akrishnarao

Tag: united states

  • “Strategic Autonomy or Strategic Adjustment? India’s New Reality”

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in both Houses of Parliament that, due to the war raging in West Asia, the country is facing a situation similar to the crisis that arose during the COVID period, and that everyone should be prepared to face it together. While saying that there is no shortage of gas and oil at present, it is noteworthy that he also described the situation as worrying. He declared that not just India but the entire world is facing an energy crisis. In reality, it is not unknown to him that people have already begun facing difficulties regarding cooking gas. With the sudden rise in demand for induction stoves in the country, their prices have also increased. Those who cannot afford these stoves have already begun either going hungry or depending on others. “You have CNG at home, right… I’ll make four rotis and go…” our domestic worker asked. The sale of gas cylinders in the black market is also taking place. Shops that used to fill gas into 5 kg cylinders have shut down. There are many instances of consumers quarrelling with dealers over cylinders due to them. Prices of tea and food items at roadside stalls have also increased. “No stock” boards are visible at many petrol pumps. People, believing rumors, are lining up at petrol pumps. Since it is unclear how this situation will be in the future, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came before the people. Recalling the experience of some selling oxygen in the black market during COVID, he warned that black marketing will not be tolerated. Modi is also aware that people will not ignore these issues during the Assembly elections in five states. India imports nearly 60 percent of its LPG. Of that, 90 percent must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. According to the latest reports, with great difficulty, we have managed to bring in four ships so far. Modi told Parliament that a large number of Indians have been safely brought back from the Gulf. The benefits that families here used to receive from the remittances sent by them have now stopped. “We know you will face problems at present. But this war is happening so that there will be no problems in the world in the long term,” Israel’s ambassador Reuven Azar said recently in Delhi. Who gave Israel, or its godfather America, the authority to wage war on behalf of all countries in the world?

    In fact, as soon as Parliament sessions began, the opposition strongly demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement on the West Asia situation. With insistence on a discussion in Parliament, the House was adjourned several times. Rahul Gandhi made serious allegations that Modi avoided discussion. Finally, Modi made a statement in Parliament explaining the situation, but a discussion on West Asia has still not been conducted. Modi said in his speech that he is speaking with Israel, America, and Iran, and has made it clear that the issue should be resolved diplomatically. However, even as he emphasized diplomacy, global developments indicate parallel backchannel efforts: the Donald Trump administration has reportedly offered a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran, conveyed through intermediaries from Pakistan, which has also offered to host renewed negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Trump stated for a second consecutive day that the United States is in talks with Iran to end the war, while JD Vance may lead potential negotiations that could take place in Islamabad, with Pakistan acting as a mediator.

    Unlike in the past when Trump claimed he had stopped an India–Pakistan war, Modi is not in a position to make such a claim now. India has developed such close ties with America and Israel during Modi’s tenure that it is no longer in a position to criticize those two countries. This could turn into a double-edged sword. The fact that Modi did not criticize the stance of America and Israel at all in his lengthy speech in both Houses of Parliament is evidence of this. Even when an Iranian ship returning after participating in naval exercises conducted by India in the waters off Visakhapatnam was blown up by America in the Indian Ocean, India did not condemn it. At the same time, India is also in a position where it cannot sever its historical ties with Iran. Modi has already spoken twice with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and expressed sympathy over the attacks. He requested that there be no obstacles to energy supplies.

    In fact, when America attacked Iraq in 2003 on the pretext of chemical weapons, the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee not only strongly condemned it but also introduced a resolution in Parliament. The ruling and opposition parties together unanimously passed that resolution condemning America’s stance. Speaker Manohar Joshi himself introduced the resolution, severely criticizing the attacks by American coalition forces on Iraq. Congress leader Jaipal Reddy described it as a very unusual resolution and explained how dangerously America was acting. He urged India to remain alert to the consequences of America’s toxic conspiracies. BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader Yerran Naidu, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee, along with leaders of all parties, condemned American aggression. Then External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha declared that no one could suppress the voice of India, the world’s largest democracy, and that the country was ready to face any challenge.

    What changes have occurred between the Vajpayee government and the Modi government? Why are the BJP and its allies now unable to comment clearly on developments in West Asia? Why have they ignored attacks on Venezuela and Iran?

