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The demise of Mulayam Singh Yadav, on October 10, has led to a detailed chronicling of the life and times of a three-time Chief Minister of India's politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, who could have been even Prime Minister in the coalition era of 1996-98 (a honour eventually that went to HD Deve Gowda and later IK Gujral) if fellow socialists like Lalu Prasad had not opposed his name.

Politics Of Social Justice

As Yadav's life is chronicled in detail about his beginning as a follower of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia in 1963, and winning as a candidate of the Samyukta Socialist Party in the UP assembly polls in 1967, a question has risen whether socialism as a political plank and trademark has served its time.

After all, Yadav’s career took off just when the politics of social justice had arrived in India. The same could be said for Prasad and Nitish Kumar in neighbouring Bihar. These leaders blossomed under the shadow of veterans such as Lohia, Jaya Prakash Narayan, and Acharya Narendra Deva as the warriors of social justice, and as an anti-Congress pole.

Of course, their baptism in anti-Congressism took even finer shape under the ‘JP movement’ against Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s, and culminated in the aftermath of the Emergency post-1977.

Since then, the socialist brand of politics held centrestage for almost 25 years through an era that also saw the decline of the Congress as it got mired in its omissions and commissions in governance methods.

Mandal-Kamandal

The demolition of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 was a turning point for the socialists of all hues. A newer threat emerged for their politics in the shape of a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even as they were boosted by the adoption of the Mandal quota for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the 1990s.

They had to position themselves against a Vajpayee-led BJP because they realised the party was actually charioted by his associate Lal Krishna Advani who had used the ‘Kamandal’ card against a caste-based regrouping under the ‘Mandal’ banner with his rath yatra for the shrine at Ayodhya.

So some of the socialists did not mind abandoning their professed antipathy towards the Congress, and joined hands with it even though they remained critical of what they said was its penchant for ‘corruption’ for the sake of power. However, they succeeded in creating a fulcrum of anti-BJP forces as the Ram temple movement saw its rise and ebb through the 1990s.

By 2002, 20 years after the demolition of the Babri masjid and outbreak of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a fire inside a train near Godhra, Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister was a new challenger for them.

Thirteen year later and after winning three consecutive assembly elections, Modi was now the harbinger of a new model of faster development. As Modi’s ascent to the national political scene seemed unstoppable, the socialist leaders remained divided on their tactics as some such as Kumar who became Bihar Chief Minister with the support of the BJP, realised they risked losing the support of minorities.

Together-Apart

The joke goes that 'true socialists cannot stay together for six months and cannot stay apart for more than six months'. Kumar’s political oscillations are a good example of this. In 2015, he joined hands with Prasad to fight the BJP’s communalism. In 2017, Kumar left Prasad to join hands with the BJP to fight corruption, and finally, earlier this year, left the BJP and is now in an alliance with Prasad’s RJD to fight communalism. All this while he has remained Chief Minister!

As India gets ready for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and many assembly polls before that, the ‘socialist’ model of politics is hardly a talking point. Yes, there are debates about the ‘freebies and welfarism versus empowerment and targeted delivery model’, but the fact still remains that Modi (and the BJP) pose a serious challenge to the opposition parties.

SUV Socialist

What caused the decline of Yadav or Prasad was that many followers of Lohia could not resist the lure of political office, they got mired in acts of corruption and nepotism, and thus abandoned the basic tenets of socialism. Their powerful aides rode on SUVs, abandoning the bicycle that was once a symbol of a dedicated socialist. Dynastic politics became their instruments of power.

Where Is The Socialist?

That brings us to the question whether a ‘samajwadi’ can survive when there is a generational shift in politics, and in the concept of ‘social justice’.

Two years ago when Ram Vilas Paswan, another Lohia follower and a minister in the Modi government, passed away, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and former governor and civil servant, raised the question: “Are any socialists left in Indian politics?”

