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Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Factory factor
Times of India's Edit Page team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day. Manufacturing growth isn't keeping up with GDP growth, indicating a problem that needs fixing Taiwan, less than 0.4% the size of China, ensures its safety by making 90% of the world's silicon chips. It's indispensable, hence untouchable in a good way. That's the power of manufacturing. So, when you read India's GDP data for Jan-March, pay attention. The good news is that growth accelerated to 7.4%, better than China's 5.4% in the same quarter. But most of it happened in construction, especially govt-funded projects. Manufacturing grew at a modest 4.8% despite govt's PLI schemes for sectors like electronics and solar equipment, and the front-loading of orders by US importers anticipating Trump tariffs. Apple alone lifted five plane-loads of iPhones in the last week of March. We are now in the third month of this fiscal's first quarter, and given the global uncertainty, it's time to assess manufacturing as a national priority. On paper, it has been govt's focus for years, yet its share in GDP is stagnant – 15% in 2014, 17% now04. Govt's 25% target remains elusive. In China, despite its 4.5x larger economy and five years of 'China+1' sourcing policies, manufacturing accounts for 26% of GDP. India's GDP is projected to grow at 6.5% this fiscal, well below the asking rate of 8% for reducing poverty. Manufacturing is key to the required quantum leap. It's a political necessity to employ youth that GCCs and other white-collar operations can't absorb. After Op Sindoor, it's also a security imperative. A nation of 1.4bn should be making its own drones, planes and missile shield. But assembling iPhones is only a step, not a goal, because it does not give us Taiwan-like manufacturing clout. We need more foreign investment, but also domestic R&D to get ahead in emerging technologies. PLIs won't get us there – half of India's phone-making capacity is unutilised. Tamil Nadu, the lone state where 25% of GSDP comes from manufacturing, got there by actively fulfilling industry needs of manpower, regulation and infra. If TN can do it, so can Gujarat, Maharashtra, UP and others. What's needed is political will. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
Time of India
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Yes means yes
Times of India's Edit Page team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day. Teenagers having consensual sex is basic human design. This must be decriminalised by GOI There are countless ways in which adults fail to understand teenagers and let them down. But when a systemic orthodoxy is causing them clear injustice, at least then the adult approaches must be reformed without delay. In the case of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, court reports have been showing for years that blanket criminalisation of teenage sexual activity is deeply oppressive. Now, the Supreme Court has issued notice to GOI to give its views on amici curiae's suggestions regarding POCSO, whose rigid application in cases of adolescent relationships is found to lead to traumatically unjust outcomes. An analysis of all judgments passed in a case involving rape in Delhi's district courts in 2013 found that around one-third involved couples who had chosen to be together. Their parents pursued the police action. Police often sympathises with the girl's father, families often punish her with a severe beating. He gets jail and a rape conviction. Because her age of consent is 18. The defence is that these families and cops' morality cannot be changed simply by changing the law. It's an untenable defence. Their private morality is immaterial. The issue is adolescents' entitlement to a private life, to coming of age, on their own terms, in perfectly healthy and natural ways. Refusing to uphold adolescent agency to consent is in a continuum of injustice that wives also suffer. In this context, the phrase 'women and children' rings cruelly apt. GOI has been opposing the criminalisation of marital rape citing concern for 'social and family structure'. Consent, though, is the bedrock of human dignity. By wrenching it away from intimate relationships, lawmakers are enabling a legion of personal torments, and encouraging the worst instincts of adult busybodies. Reform the law, recognise consent, that's where both private and public good lie. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
Time of India
16-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
5% rate, 0% sense
Times of India's Edit Page team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day. Trump's tax on remittances hurts US and immigrants Trump wants non-citizens – H-1Bs and Green Cards included – to pay 5% tax on money they send home. That's bad news for over 40mn immigrants, a tenth of whom are Indians. While Indians sent $32bn home from US in 2023-24, Mexicans sent twice as much. With a 5% remittance tax in place, their remittances would have reduced by $1.6bn and $3.2bn, respectively. US would have been richer by around $5bn, but even then this tax is bad policy. For one, it's bad in principle. All immigrants pay some taxes, so Trump shouldn't touch their post-tax income. Secondly, remittances already have high financial costs. Fees for transfers to India range from 0.8% to 10.8%, and the average is over 4%. Transfer fees for Ethiopia average 5.5%, and for Thailand 9%. Combined with a 5% Trump tax, that's a loss of 10-15%. Inevitably, many will switch to informal channels like hawala, where, depending on the amount sent, fees can be as little as 0.1%. But as US knows too well, hawala funds terrorists and drugs, which are two sides of the same coin. Bin Laden and fentanyl. Plus, as World Bank has pointed out, the administrative costs of taxing remittances can be higher than the gains. Taxing remittances isn't a new idea. In 1937, Brazil imposed an 8% tax on remittances derived from interest payments. The state of Oklahoma already charges illegal immigrants – anyone without a valid ID – $7.5 on remittances up to $500, but earns just $13mn from it annually. Trump himself toyed with a remittance fee on Guatemalans in 2019. It wasn't a good idea then, and it isn't now. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
