Editorial 1 : An Indian Compass for Future
Context: India at the UN Futures Summit - An advocate for peace, Global South
India’s Stake in Future for Humanity
- India has an unbroken, civilisational heritage of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
- India has the largest youth population in the world, it is the largest and most vibrant democracy, and is technologically future-facing.
- Intergenerational solidarity is intrinsic to Indians.
- Therefore, India has the greatest stake in any collective, global envisioning of a perfect future for humanity.
- PM Modi positioned India as a Vishvamitra representing a sixth of humanity at the UN Summit of the Future.
- He emphasised India’s vision of human-centric development and successes in SDGs, DPI and solar energy, which he offered to share.
- Warning that reform is the key to relevance, he pointed to the admission of the African Union to the G20. He argued that global action must match global ambition.
Need for Reforming the UN
- UN Secretary-General admitted the UN can’t build a future for our grandchildren with the institutions of our grandparents and that the multilateral system is gridlocked in dysfunction.
- The UN crisis contributes to and reflects the emerging world disorder.
- The UN is unable to prevent, mediate or resolve the conflicts and issues such as the NATO-Ukraine/Russia conflict, the West vs China cold war and the war in Gaza.
Current Global Situation
- The international community have taken its eyes off the terrorism ball. A furious rearmament race is on.
- False narratives and foreign information manipulation and interference around democracy and human rights is being used perversely to bring about regime changes in developing countries.
- The world is lagging in 88% of the SDG targets. Extreme weather events are causing devastation due to climate change.
- Much-needed financing from donors and unreformed and underfunded Multilateral Financial Institutions (MFIs), critical green technologies and debt relief have not materialised for developing countries.
- There is a serious solidarity deficit, undermining multilateralism by resorting to coercive unilateralism, transactional bilateralism, plurilateralism, minilateralism and regionalism.
UN Summit of the Future
- The Summit represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help rebuild trust and bring outdated multilateral institutions and frameworks into line with today’s world, based on equity and solidarity.
- Pact for the Future (PFF’s) 58 actions partially did this by addressing issues in the
- Global public good areas of conflict prevention, peace-making, disarmament and counter-terrorism
- SDGs, environmental protection and climate action and its financing
- Human rights and democracy including gender equality
- Disaster risk reduction and humanitarian response, and science, technology, digital revolution and transforming global governance.
- The Summit demonstrated the convening, consensus building and norm power of the UN to get governments to come together.
- It reiterated key earlier principles and pledges, vowed to implement them and assumed some new responsibilities.
Positive Developments for India at the Summit
- India has reason to be satisfied with the commitment to pursue a future free from terrorism and violent extremism conducive to terrorism in every way and at all levels including through revitalising the Convention against Terrorism.
- An elaborate text pledged to make the UNSC more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable, and enunciated principles for expansion and reform including Africa being given priority and implicitly paving the way for inclusion of developing countries like India.
Global Digital Compact
- Global Digital Compact is a significant normative outcome of the summit and takes forward India’s G20 thrust on bridging the digital divide, fostering the digital economy and digital public infrastructure for achieving SDGs.
- It proposed the establishment of a multi-disciplinary Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and a Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
Way Forward
- The world now has a compass for guiding it to one future as one earth, one family.
- If countries work together, rising above narrow domestic walls, the world will be able to right wrongs, survive future shocks and thrive as a people and planet.
- UN can’t make miracles unless the people believe so and dare to act.
- We must remember the Sanskrit saying “Yad Bhavam, Tad Bhavati” i.e. you become what you believe.
Editorial 2 : Tech Diplomacy 4.0
Context: India’s tech diplomacy - from Nehru to Modi
Technology at the core of Diplomacy
- Technology has been at the centre of PM Modi’s bilateral interactions with US President Joe Biden, the mini-lateral summit of the Quad leaders, his interaction with the US CEOs, and the address to the United Nations Summit of the Future.
- The outcomes from the PM’s technology diplomacy are expansive.
- They cover areas ranging from semiconductors to biotechnology, telecom to artificial intelligence, clean energy to quantum computing, and small and modular nuclear reactors to robotics.
- They cover both advanced civilian and military applications and are bound to contribute to the modernisation of India’s techno-industrial base.
History of Tech Diplomacy
- This is not the first time that technology has figured at the top of India’s national strategy and diplomacy. There have been at least three earlier occasions in independent India’s history when technology took centre stage.
- Each of those phases ended without a realisation of India’s full possibilities because internal and external factors had severely constrained technology strategies.
- Today, the domestic and the external are coming together to turn the fourth phase of India’s technology diplomacy into a consequential one for India’s security and prosperity.
- Technology has become an important focus of India’s engagement not just with the US but several countries including France, Germany, Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, and the European Union.
1950s
- PM Nehru put special emphasis on gaining access to advanced technologies as a key driver of India’s economic modernisation.
- Together with Homi Bhabha, Nehru reached out to the US and other Western powers to successfully lay the foundations for the development of nuclear and space technologies in India.
- US also became a major supporter of the Green Revolution through collaboration in agricultural technology.
1970s
- India’s economic populism, anti-Americanism, growing bureaucratisation of science and technology, marginalisation of India’s private sector, Delhi’s drift towards Moscow, India’s nuclear test of 1974, and the consolidation of the global non-proliferation regime that steadily reduced the space for technology diplomacy.
1980s
- Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi made a big effort in the 1980s to correct the failures of the first phase by putting technological cooperation back at the heart of India-US relations and exploring the space that existed outside the realm of the non-proliferation regime.
- Rajiv Gandhi’s strong technological orientation and his special emphasis on telecom and computing capabilities provided the political energy at the top to push for greater technological collaboration with the US.
- The second phase produced some significant results, but structural constraints like internal bureaucratic resistance and the external constraints driven by the non-proliferation regime, limited the progress.
2000s
- The big moment came in 2005 with the India-US civil nuclear initiative. But deep divisions within the political class and opposition from the scientific bureaucracy made it hard for India to seize the moment.
The Fourth Phase
- Modi government put digital and green technologies at the top of the policy agenda in the first term.
- The technological focus expanded to include AI and semiconductors in the second term.
- These initiatives were in tune with the technological revolution unfolding in the world and have acquired fresh momentum in the third term.
- US also recognised challenges presented by China and expanded investment in the defence and technological partnership with India.
- This culminated in the initiative on critical and emerging technologies (iCET).
- The Indian brain drain to the US from the late 1960s has now become a living technological bridge between the two nations.
Way Forward:
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The fourth phase of India’s technology diplomacy has done well to seize the new international possibilities, but it needs to be strengthened at home with the long overdue reform of the science and technology sectors. Otherwise, the internal bureaucratic resistance will inevitably lead to sub-optimal outcomes like in the earlier phases.