📰 India, Central Asian republics call for destruction of terror safe havens
Delhi announces an additional $1 billion Line of Credit for the region
•The Central Asian republics joined India on Wednesday in demanding destruction of “safe havens” of terrorism. The second meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue jointly expressed support for the peace negotiations in Afghanistan which is expected to usher in a new age for the war-torn country.
•“The Ministers strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and reaffirmed the determination of their countries to combat this menace by destroying terrorist safe-havens, networks, infrastructure and funding channels. They also underlined the need for every country to ensure that its territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks against other countries,” said a Joint Statement issued after the meeting.
•Delivering his opening remarks, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar described the Central Asian region as India’s “extended neighbourhood”. Among the key takeaways from the meeting was the announcement of an additional $1 billion Line of Credit by India for the Central Asian countries. It is expected that the money will be spent for major infrastructural and connectivity projects.
•The Joint Statement highlighted the appreciation from the Foreign Ministers of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic for India’s “efforts to modernise the infrastructure of the Chabahar port in Iran, which could become an important link in trade and transport communications between the markets of Central and South Asia”.
•The meeting also led to the announcement of grant financing by India for high impact community development projects in the countries. It also led to the establishment of working groups by India Central Asia Business Council comprising the key Chambers of all participating countries.
•Apart from Dr. Jaishankar, the meeting was attended by his counterparts Mukhtar Tleuberdi (Kazakhstan), Sirodjiddin Muhriddin (Tajikistan), Rashid Meredov (Turkmenistan), Abdulaziz Kamilov (Uzbekistan) and First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic Nuran Niyazaliev.
In the week of the survey in September, about one in three rural children had done no learning activity at all.
•About 20% of rural children have no textbooks at home, according to the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) survey conducted in September, the sixth month of school closures due to COVID-19 across the country. In Andhra Pradesh, less than 35% of children had textbooks, and only 60% had textbooks in Rajasthan. More than 98% had textbooks in West Bengal, Nagaland and Assam.
•In the week of the survey, about one in three rural children had done no learning activity at all. About two in three had no learning materials or activity given by their school that week, and only one in ten had access to live online classes. It’s not always about technology; in fact, levels of smartphone ownership have almost doubled from 2018, but a third of children with smartphone access still did not receive any learning materials.
•Although the Centre has now permitted States to start reopening schools if they can follow COVID-19 safety protocols, the vast majority of the country’s 25 crore students are still at home after seven straight months. The ASER survey provides a glimpse into the levels of learning loss that students in rural India are suffering, with varying levels of access to technology, school and family resources resulting in a digital divide in education.
•ASER is a nationwide survey of rural education and learning outcomes in terms of reading and arithmetic skills that has been conducted by the NGO Pratham for the last 15 years. This year, the survey was conducted via phone calls, reaching 52,227 rural households with school age children in 30 States and Union Territories.
•It found that 5.3% of rural children aged 6-10 years had not yet enrolled in school this year, in comparison to just 1.8% in 2018. This seems to indicate that due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic, families are waiting for the physical opening of schools to enrol their youngest children, with about 10% of six-year-olds not in school. Among 15-16-year-olds, however, enrolment levels are actually slightly higher than in 2018. Enrolment patterns also show a slight shift toward government schools, with private schools seeing a drop in enrolment in all age groups.
•In 2018, ASER surveyors found that about 36% of rural households with school-going children had smartphones. By 2020, that figure had spiked to 62%. About 11% of families bought a new phone after the lockdown, of which 80% were smartphones.
•This may indicate why WhatsApp was by far the most popular mode of transmitting learning materials to students, with 75% of students who got some input receiving it via the messaging app. About a quarter of those who got input had personal contact with a teacher.
•However, two thirds of rural children nationwide reported that they had not received any learning materials or activities at all. In Bihar, less than 8% got such materials from their schools, along with 20% in West Bengal, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. On the other hand, more than 80% of rural children in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Gujarat received such input.
•Many children did learning activities on their own, with or without regular input. Of the 70% who did some activities, 11% had access to live online classes, and 21% had videos or recorded classes, with much higher levels in private schools. About 60% studied from their textbooks, and 20% watched classes broadcast on TV. In Andhra Pradesh, half of all children did no learning activity at all, while in Kerala, only 5% of children were left out.