Gandhi, who is known for his pro-Left views, wrote, "But by the question I refer to socialists in party politics, offering electoral options, political alternatives in policy-making, seeking and getting — or failing to get — voter-support for what the Constitution of India calls justice — social, economic and political. And the resounding answer is — no, not any longer. Samajwadi — socialist — as a name and style lives in the nomenclature of political parties as, indeed, it does in the preamble to our Constitution. But the old-school socialist of the mould of, Jayaprakash Narayan, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Rammanohar Lohia, Asoka Mehta, Madhu Dandavate, Mrinal Gore, S M Joshi, George Fernandes, Madhu Limaye, has become a kitab-ka-phool.”

Inconsistency has been the hallmark of the Indian socialists. Why should anybody blame only George Fernandes or Nitish Kumar for their inconsistency? Their mentor, Ram Manohar Lohia, had also displayed similar inconsistencies. Once close to Jawaharlal Nehru, Lohia turned against the Congress and even joined hands with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the precursor of the BJP) to checkmate the Congress. So did JP. That is why the Congress lost political ground to the regional forces across India.

Mulayam Singh Yadav leaves behind a party which is on the back foot, and to defeat the BJP in UP, it will have to go the extra mile — even reinvent itself. It puts out the question of whether Akilesh Yadav can do it; but more importantly it has to be seen whether or not the socialist politics followed by Mulayam Singh Yadav can cut electoral ice in the current political reality of India.

Iran, of course, is not new to protests, despite strict state control. Tehran in the recent past saw protests in 2009, against what many called fraudulent elections; in 2017, against economic stresses; and in 2019, against a hike in fuel prices. It can be argued that none of those earlier events garnered the kind of interest and support, specifically on social media, as the women-led protests that is taking place today.

However, what these protests seek to gain from an Iranian context is a whole different ball game. Political change, coupled with an ideological reorientation of a state structure is easier said than done, despite popular mobilisation against it.

The Arab Spring, from a West Asian context, perhaps remains a prime example a decade after it began to spread across the region. From Tahrir Square in Egypt to protests peppered across the Gulf region, what changed was arguably a little direction to mitigate future risk by the region’s monarchies, the political structures themselves survived. In Egypt, the ouster of Hosni Mubarak’s almost 30-year-long rule led to elections that brought a pro-Muslim Brotherhood candidate to power, alarming regional states, and the United States (US) alike. The Brotherhood government was dislodged via a coup in 2013, bringing the Egyptian Army Chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, into power.

The other challenge for such protests is the fact that geopolitics, in general, has a significant penchant to compromise with morals, ethics, and ideas in return for real-world gains. A lot of global capacity, and specifically the west, is today tied down with the Russia-Ukraine war and the protection of European borders. Whilst the strains of the West’s relations with Iran are as old as the Revolution itself, and despite the protests being independent in nature, the Iranian state’s claim that it is the US and Israel that are planning these uprisings,  aiming to attach the protests as nefarious designs purported by foreign forces against Iranian interests.

This is consistent with its response regarding other similar domestic upheavals in the past. Much like during the Arab Spring, when then-President Barack Obama had asked US-based social media companies like Twitter to keep their services online and defer any planned down maintenance, this time as well the US has looked to primarily try and give more open access to information and the internet to the protesters via technologies such as Starlink in an attempt to bypass Iranian state censors

The challenge for any social protest in Iran today is like those faced by others during the Arab Spring, that of a lack of an off-ramp. The ascent of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s President in 2021 brought back into power the conservative section of Iranian polity, after former President Hassan Rouhani, known to be a ‘moderate’ and ‘reformist’, spent most of his tenure trying to normalise Iran’s relations with the US and negotiated with the P5+1 group of states the nuclear deal (also known as the JCPOA) which was signed in 2015 despite pushback from the conservatives.

