The EconomistOctober 5th 2019 Leaders 1312 Kashmir and claims the rest, and has vehemently denounced the
upheaval in the valley. For Narendra Modi, the prime minister
and leader of the bjp, picking on Kashmir presents an easy op-
portunity to pose as a resolute nationalist who will not hesitate
to confront his enemies.
But if Mr Modi’s actions are not that surprising, the reaction
of the courts has been (see Asia section). India’s judges are noto-
riously meddlesome and difficult. No question is beneath their
scrutiny: what destinations state-owned airlines should fly to,
say, or just how close a liquor store can be to a highway. They
have dealt all sorts of embarrassing defeats to the central govern-
ment in recent years, inventing a previously unknown right to
privacy that almost scuppered a huge biometric identification
scheme, and voiding a lucrative auction of mobile-telephone li-
cences. Yet on the many glaring abuses occurring in Kashmir
they have remained resolutely—and shamefully—silent.
Although the courts in Kashmir are in theory functioning,
lawyers are striking, making it hard for petitioners to get any-
where. The chief justice of the Supreme Court in Delhi has de-
clared that he is simply too busy to hear all the cases related to
the government’s actions in Kashmir. He passed them to other
benches of the Supreme Court, one of which gave the govern-
ment a further month to contemplate its response. Conveniently
enough, that pushes any ruling about whether or not the govern-
ment’s downgrading of Jammu & Kashmir from a state to a terri-
tory was constitutional until after the change takes effect, on Oc-
tober 31st. It will also mean, in all likelihood, a further month of
detention without trial for the Kashmiris rounded up by the au-
thorities and another month during which humbler Kashmiris
will be deprived of rights that other Indians take for granted.
Few of those other Indians will care very much. The Kashmir
valley is hemmed in by the Himalayas at the northern extreme of
the country, far from most Indians’ thoughts and experience. It
has been in some degree of turmoil since partition and indepen-
dence 71 years ago. It suffers separatist violence, now mostly
home-grown rather than instigated by Pakistan, which demands
a response from India’s security services—though that does not
justify today’s wholesale lockdown. To the extent that the rest of
the country gives Kashmiris any thought, it tends to see them as
troublemakers, if not traitors. Many Indians are toasting Mr
Modi for at last giving them their comeuppance.
Both gleeful and indifferent observers ought to be more wor-
ried. Mr Modi’s authoritarian instincts are not confined to Kash-
mir. If the courts continue to let him, he will doubtless continue
to reshape India in keeping with the bjp’s plainly stated goals.
That includes stripping 1.9m poor and illiterate residents of the
state of Assam of their citizenship, for example, if they do not
have the correct paperwork to prove that they are Indian citizens.
Then there is the bjp’s plan to finish the job begun by Hindu zeal-
ots in 1992 by building a temple on the site of the mosque they de-
molished. Events in Kashmir show that the government is ready
to trample Indians’ civil rights in order to squelch resistance to
its actions. If the Supreme Court is willing to look away today,
who is to say that the government will not feel free to carry on? 7T
o the average capitalist “open source” software may seem
like a pretty odd idea. Like most products, conventional com-
puter software—from video games to operating systems—is de-
veloped in secret, away from the prying eyes of competitors, and
then sold to customers as a finished product. Open-source soft-
ware, which has roots in the collaborative atmosphere of com-
puting’s earliest days, takes the opposite approach. Code is pub-
lic, and anyone is free to take it, modify it, share it, suggest
improvements or add new features.
It has been a striking success. Open-source
software runs more than half the world’s web-
sites and, in the form of Android, more than
80% of its smartphones. Some governments, in-
cluding Germany’s and Brazil’s, prefer their offi-
cials to use open-source software, in part be-
cause it reduces their dependence on foreign
companies. The security-conscious appreciate
the ability to inspect, in detail, the goods they are using. It is per-
fectly compatible with making money. In July ibmspent $34bn
to buy Red Hat, an American maker of a free open-source operat-
ing system, which earns its crust by charging for ancillary ser-
vices like customer support and training.
Now the model is spreading to chips. risc-vis a set of open-
source designs for microchips that was initially developed a de-
cade ago at the University of California, Berkeley. These days it is
attracting attention from many big technology firms, includingGoogle, Nvidia and Qualcomm (see Science section). In August
ibmmade its Power chip designs open-source. These moves are
welcome, for two reasons.
The first is economic. The chip business is highly concentrat-
ed. risc-vcompetes with closed-source designs from Arm, a Jap-
anese-owned firm which monopolises the market for tablet and
smartphone chips, and is a dominant presence in the fast-grow-
ing “internet of things”. ibm’s Power will challenge Intel’s grip on
desktops and data-centres. A dose of competi-
tion could lower prices and quicken innovation.
The second reason is geopolitical. America
and China are waging a technological cold war;
it threatens to damage a computer industry that
has become thoroughly globalised. The open-
source model, were it to be widely adopted,
might help defuse these tensions, by giving both
sides at least some of what they want.
Start with China. In May America blacklisted Huawei, a Chi-
nese tech giant which makes both smartphones and mobile-net-
work equipment. That underlined, to other Chinese firms and to
the country’s leadership, the risks of a model in which Chinese
tech firms build their products on American software and hard-
ware designs. Under the label “Made in China 2025”, the country
is investing billions to try to boost its domestic capacity.
Open-source components offer an alternative supply chain,
less subject to any individual country’s control. Alibaba, a Chi-Open season
The rise of open-source computing is good for competition—and may offer a way to ease the tech warTechnology and politics