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By:

Dr. V.L. Dharurkar

12 February 2025 at 2:53:17 pm

From Frost to Thaw

After years of diplomatic chill, India and Canada have attempted a strategic reset driven as much by geopolitics and trade anxieties as by a desire to repair a damaged partnership. For nearly three years relations between India and Canada resembled a prolonged winter. Yet, the visit of Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney to India at the start of the Month suggests that the thaw may finally have begun. If the past few years were marked by recrimination and mistrust, the present moment hints...

From Frost to Thaw

After years of diplomatic chill, India and Canada have attempted a strategic reset driven as much by geopolitics and trade anxieties as by a desire to repair a damaged partnership. For nearly three years relations between India and Canada resembled a prolonged winter. Yet, the visit of Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney to India at the start of the Month suggests that the thaw may finally have begun. If the past few years were marked by recrimination and mistrust, the present moment hints at a cautious but deliberate reset. Both sides have shown a keenness to replace acrimony with pragmatism. The chill began during the tenure of Justin Trudeau, whose government publicly alleged that Indian agents may have been involved in violent activities on Canadian soil. India rejected the accusations as unfounded and politically motivated. The dispute triggered tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, the freezing of high-level dialogue and an atmosphere of mutual suspicion. For two countries that had long prided themselves on democratic affinity, shared Commonwealth ties and large diaspora links, the rapid deterioration was remarkable. Canada is home to one of the world’s largest Indian diasporas, numbering well over a million people. Trade and educational links have grown steadily since the late twentieth century. Canadian universities attract tens of thousands of Indian students each year, while Indian professionals and entrepreneurs have contributed significantly to Canada’s economic life. These human connections had long acted as ballast in the relationship. But politics, as ever, can overwhelm social ties. Symbolic Weight Carney’s New Delhi visit therefore carries symbolic weight. A former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, he has entered politics with a reputation for technocratic competence rather than ideological theatrics. His five-day visit to India, from late February to early March, was carefully choreographed to signal renewal. Beginning in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, he met industrialists, bankers and policymakers, emphasising economic cooperation as the cornerstone of the revived relationship. India today is among the world’s fastest-growing major economies, with ambitions to expand its industrial base, modernise infrastructure and transition towards cleaner sources of energy. Canada, meanwhile, possesses abundant natural resources, technological expertise and capital. The two economies are complementary in ways that diplomacy had recently obscured. One of the most notable outcomes of the visit was a long-term agreement on uranium supply. Canada’s mining giant Cameco and India’s Department of Atomic Energy concluded a ten-year deal worth roughly $2.6bn to supply more than 20m pounds of uranium. For India, which is expanding its civil nuclear programme to meet rising energy demand while limiting carbon emissions, reliable access to uranium is strategically important. The agreement will help fuel a new generation of small and medium reactors, which India sees as crucial to its energy transition. Canada, for its part, is among the world’s leading producers of uranium. Renewed nuclear cooperation therefore reflects not only diplomatic reconciliation but also the convergence of economic interests. Previous agreements between the two countries had faltered amid political tensions. This time both governments have emphasised implementation and timely delivery. Trade Boost Trade, too, looms large in the reset. Bilateral commerce between India and Canada currently hovers around $10bn to $12bn annually, a modest figure for economies of their scale. Both governments have spoken of raising that number dramatically, potentially to $50bn by the end of the decade. Negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), long stalled, have been revived with renewed urgency. Here global geopolitics provides an additional incentive. The increasingly protectionist trade policies of the United States under Donald Trump have unsettled many of Washington’s traditional partners. Tariff threats and economic nationalism have encouraged countries to diversify their commercial relationships. India and Canada, both heavily exposed to the American market, now see advantage in strengthening bilateral trade and investment as a hedge against volatility emanating from Washington. Education and innovation are another pillar of the renewed engagement. Canadian universities are exploring the possibility of establishing campuses in India, enabling Indian students to access Canadian education without leaving the country. Joint research programmes and technological collaboration are expected to deepen intellectual ties that already run deep. Beyond economics lies a broader strategic calculation. The Indo-Pacific has become the central theatre of twenty-first-century geopolitics. As China’s influence expands across Asia, many countries are seeking new partnerships to preserve a balance of power and maintain open sea lanes. India has positioned itself as a leading voice in this effort, promoting a vision of a free, stable and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. Strategic Dynamics Canada, though geographically distant, has begun to pay greater attention to the region’s strategic dynamics. Collaboration with India could therefore form part of a wider network involving countries such as Australia, Japan and New Zealand. For Ottawa, engagement with New Delhi offers a way to remain relevant in Asia’s shifting geopolitical landscape. For India, Canadian support adds another partner to its growing Indo-Pacific coalition. Yet enthusiasm should be tempered with realism. Diplomatic resets are easier to announce than to sustain. The political sensitivities that strained relations in the past have not vanished entirely. Canada’s domestic politics, particularly debates surrounding diaspora activism, remain complex. India, meanwhile, is unlikely to tolerate external criticism on matters it considers internal. Managing these differences will require careful diplomacy and mutual restraint. Nevertheless, the symbolism of the present moment matters. The revival of high-level dialogue, the signing of concrete economic agreements and the visible warmth between leaders all suggest a shared desire to turn the page. In the grand sweep of history, relations between India and Canada have always rested on deeper foundations than temporary political quarrels. If the current reset succeeds, it could transform a once-strained partnership into one of the more promising relationships in the Indo-Pacific era. (The writer is a foreign affairs expert. Views personal.)

