THE TAKSHASHILA INSTITUTION
Anupam Manur is a man of strong opinions. Anupam Manur is a man of strong, considered opinions. You should listen to Anupam, because when Prof Manur talks, he makes eminent sense, and he comes from a position of both erudition and wisdom (You can hear him snigger at this in the background, but hey, one’s got to accept what’s true).
On August 3, the Indian government issued a circular which effectively took economists back to the days of the Licence Raj. In India’s chequered industrial policy history, the decision to put curbs on the import of laptops, presumably to boost domestic production and innovation, looks like bureaucratic overreach. It is also quite evident that the move is aimed at hurting China’s exports to India.
“Discarded policies of the past cannot produce different results. If India wants to be a manufacturing and exporting powerhouse, it cannot do so by protecting champions from the pressures of competition, as we tried before 1991. If import controls failed in the past, the conditions for success are far worse now, given the interconnectedness of global value chains in electronics manufacturing.”
Various eminent economists and thinkers have weighed in on the laptop policy issue, including Takshashila's friend Pratap Bhanu Mehta. A couple of days after Anupam’s scathing indictment, Dr Mehta wrote another stinging piece in The Indian Express.
Instead of placing import restrictions on laptops, the way to boost domestic manufacturing and investment from both Indian and foreign companies is to liberalise the import of electronic components and undertake the much-discussed structural reforms. Aatmanirbharta in the electronics sector is a myth, as competitive exports require cheap imports. No amount of manufacturing subsidy can compensate for the absence of free imports, and genuine ease of doing business.
You can read the piece here, and then do the good thing that good folks do in 2023: share it widely on social media.
Takshashila deputy director and the chair of our High-Tech Geopolitics programme Pranay Kotasthane may sometimes forget to order his preference in our Thursday Thali, but man does he remember important dates or what! Like the one he celebrated on August 9. No, not his wedding anniversary, but the first year of the important Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS Act).
And he did what policy nerds do to commemorate important milestones: he wrote an op-ed.
The good man that he is, Pranay teamed up with Vishwanath Madhugiri, the chief information officer of a US-based semiconductors company, to note how India could learn from the CHIPS Act, given our thrust in that sector.
Companies seeking funding under the CHIPS Act are required to submit workforce development plans. A nodal agency, the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), has been created to collaborate with industry and educational institutions. This must become a focus area for India as well. A competent semiconductor engineering workforce is India’s quickest route to gaining leverage in the semiconductor industry. Keeping this in mind, MeitY has begun a Chips2 Startup (C2S) programme, collaborating with over 100 universities and colleges. Like the NSTC, C2S aims to scale up workforce expansion by supporting existing quality training programmes. In the Indian case, however, many private training centres prepare chip designers outside the conventional university system. Hence, it is important for C2S to focus on certifying good programmes of universities or private training institutes rather than running them.
Dr Nithiyanandam, the head of Takshashila’s Geospatial Research Programme, has been busy this past week. In addition to the excellent podcast episode he recorded with Dr. Vishnu Chandra, Advisor to the Ministry of Panchayat Raj and former Deputy Director General of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the good professor also recorded a policy video in Tamil.
China plans to build the world's largest dam very close to India's border, and, as geostrategic policymakers would have already surmised, it is a potential weapon against India. Prof Nithiyanandam’s video in Tamil takes a deep dive into this to talk about the possible impact of this dam on India and Bangladesh.
Tell us what you feel about Takshashila’s foray into regional language policy videos. Actually, why don’t you write to Nithiya directly?
Tell us the truth, dear readers, you always wondered how Manoj Kewalramani knows everything about everything in China, right? In an interview with The China Project, Manoj reveals the deep, dark secret of his China obsession — masochism.
I started reading the People’s Daily (民日报 rénmín rìbào) and Chinese media regularly. I worked with Chinese media as a journalist, so I was very familiar with the ecosystem. Once I moved to research, I saw that there was lots of oversimplification of Chinese policies and thought processes and that, since China was closing down, it was becoming much easier to not think deeply about how Chinese leadership, policymakers, and people communicate themselves and see the world.
Manoj writes a daily newsletter focused on China called ‘Tracking People’s Daily’ (You must subscribe to it, by the way. It’s free, and it provides deep insight into Chinese state thinking).
