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 Today’s Read Date: 3 ,June , 2024

s.NO CONTENT
For a consensus: On campaigning rhetoric and foreign
1 policy

2 Nipped in the bud: On baby trafficking

3 The message from the Andhra Pradesh bifurcation

4 Forsaken, marginalised and forgotten

Wildfires Threaten Nearly One Third of U.S

5 Residents and Buildings
Warfare’s Climate Emissions Are Huge but
6 Uncounted
"President Lai Faces China’s Drills as He Starts
7 Taiwan Term

8 An ally or a double-edged sword?

Before ‘Fans,’ There Were ‘Kranks,’ ‘Longhairs,’

9 and ‘Lions’
The Grand Strategy of Defense of the Roman
SPECIAL Empire
 For a consensus: On
Date: and
campaigning rhetoric
foreign policy

T
oo many cooks? Indian spice products hurt by too many, not too few, standards

T
oo many cooks? Indian spice products hurt by too many, not too few, standards

With the curtains coming down on the general election 2024, every party will
take stock of its campaign on issues of domestic political importance.
However, it is also necessary for all concerned, particularly those forming the
next government, to review the disturbing trend of revisiting questions of
foreign policy. Both sides have ratcheted up the rhetoric over India’s
international ties and in some cases, even the re-opening of settled bilateral
agreements. At the start of the campaign, the ruling party focused on the
issue of the half-century-old Katchatheevu agreement, that accepted the
island as Sri Lankan territory, to target the Opposition Congress and the DMK
that were in power in 1974. In response, Congress leaders asked whether the
2015 Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh could also be reviewed for
its land concessions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led the charge on
other foreign policy fronts, especially on Pakistan, calling the Congress party
a “disciple of Pakistan” and comparing its manifesto pejoratively to that of the
Muslim League that founded Pakistan. U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath
even proclaimed that were Mr. Modi to be re-elected, he would reclaim
Pakistan Occupied Kashmir “within six months”.

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Other brash comments over India’s use of its nuclear arsenal, or that the
government will transgress international boundaries to kill ‘terrorists
threatening India’, have raised eyebrows in many capitals. The clashes
between the Indian Army and Chinese PLA at Galwan in 2020 that led to the
deaths of 20 soldiers have often been raised by Opposition leaders in
campaign rallies, as in the past as well. Meanwhile, throughout the campaign,
Mr. Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar accused “western
powers” of attempting to interfere in Indian polls.
Such heated campaign rhetoric is meant for domestic audiences, but it would
be unwise for political leaders to assume that India’s international partners
are not watching and listening carefully. India’s ties with its smaller
neighbours carry the highest levels of sensitivity, and raking up these issues
and exposing India’s vulnerable faultlines, just to make political capital, seems
short-sighted. While domestic policy has always been deeply divisive, India’s
polity had for long achieved a bipartisanship when it came to foreign policy
positions, and often took pride in the deployment of Opposition leaders to
defend India’s case worldwide, including at the UN. The proper platform for
the government to assert foreign policy, or for the Opposition to air its
differences with it, is not the hustings, but Parliament. It is hoped that as the
dust settles, leaders will reflect on the potential damage to India’s credibility
from campaign propaganda, and restore a more enduring consensus on
international relations.

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 Nipped in theDate:
bud: On
baby trafficking

India’s broken education system threatens its superpower dreams

Criminal activity is mostly driven by a combination of socio-economic factors

— poverty on one end, wealth on the other, and unmet needs or desires. The
recent inter-State baby smuggling racket that was busted by the Telangana
police should be seen under this lens. While news of baby smuggling rackets
dominate headlines from time to time, blowing the lid off of this network has
revealed chilling subterranean levels of operation, spanning several States.
An inter-State gang smuggled children from Delhi and Pune and sold them to
prospective parents in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. As many as 11
people were arrested for the smuggling of as many as 50 babies in the past
year. As per initial reports, the gang had been ‘purchasing’ babies from two
persons in Delhi and one person in Pune, traffic them to Andhra Pradesh and
Telangana and sell to the highest bidder among childless couples in these
southern States. It is learnt that the rate for a baby could be between ₹1.80
lakh and ₹5.50 lakh, netting the brokers between ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh as
commission. Three women in the gang had apparently been booked for the
same offence earlier.
Further investigation will reveal how the babies were procured, but this is not
the first time such rackets have been busted. There is no reason to believe
that the reasons were any different: poverty of the biological parents in many
cases, urging them to sell their newborns for a paltry sum, and smuggling of
newborns from government hospitals where security is lax. On the other end
of the spectrum are couples eager to have children, and impatient with the
long waiting time to adopt a baby legally. The current waiting time to adopt a
child under two years can be anywhere between two to four years. While the
lengthy process is put in place to ensure that the best interests of the child
are served, the non-availability of babies for adoption has queered the pitch,
allowing the demand to seek supply avenues by hook or by crook. Rounding
up a gang might at best be a short-term measure in this particular situation.
Children are not commodities to purchase at a premium from the free market
when supply is low. The government needs to do many things at once to
ensure such incidents do not occur again: provide effective poverty alleviation
schemes; employment opportunities for youth; generate awareness about
adoption schemes for both biological and adoptive parents; remove
unnecessary bureaucratic processes in adoption, and ensure effective
policing to nip such plots in the bud.

