Mass demonstrations have erupted in Turkey after the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. Thousands have gone to the streets to protest the silencing of President Erdogan’s most obvious opponent for the 2028 elections.
What does this public anger tell us about the regime’s current strength in Turkey? And are there through lines with other far right governments world-wide?
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Next week is the Eid holiday here in Egypt, which means this newsletter will also be taking a break. Three key developments I’m hoping to track when we’re back are India’s approach to proposed Trump tariffs, New Delhi’s evolving stance on China and developments on the delimitation question (discussed previously here). In the interim, here is our regular link round-up:
Is Modi Turning Over a New Leaf With China? (Michael Kugelman, Foreign Policy)
“A recent podcast interview with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has garnered extensive attention in India. His three-hour appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast was a strikingly long engagement for a notoriously media-shy leader. Modi discussed foreign policy extensively, but what stood out most were his comments about China.
Modi spoke positively about New Delhi’s relations with its main strategic competitor, which have been especially tense since a 2020 border clash in Ladakh…
All this said, Modi’s comments shouldn’t be mistaken for an announcement of rapprochement. India and China are still at odds over so much: China’s close alliance with Pakistan, India’s security partnership with the United States, the Dalai Lama’s longtime presence in India, and China’s strong naval presence in the Indian Ocean region (among other matters).”
China ties — beware conciliation without deterrence (Arzan Tarapore, The Hindu, paywall)
“It is not yet clear if Mr. Modi’s comments were simply a new tone, or if they presage a substantive policy shift. New Delhi itself has probably not decided, and may just be keeping its options open. It may be returning to the more conciliatory approach of the earlier days of the Modi government, when New Delhi hoped to find a mutually-productive relationship, holding summits with China’s President Xi Jinping to find areas of policy alignment. At the same time, the India-China rivalry is structural and abiding. Just days after Mr. Modi’s podcast appearance, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, met with senior commanders from India’s Quad partners, Australia, Japan, and the United States….
The risk of a stabilisation policy is that it gives New Delhi an excuse to keep putting off overdue investments in modernisation or organisational reforms. That would play right in to Beijing’s hands. For India to have military options in the future, it must invest in military power today. Military capabilities take inordinate time to field — as recent news stories have reiterated again and again, building submarines and developing fighter aircraft take years, if not decades.
In the interim, the Indian military should continue to pursue operational cooperation with its partners, regardless of Washington’s unpredictability or New Delhi’s tactical shifts in tone. Exercises in the field and on the high seas build interoperability and Indian capability. Further coordination of operations and plans can build Indian capability even more, without binding New Delhi or any of its partners to any particular policy.”
China is trying to reshape global supply chains (
, ).
“While tariffs and market access are motivating Chinese firms to build new plants abroad, how they’re going about this is not driven by economic interests alone. Beijing is trying to shape the global expansion of Chinese manufacturers, including which countries they invest in and how. Beijing is encouraging Chinese companies to build plants in “friendly” countries while discouraging them from investing in others in a kind of “industrial diplomacy.”
…
India represents the most striking case of Beijing’s effort to shape the international behavior of Chinese firms. After a series of violent border clashes culminating in 2020-2021, India clamped down on investment from China. Now across a number of industries, Beijing seems to be discouraging Chinese firms making future plans to invest in India while also limiting the flow of workers and equipment.”
Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India (Viola Zhou and Nilesh Christopher, Rest of World)
Foxconn — also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry — has been investing heavily in its iPhone factory in Sunguvarchatram. But with the factory’s higher material costs and a greater percentage of defective phones, the company has struggled to replicate the cutthroat efficiency it is known for, according to people familiar with the matter. As a result, the iPhones produced by Foxconn in Sunguvarchatram have always been less profitable than those made in China, two people close to the company told Rest of World. Foxconn did not respond to requests for comment.
In late August, Rest of World visited Sunguvarchatram, where Foxconn and other Apple suppliers were working at full throttle ahead of the iPhone 15 launch. We spoke with more than two dozen assembly line workers, technicians, engineers, and managers, all of whom requested anonymity or pseudonyms to avoid being identified by their employers.
They detailed the successes, struggles, and cultural clashes that, over the past year or so, have played out on one of the world’s most consequential factory floors. In China, Foxconn demands long days, high targets, and minimal delays and mistakes — all of which proved difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in India.
India’s $23 billion PLI scheme to rival China factories to lapse after it disappoints (Sarita Singh, Shivangi Acharya; Reuters).
“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has decided to let lapse a $23 billion program to incentivize domestic manufacturing, just four years after it launched the effort to woo firms away from China, according to four government officials.
The scheme will not be expanded beyond the 14 pilot sectors and production deadlines will not be extended despite requests from some participating firms, two of the officials said.”
Is India Ready for a Warming World? (Aditya Valiathan Pillai, Tamanna Dalal, Ishan Kukreti, Alexandra Kassinis, Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, Escandita Tewari, Navroz K. Dubash; Sustainable Futures Collaborative)
India eyes tariff cut on more than half of US imports to shield its exports, sources say (Sarita Chaganti Singh, Aftab Ahmed and Manoj Kumar, Reuters)
See also: If scrapping Google Tax is quid, what is quo, for which quid is being given away? and India, US trade talks may go beyond tariffs.
The growing burden of state subsidies (Kishan Narayan, Ideas for India).
Overall, we see that revenue deficits have become persistent, and fiscal space has shrunk dramatically. States with revenue deficits are spending over 20% of their revenue expenditure on subsidies, while their fiscal space1 has shrunk to less than 50% of revenue receipts. Committed expenditures – including salaries, pensions, and interest payments – now consume over 80% of revenue receipts in states like Punjab (81.5%) and Kerala (71.8%).2 This leaves limited room for developmental spending, a concern highlighted by recent analysis by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI, 2022).
How do political families reproduce power: evidence from Maharashtra, India (Ajinkya Mujumdar, Rahul Verma; Commonwealth & Comparative Politics).
India: The Challenge of Contrasted Regional Dynamics (Christophe Jaffrelot, Vignesh Rajahmani, Neal Bharadwaj; Institut Montaigne).
“The growing gap between the North and the South will foster tensions. Second, the economic policies followed by the Modi government since 2014 will be more and more discussed in this very context: while they replicate those of Gujarat, there is an alternative "model" epitomized by Tamil Nadu that is supported by the opposition on behalf of a more inclusive and human resources-oriented development strategy. The success story that is Tamil Nadu may attract more and more supporters—at the expense of the "Gujarat model"—because of the rise in unemployment and impoverishment of the lower-middle class.”
Can’t Make This Up
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