This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: “India’s Digital Transformation”
Marc Filippino Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, December 20th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
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Prices of all but one metal are down this year. And our defense and security correspondent tells us about his experience in a Hamas tunnel.
John Paul Rathbone: It was hot, humid, and oppressive.
Marc Filippino In addition, India has been reshaped a lot under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Our on-site office manager examines how generation is transforming the country. My call is Marc Filippino. And here’s the news you want to start the day.
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Copconsistent has been all the rage this year. It is up 2. 5% in 2023. It stands at $8,600 per tonne, putting it on track to end this year as the highest-performing commercial metal. So why the increase in price per tonne? Well, disruptions in production have created a contraction. In Latin America, there were mining disturbances that reduced production forecasts. But it’s an exception in a complicated year for all metals. They have been criticized for high interest rates, which are pushing up the dollar, making those products more expensive for importers.
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The tunnels that pass under Gaza are a real challenge for Israel. The underground network provides shelter for Hamas fighters from Israeli airstrikes. And the tunnels are huge. The network is the length of the London Underground. Recently, our defense correspondent, John Paul Rathbone, had the chance to see one of those tunnels. He went with the Israel Defense Forces and now he joins me in relaying what he saw. Hello J. P.
John Paul Rathbone Hello, Marc.
Marc Filippino So tell me a little bit about the tunnel that you were in, JP. What was it like?
John Paul Rathbone: So the tunnel was about 400 meters from Gaza’s border with Israel. According to the IDF, this is the largest tunnel discovered so far. It was large enough to be compatible with a car. It was made of reinforced concrete. There were electrical wires on one side and obviously a ventilation system. We only got to about a hundred meters deep and it was hot, sweaty and oppressive. According to the IDF, it descends and constitutes a kind of large tunnel that connects, through other smaller tunnels, with a labyrinth of the large underground tunnel that Hamas has dug into the sandstone beneath Gaza.
Marc Filippino: And what did the IDF say about this tunnel that you visited?How was it built and what is the importance of the project?
John Paul Rathbone: Yes, we were shown a video purportedly of Mohammed Sinwar, who is the brother of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza. And the task was so great that they put him in charge of it. And the IDF’s position is that Hamas has diverted budget that may have only been used to build hospitals and other amenities for civilians, but instead has devoted those resources to building what is an impressive engineering cadre.
Marc Filippino Now, what kind of role did tunnels like this play in the broader military confrontation between the IDF and Hamas?
So this is Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s technological superiority, and in the tunnels the air force has no effect. Technology has very limited effects. And it’s a real dilemma because Hamas leaders can hide there, their fighters can hide there. They can get out of IDF lines. And how to address it is at the heart of the military’s current situation. You can bomb everything around you to pieces and seal the tunnels that way, but that way you destroy all of Gaza and end up with massive civilian casualties, which is what we’re seeing now. Or you see them employing ground forces and working their way through buildings bit by bit, but this exposes IDF ground forces to attack. So that’s the dilemma.
Marc Filippino And that experience, JP, joining the IDF and the tunnel, how did it replace your view of war?
John Paul Rathbone I think one of the things that I learned has nothing to do with the tunnel, but really to do with the environment around it. And in the distance you can always hear this constant thunder of shelling. And when you leave Gaza, when you’re back in Israel proper, Gaza doesn’t really exist in anyone’s mind. The casualties aren’t really covered in the TV shows. So it’s out of sight and out of mind. And I spoke to one Israeli reservist, a young woman who’d been a civilian who’d been called up. She told me how upset and tormented, in fact, she was by the civilian death rate in Gaza. But that is very much a minority opinion.
Marc Filippino John Paul Rathbone is the defence and security correspondent for the Financial Times. Thank you, JP.
John Paul Rathbone: Thank you.
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Marc Filippino India is one of the world’s fastest-growing big economies. This is thanks in part to the rapid technological progress promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his predecessors. Nearly all of India’s adult population, well over a billion people, are connected to the internet, and IT is one of the country’s most successful exports. But critics point out many Indians live in extreme poverty and they lack basic services. In the first of a three-part series, the FT’s John Reed visits the north-east part of India, and he sees how the country is grappling with this combination of high tech and low tech.