•Parental levels of education and resources played a key role in whether children studied at home. About 20% of children whose parents had less than five years of education got learning materials, compared to 46% among parents who had studied beyond Class IX themselves. Almost 40% in low education households got no materials and did no learning, compared to 17% of high education families. However, almost 40% of low education families persevered and did some learning activities even without receiving any learning materials at all, the survey found.
•“When schools re-open, it will be important to continue to monitor who goes back to school, and very importantly to understand whether there is learning loss as compared to previous years,” said ASER. Noting that 80% of families provided learning support to children, whether from parents or elder siblings, ASER recommended that schools find ways to build on that home support going forward.
📰 ISRO to launch earth observation satellite EOS-01 on November 7
EOS-01 is intended for applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management support.
•India would launch its latest earth observation satellite EOS-01 and nine international customer spacecraft onboard its PSLV-C49 rocket from the spaceport of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 7, ISRO said on October 28.
•This is the first launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation since the COVID-19-induced lockdown came into force in March.
•ISRO chairman K. Sivan said in June that 10 space missions being prepared for launch in 2020 have been “disturbed” due to the lockdown.
•EOS-01 is intended for applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management support, ISRO said. “The launch is tentatively scheduled at 3.02 p.m. IST on November 7 subject to weather conditions” from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, it said in a statement.
•The customer satellites are being launched under commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), Department of Space, the space agency said, without giving further details.
•This will be the 51st mission of ISRO’s workhorse, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
•In view of the strict COVID-19 pandemic norms in place at the launch centre, gathering of media personnel there was not planned and the viewing gallery will be closed, ISRO said. However, the live telecast of the launch will be available on ISRO website, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter channels, it added.
•Speaking to PTI in June, Dr. Sivan said ISRO will make an assessment of the impact of the lockdown on its missions. “Because of this (pandemic), everything got disturbed. We have to make an assessment after the COVID-19 issue is resolved,” he had said.
📰 U.K. to partner for developing GIFT City, funding infra pipeline
Fund of Funds to manage British govt.’s future development capital investments
•The United Kingdom has entered into a strategic partnership to develop India’s fledgling international financial services centre GIFT City, and agreed to set up a new Fund of Funds to be managed by the State Bank of India group in order to route U.K.’s future capital investments into India.
•India and U.K. also signed off on a new infrastructure finance and policy partnership to help India execute its National Infrastructure Pipeline that envisages investments worth $1.4 trillion, at the tenth Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) between the two countries steered by U.K. Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday.
•“As we seek to recover from the profound impact of COVID-19, we can only do so in partnership and co-operation,” Mr. Sunak said. “Our two countries can work together to be a force for good, building back better, tackling climate change and creating jobs and prosperity. That’s been our focus today,” he added said soon after the conclusion of the dialogue, which was launched in 2007 and last held in 2017.
•Stressing that a bilateral partnership driven by ‘U.K.’s deep capital markets and India’s extraordinary economic dynamism’ can help show the way ahead for a global recovery, Mr. Sunak said: “We have been able to announce a series of ambitious initiatives across trade, infrastructure, sustainable finance and research. This includes a new strategic partnership to develop the GIFT city, a tremendous opportunity to drive international capital flow from the city of London to India.”
•Bilateral trade between India and the U.K. stood at £24 billion in 2019 and India is now the second-largest project investment source for the U.K.
•“We establish a new U.K.-India strategic collaboration to accelerate the development of GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City), India’s first International Financial Services Centre, and promote greater links between GIFT City and the U.K. financial services ecosystem by bringing together both governments, regulators and business to share experiences and expertise,” said the joint statement signed by both the leaders.
•Under the infrastructure partnership, the UK will support India’s infrastructure pipeline by sharing experience, knowledge exchange and technical assistance to support India’s National Infrastructure Pipeline, including setting up a Project Preparation Support Facility-cum-Centre of Excellence for PPP Projects.
•To mobilise private capital for green investment, a new U.K.-India Sustainable Finance Forum is also being established.