While this would have been a watershed moment, the US unilaterally withdrawing from the deal under the presidency of Donald Trump in 2018 was a big blow to any future US-Iran rapprochement, and also to a certain extent, the Iranian moderate’s ecosystem, which did try to find its feet during previous protest movements but without much success. The failure of the JCPOA was seen by the conservatives as another example where the US proved that it could not be trusted and engaging with the same was a futile endeavour, even though negotiations to bring the deal back continue even today, albeit with much less optimism.

Over this period, the dominant clerical establishment, led by Ayatollah Khamenei, has strengthened itself to insulate itself and the state from western sanctions, and this has included closer relations with Russia and China, two countries that offer economic assistance and political partnership without strings attached in a world fast moving towards a new era of great power competition between Washington D.C. and Beijing.

The current protests are taking place under these geopolitical realities, which make it hard for movements to translate into action by states that view most events through the lens of the existential threat posed by foreign interventionism. Furthermore, if the protests are largely inclined to one city or social strata and do not gain mass traction, much like before, the government can clamp down on them without significant local blowback. Domestic corruption and economic mismanagement have also played their own role in fermenting public discontent.

According to a poll conducted in 2021 by the University of Maryland and IranPoll, a Canada-based research firm focusing on Iran, 63 percent of Iranians (out of a sample size of 1,000) blamed corruption and mismanagement more than international sanctions for economic distress.

The current protests have, in fact, gained a lot of traction, both within Iran, and internationally, with both schools and universities inside Iran seeing pushback. This is perhaps why, Ayatollah Khamenei, despite praising the police and security agencies, has not yet called for an all-encompassing hard national crackdown. Sixty percent of Iran’s population of 80 million is below the age of 30. The perception costs here may be significant for Iran if a large section of young women do not see their rights, privileges, and aspirations aligned with the state.

Saudi Arabia, perhaps still most popularly known for its ultra-conservatism, arguably realised this, and ‘defanged’ its own moral police establishment, known as the Mutawa, to portray a more “moderate” polity heralding Riyadh towards a more stable economic future beyond oil money, and looking to make itself more palatable to the international community. After these protests, Tehran risks taking this unwanted mantle from Riyadh in eyes of the international community.

The kind of real-world effect these protests will bring to Iranian politics, if any, remains to be seen. The place to witness any potential change in political course would be to keep an eye on who succeeds the 83-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei in the future, and whether this particular transfer of power would bring any fundamental political and ideological reorientation in the country, or whether it will remain business as usual.

The death of socialist leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, a leading light of alternate politics in India, brings the curtain down on this fast-diminishing breed of politicians who rose to the pinnacle from the grassroots with a spirit of accommodation.

Yadav, known by the sobriquet ‘Netaji’, remained a quintessential old-school politician who remained committed to the socialist stream as opposed to the dominant course set by the Congress and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh/Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Influenced by the work of Ram Manohar Lohia, after his death Yadav gravitated towards Chaudhary Charan Singh and his Bharatiya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, the crucible of national politics.

It was Singh who launched the political career of this self-acclaimed mud-pit wrestler who converted his penchant for ‘Daav’ (wrestler’s gambit) into a successful political career first on the regional, and then on the national stage.

In a career spanning over half-a-century, Yadav was clear about his priorities to work towards empowerment of the backward classes and minorities through the route of political power.

In the process, at times his proclivity to align at different times with the Left and the Congress contributed in creating an image of a leader who tread his own path.

Through association in early days with the likes of Lohia and Singh, ingrained in him an anti-Congress stance. Towards the end of the 1990s, it transformed into creating the Rashtirya Kranti Morcha that laid the foundation for his Samajwadi Party in 1992.

Yadav realised the Congress was losing grip in Uttar Pradesh, and decided to occupy the space being vacated. He vowed to work and make the Congress a politically less relevant force. It is no surprise the last Congress government in the state ended its tenure in December 1989.

It is another matter that some 28 years later, in 2017, his son and party chief Akhilesh Yadav revised the position to join hands with the Congress under Rahul Gandhi.

