Editorial 1: A note for New Delhi on dealing with ‘Trumperica’

Context

With the new U.S. President’s policies impacting immigration, technology and trade, India must count the cost to its economy.

Introduction

With a flourish of his pen, United States President Donald Trump waded through dozens of files within hours of being sworn in, with executive orders (EOs), revocation orders of Biden-era decisions, campaign commitments to the ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) base and exit orders from a number of multilateral agreements and organisations. The decisions, which the White House referred to as ‘100s of Executive actions in the first 100 hours to kick off America’s Golden Age’, will, no doubt, have lasting implications for the U.S and for the world.

• Year-on-Year improvement in ties: For India, that has seen a year-on-year improvement in ties with the U.S. for the past quarter-century, the visible signs from the Trump administration have been positive.
  • Notable events include India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to the Trump inauguration, the meeting of the Quad Foreign Ministers, and the bilateral meeting with his counterpart Marco Rubio, which was the new U.S. Secretary of State’s first.
  • This was followed by the Trump-Modi call.
• Closer analysis of economic impact: On closer analysis of the economic impact, however, these optics may be deceptive.
  • The issues that will most affect India, with the duopoly of immigration and taxes at the forefront, need detailed analysis.
• Preparations for upcoming visits: As New Delhi prepares for a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington, and Trump’s visit to India later this year, a detailed understanding of the issues at play is necessary.

The immigration crackdown

• Impact of Trump’s immigration policies on India: Mr. Trump’s specific orders on securing borders, guarding against “invasions” by illegal aliens, designating cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, and advanced vetting of thevisa issuance process on the one hand, as well as raids and arrests by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on the other make it clear that this is a major priority.
  • While New Delhi has reacted to these measures with sanguine statements on taking back all illegal immigrants who are verifiably Indian, it would be short-sighted not to see the deeper, three-pronged economic effect on India.
• Economic Impact on India: Indians are now the second largest group of citizens being granted U.S. citizenship legally (after Mexico) and have cornered a predominant share of H-1B visas; but they are also the third largest in terms of illegal entry.
  • Mr. Trump’s actions will affect not just thousands of Indians who undertake perilous journeys by air and sea, and then by foot over South and Central America and Canada to the U.S.’s land borders, but also those currently in the U.S..
  • A Pew Research analysis of ICE numbers says 7.25 lakh Indians are amongst about 14 million in the total undocumented migrants, with more than 18,000 Indians in detention centres on a “final removal list” for deportation.

Three-Pronged Economic Impact

• Loss of Remittances and Unemployment Crisis: If the Trump administration does escalate deportation flights — as it did in its first term — over the next four years, India will have to deal with the loss of remittances and provide for the returnees, adding to the unemployment crisis in India.
• Economic Costs of Refusal: As Mr. Trump has shown by successfully strong-arming Colombia into accepting deportations without conditions, or face the imposition of 25% tariffs instead, any refusal to do so would also incur economic costs.
• Impact on White-Collar Workers: These migrant numbers refer largely to blue-collar workers, but other measures by Mr. Trump are also aimed at the white-collar, middle-level managers, engineers and other professionals.
• Mr. Trump’s executive order to end citizenship birth rights may be struck down by the judiciary, but the message from the move, that follows restrictions on H-1B spousal work privileges in his first term, is clear — the welcome mat for those seeking to move permanently and raise families in the U.S.is being removed.
• This will require a reassessment of India’s own education and skilling policies to ensure that all the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates who would be impacted can be absorbed.