•Welcoming India’s move to allow 100% tax exemptions for sovereign wealth funds investing in infrastructure, the U.K. Chancellor termed it a positive for their government’s development capital investments in India and the CDC Group, which has £1.23 billion invested in more than 300 Indian companies.
•“We are pleased to note the establishment of the U.K. India Development Cooperation Fund (UKIDCF) — a Fund of Funds to be managed by the State Bank of India Group and serve as the financial and accounting platform for the U.K. Government’s future development capital investments in India,” the statement said.
COVID-19 battle
•To help combat the pandemic, U.K. and India announced a joint investment of £8 million for research to understand and address the factors leading to the severity of the coronavirus in South Asian populations in U.K. and in India.
•Separately, the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care will contribute to India’s coronavirus Joint Response Plan (JRP) and antimicrobial resistance via the World Health Organization with an initial amount of £600,000, as per the joint statement.
•“Concurrently, our governments are working to support ongoing collaboration on vaccine research and design, manufacturing and distribution to ensure global equitable and affordable access,” the statement said.
📰 Countering deepfakes, the most serious AI threat
It is crucial to enhance media literacy, meaningful regulations and platform policies, and amplify authoritative sources
•Disinformation and hoaxes have evolved from mere annoyance to high stake warfare for creating social discord, increasing polarisation, and in some cases, influencing an election outcome. Deepfakes are a new tool to spread computational propaganda and disinformation at scale and with speed.
•Access to commodity cloud computing, algorithms, and abundant data has created a perfect storm to democratise media creation and manipulation. Deepfakes are the digital media (video, audio, and images) manipulated using Artificial Intelligence. This synthetic media content is referred to as deepfakes.
A cyber Frankenstein
•Synthetic media can create possibilities and opportunities for all people, regardless of who they are, where they are, and how they listen, speak, or communicate. It can give people a voice, purpose, and ability to make an impact at scale and with speed. But as with any new innovative technology, it can be weaponised to inflict harm.
•Deepfakes, hyper-realistic digital falsification, can inflict damage to individuals, institutions, businesses and democracy. They make it possible to fabricate media — swap faces, lip-syncing, and puppeteer — mostly without consent and bring threat to psychology, security, political stability, and business disruption. Nation-state actors with geopolitical aspirations, ideological believers, violent extremists, and economically motivated enterprises can manipulate media narratives using deepfakes, with easy and unprecedented reach and scale.
Targeting women
•The very first use case of malicious use of a deepfake was seen in pornography, inflicting emotional, reputational, and in some cases, violence towards the individual. Pornographic deepfakes can threaten, intimidate, and inflict psychological harm and reduce women to sexual objects. Deepfake pornography exclusively targets women.
•Deepfakes can depict a person indulging in antisocial behaviours and saying vile things. These can have severe implications on their reputation, sabotaging their professional and personal life. Even if the victim could debunk the fake via an alibi or otherwise, it may come too late to remedy the initial harm. Malicious actors can take advantage of unwitting individuals to defraud them for financial gains using audio and video deepfakes. Deepfakes can be deployed to extract money, confidential information, or exact favours from individuals.
•Deepfakes can cause short- and long-term social harm and accelerate the already declining trust in news media. Such an erosion can contribute to a culture of factual relativism, fraying the increasingly strained civil society fabric. The distrust in social institutions is perpetuated by the democratising nature of information dissemination and social media platforms’ financial incentives. Falsity is profitable, and goes viral more than the truth on social platforms. Combined with distrust, the existing biases and political disagreement can help create echo chambers and filter bubbles, creating discord in society.
•Imagine a deepfake of a community leader denigrating a religious site of another community. It will cause riots and, along with property damage, may also cause life and livelihood losses. A deepfake could act as a powerful tool by a nation-state to undermine public safety and create uncertainty and chaos in the target country. It can be used by insurgent groups and terrorist organisations, to represent their adversaries as making inflammatory speeches or engaging in provocative actions to stir up anti-state sentiments among people.
Undermining democracy
•A deepfake can also aid in altering the democratic discourse and undermine trust in institutions and impair diplomacy. False information about institutions, public policy, and politicians powered by a deepfake can be exploited to spin the story and manipulate belief.