It is ironic that during his lifetime, the SP did two political U-turns in UP. After the 2017 experiment, the party buried the hatchet to smoke the peace pipe with another arch-rival, the Bahujan Samaj Party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The famed coming together of ‘Bua-Bhatija’ (aunt-nephew) duo of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav could not prevent the BJP winning three-fourths of the 80 seats in UP.

The seeds of distrust between the BSP and the SP were sown in the mid-1990s. Having created a strong base for the party, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s first shot at power in the state came in 1993 forming a government with the BSP then under the leadership of party founder Kanshi Ram. Relations turned bitter after Mayawati levelled a serious charge of a dastardly and life-threatening attack against her by SP workers.

For the next two decades, the SP-BSP remained strident opponents, and in 1996 when the BSP had an opportunity to form a coalition government in UP, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav played a pivotal role in preventing it. By then he had acquired a national role as Defence Minister in the HD Deve Gowda-led United Front government.

The indifferent nature of relations with the Congress continued, and was pronounced. The SP was forced to sit out of any arrangement in 2004 when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance formed the government. The SP went into a sulk since it won 39 Lok Sabha seats, but counted little.

With Left too, the SP founder had his share of differences that were pronounced twice in the same decade. In 2002, Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out of the ‘Lok Morcha’ (Peoples’ Front) alliance of the Left parties, and the SP. The disagreement was over the choice of Captain Lakshmi Seghal in the election for the President of India with Yadav favouring APJ Abdul Kalam.

Then in 2008, Mulayam Singh Yadav heeded to the scientific reasoning of Kalam and decided to support the Manmohan Singh government on the India-US nuclear deal, an agreement that led the Left withdraw its outside support to the coalition government at the Centre.

These decisions left political watchers confused over the trajectory of SP politics just as his praise in Parliament for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s work and predicting a second term for him, confounded his supporters.

This in a way, reflected the old-school politician who accorded respect to opponents despite ideological differences. The spirit of accommodation and realising there was space for the other view in politics guided his policy, which otherwise remained committed to socialist ideals.

This author recalls an incident during 2002; while waiting at an airport I was having a conversation with the SP chief. Suddenly, Netaji raised his voice to scold a party leader asking, “What are you doing?” The party leader, who had just brought a cold beverage, mumbled, “Netaji, I was feeling thirsty…” only to be told “drink water”! Mulayam Singh Yadav returned to the conversation we were having, prefacing “We Samajwadis, do not consume such beverages".

Yet, towards the later part of the decade, while the SP came back to power on its own, it attracted adverse comments for the glitzy festivals at his native village Safai, with the Clintons as his guests on one occasion.

Through his nearly six-decade political journey, Netaji straddled regional and national politics on his own terms. He carried the flag of socialist ideals with Lohia as the guiding light, and took positions that could be at times be termed pragmatic. He ended the journey with the satisfaction of a seamless transfer of leadership to son Akhilesh Yadav, and empowerment of the larger Yadav clan.

From barter, shekel, metal including gold, silver, bronze, nickel, to paper to polymer, the form of money is now attempting to enter another new era by going digital through the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

As cryptocurrencies and stablecoins have become increasingly popular among young users, central banks around the world seem to believe that they need go digital on their currencies, and towards this have been issuing their own concept notes and in the early days of their experimentation phases. However, one needs to understand that the CBDCs and crypto assets are different — and cannot be compared.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on October 7 released a concept note on India’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had already announced earlier this year, that a digital rupee would be issued in 2022 or 2023 that will operate via blockchain or related technologies. The concept note comes at a time when India's crypto exchanges and the ecosystem has borne the severe brunt of higher taxes including high rate of TDS, an operational shadow ban on exchanges through payment systems all of which has indirectly pushed business and monies out of India into the hands of overseas exchanges, which seemed to have benefited the most.