Trade and the weaponisation of tariff

• Impact of Trump’s trade policy plans: If the impact of immigration actions takes some imagination, the result of Mr. Trump’s trade policy plansneeds none whatsoever, going by his pronouncements and the harsh punitive measures he undertook in his first term.
  • On inauguration day, Mr. Trump’s EOs and Exit Orders included an “America First Trade Policy” and a directive to Mr. Rubio to implement an “America First Foreign Policy”.
  • India must be prepared for how it will respond to the U.S.’s weaponisation of tariffs as a means to enforce Trumpian diktats.
  • During Trump 1.0, New Delhi quietly accepted the withdrawal of its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) status, and Mr. Trump’s order to end all oil imports from Iran and Venezuela.
  • In Trump 2.0, such actions might not only enable the U.S.’s bully-tactics further, but it may also incentivise others such as China to follow suit.
• U.S.-China Relationship and impact on India: The U.S.-China relationship has confused many over the past week: Mr. Trump’s threat of 10% tariffs on China is far lower than the 60% he had said he would impose, while his invitation to China’s President Xi Jinping for the inaugural, a U-turn on the TikTok ban and Mr. Rubio’s contention that the “US does not want Taiwanese independence” could upset many calculations.
  • While previous attempts by earlier Presidents for a U.S.-China “G-2” have been short-lived, Mr. Trump’s description of his call with Mr. Xi on January 17, where they had agreed to do “everything possible to make the world more peaceful and safe,” suggests he is also attracted to some version of the idea, which will affect an Indian economy now primed for the U.S.-China rivalry to escalate, bringing in an inflow of investments.
• U.S. withdrawal from international agreements and its cost to India: In addition, Washington’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Global Tax Deal, the Paris accord on climate changes, the freezing of USAID funding worldwide, and its revocation of previous mandates for green businesses, electric vehicles and wind and solar power will also carry a cost for India, that had been promised by the U.S. of funding for its development and energy transition.

On an ‘AI-Pocalypse’

Economic Consequences of Trump 2.0’s AI Measures

• • The biggest economic consequences of Trump 2.0’s measures, will however come from his overdrive on artificial intelligence (AI).
  • In the inaugural seating plan, tech tycoons eclipsed top members of the Trump cabinet on the dais.
  • The launch of the $500 billion Stargate AI Infrastructure project by Mr. Trump, to be built by a group of tech companies, was another marker of this priority for the new administration.
  • It is conceivable for Mr. Trump, that encouraging investments in AI is the stone that kills two birds — taking the U.S. to the top of the technology game in the face of the latest “DeepSeek” competition from China, and also reducing the need for foreign migrant ‘techies’.
  • While some of the ‘labour disruptions’ from the use of AI will simply require repurposing tech professionals for new tasks, the massive scale of replacement that some tech leaders predict with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), will make them completely redundant.
  • Listen carefully when Google CEO Sundar Pichai says that more than 25% of new code at the company is already generated by AI, although it is reviewed by engineers at present.
  • And pay heed to Mark Zuckerberg when he says that AI will begin to replace mid-level engineers at Metaand other tech companies from this year.

Impact on India’s Tech Professionals and Services Sector

• • India’s trade policy, free trade agreement negotiations, and the walkout from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership over the last decade have been largely driven by the logic of promoting Indian services.
  • IT-BPM (Information Technology–Business process management) accounts for 55% of GDP, and about 40% of India’s exports.
  • If the big tech wave that first sent hundreds of thousands of successful Indian-Americans to U.S. shores from the 1960s was necessitated by the U.S.’s desire to outrun the Soviet Union on technology after its launch of the Sputnik satellite, this new big tech tsunami could instead drown out the hopes of the new generation of Indian tech professionals wishing to migrate.

Conclusion

Despite commentary suggesting a distancing of foreign policy from the problems of Indian migrants, the sheer numbers involved mean that the government cannot. As a result, New Delhi must engage with what all these tech, trade and migration trends portend for India’s future, and the economic concerns it must factor into in its diplomatic negotiations with “Trumperica”.

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Editorial 2: Four years on, Myanmar and its continuing nightmare

Context

The deepening crisis in the country seems to have been forgotten or ignored by most nations; Myanmar is fragmenting.

Introduction

Four years after the military coup on February 1, 2021, Myanmar, ‘the sick man of Southeast Asia,’ continues to traverse a dismal path. The nation is fragmenting; there is no peace and stability; the economy is in ruins; the people are suffering; and the international community has other headaches to worry about. Myanmar’s deepening crisis has been forgotten or ignored by most nations, except perhaps the member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and neighbours such as China and India.

