India

This article was originally published in the Times of India. Why is it so difficult for US media to use the word “terrorism” in the context of South Asia? Escalating tensions between India and Pakistan over the past three weeks have produced greater international coverage of the region. Yet in conveying the news, some US outlets have relied on the word “militant” to describe terrorist groups operating from Pakistan. This vocabulary choice doesn’t suggest organisations with universally condemnable violent tactics, but instead something more ambiguous about their use of violence. But armed groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are terrorist organisations by any definition. US media should stop sidestepping the word “terrorist” when writing about these groups, and portray the regional security situation accurately. What does the coverage look like? The facts include a very serious sequence of events that began with a terrorist attack on a paramilitary convoy in Pulwama and led to the use of air strikes and fears of possible war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. In describing and analysing this sequence, a Washington Post article examined why Pakistan “has not been able to rein in anti-India militants”. Reuters employed the term to discuss Pakistan’s renewed vow to crackdown on these groups. Covering Indian foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale’s February 26 remarks explaining India’s air strikes, an Associated Press timeline rephrased him, substituting “militants” for “terrorists”. In the New York Times, a story on the Financial Action Task Force (an inter-governmental group on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing) used “militants” in the headline and alternated between “militant” and “terrorist” in the article. This soft-peddling may appeal to journalists trained to abhor hyperbole. But it makes no sense. The JeM and LeT are two particularly dangerous India-focused terrorist groups headquartered in Pakistan. Despite periodic government crackdowns, usually under international pressure after an attack in India, both groups have thrived in Pakistan virtually unfettered. So poorly enforced are any supposed sanctions against them that last year the LeT tried to register as a political party to contest national elections, and after that was rejected, ended up fielding candidates anyway under a different name. While Pakistan houses a variety of terrorist groups — including the Afghanistan-focused Haqqani Network — JeM and LeT in particular destabilise the South Asian region by mounting terrorist attacks in India, raising the spectre of further escalation. India holds JeM responsible for attacks on its parliament in December 2001, an airbase in Pathankot, Punjab in January 2016, an army camp in Uri, Kashmir in September 2016, and the Valentine’s Day attack that sparked the current crisis. It has been implicated in the 2001 suicide attack on the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly, an assassination attempt on former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, and the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl. Similarly, LeT is responsible for, most notably, the Mumbai attack of November 2008, which killed 166 people, as well as the 2001 parliament attack. JeM and LeT have been under international terrorism sanctions for nearly two decades. In October 2001, both were added to a sanctions list under UN Security Council Resolution 1267. This requires member-states to freeze assets, impose a travel ban, and “prevent the direct or indirect supply” of arms and other assistance to designated groups. In December 2001, the US government added JeM and LeT to the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, and further designated LeT under Executive Order 13224, another terrorism sanction. Pakistan actually banned both these groups in January 2002, although they promptly regrouped under other names and remained active from Pakistani soil. But both are officially on the Pakistani National Counter Terrorism Authority’s proscribed list. In other words, there should not be any dispute over their status as terrorists.  Perhaps writing about “militants” instead of “terrorists” is meant to suggest even-handedness, a means of balancing what India says with what Pakistan often denies. Or perhaps the rationale lies in a newsroom ethos of lowering the emotional tenor by using a word less likely to create fear. It may even result from an incomplete awareness of the many years throughout which these two groups have been under international scrutiny and legal proscription. Regardless of the reason, the practice downgrades the threat these groups pose to regional peace. But JeM and LeT are a menace to South Asia. Scenarios of conflict escalation between India and Pakistan inevitably begin with a terrorist attack in India, traced back to Pakistan-based groups. That’s exactly what happened on February 14. It could happen again if not tackled permanently. For that reason alone, JeM and LeT should be recognised for the dangers that they are. And above all, call them by their name: terrorists.