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 The message from Date:
the Andhra
Pradesh bifurcation

India’s broken education system threatens its superpower dreams

It is 10 years since Andhra Pradesh was divided into two States. A decade is
a long enough time examine the political, economic and historical implications
of the division of the political geography of the Telugu people, for them as well
as for the Indian Republic.
Scant nostalgia
The vitriol that dominated the bifurcation discourse for almost half a decade
prior to the actual bifurcation has now vanished without trace. The two
successor states, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, are moving on. Telugu
society today on both sides of the political division carries on with very little
nostalgia for the nearly five and a half decades of living together in one
political entity. For people from the shrunken Andhra Pradesh part, only
Hyderabad from the new state of Telangana remains in their imagination. The
rest of the geography of Telangana hardly figures in their consciousness.
And, for the people of Telangana, no area or aspect of life from across the
Andhra Pradesh side of the divide animates their political, social, cultural, or
economic imagination.0
This is puzzling for two reasons. These two regions were under different
political authorities for only about 150 years. Before the Nizam gave away the
coastal districts and the ‘ceded’ districts that came to be called Rayalaseema
to the European powers, historically, they were ruled from Golconda and
Hyderabad for a long time. And, they were together again since 1956.
However, these long years of living under one political authority could not
foster enough of a sense of togetherness to prevent the resumption of their
separate journeys. That parting of ways has not yet happened with the
Kannada-speaking area of the Nizam’s Hyderabad State, nor did it happen as
yet with its Marathi-speaking area. They both joined Karnataka and
Maharashtra States, respectively, after the linguistic reorganisation of States.
The question arises, therefore, whether the shared vision of the Telugu elites
from both the regions — Madras Presidency and Hyderabad State — for unity
on the basis of language is frailer compared to those of the shared visions of
Kannada and Marathi elites. Or, does a similar fate await them too in the not
too distant future? For, regional economic disparities, linguistic divergences,
lifestyle differences, and variations in political culture are more or less the
same in all the three linguistic groups across the geographies of the
Presidencies and Hyderabad State.
As of now, it is only the unity of the Telugus based on language that has
come unstuck. Are the other linguistic States likely to meet the same fate in
the years or decades to come? Does the fate of Andhra Pradesh which has
pioneered the reconfiguration of the Indian Republic’s political architecture
along linguistic lines also foreshadow its eventual unravelling? Does the
Indian Republic eventually have to look for an organising principle other than
language? That is the larger question that the division of Andhra Pradesh
pelts at the Republic of India.
It is often not fully appreciated that except a few States in the geographical
centre of our Republic, all other States (from Assam in the east, going along
the east coast to the southeast and continuing towards the west coast and up
to the Punjab and Haryana in the northwest) of our Republic are organised on
a linguistic basis.

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If the underlying organising principle of language is unlikely to hold them
together as units, giving greater force to economic, political, historical and
other fault lines, an alternative principle will have to be formulated sooner
rather than later. Could that be the size of territory or population? Or, should it
be something else? If the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh suggested anything
at all, it is that the Indian Republic cannot avoid this question for long.
Size, when translated into the number of seats in the central legislature, might
eventually be a point of friction among the units of our Republic, because
representation in the form of numbers determines the distribution of political
power. And, the distribution of political power has the potential to exert
decisive influence on the distribution of economic resources within the federal
structure. There are already faint noises of unease among the political elites
in some States, especially in the south, regarding speculation about future
delimitation in which some northern States could gain abnormal numbers in
the central legislature.

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 Forsaken, marginalised
Date: and
forgotten

India’s broken education

Derailed
system
reconstruction
threatens its superpower dreams

Majoritarian nationalism is reshaping Indian politics. Declining minority

participation, particularly Muslim representation, in the corridors of power is
an inevitable consequence. The general election, that has just concluded, is a
veritable testimony to India’s, at times enthusiastic, at others grudging,
acceptance of hues of Hindu nationalism. Even as the wounds of a complete
abnegation of Muslim representation in the outgoing government had not
healed, a fresh stab was made at the idea of India. Muslim exclusion from
electoral politics is beginning to sound real, central, and almost all pervasive.
As we await the results to the 18th Lok Sabha, there is a cause for concern
over the diminishing space for a section of society in the electoral fray. In the
2019 election, 115 Muslims had contested as the representatives of various
political parties. This time, the number was 78, with many parties too timid to
give a ticket to a Muslim candidate from anywhere except in the so-called
Muslim dominated seats. It could be a reflection of our politics where a
Muslim candidate is not preferred by some merely because of his or her faith.
Ground reality
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, despite the noises made last year by
Prime Minister Narendra Modi about Pasmanda Muslims, entered a sole
Muslim, Abdul Salam, from Malappuram in Kerala. Otherwise, from Punjab to
Tamil Nadu, Gujarat to Nagaland, the party deemed Muslims surplus to its
electoral arithmetic. The Indian National Congress did not cover itself with
glory either — the number of Muslim candidates fighting on the party symbol
came down from 34 in 2019 to 19 this time. What was disconcerting was the
party’s reluctance to put up even a single Muslim candidate from either Delhi
or Mumbai, leading to noises of protest from the party leader Muhammad Arif
Naseem Khan who said, “The party wants Muslim votes, not Muslim
candidates.” Mr. Khan could as well have been speaking for most non-
Bharatiya Janata Party parties. The Samajwadi Party, often criticised for
being MY (Muslims and Yadavs) representative, fought on 62 seats in Uttar
Pradesh but put up only four Muslims in the State where Muslims comprise
19% of population. Likewise, the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar fielded only
two Muslim candidates; however, its ally, the Congress, did give tickets to
Muslim candidates from Katihar and Kishanganj.
In Gujarat, neither the Congress nor the BJP put up a Muslim candidate. The
story of Muslim denial was repeated by both parties in Rajasthan. In Bengal,
the Trinamool Congress, despite Mamata Banerjee’s robust defence of
minority rights, gave tickets to only six Muslim candidates out of the 42 seats
it contested in the State. Significantly, Muslims account for a little over 27% of
the State’s population. Bengal presents a microcosm of the country. This
under-nomination is bound to result in under-representation in Parliament.
The community looks at the bleak prospect of sending possibly its lowest
number of Members of Parliament to the Lok Sabha when the results are
announced on June 4. Forsaken, marginalised, and, probably forgotten.

