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 twentieth, and that is your FT News Briefing.

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The costs of a whole lot of metals have taken a beating this yr, aside from one. And our defence and safety correspondent tells us about his expertise in a Hamas tunnel.

John Paul Rathbone
It was scorching and clammy and fairly oppressive.

Marc Filippino
Plus, India has reworked rather a lot underneath Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Our bureau chief there takes a have a look at how tech is altering the nation. I’m Marc Filippino. And right here’s the information you have to begin your day.

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Copper has been crimson scorching this yr. It’s up 2.5 per cent in 2023. It’s coming in at $8,600 per tonne and that places it on observe to complete this yr because the top-performing industrial steel. So, why the surge in copper? Well, disruptions in manufacturing created a provide squeeze. There had been mining issues in Latin America which downgraded manufacturing forecasts. But copper is an outlier in what was a troublesome yr for metals general. They’ve been getting slammed by excessive rates of interest, which is pushing up the greenback, making these commodities dearer for importers.

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The tunnels operating beneath Gaza are an actual drawback for Israel. The underground community supplies shelter for Hamas fighters from Israeli aerial assaults. And the tunnels are large. The community is the scale of the London Underground. Recently, our defence correspondent John Paul Rathbone had an opportunity to see a type of tunnels. He went with the Israel Defense Forces and he joins me now to speak about what he noticed. Hi, JP.

John Paul Rathbone
Hello, Marc.

Marc Filippino
So inform me slightly bit concerning the tunnel that you just had been in, JP. What was it like?

John Paul Rathbone
So the tunnel, it was about 400 metres contained in the Gaza border with Israel. It was, in line with the IDF, the most important tunnel that they discovered to date. It was large enough to drive a automotive by way of. It was fabricated from strengthened concrete. It had electrical cables operating down one aspect and clearly a air flow system. We solely went about 100 metres deep into it and it was scorching and clammy and fairly oppressive. According to the IDF, it drops down and is form of a trunk tunnel which hyperlinks up through different smaller tunnels to a maze of the subterranean area that Hamas has dug into the sandstone beneath Gaza.

Marc Filippino
And what did the IDF should say about this tunnel you visited? How was it constructed and the way necessary is the venture?

John Paul Rathbone
Yes, we had been proven a video purportedly of Mohammed Sinwar, who’s the brother of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s chief in Gaza. And the venture was so massive that he was put in control of it. And the IDF line is that Hamas diverted funds that might have been used to construct hospitals and different amenities for civilians, however as a substitute devoted the assets to constructing what actually is a formidable piece of engineering work.

Marc Filippino
Now, what kind of position have tunnels like this one performed within the bigger navy battle between the IDF and Hamas?

John Paul Rathbone
So that is Hamas’s response to Israel’s technological superiority, and within the tunnels, air energy has no impact. Technology has very restricted results. And it’s an actual quandary as a result of the Hamas leaders can cover in it, their fighters can cover in it. They can come out from behind IDF traces. And find out how to cope with it kind of goes to the guts in navy phrases of the place we at the moment are. You can both bomb to smithereens all the pieces round it and seal the tunnels that method, however that method you destroy all of Gaza and you find yourself with the large civilian casualties, which is what we’re seeing now. Or you discover them utilizing floor forces and choosing your method by way of buildings little by little, however that exposes the IDF floor forces to assault. So that’s the quandary.

Marc Filippino
And this expertise, JP — embedding with the IDF and going contained in the tunnel — how has it modified your perspective of the warfare?

John Paul Rathbone
I believe one of many issues that I realized has nothing to do with the tunnel, however actually to do with the atmosphere round it. And within the distance you’ll be able to at all times hear this fixed thunder of shelling. And once you go away Gaza, once you’re again in Israel correct, Gaza doesn’t actually exist in anybody’s thoughts. The casualties aren’t actually lined within the TV exhibits. So it’s out of sight and out of thoughts. And I spoke to 1 Israeli reservist, a younger lady who’d been a civilian who’d been referred to as up. She informed me how upset and tormented, the truth is, she was by the civilian loss of life fee in Gaza. But that may be very a lot a minority opinion.

Marc Filippino
John Paul Rathbone is the FT’s defence and safety correspondent. Thanks, JP.

John Paul Rathbone
Thank you.

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Marc Filippino
India is among the world’s fastest-growing massive economies. This is thanks partially to the fast technological progress promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his predecessors. Nearly all of India’s grownup inhabitants, effectively over a billion folks, are linked to the web, and IT is among the nation’s most profitable exports. But critics level out many Indians reside in excessive poverty and so they lack fundamental providers. In the primary of a three-part collection, the FT’s John Reed visits the north-east a part of India, and he sees how the nation is grappling with this mixture of excessive tech and low tech.