Time of India
13-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Leading vs Leadering
Times of India's Edit Page team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day. Memo to top bosses: the two are very different. Don't claim credit. Get the job done Every successful corporation, mission, or nation, is a whodunnit. Who made it a success? The simple, obvious answer – many people working together, making small contributions to the whole – has no takers because most people tend to be heroes at heart. Democratising success pulls us off our imaginary equestrian statues. That's why credit for collective success is always pinned on an individual – on Steve Jobs at Apple, on Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, on Newton, despite his full disclosure about seeing further by 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. But this approach is too passive for Trump, who appropriates credit actively. Specimen A: his Truth Social claim about brokering the India-Pak ceasefire. Specimen B: his brag about countries 'kissing my ass' over tariffs. He's positively glowing after the UK and China trade deals and might photobomb the Putin-Zelenskyy meet in Istanbul, if it happens. Trump's behaviour is an example of what Seattle-based blogger Venkatesh Rao termed 'leadering' some years ago – 'the art of creating a self-serving account of whatever is already happening, and inserting yourself into it in a prominent role'. It's Rao's view that even leadership – the good kind – is overrated because a leader's five minutes of insight, on which a lifetime of fame is founded, is almost entirely a function of chance. Was Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo proof of English genius, or a result of a giant volcanic eruption in Indonesia two months earlier that made Europe too rainy and muddy, as scientists have recently suggested? Good leaders give credit where it's due, and focus on getting the job done. Consider yourself lucky if your organisation has one at the summit. But if you're saddled with the leadering kind, good luck, for they are clueless. In times of rapid change – which the third decade of the 21st century is, what with a pandemic, AI, EVs and sundry wars changing the old order – leadering types can run your ship aground. Luckily, Trump, for all his leadering, isn't a warmonger. The real danger lies in a leader who seeks war – whether in the market or on the border – for personal glory. That type eventually finds the slippery slope of a Waterloo. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
Time of India
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Mission accomplished
Times of India's Edit Page team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day. Op Sindoor did what it set out to, at minimal cost to country. GOI's verbal restraint is a sign of a mature power Relief in Pakistan after Saturday's ceasefire was palpable when PM Shehbaz Sharif rushed to declare the pause a 'historic victory'. As expected, the propaganda war was about to hot up. But Indian officials held their volleys, displaying the same verbal restraint that distinguished foreign secretary Vikram Misri and his defence colleagues this past week. While a section of Indians no doubt disagrees – worried about the battle of narratives – this restraint should be seen as a sign of India's maturity. As a major economy, and rising military power, India does not need to convey its strength with boastful words. Note how Air Marshal AK Bharti didn't gloat over the damage inflicted upon Pakistan at yesterday's presser: 'Our job is to hit the target, not to count the body bags.' This policy of careful assessment, deliberate action, and measured statements befits India's global stature. Pakistan, meanwhile, lives off borrowings, and must delude itself to keep up morale. As to the question, did Op Sindoor achieve its objectives, the answer is yes. Recall what India said after the 25-minute operation last Wednesday. It was a 'measured and non-escalatory, proportionate and responsible' strike to dismantle terror infra. War wasn't a goal. Yet another way to assess outcomes is to tot up losses. Some Indian lives were sadly lost in Pakistani shelling, but overall, India suffered almost no damage. Our air defences worked well. And when India decided to retaliate strongly, it punched craters in Pakistani air bases – notably Nur Khan air base not far from Pakistan's nuclear command centre. Some are disappointed that India agreed to halt operations when it had the upper hand, but consider that every conflict distracts from the primary goal of nation building. After achieving all objectives of Op Sindoor, and more, with minimal human and material costs, it was wise of India to disengage. Unlike Pakistan, we have far bigger stakes in our future. Above all, post-Op Sindoor, Pakistan will have to weigh the costs of its proxy war carefully. India has made it clear that every terrorist act hereon will be regarded as an act of war. That doesn't mean we'll launch a military operation every time, but we reserve the right to do so whenever we choose to. Every military operation is an opportunity to assess strengths and weaknesses, and India will do so now. The idea that Op Sindoor was halted before achieving its objectives must be banished. Instead, attention must shift to catching the perpetrators of Pahalgam. Terrorists should know they have no place left to hide – not in India, not even in Pakistan. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
