New Delhi, Sep 20 (SocialNews.XYZ) From Delhi to Washington, the naraaz fufaji -- the grumpy, angry or perpetually sulking uncle -- has now found a popular place in political vocabulary.

It is not that naaraz fufaji is a new discovery; every Indian family knows one. But suddenly, these two words have acquired their own status, putting a familiar family character at the centre of political conversations.

It is quite interesting to watch several 'naaraz fufajis' getting the spotlight in the country, from the desi political arena to international politics and even other fields. The country suddenly seems to have too many fufajis.

The fufaji is a character most Indian households instantly recognise. He arrives at a family function and, instead of simply enjoying the hospitality, starts inspecting the arrangements. Why is this here? Why was that done? What was the need? And, most importantly, why wasn't I asked?

The questions may be basic, but the intention is usually to find something wrong and, perhaps, remind everyone that he would have done it better. If the food is good, he will ask why another dish was not included. If the venue is impressive, he will question why this place was chosen. And if everything has gone perfectly, he may remind everyone that his daughter's or son's wedding was better.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently gave this familiar Indian character a political identity.

During his interaction with students at the centenary celebrations of Shri Ram College of Commerce, PM Modi referred to the naraz fufaji, taking a dig at those who question every new government initiative. He returned to the expression days later in Vadodara while speaking about development projects worth more than Rs 35,000 crore and the completion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor.

The Prime Minister did not name anyone. But politics does not always require names. Sometimes a fufaji is enough.

PM Modi used the freight corridor to contrast the pace of work under his government with the earlier Congress-led UPA period, pointing out that the project had been conceived earlier but had moved slowly before 2014.

Once the naraaz fufaji entered political vocabulary, social media did what it does best -- memes, videos and reels appeared. And, naturally, Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party became frequent recipients of the new political nickname.

But Rahul Gandhi is not the only one who seems to have accepted the fufaji job description. Akhilesh Yadav too has increasingly found himself in the same political conversation, often taking a similar line to Rahul Gandhi on national issues.

The BRICS Summit in New Delhi provided a rather perfect example.

After India hosted a gala dinner for BRICS leaders with an elaborate vegetarian menu showcasing different parts of the country, Rahul Gandhi found something else to put on the political menu. He pointed out that 80 per cent of Indians are non-vegetarian and praised non-vegetarian food.

Like a typical fufaji, Rahul Gandhi managed to find a point of criticism in the dinner menu at an international summit.

Akhilesh Yadav also criticised the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government, saying international events such as the BRICS Summit could not conceal domestic governance shortcomings or replace genuine democratic accountability.

Fair criticism? That is for people to decide. But in the fufaji dictionary, the timing certainly qualifies. The naraaz fufaji does not discriminate between a major family decision and the colour of the curtains. Everything deserves a comment.

The wedding may be grand. The guests may be happy. The food may be excellent. But the fufaji will still ask questions and pass indirect judgements. In politics, apparently, even a BRICS dinner is not safe.

And then there is the international family.

US President Donald Trump could almost qualify as the international edition of the fufaji -- the kind who walks into a family gathering and within minutes tells everyone how important he is, how much he has done for them and what they should be doing differently.

India has had its own experience.

During the tensions between India and Pakistan following Operation Sindoor in May 2025, Trump repeatedly claimed a role in bringing the hostilities to an end and spoke about mediation. India rejected the suggestion of US mediation and maintained that the cessation of firing followed direct communication between the two militaries.

Then came the tariff threats and Trump's repeated comments on the Indian economy. In July 2025, he described India and Russia as having "dead economies".

No sooner had the international fufaji commented than some Indian fufajis led by Rahul Gandhi quickly endorsed it. Gandhi said Trump was right and that the Indian economy was a "dead economy", while blaming the Modi government.

They even tried to add their own reasons for the remarks, thereby proving a point for which the fufaji is perpetually known -- a fufaji gone naaraz. Every Indian knows this: the fufaji has an opinion about everything.

And politics has plenty of such characters.

Governments need criticism. Opposition parties have every right to question decisions. But when every government initiative is criticised simply because it comes from the government, the criticism can start sounding predictable. Rahul Gandhi has done this on several occasions, giving further credence to the fufaji title.

At the same time, when every criticism is dismissed by calling the critic a naraaz fufaji, governments can also avoid answering uncomfortable questions.

That is perhaps the strange beauty of the political fufaji. He is always around. He does not really retire. When his party is in Opposition, everything the government does is wrong. When his party comes to power, everything the previous government did becomes wrong.

When the government announces something, he asks why. When it does not announce something, he asks why not. When something succeeds, he asks why it took so long. And when something fails, he is the first to say, "I told you so".

The fufaji will never change. And perhaps that is the most Indian thing about our political family. There will always be a naraaz fufaji, frowning at everything under the sun, no matter what.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Sep 13 (SocialNews.XYZ) Some moments in a nation's journey are recorded in history forever. The adoption of the New Delhi Declaration at the BRICS 2026 Summit was certainly one such moment, not because the declaration itself was unexpected, but because many had doubts about whether the member countries would be able to agree on anything at all.

With conflicts raging in West Asia, the Russia-Ukraine war continuing into its fourth year, and the United States repeatedly changing tariff rules and taking an increasingly aggressive approach towards several countries, the global situation could hardly have been more complicated. And when some BRICS members themselves have big differences, expectations of consensus are naturally low.

Almost the whole world is being affected by these crises. There are growing concerns about peace, stability, trade, businesses and the future of global supply chains. Amid all this uncertainty, the BRICS Summit in New Delhi has at least tried to point towards a different direction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BRICS 2026 presented a platform that put cooperation ahead of confrontation and spoke about mutual growth, respect and the need to reinforce multilateralism.

The Summit has also shown that BRICS is no longer merely a grouping of emerging economies sitting together for an annual meeting. But it is becoming an increasingly important platform through which the Global South is trying to make its voice heard.

US President Donald Trump had once dismissed BRICS as "dead" and has repeatedly threatened higher tariffs against its members. The New Delhi Summit, however, offered a different picture. Whatever the differences within the grouping, the countries managed to arrive at a common declaration and reaffirm the importance of multilateralism, multipolarity and respect for international law.

This assumes greater significance at a time when the world has witnessed violations of international norms, unilateral actions and growing questions over the effectiveness of institutions such as the United Nations and the UN Security Council.

The present global situation could not perhaps have been better described by Prime Minister Modi in his opening address at the Summit. Referring to the existing global decision-making structure, he said it looked like a "pyramid of privilege".

It was a sharp criticism of a global order in which decisions affecting developing and least-developed countries are often taken without giving them an adequate voice. Calling for a reset of global governance, PM Modi said, "The Global South is in the front row of global crises, but in the back row of decision-making."

He called for replacing the existing "pyramid of privilege" with a "platform of partnership" where every country has a voice, every member has a stake, and human development remains at the centre of global efforts.

With this Summit, the Prime Minister has set an example for the world, presenting a platform where voices are heard. He said confidence of Global South nations in BRICS has increased because their voices are heard within the grouping, stressing that the strength of BRICS lies in its diversity and cooperation.

The messages were clear and sharp. But perhaps the real test of diplomacy is not what leaders say from the podium. It is what happens when countries with differences actually sit across the table.

And that is where an unexpected diplomatic moment in New Delhi became significant.

On September 11, at Bharat Mandapam, UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along with their respective delegations. The two leaders shook hands warmly.

The significance of this meeting cannot be ignored. It came at a time when the West Asia conflict has created deep divisions and when even diplomatic efforts to bring the opposing sides closer face difficulties.

The important point is not that all differences suddenly disappeared. They did not. Nor does one meeting mean that a complicated conflict has been resolved.

But two countries with sharply different positions were able to sit together, talk and engage, and that itself matters.

It also demonstrates why a platform like BRICS can have relevance even when its members do not agree on everything. Diplomacy does not always mean making differences disappear. Sometimes it simply means creating enough space for countries to talk despite those differences.

India has consistently maintained that dialogue and diplomacy are the way forward in resolving conflicts. During the Summit, Prime Minister Modi reiterated that position and said India stood ready to assist in peace efforts.

New Delhi's approach has therefore been to keep the doors of dialogue open rather than allow differences to paralyse the grouping.

The Iran-UAE interaction may not by itself change the course of the West Asia conflict, but it certainly showed what diplomacy can achieve when countries are given a platform to engage. This is perhaps the bigger message of the New Delhi Summit.

The Summit also showed another aspect of BRICS diplomacy. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking from the Summit venue, sent a message to Europe that Russia did not pose a threat to European countries. At the same time, on September 11, he warned that any deployment of European troops to Ukraine would amount to "a war against Russia".

It was also an opportunity for Putin to use the BRICS platform to make his stance on the Ukraine conflict clear.