Aaron Steinberg is an interdepartmental program assistant at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.  On Sunday, the Indian Election Commission released the much anticipated polling dates for the 2019 general election. Amid the electoral preparations, opposition party members are accusing the incumbent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of using recent tensions in Kashmir to stoke nationalist sentiment. Political analysts say that Modi’s response to the tensions have indeed helped in preliminary polling, but the concern over domestic issues that had been haunting the prime minister remain during this politically pivotal juncture.   One of the centerpieces of the Modi government’s platform has been addressing air pollution, but his efforts to ameliorate the matter have reportedly fallen short. According to the latest data on air pollution, seven of the ten most polluted cities globally are in India’s Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP)—home to over half of the country’s population. One of the most common metrics used for air pollution is the concentration of suspended particulate matter that have a diameter less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5). Various factors contribute to poor air quality, but one culprit, residential energy use, has been identified as a primary contributor to emissions in the IGP. Last year, a study using recent data on PM2.5 concentrations found that residential biomass burning causes as much as 90 percent of the annual anthropogenic PM2.5 emissions in the IGP. The residential energy emissions come primarily from the 78 percent of people who burn biomass (usually in the form of agricultural residues, fuel wood, and dung cake) for cooking and heating, as it is the most affordable energy source for low-income households. Carcinogens from biomass burning contribute to an array of health issues, including respiratory and heart diseases, cancer, and stroke, all of which are central to India’s increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases. One New Delhi chest surgeon found that half his lung cancer patients are nonsmokers; when he started practicing thirty years ago, 80–90 percent of such patients were smokers. For many, breathing has become the new smoking. In 2016, the Modi government launched an initiative to address the issue. Known as Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), it aims to create liquid gas connections for households below the poverty line and subsidizes state-owned fuel retailers for every new connection. The massive transition has made India the second-largest importer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the world, and it is poised to take the lead in 2019. Currently, India imports nearly 80 percent of its fuel to meet demand, leaving the supply vulnerable to price fluctuation and political whim. Amid India’s rising demand, importers looked to Iran as an additional source, becoming the country’s second-largest client. Major disruptions were expected in the wake of President Donald J. Trump’s renewal of sanctions, but India, along with eight other countries, were granted waivers, which prevented disruption. Had sanctions been carried out against Saudi Arabia, as was threatened in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, PMUY would have faced severe disruptions.  India’s reliance on imports, combined with the subsidies given through PMUY, has put considerable strain on the country’s balance of payments. PMUY’s initial success helped justify the expenditure, but issues are beginning to arise as the program progresses. With general elections coming up in the spring, the Modi government appears to be doubling down on its efforts. PMUY has made impressive progress since its introduction; fifty million new LPG connections have been reported as of 2019. The program’s success has been credited with assisting Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in winning the 2017 legislative assembly election in Uttar Pradesh (UP), where PMUY was originally implemented. It is no coincidence that PMUY was launched in UP, which sends the most legislators to parliament of any state. The Modi government is looking for similar success in the upcoming election, but the longevity of PMUY is being questioned as low refill rates for the LPG cylinders indicate a return to biomass burning. Currently, PMUY beneficiaries pay for their stove and first cylinder refill in monthly installments; however, beneficiaries must pay market rates for subsequent refills. While PMUY has done well in creating LPG connections, many Indian households are finding it difficult to fund the refill of their LPG cylinders despite the incentives. In one UP district, refill rates sunk as low as 25 to 30 percent. When money is scarce, returning to biomass is an easy way to cut costs. As of early 2019, Modi is polling ahead of his closest competitor, Rahul Gandhi, but his lead has diminished in the past year. Failing to address the shortcomings of PMUY would be a major misstep for Modi and the BJP. The government’s current plan to increase LPG subsidies may help restore confidence in PMUY throughout the election period, but energy-source diversification is crucial to long-term success of the program. India’s shift from biomass is one facet of a larger low-carbon transition. LPG is an example of a low-carbon alternative, but converting to an energy source with greater domestic availability would help ensure greater stability for the program. One method suggested by the National Institution for Transforming India is complementing the new gas stoves with electric stoves, which could be powered by domestically sourced energy. Currently, India’s energy mix is dominated by coal, which will remain a fixture for the foreseeable future. Like biomass, coal is a major contributor to air pollution, so investing in cleaner, more efficient coal plants to power electric stoves would curb emissions from both sources. Although coal is dominant, renewable sources are a distant but growing second, outpacing the growth of coal in 2018. Today, renewable energy stands at around 20 percent of the energy mix and is projected to reach at least 48 percent by 2030. If increased access to alternatives to biomass burning are paired with a more diversified energy mix in India, PM2.5 levels would be drastically diminished, leading to greater quality of life for all, especially as renewables supplant coal. PMUY has been a successful first step in addressing biomass burning and improving India’s overall air quality, but as the BJP’s flagship energy program stands now, India’s air quality and its health are largely contingent on the price of and access to LPG.