    What is surprising is that Pakistan, which has been closer to America than India, is now playing a key role in trying to broker peace between Iran and America. Reports indicate that Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Munir spoke with US leadership, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also spoke with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian. It is said that Pakistan, along with Turkey and Egypt, is making serious efforts to stop the war. In fact, Pakistan strongly condemned the joint attacks by America and Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of international law. Instead of punishing such Pakistan, why is America allowing it to attempt mediation?

    Amid these developments, the Indian government on Wednesday convened an all-party meeting around 5 pm over the ongoing West Asia conflict that began after US–Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh chaired the meeting, with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in attendance. The meeting was held inside the Parliament building without the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rajya Sabha’s Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge objected to the format and demanded a full debate in the House instead of just a briefing. Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said he would be unable to attend due to a prior engagement in Kerala. This meeting followed Modi’s address in Parliament, where he urged citizens to be prepared for every challenge and warned that the effects of the war could last for a long time. He also stated that the government has constituted seven empowered groups to formulate strategies on fuel, supply chains, fertilizers, and other sectors to mitigate the impact of the Iran–Israel–US conflict.

    Prime Minister Modi has so far visited 68 countries. He has toured the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Russia, and many other countries multiple times. It cannot be said that this has not enhanced India’s reputation or brought economic benefits. Large-scale defense and industrial investments and technology transfers have increased. Modi has invited foreign direct investment from many countries, including China, and has entered into strategic agreements with several nations. Modi is the only Indian Prime Minister to have visited the United States nine times and Israel twice. Having recently completed 8,931 days in public office, Modi was praised unanimously by NDA leaders. Home Minister Amit Shah described him as a Prime Minister who upheld India’s self-respect on the global stage. Even so, it remains to be discussed whether India has lost its strategic autonomy under Modi, who has acted differently from the approaches followed during the tenures of Indira Gandhi, Vajpayee, and P.V. Narasimha Rao, or whether it is merely being forced to take a temporary step back.

    In any case, at this juncture, the Modi government suddenly bringing forward the women’s reservation bill and the delimitation of constituencies is another surprising development. As initially planned, the latest census should have been completed, the number of constituencies increased, and then women’s reservation implemented. But why was there a need to introduce delimitation and women’s reservation based on the 2011 census? If these bills are passed, the focus of political parties and the public will certainly shift entirely to constituencies and women’s seats. Whether this will bring the expected political advantage to the Modi government in the Assembly elections in five states can only be known once the results are declared.

  • From Visakhapatnam to the World: India’s High-Stakes AI Gamble

    At the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled what he called the M.A.N.A.V. vision for artificial intelligence — moral, accountable, national, accessible and valid. It was a speech rich in symbolism and strategic intent. India, he argued, does not fear AI; it sees opportunity. It does not seek dominance; it seeks democratization. It does not want technological colonialism; it wants sovereignty with inclusivity.

    On stage were leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, alongside technology executives including Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman. The optics were deliberate. India was positioning itself as the democratic voice in an AI world increasingly defined by American corporate power and Chinese state-driven industrial strategy.

    Pichai, in particular, added a layer of emotional symbolism. Recalling his student days, he said he often took the Coromandel Express from Chennai to IIT Kharagpur, passing through Visakhapatnam — then “a quiet and modest coastal city brimming with potential.” “I never imagined Visakhapatnam would become a global AI hub,” he said. Today, he announced, Google’s full-stack AI hub in that very city as part of its $15 billion investment in India — housing gigawatt-scale compute and a new international sub sea cable gateway would deliver jobs and cutting-edge AI capabilities across the country.

    The message was powerful: global capital validating India’s AI rise. Yet the summit also exposed the widening gap between hype and structural reality.

    India today is one of the largest AI user markets in the world. Its 1.4 billion citizens rely deeply on digital infrastructure provided by foreign platforms — primarily Google, Microsoft and Meta. It is difficult to imagine the economic and social paralysis that would follow if YouTube, Android services, cloud infrastructure or major social media platforms were suddenly withdrawn. India is among their largest markets, generating billions in advertising, subscription and data-driven revenues. Yet the core technological layers — GPUs, advanced semiconductors, frontier models — remain largely outside Indian ownership.