BRICS may have its contradictions. Its members may disagree on wars, geopolitics and global priorities. But the fact that they still managed to sit together and produce a consensus at a time when the world is increasingly divided is itself an achievement.

The BRICS Summit has therefore been more than just another diplomatic gathering. It has shown the extent of India's diplomatic space and the importance of keeping communication alive even in difficult times.

And perhaps, for a change, it is also a moment to quieten those who are always ready to point fingers and play the role of the perpetual 'phuphaji' -- the one who finds fault with the arrangements even when the entire family has finally managed to sit together.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Sep 13 (SocialNews.XYZ) On September 9, a sub-committee of the Union Home Ministry met representatives from Ladakh in New Delhi. The next day, Sonam Wangchuk gave the government one week. If no assurance came, a padyatra would begin on September 19 and run to September 24, with a wider agitation to follow. The Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance said the talks had produced nothing new.

Others in the same room described it very differently.

Thupstan Chhewang, a former Member of Parliament who led the Leh Apex Body until he resigned last year, called the talks fruitful. He said points of consensus were never placed before the people, and that the delay came not from the Home Ministry but from differences within the Apex Body and the KDA over sequencing.

He questioned the need for a fresh agitation when dialogue was producing results.

Ladakh’s Member of Parliament, Mohmad Haneefa Jan, said the Home Ministry was serious about the legislative setup and about safeguards under Article 371. He stressed the urgency of restarting recruitment for young people who have waited years for an examination.

What the September 9 meeting settled

There will be a Union Territory-level elected body with legislative, executive and financial powers. Its members will be chosen by direct election from constituencies rather than indirectly through the hill councils. Every representative from the Apex Body and the KDA pressed for direct election, and the Centre accepted it. Delimitation will be separate for Ladakh, and constitutional protection has been accepted for land, culture, heritage, environment and natural resources under a special provision of Article 371.

Earlier rounds had already delivered. Eighty-five per cent of government posts are reserved for locals, eighty per cent of them for Scheduled Tribes. A domicile framework is in place, five official languages are notified, and a third of hill council seats are reserved for women.

That covers a large part of what the movement asked for. Is this a government that has made no progress?

Why no draft arrived

What the meeting handed over instead was a set of questions on dividing powers between the hill councils and the new territorial body. This is the one thing still genuinely unsettled, inside the movement as much as between it and Delhi. A strong territorial Assembly and strong hill councils both claim the same subjects. Land, forests and local administration cannot sit in two places at once. Until Ladakh answers which powers belong where, nobody can write the clause.

Let the existing system work

In August, the administration began the panchayat election process with a revision of electoral rolls. Ladakh has 193 panchayats, ninety-five in Leh and ninety-eight in Kargil, and hill council elections are also due. Wangchuk and sections of the KDA have argued that these polls should wait until the territorial body is created. That argument does not hold.

Ladakh’s structure has three tiers: the panchayat at the base, the hill council above it and the proposed territorial body on top. The lower two have existed for years. Leh has had a hill council since 1995 and Kargil since 2003, with panchayats functioning alongside. Neither was created by this negotiation, and neither depends on it. A panchayat election changes nothing about what the territorial body will look like.

A delay changes a great deal. Village and hill council seats stay empty, money that moves through those institutions stops moving, and the five new districts keep waiting for the councils they were promised.

The same applies to the demand that the administration take no major decisions until the settlement is final. That would freeze recruitment under the new reservation rules, which took years of agitation to win. It would hold up domicile certification, road tendering and winter health postings. It would stall the notification of councils for Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra and Changthang. These are Ladakh’s gains, not Delhi’s projects, and a freeze would stop them from reaching people who were never in the room.

The shortcut that looks like protection

The oldest demand is the Sixth Schedule, treated as a shortcut because it is familiar and already in the Constitution. But it creates district councils, not a legislature. Ladakh has had district councils for decades, so adding the Schedule tomorrow would still leave it with no Assembly and no territorial law-making power.

There is a further point, rarely made. Parliament can amend the Sixth Schedule by ordinary law, and such a change is not treated as an amendment of the Constitution. A special provision under Article 371 can be altered only by constitutional amendment, needing a two-thirds majority in both Houses. On how easily a future government could undo the protection, the familiar instrument is the weaker one.

The question Ladakh should ask

The approach now being taken is all or nothing. Everything must be settled together, or nothing moves. No negotiation of this size has worked that way.

The sensible course is the opposite. Lock in what has been agreed and put the elected body, direct elections, separate delimitation and the Article 371 safeguards beyond doubt. Then carry on with what remains: the division of powers, policing and the method of delimitation.

An ultimatum claims that one set of negotiators may decide, on its own timetable, whether a constitutional settlement moves forward or collapses. That is a claim to a veto, and nobody in this process holds one. The Apex Body and the KDA are coalitions of organisations. They have earned their seat at the table. They have not been elected to speak for all of Ladakh.

When every round of talks ends in a fresh deadline, and every gain is dismissed as nothing, it is fair to ask what the objection is really about. Is it about Ladakh’s powers, or about who gets to claim them? Is it wise to hold an entire process to ransom while a few leaders wait for terms that suit their own ambitions?

Ordinary Ladakhis are paying for this. Their villages have no elected panchayats. Their young people are waiting for recruitment notices. Five new districts have no councils. When agitation becomes permanent, it stops being a means to anything and turns into an occupation in itself.

The next round of talks is set for early October. Ladakh is entitled to insist that a draft arrives then, and to say so plainly if it does not. What it cannot afford is to win the argument about speed and lose the thing it was arguing for.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Sep 9 (SocialNews.XYZ) Asking Indians to step away from the jewellery counter ahead of the festival season carries political risks. Gold in India is more than a commodity. It is a form of savings, an intergenerational asset and a deeply entrenched cultural tradition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public plea to avoid unnecessary gold purchases puts concern about the import bill up against long-standing buying habits and the interests of the domestic jewellery trade.

The electoral calendar adds a political dimension. Next year, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab head to the polls. The domestic gold trade includes merchant communities that have traditionally formed part of the BJP’s support base.

A sustained decline in gold buying could depress jewellery sales and unsettle sections of that constituency ahead of these elections. The appeal suggests a willingness to deliver an uncomfortable economic message, although its political cost will depend on whether consumers respond and how the trade is affected.

The economic concern is the rising bullion import bill amid wars and global uncertainty. Higher international gold prices have increased the cost of meeting Indian demand, even as import volumes have declined. According to data reported by The Economic Times, India’s gold imports rose more than 24 per cent to an all-time high of $71.98 billion in 2025–26. This occurred even as the volume imported fell nearly 4.8 per cent to roughly 721 tonnes.

India bought less physical gold but paid a substantially higher dollar bill. Gold imports add to the demand for foreign exchange. A surge in festive buying can therefore widen the trade deficit and, depending on other external flows, add to pressure on the rupee.

However, framing PM Modi’s appeal purely as a response to global gold prices offers incomplete context. It also draws attention to the government’s limited progress in reducing dependence on imported crude oil. Earlier ambitions to bring down that dependence have proved difficult to realise.

With limited scope to curb essential oil imports without affecting economic activity, discretionary imports become a more accessible target. Gold is an obvious candidate, although restraining purchases would not resolve the underlying dependence on imported energy.

Nor is all gold buying simply consumption that households can readily postpone. For many buyers, it is also a means of saving and providing financial security. That complicates the attempt to influence demand through an appeal for restraint.

Reducing gold imports requires more than a Prime Ministerial plea. It also requires more effective ways to bring existing domestic holdings into circulation and offer alternatives to those buying gold primarily as an investment. Indian households and religious institutions are estimated to hold 20,000 25,000 tonnes of physical gold. This represents substantial wealth, but much of it remains outside formal financial channels. Efforts to mobilise it have met with limited success.

The Gold Monetisation Scheme struggled to attract household gold, partly because families are reluctant to melt down ancestral jewellery in return for interest. Sovereign Gold Bonds offered an alternative for investors seeking exposure to gold prices, but could not substitute for jewellery bought to wear, gift or pass on.

The distinction matters. A gold-linked financial investment and a family heirloom serve different purposes. The difficulty is not simply that policy has failed to turn physical gold into a financial asset. It is that financial products cannot fully replace the cultural and practical uses of jewellery.

Without addressing those differences, efforts to shift demand away from physical gold will have limits.

There are precedents for PM Modi taking decisions that unsettled established interests, including sections of his own support base. But comparisons between the gold appeal and structural reforms need care.

As Chief Minister of Gujarat, he implemented the Jyotigram Yojana, which separated agricultural power feeders from those supplying other rural consumers. The programme faced resistance from sections of the farming community but changed how rural electricity was supplied.

As Prime Minister, his government introduced the Goods and Services Tax, seeking to create a unified national market. The transition brought significant adjustment and compliance costs, particularly for smaller businesses and traders, including communities traditionally associated with the BJP.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code similarly challenged the position of established business promoters. It provided creditors with a framework to resolve defaulting companies, potentially displacing existing owners. Its implementation has also exposed shortcomings requiring further reform.