This week: Facebook announces new privacy framework; Big Tech goes on the offensive; new developments in China-U.S. cyber relations; UK's proposes a cyber detterence strategy; and India's tech companies make moves.

This guest post is co-authored by Sarang Shidore, a visiting scholar at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, and Joshua Busby, associate professor of public affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin. For four years, we have been tracking the solar sector in India as it seeks to scale up to meet the government’s 100GW target by 2022. Although rooftop additions continue apace, there has been slower growth at the utility scale. The next stage of growth in India will be difficult to achieve without major reform across the electricity sector as a whole. But an upcoming national election in May could bring in a weaker coalition government, adding to the sector’s already large challenges that include land acquisition and problems with the existing auction system. Utility-Scale Slowdown Implies 2022 Goal is a Stretch India’s annualized solar capacity addition was 8.2 GW in 2018, down from the previous year’s all-time high of 9.6 GW. Though utility-scale additions dropped by nearly 20%, rooftop solar showed a remarkable surge of more than 70% over the previous year from a smaller base. However, India’s rooftop growth is focused mainly in the commercial & industrial sectors – residential solar has yet to take off in the country. As of January 2018, India had more than 26 GW of capacity of solar electricity, dramatically higher than the 2.5GW in 2014 when Prime Minister Modi took office. However, as we wrote last year, 100GW is a stretch goal that India likely won’t reach by 2022, and that continues to be the consensus among industry-watchers. The latest forecasts estimate that India will reach 65GW of installed solar capacity by 2022, of which 51GW will be utility scale and the remainder divided between rooftop, open access, and off-grid solar. While that is below the announced target, it is still impressive, especially where such progress was thought unlikely just a few years ago. Constraints, Old and New Given a backlog of approved projects, there will likely be more capacity installed in 2019 than 2018. However, a number of developments have undermined developers’ confidence. Reverse auctions, in which prices are continuously bid down until prices fall no further, have driven solar prices down in India to less than 3 rupees (4.3 cents) per kilowatt hour. A new import tariff as high as 25% kicked in this year, aimed at solar panel imports from China and Malaysia. China accounts for 90% of panel installations in India, so this, along with a depreciating rupee, has raised costs across the board and lowered the returns that developers and investors can earn. The increasingly challenging economics of large-scale Indian solar development has forced consolidation in the market. In 2019, just 4 players Azure, Acme, NLC, and Japan’s SoftBank are expected to provide more than 40% of new utility-scale capacity. Increasingly, there are instances of auctions being run and then canceled after the market-discovered auction price was deemed too high, making the business of bidding for projects more risky for developers.  This has happened both at the state and central level and is damaging the investment environment for solar. Despite these hurdles, significant interest remains from foreign investors from Japan, the Persian Gulf, and Europe. American investors who are earning better returns at home have largely steered clear of the Indian market. Land acquisition issues continue to dog plans for some large-scale solar parks. More than 40 such parks are in various stages of planning and development. Though land forms less than 5% of typical project costs, it is often the most complex and time-consuming step.  For instance, a 500 MW park in the large state of Maharashtra was scaled back this year after a farmer protesting inadequate compensation committed suicide. A large 2 GW solar park, located in the desert state of Rajasthan, is expanding more slowly than planned due to land disputes. Also, developers often opt for acquiring fertile land rather than wasteland, as it is typically closer to existing grid infrastructure. This further increases the chances of farmer resistance. An ambitious “green corridor” project to strengthen the grid between states with large generation potential and centers of high electricity demand is ongoing, and allocations for it increased by nearly 20% this past year to $92 million. Yet, as new renewable energy gets added to the grid, the demand for greater inter-state