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A fading
All this is a far cry from the heydays of the 1980s when Muslims enjoyed a
sizeable slice of the electoral cake. In 1980, there were 49 Muslim MPs in the
Lok Sabha. In 1984, there were 46 Muslim MPs.
Pertinently, the BJP was just born in 1980 and had only two Lok Sabha MPs
in 1984. As the party’s fortunes rose in ensuing elections, the fortunes of the
largest minority went into a parallel decline, finishing with only 23 MPs in
2014. There was a token increase of three in 2019 — a number that seems
difficult to attain this time in the light of a drastic fall in the number of Muslim
candidates. The Muslim MP is faced with the prospect of gradual elimination.
Muslims bring up a little over 14% of India’s population, but since the first
election in 1951-52 to the last round in 2019, the community’s share in Lok
Sabha has been under 6%.
An attack on the idea of India
Incidentally, while Muslims have not been as visible as candidates this time,
this, however, has not translated into their absence from headlines during the
elections. Mr. Modi led the pack in stoking fears in the larger society, referring
to the community members as “infiltrators” or “the Congress seeking to give a
buffalo to a Muslim if a Hindu owned two buffaloes” to give an example or
two. He was both coarse and divisive. If the data shared by the Congress
president, Mallikarjun Kharge, are to be believed, Mr. Modi used the term
‘Mandir-Masjid-Muslim’ 421 times in his speeches. For all his bluff and
bluster, he did not conceal his irreverence for the idea of India — a value
system that regards all citizens as equal stakeholders in the progress of the
nation. Mr. Modi’s aggressive Hindutva set the benchmark for other parties.
Forget the so-called Muslim vote-bank politics of yesteryears. Today, even
the Centrist and Left parties remain disinclined to end Muslim political
isolation.

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 Wildfires Threaten Nearly One
Third of U.S Residents and Date:
Buildings

India’s broken education system threatens its superpower dreams

CLIMATEWIRE | Wildfires threaten nearly one-third of U.S. residents and

buildings, according to a new government analysis that suggests the risk is
greater than previously known.
The Forest Service, working with Montana researchers, took a new approach
to measuring wildfire risk and limited its historical analysis to the 15 years
between 2004 and 2018. A previous analysis considered conditions over 34
years ending in 2012.
The narrower and more recent time frame aims to focus on a period during
which climate change has notably affected atmospheric conditions and led to
intensifying heat, drought and wildfire.
“We’re more accurately reflecting climate changes that we’ve seen in the last
few years,” said Kelly Pohl, associate director at the nonprofit Headwaters
Economics, which released the findings with the Forest Service and
Pyrologix, a wildfire risk modeling firm.
The Forest Service published its new assessment Wednesday as an update
to its risk estimates from 2020. Wildfirerisk.org identifies the most fire-prone
parts of the county and helps guide wildfire mitigation efforts.
The updated analysis says more than 115 million people and 48 million
buildings are located in counties facing high wildfire risk. Underserved
communities are disproportionately exposed.
Nearly 75 percent of tribal area residents are in counties with high wildfire
risk. And nearly 20 percent of high-risk counties have a large share of mobile
homes, the analysis found.
“This update tells us the nation’s wildfire crisis has the potential to impact
more people than we originally thought,” Jeff Marsolais, a Forest Service
associate deputy chief, said in a statement.
“That top-level finding is a big deal,” said Pohl. “We really need to be thinking
about community-level solutions in lots of parts of the country.”
The update comes as wildfire seasons grow longer, more destructive — and
more expensive.
A 2023 analysis by Congress’ joint Economic Committee broadly analyzed
wildfire damage including the effect on real estate values, property,
watersheds, timber, insurers and more. Wildfires cost the U.S. $394 billion to
$893 billion a year, the committee concluded.
Fueling the damage are overgrown forests, development in high-risk areas
and rising temperatures, which exacerbate the hot, dry conditions that help
wildfires catch and spread.
States, insurance companies and modeling firms are trying to improve wildfire
modeling and data to pinpoint where fires might ignite, spread and cause the
most devastation.