These measures changed institutions, rules and incentives. An appeal to avoid gold purchases relies instead on voluntary restraint. It may reflect a willingness to challenge established preferences, but it is not equivalent to a change in taxation, credit rules or the organisation of an essential service.

Its economic effect will depend on whether households alter their buying decisions. The intention to ease external pressures is clear; the scale and durability of the response are not.

Demonetisation in 2016, ahead of the following year’s Uttar Pradesh election, provides another example of a disruptive intervention before a major political contest. It does not, however, establish that taking an electoral risk necessarily produces economic gains.

The gold appeal is also materially different. Rather than imposing a sudden policy change, PM Modi is asking consumers to give greater weight to the national economic cost of their purchases. Whether that argument outweighs considerations of tradition, savings and expected returns remains uncertain.

The immediate gamble is that some households will defer buying without a wider backlash from the jewellery trade. Even then, postponed purchases may return later, limiting the lasting effect on imports.

PM Modi's intervention brings the foreign-exchange cost of gold into the public debate. But the test is not the boldness of the appeal. It is whether the appeal changes demand, and whether policy can provide credible savings alternatives and make better use of gold already held in India. Political gains, should they follow, would be a separate outcome.

(Rakesh Khar is a seasoned editor. He writes at the intersection of politics, business, technology and society. Views expressed are personal)

/as

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Sep 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) There can be no greater terror than seeing your name, occupation, contact numbers, residential address, and details of your family and relatives publicly marked by terrorists. And the only reason for this is that you are a Kashmiri Pandit -- an original dweller of Kashmir trying to return and reclaim the land of your ancestors.

This is the reality of 2026. And it is not very different from what happened when the persecution began in the 1980s and exploded in the 1990s. The threat, harassment, and targeted killings never really went away. They have continued in different forms over the years.

The terror groups are the same, even if some now operate under different names. Their backers remain the same, sitting in Pakistan, Turkey, and other countries, as well as in Kashmir. Some politicians and separatist-supporting outfits remain around too. And the objective has not changed -- an Islamic Kashmir and the complete elimination of Kashmiri Pandit influence and presence from the Valley.

When former J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah dismissed the recent threat letters received by Kashmiri Pandits, it showed a mindset that has often been seen as sympathetic to separatist thinking. His bizarre argument was that if Kashmiri Pandit employees were receiving threats, why were senior Hindu officers posted in the Union Territory not being threatened? He knew exactly what he was saying. And yet, he said it.

Farooq Abdullah and those like him know very well that Kashmiri Pandits have been trying to return to their homeland. Some have made individual efforts, while others have returned in groups. A small number have tried to resettle in different parts of the Valley.

Then there are those who returned in 2008 under the Rs 16,000-crore rehabilitation package announced by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They took government jobs in different departments, but under strict conditions. They had to work in Kashmir or risk losing their jobs and were provided accommodation in gated settlements.

According to Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai, in a July 26, 2022 reply to a Lok Sabha question, 5,502 Kashmiri migrants had been provided government jobs under the Prime Minister's Development Package. The migrants included Kashmiri Pandits and other religious communities as well.

So, when three threat letters emerge one after another, on August 3, 23, and 27, why would those Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley not be afraid?

Threat letters are not new to Kashmiri Pandits. They were part of the terror campaign that began in the late 1980s and drove thousands of Hindus out of the Valley in the 1990s. Hit lists were prepared and pasted on walls and houses. Kashmiri Pandits were abducted and tortured on allegations of being Indian agents or RSS members.

Hundreds were killed. Some were brutally murdered, their bodies hung from poles and trees. Some were killed in sawmills. Others were beheaded, with their heads thrown into Hindu courtyards.

This was happening in the late 1980s and 1990s, when Farooq Abdullah was Chief Minister of the erstwhile J&K state under Article 370 and Article 35A, while Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, father of Mehbooba Mufti, was the Union Home Minister. Then there were also mass killings in which Kashmiri Pandit men, women and children were lined up and shot dead in the years that followed.

This is the history that cannot simply be wished away. So when threat letters resurface, how responsible is it to ask why other Hindu officers are not being targeted?

The real issue is not who else has not been threatened, as Farooq Abdullah wants it to be believed. The real issue is why Kashmiri Pandits, who have returned to their homeland to work and rebuild their lives, continue to live under such fear.

Had the political class been genuinely interested in their return, far more would have been done to help this beleaguered community and restore the real meaning of Kashmiriyat.

Kashmiriyat was never about erasing differences. It was about Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims living together while respecting each other's religious boundaries. It was about a society where two distinct communities could coexist with discipline, mutual respect, and a sense of community. That Kashmir has been shattered.

And those who should have stood up for the Valley's minuscule minority have largely remained silent. They did little when Kashmiri Pandits were persecuted and have done little since to create a social narrative within the majority community that encourages their return. That silence has consequences.

For the Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley today, this is not a political argument. It is about survival and the simple right to live without looking over their shoulders. Most of them are afraid to move freely or even attend offices.

The most disturbing question is how terrorists managed to get such precise information about those being threatened -- their mobile numbers, workplaces and Jammu-based postal addresses.

The nexus is well entrenched. It could include a neighbour, colleague, classmate, business partner or simply anyone with access to such information. It was there in the 1990s and has never gone away.

The aim is clear -- never to let Kashmiri Pandits return to their homeland and to create such fear, from time to time, that those who have returned are forced to think twice before staying back. That, perhaps, is the real terror.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Sep 5 (SocialNews.XYZ) The order of events is the argument. On 28 February, the United States and Israel struck Iran, and Iran's retaliation closed the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial shipping. Brent went from about $72 on the eve of the strikes to nearly $120 within nine days, and above $126 by the end of April.

Qatar declared force majeure on gas contracts that supplied over two-fifths of India's imported LNG. More than two dozen Indian-flagged ships and some 780 Indian seafarers were inside the Gulf. By August the cost of moving a barrel of Saudi crude to India had risen more than fourfold, and war-risk cover for one Hormuz transit was reported as high as $10 million. Reserves fell more than $47 billion from their late-February peak by late May, and the rupee set record lows, before the swap inflows rebuilt them.

The Reserve Bank opened its dollar swap facility on 8 June. By 31 August it had drawn $136.38 billion, $127 billion of it from overseas Indians placing three-to-five-year deposits with Indian banks. The operation mobilised roughly four times the amount raised through the comparable 2013 swap windows, and deserves its applause. But the sequence matters more than the size. The physical shock came first. The dollar shield came three months later. It helped finance an adaptation already underway; it could not have prevented the disruption.

That sequence exposes a distinction Indian policy rarely makes explicit: a country has two reserves. The first is financial: dollars, gold and credit lines. The second is physical and institutional: the inventories, ships, contracts, insurance, payment channels, rehearsed decisions and working relationships abroad that let it obtain what it needs when supply, not money, binds. In 2013 the immediate stress was mostly financial, and dollars answered it. In 2026 the binding constraints lay increasingly in the second reserve, and dollars could finance the adaptation but not perform it.

On the first reserve, the news is good, and it should be stated precisely. India has not received $136 billion. Overseas Indians deposited it with Indian banks; the banks swapped the dollars to the RBI for rupees; the RBI's reserves rose, and so did its forward book, the dollars it must return, to a record of about $137 billion in July. The RBI's forward liability is matched by the banks' deposit liabilities, so the money is not gone. One common analytical adjustment, among several adequacy measures, is to net the forward book from gross reserves: late-August reserves near $729 billion less the end-July forward book, about $590 billion, against the $327 billion of external debt that fell due within a year as of end-March, a cover of about 1.8 times, above the one-for-one benchmark conventionally applied to short-term liabilities. The rupees created against those dollars have left the banking system with a record liquidity surplus of roughly ₹9.7 trillion that the RBI must now manage; that is the same transaction seen from inside the country. The current account deficit was 0.6 per cent of GDP last year, against 4.8 per cent in the year to March 2013. Even at the May trough, standard adequacy indicators did not point to an external-liquidity crisis. That is exactly why the second reserve is the story.

Measure it honestly. India imports a record 88.7 per cent of its crude, and between 41 and 52 per cent of it crossed Hormuz before the war. The strategic petroleum reserve holds nine Page 1 of 3The Second Reserve Mir Junaid and a half days of requirement at full capacity; when the war began it was 64 per cent full, roughly six days. By May the government put rolling stock at sixty days of crude, sixty of gas and forty-five of LPG, counting refiners' tanks and cargoes contracted or at sea, and those barrels are real; the public sources reviewed here do not disaggregate how much of that cover is immediately discretionary under emergency arrangements, as against what refineries need to keep running. Imported LNG met around half of gas demand in June, and the fertiliser sector is the second-largest consumer of that gas. India's urea plants are gas-fed: a gas shock puts immediate pressure on urea output, and sowing windows do not move. In 2026, stocks were a third higher than a year earlier, and the allocation order kept that pressure from reaching the farm. Indian-flagged vessels carried only 6.1 per cent of India's overseas cargo in 2024-25, down from about 41 per cent in 1987-88 on the same official series; the fleet carries roughly twice the tonnage it did then, but trade grew far faster, and the other 94 per cent moves on hulls India cannot direct. And the barrels that replaced Gulf crude fastest were Russian, which India already bought in volume; Washington's thirty-day sanctions waiver in the first week of March, later extended to all buyers, let refiners ramp purchases sharply.