capacity is also growing. The green corridor is effectively a moving target and is currently lagging well behind additions of new capacity. India’s electricity sector, mostly organized at the state level in India, has undergone major reforms since the 1990s. From being integrated and almost entirely government-owned in each state, the sector was “unbundled” or split up with different companies handling generation, transmission, and distribution. Along with unbundling, privatization was also pushed. However, while generation was substantially privatized, transmission and distribution remain predominantly state-owned. However, electricity subsidies for agricultural use among India’s vast farming population have also increased steadily. What that means is that distribution companies (Discoms) in most large states face significant under-recovery of costs and are saddled with huge debts. This acts as a major constraint on the expansion of solar power, as Discoms are highly reluctant to buy more electricity from renewables in the face of existing long-term contracts with coal plants. The central government launched a key initiative in 2015 to rescue Discoms from their financial distress, called UDAY. However, UDAY is largely a failure. Though stricken Discoms have temporarily regained much of their health by transferring 75% of their existing debt to state governments, the Discoms have not implemented other reforms like reducing grid losses to improve their long-run profitability. The distribution companies’ generally poor financial health thus constitutes a major barrier for renewables penetration going forward. Moreover, there are challenges and costs of grid integration associated with renewable power because of intermittency, the fact that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. In the absence of affordable energy storage, grid managers have to ramp up other sources of electricity to act as balancers when there is no sun or wind. Hydropower and natural gas are ideal balancing sources for variable renewable electricity. Some states such as Karnataka do have sufficient hydropower to balance their renewables generation. But, many others do not, and, in the absence of viable natural gas plants, coal plants have to play this role. However, ramping coal plants up and down is expensive. As renewables penetration increases in the Indian electricity system, these challenges will get more serious. New Solar Models – Seeds of Change? New innovative approaches suggest a different path forward. While they tend to be smaller scale, they meet the electricity needs of key constituencies and can help overcome problems of land acquisition and below-cost electricity for agricultural users.  Madhya Pradesh, a poorer state in the central part of the country, is pursuing demand aggregation to reduce rooftop solar costs and is rolling out solar pumps for farmers. The rooftop program is initially oriented towards public buildings, such as government departments, schools, universities, and hospitals. The unique aspect has been to aggregate demand for would-be developers by bundling sites together Before the bidding process, the state surveyed the sites to estimate their technical requirements and made that information available to developers. This has led to electricity price bids of less than 2 rupees per kilowatt hour in some cases, which is as much as 5 rupees cheaper than standard Discom rates. While significant subsidies of more than 40% helped facilitate lower bids, state officials argue their preparatory work and transparency of information brought costs down even further by reducing investors’ uncertainty. The agricultural sector is responsible for more than 30% of electricity demand in a number of states as many farmers rely on groundwater for irrigation. Because farmers tend to get subsidized power, many of India’s Discoms perennially lose money. However, farmers also get unreliable power for limited hours, often at night rather than during the day. The wealthier state of Maharashtra, which includes the India’s financial capital Mumbai but is also heavily agricultural, is experimenting with solar agricultural schemes to offer farmers more convenient and reliable daytime power and should help Discoms improve their balance sheets. Maharashtra has developed a solar feeder scheme which sets up a small scale solar plant of 1-10MW in the community. Farmers connect to this power plant to run their pumps. The southern state of Karnataka, which includes the national IT hub Bangalore, has innovated a semi-distributed solar model by building smaller scale parks of 10 MW to 100 MW at the taluk level (taluks are clusters of villages). Taluk-level solar plants do not require large parcels of land and can be located more closely to the rural consumers. The model could ease the land challenge, lower grid losses, and reduce Discoms’ financial losses. Karnataka also innovated a land leasing model for its large 2 GW Pavagada solar park located in a poor drought-stricken region. Instead of acquiring farmer-held land outright, it offered 28-year leasing deals. 