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Economic Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Behind the curtain: How RBI navigates politics, pressure, and prudence
Agencies All you need is guv In 'Land of the Free, Conditions Apply' (ET Edit, June 3), Ateesh Tankha and Syagnik Banerjee dramatise RBI as a contemporary 'ancient Rome', issuing diktats with the flourish of a censor, revoking licences like tributes unpaid, and imposing deadlines as if chasing gladiators out of the Colosseum. The allusion is charming. But it's policymaking, unlike politics or prose, does not reward theatre. In what is often a thankless vocation, RBI has displayed more institutional maturity than its critics seem willing to acknowledge. No institution is perfect. Certainly not a central bank tasked with navigating turbulent crosswinds of economic aspiration, financial innovation, systemic risk and political expectation - all while remaining outwardly unflappable. But to consistently caricature every move of RBI borders on convenient fiction. And fiction, as it turns out, is often more profitable than fact. There is a well-monetised industry built around regulatory foreboding. For every regulation that induces participant discomfort, there are self-appointed oracles who promise clarity and solution - for a fee, of course. For every directional shift by RBI, whisper campaigns assure that 'a workaround is in the works'. The new SaaS - Solace as a Service - is one that one can subscribe regulator is immune to occasional overcorrection. Retraction, when warranted, is not a sign of institutional weakness, or that of an industrial win. Discussion papers, feedback loops, closed-door dialogues, informal expert conversations, including with media editors, advisory committees - these have all been part of RBI's ecosystem for years. What has changed is the codification of that listening as a process. The market notion that regulation must emerge from consensus risks recasting prudential judgement as a democratic vote - an idea incompatible with the function of a central the original critique invoking the Roman censor may have intended to offer little more than a wry historical metaphor, one suspects it was also guided by a cleaner logic - the kind that aligns with Occam's razor, where the simplest explanation is often the most the regulatory environment today cannot afford such parsimony. The backroom is crowded - with geopolitical expectations, domestic fiscal compulsions, global market volatility, lobbying by regulated entities and, yes, political winds that shift not by policy cycles but by election calendars. To expect a central bank to function in antiseptic detachment from such realities is to ask of it a purity no modern state can political pressure - of the visible and invisible kind - is not an intrusion into RBI's role. It is, in some sense, embedded in its existence. The RBI, like all regulators, ultimately derives its authority from the sovereign. It would be naive to presume that regulators can be immune to political dynamics when their legitimacy itself flows from the political architecture of the state. The point is to navigate it with integrity and institutional RBI has often demonstrated. In recent years, it has managed liquidity swings, calmed currency markets, enabled digital finance, handled sectoral crises, protected retail investors and regulated a diverse financial ecosystem from banks to fintechs. That India's financial system has stayed fundamentally stable through it all speaks to quiet but significant regulatory depth. Financial regulation is not a customer service function but a systemic responsibility, and a public good. Many industry actors expect to be consulted as clients, not as constituents of a financial order. Part of the challenge is that good regulation is invisible by design. Financial stability is a negative outcome space. A crisis that never occurred is work well done. India does not operate in a textbook financial architecture. Our credit ecosystems are simultaneously formal and informal. Our capital markets are growing but not yet deep. Our digital infrastructure is far ahead of our enforcement capacity. But to ignore the necessity of strong, even pre-emptive regulation in such an environment is reckless. RBI moderates a sandbox, a living laboratory of scale, chaos, ambition and ingenuity. And it must do so while absorbing shocks, forecasting risks, managing moral hazard and stewarding does not mean RBI should be immune from critique. Far from it. All institutions benefit from external scrutiny, especially those that wield such far-reaching influence - especially when it does not have an appellate authority.'Fiat justitia ruat caelum' (Let justice be done though the heavens fall). RBI may not always please the forum, but its job is to do what is right for the system - even if the heavens protest. At the end of the day, RBI provides credibility, a far rarer commodity. Even it cannot mint it. And it continues to earn it. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. The answer to companies not incurring capex may lie in stock markets Banks are investing in these funds instead of lending the money. Why? He termed IndiGo a 'paan ki dukaan'. Still made INR30k crore by selling its shares How Sikka turned Infosys misfortune into AI springboard Stock Radar: PNB stock breaks out from downward sloping channel; time to buy the PSU bank? 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The Independent
10-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
AI made its way to vineyards. Here's how the technology is helping make your wine
