Quick notes: Changing warfare | Industrial policy

• A war which changed the very nature of war itself: "In the First World War, we invented the machine gun on a tank, and that changed the nature of the war; in the Second World War, we invented aerial bombardment of enemy cities. Historians will look back at the war in Ukraine and realise how drones and autonomy started to take off, and that was a step that changed the nature of war. I think international regulation will eventually be introduced to stop the potential use of killer drones because these are ultimately going to be weapons of mass destruction”.


• Still clueless on manufacturing: Our industrial policy is based on a conceptually flawed approach of picking winning firms rather than sectors. This is the opposite of the successful approach adopted in East Asia, which did not select winning firms but adopted a combination of a horizontal, cross-sectoral industrial policy and a focus on some key sectors.
  
  Between 1979–2014, manufacturing remained at 16–18% of India’s Gross Value Added (GVA). Since 2015, it has declined and reached 13% by 2019, the lowest ever since 1960. . read more.



• CJI must come clean and apologise: For the Chief Justice to confuse gender with sex and claim there is no such thing as an absolute concept of a biological man, is not only anti-science, it is dangerous if applied to the fields of medicine and forensics.



• Caribbean nations want UK to pay reparations for slavery: Britain traded more slaves than nearly any other country, transporting 3.1 million Africans to its colonies in the Caribbean, as well as to North and South America.



• Misleading ads: How Bournvita lost the trust of its consumers



• Vidhushi Smt Malini Rajurkar: Tarana in Raag Shankara.




• K K Muhammad: Out of 200 Bateshwar Hindu temples in Madhya Pradesh, 80 got restored during Congress Govt and the remaining 120 temples could not, since BJP Govt didn't support.

Immensely liked the @TheLallantop interview of archeologist KK Mohammad

Mr Mohd was candid in saying that out of 200 Bateshwar Hindu temples in Madhya Pradesh , 80 got restored during Congress Govt and the remaining 120 temples could not , since @BJP4India Govt didn't support pic.twitter.com/SCeiYZXkN9

— Pawan Durani (@PawanDurani) April 18, 2023




pic.twitter.com/2bqb3L2eSm

— Tyrion Kumar Lannister (@KumarTyrion) April 19, 2023




True i was there last year terrible condition. pic.twitter.com/iXym0jLqRg

— Rishabh jajoo (@Rishabhjajoo2) April 19, 2023




• Wetlands are nature's shock absorbers: But India is losing them at an alarming rate

Quick notes: Brand-free model | Stolen treasures...

• India's Brand-free Economic Growth: While it is great that India is now making a lot of mobile phones for export, none of these carry an Indian brand name. The Chinese and Koreans, on the other hand, have spawned a half-dozen brands that dominate global markets.
  
  The Modi government's manufacturing push is very good and necessary, but basically it is pushing Indian manufacturing in the same direction as our software (services) industry: Outsourcing -- India's fully (global) brand-free economic growth.



• China challenging incumbent automakers: The legacy industry’s greatest assets are not worth as much as in the past... China’s car buyers have fallen out of love with foreign brands. Home teams are routing MNC competitors that had dominated China’s auto market.
  
  China could dominate the next big advance in batteries. In two years, China will have nearly 95 percent of the world's capacity to make sodium batteries.
  
  500 watt-hours per kilogram! CATL announces very energy-dense "condensed battery" for passenger aircraft. It’s likely a semi-solid state battery, an emerging technology with the potential to address issues that have held back the mass commercialization of solid state batteries.
  
  How China plans to get in on US clean energy subsidies: Chinese companies are opening up manufacturing plants in the US and embedding themselves ever more deeply into the supply chains of major critical minerals. The influx of Chinese clean energy manufacturing projects raises the question of whether US industrial policy efforts to revitalize American manufacturing risk being hijacked by its chief rival.
  
  



• India Pride Project : The sleuths bringing back India’s stolen treasures.
  
  The narrative "they" often sell is that these precious antiquities deserve to enjoy global attention while staying safe in secured museums. A recent New York Times article summed up the colonial thinking that continues around restitution, suggesting that "in America, critics of the surge in returns worry that museum collections built over time by scholars and imbued by a sense of context are being randomly depleted. Should US audiences, they ask, be deprived access to iconic objects that they suggest belong, not to individual nations, but to humankind?".
  
  The fundamental flaw in this argument is that many of these artefacts are not art pieces to be "enjoyed" but sacred objects cherished and worshiped through generations before they are snatched away.
  



• Modi sarkar's narrow perspective: The dangers of allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India.



• Unemployable: India's worthless degrees undercut world's fastest-growing major economy.



• India's migrant millions: Caught between jobless villages and city hazards. This internal migration is bound to intensify as India becomes the world's most populous nation, throwing up enormous challenges for the government to absorb its army of young unemployed.



• How to pronounce ZHA in Malayalam:




• US Is Getting ‘Lonely’: Deepening links between the Middle East and Russia and China are a huge challenge for the United States. “If the Bretton Woods system is not delivering strongly around the world, there are going to be serious challenges.”



• Saudi Arabia's cricket league: What will happen to the $8.4 billion IPL?

Quick notes: Petro-yuan | English fines...

• Petrodollar Dusk, Petroyuan Dawn: Iran, Venezuela, Russia and now Saudi Arabia shifting towards Petro-yuan. For nearly 50 years, the Saudis had insisted on payments with US dollars. But that all changed recently. “The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the US dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.”




• India Pushes Trade in Local Currency : Malaysia will be a test case that other countries will watch to decide whether trading in the Indian currency is feasible. India has already established a rupee-ruble payment mechanism with Moscow, which experts say is serving as a template for other countries. Last July, banks from 18 countries set up rupee accounts in Indian banks. They include Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Germany, Oman and Singapore.



• Italy introduces legislation to stop invasion of English language: Public officials could face fines of up to $110K for using foreign words in official communications.. France also has a language watchdog – the Académie Française — in which it catalogs and fight against foreign words, especially English ones, creeping into everyday language.

Countries oppose/ban the use of foreign language and even the foreign vocabulary in official communications to preserve their culture since language and culture are inseparable and go together. Invaders/colonisers impose their language for the same reason! https://t.co/YUabTzMdF3

— चमू कृष्णशास्त्री Chamu KrishnaShastry (@ChamuKShastry) April 2, 2023




• Brown is beautiful: India's 'brown beauty' makeup influencers go global




• New star in AI: Google says its AI chip is up to 1.7x faster and 1.9x more power-efficient than Nvidia A100 chip.



• Generative AI: Who will be the ultimate financial winners?

Great clip from @chamath describing who the ultimate financial winners may be from the generative AI revolution

pic.twitter.com/PieaotllOI

— Science Is Strategic (@scienceisstrat1) March 30, 2023




• Ustad Imrat Khan: Raag Gorakh Kalyan, drut