Against this, the spring was a success of adaptive crisis management. Non-Hormuz sourcing rose from about 55 to about 70 per cent of crude imports within weeks. The United States became India's largest LNG supplier for the first time. A gas-allocation order came within nine days; an Informal Group of Ministers under the Defence Minister met from March on fuel, fertiliser, shipping and essential supplies; a sovereign-backed maritime insurance pool was approved in April and wrote its first war-risk policy on 12 May. India passed the test. It passed it from thin dedicated buffers, on foreign hulls insured abroad, at two to five times pre-war freight, with a cost premium that has not been disclosed and a financial instrument that followed the shock by three months. Rerouting also cost throughput: a tanker fetching Atlantic crude completes a fraction of the voyages a Gulf shuttle does, so the same hulls deliver less over time, while exporters face both dearer inputs and higher outward logistics costs. Much of that capacity was built during the shock, and much of the visible coordination ran through a ministerial group convened for the crisis, by its own name informal. The Strategic Policy Group under the National Security Adviser has the standing membership to hold a simultaneous currency, energy, shipping, fertiliser, payment and information shock, and internal arrangements may exist that are not public; what is not publicly visible is a permanent doctrine that measures, rehearses and benchmarks continuity across these systems together.

Call the remedy deterrence by continuity, deterrence in the strategist's sense of denial: the objective is that no single external disruption can stop an essential national function, so that squeezing a chokepoint cannot halt it and the return on trying falls. Finland's security-of-supply law and Japan's economic-security act are antecedents, neither of which can be copied; the useful step for India is to treat these capabilities as a reserve that can be measured. The Defence Minister asked in May for strategic reserves to be re-evaluated and for scenario planning; this is an argument for doing that through national benchmarks, with aggregates published where security permits. This is not autarky. India benefits enormously from trade, and indiscriminate import substitution has raised costs and invited rent. The test for domestic capability is narrow: would an interruption of, say, ninety days stop an essential function, and is there no cheaper redundancy? Fuel, gas, fertiliser and LPG are priority candidates for formal stress testing; most imports would not justify strategic redundancy and should keep being bought on the world market.

Five steps follow, and the last of them, measurement, should in practice come first. First, storage on the cheap model: India's caverns were about one-third empty when the war began. Let producers fill leased caverns at their own cost with India holding first call, as Page 2 of 3The Second Reserve Mir Junaid Korea does, as ADNOC has done at Mangaluru since 2018, and as the storage cooperation agreed with the UAE in May extends; make it the template for the Phase II caverns. Second, a designated pool of Indian-controlled tankers and gas carriers sized against a predefined share of emergency import requirements, drawn where practical from vessels already under Indian control or flag, with government first-call rights written into their terms; the new insurance pool, which had written 1,600 war-risk policies by late July while premiums fell by more than a third from their conflict peak, now covers them; its adequacy should be stress-tested against correlated claims in a prolonged disruption. Third, retain the 9 March statutory priority framework, which held urea plants at seventy per cent of their supply behind household gas, as standing crisis planning, rehearse it before each sowing season, and publish fertiliser stock in weeks of seasonal cover rather than annual tonnage. Fourth, a rehearsed settlement protocol among the RBI, the Finance Ministry and designated banks, built on the RBI's 2022 rupee-settlement framework, for paying for emergency energy cargoes in more than one currency, with sanctions opinions obtained in peacetime. That is not de-dollarisation; the aim is decision speed. Fifth, make the ministerial group's work permanent: a standing measurement and exercise function inside existing national security architecture, not a new body, with benchmarks, aggregates published where security permits, and an annual compound-shock exercise. If such an exercise already runs, the government should say so; the proposal then shrinks to the benchmarks.

The objections are serious and mostly conceded. The RBI manages financial risk well; the combined shock is what falls outside its mandate. Stockpiling is inefficient; the lease model answers that. Chokepoints cannot be eliminated; the metric is concentration. None of this is free: storage carries capital, standby ships cost fees, reinsurance is a contingent liability; the standard should be the cheapest credible redundancy that keeps an essential function above a defined threshold, and the comparison is March's undisclosed freight and insurance premium, paid while reserves fell by more than $47 billion.

None of this buys independence. In March, India still had to ask for waivers, for cargoes, for safe passage, and it obtained safe passage through the strait from Tehran and a sanctions waiver for Russian crude from Washington, and bought replacement cargoes on a market the same war had tightened. Stocks and ships decide when the asking starts and on what footing. A country with an emergency oil buffer it can direct at will, an assured pool of ships available under emergency first-call arrangements and a bank channel that clears in days makes its first call to a foreign capital late, and as a buyer. A country with six days of dedicated reserve and its hulls insured abroad makes it in the first fortnight, under immediate necessity. The weeks between those two calls are the whole of India's freedom of action.

The bill for this year's shield falls due between 2029 and 2031. The overseas Indians who placed the deposits did so on commercial terms, and they deserve the truth: the money will be repaid because the contract requires it, and the next mobilisation will succeed only if this one is remembered as honest. The question for the years between is not whether reserves stay high. It is whether the adaptive continuity of 2026 becomes designed continuity, so that when the deposits mature, India needs a smaller shield, not a larger one. The first reserve has been counted. The second has not. Counting it means, for every essential function, three numbers: assured days of continuity, concentration of dependence, and the time needed to substitute or reroute. That count is where economic security begins.

(The author is Mir Junaid, President, Jammu & Kashmir Workers Party; Founding President, Centre for Inclusive & Sustainable Development. He tweets @MirJunaidJKWP and can be reached at junaidjawaidmir@gmail)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Sep 2: A storm is the most honest examiner in economics. It sets the same paper for every economy at the same hour, and it marks without mercy. The past thirteen months were such an examination. The steepest American tariffs faced by any major trading nation. An oil shock. The Hormuz disruption. A supply chain squeeze in every part of the world.

Now read that question paper again, because every question on it was hardest for India. The tariff wall was tallest for us. The oil shock was most cruel for us, because India imports nearly ninety per cent of its crude. The chokepoint at Hormuz sits astride the very lanes that carry our energy and trade. If this examination was loaded against anyone, it was loaded against India.

The report card is in. Germany wrote one per cent. Japan wrote half. Britain, 1.2. The United States, 2.1, the best in the entire G7. China, 4.3. India handed in its paper. Seven point eight. Nearly twice the speed of China and nearly four times the speed of America.

The storm hit India hardest, India still finished first

Not survived. Accelerated. The GDP growth rose from 6.9 per cent a year ago to 7.8 percent. The Reserve Bank had projected seven. In the five years since the world emerged from the Covid disruption, India has been the fastest growing major economy on earth every single year, and the sixth year has opened with its strongest showing arriving in the worst global weather in a generation.

Inside the number, every engine is firing

Manufacturing grew 9.2 per cent, Services grew 10 per cent, consumption grew 7.1 per cent while investment sector raced ahead with 11.9 per cent growth. For thirty years, the world insisted India must choose between the factory and the office. This quarter, the factory grew nearly as fast as the office, and both grew faster than most economies grow at all. Foreign investors have read the data. Gross inflows touched 30.7 billion dollars, the strongest in at least fifteen years of Reserve Bank records, and net inflows jumped sixty-four per cent. Gross inflows measure interest. Net inflows measure conviction. The world's money is no longer visiting India. It is moving in.

Twelve years: From Fragile Five to fourth largest

In 1991, one oil spike emptied India's vaults and sent the nation's gold to London. As recently as 2013, the world had categorized India among the Fragile Five. But those days are gone. Today, India is the fourth largest economy in the world and closing faster for third spot. Twenty-five crore Indians have risen out of multidimensional poverty. Inflation, near double digits when this government arrived, held at 4.45 per cent through this year's oil shock. Foreign exchange reserves have more than doubled. Nearly two thirds of all the foreign investment attracted since liberalisation arrived in these twelve years. Close to half of the world's real time digital payments happen in India. The economy once figured under fragile category has a new sign – that of robust, resilient and resurgent India.

Good fortune fades, good decisions last

None of this happened by chance. It happened by design, and the design carries the signature of Prime Minister Modi's courageous and decisive leadership.

