India's silicon sunrise
THE WORD XENNIAL HAS COMPLETED one decade of existence. The credit for birthing the word goes to journalist Susan Stankorb. The word is defined as “a micro-generation that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of Gen X and the blithe optimism of millennials”.
One of the places where this generation and the generational shift are seen is in newsrooms. I remember a period of transition when THE WEEK’s desk did not have a computer per subeditor. In DTP centres, you approached a computer respectfully, without footwear. Air conditioning was deemed to be a must for this new animal. The words Pentium III and Celeron were pronounced in hushed tones.
From those times, we have come so far. Computers now live in pockets, order food for us, help us flirt, bring our families closer and a lot more. Hey, they even accompany us to the loo. Correspondent Niladry Sarkar’s cover story tells you what India is doing to stay relevant in the digital century by securing its semiconductor future. He travelled to Dholera in Gujarat, where a 920sqkm-megacity is rising fast to build semiconductors—a city larger than Mumbai or Bengaluru.
The cover story has voices that lend it gravitas, like the interview with V.K. Saraswat, member of NITI Aayog and the advisory committee of India Semiconductor Mission. We have three guest columns, too, from V. Veerappan, chairman, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association; Pranay Kotasthane, deputy director and chairperson of the high-tech geopolitics programme at the Takshashila Institution; and Anantha Kinnal, cofounder and managing director of Bengaluru-based Calligo Technologies.
As always, the cover story is just one dish in THE WEEK’s weekly buffet. We have Mark Linscott and Anushka Shah looking at the Trump tariff strategy vis-à-vis India. Linscott is a former assistant US trade representative and senior adviser (trade) at the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and Shah is manager, trade policy and emerging and critical technologies, USISPF.
In @leisure, Senior Subeditor Bechu S. writes about the ‘Afghan Bruce Lee’. Abbas Alizada was a social media star in Afghanistan before the Taliban stormed back into Kabul. Soon, artistes were in their crosshairs and to make things worse, he is a Hazara, an ethnic group that has been systemically targeted in Afghanistan. He fled with his family to the UK in 2021, from where he spoke to THE WEEK. His latest movie was shot in India and released in March.
Another poignant article in this issue is Anagha Subhash Nair’s interaction with those who survived chemical weapon attacks in Syria. The Baathist regime later destroyed its cache of chemical weapons, but the damage lives to this day.
When one thinks of chemical weapons, the first name that comes to mind to those of us who lived through the Gulf War is that of Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein’s defence minister. He was so much in the news in those days that an artist at THE WEEK named a kitten after him. The artist fed many strays and this one was different. He had a coat that looked like camouflage; he was a furtive little thing. He never ate with the others and never grew close to the hand that fed him. An anti-social kitten, if there could be one.
Chemical Ali was the kitten’s name, Al-Majid’s alias.
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