📰 Govt. reconstitutes panel for studying Sarasvati river
The earlier panel’s term ended in 2019
•The Centre has reconstituted an advisory committee to chalk out a plan for studying the mythical Sarasvati river for the next two years, after the earlier panel’s term ended in 2019.
•The Archaeological Survey of India on March 10 issued a notification for “reconstitution of the Advisory Committee for the Multidisciplinary Study of the River Sarasvati”. The ASI had first set up the committee on December 28, 2017 for a period of two years.
•The committee would continue to be chaired by the Culture Minister and include officials from the Culture, Tourism, Water Resources, Environment and Forest, Housing and Urban Affairs Ministries; representatives of the Indian Space Research Organisation; officials from the governments of Gujarat, Haryana and Rajasthan; and an ASI official. Among the “non-official members” of the 27-member panel are archaeologists B.R. Mani, Vasant Shinde, K.N. Dixit and K.K. Muhammed, and historian Balmukund Pandey. The committee includes Madan Gopal Vyas, Ratnesh Tripathi, Prabhu Sundarji Bhai Thakkar, S. Kalyan Raman, Prashant Bhardwaj, Amit Rai Jain, V.M.K. Puri and Mukesh Garg.
•One of the officials in the panel said the committee would review the work done by the previous panel and then formulate a plan. The committee would advise the Government Departments conducting research, the official said. A Culture Ministry official said the research on tracing the course of the Vedic river in present day Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat was “incomplete”.
•According to the ASI’s 2017 notification, the committee was tasked with defining the Sarasvati river and its basin, identifying “special items of geotechnical nature for study of the Sarasvati basin and to suggest names of competent agencies/individuals” and identifying “archaeological sites and areas for multidisciplinary research and to assess their potential for development as centres of education and tourism”.
The Quad broadens India’s interests on its geopolitical horizons further
•The virtual summit that brought together leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, last week, contained both broad substance and deep symbolism. Countering any perception that the Quad is merely a “talk-shop”, the outcomes announced by U.S. President Biden and Prime Ministers Modi, Morrison and Suga include a vaccine initiative and joint working groups to cooperate on critical technology as well as climate change. The vaccine initiative comes with an ambitious deadline: a billion vaccines by the end of 2022, made in India with U.S. technology, Japanese funding and Australian distribution networks to reach as many Indo-Pacific countries as possible. The four Quad countries will ensure emissions reduction based on the Paris accord as well as cooperate on technology supply chains, 5G networks, and biotechnology. Mr. Biden, who hosted the summit, managed some powerful atmospherics, by coordinating a joint statement — and a first — called “The Spirit of the Quad”, and a joint article by the four leaders that committed to an open Indo-Pacific “free from coercion”. The leaders are expected to meet later this year, at the G-7 summit. For Mr. Biden, the early push for the Quad engagement is part of his promise that “America is back” in terms of global leadership, reaffirming regional alliances, and taking on the growing challenge from China. For similar reasons, and due to maritime tensions with China, trade and telecommunication issues, Australia and Japan are keen on taking the Quad partnership to deeper levels of cooperation. For India, the new terms of the Quad will mean more strategic support after a tense year at the LAC, as also a boost for its pharmaceutical prowess, opportunities for technology partnerships, and more avenues for regional cooperation on development projects and financing infrastructure, especially in South Asia, where China has taken the lead.
•It would be a mistake, however, to portray the Quad summit as a “throwing down of the gauntlet” to China. The new U.S. government is still exploring its own relationship with China; its first engagement with Beijing’s top diplomats is in Alaska, on Thursday. For Japan and Australia, China remains the biggest trading partner, a relationship that will only grow once the 15-nation RCEP kicks in. India, given its own ties with China, sensitivities over ongoing LAC disengagement talks, and its other multilateral commitments at the BRICS and SCO groupings, also displayed caution in the Quad engagement, keeping the conversation focused on what Mr. Modi called making the Quad a “force for global good” rather than pushing plans for a militaristic coalition. In that sense, the Quad’s new “summit avatar” has given India yet another string to its bow, broadening India’s interests on its geopolitical horizons even further.
