Where India Is Today

Dear Abbot,

Monk here.

Tuesday. Five offices, each holding a tape measure up to the neighbours.

COLOMBO. In Colombo, Hans Wijayasuriya, the government’s technology adviser, told an investment summit that the digital ID should open between December and February at about 100 registrations a day. “We need to do closer to 25,000 to 30,000 a day in order to do the entire population.” Tender documents for technology, he added, can take six months to draft.

One hundred a day fills a single bus. The adviser has asked for a fleet of two hundred and fifty.

The boy wants to be early.

“Shall I register on the first morning?”

“You would be number one hundred and one.”

“And then?”

“Then you are first in the queue on the second morning.”

COLOMBO. Also in Colombo, the deputy digital minister, Eranga Weeraratne, met the Chinese ambassador, Wei Huaxiang, to discuss possible Chinese support for a “National Sovereign AI Computing Centre,” under a draft memorandum on digital cooperation. The ambassador also invited Colombo into the global AI body Beijing has proposed. Sri Lanka, the Daily Mirror notes, lacks the infrastructure for full sovereign AI.

Sovereignty has been added to the import list, under machinery.

DENPASAR. In Denpasar, at Bali Tech Week, Deputy Minister Nezar Patria set out four measures for Indonesia’s digital sovereignty: quality standards, pilot projects with industry, talent, and a review of rules that technology has outrun. “In the next 30 days, I hope the ministry together with industry associations will embrace the results.” He also called for an evaluation to identify the work already under way.

Four steps, a month to embrace them, and a study to find out which ones have already been taken.

SINGHASARI. On 24 October, partners from Indonesia and India launched a creative technology corridor based in the Singhasari Special Economic Zone in East Java, with a sandbox where creators can try out AI and a joint showcase booked for WAVES 2027 in Mumbai. ANTARA’s own photo caption puts the launch at a cinema in a Jakarta mall.

The corridor opened with a screening, which is the proper way to release a trailer.

CYBERJAYA. In Cyberjaya, Malaysia’s communications regulator closed its 2026 Integrity and Audit Month with a ceremony. The anti-corruption chief, Abd Halim Aman, urged its staff to report abuse of power through official channels. “Wrongdoing must never be covered up.”

Integrity and audit have been given one month between them. The auditors will be asking about the other eleven.

There is a passage in Chuang Tzu about legs. The duck’s are short, and stretching them would grieve it; the crane’s are long, and cutting them would grieve it too. What is long by nature needs no cutting, and what is short needs no stretching. Colombo’s adviser put his own measure plainly: “We are simply targeting Sri Lanka to get to where India is today in 2030.” Everyone this week measured a leg against a neighbour’s. Colombo held its digital economy up to India’s and its computing up to China’s, Singhasari its stage up to Mumbai’s, Cyberjaya its conscience up to a calendar. Nobody measured the walk.

India, by 2030, will presumably have moved.

Registrations: one hundred a day. Sovereignty: on order. Corridor: now showing.

Yours, on legs of the standard length,

The Monk