13,000 acres were acquired this way, with thousands of farmers signing lease contracts. In exchange, farmers are paid an annual rent with a periodic escalation clause. This eased farmer concerns over permanently losing their land and assured them a steady income regardless of the weather. Pavagada helped Karnataka become the leader of all Indian states in net solar capacity. The Current Pathway - More Solar, More Coal From a climate change and air quality perspective, the more important question is whether India’s renewables growth will displace coal as soon as is practically feasible. From that point of view, the growth of the last few years of the solar sector looks less impressive. However, from an energy security perspective (the primary driver of India’s energy policy), solar has provided a welcome, cleaner domestic source of electricity and has significantly alleviated power deficits triggered by uneven supplies of domestic coal in states such as Karnataka. Coal still retains its preeminence in India’s electricity mix, responsible for close to 75% of electricity generation. Even as some old coal burning power plants are being taken off-line, some new coal plants are being built. In recent years, renewables additions have outpaced coal; for example in 2018, renewables additions were 11.2 GW (of which solar was 8.2 GW) compared to coal additions of 4.5 GW. Though the new coal plants are more efficient supercritical and ultrasupercritical plants with greenhouse gas emissions reductions of more than 25%, they are still net carbon additive. In 2018, the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW), a prominent Indian think tank, developed scenarios of low carbon development for India. In the most pessimistic scenario where renewables projects have to bear the cost of integrating their power into the grid, the non-fossil share of electricity will rise to at least 48% in 2030, up from around 20% today. In the most optimistic scenario in which renewables do not have to bear any cost of grid integration and coal plants operate under a new market design, the share will be as much as 79%. This is a large spread of possible scenarios, and speaks to the high sensitivity of sector pathways to policy and regulatory initiatives. In other words, much can be done to bend the curve. Peering Ahead In spite of sector headwinds, more than 13 GW of solar will be added this year according to Bridge to India, of which 10.9 GW will be utility scale and 2.4 GW rooftop. This surge is largely due to legacy effects of intense tendering activity in late 2017 and early 2018 coming online in 2019. But the overall trends of 2018 point to serious risks of a solar slowdown. If renewables are going to displace a larger share of coal in the medium-run, then some more transformational changes in how the electricity space is regulated and organized will have to be pursued. As we argue in an article forthcoming in Energy Policy, the significant growth of renewable energy in India since 2014 has very much been a top-down affair greatly driven by policy innovation and high prioritization by the central government and some key states. This policy push was driven by multiple factors including global pressures leading up to the Paris agreement, the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, and energy security and investment factors. However, the upcoming national election will likely return a more fractious coalition government, reducing the appetite for ambitious energy sector reform, all in the context of flagging global climate action. The question of electricity reform in India highlights the challenges for democracies of reconciling diverse interests and voter groups with the need to move to cleaner sources of energy.  This challenge is not unique to India. Witness the prolonged discussions in Germany over the timing and terms of phasing out coal production. The United States, with the deregulatory pushback in the Trump era, is also facing similar challenges. Solving this puzzle will be a key challenge of national and global governance in the years ahead. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the IC² Institute, the LBJ School, and the Strauss and Clements Centers at the University of Texas.

Developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week.

Renewed tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals over Kashmir have once again put the world on high alert. 

Countries that wish for peace must press Pakistan to make better choices and uphold its obligations as a UN member state.

Developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week.

Test your knowledge of India, from its independence movement to its border conflicts.

On February 14, a terrorist drove a car filled with explosives into a paramilitary convoy in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir. A Pakistan-based terrorist group, Jaish-e-Muhammad, claimed responsibility shortly after the attack. The death toll of Indian soldiers has now exceeded forty, more than twice the number of fatalities in the September 2016 Uri attack, which resulted in India’s “surgical strikes” in response. So Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faces national elections within weeks, is under enormous domestic pressure to respond strongly. The United States, too, has to think about its next steps. The completely open presence of these terrorist groups in Pakistan—groups under U.S. and UN terrorism designations—shows how Pakistan continues to fail at its own obligations as a member state of the United Nations to take sufficient action. While the Donald J. Trump administration has suspended security assistance to Pakistan precisely to compel further action on terrorism, there are more steps that Washington could take. Read my take on CNN.com for more. My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India Is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

The Indian government released an “interim” budget today, a document designed to provide continuity for the next three months or so before the general election takes place and a newly constituted government takes office. This interim budget in many ways resembles a continuing resolution in the U.S. system, a “holdover-keep-things-running” function that typically receives almost no notice in the United States. (Unless, of course, one doesn’t pass and the government shuts down.) By contrast, the Indian media are treating this three-month interim budget just like a full-fledged budget, devoting attention to its meaning and its implications for industry, farmers, the middle class, and foreign investors. This is because the scale of the proposals in the budget suggests a roadmap for the entire year rather than a holding exercise. Should the next Indian government, once it is constituted at some point likely around late May, have a different focus, then it would be worth having a more extensive budget discussion at that time. But the question of the hour really has to be what to do about jobs. Against the backdrop of mounting bad news on the jobs front, it’s no mystery that the interim budget would offer support to farmers, tax relief to the middle class, and an opt-in pension plan for informal sector workers. These are palliative measures, however, that do not provide broader recommendations for how to address whatever is hindering job creation in the Indian economy. The much-delayed release of National Sample Survey data on unemployment led earlier this week to a data leak to Business Standard, and the information released should wake everyone up to the urgency of the problem. According to this report, the survey finds headline unemployment at an over-forty-year high of 6.1 percent.  If unemployment in India is indeed as high as the reported National Sample Survey figure—keep in mind that the nongovernmental Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy unemployment estimate for December 2018 was even higher at 7.3 percent—then all parties should focus like a laser on what they can do to solve the problem. Answering the jobs question with the best possible policy proposal requires the best available data. Here’s an example. It has been politically impossible—across parties—to implement extensive structural reforms that would allow India’s manufacturing sector to flourish, as has been the case in East and Southeast Asia, and even in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, the ready-made garment industry has been a pathway out of poverty for around four million people, mainly women. As China moves out of the garment industry, countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam are picking up the slack, and this could be an opportunity for India as well. How well have the changes to India’s textile sector that were initiated in 2016—changes that allowed for seasonal employment and eased labor laws that disincentivized hiring more than one hundred people—helped with job creation in the industry? It has become abundantly clear that demonetization and the complexity of the Goods and Services Tax rollout hurt small businesses. So public policy ought to focus on how to improve opportunities for small businesses and help them grow, because they are engines of job creation. That means I agree with the question posed by Takshashila Institution Cofounder and Director Nitin Pai: “What is your plan to create 20 million jobs every year?” That’s the question that ought to be everyone’s top priority. My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India Is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

Washington will need to identify and commit to specific goals in the Indo-Pacific if this geographic and strategic approach is to be successful.

This week: India confronts the 'panopticon'; Apple's CEO calls for federal privacy legislation, and the Huawei saga continues.