24-10-2021

SUNDAy, ocToBER 24, 2021
4
Why India, Taiwan should strengthen ties
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Value-adding
agro-industries
One thing which continues to favour
Bangladesh in its export trade is its
comparative advantage in the production
of certain products for exporting them to the
world's markets. Value-addition to agricultural
produces for export happen to be one such
hugely prospective area.
But it does not seem that even a small part of
the potentials of this very promising area has
been exploited so far though the few
entrepreneurs in this field cannot be blamed for
the most part for failing to launch this sector
vigorously. For example, a media report --
sometime ago-- focused on the plight of three
producers of potato flakes and potato starch who
were having great difficulties to go into
production for the last four years though they
invested a great deal of money in their projects.
Potato based food and allied products such as
flakes, starch, chips and other products have
only a limited market in Bangladesh. But the
same have a huge international market which
can be tapped by Bangladeshi producers. The
aspect of comparative advantage also should give
an edge to entrepreneurs in this field because
potato growing is almost an effortless and
inexpensive exercise in this country due to the
fertility of its soil and other favourable physical
conditions. The potatoes are also of good quality
and suitable in terms of nutrition value for
overseas markets.
A record quantity of potatoes have been
produced in recent years far in excess of the total
local demand . If the excess amounts could be
added value by turning them into various potato
based food products and exported, then the same
could open up a rich new vein of export earnings
for the country. But as the report highlighted,
three pioneering entrepreneurs in this field were
struggling for the take-off of their projects
The main hurdle seemed to be the law suit that
a bank which financed one of these projects was
about to start and for similar pressure from the
other banks for meticulous servicing of their
loans. But given some cooperation by these
banks through rescheduling of the loans and
easing somewhat the terms and conditions of
their payment in the face of valid requests from
the borrowers, the three industries could be
mightily helped to go into production and start
exporting their products.
In that case, everybody could expect a good
return : the entrepreneurs would very likely start
production and servicing their loans, the banks
would not have to bear the burden of nonperforming
loans, considerable employment
from the growers' level to the workers in the
producing plants could be created and, more
significantly, a breakthrough could have been
made in this sector which would attract the
notice of other potential entrepreneurs into this
field and encourage them as well.
Not only potatoes, there are other agricultural
products such as tomatoes, gherkin,
strawberries, baby corn, mushroom, various
types of vegetables and fruits etc., which can be
commercially grown, processed and exported
successfully from Bangladesh. The doing of the
same can also add much to employment
generation because of value-addition and chain
activities at different stages from the farms to the
factories. But a supportive policy environment
would be required for the private sector to be
more and more interested to try their hands in
this field. Banks can treat enterprises in this
sector with care and flexibility to help it to gain a
momentum.
Once the enterprises in this area start cropping
up, the same can be a source of good and reliable
customers of the banks like the garments
industries. Therefore, the banks should see the
merit of supporting this sector leniently even if
that requires a somewhat easing of the rules for
them now. Government can lease out lands to
entrepreneurs in this sector for growing the basic
produces such as potato. Government's fiscal and
other policies should also aim to help in the
stimulation of this prospective sector.
As the world gets back on its feet
from the Covid-19 pandemic while
reeling under a global chip
shortage, Taiwan has become an
important geopolitical focal point.
Taiwan's stranglehold over the
semiconductor industry and its overall
technology expertise have demonstrated
its strategic importance in the global
world order.
Taipei's New Southbound Policy was
envisaged by President Tsai Ing-wen to
enhance cooperation between Taiwan
and other major states in Southeast and
South Asia. India, on the other hand,
formulated the Act East Policy as a major
diplomatic initiative to promote
economic strategic relations with other
states in the Indo-Pacific region.
With both India and Taiwan looking to
deepen diplomatic ties in their respective
regions, now would be the opportune
time for the two states to forge an
alliance built on common interests.
It was reported this month that Indian
and Taiwanese officials met to discuss a
possible collaboration on building a
semiconductor manufacturing facility in
India. An investment of US$7.5 billion
was reportedly offered by Taiwan in
exchange for liberal trade tariffs on
semiconductor manufacturing materials
to build a state-of-the-art fabrication
facility in India.
With the Quadrilateral Security
Dialogue focusing on securing the
semiconductor supply chain, Taiwan's
expertise in that domain could serve as a
base for developing a robust
technological partnership with India.
The Asian Silicon Valley Development
Plan was created by the Taiwanese
government in 2016 with two primary
objectives: first, promoting research and
development for Internet of Things (IoT)
devices, and second, improving Taiwan's
entrepreneurship ecosystem.
With states looking to create
technological partnerships to counter
China's rise, India can look toward
Taiwan's plan to grow both its technical
expertise and ensure its presence in
cutting-edge technology research.
Taiwan's exports have been dominated
by electronic hardware components,
which have driven its overall trade and
created a huge surplus. India's evergrowing
demand for high-technology
products, especially in the coming
decades, could help bring it and Taiwan
to the table to negotiate a deal that would
economically benefit both states.
As technologically developed states,
India and Taiwan should look at the
strategic implications of emerging
technologies as potential areas of
collaboration in the future.
