Quick notes: Failed SEZs | Minus 40 celsius...

• Why Indian SEZs failed: India's SEZ "reforms" largely centered around concessions to favored businesses--tax sops and cheap real estate—rather than a fundamental reset of India’s convoluted and restrictive rules for doing business. If low taxes were all that mattered for attracting investment, any poor country could entice global manufacturers by slashing taxes. Clearly, good governance and strong rule of law matter a great deal more to such businesses.
  
  Whereas the Shenzhen agglomeration alone sprawls across 2,000 square km, all of India’s SEZs put together occupy less than 500 square km. Larger zones benefit from several spillover effects: They attract clusters of businesses, encourage knowledge transfers from foreign to domestic companies, and spread employment, infrastructure and development to neighboring regions. India’s zones are too small to do the same.



• Banned Chinese apps re-enter in new avatars: India is too lucrative a market to lose for Chinese companies and they would make every effort to return. “If the app ban doesn’t subside in a few months, banned apps in new avatars will crop up.



• Battlefront at minus 40 Celsius: The Eastern Ladakh area witnesses the harshest winters where temperatures normally dip to minus 35 degrees in the night during winters coupled with high-speed freezing winds.
  



• China's unmanned plateau helicopter makes maiden flight: The AR-500C drone will be used in missions including reconnaissance and communication relay, with optional functions including electronic disruption, target indication, fire strikes, cargo delivery, and nuclear radiation and chemical contamination reconnaissance.



• Make these in India: Bollinger plans to make new electric Deliver-E van with 200 miles of range
  
  
  


• Sri Lanka returns hazardous waste to UK: Several other countries in the region have recently begun to return waste imported from foreign countries.  In January, Malaysia returned 42 shipping containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the UK.



• "Detox My Fashion": Textile dyeing is one of the most polluting aspects of the global fashion industry, devastating the environment and posing health hazards to humans. The discharge is often a cocktail of carcinogenic chemicals, dyes, salts and heavy metals that not only hurt the environment, but pollute essential drinking water sources.



• May his ilk grow: A ray of hope for the vernacular

@sankrant I have started teaching computer programming/coding in Gujarati via weekly facebook live sessions. Page: https://t.co/ogwz8FZQyN Thank you for re-igniting that flame in me :) 🙏

— चिराग: Chirag Patel (@chipmap) September 24, 2020




• “We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook”: Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent. But eventually that wasn't enough to grow the business as fast as they wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed more.



• EU's China weak spot: Germany had been particularly reluctant to speak out on Hong Kong repression as it hoped to secure an investment deal with China by year's end.