Analysing geopolitics of emerging technologies, especially nuclear energy and biotechnology. @miis and @ucdavis alum. Tweets = personal; RT ≠ endorsements.
India
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My latest article in @NikkeiAsia argues for India to fully allow private sector in the nuclear energy sector. Budget announcement on SMRs and recent reports of private sector interest are encouraging. However, effective implementation is key.
asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/It-s…
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Saurabh Todi retweeted
India hasn't failed to catch-up to China because of inequality.
Did China disrupt hierarchies during its Cultural Revolution? Temporarily, yes! Elites, landlords and the wealthy were systematically purged and executed by Mao.
So that should've gotten rid of class distinctions, correct? Not at all!
See the graph below. The Cultural Revolution did get rid of inequality, but only temporarily. The elite soon bounced back and inequality exceeded pre-Cultural Revolution levels.
You can see this pattern not only in income, but also in educational attainment, wealth and social status. Elite persistence and inequality are sticky and the Chinese have tons of it.
While there are cultural differences to China and India, most of China's over-performance is due to better Chinese policy. India can (and is) doing better.
What will it take for India to catch up with China? No, its not just economic growth. pallaviaiyar.substack.com/p/…
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Saurabh Todi retweeted
ANRF PM Early Career Research Grant open for Proposals.
𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗮𝗹𝘀 | 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁
#ANRFIndia invites proposals for 𝗣𝗠𝗘𝗖𝗥𝗚, an initiative to empower early career researchers and strengthen India’s research and innovation ecosystem.
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This is the crux: '"Indian-designed satellites and their underlying IP do not automatically become subject to US ITAR restrictions merely because Pixxel also has an American entity. Where foreign-origin components or technology carry applicable export-control obligations, we comply with them. Having an international presence does not mean surrendering sovereignty over Indian-developed technology," Ahmed said.'
Territorial origin of IP matters. It cannot be subject to ITAR. Underhanded approaches are not out of bounds though and that is a different issue.
But beyond the question of efficacy between the technologies that these two startups offer, how "Indian" each company is, there is a larger question of how companies which have also set up shop in the USA are subjected to American laws and what ramifications it could have on their Indian operations.
Moneycontrol explored this subject in this article, with experts saying that spacetech firms with US operations can be subjected to export controls, compliance mandates, and investor pressure, making them vulnerable to US-directed data blackouts and operational restrictions during conflicts.
However, in his recent blog post on X, @awaisahmedna has addressed these concerns.
"Indian-designed satellites and their underlying IP do not automatically become subject to US ITAR restrictions merely because Pixxel also has an American entity. Where foreign-origin components or technology carry applicable export-control obligations, we comply with them. Having an international presence does not mean surrendering sovereignty over Indian-developed technology," Ahmed said.
"Space and defence are among the world's most tightly regulated industries. Sensitive Indian government contracts require stringent diligence concerning ownership, management, control, security and technical capabilities. Do people seriously believe the Government of India awards sensitive defence and space contracts without examining these things?," he further asked.
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Saurabh Todi retweeted
Yes! Come join us @PixxelSpace if you want to work on operational satellites in space whose data will be used in India and across the globe! For everything from climate change to agriculture to mining to national security. We are scaling fast. Let's add to the 9 satellites we have launched till date all of which have worked and beamed down data to our servers and customers on ground. Thanks!
pixxel.space/careers
We’re hiring btw, across multiple offices in India, where we are headquartered. And in other geographies too.
Apply: pixxel [dot] space [slash] careers
Or send us your resume: join [at] pixxel [dot] co [dot] in
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It was so sad to see the vitriol and bigoted insinuations directed against founders. One hopes that this wouldn’t distract them from building in India and for the world.
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A lot of arguments in this explanation that should have been common sense but glad they’ve been placed on record nevertheless. It was disheartening to see bigoted remarks against the founders.
We should make in India and for the world. The latter won’t happen if we pearl clutch about corporate structures that exist at home and elsewhere.
300+ Indians have spent years of their lives building satellites and critical technology for this country. They deserve better than having their work and patriotism questioned by manufactured controversies.
I owe them a response. Here it is:
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This isn’t a personal rant about delayed funding; it is an audit of a broken administrative system.
The fatal flaw in our research apparatus isn't just the initial delay; it's the catastrophic downstream friction it creates.