When the tariff wall rose this past year, Narendra Modi-led government cut and simplified the GST, putting money in Indian pockets - the moment foreign demand was threatened. Capital spending on roads, rail and ports was sustained, not slashed. Energy and inputs were secured while West Asia burnt, and no Indian factory stopped. New trade agreements with Britain and Europe opened doors as one narrowed. Exports answered in July with substantial rise.

And the crisis management of one year rested on the patient construction of a decade. The inflation target, written into law, was maintained. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code cleaned the banks and made them strong enough to lend through storms. The GST stitched one national market out of dozens of tax borders. Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile carried welfare straight into crores of accounts and laid the rails on which UPI runs. Make in India and the PLI seeded the factories whose output the world is now buying. Highways doubled, freight corridors opened, ports quickened. Each decision came years before it was needed. That is the foresight of Prime Minister Modi, and this quarter is its dividend.

Rahul Gandhi predicted ruin, India delivered growth

Rahul Gandhi had declared India's economy dead. A few months ago, he went further and promised an ‘economic tsunami’ worse than any crisis Indians had seen in their lives. Just imagine the shamelessness, and the sheer negativity. Who forecasts ruin, twice, for his own country, and that too the very country leading the world in growth? Twice he predicted. Twice, India proved him wrong. The tsunami never came. The growth did.

Rahul Gandhi holds a constitutional office and enjoys every privilege that attaches to it. Yet he is not questioning a government. He is running down a nation. And, if hatred for one leader has swollen into disparagement of one's own country, the country is owed an apology. In his message, Prime Minister Modi spoke of those "mired in the abyss of pessimism", echoing falsehoods and spreading despair, and of a nation that rose above them to deliver 7.8.

India has rejected this politics of pessimism, negativity and despair at every hustings. The data has rejected it too. The economy is not dead. Rather, the dead economy narrative of Rahul and Opposition is for sure.

Prime Minister saw a milestone, he set the next one

What a leader does at a moment of triumph reveals him. Prime Minister Modi claimed nothing for himself. He congratulated the people, calling the number a reflection of "our collective strength". Then he handed 140 crore Indians their next assignment: maintain the pace, deepen self-reliance, buy Swadeshi, wed in India, build Atmanirbhar Bharat, so that at a hundred years of freedom this generation hands a Viksit Bharat to its youth.

That is not a victory lap. That is a compact between a leader and a civilisation, with a date attached: 2047.

Reform by conviction: India may keep surprising on the upside

Prime Minister Modi has long said that his reforms come from conviction, not compulsion. On his initiative, more than 1,500 obsolete laws have been repealed and over 40,000 compliances removed, easing the daily life of citizens. The next generation of reforms is already under preparation. Each opens capacity the old economy never had, and each lands on an economy with the youngest workforce, the fastest digitisation and the deepest domestic market of any major nation.

The Reserve Bank projects 6.7 per cent for the full year. On this quarter's evidence, the risk to that forecast runs firmly upward. India has beaten expectations quarter after quarter.

The verdict

For thirteen months, the world threw its worst at this economy, and threw it hardest at us. The economy answered with its best. The prophets of doom made two predictions and lost both. The reformer made twelve years of hard decisions and won the storm.

Storms do not flatter. They measure. And the storm has measured India the best in the world. Seven point eight.

(The author is a Senior Advocate, practising in the Supreme Court of India)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Aug 30 (SocialNews.XYZ) It was surprising to see the Leader of Opposition not attack his government for once, when the country was in the midst of a crisis. Instead, he toured the devastated regions and then offered a nine-point memorandum to the Prime Minister with recommendations for rescue and relief. The guess is not difficult. The LoP is not Indian, and the country is Nepal.

After the shocking devastation caused by floods in Nepal, Bhishma Raj Angdembe, leader of the main Opposition Nepali Congress, met Prime Minister Balendra Shah and submitted recommendations for rescue and relief. He also praised the Nepal Army for its rescue efforts. The opposition leader even pledged support to the government in responding to the disaster.

Does a similar political exercise happen in India? Does the Leader of Opposition offer suggestions and recommendations, or is the role largely reduced to opposing the government on almost everything?

The answers are not difficult to gauge. A vibrant opposition is essential for any democracy. It has to question the government, criticise its policies, hold it accountable and prevent the abuse of power. It is also expected to act as a check to ensure that governance remains transparent and responsive to people.

These rules sound rather academic when one looks at the kind of opposition politics that has played out in India over the past decade.

In Parliament, questions are often lost in disruptions. Session after session witnesses ruckus, protests and adjournments, leaving little time for meaningful debate. The problem has become more visible since the NDA government's second term. Even in the current 18th Lok Sabha, many new MPs have struggled to get an opportunity to speak, let alone raise questions.

When a journalist recently asked Rahul Gandhi about the Opposition's continued disruption in Parliament, the Congress leader dismissed the question by saying the journalist was a BJP person. This was hardly the first time he has reacted this way to an uncomfortable question. Reporters asking pointed questions have often been labelled as being close to the ruling party. Recently, when a reporter asked him about the families of Delhi Police personnel injured during protests at Jantar Mantar, his response again was: "Are you from BJP?"

The question is not whether journalists should be critical or whether Rahul Gandhi should be questioned. The question is whether every uncomfortable question has to be dismissed by attaching a political label to the person asking it.

Earlier, during the Budget Session in February, Gandhi displayed an alleged copy of former Army Chief General M.M. Naravane's unpublished memoir and raised claims based on it. The episode created a ruckus in the House and led to repeated adjournments. The claims surrounding the memoir were subsequently disputed, while Naravane and the publisher clarified that the memoir had not been published. But by then, valuable parliamentary time had already been lost.

This time too, during the Monsoon Session, the Opposition led by Rahul Gandhi strongly raised the paper leak issue and the alleged crackdown on protesting students. There was nothing wrong in raising either issue. In fact, it was the Opposition's responsibility to question the government. But should that responsibility end with raising the issue only? Shouldn't the Opposition also suggest a counter-plan that can put the government on real notice and, more importantly, help fix the problem?

Raising one's voice is important. But when the main issue gets drowned in the din, the Opposition's activism hardly serves any purpose.

And then the noise ebbs, and a new issue takes its place. The problem is not Opposition or the eagerness to oppose. The problem is Opposition without proposition.

Opposition for raising noise, grabbing social media views and generating clicks -- that seems to be what the role is increasingly being reduced to. Just as a reel creates a short entertaining moment, the Opposition too appears to have discovered a hit-and-run strategy.

With social media reaching almost every age group, the Opposition, particularly the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress, appears to be increasingly conscious of staying visible and relevant to younger voters. Political messaging today has to be social-media friendly. But when politics starts being designed primarily for the next clip, the larger issue can easily get lost.

This appeared to be the case when Rahul Gandhi staged a spectacular protest near the Prime Minister's residence, an episode that quickly travelled across social media and generated views and clicks. A protest is an important democratic tool. But when the spectacle begins to overshadow the issue, the purpose gets diluted.

Since the NDA came to power in 2014, the Opposition, largely led by Rahul Gandhi, has been on an overdrive attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi politically and, at times, personally. Political attacks are part of the game. But some attacks become so personal that they begin to cross the fine line between political opposition and political negativity.

Recently, during an event, Rahul Gandhi criticised PM Modi's foreign policy approach and mocked his tendency to hug foreign leaders. He then hugged Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit on stage, who jokingly asked whether Gandhi was thinking of "Meloni". Gandhi replied, "I have not reached there yet." The remark immediately became controversial, with critics arguing that an LoP should exercise greater caution, particularly when referring to a woman head of a foreign state.

The bigger question is not whether political humour should be allowed. It is whether every political disagreement needs to be turned into a personal jab.

The same question arose during Operation Sindoor. Rahul Gandhi questioned the government over the military operation and asked, "How many Indian aircraft did we lose because Pakistan knew?" Gandhi's question was directed at the government, as opposition questions often are. But at a time when Pakistan was pushing its own narrative about Indian aircraft losses, the timing and nature of such questions drew criticism.

The Opposition has every right to question its government, even during difficult times. But national interest also demands that political differences do not become a convenient vehicle for an adversary's narrative.

This is where the Nepal example becomes interesting.

Bhishma Raj Angdembe did not stop being the opposition leader when Nepal faced a devastating flood. He inspected affected areas, met the Prime Minister, submitted a nine-point memorandum, and praised the Nepal Army's rescue efforts. He did not surrender his role as an opposition leader. He recognised that there are moments when politics has to step aside, and the larger interest has to come first.

India's Opposition does not need to stop opposing. It needs to rediscover the purpose of Opposition.

The country has enough issues -- unemployment, corruption, examination irregularities, social and other concerns -- for the Opposition to question the government every single day. But questioning should be followed by alternatives. Criticism should lead to solutions, and protest should lead to a conversation.