📰 Salutary reminder: On Consumer Price Index
Policymakers must focus on maintaining price stability given the volatile food and fuel costs
•With just over two weeks left to the March 31 deadline for the government and RBI to complete the quinquennial review of the current inflation target under the monetary policy framework, the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading provides a salutary reminder for policymakers to maintain a ceaseless vigil over price stability. Retail inflation, measured by the CPI, accelerated to a three-month high of 5.03% in February, data released by the National Statistical Office on Friday showed. The jump of almost 100 basis points from January’s 4.06%, while partly attributable to a base effect given that price gains had relatively eased in February 2020, is a clear signal that food and fuel costs continue to pose a threat to broader price stability in the economy. Specifically, the RBI’s early February prognostication of continuing pressures in the prices of pulses and edible oils has been borne out by the last two months’ CPI data. Inflation of both essential food products has persisted in the double digits during the period, and in the case of the latter, accelerated disconcertingly to 20.8% last month. Price gains with respect to two other key sources of protein, meat and fish and eggs, also remain stuck above 11%. And the deflation in vegetable costs, which had helped offset the generalised pressure in food inflation, also waned considerably in February to minus 6.7% from minus 15.8% in January. The upshot was that food and beverages as a combined category, with a weight of 54.2% in the CPI, witnessed an almost 160 basis points quickening in inflation to 4.25% last month, from January’s 2.67%.
•Another equally worrisome source of inflationary pressure is the continuing upward trajectory in the prices of petroleum products. Transport and communication, which directly reflect these prices, saw inflation rocket by more than 200 basis points to 11.4% in February, from 9.3% the preceding month. Diesel, the main fuel for freight carriage, is now hovering around ₹85 per litre in many parts and will most certainly feed into the costs of everything requiring to be transported. Brent crude oil futures have surged by close to 40% in the three-month period through March 11 in the wake of output cuts by major oil producing nations, another worrying portent for inflation. With the RBI’s own researchers having so cogently laid out the case for persisting with the current flexible inflation targeting regime of ensuring that price gains stay within the 2% to 6% band in the central bank’s first Report on Currency and Finance in eight years, policymakers must stay laser focused on keeping price stability front and centre of their fresh framework for the next quinquennium. Any effort to dilute the focus in a purported bid to prioritise growth, risks putting the economy on a perilous path that may secure neither objective.
📰 Future force for future wars
Confluence technology and a whole-of-government approach need to drive new strategies and tactics
•While addressing the country’s top military leadership in Gujarat’s Kevadia recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the top commanders to develop the military into a future force while taking note of the rapidly changing technological landscape. He also called for an approach that focuses on breaking down civil-military silos and on expediting the speed of decision-making besides shedding the legacy system.
Changing nature of war
•Earlier, wars used to be easy to define. We could say with confidence whether we were at war or at peace. We could identify whom we were fighting with and at which front. The character of war was demonstrated depending upon the norms and ideology of society, technology, and anonymity. Now, new terms denote changes in the definition of modern war. These include ‘hyper’, ‘hybrid’, ‘compound’, ‘non-linear’, ‘fourth-generation’, ‘next-generation’ and ‘contactless’. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz recognised the changing character of war incredibly early when he stated that war was practically limitless in variety. Such being the unpredictability, how do you modernise a force and make it ready for the future?
•War, at its core, is organised violence, waged for political purposes. The real purpose is domination. If humans are naturally political animals, war will be the proverbial state of nature and peace, the aberration.
•For peace to prevail or be enforced, development of future force capability based on a Third Offset Strategy was announced by the U.S. in 2014. It consists of cutting-edge technology, exploration of new operational concepts for utilising such technology, and retaining the best and brightest in human resource to achieve the objective of peace. Although still in its inchoate stages, it focuses on promising technology areas such as robotics and system autonomy, miniaturisation, Big Data, and advanced manufacturing. It provides for autonomous learning systems, collaborative decision-making between humans and machines, assisted human operations, advanced manned-unmanned systems operations, network-enabled autonomous weapons, and high-speed projectiles. Technologies like these can be expected to cause unprecedented effects and disruption by impacting cognitive and perceptional domains through weapons, soldiers, robots, and cyborgs. Tactical actions undertaken through these can be expected to cause strategic effects.
Force employment
•It will be the way the effects are directed for employment that will most significantly change warfare. Strategists reared in Western-Style liberal democracies, who are used to thinking in terms of an orderly Westphalian world, are slowly being forced to come to terms with anomalies in the existing paradigm. In India, the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, is preparing the future force. He admits that ‘force on force’ concepts are difficult to tide over but is positive about the future.
