Thread by @TakshashilaInst

We're hosting the authors of our New World Order project in a round table discussion this morning. @pranaykotas and @AKanisetti are taking the gathering through how and why this project began.

"We began the project back in 2014. The New World Order discussion wasn't a big thing back then. There is a new world order emerging, and we started this project with the aim of finding India's place in it." @pranaykotas

For those interested in reading more about the project, here's a ready reckoner:
slideshare.net/TakshashilaIns…

Avinash M Tripathi @qfint is now talking about economic strategies for a resurgent India. "Globalization without its intellectual justification will not survive - a case must be made for global integration. India must become a knowledge-producing economy," he says.

Shruti Rajagopalan @srajagopalan argues, "Before we talk about global trade, we haven’t unlocked the problem of the domestic signal market."

"There are some industries which should be globalized for their own benefits. Take Indian farmers who have a difficult time in the domestic market - they want to gain greater access to the global market," explains @srajagopalan

Discussant Anupam Manur @anupammanur asks, "What kind of policy framework can encourage local innovation in India?"
"Knowledge is a public good - by definition, it will have to be financed by the state at some level. Knowledge is also a global public good," responds @qfint

Shruti Rajagopalan @srajagopalan is talking about how India can use its numbers. "How do we make network goods more jobs-intensive? We need labour law reforms that can create opportunities. We need to stop regulating and focus on how we can distribute the producer-surplus better"

"Urbanisation and network goods have an overlap. Some markets don't need network goods to be localised. Within network goods, there is a need for bifurcation. The first step is not to regulate the network good and tell it what to do - it's to make its services more discreet."

Surya Prakash BS @SuryaPrakashBS is now talking about his segment, Reimagining Revenue. "The idea here is that people who use services should pay for it. I'm proposing that certain taxes be priced scientifically and be derived from the person who uses it directly."

"It needs to be sequenced with other things - you can’t have a monopoly of one service provider, so you need to break it in order to have good competition. It will have to also be balanced with reforms in the conventional tax space," says @SuryaPrakashBS

"India is really well-aligned for user fees. We have a pretty good model across income brackets. And user fees tend to be more poor-friendly. Here, you're paying for exactly what you want. User charges also lend themselves to dynamic pricing," says @srajagopalan

Alok Prasanna Kumar is speaking about reforms. "At the end of the day, despite the discussion amongst think tanks and public policy individuals, the challenge would be to get the government and government individuals to understand the necessary steps and to follow them through."

"What is going wrong is that somewhere along the line, these institutions have not kept pace with the changes that have been taking place. What the anti-defection law has done is that it has made parliament into simply a place where votes are counted," he says.

"There is a centralization tendency at every level of government, which makes these positions lucrative, but does not equip to develop specialization and be sufficiently independent," he says. Alok is now running through his 12 point reform framework.

Shambhavi Naik @shams1085 talks about how India can lead a biotechnology revolution. "There are three things involved: tools and technologies, process and applications. We need good basic infrastructure - but this is a different and novel approach to science," she says.

"Some of the things that fit into the way this revolution will go forward are funding, diagnostics, precision medicine and bio-printing. The ship has sailed for India in a lot of ways. The question is do we catch up, or just import these technologies," she says.

Krithi Karanth @KrithiKaranth is now talking about conserving nature amidst a billion people. "India is one of the few places in the world with the most biodiversity. But we have some of the least amount of land set aside for wildlife," she says.

"Only 5% of land in India is legally protected for wildlife as opposed to the US and China at 15% and Bhutan at 30%. But we can take it to 10%. We have challenges like conservation vs development, mitigating conflict and a huge opportunity for promoting wildlife-friendly tourism"

We can build wildlife-friendly tracts of land, says @KrithiKaranth. "There is a lot of opportunity due to people leaving agricultural tracts in order to go to the cities - these tracts can be repurposed to help wildlife. There are strategic ways to repurpose this land."

