Editorial 1: India and the SCO Paradox
Context: The visit of Chinese and Russian defence ministers to attend a ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation this week in Delhi is drawing much attention.
Introduction: SCO
- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an intergovernmental organization founded in Shanghai on 15 June 2001.
- The SCO currently comprises eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four Observer States interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).
- In 2021, the decision was made to start the accession process of Iran to the SCO as a full member, and Egypt, Qatar as well as Saudi Arabia became dialogue partners.
- Since its inception in 2001, the SCO has mainly focused on regional security issues, its fight against regional terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism. To date, the SCO’s priorities also include regional development.
India chairing SCO and issues it has to deal with
- India, which is chairing the Eurasian regional forum this year, will have a range of bilateral problems to discuss with its fellow SCO members.
- These include the disengagement and de-escalation of the border confrontation with China and Moscow’s supply of spares to the large inventory of Russian arms amidst the war in Ukraine.
The SCO’s Paradox
- Even as the Eurasian forum looks attractive to a growing number of regional states, its internal contradictions are casting a shadow over its strategic coherence.
- If the main objective of the SCO was to promote peace in Eurasia, its ability to cope with the intra-state and inter-state conflicts among the member states is now under scrutiny. To make matters more complicated, Russia’s war in Ukraine is raising questions about Moscow’s capacity to sustain primacy in its backyard.
- Meanwhile, China’s rise is increasing the prospects for Beijing’s emergence as the dominant force in inner Asia.
Russia and Central Asian countries
- If Russia is a protector of the Central Asian regimes, it could also be a potential predator. Russian leaders have often dismissed Central Asian states as artificial nations.
- To be sure, Russia is deeply entrenched within the Central Asian state system with strong ties to local elites and security establishments. Many Central Asians work in Russia and send valuable remittances home. Yet after Ukraine, the Central Asian states are looking to intensify their diversification strategies to reduce their reliance on Russia.
China’s growing influence
- Some observers argue that China’s growing regional influence will come at Russia’s expense, as Beijing becomes the senior partner in the bilateral relationship with Moscow after Ukraine.
- Others point to the fact that Russia and China have drawn closer than ever before and that they have little reason to quarrel over Central Asia. Moscow’s muscle and Beijing’s money provide a sensible basis for their strategic division of labour in Central Asia to keep the Western powers out of the region.
- A third argument agrees that China has no reason to replace Moscow as the main power in Central Asia in the near term, but it warns against underestimating Beijing’s long-term ambitions in the region. One straw in the wind is Beijing’s explicit support of the sovereignty of the Central Asian states.
India’s regional interests
- Delhi’s engagement with the SCO all these decades was premised on Russian primacy in the region and Moscow’s support of India’s regional interests.
- For India, a strong and independent Russia is critical for maintaining the inner Asian balance.
- But Delhi is in no position to ensure Moscow’s strategic autonomy from Beijing; that depends on Russian strategic choices.
What is way-ahead for India?
- Delhi’s burden in SCO must now be to protect its own interests amidst a rapidly changing regional power distribution in China’s favour. That India does not have direct geographic access to the landlocked region makes that challenge a demanding one.
Editorial 2: Brain Economy Challenge
Context: Technology will change the way we look at Labour, Capital and skills.
Brain Economy
- If Marx were alive today and playing with GPT4, he would have been the first to notice that the nature of labour has morphed drastically since the mid-19th century — from body to skill to brain.
- Physical labour required no education, skill-based labour required higher education, training and expertise, and, now, brain-based labour is about rapid innovation and creation, driven by technology. Welcome to the brain economy.
Impact on different technologies
- No industry will be immune from technology in the global brain economy. Retail, agriculture, automobile, finance, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, education, sports and entertainment will be driven and reshaped by technology and brain power.
- Technology will not be limited to software, artificial intelligence and data analytics — it will spread rapidly across brain sciences, quantum computing, genetic engineering, 3D printing, nanotechnology and combinations thereof.
Trade offs in the Brain Economy
- To facilitate a meaningful dialogue around the trade-offs in the brain economy, we need to first abandon outdated stereotypes of evil corporations, sinful profits and inhuman technology.
- The accompanying myth of man vs machine, created when labour meant the human body, needs to be laid to rest. Technology doesn’t destroy jobs — it creates jobs, liberates people and drives social progress.
- Whether we like it or not, advances in technology in the brain economy will always be a couple of steps ahead of politicians, bureaucrats, policies and laws.
Major foreseen issues
- Naturally, there will be issues of concern like greedy corporations with an urge to dominate the marketplace and exploit legal loopholes.
- There will be ethical dilemmas regarding technology choices. Regulation and oversight are essential, but these need to be pragmatic, not dogmatic.
- Technology illiteracy impedes understanding, perpetrates falsehoods and obstructs progress.
What needs to be done?
- A clear understanding of technology is as important an issue as those of privacy, inclusivity, fairness and ethics. Scientists, technologists, businessmen, entrepreneurs and corporations must also be present at the discussion table.
- Starting now, the education architecture of the country needs to be revamped. Students and teachers in primary and secondary education need to be equipped with technology. Failures in experimentation and creation in schools should be celebrated, not ridiculed.
Relationship between Labour and capital to change
- The relationship between capital and labour will change. Capital exploited physical labour and invested in skills. It will now chase and partner with the brains.
- The balance of power between capital and labour will become more symmetric. But markets will create inequality by assigning exponentially differential values to body, skill and brain.
Way Forward
- In a country the size of India, it’s impossible to transition everyone to the brain economy overnight. The biggest component of the body economy in India is agriculture. We need our agriculture to be technology-enabled, not body driven. Inequality will remain, but it’s better to be unequally well off than to be equally poor.
- But the bigger issue of inequality is the inequality between nations. In the brain economy, the alternative to technology and innovation is total irrelevance. To be a globally relevant player, India needs to embrace the concept of this new world of the brain economy, adapt its mindset and appropriate its resources accordingly.