John Reed voice clipIt’s a typical early evening in Varanasi, India’s holy city on the river Ganges. This is a major pilgrimage site. People are chopping wood for funeral pyres, which are wafting out pungent smoke. Bodies in shrouds are being carried on stretchers through the alleys as people chant the name of the Hindu deity, Lord Ram. (Devotees chanting) Above the cremation steps, shops are selling the wood that’s used to burn the corpses. Devout Hindus believe that if you’re cremated in Varanasi, you can escape the endless cycle of rebirth. But if you look closely enough, signs of the new India intrude. (Devotees singing)
On the stairs leading to the river, merchants selling cremation needed pieces accept cashless payments, exchanging a phone number or scanning a QR code. (Low beep) One of the merchants here tells my colleague Jyotsna Singh that most of his customers now use their phones to make payments. (Shopkeeper speaking in the local language)
What makes this possible is that everyone in India has an ID linked to biometrics, such as fingerprints or retina scans. These are part of India’s digital backbone, what the Modi government calls the India Stack. A short distance from the holy river, about two dozen people are sitting in front of large data monitors, with a panoramic photo of the Ganges at sunset in the background. This is the control room for Varanasi’s Smart City project. It’s one part of Modi’s tech vision for a connected and networked India. (PA system announcement)
At the front of the room, a giant video monitor occupies an entire wall. It shows CCTV footage from across the city, adding steps to the riverbank, data on traffic patterns and the existing number of Covid cases in the city.
Deivasigamani Vasudevan voice clip The command control centre came into existence in February 2019, but did become fully functional in August 2020.
Voice clip via John Reed This is Deivasigamani Vasudevan, Information Systems Manager.
Deivasigamani Vasudevan voice clip And that went to a Covid war room where we can assess each and every patient, hospitals, foster homes, distribution of fundamental needs, medication management, ambulance management, and increased location. It all happened from here.
John Reed’s Voice Video India has places like these in about a hundred cities. As more and more people move to urban centers, Smart Cities’ task aims to improve life in those centers and prevent crime. Vasudevan displays a smart map that monitors traffic violations. The system, powered through multiple cameras, has facial popularity capability. It features a logo that nicely blends old and new: a saffron-colored circle representing Hinduism, a trident, a face on top, and the third eye of the god Shiva.
Deivasigamani Vasudevan voice clip So all of the projects are focused on preserving the heritage. Even our wireless cameras and surveillance cameras, CCTV cameras, we find it, they are very nicely camouflaged under a heritage lamppost. You won’t even see it. And one of the important thing is we laid down our own optical fibre network of 400km around the city. We have state-of-the art data centre to process the data.
John Reed voice clip India championed its digital inclusion model during its G20 presidency this year, but there’s a dark side to Digital India. Some worry about increasing surveillance and Aadhaar, the digital ID system, has fallen prey to several hacks in which the data of hundreds of millions of people leaked online. Modi critics also say the India Stack is one more way of distracting attention from the low-tech problems plaguing the country, around things like infrastructure, clean water, decent schools and public health. Vishwambhar Nath Mishra is one of these. He’s a Hindu priest and engineering professor at Banaras University. He says the sewage system in Varanasi is no longer fit for purpose, and the river Ganges is heavily polluted.
Voice clip of Vishwambhar Nath Mishra Day after day, the volume of raw sewage discharged into the river continues to rise. It may sound good, but the truth is that the patient is dying and you are simply giving them fancy clothes and a fancy appearance. This is not going to work.
John Reed Voice Video Back at the Ganges cremation sites, the salesman cuts through all the techno. (The seller speaks in the local language. )
Adeja tells us that while digital Indian mobile payments are fine, Varanasi lacks basic facilities, and the renovations politicians have been promising just aren’t happening. Varanasi is Modi’s constituency. When he was campaigning for his first term in office in 2014, he promised to modernise the city and make it the spiritual capital of the world. His vision for India and for Varanasi will be put to the test for the voters in early 2024 when he seeks a third term.
For the FT News Briefing, I’m John Reed. Special thanks to Jyotsna Singh, who helped report and produce this article.
Marc Filippino Up next in our series on India, we’ll head to the southern part of the country. We’ll look at how India is trying to find jobs for its massive population.
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You can read more about all those stories on FT. com by clicking the links in our screennotes. This was his daily FT press conference. Be sure to check back for the latest business news.
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