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The information can help decide how to spend billions of dollars that the
federal government and some states have provided for mitigation. The
bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act include about $4
billion combined for “hazardous fuels mitigation.”
The First Street Foundation, a New York nonprofit focused on physical
climate risk data, has done its own advanced modeling. The research group
unveiled its national fire risk assessment in 2022 that said 26 million U.S.
properties faced moderate wildfire risk at the time — and the figure could
jump to 35 million by 2052.
Colorado in 2023 overhauled its own outdated fire risk map to account for
development in high-risk areas as well as a pine beetle epidemic that left
behind 3 million acres of dead, flammable trees. Officials said the changes
would help communities prepare for future blazes.
The Forest Service made several changes to its wildfire risk tool in addition to
narrowing its modeling to 15 years.
The new version includes updated data about where homes and buildings are
located and what types of trees, shrubs and grasses are present on various
landscapes. The changes help capture the risk of “low-probability, high-
impact events like those that we’ve recently seen in parts of the country, like
the Pacific Northwest,” Pohl of Headwaters said. “And we’re better able to
represent the way embers can spread wildfires into communities.”
The newly released tool shows that more than 60 percent of the counties in
both Oregon and Washington have high wildfire risk, up from 47 percent in
the Forest Service's 2020 estimate.
Wildfirerisk.org now includes features to help communities better understand
and respond to wildfire threat.
One example, which Pohl called a “vulnerable populations section," lets users
identify neighborhoods that might struggle to prepare for or respond to wildfire
because of demographics. The neighborhoods might have a large number of
residents who don’t speak English or don’t have cars. Local officials could
decide to translate disaster communications into various languages or adjust
emergency evacuation plans.

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“These are really helpful resources at the federal level, to think about where
risk is greatest across the country,” Pohl said. “But also within a community,
to think about the different neighborhoods that might experience wildfire
preparation and wildfire recovery differently.”

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 Date:
Warfare’s Climate Emissions Are
Huge but Uncounted

India’s broken education system threatens its superpower dreams

CLIMATEWIRE | One sector of the global economy is conspicuously absent

from countries' efforts to halt climate change: the world's militaries.
Nations participating in the Paris climate agreement are not required by the
United Nations to report the carbon emissions from their armies and aircraft
or warships and weapons. It's up to individual governments to decide whether
their armed forces must decarbonize.
But with war a seemingly perpetual feature of the modern age, some experts
say it's long overdue that military emissions be counted toward each country's
climate targets.
“A lot of what we advocate for is directly to change the reporting framework
that the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change] sets out,” said Ellie Kinney, a campaign coordinator with the United
Kingdom-based nonprofit the Conflict and Environment Observatory.
“There is absolutely an effort on this at the moment that we’re part of, that lots
of other organizations are part of, on recognizing the interconnected nature
between war and the climate crisis,” she said Wednesday at a panel on
military conflict and climate change hosted for reporters by the global
journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now. “And not just war, but
militarization overall.”
A group of environmental organizations sent a letter to the U.N. last year
urging more stringent and transparent reporting for military emissions. “Our
climate emergency can no longer afford to permit the ‘business as usual’
omission of military and conflict-related emissions within the UNFCCC
process and international climate negotiations,” they said in the letter, as
reported by Reuters.
Scientists and other climate experts have also raised the alarm about the
military blind spot in global emissions accounting.
“Military emissions need to be put on the global agenda,” a group of scientists
and policy experts stated in a 2022 comment published in the scientific
journal Nature. “They must be officially recognized and accurately reported in
national inventories, and military operations need to be decarbonized.”
But accounting for global military emissions is a tricky business.
Because the reporting is voluntary, relatively few countries disclose those
emissions to the U.N. And estimating them independently is difficult because
militaries tend to be secretive, leaving researchers with little data and no
standard framework for counting climate pollution. A 2022 report by the
Conflict and Environment Observatory suggested that militaries could account
for around 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — but that could
be an underestimate.

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Meanwhile, the world is experiencing its highest level of conflict since World
War II, according to the U.N.
Recent wars have already had a significant impact on global emissions,
preliminary reports have warned.
One recent study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggested that the
first 60 days of the war in Gaza spewed more than 281,000 metric tons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It only looked at immediate emissions
from sources like aircraft, tanks, rockets and artillery. Long-term
reconstruction efforts, meanwhile, could result in tens of millions of metric
tons of CO2.
A recent report on Russia’s war in Ukraine suggested that emissions so far,
including reconstruction efforts, likely exceeded 150 million metric tons of
CO2.
Waging war is just one source of emissions. Preparing for it is another.
U.S. military emissions are the largest of any country worldwide, rivaling the
entire annual carbon output of some smaller nations, like Norway or Sweden.
They have a wide range of origins, including both military operations and the
maintenance of more than 700 U.S. military bases worldwide.
“If you look at us and add up installations and operations, the U.S. is the
single-largest [military] energy user, and therefore the U.S. is the largest
single institutional emitter,” said Neta Crawford, a political scientist at the
University of Oxford, speaking on Wednesday’s panel.
'Business as usual isn’t going to save us'
Controversy over military emissions reporting predates the Paris Agreement.
It began with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first international climate treaty
focused on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol originally intended to account for military emissions. But
the U.S. successfully pushed to exempt them. The U.S. later failed to formally
ratify the treaty.
The 2015 Paris Agreement technically removed the exemption for military
emissions. But it didn’t require countries to report them, either — making it
voluntary instead.