•What do military developments mean for political and democratic decision-making? Democracies work slowly. To prepare for accelerated future wars, they need to master the ‘hybridised effect’ of warfare that our adversaries are increasingly adopting. Operating below the threshold of out-and-out hostilities, effects caused by anonymous threats bypass frontiers without challenging national sovereignty. Our understanding of war on the other hand has remained the same: organised campaigns, orchestrated by domain-led central staff against an enemy that conforms to preconceived notions of logical and rational actions. Confluence technology and a whole-of-government approach, which are absent, need to drive new strategies and tactics.
•Perhaps the most important political trend affecting armed conflict in the 21st century will be in the relationship between civilians and those who fight on their behalf. This is what the Prime Minister said needs to change when he asked for breaking of civilian-military silos.
📰 The job crunch and the growing fires of nativism
Unless States in India have the autonomy to create jobs, they will only resort to reserving existing jobs for locals
•The Haryana government has recently passed legislation that mandates companies in Haryana to provide jobs to local Haryanvis first, before hiring people from outside the State.
•The unemployment rate in Haryana is the highest of all States in India, as per data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, or CMIE. A whopping 80% of women in Haryana who want to work cannot find a job. More than half of all graduates in Haryana are jobless. The jobs situation in Haryana is staggeringly dismal.
Many factors control jobs
•Politically, 11 out of the 18 million voters of Haryana do not have a regular job. World history warns us that when such a vast majority of adults are jobless, it inevitably leads to social revolutions and political upheavals. So, it is entirely understandable that the democratically elected Haryana government panicked and chose to reserve the few available jobs for its own voters.
•Haryana is not alone in this quandary. The cabinet of the government of Jharkhand approved similar legislation to reserve jobs for Jharkhand residents. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu announced a similar proposal to reserve jobs for Tamils in its manifesto for the upcoming Assembly elections. Many States in India have embarked on this nativism adventure to protect the interests of the vast number of their jobless locals.
•Predictably, this has attracted criticism from economists and commentators, as it militates against their liberal idea of a free economy. ‘Focus on creating more jobs, not on reserving the few available ones’ is the popular refrain. But, it is a false binary. Creation of new jobs is not entirely in the control of State governments. It is a complex interplay of multitude of factors.
States and key parameters
•Job creation is obviously an outcome of the performance of the larger economy. If say, the American giant retailer, Amazon, believes that the Indian economy is poised to grow robustly, it may choose to expand its operations in India. The Chief Minister of a State in India has limited control over the management of the larger economy and thereby, attract new investors and businesses who can create jobs. When Amazon, enticed by a buoyant Indian economy, decides to expand its Indian operations, then presumably, the State governments can compete to lure Amazon to their State and help create new jobs.
•Ostensibly, Amazon needs abundant high quality skilled and unskilled labour, land at affordable prices, uninterrupted supply of electricity, water and other such ‘ease of business’ facilities for its expansion. State governments in India can theoretically compete with each other on these parameters to attract Amazon to set up operations in their State. Further, any tax advantages that a particular State can provide vis-à-vis others will increase its attractiveness for Amazon. In fact, this is exactly what happened in America in 2018 when Amazon decided to build its second headquarters and various States, towns and cities publicly competed with each other to woo Amazon and its jobs to their area. But, realistically in India, in very few of these parameters can a poorer State compete against a richer State to attract Amazon.
Critical factors
•An elected State government can certainly, during its five-year tenure, attempt to provide high quality local infrastructure to attract new businesses. State governments also have the ability to provide land at affordable prices or for free to attract investments. However, the availability of skilled local labour is a function of many decades of social progress of the State and cannot be retooled immediately. After the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), State governments in India have lost their fiscal autonomy and have no powers to provide any tax concessions to businesses. So, while State governments have the ability to use land and local infrastructure as tools to attract businesses, they do not have control over immediate availability of skilled manpower or to use taxes as a tool to lure. In America, States compete against each other vigorously using tax concessions and land offers to bring new jobs to their States.
•But, beyond all these, the most critical factor in the choice of a location for a large business is what economists term as the ‘agglomeration effect’ — the ecosystem of supply chain, talent, good living conditions and so on. A State with an already well-established network of suppliers, people, schools, etc. are at a greater advantage to attract even more businesses than the States that are left behind. Put simply, if Amazon’s competitor Walmart is already established in Karnataka, then there is a greater incentive for Amazon to also locate itself in Karnataka to take advantage of the established ecosystem. This leads to a cycle of the more prosperous States growing even faster at the expense of the lagging States.