For easier understanding, a CBDC is a ‘digital banknote’ that can be used by individuals for their retail requirements such as paying shops, businesses or between businesses or among financial institutions for their wholesale ones. A CBDC is a virtual money backed and issued by a central bank. The CBDCs are different from electronic payments such as UPI, wallet, NEFT, IMPS, RTGS, etc. as these are digital payments with banking solutions at their core. The liability of these account transfers lies with the corresponding government/commercial banks. Despite being called the sovereign equivalent of crypto assets, the CBDCs are centralised.

The RBI’s concept note has defined the CBDC as the legal tender issued by the central bank in a digital form, and referred to it as ‘e₹’. The RBI has also explained the objectives, choices, benefits, and risks of issuing a CBDC in India. The RBI has proposed to issue two versions: one for wholesale for interbank settlement, and the other for retail for the public. The RBI has also proposed that it will issue the e₹ but regular banks can distribute it. The RBI has also proposed the e₹ in its retail version to be token based, wherein one can find out the recipient’s public key, and transfer it using one’s private key. Anonymity has been proposed for small amounts only.

As per the Atlantic Council, today 105 countries, representing over 95 percent of global GDP, are exploring CBDCs of which 10 have fully launched, with China’s pilot set to expand in 2023. Of the G7 economies, the United States and the United Kingdom are most behind on CBDC development. Nineteen of the G20 countries are exploring a CBDC, with 16 already in development or pilot stage. Globally various efforts that involve multiple countries and banks have been underway from efforts like Multiple CBDC Bridge (mBridge), Project Dunbar, Project Helvetia, Project Jasper, Project Aber, Project Jura, Onyx/Multiple wCBDC etc. Bahamas was the first to issue the Sand Dollar CBDC three years ago.

It is, however, important to understand that in some countries a CBDC may be an important path to financial inclusion, while in case of others it may have other motivations. The CBDCs may also help support trade in another emerging area of NFTs.

The CBDCs can help in reducing operational costs in physical cash management, foster financial inclusion, and bring further innovation in the payments system without risks. It can be used for retail, wholesale, and international payments.

With each central bank around the world evolving its own use cases, concepts, and with certain banks and countries collaborating in their own way, there is a likelihood that the global financial system may face an interoperability issue, unless there is equal effort to work towards certain standards as well.

For the last three years, we have lived in a surreal world that in normal times one would read about only in dystopian books or watch in horror movies. This is the period when humanity convulsed and the world went topsy-turvy thanks to the sudden dramatic onset of COVID-19. And just when we thought, we were close to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, the global economy was hit by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Arguably, the Indian economy and companies have shown tremendous resilience and both are back on the track of growth. The country, even with a consistent new normal of 6-6.5% GDP growth rate over the next few years, will remain one of the fastest growing economies of the world and is expected to catapult from being the fifth largest economy to the third by the end of the decade.

But all is not well.

Corporate growth momentum is at the risk of getting lost due to varied factors – both external (uncertain supply chain and a challenging export market for goods and services) and internal (increasing input costs due and higher financing cost caused by an inflation-led spike in interest rates). And the early sign of such a reversal is already visible. 

For Indian companies to defy gravity and actualize the trajectory of sustainable high growth, resilience holds the key. The most successful Indian companies in such an uncertain, turbulent era will be those who adapt, react, and pivot into whatever the new normal is and stay ahead of the learning curve. 

How can Indian companies build and sustain resilience? Here are 9 key building blocks

First, It’s Never Too Late to Start Building Resilience 

When it comes to start building sustainable resilience in corporate entities, there is immense power in the Power of Now. Building organizational resilience is no child’s play — it requires deliberate intentionality and a tremendous amount of energy, time, effort, persistence, discipline and flexibility. There are low hanging fruits to be plucked, and often some gains of the effort arrive rather early. 

Second, Leadership Holds the Key 

In this uncertain, turbulent world, it is impossible to predict the future and despite corporations having developed specific resilience capabilities, when sudden disruptions occur, surprise gaps in those capabilities become visible and it is here that the leader plays the critical role. 