If opposing becomes a personal agenda and noise becomes the strategy, the real issue gets blurred. A protest can generate headlines, a reel can generate views, and a sharp attack can generate applause. But none of these, by themselves, can help better governance.

Perhaps the lesson from Nepal is a simple one. An opposition leader does not become less of an opposition leader by helping the government during a crisis. He may, in fact, become a better one.

India needs an opposition that questions the government, certainly. But it also needs one that knows when to offer a solution, when to cooperate and when to put the country before the next headline.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, August 28: Being a patriotic and proud Indian Muslim, I felt this was a hit job against India. The USCIRF’s latest statement goes far beyond a routine assessment of religious freedom. It targets RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s visit to the United States, calls for targeted sanctions against RSS members and Indian officials, and even urges Washington to consider revoking Bhagwat’s visa. USCIRF has also repeated its recommendation that India be designated a “Country of Particular Concern.”

That is an extraordinary political intervention. And the timing is difficult to ignore. India is preparing to host the BRICS Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi on September 12–13, at a time when its economic weight, diplomatic influence and standing across the Global South are expanding rapidly. One does not have to believe in conspiracies to ask whether the timing deserves scrutiny.

India is a thriving economy and one of the most consequential countries of the 21st century. Yet its rise has gone hand in hand with extraordinary religious diversity. The country remains home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations, millions of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, as well as ancient Jewish and Zoroastrian communities.

Just this week, Muslims across India publicly marked Eid Milad-un-Nabi with religious gatherings and processions, with police providing security arrangements. In Hyderabad, for example, the city police coordinated with organisers ahead of the procession and made security arrangements for the event.

That is the India I see.

The India USCIRF overlooks

One of the most revealing pieces of evidence comes from the Pew Research Center, which surveyed nearly 30,000 Indian adults across the country in 17 languages.

The findings are striking. Ninety-one percent of Indians said they were very free to practice their religion. Among Muslims, the figure was 89 percent; among Christians, 89 percent; Hindus, 91 percent; Buddhists, 93 percent; Jains, 85 percent; and Sikhs, 82 percent. More importantly, 79 percent said people belonging to other religions were very free to practice their faith.

Pew Research Center findings also found that 84 percent of Indians considered respecting all religions very important to being “truly Indian.”

There is another assessment USCIRF’s narrative cannot simply wish away. The Global Minority Report, produced by the Centre for Policy Analysis and reported by The Australia Today, ranked India first among 110 countries for inclusivity towards religious minorities. South Korea, Japan, Panama and the United States followed, while the United Kingdom ranked 54th and the UAE 61st.

India’s Constitution reinforces this pluralistic character. Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion, while Article 26 gives religious denominations the right to establish institutions and manage their religious affairs.

India’s Muslim community itself reflects this diversity. Sunni and Shia Muslims live across the country alongside Barelvi, Deobandi and Salafi communities, Sufi traditions and numerous independent Islamic institutions. India’s Muslim population exceeded 170 million in the 2011 Census.

So why is the RSS always the target? I am not a Sangh member, nor do I speak on its behalf. But I have often wondered why the organization attracts such sustained external scrutiny. My two cents: perhaps it is precisely because the RSS represents an indigenous political and social outlook that places greater emphasis on Indic identity, self-reliance and resisting external influence. You may disagree, but that perspective deserves to be discussed rather than automatically pathologized.

The Jews and Parsis tell India’s story

Perhaps the strongest answer lies in India’s history.

My Jewish brethren found refuge in India when Jews elsewhere faced persecution. Jewish communities have lived here for centuries, maintaining synagogues, traditions and institutions while becoming part of Indian society.

India’s relationship with the Jewish people is not merely diplomatic. It is civilizational.

The same is true of the Parsis. Zoroastrians fleeing persecution in Persia found a home in India. They did not merely survive; they flourished. Parsis went on to make extraordinary contributions to Indian industry, science, education and philanthropy. The Tata family is perhaps the best-known example.

This is not the history of a civilization that demanded minorities abandon their identity. It is the history of a civilization that gave communities space to preserve it.

Where is the consistency?

This is where USCIRF’s approach deserves serious questioning.

The commission’s own documentation on Pakistan describes severe restrictions on religious freedom, including blasphemy laws affecting Ahmadis and cases involving forced conversions of Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.

Meanwhile, India allows Sunni, Shia, Barelvi, Deobandi, Salafi and numerous other Muslim traditions to operate openly alongside Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Zoroastrian communities.

There is also a legitimate debate in India over foreign funding and religious conversion. The government regulates foreign contributions through the FCRA, whose stated purpose is to ensure that foreign funding is not used for activities detrimental to the national interest. Government records have also documented complaints concerning foreign-funded organisations and alleged inducement-based conversions.

Reasonable people can debate the policy. But, turning every such regulation into proof that India has no religious freedom is another matter entirely.

The West needs to be clearer about who its genuine friends are. India is not merely another country on a geopolitical spreadsheet. It is a civilization, a constitutional democracy, a rising economic power and a country whose people have repeatedly opened their doors to communities fleeing persecution.

India’s story cannot be reduced to a political accusation. Its Constitution, history, diversity and lived reality all matter.

Friends can disagree. Friends can debate. But, friends should also recognize history.

India’s extraordinary tradition of religious coexistence is far too significant to be erased by a politically charged USCIRF statement.

(The writer is a Strategic Communications and National Security commentator, entrepreneur, and founder of Milli Chronicle UK. He is a columnist, TV panelist, podcast guest and public affairs commentator covering geopolitics, national security, international affairs and strategic narratives.)

Source: IANS

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Dhaka, Aug 27 (SocialNews.XYZ) Bangladesh-India relations have entered a complicated but consequential phase. Political developments in Bangladesh since 2024, unresolved water and border disputes, and persistent differences over trade and connectivity have created an impression that ties between Dhaka and Delhi are under unusual strain. Yet describing the relationship simply as 'tense' overlooks a more important reality: the two countries remain deeply interconnected, and neither can afford a permanently adversarial relationship. The challenge is not to restore an old model of bilateral engagement but to build a new one, grounded less in political proximity and more in equality, reciprocity, sovereignty, and clearly defined mutual interest. Bangladesh needs India, but India equally needs a stable, prosperous and cooperative Bangladesh, and recognising this mutual dependence could be the foundation for a more mature relationship.

The political transition in Bangladesh has inevitably affected bilateral ties. Following the change of government in August 2024, India raised questions about political stability, minority security, border management and the future direction of Bangladesh's foreign policy. At the same time, many in Bangladesh questioned India's longstanding closeness to the previous political establishment, viewing New Delhi as too closely identified with a particular configuration in Dhaka. These perceptions matter because foreign policy is shaped not only by government decisions but also by public trust, and if each country increasingly views the other through a narrow, suspicious lens, the space for constructive diplomacy narrows. Both governments share an interest in separating the state-to-state relationship from domestic political alignments.

A reset should not mean abandoning the achievements of the past decade and a half. Bangladesh and India have developed extensive cooperation in trade, transport, energy, security and people-to-people connectivity, including expanded rail, road and inland waterway links. This interconnectedness is strategically significant: Bangladesh sits at an important position between South Asia and Southeast Asia, while India surrounds it on three sides and remains its largest immediate neighbour. Bangladesh offers India potential access to the Bay of Bengal and shorter routes to the Northeast, while India offers Bangladesh access to one of the world's largest consumer markets. The relationship should move beyond the language of dependency and treat connectivity as a shared asset, not a favor one side grants the other.

Trade illustrates both the potential and the problem. India is one of Bangladesh's major trading partners, yet the bilateral trade balance has historically been heavily tilted toward India, with Bangladeshi exports remaining far smaller than imports. Tariff preferences have expanded exports in some sectors, but non-tariff barriers, certification requirements, and weak logistics continue to constrain access to the Indian market. A more balanced relationship does not require an artificial trade balance; it requires both sides to address the structural conditions limiting Bangladeshi exports through better customs procedures, recognised standards, and investment partnerships, from which India would gain stronger integration with Bangladeshi production networks, and Bangladesh would gain investment and technology. The same logic applies to connectivity, where transparent commercial arrangements should govern transit, ports and waterways so corridors are mutually profitable rather than symbolic.

Energy reflects the same mutual interest already at work. Bangladesh has imported electricity from India while Indian companies have invested in its energy sector, demonstrating how interdependence can become a source of stability. At the same time, Bangladesh should continue diversifying its energy sources, a step that reflects national resilience rather than hostility toward India.

The most sensitive issue remains water. Bangladesh and India share 54 rivers, making water cooperation a defining feature of the relationship. The 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty showed that difficult issues can be resolved through negotiation. Yet, the unresolved Teesta issue remains a major source of frustration in Bangladesh, carrying direct implications for agriculture and water security in the country's north. For India, particularly West Bengal, the issue touches its own agricultural and political interests, making the dispute difficult but not impossible.

