What to Read in The Hindu Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: The Teesta dam and the long shadow of climate change

Context

The key line that the dam was ‘commercially viable’ is a weak reason to reconstruct it.

 

Introduction

On January 27, 2025, an expert committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change recommended a proposal to rebuild the Teesta-3 dam on the Teesta river in Sikkim. In October 2023, a powerful glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) from the South Lhonak lake had decimated the dam and its hydroelectric power generation facility. The waters also carried debris from the dam forward like a fluid battering ram, heightening the damage further downstream. In all, over 100 people were killed while more than 80,000 people in four districts were affected.

 

South Lhonak Lake Moraine Failure and Its Aftermath

• Moraine Failure : A moraine on the South Lhonak lake’s flank suffered a slope failure, weakening the terminus.
• Rockfall Impact : The failure sent rocks tumbling into the lake, generating a strong ripple.
• Outlet Collapse : The outlet subsequently gave way, with satellite data indicating that around 50 billion litres of water spilled into the valley.
• Triggered Landslides : The event set off multiple landslides about 30 to 40 kilometres downstream.
• Ongoing Instability : Experts monitoring the lake stated that the moraine has remained unstable.

 

The link with global warming

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  • Global warming and particulate matter — especially black carbon, also known as soot — accelerate the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
  • More runoff is pooling into new lakes or adding to the existing ones.
  • The rate of melting is inversely proportional to the volume, so, as glaciers shrink, they melt faster.
  • A report by the Central Water Commission of last year found that the number of “glacial lakes and other water bodies” in the Himalayan region had become 10.8% more numerous between 2011 and 2024 and that their combined surface area had increased by 33.7% in the same period.
  • The South Lhonak lake itself was formed in the early 1960s and grew to 167 hectares by 2023.
  • Glacial retreat has also been known to destabilise extant geological formations and create new sources of risk.

 

Teesta-3 Dam and Controversy 

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  • The expert committee’s decision to recommend the rebuilding of the Teesta-3 dam is worrisome.
  • The committee’s decision was motivated by the fact that Teesta-3 was “successful” and “commercially viable” and that its power-generating equipment “was largely intact” following the GLOF.
  • Environmental activists and hydrogeology experts alike have expressed misgivings about large hydroelectric power projects in the Himalaya and have questioned the new design’s green clearance.
  • Teesta-3 has also been the subject of several public interest litigations asking for it to be scrapped:
    • Because of its location (in an earthquake- and landslide-prone area).
    • Issues in its techno-economic clearance.
    • Its non-compliance with a 1996 notification to have Sikkim hold 51% equity.
    • And alleged corruption.

 

Teesta-3 2.0 Design and Climate Risks

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  • According to the committee, Teesta-3 2.0 is to be built with concrete alone rather than concrete and rocks as before.
  • To have a spillway nearly three-times more voluminous.
  • And to have an early-warning system for flooding.
  • The facility’s new design is reportedly based on a “worst-case scenario” modelled by the India Meteorological Department, with the “maximum possible rain” in the next century in the region.

 

Climate Change as a Risk Multiplier

•  
  • But one of the hallmarks of climate change is that it is a risk-multiplier.
  • If the slope failure off the South Lhonak lake had occurred without there being a lake, there is unlikely to have been a flood.
  • Likewise, if the moraine had not collapsed, the gradual accumulation of water may have caused the overtopping to flow into the valley less violently than during a GLOF.

 

The views of experts

• The proliferation of glacial lakes, geological instability, transient landscape dynamics, and atmospheric soot flux from industrial centers in the Gangetic plains increase risks beyond what a rainfall-centric model can capture.
• Experts doubted whether the 2023 GLOF was triggered by heavy rain, as local weather stations recorded only moderate rainfall or less.
• Professor Raghu Murtugudde highlighted in The Hindu that climate models struggle to characterize relationships between climate change and local rainfall due to insufficient data.
• Climate models are “notoriously bad at properly capturing normal rainfall and worse at extreme ones.”

 

Comprehensive Assessment of the 2023 GLOF

• On January 30, 2025, an international team, including experts from IIT Bhubaneswar, IISc Bengaluru, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and the Government of Sikkim, published an assessment of the 2023 GLOF.
• Their report (The Sikkim flood of October 2023: Drivers, causes, and impacts of a multihazard cascade) highlighted gaps in current GLOF modeling and assessment approaches.
• Existing models fail to adequately consider erosion, sediment transport, hillslope-channel interactions, riverbank collapses, landslides from toe-undercutting, and sediment impact on local bed elevations.
• In large river basins, water waves move faster than sediment waves, making sediment transport crucial for flood impact assessments.

 

Impact on Teesta-3 Hydropower Project

• Pre-GLOF, the commercial viability of Teesta-3 reflected India’s rising power demand and the necessity of production.
• Climate change multiplies risks, requiring an evaluation of energy production against potential consequences.
• Downstream property and livelihoods suffered greater damage due to the dam obstructing the swelling river.
• If the new design (Teesta-3 2.0) holds, it may reduce downstream damage from a similar flood.
• However, a stronger or significantly different flood could cause even greater damage.
• A new facility with more moving parts introduces both new success and failure modes.

 

The people form the larger picture

• The social security of the region’s residents will have to be improved accordingly so that, in the event of a disaster, they are able to piece their lives back together without slipping on any social, health, and/or economic indicators.
• Brian Stone, Jr., a professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S., wrote in a 2024 article (“The lunacy of rebuilding in disaster-prone areas”),
  1. “We cannot engineer our way out of climate change; retreat is inevitable.” That is, if the climate-change-induced risk to X in an area is to be kept constant, in time either the area will shrink or the costs of maintaining X will increase. X could be property, livelihoods, even human lives.