Code in the Canopy

How Madhya Pradesh’s AI experiment in forest monitoring could become a model for the world

Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh

In the heart of India, a forest officer has achieved a coup of sorts that ministries and tech firms across the world are still mulling. It is marrying artificial intelligence with satellite imagery and field-level accountability to fight deforestation in real time.


Madhya Pradesh, the state with India’s largest forest cover, is now the first in the country to pilot an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, cloud-based forest alert system. Developed not in some private lab but by a public servant - a young Indian Forest Service officer named Akshay Rathore - it is an experiment worth watching. If it works, the system could become a template not only for India’s fragile forests but also for endangered ecosystems across the developing world.


The system, already rolled out across five forest divisions notorious for illegal tree-felling and encroachment in Guna, Shivpuri, Khandwa, Burhanpur and Vidisha, uses satellite images from Google Earth Engine, compares them across three dates, and applies a custom-built AI model to detect changes as minute as a 10-by-10 metre patch of tree cover. Alerts are pushed directly to beat guards via a mobile app. They are then expected to physically verify the site, upload geo-tagged photos and audio comments, and close the feedback loop.


This is a system designed for a country where manpower is stretched and terrain is often inaccessible and given that traditional monitoring methods, usually paper-based or relying on bureaucratic relays, are ill-suited to respond to dynamic threats.


While Madhya Pradesh may have 85,724 sq km of forest and tree cover (according to the Forest Survey of India’s 2023 report), it also leads the country in forest loss, with 612 sq km lost that year alone. Rathore’s system does more than just flag these changes. It classifies them, analyses their vegetation index (NDVI, SAVI, and EVI, for those who like acronyms) and sets up the ground force for real-time response.


Rathore, an alumnus of IIT Roorkee, built the initial Python scripts himself by using ChatGPT to streamline some of the scripting while leaning on lessons learned from an earlier encroachment flare-up in Guna.


The best innovations in governance are often not those with the largest budgets or biggest private partners, but those born out of institutional urgency and local knowledge. Consider Kenya’s use of blockchain to verify land titles or Indonesia’s ‘One Map’ policy to integrate spatial data for forest governance. India, with its complex land politics and mounting ecological pressures, needs more such bottom-up, tech-enabled models.


Still, the Madhya Pradesh model is far from perfect. Human verification, though necessary for now, slows down the system and leaves room for neglect. But Phase 2 of the project, which proposes to use drones and historical seasonal data to train predictive models, could address this.


There are reasons for caution. AI-based governance tools often raise concerns about surveillance, data misuse and overreliance on algorithms. But the potential here is vast. The approach blends precision with scalability. A 10-by-10 metre resolution is good enough to catch most illegal activities without overwhelming field staff. The alert-to-action loop means the system is not just diagnostic but operational. Over time, as the model learns from on-ground feedback, it promises to be self-improving. Think of it as the Waze of forest governance except instead of navigating traffic, it is routing patrols to illegal loggers and encroachers.


The Indian state is often accused of being sluggish, reactive and under-resourced. But this experiment shows what is possible when the state leverages both its local intelligence and cutting-edge tech.


Whether Madhya Pradesh’s system will scale to other parts of India remains to be seen. Bureaucratic rivalries, budget constraints and technical hurdles are real. But in a country where forests are both sacred groves and political battlegrounds, and where climate change is no longer a future threat but a lived reality, Rathore’s AI system offers a fighting chance to protect forests.

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