India's 2020, and What Comes Next
And why this newsletter will continue to focus on policy in 2021
Hi there, I’m Aman Thakker. Welcome to Indialogue, a newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments in India. The aim of this newsletter is to provide you with quality analysis every week on what’s going on in India.
A quick note: This will be last edition of Indialogue for 2020. I will be engaged with a family obligation next weekend, and the following weekend is Christmas weekend. I will send out a new edition of Indialogue on Monday, January 4th, 2021. I hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday season, and a Happy New Year. I eagerly look forward to continuing our conversations on the biggest policy developments in India in 2021.
Thank you very much for subscribing. My writing, and this newsletter, benefits from your feedback, so please do not hesitate to send any suggestions, critiques, or ideas to aman@amanthakker.com.
India's 2020, and What Comes Next
Since this is the final newsletter of the year, I thought I’d take a different approach. Rather than diving into discrete policy topics, I thought I’d zoom out to this year as a whole, and try to reflect on what it all means. Doing so seems poignant, bookending how I started this newsletter this year, mere weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic sent India, and soon much of the world, into lockdown.
It’s been a volatile 2020 for India. India was already showing signs of a slowing economy when the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ensuing lockdown, hit, giving the economy yet another body blow. The pandemic continues to be a reality, likely staying with us for some time while the glimmer of hope of soon-to-come vaccines growing brighter each day. However, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the human cost of this pandemic for India. 143,000 Indians have lost their lives per official numbers, with public health experts saying the true numbers could be much, much higher.
Chinese troops have been challenging India’s sovereignty since May 5, and continue to be amassed along (and across) the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. Relations between these two Asian giants are now at their worst point since 1962, and it looks like it will be a long, cold winter. The last publicly reported meeting between Indian and Chinese officials was nearly two months ago in October. While diplomats from both sides met under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs on September 30, the last meeting of military officials at the border was on October 12. With no resolution in sight, Indian soldiers will spend the next few months in the blistering cold, away from family, in order to protect the sovereignty of the nation.
Meanwhile, we might be entering the new year with thousands of farmers and other protestors gathering at the borders around Delhi. Although those from Punjab have been at the forefront, media reports indicate that thousands more could join in the coming days from Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and other states. They’re protesting the passage of two ordinances passed by Parliament in September, which were aimed at reforming India’s agricultural sector.
I started this newsletter, in no small part, to make sense of these events. I wanted to not just work through what happened by writing about it, but also find a community of readers with whom I could exchange those thoughts and from whom I could learn. And throughout this process of making sense of what happened, I have maintained a focus on policy: the actions proposed, enacted, and advanced by India’s state and central governments. Issues of politics or ideology have taken a back seat to analysis of policy, and I have strived to bring them in only when it was necessary to understanding policy. I hope I have succeeded.
But this begs the question: why this emphasis policy? It’s too simple to say that it emanates from my own abilities and heuristics: that I have studied or worked on policy for much of my academic and professional life, or that I naturally gravitate towards those issues over others, or that I seek to, one day in the future, have a career in shaping policy in India.
2020 has been a year that demonstrates the true impact of policy. Policies can not only change lives, it can save them. They can transform livelihoods, for the better or for the worse. They can lead us on the path to war, or write a new chapter of peace. They can just as easily affect one life as it can billions. You can see this reflected in every one of the events I wrote about above. From COVID-19 to foreign relations with China to economic reforms, policy has been played an outsize role in how these events unfolded.
For me, all of this only reinforces the need to engage more deeply with policy. The expectations and sheer potential for India’s story remain significant, as do the problems - both legacy and new - that it faces as we look to next year. The key variable remains how well India uses its limited resources to craft policies that can address its challenges, achieve its goals, and reach its full potential.
Through this newsletter, I hope to continue to chronicle and analyze India’s efforts to craft those policies. I thank you for being a part of this newsletter for the past nine months, and look forward to continuing with you in 2021. In the meantime, please do feel free to write to me at aman@amanthakker.com with your thoughts, comments, and feedback, and whether you’d like to see something different from Indialogue next year. I welcome your feedback.
Thank you again for reading, and have a Happy New Year.
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News Roundup
Prime Minister Modi held a bilateral virtual summit with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan on December 11. The two leaders discussed post-COVID-19 cooperation between both countries, as well as regional and global issues of mutual interest. Following the summit, the leaders announced the signing of several Memoranda of Understanding, including on renewable energy, digital technologies, cybersecurity, community development, and the establishment of a dollar credit line.