The lesson from the Ganges agreement is that durable water diplomacy requires institutional mechanisms, transparency, and sustained political commitment rather than periodic statements. The upcoming renewal of the Ganges treaty offers an opportunity to move beyond a zero-sum framing toward a broader system of transboundary river management, including joint hydrological data, flood forecasting and climate adaptation, as rising climate uncertainty makes such cooperation more urgent.

Border management presents another difficult dimension. India remains concerned about illegal migration, smuggling and cross-border crime, while Bangladesh has repeatedly raised concerns about civilian deaths and the use of lethal force along the border. Neither side should dismiss these concerns as propaganda. A modern framework should protect sovereignty while reducing unnecessary violence, through greater use of non-lethal technologies, coordinated investigations and stronger action against organized criminal networks, with the goal of a border that is secure, humane and economically functional.

Security cooperation itself remains an important area of mutual interest, as both countries share concerns about terrorism, organised crime and instability across the wider Bay of Bengal region, and Bangladesh has demonstrated that it does not want its territory used against India's security interests. Yet this cooperation should not justify viewing every Bangladeshi policy choice through an Indian security lens. Bangladesh must retain the freedom to develop relations with China, Japan, the United States, ASEAN countries and other partners; a sovereign Bangladesh pursuing diversified partnerships is not inherently a threat to India. The same principle applies in reverse: Bangladesh should recognise India's legitimate security interests, while New Delhi should recognise that Dhaka's engagement with other powers is part of its sovereign foreign policy. Mutual reassurance, not pressure, is more likely to produce long-term stability.

The Rohingya crisis adds a further layer to this relationship. Bangladesh continues to host a very large displaced population from Myanmar, while India has its own security and migration concerns in the region. Neither country can resolve the crisis alone, and greater cooperation between them, alongside engagement with Myanmar and other regional actors, could contribute to a broader response.

Ultimately, the future of Dhaka-Delhi relations will depend not on how quickly the two sides return to the past, but on whether they can build something more sustainable. The old relationship was often described in terms of historical affinity and political friendship, which remain valuable but insufficient on their own; contemporary relations also need institutional predictability and measurable reciprocity. Equality does not mean Bangladesh and India have identical weight, since they clearly do not; it means differences in size do not eliminate the smaller country's right to pursue its interests. Mutual interest means cooperation should benefit both sides, and sovereignty means neither country should expect the other to organize its foreign policy around its preferences.

A new chapter is therefore possible, though it will require India to listen more carefully to Bangladesh's concerns about water, trade, borders and sovereignty, and it will require Bangladesh to recognise India's legitimate security and connectivity interests while ensuring its territory remains a source of regional stability. Both sides will need to resist nationalist rhetoric that turns every disagreement into a diplomatic confrontation. The relationship should also become less dependent on personalities and political parties, since governments change but geography does not: rivers continue to flow across borders, businesses continue to trade, and the Bay of Bengal continues to connect both countries to a wider regional economy.

Dhaka and Delhi do not need to agree on everything to sustain a strong relationship. Mature relationships are defined not by the absence of disagreements but by the ability to manage them without letting them undermine cooperation. The objective should be neither Indian dominance nor Bangladeshi distance, but a relationship in which both countries pursue their national interests while recognising that cooperation often serves those interests better than confrontation. The present moment should therefore not be seen merely as a period of tension; it can become a moment of recalibration. If Dhaka and Delhi can move from political expectations to institutional engagement, from dependency to interdependence, and from rhetoric to reciprocity, the relationship can emerge stronger and more durable — not a retreat from the relationship between the two countries, but its foundation.

(The writer is a political and international affairs analyst. Views expressed are his own)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Aug 23 (SocialNews.XYZ) It is now clear that the opposition parties have started preparations for the 2027-29 election period, which includes elections in about seven states and, ultimately, the Lok Sabha polls. The stakes are very high, and the fight is crucial for both the Opposition and the ruling coalition.

For the Opposition, it is about survival and cutting the ruling dispensation to size. For the coalition in power, it is about maintaining continuity and demonstrating that its strategy has been right. The fight has begun, and this time the rules have changed. It is no longer just about rallies, corner meetings, distributing pamphlets, writing slogans on walls or erecting banners.

The election game has moved to a different level. It is now more about building narratives and creating a wave on social media. In fact, the election fight has moved from street campaigning to something resembling a gaming level.

With social media reach widening by the day, political parties are refocusing their electoral strategies. India has over 50 crore active social media users, while newer generations have grown up with mobile phones with an Internet connection. Gen Z's reach through platforms such as Instagram, Meta and X is huge.

It is this generation -- those born roughly between 1997 and 2012 -- that is now under the lens of political parties and their strategists. The entire political spectrum, the ruling side as well as the Opposition, is focusing on Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

The competition has begun not just between the Opposition and the ruling side; it has also erupted within the Opposition camp. For some time now, the opposition parties, even while trying to present a united face, have been trying to outwit each other and emerge as the lead face to take on the BJP-led government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The fight within has become interesting, with Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party and others trying to race ahead with strategies to lure younger generations. A big section of older generations has consistently voted for the Modi-led Centre and the BJP in a majority of states. With a large section of this generation presumed to be leaning towards one side, the focus has shifted to Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who have not directly experienced the UPA-era governments or the AAP government in Delhi.

Most have only heard stories about the past regimes and have witnessed the BJP in power for the past 12 years. Hence, the centre of attention is the younger generation. The Opposition is especially focused on Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the hope of creating a sphere of influence that might impress youngsters enough to press the EVM button in its favour.

It is this EVM button press which has become the fulcrum of the entire exercise that political parties are going through now. Each one has strong media teams and is hiring influencers to generate and spread a particular narrative.

The activism of Rahul Gandhi, the sudden emergence of the AAP-backed CJP, and the Congress, SP, BJP and others overhauling their social media departments are indicators of the extent to which parties are prepared to go to create the right image across various platforms. The aim is to generate storms on social media and remain in the public view.

This is now fully visible across social media handles, with parties trying everything under the sun to garner maximum views. The recently held CJP protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi is perhaps the finest example of this strategy. Termed a sidekick of Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, the Cockroach Janata Party activists and supporters did everything -- from speeches to abuses, from dances to obscenity, and even violence against security forces. The aim was to storm the media space and create a sensation, which they did successfully.

However, it did not end with the protest. CJP activists are now creating social media reels by forcibly entering schools and trying to influence young minds. Under its ‘School Thik Karo’ campaign, CJP workers have been barging into classrooms in government schools in Maharashtra and Rajasthan to ‘expose’ poor infrastructure and administrative lapses. However, they faced public wrath in a Rajasthan village, where the team was first asked not to bother the villagers. When the CJP team still tried to barge into a school, the villagers threw them out.

Questions are now being asked about the lack of CJP activism in non-BJP-ruled states. The party leaders are also being cornered over their lack of interest in the Jharkhand student protest movement. The CJP is increasingly being portrayed as biased and playing lop-sided politics.

If the CJP is trying every means to stay in social media views, the Congress party is not staying behind. In what appears to be a direct competition for attention, Rahul Gandhi has been playing on the July 20 student protest violence case.

On August 21, Gandhi held a six-hour sit-in protest outside a Delhi police station to register an FIR in the case of a 19-year-old student protester who allegedly suffered pellet-gun injuries during the July 20 march to Parliament. The protest quickly went viral on news television and social media. For much of Friday, Gandhi occupied a substantial share of the viewing space.

It is this viewing space for which strategies are being drawn and redrawn by political parties and their supporting outlets.

Recent reports said that the social media reach of Union ministers came up for discussion at a Cabinet meeting and ministers were told to step up efforts to ensure their messages reach a wider audience, particularly the youth.

With every party reviewing and refocusing its social media activities, the competition is only going to get more interesting. But what needs to be watched is the kind of plot that is set and the narrative that follows.

The country is definitely going to witness an intense fight, especially among opposition parties, to build a narrative that can impress Gen Z. The target is the 2027 elections and the big 2029 battle. And today's Gen Z could have a big say in deciding that fight.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Aug 16 (SocialNews.XYZ) When politics starts looking like a circus, it is time to ask whether we have forgotten what the Opposition is actually meant to do. There is nothing wrong with criticising a government or holding protests, an essential part of democracy. But when the issue takes a back seat, and the camera, the clicks, and views become more important than the cause, it indicates that something has clearly gone wrong.

Over the past few months, we have seen shouting, mockery, personal attacks and political theatrics. And all this is happening in the 80th year of India's Independence.

Eighty years after the freedom struggle, one would expect our politics to have acquired some wisdom and maturity. Instead, at times, it appears to be competing with a comedy show for attention.

The question is not whether the Opposition parties should oppose. Of course they should. The question is how far they should go -- and what kind of example they are setting while doing it.

During the Monsoon Session of Parliament, the Opposition repeatedly disrupted proceedings, with ruckus inside the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and protests on the Parliament premises. There is nothing unusual about the Opposition protesting. That is their job. But there comes a point when a protest stops being about the issue and becomes a performance with a particular motive aimed at denigrating.

