New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed various memorandums of understanding with his Singaporean counterpart Lawrence Wong Thursday morning to boost trade relations, the most significant one being over semiconductors.
Reuters reports that the cooperation extends to digital technologies, skill development and healthcare. Modi even visited a leading Singaporean semiconductor company during his trip.
Meanwhile, there’s a parallel semiconductor deal in the works—between Tamil Nadu and America.
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has been in the US on a two-week official visit, meeting Silicon Valley bigwigs at Microsoft, Google and Apple. He has also been meeting other companies, including Yield Engineering Systems (YES), a manufacturer of process equipment for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-performance Computing (HPC) semiconductor solutions. Local press in California reports that as part of the MoU, YES will invest around Rs 150 crore in Tamil Nadu and set up a facility in Coimbatore, which will employ 300 people in the next five years.
“Tamil Nadu offers an excellent business climate, a well-regarded education system and a great talent pool that will benefit YES as well as the wider semiconductor ecosystem,” Rama Alapati, Indian-origin CEO of YES, told reporters.
An MoU was also signed with Google, which will establish Tamil Nadu AI labs, which will collaborate with startups and MSMEs. Both Apple and Google products are being manufactured in Tamil Nadu through Foxconn, Pegatron and Tata Electronics, and Stalin’s government has been repeatedly highlighting the number of jobs such giants are generating in the state.
The need to create jobs in India seems to resonate on a global level.
Economist Trinh Nguyen points out in an opinion piece in Nikkei Asia that Modi’s “jobs budget” for 2025, which he released in July, might not create enough formal jobs.
“India needs to create 115 million jobs by 2030 to absorb both underutilised workers and the incoming labour force, according to research by Natixis. To achieve this herculean task, India’s growth engine needs to fire on all cylinders, from manufacturing to services, over the next five years,” writes Nguyen.
The only way forward, according to her, is to invest in labour-intensive manufacturing, which will generate opportunities to bolster India’s headway in “macroeconomic issues such as fiscal consolidation and infrastructure building”.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg is ringing a different warning bell. Both Indian and Chinese diesel markets are showing signs of a slowdown. In India, “where economic growth has been outstripping China’s by a wide margin”, diesel consumption rose 2.4 percent this year, compared to 6.7 percent in 2023 and almost 10 percent in 2022. Customer’s perceptions are changing, Bloomberg notes.
Diesel matters because the fuel is a “pillar of the traditional global energy market”. If the Indian market is slowing down, crude oil prices could weaken and lead to a global glut.
The Indian and Chinese demand for crude oil is an important calling card for Russian trade, The Economist wrote last week. Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the country’s future lies with China and India. Despite shying away from infrastructural projects in the past, Russia’s trade relations with both countries have been boosted by demand for Russian oil.
“India is the ultimate prize,” The Economist writes. “Unlike China, its demand for coal and oil is projected to remain strong until at least 2030.”
Ultimately, it concludes, India—and China—will power Russian economic growth. But only if the price is right.
In other news, The Guardian spotlights what most middle class Indians worry about when planning summer vacations—how crowded hill stations can get.
In a deep dive on McLeodGanj, The Guardian reports on how the “Himalayan town” has seen a massive rise with respect to domestic tourism as more and more Indians seek refuge from harsh heat. The “tourist season” of May to July has all but “disappeared”, and there’s a steady stream of visitors all year round.
“McLeod Ganj’s Tibetan community has been migrating out of the hill station in search of better work opportunities for several years,” writes Prasannata Patwa. “But now the impact of the climate crisis and overtourism is pushing others to contemplate leaving. The population has dramatically shrunk, say local people.”
And now, even McLeodGanj isn’t exempt from the heat. This summer, temperatures hit 40 degrees celsius, which has been previously unheard of. Traffic jams, water shortages, landslides, cloudbursts and indiscriminate construction have also been affecting the delicate mountainous ecosystem.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
Also Read: Global media peeks into India’s trade ties, the Russian ‘secret’ & a semiconductor pact on the cards