•A deepfake of a political candidate can sabotage their image and reputation. A well-executed one, a few days before polling, of a political candidate spewing out racial epithets or indulging in an unethical act can damage their campaign. There may not be enough time to recover even after effective debunking. Voters can be confused and elections can be disrupted. A high-quality deepfake can inject compelling false information that can cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the voting process and election results.
•Deepfakes contribute to factual relativism and enable authoritarian leaders to thrive. For authoritarian regimes, it is a tool that can be used to justify oppression and disenfranchise citizens. Leaders can also use them to increase populism and consolidate power. Deepfakes can become a very effective tool to sow the seeds of polarisation, amplifying division in society, and suppressing dissent.
•Another concern is a liar’s dividend; an undesirable truth is dismissed as deepfake or fake news. Leaders may weaponise deepfakes and use fake news and an alternative-facts narrative to replace an actual piece of media and truth.
Major solutions
•To defend the truth and secure freedom of expression, we need a multi-stakeholder and multi-modal approach. Collaborative actions and collective techniques across legislative regulations, platform policies, technology intervention, and media literacy can provide effective and ethical countermeasures to mitigate the threat of malicious deepfakes.
•Media literacy for consumers and journalists is the most effective tool to combat disinformation and deepfakes. Media literacy efforts must be enhanced to cultivate a discerning public. As consumers of media, we must have the ability to decipher, understand, translate, and use the information we encounter (https://bit.ly/2HFlUs8). Even a short intervention with media understanding, learning the motivations and context, can lessen the damage. Improving media literacy is a precursor to addressing the challenges presented by deepfakes.
•Meaningful regulations with a collaborative discussion with the technology industry, civil society, and policymakers can facilitate disincentivising the creation and distribution of malicious deepfakes. We also need easy-to-use and accessible technology solutions to detect deepfakes, authenticate media, and amplify authoritative sources.
•Deepfakes can create possibilities for all people irrespective of their limitations by augmenting their agency. However, as access to synthetic media technology increases, so does the risk of exploitation. Deepfakes can be used to damage reputations, fabricate evidence, defraud the public, and undermine trust in democratic institutions.
•To counter the menace of deepfakes, we all must take the responsibility to be a critical consumer of media on the Internet, think and pause before we share on social media, and be part of the solution to this infodemic.
📰 The challenges of walking the Indo-Pacific talk
In countering China, India must note that strategic talk alone cannot trump overriding economic realities
•The recently concluded third annual United States-India 2+2 ministerial dialogue has amplified the ongoing conversation in India on the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the Indo-Pacific, the threat from China, and, the United States as a potential ‘alliance’ partner. No strategic vision has captivated India’s foreign policy mandarins and strategic community in recent times as have the Indo-Pacific and the Quad.
•The international community has once again decided to court New Delhi to play a decisive role in shaping the region’s strategic future. While during the mid-2000s the world expected India to be an economic powerhouse, a decade later, those expectations remain modest, at best. The expectation this time is more strategic and military, to lead the charge against China from within the region. Will India, and can India, fulfil these expectations?
The concepts, the differences
•The Indo-Pacific is a grand politico-economic vision while the Quad is a forum for strategic and military consultations among India, the U.S., Australia and Japan. Depending on how one wishes to view it, they could be seen as conceptually interlinked or as separate visions. Their similarity comes from the fact that the Quad members are also major States in the Indo-Pacific region, and both the Quad and the Indo-Pacific constructs are focused on China. More so, they are also in some ways centred around India’s geographic location and its policies. Put differently, if you take China out of the equation, they would have little rationale for existence. And if you take India out of the picture, their ability to sustain as geopolitical constructs would drastically diminish.
•At the same time, the Indo-Pacific and the Quad are also quite different from each other. The first is a politico-economic vision and the last is a military-strategic vision — the last does not form the military or strategic nucleus of the first. While the Indo-Pacific provides a complex political and economic picture with a hesitant, but growing, articulation of China as a strategic challenge, the Quad is inherently more anti-China in character and intent. The Indo-Pacific, despite the subtle anti-China undertones, will find it impossible to avoid engaging China. Even the Quad, still in its institutional infancy, is mostly focused on diplomatic signalling and with little common intent let alone joint action. At the moment it so seems, paradoxically however, that the Quad’s ability to succeed would entirely depend on China — the more aggressive China gets, the more resolute the Quad countries would be in strengthening it.