We'll be back after lunch with more interesting discussions.

Constantino Xavier @ConstantinoX is now presenting his segment, "Patterns of Power: India and the Region". "India is less integrated with its neighbourhood today than it was in the 1950s," he says.

India has liberal roots, even under the colonial system. It has a high state fragility index and has a very difficult environment for a democracy to survive, mostly due to its neighbours being more authoritarian, says @ConstantinoX

In the next 25 years, India will have to work in partnership to earn status, move from denial to delivery and encourage democracy and good governance, he explains.

Kunal Singh @d_extrovert is now talking about his paper Balancing India's Security and its Quest for a Multipolar World. "Despite a bipolar world working to India's disadvantage, a multi-polar world is also not ideal if China maintains a significant power advantage of over India"

"Essentially what matters for India is not just the number of poles, but also the distribution of power among those poles," explains @d_extrovert

"For India specifically, in the current scenario, you need the US to balance against China - it won’t work without the US. This is a complementary thing. The moment India has a better relationship with the US, it is supported more," says Kunal Singh @d_extrovert

Ameya Naik @Kianayema is now talking about an Indian vision for a rules-based international order. "At this point, we need to identify how we maintain or protect our interests. One such way can be to build coalitions, but the specifics of this are complex," he says.

"First, There are few powerful states who share our interests who would potentially be in a coalition with us," explains @Kianayema

We should invest in building rules and institutions - this is long-term:
We need to build:
Legitimacy - is a resource in international and domestic politics
Reputation - is a resource (especially in negotiations)
Consistency - is a virtue in international law

"When a state has done an illegitimate act, it's possible for a group of states to react and reduce the cost of building a coalition due to legitimate reasons to act. If US power wanes, effective international rule enforcement will be more important in such a multipolar world."

Manoj Kewalramani @theChinaDude is now talking about his segment, Managing the China Relationship. "The defining characteristics between India and China's relationship include competing interests, and deep and growing asymmetry of power."

Manoj @theChinaDude proposes a four pronged approach to manage India's relationship with China. This includes deeper civil society interactions, collaboration, balancing our relations with them and addressing the asymmetry and deterrence with raising the costs of conflict.

"We should be doing all this irrespective of the New World Order scenarios. There is instability for China coming down the road. This would help deter China even more at the moment if we're able to raise costs of conflict," says @theChinaDude

"The shift from Xi Jinping to someone else will be a big stress on the Chinese. There may not be a complete collapse, because Chinese society and economy is different. But there will be deep elite friction," says Manoj @theChinaDude

Anirudh Kanisetti @AKanisetti is now talking about his paper How India can be a Player in the Information Domain. "Information warfare includes Russian meddling in the 2016 us elections, Iran's IUVM (Iran has been cloning websites and making them subtly pro-Iran)," he says.

"What we should do to combat information warfare is create laws and regulations regarding the structure of the internet, encourage fact-checking and come out with unified cyberwarfare doctrines and encourage the cybersecurity industry," says @AKanisetti

Akshay Alladi @akshayalladi is now talking about his paper, Small Bets, Big Payoffs. He's looking at what initiatives would have the highest payoffs in these new world order scenarios. "Uncertainty and disruption is potentially good for challengers vs incumbents," he says.

"What is a small bet? It's a small investment initially. The small investment should help build familiarity and some capability. It should be possible to see leading indicators that show that the less likely scenario is emerging," says @akshayalladi

Akshay Alladi @akshayalladi then talks about the small bets India can make in 8 scenarios. These include military interventions, diplomacy, soft power projection and becoming a global pool of talent, among others.

We've wrapped up our day-long round table on our New World Order project. All the authors who spoke today will be writing papers which we will compile into a book. Watch this space for updates.

In the meantime, if you'd like to read more about our New World Order project, here's the discussion document we published earlier this year:
takshashila.org.in/new-world-order