John Reed voice clip
It’s a typical early night in Varanasi, India’s holy metropolis on the river Ganges. This is a serious pilgrimage website. People are chopping wooden for funeral pyres, that are wafting out pungent smoke. Bodies in shrouds are being carried on stretchers by way of the alleys as folks chant the title of the Hindu deity, Lord Ram. (Devotees chanting) Above the cremation steps, retailers are promoting the wooden that’s used to burn the corpses. Devout Hindus imagine that for those who’re cremated in Varanasi, you’ll be able to escape the countless cycle of rebirth. But for those who look carefully sufficient, indicators of the brand new India intrude. (Devotees singing)

At the steps that lead all the way down to the river, the retailers promoting gadgets wanted for cremation are taking cashless funds, with the trade of a cellphone quantity or the scanning of a QR code. (Faint beep) One of the retailers right here tells my colleague Jyotsna Singh that the majority of his prospects now use their telephones to make funds. (Merchant talking in native language)

What makes this attainable is that everybody in India has an ID linked to biometrics, corresponding to fingerprints or retina scans. These are a part of India’s digital spine, what the Modi authorities calls the India Stack. A brief distance from the holy river, about two dozen individuals are sitting in entrance of enormous knowledge displays, with a panoramic photograph of the Ganges at sundown within the background. This is the management room for Varanasi’s Smart City venture. It’s one a part of Modi’s tech imaginative and prescient for a linked and networked India. (PA system announcement)

At the entrance of the room, a big video monitor takes up a complete wall. It has CCTV footage from all around the metropolis, together with the steps by the river, info on visitors patterns, and town’s present variety of Covid circumstances.

Deivasigamani Vasudevan voice clip
The command management centre got here into existence in February 2019, however did change into absolutely purposeful in August 2020.

John Reed voice clip
That’s Deivasigamani Vasudevan, head of knowledge methods.

Deivasigamani Vasudevan voice clip
And this was transformed to a Covid warfare room the place we may appraise each affected person, hospitals, the shelter houses, the distribution of necessities, drugs administration, ambulance administration, higher location. Everything used to occur from right here.

John Reed voice clip
India has rooms like these in about 100 cities. With extra folks than ever transferring into city centres, the Smart Cities venture is about bettering life there and stopping crime. Mr Vasudevan factors to a sensible map that displays visitors violations. The system, powered by a number of cameras, has facial recognition functionality. It includes a brand that properly blends the outdated and the brand new — a saffron-coloured circle representing Hinduism, a trident, a face on the prime and the third eye of the god Shiva.

Deivasigamani Vasudevan voice clip
So all the initiatives are centered on preserving the heritage. Even our wi-fi cameras and surveillance cameras, CCTV cameras do discover it, they’re very properly camouflaged underneath a heritage lamppost. You received’t even see it. And one of many necessary factor is we laid down our personal optical fibre community of (400?) kilometres across the metropolis. We have state-of-the artwork knowledge centre to course of the information.

John Reed voice clip
India championed its digital inclusion mannequin throughout its G20 presidency this yr, however there’s a darkish aspect to Digital India. Some fear about rising surveillance and Aadhaar, the digital ID system, has fallen prey to a number of hacks during which the information of a whole bunch of tens of millions of individuals leaked on-line. Modi critics additionally say the India Stack is another method of distracting consideration from the low-tech issues plaguing the nation round issues like infrastructure, clear water, respectable colleges and public well being. Vishwambhar Nath Mishra is one in all these. He’s a Hindu priest and engineering professor at Banaras University. He says the sewage system in Varanasi is now not match for function, and the river Ganges is closely polluted.

Vishwambhar Nath Mishra voice clip
Day by day, the quantum of discharges of uncooked sewage into the river remains to be rising. So it might look stunning, however the true factor is that the affected person is dying and you’re simply giving good garments and good look. So that’s not going to work.

John Reed voice clip
Back on the cremation websites on the Ganges, one other vendor cuts by way of all of the techno excessive. (Vendor talking in native language)

Adeja tells us that whereas digital Indian cellular funds are positive, Varanasi lacks fundamental amenities, and the renovations politicians have been promising simply aren’t taking place. Varanasi is Modi’s constituency. When he was campaigning for his first time period in workplace in 2014, he promised to modernise town and make it the non secular capital of the world. His imaginative and prescient for India and for Varanasi will likely be put to the check for the voters in early 2024 when he seeks a 3rd time period.

For the FT News Briefing, that is John Reed. Special because of Jyotsna Singh, who helped report and produce this piece.

Marc Filippino
Up subsequent in our collection on India, we’ll head to the southern a part of the nation. We’ll have a look at how India is looking for jobs for its large inhabitants.

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You can learn extra on all of those tales at FT.com without cost once you click on the hyperlinks in our present notes. This has been your each day FT information briefing. Make certain you test again tomorrow for the most recent enterprise information.

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