When a sanctioned 12-month grant sits in bureaucratic escrow for six months, the calendar doesn’t magically stretch to accommodate the lost time:
You are expected to compress a 12-month experimental pipeline into six frantic months.
Tender processes, reagent procurement, NGS runs, and hiring cannot be run at double speed they too encounter local bureaucratic delays.
Utilization falls short of the theoretical timeline.
The agency flags "under-utilization," holds back the next tranche, and demands three new justification certificates!
The delay generates the under-utilization, and the under-utilization becomes the official excuse for the next delay. It is an artificial, self-reinforcing friction trap designed by finance desks that have never run a single project in their lives. You cannot demand high-torque science while strangling the fuel flow! 🎯📉⚙️⏳💸
#MotorShastra #AcademicRealities #ResearchFunding #GrantUtilization #SystemicFriction #BureaucraticLoop #IndianScience #HigherEdReform
The harsh, unglamorous reality of running a research lab in India:
• 9 months spent navigating bureaucratic loops just to onboard a single postdoctoral fellow.
• Two nationally funded grants stuck in fiscal limbo, sanctioned on paper, zero cash flow in practice.
• Project staff and research fellows surviving without salaries for 90 days.
We celebrate Nobel dreams and technological self-reliance on public stages, but behind the laboratory doors, PIs spend 70% of their bandwidth begging finance desks to release sanctioned funds and apologizing to unpaid junior scholars.
Science does not fail in India due to a lack of intellect or ambition; it gets slowly suffocated by procedural inertia and financial apathy. If we cannot ensure basic salary timelines for young researchers, talking about global leadership is pure theater. 🎯☕📊🔬
#IndianAcademia #ResearchFunding #HigherEdRealities #SciencePolicy #PostDocStruggles #AcademicLeadership #SystemicReform
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Saurabh Todi retweeted
The harsh, unglamorous reality of running a research lab in India:
• 9 months spent navigating bureaucratic loops just to onboard a single postdoctoral fellow.
• Two nationally funded grants stuck in fiscal limbo, sanctioned on paper, zero cash flow in practice.
• Project staff and research fellows surviving without salaries for 90 days.
We celebrate Nobel dreams and technological self-reliance on public stages, but behind the laboratory doors, PIs spend 70% of their bandwidth begging finance desks to release sanctioned funds and apologizing to unpaid junior scholars.
Science does not fail in India due to a lack of intellect or ambition; it gets slowly suffocated by procedural inertia and financial apathy. If we cannot ensure basic salary timelines for young researchers, talking about global leadership is pure theater. 🎯☕📊🔬
#IndianAcademia #ResearchFunding #HigherEdRealities #SciencePolicy #PostDocStruggles #AcademicLeadership #SystemicReform
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One faces this issue in industrial clusters like Ludhiana too. First, there are limited locals available; if they are, they all want to emigrate out of India, many promising ones have left the state and ones left behind have to struggle with rising crime, drug issue. State hasn’t tried nearly enough to diversify its economy.
I returned home (Patiala) last year after spending 22 years outside of Punjab for higher education followed by a job at a national newsroom. I really thought coming back home would be great. But the last one year has been BAD. There is hardly any work and ZERO PROFESSIONALISM!
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This is one of the toughest adjustments when living with family after living alone for an extended period of time.
During latter, our problems are our alone and family members’ problems don’t reach us. But when living together, the two worlds collide and it’s a major challenge finding an acceptable equilibrium between the two. It often isn’t found unfortunately.
Living with family after 10 yrs & I struggle a lot with how no one is considerate of not letting their mental health issues ruin other people's mental health.
If you can deal with your issues, too bad, because others will dump theirs on to you. Your own issues are your defence.
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Saurabh Todi retweeted
🚨India released new Earthquake map
Now entire Himalayas in the highest earthquake danger zone for the first time ever.
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Not only is there decline in extreme poverty numbers, we have credible data of a rise in living standards of SC/ST families too!
Devesh Kapur conducted a study in which they measured the rise in living standards of SC/ST families from 1990-2007 and it's indisputable that they have risen up in their economic wellbeing.
And this was in 2007, when India still had noticeable poverty. So 20 years later, if this study was to be conducted again, we would expect the rise in living standards to be even higher.
