Newspaper Summary 210226

 

In 6-3 Ruling, US Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Global Tariffs

The US Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law meant for use in national emergencies. In a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, the court upheld a lower court’s decision that the Republican President’s use of the law exceeded his authority.

Treads on Congressional Power

The court ruled that the administration’s interpretation of the law would intrude on the powers of Congress and violate a legal principle known as the “major questions” doctrine. This doctrine requires executive actions of “vast economic and political significance” to be clearly authorized by Congress. Justice Roberts wrote that “the President must ‘point to clear congressional authorisation’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose taris,” adding, “He cannot”.

Joining Justice Roberts in the majority were conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom Trump appointed during his first term, along with the court's three liberal judges. The three dissenters were conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh.

Economic and Legal Fallout

Trump leveraged these tariffs as a central economic and foreign policy tool in a global trade war that has alienated partners and caused significant economic uncertainty. The conclusion reached by the court followed a legal challenge by affected businesses and 12 US States, most of them Democratic-governed, against the unilateral imposition of these taxes.

While the tariffs were forecast to generate trillions of dollars over the next decade, economists from the Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimated on Friday that the amount already collected stood at more than $175 billion. Legal experts indicate that this massive sum likely would now need to be refunded.

Administration Response and "Game Two"

Trump called the ruling a “disgrace” and told reporters that his team would have to develop a “game two” plan. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other administration officials stated the US would seek other legal justifications to retain as many tariffs as possible. These include:

• Statutory provisions for goods that threaten US national security.
• Retaliatory actions against partners using unfair trade practices.

However, officials noted that none of these alternatives offers the "blunt-force dynamics" or flexibility of IEEPA and may not be able to replicate the full scope of the original tariffs in a timely fashion.

The decision marks a major rejection of one of Trump's most contentious assertions of authority, reaffirming that the US Constitution grants Congress, not the President, the primary authority to levy taxes and tariffs.

Novartis to sell entire 71% stake in listed India arm to ChrysCapital group for ₹1,446 crore

Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG is set to sell its entire 70.68 per cent stake in Novartis India Ltd (NIL) to the ChrysCapital group for ₹1,446 crore. The drug major has entered into an agreement with WaveRise Investments Ltd, ChrysCapital Fund X and Two Infinity Partners to sell the India-listed entity. The transaction is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2026, subject to certain conditions.

Transaction Details

Novartis has agreed to sell 1,74,50,680 fully paid-up equity shares in Novartis India. The acquisition breakdown is as follows:

• WaveRise Investments will acquire 1,39,38,382 equity shares (56.45 per cent) at ₹860.64 per share.
• The second acquirer will buy 25,47,189 equity shares (10.32 per cent) at ₹701.25 per share.
• The third acquirer will buy 9,65,109 equity shares (3.91 per cent) at ₹701.25 per share.

As mandated by regulations, the acquiring companies have also announced an open offer to pick up the remaining shares in the company.

Strategic Transformation

Upon completion of this share transfer, Novartis will finish its transformation into a pure-play innovative medicines company aligned with its global strategy. This strategy focuses on cardio-renal-metabolic, immunology, neuroscience, and oncology products, with growth identified in the US, China, Germany, and Japan.

Novartis reiterated that this transfer of shareholding in NIL will not impact Novartis Healthcare Private Ltd (NHPL). Novartis will continue its presence in India through NHPL, a wholly owned subsidiary used to bring high-value innovative products into the country.

Historical Context

Novartis was formed in 1996 through the merger of Swiss majors Ciba-Geigy AG and Sandoz AG. While Ciba’s history in India dates back to 1947, NHPL was formed later in 1997. Its current innovative drugs portfolio includes cancer, immunotherapy, and gene therapy products. Details regarding the future of the 40 employees with NIL and the associated branded products currently remain unclear.

India joins US-led Pax Silica to secure chips, critical minerals

India and the US signed the Pax Silica declaration on Tuesday at the India AI Impact Summit, formally marking New Delhi’s entry into a strategic partnership to secure resilient supply chains for semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), and critical minerals. Both nations projected the initiative as a move to curtail over-dependence on “one country,” an oblique reference widely presumed to be China.

Securing Supplies

The pact, literally meaning “Peace through Silicon,” was signed by Indian IT Secretary S Krishnan and US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg, in the presence of Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and US Ambassador Sergio Gor. Pax Silica was originally launched in December and its current members include:

• India (latest entrant)
• United States
• Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore
• United Kingdom, Greece, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates

Geopolitical Context

The broader geopolitical subtext of the coalition is aimed at counteracting China’s predominant role in rare earth processing, advanced manufacturing inputs, and the global semiconductor value chain. US Under Secretary Helberg described the commitment as a rejection of “weaponised dependency” in global networks and warned against the threats of “economic coercion and blackmail.” He further underscored concerns regarding infrastructure vulnerabilities, noting that foundations of economic security had been allowed to “drift” for too long.