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That means few countries choose to make it a priority, said Kinney, the
campaigner.
“With things that are voluntary, it doesn't particularly happen, or happen
particularly well,” she said.
In the absence of a U.N. requirement, some organizations are working on
their own military emissions trackers.
The Military Emissions Gap project is a partnership between the Conflict and
Environment Observatory and the U.K. university research consortium
Concrete Impacts. It monitors the emissions data that countries voluntarily
submitted to the U.N. and attempts to compare those reports with
independent estimates of their actual emissions to identify gaps or missing
information.
“This is a lot harder than we thought it would be because there’s shockingly
little data,” Kinney said.
Part of the problem is that voluntary reports often limit their estimates to only
emissions associated with energy use from military bases or fuel use from
equipment. They tend to leave out emissions associated with military supply
chains and the global weapons industry, which likely account for a large
portion of any given nation’s military carbon footprint.
There’s also no standard framework for reporting conflict-related emissions.
That makes it difficult for countries to assess the pollution they produce while
at war.
The project’s assessments so far indicate that many countries have
significant gaps in their reporting, meaning their actual military carbon
footprints are likely to be many times higher than the figures they report to the
U.N. The U.S. is among them.
U.S. military emissions are declining overall, research suggests — just as
U.S. emissions are slowly falling on the whole. That’s largely thanks to
economywide shifts from coal to natural gas and other operational and
installation changes, said Crawford, the Oxford political scientist.
But deeper changes would require a major rethinking of U.S. military strategy
through a climate lens, she added. That means asking big questions about
whether certain installations, operations and exercises are still necessary in
the modern world.
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 "President Lai Faces China’s
Date:
Drills as He Starts Taiwan
Term

India’s broken education system threatens its superpower dreams

Lai Ching-te’s term as Taiwan’s new President began on a stormy note on

May 20 after Beijing interpreted his inaugural address as a soft pitch for
independence. In his speech, Taiwan’s leader had urged the Communist
Party of China (CPC) to recognise the existence of the Republic of China
(Taiwan’s formal name), and engage with its elected representatives.

Pincer movement
China views Lai with suspicion, especially since he had earlier described
himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan’s independence”, and it responded
with military drills in the straits, named Joint Sword 2024 A. Almost on cue,
the domestic opposition parties in Taiwan pushed laws that gave the
members of parliament more oversight over the political executive. The laws
will enable members of parliament (Legislative Yuan) to access more
information from private individuals and corporate entities. Even institutions
like the military will be brought under the purview of Taiwan’s domestic
opposition, and could be mandated to divulge sensitive information. Giving
this law more teeth will mean validating punitive measures like prison terms
for those who found guilty of “contempt of parliament”.
Taiwan’s civil society has hit the streets to register their displeasure against
what they perceive as Beijing’s moves to get a backdoor entry into Taiwan’s
democratic process. This represents the re-emergence of “people power” as
a pressure group. Experts in Taiwan express hope that the youth will become
a guiding light for public policy discourse, since nearly 30% of its electorate
lies in the 20-29 age bracket. Taipei had also witnessed an agitation in which
demonstrators occupied the parliament building in 2014 to lodge their
dissatisfaction against a trade deal promoted by the then-ruling Kuomintang
party, as there were apprehensions that the agreement would bind Taiwan
closer to the mainland.
Economy matters
Security and economic issues dominated the 2024 Taiwan presidential
election, and Lai will have to address the latter soon. First, Taiwan’s economy
is slowing down, with GDP growth dropping to 1.4% in 2023. Second,
following military tensions in the straits since the 2022 visit of then-US House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, foreign direct investment (FDI) has dipped. FDI
inflows in January-November 2023 dipped 13% compared to the same period
in 2022. Taiwan’s minimum wage is low, putting the island’s educated
workforce at a disadvantage, given that the cost of real estate remains high.
While ties with the mainland worsen, Lai will have to direct his attention to the
economy too. In this respect, the ascent of “people power” is a double-edged
sword for Lai, since failure to meet the aspirations of Taiwan’s youth can
rebound on him.
Beijing’s designs Chinese President Xi Jinping will also be watching Lai
carefully to plan his next moves. In his address to the CPC’s National Party
Congress in October 2022, Xi said China could use military force to achieve
Taiwan unification. This presents Xi with options like a large-scale invasion
across the straits, an economic blockade, or secretly plotting a coup d’état.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, China had made a pitch to Taiwan’s
people that they face a choice between peace and prosperity or conflict,
leading to economic decline.

