hmm, this Economist article from earlier this month shows just how bad things are in India:
https://archive.is/bttaV
The last thing india needs is more bureaucracy and regulations and restrictions on personal freedoms (not to mention a free press which they've plummeted since the current PM's party took control).
>To put it in perspective, it will have a generating capacity far greater than that of the Three Gorges dams in China and Itaipu in Brazil. With a projected capacity to produce 40.000 megawatts of power, the Grand Inga Dam is more than just an ambitious megaproject.
> Second point the Indian leader arrested was involved in huge scams in liquor and policy.
unproven, and the timing could not have been more suspicious:
"Amnesty International, an international human rights group said that the arrest of Kejriwal and the "freezing of Indian National Congress’ bank accounts", a few weeks before India's general elections showed "the authorities’ blatant failure to uphold the country’s international human rights obligations".[45][46]"
> Despite extradition treaty Canada has become a safe harbor of terrorists and refused to extradite terrorists even after repeated requests by India.
How about despite an extradition treaty, India has never submitted a claim against these so called terrorists and like normal democracies use the courts to argue their case for extradition. In Canada the courts are generally far more independent than those in India. Note - speech calling for a separate state by itself is not terrorism in any country that values free speech (heck half of Quebec regularly does this), only calling or acting for violence means crossing that line, i haven't seen any evidence for the latter (but I'm open to be proven wrong - from independent credible sources unlike those you listed).
> Reversing the trend ? Are you kidding me.
Yes, according to the article I originally cited and others, India has become less democratic. Caste violence and religious tension (i.e. chants of "love jihad") seems to have gotten worse - true to India's founders video in the 1950's I shared of democracy in India.
He also bought one of india's last major independent traditional media outlets (NDTV) years ago. The comparison I can think of is if MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News were all run like Fox news in terms of alignment with Trump. In a country where 25% the population is illiterate this is especially concerning as a significant portion of the electorate can only access their news from traditional media (TV, radio).
I saw an interesting interview from 50's by one of India's founders on the topic of democracy in India: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WyWUlIbcRH8 . It seems India still has a long way to go, and the current government is reversing the trend.
I really hope the west thinks long and hard about foreign investment in/free trade with India without preconditions (although these are doubtful from the US under the current administration, maybe the EU can step up). The west had this idea that opening up trade with China would make the country more democratic and free, but it had the opposite impact (the extra resources only made things worse in these areas at home and aborad, especially after Xi's takeover in 2014).
These 2 failures could have been easily avoidable both times.
I really wish there was a push in the US government to create and stockpile plutonium-238 and ensure it's readily available, subsidized, and offered for all US probes/rovers/other scientific instruments in space (whether it be for NASA's use who currently has to ration because of how little they have left, or for private use after approval).
Like, why aren't all of space scientific instruments RTG powered like voyager 1 which is still providing useful scientific data 47+ years later. Think about all of the lost scientific insights over the past few decades because either NASA (because of a low stockpile) or private companies like intuitive (from their 2 failures) end up choosing solar panels for their source of power with no other alternative.
Besides the fact that solar panels can fail if they aren't pointed a certain way, they usually offer far less power, and are subject to radiation, micro meteor, or dust damage. All of these are the main reason why these instruments tend to have a far shorter lifespan than voyager 1.
This is so damn true. I wish people would stop taking companies in China at face value about any of their claims if the CCP has a vested interest in for geopolitical and economic reasons. Bytedance is another example.
It's telling that "South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing user data with the owner of TikTok in China." - source: >https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gex0x87g4o
I mean it's not like an entity that bypasses sanctions would ever be open about it, as doing so would immediately result in more sanctions and the closing of loopholes. What does the CCP have to gain? What does it have to gain by stealing hundreds of billons of western IP in the past? 4 things: Power, prestige, riches, and the means to keep their power. This has been going in since at least 2004 (see Nortel case: https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-milita...)
The US winning the AI race was a clear threat to those 4 things.Hurting investor sentiment by a) distilling a model which cost billions to develop, and b)spreading propaganda and muddying the waters about costs, gpus, etc, helps them to narrow the gap. Making it open source was not done out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of self interest - another attempt to deflect from their actions (further muddying the waters) and divide the public against taking any further punitive action against the state (given the connection re: SK claims-tiktok algorithms were probably on overdrive spreading their bs) .
I respect this man for calling out the Ambani family (you may have remembered them from the extremely lavish wedding of one their sons earlier this year) for owning one of the most expensive homes ever (a luxury condo just for the family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building) which overlooks one of the worlds biggest slums :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi
"Tata Group former chairman Ratan Tata said Antilia is an example of rich Indians' lack of empathy for the poor.[47] Tata said, "The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him and asking how he can make a difference. If he cannot, then it's sad because this country needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways of mitigating the hardship that people have.[47] It makes me wonder why someone would do that. That's what revolutions are made of."[48]"
The Ambani family is so influential in india (a symptom of a very big problem in India re: extreme levels of poverty and income inequality and political corruption) that zuckerberg even bought the son a 30 million dollar wedding gift (private jet):
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iPlzRBpo0Gg
Anyways, Ratan Tata life story seems to be a genuine rags to riches story without the lavish flaunting of wealth or outright corruption to obtain the wealth in the context of an extremely poor (for at least half of indians)/corrupt country.
The last thing india needs is more bureaucracy and regulations and restrictions on personal freedoms (not to mention a free press which they've plummeted since the current PM's party took control).