In his interview with Jonathan, Manoj tells us how he reads the People’s Daily, and dissects each page. “There’s a pattern to it,” says Manoj. “The front page is usually top leadership news, dominated by Xi Jinping 习近平. It’s not really news, but rather sort of a corporate bulletin highlighting what the CEO and other top leadership is doing.”
But we knew that part, didn’t we? What Manoj says about the rest of the paper is more illuminating, and it tells us a lot about how Chinese state media works. It’s a fascinating interview about a fascinating vocation. It does not pay him, but Manoj does it with the same zeal every single day.
Manoj can’t have enough of China. Frankly, we should all follow his lead, because it is important that India understands China like no one else. It is simultaneously our most strategic economic competitor as well as our military rival.
This past week, Manoj wrote an important op-ed for Moneycontrol on Indo-China relations. To cut a long story, okay, op-ed, short, Manoj’s piece focuses on how bilateral trade between China and India will expand, but in today’s era it is politics that trumps economics. Manoj says there are three structural factors – clashing zones of influence, China leveraging its asymmetry at the border, and India’s proximity to the US – that will keep the relationship difficult and volatile.
“A Delhi closely aligned with Washington presents a formidable hurdle for Beijing’s global ambitions. But Chinese scholars also acknowledge that the Washington-Delhi embrace is not necessarily of an alliance variety; there exist limitations, grievances, complications and divergences of interests.
Consequently, Beijing repeatedly urges Delhi to view bilateral relations in the context of the once-in-a-century changes taking place in the world and think of bilateral cooperation from the perspective of their respective national rejuvenation. Yet, there is precious little that China has done to demonstrate appreciation for India’s interests and aspirations.”
Amit Kumar, Manoj’s colleague at Takshashila’s Indo-Pacific Studies Programme has a podcast video on India-China trade. He spoke with Surya Gangadharan of StratNews Global on an important yet vexing question that policymakers face: “India's trade deficit with China is around $100 billion, testimony to the vast range of goods imported by this country. Does that translate into critical or strategic dependence?”
As discerning readers of Dispatch would know, Amit has authored a masterly paper on dependence-induced vulnerabilities in asymmetrical trade interdependence. In this discussion with Surya, he expands on that theme and tells us why and how it can be applied to the India-China trade.
Over the last few months, Takshashila’s high-tech geopolitics research analyst Satya Sahu has recorded a series of excellent podcast episodes for All Things Policy. The series is aptly called SiliconPolitik.
In episode 4, Satya speaks to Stephen Ezell, Vice-President of Global Innovation Policy at the International Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a renowned expert in science and technology policy, international competitiveness, trade, and manufacturing. Their topic of discussion is central to India’s high-tech goals – trade policy to build the nation’s semiconductor ecosystem.
In the podcast, besides making many other important points Stephen briefly refers to an exhaustive study on India’s tariff regime of the 1970s where economists determined that for every dollar of tariff that India imposed on ICT goods, the broader economy suffered a loss of $1.03 because “every other firm in the economy – the banks, the manufacturers – were forced to use either more expensive or inferior ICT goods. So in the interest of trying to help one industry, India damaged all its other industries.”
This takes us back to Anupam’s argument in his op-ed on the new shortsighted laptop import rules. Well, the more things change, etc, etc.
The Parliament passed The Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Bill, 2023 (the Bill) on August 8, 2023. The Bill seeks to fix the anomaly with regard to the exercise of disciplinary and administrative powers over armed forces personnel serving in Joint-Services Organisations (JSOs) like the Andaman and Nicobar Command, Defence Space Agency or National Defence Academy. JSOs typically are staffed with personnel drawn from across the Army, Air Force, and Navy.
In this issue brief, Shrikrishna Upadhyaya compiles all that is necessary to understand this Bill, which could well be a precursor to the re-organisation of Indian armed forces into Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs), a long-awaited military reform. The issue brief examines the structural underpinnings of such integrated commands and offers pathways for constructing them.
To be sure, Takshashila has a state position on this important issue: “The theaterisation of India’s defence forces is imperative, and the debate must focus on the how, rather than the why.”
Takshashila’s Strategic Studies Programme Director Lt Gen Prakash Menon provides key inputs to the document. It is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in our military.
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