See attached tables for details on how living standards have changed.
The decline in extreme poverty numbers maybe credible @surjitbhalla but I think @over2shailaja does have a point: we may need a credible standard of living index that may give a better sense of where we are in terms of transforming the lives of millions. Another more focused discussion (not debate) soon!🙏👍
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Thanks for the close reading @kejimao. We have also long argued that India must open to Chinese investment in non-sensitive sectors.
But I genuinely want to understand how are Chinese interests served by the blocking of Tunnel Boring Machines, fertilizers, Foxconn engineers, and the expansive recent controls against transfer of industrial technology?
At a time when India's position is changing, it is CPC that now seems to be acting less courageously.
This piece by Pranay Kotasthane and Bharath Reddy is well worth reading.
They point out that Chinese open-weight models run on Indian hardware/data centers can offer better data sovereignty and lower continuous dependency than US proprietary APIs.
In reality, China and India have broad scope for cooperation across many areas, and open-weight models are only one of them. The problem is that, for India, political rationality almost always overrides economic rationality when dealing with China.
This means that if India wants to gain from cooperation with China, the biggest challenges and obstacles come not from China itself, but from within India.
A serious misconception is that "standing up to the China challenge" is the ultimate display of courage, but the reality may be quite the opposite. At a time when anti-China rhetoric has become the politically safest and even most lucrative option, it takes far greater courage to objectively assess China’s strengths across various sectors and propose solutions that best serve India's interests.
I see exactly this kind of responsible, national-interest-driven courage in the work of Pranay Kotasthane and Bharath Reddy.
hindustantimes.com/opinion/l…
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Yep! People here just love to hate everything. Just incessant stream of bile on every possible issue and sometimes a complete non-issues.
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The problem is any standard that indicates transformative change gets discredited as not representative enough. That’s a bad faith argument.
We should aspire to a better standard but the success has to be measured against a globally accepted standard.
The decline in extreme poverty numbers maybe credible @surjitbhalla but I think @over2shailaja does have a point: we may need a credible standard of living index that may give a better sense of where we are in terms of transforming the lives of millions. Another more focused discussion (not debate) soon!🙏👍
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there is no magical way for us to become east asia, especially in the current global scenario, and if the AI scare hits our services exports, then it's going to get 10x challenging for us to cover capital and current account. no wonder our policymakers are panicking like it's end of the world
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this is what worries me most that we are hitting these structural constraints when our fiscal is at its best in a decade, CAD is at 1-1.5%, growth is decent, and FDI is around 100B. we need to ask what we have to offer to the world, and if the world is interested in that
Structural issues are real. I wrote about this in March. There’s no organic reason for an international investor to hold INR assets. That’s the problem!
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Saurabh Todi retweeted
The three 2020 farm laws (repealed in 2021) aimed to expand farmers’ options. The Trade and Commerce Act allowed sales outside APMC mandis without market fees, promoting freer inter-state trade and more buyer competition. The Agreement on Price Assurance Act created a national framework for written contract farming with pre-agreed prices, input support, and land protections, shifting market risk to sponsors. The Essential Commodities Amendment limited stock-limit powers except in extreme cases, exempting processors to encourage private investment in storage and processing. Together they sought higher prices, lower risk, and better infrastructure, especially for perishable crops, though critics feared MSP erosion and corporate dominance.
Have started sowing potatoes today.
To everyone who mocked or abused me for being a farmer, Tax free income, here’s a reality check. Today, a 50 kg bag of potatoes is selling for just ₹250.
Meanwhile, businesses sell 100 grams of fries for ₹100. Now decide for yourself who actually makes the bigger profit: the farmer or the business?
So far, I’ve already spent: ₹100 per bag just for cold storage of seed potatoes.
₹100 per bag on sowing.
That’s ₹200 already spent, with many more expenses still to come before harvest, including irrigation, fertilizers, labour, pesticides, transport, and more.
In the end, a farmer is often left with barely ₹5–10 profit on a 50 kg bag, if that.
Despite all this, farmers still don’t abuse anyone. We simply work hard, feed the nation, and hope for a fair return!
The day Punjab, India has large-scale food processing plants, farmers will finally be able to earn what they truly deserve. 😀🙏🏻
@MOFPI_GOI @ChouhanShivraj
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