Strategic Alignment

For India, the move signals a calibrated deepening of technological alignment with the US and its democratic partners. Minister Vaishnaw highlighted India’s expanding capabilities in chip design and its growing pool of skilled technology professionals as major assets for collaborative global value chains under the Pax Silica framework.

US Ambassador Sergio Gor stated that India brings strength to the coalition, remarking, “Peace doesn’t come from hoping adversaries will play fair... Peace comes through strength. India understands this.” Industry leaders, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, noted that this agreement, alongside recent trade progress, will lay the foundation for a robust and enduring US-India tech partnership.

‘Sovereign AI means building trusted partnerships, not isolation’

Evan Solomon, Canada’s Minister for AI and Digital Innovation, has been a leading advocate for the concept of Sovereign AI. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Solomon outlined a vision for Indo-Canadian cooperation that balances rapid technological adoption with risk mitigation and the preservation of national digital autonomy.

Defining Sovereign AI

Solomon emphasized that sovereignty does not mean isolation; instead, it means having trusted partnerships and options. He defined it as controlling one’s digital destiny, which involves everything from building efficient data centers to owning the intellectual property (IP) of applications.

Canada provides a global alternative to US or Chinese technology through Cohere, one of the world's major large language models. Solomon argued that international alliances are essential to the process of ensuring sovereignty, including collaborative research, education, and creating IP that remains within a nation’s borders.

Strengthening Indo-Canadian Ties

Discussions between Solomon and Indian IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw have resulted in the development of a series of MoUs to map out technological cooperation. Solomon noted that both nations share a common goal: building Sovereign AI stacks to ensure they are not dependent on a single provider or country. He cited Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which employs nearly 10,000 people in Canada, as a prime example of the deep partnerships required to build these shared technology stacks.

AI Safety and "LawZero"

Safety is a fundamental pillar of sovereignty. To address growing concerns, Solomon highlighted LawZero, an AI system designed specifically to "police" other AI models. Canada has issued a letter of intent to be a primary financial backer of this technology, which was presented at the summit by world-renowned scientist Yoshua Bengio.

While LawZero can identify if an AI is about to perform harmful actions, Solomon clarified that protecting data security and personal privacy remains the responsibility of the government through updated legislation and transparency requirements.

Navigating the Workforce Transition

Addressing the threat of AI-driven job losses, Solomon observed that while history shows technological revolutions eventually create more jobs than they destroy, the current anxiety is real. He stressed that governments must prioritize skills training and education, as those who can effectively use AI will have a significant advantage in a rapidly evolving labor market.

AI is no magic; IT services will be the last mile in agentification: Cognizant

Enterprises are beginning to realise that artificial intelligence is not a magical “pixie dust,” according to Cognizant’s Chief AI Officer Babak Hodjat. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Hodjat emphasized that customization with business processes is the essential key to reaping the actual benefits of AI agents.

Owning the Last Mile

Hodjat argued that IT services companies are uniquely positioned because they “own the last mile” and possess an inside-out understanding of their clients' specific domains. He noted that this contextual knowledge is often the missing piece in the broader ‘agentification’ journey.

To be effective, agents must be designed and defined to model the specific organizations and processes of clients in a trustworthy manner. This requires a rigorous process of tailoring, engineering, and safeguarding. Hodjat stated that Cognizant is "ahead of everyone else" in this regard, supported by significant investments in its AI labs.

Infrastructure and Strategic Partnerships

Cognizant has expanded its research capabilities by opening an India AI Lab in Bengaluru, which complements its existing lab in San Francisco. The company’s research efforts have already yielded results, with its San Francisco facility recently receiving its 61st US patent.

The company is also pursuing win-win partnerships with AI-native startups like Anthropic. While Cognizant empowers its associates to use these models for clients, it also helps these startups become reliable players in the enterprise sector.

Preparing the Workforce

With a majority of its employees based in India, Cognizant is actively preparing its workforce for this technological transition. The company is implementing several initiatives:

• Specialized Training: Running boot camps, hackathons, and specialized courses in context engineering.
• Measuring Impact: Internally tracking how AI affects project delivery and its impact on acquiring new clients and increasing productivity.
• Hiring Freshers: Bringing in large numbers of new graduates who understand and use AI much more naturally.

Hodjat observed a pyramid of attitudes toward AI: skepticism and conservatism at the top, and ‘naivety’ at the lower levels, both of which the company is addressing through targeted training and innovation.

Advancements in Core AI Research

The India AI Lab, which consists of about 30 PhDs, researchers, and engineers, focuses on cutting-edge research grounded in client needs. A major recent breakthrough involves a new way to fine-tune large language models (LLMs) using Evolutionary Strategies instead of Reinforcement Learning. This method is notably less compute-hungry than traditional approaches.

In India, the team is also researching multi-objective reasoning systems—which allow AI to reason for more than one outcome simultaneously—and is collaborating on research with institutions like the IITs.

