What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

EDITORIAL 1: Stand up to Trump

Context

Trump has not only unleashed a trade war, but is also deploying commercial instruments for geopolitical ends. He has bluntly declared that trade will now be used to compel countries to bend to the US’s will.

The current scenario

• Trump is not only targeting India on its trade surplus and alleged high tariffs but threatening penalties on our pursuing relations with Russia, with Iran and our membership of the BRICS plus.
• We cannot treat his actions as only driven by trade. These actions threaten India’s core interests, its ability to follow a policy of strategic autonomy,which every government, irrespective of its political colour, has remained wedded to since Independence.
• We have enjoyed international credibility and respect precisely for our adherence to this policy and our willingness to go it alone, if necessary, to uphold our national interest.
• We should not treat the current disruption in India-US relations as just a trade dispute. It is much more than that.
• What he has inflicted on India is of a piece with his 50 per cent tariff on Brazil for the indictment of its former President Jair Bolsonaro through a legal process.

What are the options open to India?

• The first order of business is to recognise that under Trump, India-US relations are becoming progressively adversarial.
• Submitting to his exaggerated demands, which are now political as well as economic, would severely undermine India’s national interests.
• We cannot give any country a veto over which countries India should or should not partner with.
• While we should continue to remain engaged in trade negotiations and aim for a deal which brings mutual and not one-sided benefits, we should firmly reject diktats on how India should run its foreign policy.
• Two, the very strong Indo-US cooperation that has been built up in the past two decades in intelligence cooperation, defence hardware supply and co-production and high technology cooperation, is still largely untouched.
• These are most valuable to India and should not be negatively impacted by any action on the Indian side.
• Three, there may be analysts of the Realist School who advise submission to Trump’s bullying tactics so as to assuage his ego and win peace.
• This would be damaging in the long run. Bullies treat each act of submission as a cause for demanding even greater obeisance the next time around.
• Four, we seem to underestimate our staying power. As a much weaker country, economically and militarily, India was ready to stand alone when its vital interests were threatened.
• In 1968, it refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) despite immense pressure from the then superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union.
• We refused to adhere to a blatantly discriminatory Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty in 1995 despite being a lone holdout.
• In climate change negotiations, we held our ground that the Rio Convention provisions must be upheld until we ourselves resiled from our principled position and accepted the Paris Climate agreement in 2015, which we now see observed more in the breach by its then apostolic champions.

Courage to stand up

• India has always been regarded with respect for its courage to stand up for its convictions.
• Most developing countries still take their cue from India. We carry credibility with them. This provides India with a significant diplomatic ballast.
• We should recognise and value this asset, which is undermined if we keep talking about being at the high tableand consorting with top global leaders.
• India should never sacrifice its material interests for the symbolic status of being at the high table.
• There will certainly be pain in resisting Trump, but we should be prepared to endure it.

Conclusion

The people of India have in the past and will in the future be ready to accept sacrifice in the national interest and support a leader who makes that appeal.  It is estimated that India’s GDP growth will suffer a reduction of 2 percentage points from Trump’s tariff tantrum. This is a small price to pay for upholding India’s larger interests.

 

EDITORIAL 2: For energy security, a redesign

Context

Energy security has typically been discussed within the frame of access, reliability and affordability of fossil fuels. Today, however, against the backdrop of global warming and India’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2070, this results in too narrow a perspective.

On a two track

• India is on a two track energy trajectory. One track relates to the demand for fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and the other to renewables (solar, wind, bio etc).
• The national objective is to decrease the share of the former and increase that of the latter in the energy consumption basket.
• To achieve this goal, India must focus on not just conservation of the usage of fossils, but also the simplification and coherence of the energy regulatory system.
• India has done well to safeguard its energy security in the traditional sense. It has opened up multiple sources of crude oil and has resisted western government pressure to sanction Russia.
• Also, by steadily increasing the share of Russian crude in its import basket from 2.1 per cent by value in 2021-22 to 35.1 per cent in 2024-25, it has reduced the weighted average cost of the basket of imported crude by at least $2/barrel.
• Further, demand management and efficiency has reduced the intensity of fossil fuel demand per unit of GDP.

Not a robust situation

• However, when looked at through the broader prism that captures the trajectory of renewables, the situation does not look as robust.
• This is not because growth in the capacity of renewable energy has been slow. In fact, on the contrary, it has been impressive, albeit from a low base.
• Five years back renewables accounted for 19 per cent of electricity generating capacity. Today it accounts for 49 per cent (234 GW).
• What is worrying is the slowdown in the pace of this growth and the imbalance between the generation of capacity and the development of supporting transmission and distribution infrastructure.

The reasons and the solutions

• There are several reasons for this slowdown, but one major factor is the regulatory miasma surrounding the sector.
• Every businessman has had to deal with bureaucracy. But even the most hardened will catch their breath reading these statistics.
• It takes months to secure all approvals before any construction could commence.
• The word “usable” is the key. For it is one thing to create generation capacity. Quite another to develop the interstate transmission network; establish backup storage systems; build the distribution network and set the tariffs and standards for this capacity to be consumed.
• And as the experience of Spain earlier this year brought into sharp relief, it is even more complicated to ensure that connectivity between these different segments of the value chain is seamless, balanced and technically solid.
• The supply of hydrocarbons depends crucially on geology. Governments have no control over a country’s natural resource endowments.
• On the other hand, the supply of renewables faces no structural block. Sunlight and wind are “freely” available; the technology for generating wind and solar energy is well established; the economics are competitive; and there is investor interest.
• The rub is the multiplicity of regulatory agencies and regulators that bear on this sector. Plus the fact there is no one executive authority with nodal responsibility or accountability for its operations.
• The positive is the government faces no structural block like geology to overcome this rub. It can, if it so wishes, undertake a root and branch reconfiguration and redesign of the current regulatory system.
• It can simplify the regulatory process by removing or converging the current multiple layers of oversight.
• It can standardise operating rules; ease the process of land acquisition; digitise the approval process; align technical standards and safety conditions; render transparent the setting of network charges and supply contracts; and expedite dispute resolution.

Conclusion

The government does, of course, face the block of legacy vested interests. It is a powerful block but it cannot withstand determined political will. Such will is required for the prize of weakening the current unhealthy link between economic growth, energy demand and environmental protection — for “Energy Atmanirbharta”.