The ‘3-3-3’ danger
•This phenomenon is already evident in India’s increasing economic divergence among its States. In previous published joint research, I have called this the ‘3-3-3’ effect — the three richest large States (Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) are three times richer than the three poorest large States (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh), in per-capita income, compared to 1.4 times in 1970. This gap between the richer and poorer States in India is only widening rapidly and not narrowing, due to the agglomeration impact of modern economic development paradigms.
Subnationalism
•In the absence of a level playing field and with no fiscal autonomy, it is enormously difficult for developing States in India to attract new investments and create new jobs. In this context, an elected government that operates on a five-year electoral cycle, confronted with a powder keg of millions of jobless voters will understandably resort to seemingly ‘paisa wise, rupees foolish’ appeasement policies to salvage whatever it can of an ominous employment situation. After all, how is the Haryana government’s policy to restrict labour movement into its borders and protect jobs for locals any different from the Prime Minister’s ‘self-reliant India’ initiative to restrict goods movement into India’s borders and protect local jobs?
•The potent combination of widening inter-State inequality, a ‘rich States get richer’ economic development model, an impending demographic disaster and shrinking fiscal autonomy for elected State governments in a politically and culturally diverse democracy will inevitably propagate nativistic sub-nationalism among the various States of India. Until the economic playing fields for the various States are levelled and much greater fiscal freedom provided to the States, “don’t protect but create jobs” will only remain a topic of a hollow lecture and moral sermons.
📰 Forestalling a cyber Pearl Harbour
It would be a grievous error if India were to underestimate the extent of the cyber threat it faces, especially from China
•The threat posed to key Indian entities by antagonistic forces such as China is beginning to merit critical attention in all the right quarters. This follows revelations by the U.S.-based cyber security firm, Recorded Future, which were carried by the media in the United States.
Infrastructure as target
•According to a despatch by The New York Times, in the lead-up to the India-China border clashes, Recorded Future had found an increase in malware attacks targeting the Indian government, defence organisations and the public sector. Also that, coinciding with Chinese incursions in Eastern Ladakh, certain Indian power facilities had been targets of a cyber attack. Furthermore, that there was still some evidence of ongoing intrusions, though the intensity of the activity appeared to have ceased by mid-February 2021.
•A needless controversy did erupt in the wake of these disclosures, as to whether the October 2020 blackout in Mumbai was directly linked to this cyber attack. State authorities in Maharashtra attributed the blackout to the attack by the Chinese cyber group, but authorities in Delhi blamed it on human error. Far more crucial than merely assigning blame, and what should have been of real concern, is that key infrastructure facilities, such as the power sector, were now in the crosshairs of a hostile China, which appeared intent on deploying cyber weapons to target India. China’s intention evidently is to keep India in thrall, while outwardly demonstrating a conciliatory posture, such as vacating some of the areas in Eastern Ladakh that it had occupied post April 2020.
•The reported events are a wake-up call for India, and it would be a grievous error if India were to underestimate the extent of the cyber threat posed to it by China. Indian government agencies, such as the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) may have more information on China’s aggressive cyber campaign, but if what Recorded Future has indicated is true, viz., ‘that since early 2020, there has been an observation of a large increase in suspected targeted intrusion activity against Indian organisations from Chinese state-sponsored groups’ concentrating on infrastructure targets, including the power sector and ports, then India needs to be on its guard.
•At least 10 Indian distinct power sector organisations are said to have been targeted, in addition to two Indian ports. What adds verisimilitude to these revelations is the identification of the network infrastructure viz., AXIOMATICASYMPTOTE, whose servers are known to be used by RedEcho, a China-linked activity group, that targets India’s power sector, and facilitates the employment of a malware known as ShadowPad. ShadowPad is a network intrusion malware affiliated to both the Chinese Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army. ShadowPad is depicted as a “back-door ‘Trojan’ malware which creates a secret path from a targeted system to a command and control server to extract information”. If indeed the future is digital, and if China has indeed embarked on an all-out offensive of this nature, India needs to adopt comprehensive measures to forestall a potential ‘Cyber Pearl Harbour’, as far as India is concerned.