Remya Nair and Neelam Pandey of ThePrint reported that a report by a Group of Ministers (GoM) established to promote manufacturing in India that is headed by Smriti Irani, Minister for Textiles, and for Woman and Child Development, found that there are 86 product lines in which India was “critically dependent” on Chinese imports. The GoM report argued that “by way of identifying tariff lines where India is critically dependent on one country for its imports, the same could become the key lines for setting up and expanding domestic production capacity.”
The Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways released a draft of the Indian Ports Bill, 2020, which will repeal and replace the Indian Ports Act, 1908. The Bill calls for the creation of a Maritime Port Regulatory Authority, as well as the formulation of a new “National Port Policy” and “National Port Plan” to improve the administration and management of non-major ports (The Major Port Authorities Bill, 2020, which passed the Lok Sabha in September 2020 is aimed at major ports). The bill is open to comment until December 24, 2020, and is available in full here.
India, Uzbekistan, and Iran will hold the first-ever trilateral working group meeting between the three countries on the joint use of the Chabahar port in Iran. The meeting comes as Uzbekistan expressed an interest in using the port as a transit post.
Sudhi Ranjan Sen of Bloomerg reports that Indian officials have blamed China for assisting rebel groups such as United Wa State Army and the Arakan Army, both of which were designated as terrorist groups, by supplying weapons and providing hideouts as the groups undertake attacks along India’s border with Myanmar.
The Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Dominic Raab, will travel to India as part of an official visit from December 14-17. During his visit, Mr. Raab will meet with Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar, Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal, and the Chief Minister of Karnataka B. S. Yediyurappa.
Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan announced the creation of a task force with the government of Qatar aimed at promoting Qatari investments in the energy sector in India.
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh addressed the 14th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus on December 10, which saw attendance from the 10 member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and eight partner countries (India, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand). The Defense Minister spoke about the need for an “open and inclusive order in Indo-Pacific based upon respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations, peaceful resolutions of disputes through dialogue and adherence to International rules and laws.”
The Cabinet approved a project to set up a dedicated submarine optical fiber cable between Kochi and the 11 islands of Lakshadweep at the cost of Rs. 1,072 crore ($145.6 million) spread over five years.
The Ministry of External Affairs held bilateral consultations with the Foreign Ministry of Norway, aimed at deepening bilateral cooperation during both countries’ upcoming terms as non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In particular, India briefed Norwegian officials on its priorities at the UNSC, namely reform of multilateral institutions, counter-terrorism, and peacekeeping.
Three to Read
From cogent analysis to potentially big news that you should keep an eye on, here are a few commentaries and other pieces of writing that I found particularly enlightening:
Amb. Shivshankar Menon, distinguished fellow with the Centre for Social and Economic Progress and former National Security Advisor of India, argues: “India-China relations have been reset to a new normal. There is no going back to what they were, to the surface calm that prevailed before 2020 or the coexistence before 2012. Political relations will now be more adversarial, antagonistic, and contentious. Although theoretically, India-China relations could see a new modus vivendi after the crisis, as they did after the Sumdorungchu/Wangdong crisis in 1986-88, this seems unlikely with authoritarian strongmen in power in both countries; troop buildups on the border, aroused public opinion, and differences are out in the open.”
Rukmini S., an independent data journalist based in Chennai, writes: “India could be seeing an increase in child undernutrition, reversing decades of gains, early data from the just-released first phase of the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS) indicate. If subsequent phases display similar trends, this would represent the first increase in child stunting--low height for age--in 20 years… The National Family Health Survey is a nationally representative household survey that covers over 400,000 households, asking questions around marriage, fertility, vaccinations and health status, among others. It is India's chief source of health data and is used to evaluate the progress of health schemes and improvements in health--particularly of children and women.”
Suyash Rai, fellow at Carnegie India, argues: “The internet economy in India is quite open and minimally regulated. This is now beginning to change because of three emerging motivations.First, India is beginning to systematically assert its sovereign power to regulate internet-based activities. New regimes for regulation of personal data, e-commerce, content of video streaming services, and related spheres are in the offing. Second, the government is increasingly using technology policy as an instrument of foreign policy and national security. From denying market access to inflict costs upon adversaries (for instance, the ban on certain Chinese apps), to using State power to access personal data for law enforcement, to localisation for data security, a variety of new interventions are emerging. Third, the government is keen to ensure that the digital economy adds more value in India.”
Thank you for reading this latest edition of Indialogue. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback by emailing me at aman@amanthakker.com.