The Transition Mantra

Hodjat concluded that the primary hurdle in moving from IT services to AI services is managing expectations. He stressed that AI is not magic but rather an engineered design principle. He believes once the industry tapers down the "magic" expectation, the transition will be complete.

Think before scaling up AI data centres

WEIGH THE COSTS. Countries that moved early now see the full cost of those choices. What began as a digital bet has steadily changed grids, water systems, and land use.

By Nishant Sahdev

New Delhi’s invitation to global companies to build AI data centres in India is being read as a confident move, based on the logic that India has the scale and space to host the computational power AI needs. However, countries that jumped early into building large numbers of data centres have learned wallet-bruising lessons. Unlike roads or bridges, AI infrastructure changes and becomes outdated fast, consumes enormous energy, and depends heavily on the changing priorities of private firms. The real constraints are not talent or ideas, but rather steady power, cooling, water, stable grids, and available land.

Lessons from Abroad

A single modern facility can use as much electricity as a small city and requires that supply without pause. In the US, data centres used about 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, and that share is expected to climb to 10-12 per cent of total demand within a few years. In Northern Virginia, home to the world’s largest cluster, these facilities already consume more than a quarter of the region’s electricity. This has resulted in household electricity bills rising faster than the national average, as grid planning now revolves around the demands of large computing facilities rather than homes or small businesses.

Ireland offers a similar lesson, where data centres accounted for over 20 per cent of the country’s electricity demand by 2022. Water scarcity is another sharp concern; in Oregon, Google’s facilities used nearly 30 per cent of a city’s water during a drought. The overarching lesson is that data centre costs accumulate over time and spread widely, while the early benefits are captured by only a few.

The Dynamics in India

In India, electricity is not a simple commodity but a social bargain where power supply is deeply political, balancing households, farmers, and small businesses. Adding large, always-on data centres reshapes who gets priority. Once facilities are labeled “strategic infrastructure,” their access to power is rarely questioned during heatwaves or grid stress, often shifting adjustment costs—like outages or higher tariffs—to ordinary users.

Furthermore, while India supplies the resources, it does not automatically gain control over the proprietary models and intelligence produced. There is a risk of repeating a pattern from the telecom revolution: India became essential to global platforms without owning them. AI infrastructure risks a deeper level of this mistake, where the "subsidy" provided is not just market access, but India's power, water, and land.

Set the Terms

India still has an advantage: time. It must price its ambitions honestly and treat large data centres as strategic infrastructure rather than routine real estate. Safeguards should include:

• Transparent and capped power and water costs.
• Time-bound incentives.
• Public subsidies tied to domestic capability and ownership of skills, systems, and models.

Setting these terms early will ensure infrastructure builds national strength; delaying them means the costs will still arrive, but without any remaining leverage.

The writer is a Physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US

The stray community

Delhi has its share of people who rally against strays, but streeties also have a way of bringing people together.

Across Delhi, like elsewhere in the country, people care for stray dogs in their own little ways.

By Pooja Singh

Raghu is refusing to eat his lunch—a bowl of rice mixed with boiled vegetables. He sniffs it and returns to his spot in a corner of Delhi’s Khan Market. “Chicken nahi hai na aaj (there’s no chicken today),” says Meenakshi Yadav, giving Raghu, a visibly overweight nine-year-old street dog, a gentle slap. A few minutes later, he’s emptied the bowl.

Yadav, who works as a cleaning lady in a shop in Khan Market, travels 30km every day from the outskirts of Delhi to reach her workplace. Alongside her own lunch, she carries food for five stray dogs, including Raghu—all brothers who have lived outside the shop for several years. Mishra, another worker, noted that while he was initially scared of dogs, he and other guards now sit with them at 4pm to share tea and biscuits.

For some street dogs, Delhi can be a welcoming place. Wealthy individuals sometimes provide extensive care, such as Yadav’s boss, who bathes the dogs once a month and pays for regular check-ups. Similarly, those with very little, including people living on the streets, often share what they have to feed strays.

It is a common sight to see packs of dogs hanging around restaurants for scraps or sprawling outside shops as passersby react with affection. Recently, a street dog even sauntered into an India Design Fair preview party and was welcomed with head scratches from the guests.

However, Delhi can also be harsh. Recent Supreme Court discussions have focused on the danger of deadly rabies cases, and some residents have called for the removal of strays from the streets.

Despite the debate, these dogs often bring communities together. In one locality, a woman who feeds strays from her scooter at dawn was recently joined by two neighbours to cover more ground. In Janakpuri, a group of youngsters has organized a care network across 14 residential colonies, washing winter sweaters for the dogs, taking them to the vet, and even setting up resting spots with fans for the summer.

Scattered across the city are these stubborn pockets of care where dogs that belong to no one are still looked after. They provide a reason for people to pause and talk, creating social bonds in the places they are most needed.