The Indian government may deem it prudent not to escalate the current uproar over the free-floating profanities in multiple Indian languages that have flooded the big tech billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok 3. New Delhi is too focused on the pursuit of closer engagement with the highly erratic US president Donald Trump, who has threatened reciprocal tariffs on Indian exports. Equally pivotal an influence in maintaining bilateral relations with Washington is Mr Musk, arguably the country’s second most powerful individual, whose controversial decisions as head of the Department for Government Efficiency have upended decades of US foreign policy and soft power.

One major outcome of the efforts to smooth tensions with Washington was the swift backing of India’s two telecommunications behemoths, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio and Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel, extended earlier this month for Mr Musk’s SpaceX to roll out its Starlink satellite broadband internet services in India. The country’s space broadband market is estimated at $1 billion in annual revenues. The telecom tycoons had previously been persuading the government and the regulator to auction satellite spectrum through the regular competitive process. Mr Musk had contested that any such move would conflict with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s designation as a shared spectrum for satellites. The recent breakthrough, moreover, is expected to smoothen the path for the........

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