Sustainable organizational resilience begins with some attributes so far not considered central to leadership capabilities. These are absolute calmness amid turbulence, ability to lead with empathy and awareness, inherent capacity to create an organizational culture where genuine mistakes are condoned and innovations rewarded. A resilient leader must be able to rapidly connect with stakeholders; positivity, creativity and ability to experiment have to be his/her first nature 

Three, Resilience is a Culture Thing 

Leadership and culture are congenital twins; unless the leadership creates a culture where resilience thrives there is no sustainability. 

Creating culture where resilience thrives is the primary responsibility of the leader. The leader also has to empower resilience champions because when the canvas is fast changing and unpredictable, organizations need multiple layers of shock absorbers, innovators and change makers. 

Four, No Resilience without Transparent Proactive Communication with Stakeholders – Internal and External 

Resilience takes centre-stage when disruptive changes happen increasingly abruptly and unpredictably. Such situations will require quick measures to stop loss and rapidly regain the competitive advantage. A culture of secrecy is antithesis to a resilient corporate entity. What is needed is a transparent, proactive, and credible and rapid communication with key stakeholders, both internal and external, including but not limited to employees, customers, and vendors. 

Five, Resilient Organizations React Faster when Disruptions Occur 

We are living in an era where disruptions can arrive from any direction, and relate to any part of the organization. Disruptions by definition often cannot be stopped in its occurrence. But resilient organizations are the one that react and act fast when the disruptions occur. A key distinctive feature of such companies is that they are agile and free of silos. 

Six, Dynamic Business Resilience Forecasting and Rapid Adjustment is The Future 

The strategic long-range planning I was taught at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Manila using Harvard Business School (HBS) case studies are passé in the era of disruptive change and disruptive technologies. A resilient organization in today’s era of rapid-fire disruptive change, has to work with dynamic business forecasting with an ability to modulate, adjust, replan and act-- this is critical whether the demand patterns change unpredictably or supply chains break down abruptly, as we have seen in the last three years. 

Seven, It Is Innovation, Stupid, That Will Keep the Resilient Organization Going 

Gone is the era of divisions, departments, compartments, and silos. A resilient company thrives on innovation and is perpetually in start-up and incubation mode. Valuing entrepreneurship is the most prized ornament of such company in normal times, but more so during crisis time. 

Eight, Managing End-to-End Risk Is a Daily Task 

A system of periodic preparation, comprehensive risk framework and monitoring was suitable to companies of yesteryears, Resilient companies use data mining, digital technology and artificial intelligence, and for them end-to-end risk management is a round-the-clock affair. It helps them avert disruption and to act swiftly if the disruption occurs. 

Nine, Resilience Has To Be an All-Encompassing, Multidimensional Suite 

A McKinsey framework provides for a six-dimensional resilience approach, namely: 

Firstly, financial resilience to balance both short- and long-term financial aims 

Secondly, Operational resilience to maintain robust production capacity that can be flexible to meet demand changes as well as remain stable when operational disruption happens 

Thirdly, Technological resilience with investment in strong, secure and flexible infrastructure, including managing cyber threats, technology breakdown avoidance, disaster-recovery capability and a system that uses high-quality data, duly respecting privacy, without bias and compliant with regulatory requirements 

Fourthly, Organizational resilience that creates a diverse, inclusive, equal opportunity workplace that recruits best talent, develop that talent equitably, upskill or rapidly reskill it flexibly, implements strong people bias-free processes, with a pan-organization, robust succession plans 

Fifthly, Reputational resilience, one wherein institutions align their values with their actions and words. Resilience demands a strong sense of self—enshrined in mission, values, and purpose, which guides actions, along with flexibility and openness in listening to and communicating with stakeholders, anticipating and addressing societal expectations and responding to criticism of the firm’s behaviour. 

Lastly Business-model resilience, one that can adapt swiftly to significant shifts in customer demand, the competitive landscape, technological changes and the regulatory terrain. 