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Following the election, China’s ministry of state security put out an article
stating that it was important to defeat forces promoting Taiwan’s
independence. The intelligence establishment said that for the unification of
Taiwan, it was imperative to bolster forces that shared the mainland’s views
on unifying the breakaway province. The article argued for rallying public
opinion in Taiwan, and pushed for building a covert front on the island that
could discreetly pursue the mission. This was also followed by the visit of
former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to China to meet Xi this April.
Denting Taiwan’s morale
Apart from empowering elements opposed to Lai, Beijing is also trying to
overawe the people of Taiwan. Commenting on the recent Chinese military
exercises in the straits, a commentary in China’s Science and Technology
Daily boasts of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) prowess in “subduing”
Taiwan. The article states that the PLA’s joint drills enabled it to develop real-
time combat capabilities in the Taiwan straits. It adds that the drills will enable
the PLA to carry out an effective blockade of Kaohsiung Port (south of
Taiwan), which handles a large volume of the island’s trade, and routes that
serve as a supply line for the island. It adds that a sustained blockade will
deal a blow to the island’s economy since its exports and energy imports are
routed through sea lanes that PLA can gain control of.
Another piece in Guancha, a Chinese news portal with nationalist leanings,
gauges the reaction of the Taiwanese public to PLA’s exercises. It quotes
former Taiwan military figures assessing PLA capabilities as being better.
They caution that repeated war drills may follow suit in the straits. Once
normalised, the PLA may then launch a swift invasion and seize Taiwan by
force. The article surmises that on account of the war drills ordinary
Taiwanese say that they are at a “dangerous point” in mainland-Taiwan
relations. They worry that President Lai peddling a “two-state” theory will
worsen tensions that will have catastrophic consequences for livelihoods of
the Taiwanese.

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The Lai administration faces daunting challenges: a belligerent opposition,
deteriorating relationship with the mainland, and reinvigorating the economy
under the shadow of Beijing’s military coercion. Beijing will not ease the
pressure on Lai, and may prefer a strategy to hurt Taiwan’s economy in the
long run. Xi has professed his intentions to build bridges with elements on the
island opposed to the Lai administration with an eye on putting roadblocks in
the new government’s agenda. Nurturing such a fifth column can come in
handy to create conditions that can generate disenchantment if the
government is unable meet the aspirations of the electorate. Thus, China
could engineer socio-political unrest in Taiwan, and then use pro-Beijing
elements to stage a coup d’état. Such a scenario would not be in the realm of
fantasy in light of the discovery of satellite pictures that purportedly show a
replica of the Taipei presidential precincts in China’s Inner Mongolia.

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 Date:
An ally or a double-edged
sword?

Healthcare relief

Do ChatGPT passing bar exams with flying colours took many by surprise.
Artificial intelligence’s (AI) ability to come up with suggested diagnosis in the
field of medical sciences has also opened several new paradigms to transform
healthcare.
Another knowledge-led profession, taxation, cannot be immune to the impact of
the newest AI avatar, generative AI (GenAI). We are seeing several use cases
emerging at a fast pace, helping legal and tax professionals in their daily lives;
they not only help improve productivity but also improve quality of work.
However, with the impact of AI also comes the need for careful consideration.
Will AI challenge the ways of working of tax professionals, or it will challenge
the core competencies of an average tax professional?
AI as an innovative partner

Across the spectrum of a typical tax function, there are multiple areas where
GenAI is showing promising impact; these areas cut across compliance,
research, and litigation for activities such as data handling, smart analysis,
document reviews, and summarisation.
Tax compliance typically involves collecting data from various sources,
processing it, and then filling a form template like a tax return or similar
document. Conventional tools automate this process to a great extent, but
many qualitative tasks are still performed manually. AI can reduce these
manual tasks by providing insights and analysis from the data and results. For
example, reading and analysing general ledgers or purchase registers and
identifying specific events/triggers having an impact on computation of income,
blocked input tax credit, or reverse charge transactions under the goods and
services tax law.
The function of tax research and litigation is attracting interest in GenAI for its
ability to do several tasks better than humans. For example, when a company
receives multiple tax notices, AI can help the tax team by quickly reading and
validating these notices, and even drafting responses to review and finalise in
near-real time. Similarly, GenAI solutions can read and analyse thousands of
annual reports and other information and convert it into an insightful output in a
matter of minutes.
AI is also transforming courtrooms with the eCourts project, where live video
streaming is just the start. Soon, digital records and virtual participation will be
common. Imagine AI recording and storing court transcripts for future analysis
and providing analytics about the arguments taken and the observations of a
bench. Tools like this, which can transcribe meetings, exist today.