Despite being two of the fastestgrowing
economies in the world, the
economic partnership between India and
Taiwan is still in its infancy. Taiwanese
investments in the subcontinent are yet
to approach the level of mainland
China's.
The minimal economic opportunities,
coupled with some inherent fallacies of
the Indian economic system, have
discouraged Taiwanese investors from
pursuing big-budget projects in the
country. Complicated tax regulations,
corruption, language barriers, and
insufficient understanding of each
other's business environments have
prevented potential economic
partnerships between them.
Eliminating these barriers would help
bolster growth and increase
ARjUN GARGEyAS
opportunities for investment. Moving
beyond government-to-government
relations is the need of the hour. The
private sectors in both India and Taiwan
have the ability to collaborate in multiple
areas. As well, there is an opportunity for
the education sectors in both states to
foster people-to-people relationships
and help the next generation get better
opportunities.
Universities must look to set up
additional campuses and research
NANjAlA NyABolA
facilities in order for young researchers
to work together on emerging and
critical technologies. While Taiwan has
already established around 11 Chineselanguage
learning centers in India,
exchange programs and better
scholarship opportunities could help
improve the student fraternity in both
states.
While Indian students have the
opportunity to learn the local language of
Taiwan, language is one of the main
barriers for Taiwanese students in a
multilingual society like India.
Arrangements must be made to attract
young people from Taiwan to pursue
higher education in India. Improving
educational ties could eventually lead to
better diplomatic relations.
Innovation in Taiwan has reached
exemplary levels along with
corresponding patent activity. With
intellectual capital, there is a need for
human resources to translate this into
tangible goods and services.
India, with its abundant human capital
and the government looking to improve
the manufacturing sector, could serve as
a perfect destination for Taiwanese
companies looking to set up
manufacturing plants. This could also
help resolve trade barriers.
With agriculture dominating the
workforce in India, modernization in the
field of agriculture by Taiwan could help
Indian farmers get access to improved
machinery and other equipment at
affordable prices if these companies
manufacture their products in India.
Despite being a powerhouse in the
pharmaceutical industry, India can still
look to become a global leader in
manufacturing drugs for states like
Taiwan that have the intellectual capital
and rights to do the same. And there are
other industrial supply chains for which
India could act as a manufacturing hub
for Taiwanese companies.
India-Taiwan relations have improved
significantly since the 1990s despite the
lack of official diplomatic ties. The trade
volume between the two has shown
considerable growth, with a steady
annual increase.
There have also been talks of
technology transfers in critical industries
between Indian and Taiwanese
companies that could act as a
counterbalancing mechanism to China's
rapid technological rise.
Relations between India and China are
at an all-time low after the border
skirmishes last year in eastern Ladakh.
Recent aggression by China against
Taiwan has also resulted in Western
allies such as the United States sending
warships into the Taiwan Strait.
India and Taiwan, which share
democratic values and common
economic interests, have an opportunity
to deepen their ties both militarily and
economically. This is a must for a free
and open Indo-Pacific region.
Source: Asia times
We may not want the future Facebook is building
Facebook and its sister services
suffered an outage on October 4,
2021 [File: Reuters/Dado Ruvic]
It has been a difficult week for
Facebook. On Monday, its family of
companies - including Facebook,
WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and
Oculus - suffered their largest service
interruption to date. For six hours all of
the platforms were offline because a
routine maintenance process went
awry. Billions of users were unable to
access their services while company
staffers were virtually and physically
locked out of the systems they needed to
fix the issue.
Then on Tuesday, former Facebook
employee and whistle-blower Frances
Haugen testified before the United
States Congress that the company
deliberately puts profit over protecting
people by allowing harm to children
particularly, and democracy more
broadly. Despite efforts from Facebook
to counter Haugen's testimony on
various outlets, her account was
devastating for the company and came
as Congress is deliberating the chance
of some kind of legal or political action
against the company.
If these two things seem
disconnected, it is because you have not
been paying attention to Facebook's
growing market dominance as a social
networking platform and as a
communications provider. Today, an
estimated two billion people in more
than 180 countries use the WhatsApp
messaging platform while there are at
least 3.5 billion people who use
Facebook. Instagram, while not as
popular as these two sites, is
increasingly important for small
businesses in several countries, that use
it to build and manage their client bases
in lieu of building their own websites.
These platforms are unambiguously
important to the global digital society
because of their sheer size, and that
means that small internal decisions to
look the other way when people misuse
them are significantly intensified, as
well as easily transmitted across
international borders. Positive nudges
on Facebook drive people to the polls,
but misinformation on the same
platform drives people to drink horse
medicine.
Devastating revelations about how
the company thinks about its
responsibility towards users coming on
the heels of a service failure of this scale
raise a simple yet fundamental
question: Is Facebook ready for the
future it is building and are we prepared
to live in it?
