Policy News Round-Up from India
Indialogue is a newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments in India
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 reminder: As I mentioned last week, given that it’s a holiday weekend here in the United States, today’s edition of Indialogue is a very short version of the regular newsletter (with only the news roundup and reading recommendations). We’ll return to the regular format beginning next week, June 7. Thank you in advance for your understanding, and apologies in advance!
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News Roundup
Prime Minister Modi spoke on the phone with President Emmanuel Macron of France on May 26, 2021. The two leaders discussed France’s support to India during its ongoing second wave of COVID-19 infections, as well as bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest.
During his visit to the United States from May 24-28, 2021, External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar met with several high-ranking officials from the Biden administration, including:
Several news sources in the United States report that President Biden is ready to name Eric Garcetti, the current mayor of the city of Los Angeles, as the next U.S. Ambassador to India. Garcetti, who is seen as a trusted ally of President Biden and was on the shortlist to be named as a member of President Biden’s Cabinet, will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before he is officially named Ambassador.
WhatsApp, the cross-platform messaging app owned by Facebook, has sued the Indian government in the Delhi High Court, seeking to block enforcement of India’s proposed “intermediary liability” rules, which grants the government the power to require tech companies to take down social media posts it deemed unlawful. WhatsApp argues such rules would violate its users privacy, since its messages are encrypted end-to-end, and it does not have the power to read its users’ messages or take them down. The Indian government has insisted that the rules were framed in order to maintain the privacy of Indians while also giving the government the powers to ‘maintain law and order and ensure national security.”
The Goods and Services Tax Council of India met for its 43rd meeting on May 28, 2021. At the meeting, the Council issued recommendations to fully exempt specific goods necessary for India’s battle against COVID-19 - such as medical oxygen, oxygen concentrators and other oxygen storage and transportation equipment, COVID-19 test kits, and COVID-19 vaccines - from being taxed until August 31, 2021. Moreover, given the rise of Black Fungus cases in recent weeks, the Council also decided to exempt Amphotericin B, an anti-fungal drug used to treat Black Fungus, from being taxed until August 31, 2021 as well. Other recommendations made by the Council are available here.
In a recent interview with Rajat Pandit of The Times of India, India’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Manoj Naravane reiterated that, when it comes to the ongoing stand-offs with Chinese troops along several points along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh was to “restore the ‘status quo ante’ as prevailing on or before April 2020” and that “Our forces are ready to thwart any unusual activity on part of our neighbour.” You can read the full transcript of the interview here.
The Governments of India and Israel have signed new agreements titled the “INDO-ISRAEL Agricultural Project Centres of Excellence” and “INDO-ISRAEL Villages of Excellence” between the Indian Ministry of Agriculture & Farmer’s Welfarea and the Israeli Agency for International Development Cooperation. The agreements are aimed at creating advanced-intensive agriculture farms in 12 Indian states with Israeli Agro-Technology tailored to local conditions over a period of three years.
The Cabinet approved the creation of a new Indian consulate in Addu City, Maldives in 2021. The announcement comes at a time when India has invested deeply in its relationship with Maldives as part of its “Neighborhood First” and its “Security and Growth for All in the Region” (SAGAR) policies, and as part of its desire to maintain ties with key Indian Ocean Region countries to counteract China’s growing influence in the region.
India is reportedly close to finalizing a deal to procure “four advance Israeli Heron Mark-II drones.” These drones, which can stay airborne for a period of 45 hours, will likely be deployed along the Line of Actual Control with China, giving India a boost its surveillance capabilities along the entire 3,488km undemarcated border with China. The first of these drones will reportedly be delivered to the Indian Army in two or three months.
This coming week, on June 1, India will host a virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), as part of India’s Chairmanship of the grouping in 2021.
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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:
Dr. Jonah Blank, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, writes: “In long-term strategic competition with China, how effectively the United States works with allies and partners will be critical to determining U.S. success. This report examines the potential benefits of, and potential impediments to, partnering more closely with India. India is already a peer or near-peer competitor of China across a range of military capabilities, and India's self-defined core national security interests are in relatively close harmony with those of the United States. However, U.S. planners must be keenly aware of the constraints on both India's willingness and capacity to forge a partnership based on strategic competition with China.”
Durga Shakti Nagpal, an officer in the Indian Administrative Service, argues: “While India is struggling to fight the second wave of Covid-19, talking of a remedial strategy to firmly deal with another wave of infections may be the most appropriate exercise to undertake now. The ongoing second wave will, unfortunately, leave deep scars. People were left to fend for themselves — something that they never knew how to do, and something that was never their business. This pandemicoffers us a rare opportunity to put our largely medieval public healthcare apparatus in good shape.”
Ejaz Ghani, an Indian national working for The World Bank, writes: “Despite India’s rapid economic growth in recent decades, India still has very few women entrepreneurs, well below several Sub-Saharan African countries on some average measures. Although India’s overall average female business-ownership share is on an uptrend, the pace of improvement is slow, and there remain huge spatial disparities across states within India… For India to become a $5 trillion economy, entrepreneurship by women must play a bigger role in its economic development. Despite recent economic advances, India’s gender balance on this measure is among the lowest in the world. Improving it is important not just for gender equality, but the entire economy.”
Thanks 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.