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Recently, the Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, also commented: “This
proves that AI has the potential to enhance the efficiency of court proceedings
by automating routine tasks such as document review, case management, and
scheduling. By leveraging AI-powered tools, courts can streamline
administrative processes, reduce paperwork, and expedite the resolution of
legal disputes. This not only saves time and resources but also improves
access to justice by reducing delays and backlogs in the court system.”
Furthermore, AI chatbots can help users 24/7, predictive analytical models can
tap into historical data to forecast tax trends, and automation of tax calculations
can simulate different scenarios and help to optimise tax strategies,
demonstrating AI’s crucial role in modernising tax practices and guiding
strategic decision-making.
AI as a complex ally
GenAI is useful, but it also comes with privacy concerns. We need to think
carefully about how we use it. So, what are the challenges? GenAI uses large
language models and learns from vast data, but its accuracy isn’t guaranteed.
In the tax landscape, the margin of error is minimal, and output should be highly
accurate.
GenAI can also make up its own answers, which may sound correct but are
wrong. “Hallucination” effects can happen for different reasons, like if there’s
too much data or if the AI wasn’t trained well. Hence organisations may explore
developing their own pre-trained model for specific tasks on their proprietary
data or partnering suitably. Yet the necessity of maintaining a human oversight,
often referred to as the “human-in-the-loop” approach, will remain critical till this
technology is nascent and evolving.
Another complex question arising due to advent of GenAI is learning and
skilling of next-generation tax professionals; academia as well as young
professionals need to find new frameworks of learning, and not fall into the trap
of “ChatGPT” shortcut.
While at one level, the tax function is progressively pressured with multi-level
policy changes, increased controversy, tighter budgets, talent issues etc., there
is tremendous opportunity to see how to use GenAI to suitably tackle these
challenges. As a catalyst for change, AI is poised to propel the tax profession in
a new era.
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However, the future of AI in taxation involves balancing technological
advancements with risk mitigation. AI should be seen as a transformative ally in
taxation, boosting efficiency and aiding strategic decision-making as tax plays a
greater role in C-suite discussions. Yet given that GenAI as a technology is
nascent and evolving, its responsible use with humans in the loop is necessary.
The revolution is here, and it is time to embrace AI’s transformative potential.

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 Before ‘Fans,’ There Were ‘Kranks,’
‘Longhairs,’ and ‘Lions Date:

India’s broken education system threatens its superpower dreams

THE EXACT ORIGINS OF THE modern term “fan” are disputed, but most
look to the 1880s, where it was first used by American newspapers to
describe particularly invested baseball enthusiasts. But “fan” was just one of
the words the press, leagues, clubs, and baseball enthusiasts themselves
were using at the time. They were called “enthusiasts,” but also a whole host
of other names, from “rooters” to “bugs” to “fiends” to “cranks,” sometimes
spelled—as in the German word for “sick”—as “krank.”
“The Krank is a heterogeneous compound of flesh, bone, and base-ball,
mostly base-ball,” begins Thomas Williams Lawson’s 1888 book The Krank:
His Language and What It Means, a small, humorous glossary described by
Major League Baseball’s official historian, John Thorn, as “baseball’s rarest
book.” (Thorn has thankfully put a digitized version online.)
“The Krank cannot be mistaken for any other animal,” Lawson wrote. “His
peculiarities are numerous.” Those peculiarities made for a noisy and notably
participatory kind of fan culture: Kranks would heckle players, bang drums,
and engage as much with each other as with the game.
They shared insider lingo and knowledge, like how to bribe the ticket-taker to
get into the more comfortable, better-positioned grandstand over the
bleachers. They were known to outsiders—authorities, owners, reporters—as
a group with an encompassing set of traits. Much like fans today, they were
often treated as a monolith: one to be enticed because of their enthusiasms,
and policed when those enthusiasms didn’t align with the desires of non-fans.
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“How can we use instances of enthusiastic behavior in the past?” asks Daniel
Cavicchi, an American Studies scholar who teaches at the Rhode Island
School of Design. “How do we point to all of those and say, ‘This is connected
to what we consider fandom today?’” Cavicchi, who began his academic
career focusing on music fans, is now looking through history to find
instances of fandom-like groups, from fire buffs to trainspotters to flower
fanciers. “Clubs are formed, people meet regularly, they start doing the same
things, and they develop their own language,” Cavicchi says. “All of the things
that we associate with fandom today, from music to sports.”
These groups, Cavicchi explains, were often considered too passionate and
problematic, both by outsiders and others within the fandom itself. “Fandom,
at least in Western, European, and North American society, was not always
accepted. There’s always some sort of element of society that wants to
control it in some way, or tamp it down, or put it in boundaries. So we can be
enthusiastic, but not too enthusiastic.”
Finding the fans of past eras can be a tricky task. Language changes a great
deal over time, and much of how we view and discuss fan culture today is
mediated by the big modern structures that shape our fannish worlds, from
industries like Hollywood and sports leagues to the spaces, both analog and
digital, that bring fans together.

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Like fandom names today, some came from within the group, some came
from outsiders—and some fell in between. “The word ‘fan’ itself is
controversial because there were multiple stories about how it emerged in
baseball,” Cavicchi explains. “Some say it was dismissive, a team owner
mocking the people who would hang out outside the dugout and harass the
players. Some say it was a term of snarky endearment—journalists made it
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up because they saw there were these people that really, really loved
baseball, and it was kind of endearing, but at the same time, it was a little bit
odd, so they made up this shortening of ‘fanatic.’” Cavicchi notes that the
“fanatic” root is disputed, too; he prefers the theory that it’s a shortening of the
much older “fancy,” a word for boxing clubs from the 18th century. The term
“fancier” was in use by the 19th century, many decades before “base-ball
fans” were earning their nicknames.
This, of course, stretches across the history of fandom: Differences like age,
geography, approach, and values can lead to different groups forming around
the same thing. Trekkies versus Trekkers, for instance, or Holmesians versus
Sherlockians. “How you name yourself says a lot about what you think of
yourself and your very intense passions,” Cavicchi says. “But at the same
time, another name or variation on the name, or another use of your name,
maybe in a derogatory sense, may say something about what the culture
thinks about you.” Modern fandom terms like “stan” and “fangirl” can connote
very different things depending on the speaker—overly emotional and
uncontrollable to a critic, or a term of in-group recognition to fellow fans.
Looking for fandom in earlier eras and today is often about recognizing and
contextualizing slang. For example, the now-broad term “buff” comes from
“fire buff,” a term for enthusiasts who stood on street corners watching a
blaze in buffalo-skin coats. Even as some modern fandoms accept the names
bestowed upon them by music-management corporations or television studio
marketers, fans continue to create language for themselves, rendering some
terms largely indecipherable to outsiders. Cavicchi is particularly interested in
“why slang is so important for enthusiastic behavior.