From the way Facebook has handled
Haugen's testimony, as well as the
The Asian Silicon Valley Development Plan was created
by the Taiwanese government in 2016 with two primary
objectives: first, promoting research and development
for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and second,
improving Taiwan's entrepreneurship ecosystem.
service interruption, it is evident that it
does not fully understand the behemoth
that it has constructed. A simple layman
account of the service interruption is
that because of a software update
Facebook essentially locked itself out of
the backend of the system that not only
governs how each of the various
platforms function, but also the systems
that run the company itself.
If between Facebook and WhatsApp
alone there are about at least five billion
individual accounts, you have to
wonder why anyone thought it was a
good idea to centralise all of the
information in such an elementary
way? It is the kind of overcentralisation
that gives competition
lawyers heartburn and that compels
governments to intervene and stop
companies from getting too big.
If Facebook was merely a large
company that people depended on to
communicate that would have been bad
enough. But it is a large company that
people depend on to communicate that
also collects, monetises and transforms
the personal data that people provide to
it for this communication, and then
holds it in opaque systems that are
always two steps behind critical
political developments. This perhaps
explains the simple question that
Congress asked Haugen: Is it time to
break up Facebook?
The pure economic argument is that
as long as the company is growing, it
should be allowed to keep growing;
after all, it is creating jobs and growing
economies. But jobs and economies do
not exist outside social and political
contexts and will mean nothing if
societies collapse. The justification for
allowing indefinite growth is feeble,
particularly when the evidence that
Haugen provided suggests that the
company is not willing to change course
on proof that it harms societies.
The company's policies on dealing
with the sociology and moral economy
created by the unprecedented
concentration of data in its hands are
wanting. It is seemingly unable or
unwilling to understand that making
communication easier means that
people of bad intent will also find it
easier to communicate.
There are fundamental questions of
society that strike at the heart of
Facebook's business model that need
more rigorous analysis than a couple of
one-off company statements. Should a
company be able to monetise
information that people provide for free
in order to maintain their social
networks? Should political information
be treated differently than commercial
information and how? Is advertising the
only model for funding social networks?
What obligations do these companies
have to societies or markets where they
are not registered and yet still want to
profit from? These are philosophical
questions about the nature of society
after the digital era that cannot be
papered over by empty rhetoric about
economic growth.
Indeed, history is replete with
examples of corporations that grow too
large and have too much influence and
the knock-on effect that this has on
societies, particularly when they
collapse. But Facebook's own history is
Indeed, history is replete with examples of corporations that grow
too large and have too much influence and the knock-on effect that
this has on societies, particularly when they collapse. But Facebook's
own history is full of warning signs that the company's financial
growth has outpaced its comprehension of its social responsibilities.
full of warning signs that the company's
financial growth has outpaced its
comprehension of its social
responsibilities.
Early in 2021, there was a widespread
backlash when the company made it
easier for information to be shared
between WhatsApp and Facebook.
Users resisted the change by migrating
from the platform to competitors like
Signal and Telegram, forcing the
company to backtrack on the threat that
anyone who rejected the new terms of
service would lose functionality on the
application.
Consider that many of Facebook's
users are in the West, but WhatsApp is
only now growing in popularity there;
conversely, millions of users in the
developing world use WhatsApp, but do
not have Facebook accounts. This
suggests that a large number of the
people who are using WhatsApp
primarily as a messaging platform are
not interested in having it integrated
into their Facebook profiles, if they have
any.
It was an ill-advised data grab that
underscored that the tech giant's
growth strategy was out of step with
what people wanted it for.
Haugen said that she did not believe
that the company needed to be broken
up, but European regulators disagree.
In 2020, the European Commission
proposed a set of content policies
designed to make Big Tech companies
more accountable for the harms that
were incubated on their platforms,
promising fines of six percent of global
revenues and expanding anti-trust fines
of up to 10 percent of future revenues,
as well as forcing the platforms to sell
parts of their business if they continue
to violate the rules.
The companies - including Amazon,
Twitter, Google and Facebook - resisted
the policy proposals although they did
offer to work with regulators to find
alternatives. The alternatives have been
slow to come.
If asked, most people probably would
not want all their information
centralised, monetised and
transformed the way Facebook and
other social networking sites are doing
now. They offer the information up to
connect with family and friends, not for
it to be bundled and converted into
advertising or information products
that are sold to the highest bidder
regardless of their intent.
But the platforms' algorithms and
backend architecture are deliberately
shrouded in so much secrecy that
evidently sometimes even their own
staffers do not fully know how to fix
them. And this is where Haugen's
testimonies on how Instagram harms
minors and how Facebook harms
democracy come together: the company
knows that it is happening but does not
seem to fully understand why and is
unwilling to take the measures that are
needed to stop it from happening if this
would hurt profitability.
One of Haugen's most powerful
observations during the hearing was
that "until incentives change at
Facebook, we should not expect
Facebook to change". The incentives
that drive the company - like any other
- are based on the perverse logic of
neoliberal economics: that companies
must grow indefinitely and that all
growth at any cost is good.
But the service outage and the
revelations are an invitation to
reconsider this economic model, to
remind ourselves that there is such a
thing as too much concentration of
power, and to sincerely engage with the
question of what role social networking
sites should play in the future we want
to live in. And taking up this invitation
is a matter of urgency.
Source: Al Jazeera