A stocktaking

• Armed battles across Myanmar: The past four years have brought armed battles to homes, villages, and cities, with government troopsfighting against their own people.
  • The resistance is represented by a variety of ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and people’s defence forces (PDFs) in all parts of the country — north, south, east, and west, including the heartland where the majority Bamar community lives.
  • The resistance is broadly coordinated by the unrecognised National Unity Government (NUG).
• Costs of conflict: The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) estimated that, as of January 29, 2025, the military arrested 28,405 people, of whom 21,683 were still detained.
  • The military has killed 6,224 people, with around 2,900 treated as “need to be verified killed persons”.
  • Over 3.3 million people are now internally displaced across the country.
• Accusations against the Junta: Independent sources have spoken of “indiscriminate attacks” and “unlawful killings” by the junta, which are characterized by their brutality and inhumanity.
  • Four years of continuous fighting have caused untold damage to military personnel, resulting in killings, injuries, desertions, and a general loss of morale.
  • Professor Zachary M. Abuza of the National War College, Washington DC, wrote: “The junta is entering the fifth year of military rule with its power rapidly slipping away”.
• Ongoing war of attrition: The junta forces and the resistance are locked in a ceaseless war of attrition, in which neither side can be a victor.
• Myanmar Divided into Three Zones
  • The country stands divided into three zones:
    • The central part remains broadly under military control.
    • Peripheral areas are generally with the resistance.
  • Armed battles and aerial bombardments by the military occur in civilian regions located in both zones.
• Ongoing struggles: Inner demons continue to haunt the people of Myanmar.

ASEAN’s role

• Crisis background: The crisis began in early 2021 when the military did not like the results of the elections held in November 2020 that gave Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy victory.
  • The 10-year-old experiment in limited democracy was rudely terminated as tanks rolled into the streets.
• Military’s preferred solution: To end the impasse, the military’s preferred solution is ironically to hold another election.
  • The generals tried to do this last year, but they failed.
  • The question remains, can they succeed this year?
  • With at least half the country outside their control, elections, if held, will not represent the views of the entire populace.
  • Moreover, if held under the present conditions of continuing violence and suppression, will they confer legitimacy on the next government that must necessarily be friendly to the military? Doubts exist.
• UN’s View on elections: United Nations experts, led by Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, offered a forthright view.
  • They state: “You cannot hold an election when you deposed a democratic government in an unconstitutional coup and continue to arbitrarily arrest, detain, disappear, torture, and execute opposition leaders.”
  • They warn that the notion that elections will resolve the political crisis is considered “delusional” by seasoned observers.
• ASEAN’s role and challenges: The UN has outsourced the responsibility of mediation to ASEAN.
  • ASEAN did what it could, but its Five-Point Consensus (5PC) remains stillborn because the cessation of hostilities and the commencement of national dialogue are unacceptable to the warring parties.
  • Recently, ASEAN Foreign Ministers advised the military government to prioritize dialogue over holding elections, but this advice has been brushed aside.

The neighbours in the picture

• Challenges in Resolving Myanmar’s crisis: The UN and ASEAN are unable to resolve matters for Myanmar.
  • Some experts argue that Myanmar’s neighbours, namely China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Laos, must do something tangible, as the ongoing crisis directly threatens their interests.
• Obstacles to Neighbouring countries’ response: Myanmar’s borders with India and Bangladesh are now controlled by EAOs (Ethnic Armed Organizations), not the government.
  • There is a lack of trust between India and China.
  • India-Bangladesh relations are under serious stress.
  • As a result, the neighbours are unable to develop an internal consensus on how to persuade both the government and opposition to move from conflict to peace.
• Role of Thailand: Thailand, the only big neighbour and an ASEAN member, is uniquely positioned to help.
  • However, Thailand faces limitations that it cannot overcome.

Conclusion

Meanwhile, China has substantially increased its influence since the coup. It will continue to be a dominant player, especially as the West shows declining interest in Myanmar. China is “the only outside power with the means, capacity, and motivation to influence in Myanmar’s internal conflicts,” wrote Bertil Lintner recently. Hence, the inescapable conclusion is that the people of Myanmar should stop hoping that help will come from the outside. If their leaders are unable to talk rather than let their guns do the talking, sadly, they, the people, will continue paying a hefty price for their leaders’ folly.