An offensive by China
•Across the world, Beijing does appear to be engaged in a major cyber offensive, directed not only against countries like India but against many advanced nations as well. In attempting this, what China is doing is essentially exploiting to perfection the many vulnerabilities that software companies (essentially those in the West), have deliberately left open (for offensive purposes at an opportune time). Exploiting this loophole, and also turning matters on its head, it is companies in the western world that are now at the receiving end of such antics, having ‘left vulnerabilities for future exploitation’.
•Chinese cyber espionage sets no limitations on targets. Towards the end of 2020, and as the world prepared for large-scale deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, their attention was directed to vaccine distribution supply chains around the world. A global ‘spearphishing campaign’ targeting organisations responsible for vaccine storage and transportation was reportedly unleashed, and while concrete evidence as to which country was indeed responsible for this is not available, the shadow of suspicion has fallen mainly on Chinese hackers. Their objective seems to have been targeting vaccine research, gaining future access to corporate networks, and seeking sensitive information relating to COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
Cyber warfare by others
•Very recently in 2021, several thousands of U.S. organisations were hacked in an unusually aggressive Chinese espionage campaign. The Chinese group, Hafnium, which has been identified as being responsible for this breach, exploited a series of flaws in the Microsoft software, enabling attackers to gain total remote control over affected systems. Each hour of the day, thousands of Microsoft servers were compromised as a result, till the breach was discovered.
•While Chinese cyber espionage may be the flavour of the month, what must be recognised is that many other countries, including the U.S. and Russia, do engage in the same kind of cyber warfare. Little is publicised about western cyber espionage, and while these may not match that of either China or Russia, it does happen. The U.S. has extensively publicised Russia’s cyber antics from time to time. Best known are accusations of Russia’s cyber interference in the U.S. presidential elections in 2016, which approached the level of a major scandal. Russia is currently the prime suspect in one of the greatest data breaches concerning the U.S. Federal government, involving the Departments of Defence, Energy, State, Homeland Security, Treasury, etc. Headlined SolarWinds, the late 2020 breach is a prime example of the damage that can be caused by a cyber attack.
Sharpening attacks
•Cyber attacks and cyber espionage could rewrite the history of our times. We are witnessing only the tip of the iceberg at present and most nations are truly unaware of the extent to which breaches are taking place. Nations should beware and be warned about how cyber attacks can bring a nation to its knees. This was well demonstrated way back in 2016, when a major attack on Ukraine’s power grid took place and set an ominous precedent in this respect. The attacks were carried out by skilled cyber security professionals, who had planned their assaults over many months, testing the quality of the malware, carrying out detailed logistics planning, and conducting a very sophisticated operation. The Ukraine example should be a wake-up call for India and the world, as in the intervening five years, the sophistication of cyber attacks and the kind of malware available have become more advanced. India, could well be blindsided by Chinese cyber attacks on critical infrastructure if the latter sets out to do so, unless prophylactic measures are taken in time.
•There are no readymade solutions to counter the cyber offensive emanating from different quarters. No nation can hope, or can claim, to be insulated from such attacks. The U.S. seemed to fully wake up to the cyber threat only in 2017 when U.S. security tools were hacked, having preferred for long to indulge in a kind of ‘active defence’ by seeking to hack enemy networks. U.S. President Joe Biden is now understood to have included a sum of over $10 billion for cyber security in his COVID-19 Relief Bill, which is clearly intended to improve U.S. ‘readiness and resilience in cyber space’.
Part of Beijing’s world view
•From an Indian perspective, the Chinese cyber threat could prove to be truly daunting. The reasons for this are many. China’s analysis of the state of current relations between China and India is that they remain antagonistic to the point of ‘de-coupling’, and the confrontation between Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘Community with shared future for mankind’ and India’s current posture could lead to a ‘long period of volatility’. As India grows closer to the U.S., this gap between the two key Asian nations can be expected to become still wider.
•Under Mr. Xi, China has forged a firm nexus between authoritarianism, global ambitions and technology, and is determined to transform the global order to advance its interests. ‘Cyber’ could well be one of China’s main threat vectors employed against countries that do not fall in line with China’s world view. China’s 2021 Defence Budget (amounting to $209 billion) gives special weightage to the Strategic Support Force (SSF), which embraces cyber warfare — an ominous portent that bodes little good for countries that posit a challenge to China’s ambitions, such as India. Drawing up a comprehensive cyber strategy, one that fully acknowledges the extent of the cyber threat from China, has thus become an imperative and immediate necessity.
