New Delhi: Reporting on the meeting Monday in New Delhi between Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand, James Bradshaw writes in The Globe and Mail, the “1,200-word joint statement gives a nod to Canada’s insistence that… encroachments on its sovereignty must not happen again, citing ‘mutual respect for shared democratic values’, the rule of law, and a commitment to upholding the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
‘It also says Canada and India are keen to draw closer together to “mitigate vulnerabilities arising from shifting global alliances,” in an apparent reference to the pressure each country is facing from U.S. tariffs and President Donald Trump’s efforts to upend global trade.’ the article adds.
“Both Canada and India have fallen into Mr. Trump’s crosshairs as the United States pushes a more protectionist vision for trade,” Bradshaw writes.
Canadian officials are in intensive negotiations in Washington, seeking relief from high tariffs for key sectors such as steel, aluminum, automobiles and forestry products. The US has also punished India with 50 percent tariffs for buying fuel from Russia.
“That economic pain appears to have acted as a catalyst to speed up the thaw in Canada-India relations, as countries around the world look to reduce their dependence on the U.S.,” adds Bradshaw.
A joint statement on Monday from Jaishankar and Anand outlines a number of specific measures the two countries plan to take “to restore stability in the relationship.”
Sunlight hours in India have “steadily declined,” reports Soutik Biswas in the BBC on a study on the alarming trend over the past three decades.
“This seasonal pattern of sunshine intersects with a deeper, long-standing problem: India’s severe air pollution crisis—it’s now among the world’s top 10 polluted countries—which scientists trace back to the 1990s. Rapid urbanisation, industrial growth and land-use changes drove up fossil fuel use, vehicle emissions and biomass burning, sending aerosols into the atmosphere and dimming the Sun’s rays,” says the report.
Even when there are more sunshine hours, the report says it doesn’t imply cleaner air. Instead, they’re simply a result of cloud free days.
“Our study found that shrinking sunshine hours are linked to clouds that linger longer without releasing rain, blocking more sunlight. These longer-lasting clouds form indirectly due to aerosols that alter weather and climate,” Manoj Kumar Srivastava, a professor of geophysics at the Banaras Hindu University, and one of the authors of the study has been quoted as saying.
The BBC’s Priti Gupta looks at what has emerged as the bedrock of artificial intelligence infrastructure—data annotation or ‘cloud farming’—much of which takes place in rural India.
“India has long been a centre for outsourced IT support, with cities like Bangalore or Chennai being traditional hubs for such work. But in recent years firms have been moving that work into much more remote areas, where costs for staff and space are lower,” says the report. “The trend is known as cloud farming, and AI has given it another boost with numerous towns, like Virudhunagar, hosting firms working on AI.”
“We realised that instead of forcing people to migrate to cities in search of jobs, we could bring jobs to where people already live,” says Mannivannan J. K., the chief executive of Desicrew, described as a “cloud farming pioneer” by the BBC.
Currently, 30-40 percent of Desicrew’s work is about AI. But this number is projected as growing to 75 percent. And 70 percent of the staff is female.
“People often assume rural means underdeveloped, but our centres mirror urban IT hubs in every way—secure data access, reliable connectivity, and uninterrupted power. The only difference is geography,” he tells the BBC.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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