•It is too early to say whether the Indo-Pacific as an economic construct will be able to pose an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is far more advanced, much more thought-out, and has the economic might of the Chinese state behind it. Several Indo-Pacific countries are already members of the BRI. On the flip side, the BRI is a ‘Chinese’ project and is already under immense stress from its inherent weaknesses, such as China’s unilateral pursuit of the BRI and the associated economic burdens on the States that sign up to it.
Hurdles in India’s strategy
•Notwithstanding the current excitement in New Delhi about the Indo-Pacific, the question we must ponder over is how successful New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific strategy would be going forward. For a politico-economic construct such as the Indo-Pacific to survive, there must be strong economic partnerships and linkages among its members. Merely focusing on strategic talk and possible military cooperation will not work because at some point, the unavoidable economic logic will kick in.
•With that in mind, let us examine India’s economic engagement of the Indo-Pacific. For one, New Delhi’s recent decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the region’s flagship free trade arrangement, could potentially complicate the country’s future engagements in the region.
•But that is not the complete story. The RCEP decision, a direct result of domestic political compulsions in India, comes in the backdrop of the already huge gap between India and China on trade with almost every Indo-Pacific country. The table shows the gap that exists between Indian and Chinese trade with the major Indo-Pacific and Quad States. This growing trade gap that India and China have with these countries will be a major determining factor in shaping the region’s strategic realities.
•New Delhi’s decision not to sign on to the RCEP also needs to be viewed in the broader context of the Chinese institutional engagement of the region. Of the main countries of the Indo-Pacific, the bilateral free trade agreements are as follows.
•In the case of India, it does not have FTAs with Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Bangladesh and the Maldives. It has FTAs with South Korea, the Association of South East Asian Nations, or ASEAN, Japan and Sri Lanka. In the case of China, it has FTAs with all these countries barring the U.S. It does not have an FTA with Bangladesh, while negotiations are on with Sri Lanka. Trilateral FTA negotiations are also going on between China, Japan and South Korea.
•Once again, economic compulsions will go a long way in shaping strategic realities for a variety of reasons including that trade with China is crucial for the economies of these States. Even if they attempt economic decoupling from China, it would be a long process, if pursued with adequate alternatives and political determination. The lesson is straightforward: strategic talk alone cannot trump economic realities.
China’s larger military reach
•If our economic engagements with the region were insufficient, which are at least partly due to domestic political considerations, our strategic and military engagements in the region also fall short.
•Beijing, for instance, is a major defence supplier to several of the region’s States including Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, dwarfing India’s minimal sales, defence dialogues and occasional joint military exercises in the region.
Economic role is key
•Put differently, India’s role in the Indo-Pacific will remain limited if it does not prove to be a major economic partner to these States. But given the economic slowdown in India today in the wake of COVID-19 (compared to the much better place that China is in) and the lack of political consensus in the country about regional economic agreements such as the RCEP, India’s ability to economically engage with the region remains limited. On the military-strategic side too, India’s performance in the region is less than desirable. The only choice, it appears then, is for some sort of a loosely structured regional strategic alliance with the U.S. and its allies in the broader Indo-Pacific region. But let us be clear. There is a fundamental difference between sustainably engaging the Indo-Pacific region using economic, strategic and military tools, and choosing to take the easier and quicker path of a military ‘alliance’ with the U.S. and its allies.
•Moreover, is there sufficient political consensus within the country’s strategic elite to pursue such a path? Having been socialised in the Cold War crucible of non-alignment, and later strategic autonomy, is the Indian strategic elite ready to embrace a new set of beliefs and ideas about a balancing act in international politics?
•For sure, there is an unapologetic ‘realist’ turn in India’s foreign policy today, perhaps an unavoidable one, and the Indian debates on balancing and alliance formation are undergoing major changes as well. New Delhi, however, remains caught between a deeply constrained, but unavoidable, need to rethink its strategic posture, and the recognition of its material inability to do so, at least for now.