    This dependency has prompted calls for more aggressive policy responses. One suggestion gaining quiet traction is the idea of a stronger digital tax regime. If India does not own the GPUs, the chips or the core models, the argument goes, it must at least capture a fair share of the value generated from its data and user base. A digital tax could be framed not as protectionism, but as reinvestment capital — a mechanism to fund domestic compute clusters, semiconductor initiatives and sovereign research programs.

    The contrast with China is frequently invoked in this debate. Beijing did not allow American search engines and social networks to dominate its domestic market during the first wave of the internet revolution. It built domestic equivalents and protected them through regulatory firewalls. In the current AI wave, China has again pursued vertical integration — investing in rare earth supply chains, semiconductor fabrication, data centers and foundational AI research. Companies such as Unitree Robotics, whose Unitree Go2 robotic dog was controversially displayed at the summit expo under the label “Orion,” represent not merely startups but components of a broader industrial strategy.

    India’s model has been different — open markets, global integration, and a focus on services and SaaS. But SaaS dominance in a pre-AI era may not guarantee relevance in a post-AI world. As generative AI begins to automate coding, workflow management and enterprise solutions, many application-layer companies face margin compression. Unlike China with ByteDance’s TikTok or the United States with YouTube, India does not possess a globally dominant consumer tech brand at comparable scale. Its strength has been backend services, not platform ownership. If AI collapses the value of application wrappers built atop foreign models, India’s current comparative advantage could narrow significantly.

    Another structural vulnerability is brain drain. A disproportionate number of leading AI researchers and engineers of Indian origin work in American firms and research labs. While this diaspora influence enhances India’s soft power, it also reflects a domestic ecosystem that has not yet retained frontier talent at scale. When the core breakthroughs happen in Silicon Valley rather than Bengaluru, sovereignty becomes aspirational rather than operational.

    These tensions surfaced dramatically in the controversy surrounding the summit expo. The Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi described the event as a “disorganised PR spectacle,” accusing the government of allowing Indian data to be showcased while Chinese hardware was presented as domestic innovation. He argued that instead of leveraging India’s talent and data power, the government had reduced AI to optics, even inviting mockery from foreign media. Whether exaggerated or not, the symbolism was politically potent: in a domain framed around sovereignty, authenticity matters.

    Yet dismissing the summit entirely as spectacle would also be simplistic. India does possess foundational assets that few nations can match: scale, digital public infrastructure, a vast multilingual dataset, and geopolitical positioning between the United States and China. Aadhaar-linked systems, UPI’s payments architecture and digital governance layers create a test-bed environment for AI deployment at population scale. Few democracies can integrate AI into welfare delivery, financial inclusion and public services as rapidly.

    The central question, then, is not whether India is leading AI today. It clearly does not control the foundational layers at the scale of the United States or China. Nor does it have the industrial depth that Beijing built over decades through coordinated state policy. The real question is whether India can convert its demographic scale and digital footprint into long-term technological autonomy.

    Modi’s MANAV framework articulates a moral and strategic ambition — sovereignty without isolation, democratization without dependency. Pichai’s Visakhapatnam announcement underscores both the promise and the paradox: global investment flowing in, yet foundational infrastructure still foreign-owned. Sovereignty in AI is measured not by summit declarations, but by ownership of compute, chips, research and platforms. If India remains reliant on American cloud infrastructure and imported GPUs, the rhetoric of independence will face credibility tests. If domestic initiatives — semiconductor manufacturing, sovereign language models, and public-private R&D collaborations — scale meaningfully, the narrative could solidify into substance.

    Hype is not inherently deceptive; it is often a political tool to mobilize investment and confidence. But hype must be matched with institutional follow-through. A digital tax regime, serious capital infusion into domestic compute, retention of AI talent, and creation of globally competitive consumer platforms would signal that the ambition is structural, not symbolic.

    India stands at an inflection point. It can continue as the world’s largest AI user market — influential, visible and profitable for foreign firms — or it can leverage this moment to deepen industrial capacity and strategic autonomy. The MANAV speech set the tone. The coming decade will determine whether it becomes a blueprint for sovereignty or a chapter in political theatre.