007-2013; the average rose from 98 kg/ha in 2003 to 224 kg/ha in 2013.
•There is a strong correlation between the rise in use of fertilizers in individual States and yields, and this bias increases when it is combined with improvements in irrigation.
•The total insecticide expenditure per hectare reduced in 2006, andLepidopteranspraying expenditures continued to fall until 2011. While the ABW that feeds on different plants does not appear to have developed a resistance to Bt, the PBW developed a resistance by 2009 in India. In a few years, the situation was dreadful. Bollworm spraying began to climb again. Sap-sucking insects have surged for the hybrids, as thehirsutumBt cotton hybrids are quite vulnerable. With rising acreage under Bt cotton cultivation, expenditures for spraying for sucking pests also went up. By 2018, farmers were spending an average of $23.58 per hectare on insecticide — 37% more than the pre-Bt levels.
Real-world challenges
•It is tough to isolate one particular aspect of a technology and evaluate it properly. A technology that works in the lab may fail in fields since real-world success hinges on multiple factors, such as different kinds of pests and local soil and irrigation conditions. The benefits of Bt cotton have been modest and short-lived. Changes to the agricultural systems correlate better with positive yields, and countrywide yields have not improved in thirteen years. India’s global rank for cotton production is 36 despite heavy fertilizer use, irrigation, chemicals and Bt cotton usage. This is below the national average of some resource-poor African countries that don’t have Bt, hybrids or good access to inputs.
•The cost of ignoring ‘desi’ varieties for decades has been high for India. These varieties resist many pests and don’t present the problems faced with hybrids. Research suggests that with pure-line cotton varieties, high density planting, and short season plants, cotton yields in India can be good and stand a better chance at withstanding the vagaries of climate change. But government backing for resources, infrastructure and seeds is essential to scale up ‘desi’ varieties. It is time to pay attention to science and acknowledge that Bt cotton has failed in India, and not enter into further misadventures with other Bt crops such as brinjal or herbicide resistance.
📰 In blockchain voting, leave out the general election
The idea of further digitising India’s electoral infrastructure is problematic and could hinder free and fair polls
•The Election Commission of India has for a while now been toying with the idea of further digitising the electoral infrastructure of the country. In furtherance of this, the Election Commission had, last month, held an online conference in collaboration with the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (“TNeGA”) and IIT Madras (https://bit.ly/35k4niQ), through which they explored the possibility of using blockchain technology for the purpose of enabling remote elections. While this exploration is still only in the nascent stages, there are several concerns that must be considered at the offset with utmost caution.
Rise in new applications
•A blockchain is a distributed ledger of information which is replicated across various nodes on a “peer-to-peer” network for the purpose of ensuring integrity and verifiability of data stored on the ledger. Blockchain ledgers have traditionally been used as supporting structures for cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum; however, their use in non-cryptocurrency applications too has seen a steady rise, with some solutions allowing individuals and companies to draft legally-binding “smart contracts,” enabling detailed monitoring of supply chain networks, and several projects focused on enabling remote voting and elections.
•Arguments in favour of remote voting are plenty. In the way the envisioned system has been described, ‘remote voting’ would appear to benefit internal migrants and seasonal workers, who account for roughly 51 million of the populace (Census 2011), and who have, as a matter of record, faced considerable difficulties in exercising their democratic right of voting. The envisioned solution might also be useful for some remotely-stationed members of the Indian armed forces, though it should be noted that, for the most part, vote casting has not been an issue for those serving in even the remotest of places including the Siachen Glacier, which, given its altitude, is considered to be the ‘highest battleground’ on the planet.
Key issues, security concerns
•The problems with the blockchain-based remote voting systems are manifold. At an earlier event held by the Election Commission, then Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena, explained that electors would still have to physically reach a designated venue in order to cast their vote, adding that systems would use “white-listed IP devices on dedicated internet lines”, and that the system would make use of the biometric attributes of electors.
•Digitisation and interconnectivity introduce additional points of failure external to the processes which exist in the present day. The system envisioned by the Election Commission is perhaps only slightly more acceptable than a fully remote, app-based voting system (which face a litany of issues of their own, and which have so far only been deployed in a few low-level elections in the West). The systems used in such low-stakes elections have suffered several blunders too, some of which could have been catastrophic if they had gone undetected.
•Blockchain solutions rely heavily on the proper implementation of cryptographic protocols. If any shortcomings exist in an implementation, it might stand to potentially unmask the identity and voting preferences of electors, or worse yet, allow an individual to cast a vote as someone else. In Russia, during the vote on the recent controversial constitutional amendment ushered in by Russian President Vladimir Putin, citizens were able to cast their vote online. While the voting process was still under way, a Russian media outlet reported that it was possible to access and decrypt the votes stored on the blockchain due to a flaw in cryptographic implementation, which could have been used to unmask the votes cast by electors.
•The requirement of physical presence and biometric authentication may not necessarily make a remote voting system invulnerable to attacks either. An attacker may be able to clone the biometric attributes required for authenticating as another individual and cast a vote on their behalf. Physical implants or software backdoors placed on an individual system could allow attackers to collect and deduce voting choices of individuals.
•Further, while the provisioning of a dedicated line may make the infrastructure less prone to outages, it may also make it increasingly prone to targeted Denial-of-Service attacks (where an attacker would be in a position to block traffic from the system, effectively preventing, or at the very least delaying the registration of votes). More attack scenarios that the system might be vulnerable to will slowly become evident when additional details about the hypothesised system are disclosed.
•Apart from lingering security issues, digitised systems may also stand to exclude and disenfranchise certain individuals due to flaws in interdependent platforms, flaws in system design, as well as general failures caused by external factors. Naturally, the more levers that are involved in the operation of a system, the more prone it would become to possible malfunction.
Other solutions
•If the only problem that is to be solved is the one of ballot portability, then perhaps technological solutions which involve setting up entirely new, untested voting infrastructure may not be the answer. Political engagement could perhaps be improved by introducing and improving upon other methods, such as postal ballots or proxy voting. Another proposed solution to this issue includes the creation of a ‘One Nation, One Voter ID’ system, though it is unclear whether such a radical (and costly) exercise would be required at all for the mere purpose of allowing individuals to vote out of their home State.
An obsession
•India can characteristically be described as a country obsessed with techno-solutionism. If a solution uses technology, the general consensus is that it must work. However, this optimism for technological solutions poses a threat and could stand to hinder free and fair elections in the future, if unchecked. It is important to lay stress on the point that further digitisation, in itself, does not make processes more robust. Any solution to electoral problems must be software independent and fault tolerable, where failure or tampering of one mechanism — or several — would not affect the integrity or transparency of the overall process.
•Even if the Election Commission is able to design a system which is proven to be satisfactorily secure in the face of attacks, where tampering could be detected, and where the integrity of the ballot is verifiable by electors, use of such a system could perhaps only be justified for lower level elections, and not for something as significant and politically binding as the general election.