 

Conclusion

Instead, the decision should be made within a framework of priorities led by the need to minimise risk to locals, their property, and their livelihoods and maximise their socio-economic resilience. The framework should also include a risk determination matrix with a response plan and a hard ‘unacceptable risk’ level. The cost of these measures should be included in the dam’s hydroelectric power tariff rather than externalising it in the determination of commercial viability. Anything else would be unsustainable by definition.

 

Editorial 2: Dealing with China’s weaponisation of e-supply chains

Context

With large-scale electronics manufacturing important to India, New Delhi needs to speed up its future-proofing

 

Introduction

In mid-January this year, news emerged of China preventing travel by its citizens working as engineers and technicians in Foxconn’s facilities in India. It was also reported that those already in India were being recalled, and that the restrictions extended to curbs on exports of critical specialised manufacturing equipment, over which China has a monopoly. While Foxconn has reportedly scrambled to bring in Taiwanese workers to fill the gap in manpower, it is the stoppage of specialised equipment that is crippling. Apple-Foxconn remains critical to India’s ambitions of becoming a global manufacturing power, and, therefore, such strangulation will affect that larger objective.

 

What is at play

• These zero-sum measures by China expand geopolitical competition with India through regulations on flow of capital and other factors of production.
• Fully cognisant of its dominance in advanced machinery and a well-trained workforce in tightly integrated global electronics production, China intends to also curb the tacit transfer of knowledge from Chinese technicians to their Indian counterparts on the assembly line.
• Combined with the disruptions on account of non-availability of specialised equipment, China has sought to weaponise its strategic location in the network of supply chains to slow down production in India and place itself in an advantageous negotiating position.

 

China Plus One Strategy and India’s Position

• The growing trade tensions between China and the West, specifically the United States, along with the COVID-19-related disruptions, have led many global corporations to adopt a China Plus One diversification strategy to future-proof themselves.
• India has been in the forefront to seek benefits from this move along with countries such as Vietnam and Mexico.
• Given the scale and the development trajectory of India’s manufacturing sector bearing potential similarities to that of the Chinese experience, Beijing realises the need to limit the rise of its geopolitical rival and also remind global corporations of its own indispensability to the production ecosystem.

 

Apple-Foxconn’s Expansion in India

• Over the last few years, the Indian government, in coordination with its State governments, has pulled out all stops to entrench Apple-Foxconn’s investments in the southern part of the country.
• The efforts bore fruit in 2023, with the assembling of iPhone 15 models at Foxconn’s facility in Sunguvarchatram, Tamil Nadu, along with another line in Tata Electronics’ plant in Hosur, Karnataka.
• In the fiscal year ending March 2024, Apple assembled $14 billion worth of iPhones in India, through contract manufacturers Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tata Electronics.
• In 2024, for the first time, iPhone 16 Pro models were assembled by Foxconn in India.
• State governments in south India have prioritised Apple-Foxconn in their pursuit of investments.
• The conferment of the Padma Bhushan on Young Liu, Chairman of Foxconn, in 2024, further underscores the company’s importance for India.
• It appears that the emphasis has been on replicating Apple’s symbiotic relationship with China.

 

A pillar of ‘Make in India’

• Large-scale electronics manufacturing, especially of smartphones, is a key pillar of the ‘Make in India’ programme.
• The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, launched in 2020 for the electronics industry, has seen increased allocation by the central government.
• The Union Budget this year allocated ₹8,885 crore ($1.02 billion), up from ₹6,125 crore ($0.70 billion) in 2024.

 

PLI Scheme Beneficiaries and Policy Changes

• A recent report revealed that over three financial years (2022-23 to 2024-25), Apple’s contract manufacturers in India (Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tata Electronics) received ₹6,600 crore ($0.76 billion) out of the total ₹8,700 crore ($1 billion) disbursed under the PLI scheme.
• The Union Budget 2025 has removed basic customs duties/import taxes on key mobile phone components, including printed circuit boards, camera modules, connectors, and sensors.
• Import duties on capital goods/machinery for lithium-ion battery manufacturing have also been eliminated.

 

India-China Relations and Economic Dependencies

• China’s zero-sum action came months after a thaw in India-China ties, following the patrolling agreement in October 2024, which ended a four-year military standoff in eastern Ladakh.
• Economic necessity, particularly India’s dependence on China for components and machinery, played a role in accelerating negotiations.
• This highlights that India-China relations do not necessarily depend on a stable boundary, as geopolitical competition between the two countries is expected to intensify further.

 

India needs to think long term

• There are no easy solutions for India in the short term, making it necessary to involve both Apple and Foxconnin negotiations with China to ease Beijing’s latest measures.
• Since these corporations have stakes in both countries, their involvement could possibly help India's case.
• At the same time, this should be seen as an opportunity to hasten the process of future-proofing in human resources, components, and specialised machinery.
• India remains largely a centre of final assembly of smartphones.
• To develop a well-rounded manufacturing ecosystem, the production of components must be expanded.
• Ancillary industries need to be incentivised and scaled up to strengthen India's manufacturing capabilities.

 

Conclusion

The National Manufacturing Mission for small, medium and large industries, announced in the Union Budget is a good step, but it needs credible financial muscle that leads to development of clusters for technological knowledge-sharing. On-site training for workers, which includes tacit sharing of knowledge on the assembly line, needs to be complemented and augmented with industry-specific specialisation in skill development programmes. More private capital needs to be encouraged in order to create a robust network of indigenous contract manufacturers for not just foreign corporations but also for domestic Indian brands.