GS – 2
Strategic investments by global tech companies are heartening. Regulators must up their game. Explain in detail. 250 Words
In the News:
- One Indian company stood out during the lockdown and attendant economic gloom. Reliance Industries announced that it has raised a cumulative Rs 2.12 lakh crore through a variety of channels over the last few months. Of particular interest is the strategic partnership with global technology giants Google and Facebook, backed by their investment in its technology arm Jio Platforms.
Salient feature:
- The salient feature here is that it highlights the potential of the Indian market for global technology giants and the talent pool it offers which can be tapped for designing products that could potentially be exported too.
- In this context, Reliance also announced that it has developed a complete 5G solution from scratch. The unusual development of two technology giants partnering the same Indian company gives us a pointer where we are headed. Bundling by large technology platforms introduces a level of efficiency in service provision that was unavailable earlier.
- Simultaneously, it introduces a regulatory challenge that is altogether new. For example, even as bundling brings in efficiency, regulators the world over grapple with the challenge of gauging when it begins to thwart competition.
- Disruption in technology emerges in niche areas. Bundling may disadvantage a stand-alone product and take us down the road to monopoly. India’s policy makers have to figure out how to keep competition bubbling without undermining natural market evolution.
Encourage start-ups:
- In this context a recent report by a government appointed committee, headed by former Infosys chief S Gopalakrishnan, is instructive. Data is at the heart of technology businesses.
- As the committee pointed out, there’s a strong case to ensure anonymised non-personal data remains openly accessible to encourage start-ups. It makes the case for a non-personal data regulator to keep markets competitive.
- At the same time, the government needs to get cracking on an improved version of the personal data protection bill, which will uphold the Supreme Court judgment that privacy is a fundamental right in letter as well as in spirit.
Sharp falls in working age population will require many countries to pursue liberal immigration policies. Comment 150 Words
In the News:
- A new study in Lancet projecting India’s population peaking much earlier than expected, at 1.6 billion in 2048 before declining to 1.09 billion in 2100, points to a narrowing window for demographic dividend.
- Similar trends of population decline have been forecast for much of the world, except sub-Saharan Africa.
Demographic trends:
- The implications of these demographic trends are far reaching. Sharp falls in working age population will require many countries to pursue liberal immigration policies or alternatively improve workforce participation rate among women and elderly. Labour productivity improvements demand increased investments in education and healthcare. Countries unable to stabilise their working age population are priming themselves for economic stagnation.
- The biggest challenge will be to sustain large public social security nets without overburdening a smaller workforce with higher taxes.
Economic slowdown:
- For India, struggling with a sustained economic slowdown that has killed jobs, pushing the long awaited second generation of economic reforms cannot wait longer. Powered by a young workforce, India must utilise the narrowing window to lay a strong economic foundation and robust infrastructure built to last a 100 years or so.
- India’s inability to invest in human capital for the masses will hurt as developments in AI, robotics and telecom change the nature of skilled and unskilled labour. Social and economic policies can no longer afford to exclude women. Both female
- workforce participation rate and female sex ratio at birth have slipped this decade. Focus on jobs, schools, hospitals and environment. Everything else in Indian politics is noise. Cultural identity wars are oversold, and counterproductive.
Future Officers 