When artificial intelligence-backed tractors became available to vineyards, Tom Gamble wanted to be an early adopter. He knew there would be a learning curve, but Gamble decided the technology was worth figuring out. The third-generation farmer bought one autonomous tractor. He plans on deploying its self-driving feature this spring and is currently using the tractor's AI sensor to map his Napa Valley vineyard. As it learns each row, the tractor will know where to go once it is used autonomously. The AI within the machine will then process the data it collects and help Gamble make better-informed decisions about his crops — what he calls 'precision farming.' 'It's not going to completely replace the human element of putting your boot into the vineyard, and that's one of my favorite things to do,' he said. 'But it's going to be able to allow you to work more smartly, more intelligently and in the end, make better decisions under less fatigue.' Gamble said he anticipates using the tech as much as possible because of 'economic, air quality and regulatory imperatives.' Autonomous tractors, he said, could help lower his fuel use and cut back on pollution. As AI continues to grow, experts say that the wine industry is proof that businesses can integrate the technology efficiently to supplement labor without displacing a workforce. New agricultural tech like AI can help farmers to cut back on waste, and to run more efficient and sustainable vineyards by monitoring water use and helping determine when and where to use products like fertilizers or pest control. AI-backed tractors and irrigation systems, farmer say, can minimize water use by analyzing soil or vines, while also helping farmers to manage acres of vineyards by providing more accurate data on the health of a crop or what a season's yield will be. Other facets of the wine industry have also started adopting the tech, from using generative AI to create custom wine labels to turning to ChatGPT to develop, label and price an entire bottle. 'I don't see anybody losing their job, because I think that a tractor operator's skills are going to increase and as a result, and maybe they're overseeing a small fleet of these machines that are out there, and they'll be compensated as a result of their increased skill level,' he said. Farmers, Gamble said, are always evolving. There were fears when the tractor replaced horses and mules pulling plows, but that technology 'proved itself' just like AI farming tech will, he said, adding that adopting any new tech always takes time. Companies like John Deere have started using the AI that wine farmers are beginning to adopt. The agricultural giant uses 'Smart Apply' technology on tractors, for example, helping growers apply material for crop retention by using sensors and algorithms to sense foliage on grape canopies, said Sean Sundberg, business integration manager at John Deere. The tractors that use that tech then only spray 'where there are grapes or leaves or whatnot so that it doesn't spray material unnecessarily,' he said. Last year, the company announced a project with Sonoma County Winegrowers to use tech to help wine grape growers maximize their yield. Tyler Klick, partner at Redwood Empire Vineyard Management, said his company has started automating irrigation valves at the vineyards it helps manage. The valves send an alert in the event of a leak and will automatically shut off if they notice an 'excessive' water flow rate. 'That valve is actually starting to learn typical water use,' Klick said. 'It'll learn how much water is used before the production starts to fall off.' Klick said each valve costs roughly $600, plus $150 per acre each year to subscribe to the service. 'Our job, viticulture, is to adjust our operations to the climatic conditions we're dealt,' Klick said. 'I can see AI helping us with finite conditions.' Angelo A. Camillo, a professor of wine business at Sonoma State University, said that despite excitement over AI in the wine industry, some smaller vineyards are more skeptical about their ability to use the technology. Small, family-owned operations, which Camillo said account for about 80% of the wine business in America, are slowly disappearing — many don't have the money to invest in AI, he said. A robotic arm that helps put together pallets of wine, for example, can cost as much as $150,000, he said. 'For small wineries, there's a question mark, which is the investment. Then there's the education. Who's going to work with all of these AI applications? Where is the training?' he said. There are also potential challenges with scalability, Camillo added. Drones, for example, could be useful for smaller vineyards that could use AI to target specific crops that have a bug problem, he said — it would be much harder to operate 100 drones in a 1,000 acre vineyard while also employing the IT workers who understand the tech. 'I don't think a person can manage 40 drones as a swarm of drones,' he said. 'So there's a constraint for the operators to adopt certain things.' However, AI is particularly good at tracking a crop's health – including how the plant itself is doing and whether it's growing enough leaves – while also monitoring grapes to aid in yield projections, said Mason Earles, an assistant professor who leads the Plant AI and Biophysics Lab at UC Davis. Diseases or viruses can sneak up and destroy entire vineyards, Earles said, calling it an 'elephant in the room' across the wine industry. The process of replanting a vineyard and getting it to produce well takes at least five years, he said. AI can help growers determine which virus is affecting their plants, he said, and whether they should rip out some crops immediately to avoid losing their entire vineyard. Earles, who is also cofounder of the AI-powered farm management platform Scout, said his company uses AI to process thousands of images in hours and extract data quickly — something that would be difficult by hand in large vineyards that span hundreds of acres. Scout's AI platform then counts and measures the number of grape clusters as early as when a plant is beginning to flower in order to forecast what a yield will be. The sooner vintners know how much yield to expect, the better they can 'dial in' their wine making process, he added. 'Predicting what yields you're going to have at the end of the season, no one is that good at it right now,' he said. 'But it's really important because it determines how much labor contract you're going to need and the supplies you'll need for making wine.' Earles doesn't think the budding use of AI in vineyards is 'freaking farmers out.' Rather, he anticipates that AI will be used more frequently to help with difficult field labor and to discern problems in vineyards that farmers need help with. 'They've seen people trying to sell them tech for decades. It's hard to farm; it's unpredictable compared to most other jobs,' he said. 'The walking and counting, I think people would have said a long time ago, 'I would happily let a machine take over.''