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 It’s almost like we don’t want to name it, so slang is the next recourse. That’s
what’s available.” That distance was as important for 19th-century fans as it
remains for some fans today. “[You can] use slang to name that which isn’t
acceptable, and also to hide a little bit, to not push against the cultural arbiters
of taste,” he says. “So you can practice your fandom and understand
yourselves as a member of a group without being overly visible.”
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There are no perfect comparisons between pre-“fan” groups and modern

fandoms. To make them would flatten the context that shapes modern fan
cultures, just as much as 19th-century culture shaped the “dilettantes,” the
“lovers,” and the “matinee girls.” But there’s something powerful in seeing that
people in past eras not only loved things deeply, but sought out other lovers
of the thing—and gave themselves a name.

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 The Grand Strategy of Defense of
Date:
the Roman Empire

The group then travelled to Glasgow, and the encounter was reported to the magistrates of the city, who in turn brought the news to James VI of Scotland. Intrigued by that which he had heard, the king decided to track down the cannibals himself. 400 men and bloodhounds were brought by the king to the scene of slaughter, and the hunt
India’s
began.broken
When they
education
were discovered
system threatens
in their
itssea
superpower
cave, the Beans
dreamssurrendered without a fight. They were then led in chains to the Old Tolbooth Jail in Edinburgh. No trial or judicial process took place, and they were executed – the men had their genitals, hands and feet cut off, and were left to bleed to death, whilst the women were burned alive at the stake. Thus, the Beans’ reign of terror came to an end.

If one was to briefly define the expression of ‘grand strategy’, it would likely be
described as the integration of a state's overall political, economic, and
military aims to preserve its long-term interests. Within the current
historiography of Roman military history, an interesting matter of debate
arises in which an attempt is made to detect, and then define, the existence of
a grand strategy of defense among the ancient Romans.
Some historians argue that, throughout classical Roman history, Roman
leaders never managed to establish a grand military strategy. For example,
some argue that military decisions were made on an ad hoc basis by Roman
authorities who reacted to political and military events rather than planning at
the strategic level. Some go as far as proposing that not only Roman strategy,
but even Roman survival were reduced to pure luck. At the other end of the
spectrum of opinion, there is another group of historians who argue that the
notion of a grand strategy of defense existed among the Romans as early as
the Republican period.
 In the context of this debate, and without judging whether they abided to a
clearly established military grand strategy, in a modern sense of the term, it is
more likely that the Romans did follow a general concept of military defensive
thinking called a grand strategy of defense. Furthermore, this grand strategy
of defense was not static, but evolved throughout the history of the Roman
Empire, adjusting to a changing environment.
The Birth of an Empire
In the 5th century BC, long before anyone in Rome considered establishing a
grand strategy of defense, it was the small and medium-sized landowners
who were responsible for defending the Roman state, whose area of
influence corresponded to barely half the surface area of the current Italian
region of Lazio, i.e., an area of about 9,000 square kilometers (approximately
3,475 square miles). The aristocracy and those who were not proprietors (
proletarii) were not admitted in the army, which was then seasonal. The
period of military campaigns usually began in mid-March and ended in mid-
October. In the 2nd century BC, the professional army appeared, made
permanent by the continuous wars and the need to defend or pacify ever-
growing territorial possessions.
At that time, all Roman citizens had access to the legion. Non-citizens could
also enroll as auxiliary troops. The auxiliary also included foreigners or
barbarians from outside the Roman world. Following his military service, the
auxiliary soldier was granted Roman citizenship. This social status was highly
prized as it was relatively restricted and offered many privileges. At that time,
the army consisted of four legions, counting between 16,000 and 24,000
legionaries, supported by auxiliary troops which represented about a third of
the number of legionaries. Already, under the Republic, these troops were
subject to a strict administration and an iron discipline. Consequently, it was
the cohesiveness of their units in combat, more than numbers, that often
determined a victorious outcome in battle.

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During the time of the Republic, Rome began to expand its hegemony over
the whole of Europe. There is no historical evidence to support that this
expansion was the result of strategic planning by the heads of state. There
was originally no concerted plan to conquer the known world. Quite to the
contrary, these campaigns were fought to defend Rome’s own independence
and very existence. During this period, these campaigns were reactive to
events that were unforeseen and generally unprovoked.

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