It is a no-brainer that the firms with capabilities to prepare for and respond to disruption dynamically are more resilient across all the above six dimensions. 

The decision of the Indian Air Force (IAF) to acquire 100 mini unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, will allow the organisation to hone its operational capabilities without looking over its shoulder all the time. The IAF going in for such a large suite of UAVs is obviously to strengthen its air base defences after the drone attack on a Jammu air base last year. That was a rude wake-up call for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on the clear and present danger posed by armed drones that sneak in from across the western and northern borders.

The MoD is now shopping for mini UAV platforms equipped with electro-optic and thermal imaging capability to detect targets on land and air from afar. This serves the dual purpose of thwarting cross-border terrorist activity as well as dealing with intruder drones. Not surprisingly, the IAF has awarded the contract for the UAVs to an Indian company in line with the government’s resolve to indigenise defence acquisitions. It also complements the IAF’s plan to protect air bases in the subcontinent with home-grown anti-drone systems.

UAVs have come a long way since American inventors Elmer Sperry and Peter Hewitt designed the first ‘aerial torpedo’ in 1916 by integrating three key technologies — automatic stabilisation, remote control and autonomous navigation — on a single aero-model. In 1930, defence scientists in Britain and the US used the aerial torpedo to develop radio controlled ‘target drones’ to train anti-aircraft gunners. But the potential of UAVs as a weapon of choice for armies was largely ignored even during the Cold War when the military-industrial complexes of the US and the erstwhile USSR merely considered UAVs as nuisance weapons. What a contrast from the current combat drones, with their reach and lethality, which are critical force multipliers indispensable to militaries across the world!

India was a late starter in the global military drone market which is currently estimated to be worth $12 billion, and predicted to grow to $31 billion in the next seven years. The country’s indigenous UAV programme was launched in the early 1980s when the IAF modified the American Northrop Chucker remotely piloted vehicle as a desi drone. Eventually, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) would use this as a template to develop the Lakshya target drone for practice firing of beyond-visual-range missiles.

The DRDO has since followed it up with several short range drones like the catapult-launched Nishant and its advanced variant, Gagan, equipped with a Synthetic Aperture Radar that produced high-resolution 3-D images. The real deal, however, is the vaunted Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAV, Rustom 2 with auto landing capabilities ideal for surveillance and reconnaissance. A more advanced High Altitude Long Range drone is also being developed with an eye on the Sino-Indian border in eastern Ladakh.

It’s time to get realistic about the worsening energy situation. A power shortage is approaching and few alternatives to bridge the green transition exist right now. Nuclear is re-emerging as a front-runner, as are doubts and skepticism around its safety as memories of past accidents loom large along with haunting images of mushroom clouds. South Korea, though, shows why nuclear isn’t just a pipe dream — or a fuel to fear.

The country’s worries — like those of many others — aren’t just people feeling cold this winter, or rising prices. It’s the lack of electricity that will ultimately hamper everything from industrial production of goods and food to electric vehicles and the infrastructure to charge them — industries account for over half of the nation’s consumption. South Korean firms that supply high-tech goods to the rest of the world, including cars, batteries and chips, seem to have come to that realization. These energy-intensive sectors won’t run on wind, solar and biofuels alone because the actual capacity just isn’t enough and for large-scale operations, it isn’t consistent. If power starts becoming an issue, so will their profits and global technological heft.

Powering Up

In South Korea, nuclear generation, a baseload source, accounts for over a quarter of electricity production.

To deal with it, South Korea’s biggest companies are putting their weight behind nuclear power plants, which contribute to about 27% of electricity there — an astute move. Samsung C&T Corp., the trading and construction arm of the Samsung empire, is working with NuScale Power Corp. to construct the first small modular reactor, or SMR, in the US and in eastern Europe. Meanwhile, Doosan Enerbility Co. has also tied up with NuScale to supply equipment. The US firm is the first and only to have had its SMR design receive certification — after a rigorous review process by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.