Some recent scenes in the Parliament complex were almost abusive and not rightly intended. Independent MP Pappu Yadav, dressed in saffron robes, performed a mock act involving a priest and money and was joined by Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party leaders and others. Congress MP Pawan Khera led a demonstration by some Congress and Samajwadi Party members carrying toy monkeys and raising slogans against the Prime Minister.

Perhaps such protests get attention. Perhaps they make for good social media clips. But what do they actually add to political debate?

The same question arises over the Congress' 'Rachnatmak Congress National Convention' at Constitution Club on August 13, where Rahul Gandhi and senior Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit made comments and gestures concerning Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni that attracted criticism.

On Independence Day, Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi stayed away from the main ceremony at the Red Fort led by PM Modi for the second consecutive year. The reason was reportedly linked to seating arrangements. Rahul Gandhi wanted a front-row seat, while the government followed the Table of Precedence, which determines seating and protocol at official functions based on Constitutional position and office.

One may disagree with the arrangement. One may even protest against it. But Independence Day is not a party function. It belongs to the country. Boycotting it was not a positive criticism.

Then came the controversy at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi over Vande Mataram. Videos from the event appeared to show party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi making gestures that seemed to ask workers to stop the national song rendition. Rahul Gandhi too appeared to make a similar gesture moments later.

Congress, however, denied that Sonia Gandhi had sought to stop the full rendition. But the visuals have already raised questions and sparked a debate.

And if the Congress has taken Opposition politics into the territory of political theatre, the CJP-led Jantar Mantar protest offers another example of how a genuine issue can get overshadowed by the spectacle surrounding it.

What began as a protest over an issue concerning students attracted support from political groups, NGOs and several other voices. That, however, raises a question now: why is the same enthusiasm not visible when students in Jharkhand, Punjab, Kerala or Karnataka are struggling with their own problems?

The situation of protesting students in Jharkhand is particularly disturbing. They have faced police action, criminal cases and harassment. In Punjab too, there has been a complete denial by the AAP government, and it took the Punjab and Haryana High Court to step in. Even then, the government appears unmoved.

And, where are the voices that were so loud during the CJP protest? Where are the political groups and lobbies that made the Jantar Mantar protest such a major issue? Their silence on Jharkhand and Punjab is difficult to ignore. None of the CJP leaders, for instance, has gone to Jharkhand and sat with the protesting students. Instead, CJP leaders have continued to travel elsewhere, with specific tasks.

Even the behaviour of some CJP leaders has started to raise questions. CJP co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka threatened a police officer in Rajasthan's Alwar while invoking the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union Education Minister after the Jantar Mantar protest. Earlier, CJP convenor Abhijeet Dipke was seen yelling at a police sub-inspector assigned to his security detail.

If the CJP, whose source of funding has itself become a subject of discussion, has turned abusive or filthy behaviour into some kind of political necessity, it raises a larger question about the standards being set by political movements today.

The larger question, however, is not about one protest, one gesture or one political party. It is about where our political culture is heading.

Political opponents will fight. Governments will make mistakes and must be questioned. Leaders will disagree, sometimes strongly. That is democracy. But disagreement does not have to mean disrespect.

A protest can make its point without becoming a performance for the cameras. Criticism can be strong without becoming abusive. Political rivalry can be fierce without turning into a competition over who can create the bigger controversy.

Unfortunately, this is the example being set before the younger generation. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are growing up in a world where almost every political incident reaches them through a short video, meme, reel or social media post. They may not read the entire debate in Parliament or know the details of an issue. But they will see the shouting, mockery, abuse and spectacle. Those are the things that stay with them. And that should worry us.

If today's political leaders teach the young that shouting is debate, abuse is criticism, and disruption is protest, we should not be surprised if this becomes the new normal.

Was this kind of politics and negativity hinted at by PM Modi when he mentioned the 'dimagi Naxal' in his Independence Day speech?

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, August 14: The Partition of Bharat in 1947 was one of the greatest human tragedies of modern times. Millions were killed, displaced and separated from their homes and families, while countless others were subjected to looting, abduction, forced conversion and unspeakable violence.

Some of the most gruesome episodes took place in the Western region (now Pakistan), particularly in the regions of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Balochistan, Sindh and West Punjab. Yet, the suffering of many of these victims has received comparatively little attention in the mainstream historical narratives.

Among those who attempted to document these events was Sikh leader Master Tara Singh, along with a small number of scholars and eyewitnesses. Their accounts preserve testimonies that must not be forgotten.

The stories of Sheikhupura, Thoha Khalsa and Muzaffarabad are among the starkest reminders of the brutality unleashed during those turbulent months. They speak not only of death and destruction, but also of courage, sacrifice and the desperate choices made by ordinary people caught in the violence.

The Sheikhupura Massacre

The following account is attributed to Mr. Ram Nath, Advocate, High Court, formerly of the Sheikhupura Bar.

According to his statement, Sheikhupura had never witnessed a communal riot before Partition. It was regarded as a stronghold of the non-Muslim communities. The last census recorded Muslims at approximately 68 percent, Sikhs at 20 percent and Hindus at 12 percent. The Sikhs were described as the most influential and formidable community in the district.

On 15 August 1947, Muslim officials and prominent non-officials reportedly gave assurances that they would protect the lives, honour and property of non-Muslims. However, following Partition and the exercise of options by government officials, non-Muslim officials were removed. The police force was also predominantly Muslim.

On the evening of 24 August, a curfew was imposed by the District Magistrate. According to the testimony, Muslim military personnel set a house on fire and the following day, continued their operations.

The account describes the subsequent violence as highly systematic. Military personnel allegedly moved through the old Sheikhupura settlement, killing residents while another group looted property and set fire to non-Muslim homes.

At New Ihatas, Hindus and Sikhs were reportedly assembled, with women and men separated. Young women were allegedly singled out while their parents, brothers and husbands were forced to watch. When one young man protested, the men present were reportedly shot.

The most devastating episode, according to the testimony, took place at a Sikh rice factory. Men and women were separated, women were subjected to degrading treatment, and large numbers of men were shot. The statement claimed that by August 26, approximately 10,000 men had been killed and truckloads of young women removed.

These figures and details come from an eyewitness statement and should be understood in that historical context; they warrant a careful examination alongside other contemporary records.

The Muzaffarabad Massacre

The following testimony was given by S. Khazan Singh, son of S. Chain Singh of Village Kotli, Tehsil and District Muzaffarabad, Jammu and Kashmir.

He described an attack on his village by Pathan raiders in October 1947. According to his testimony, around 20 people were killed during the initial assault, while others fled towards the interior of the state.

He stated that the fleeing Hindu and Sikh population was subsequently surrounded by armed raiders and taken towards Domel. Hindu and Sikh families from other villages and towns were also reportedly brought there.

According to Khazan Singh, the men were separated from women and children. He described a subsequent massacre in which large numbers of men were shot and their bodies thrown into the river. He estimated that more than 1,000 people were killed.

He further testified that children were also killed and that he himself was captured and forcibly converted to Islam. He eventually escaped after Pakistani military personnel intervened and took him to Pattan Khurd in the Hazara district.

This testimony is particularly significant because the survivor claimed to have personally witnessed the events and later recounted them in a formal statement.

Thoha Khalsa

Perhaps one of the most haunting stories of the Rawalpindi violence is that of Thoha Khalsa, a small village in Rawalpindi District.

According to contemporary accounts, the village was surrounded by a large armed group during the communal violence. The villagers resisted as best they could but were heavily outnumbered.

Negotiations followed, and a payment of ₹10,000 was reportedly demanded. The villagers paid the amount after receiving assurances that they would not be attacked. According to the account, the attackers returned the following day, demanded further payment and killed around 40 defenders.

With their menfolk unable to continue the defence, the women of the village reportedly gathered and faced an unbearable choice. Fearing capture and the loss of their honour, around 90 women chose to end their lives by jumping into a well. Only three were reportedly rescued.

Their deaths have since become one of the most tragic symbols of the suffering endured by women during Partition.

Remembering the Victims

Partition was not merely a political rearrangement of territory. For millions, it meant the destruction of homes, families, communities and lives that had existed for generations.

The stories of Sheikhupura, Muzaffarabad and Thoha Khalsa remind us that behind the statistics of Partition were individual human beings—men, women and children who faced extraordinary violence and loss.

Partition Horror Remembrance Day should therefore not be about hatred or revenge. It should be about remembrance, truth and learning.

We owe it to the victims to preserve their testimonies, examine historical evidence honestly and remember the suffering of all communities affected by Partition.

History cannot be changed. But it can be remembered honestly. Those who forget the horrors of the past risk repeating them.

Remember the victims. Preserve their stories. Learn from the tragedy. Never again.

(Mohisha Tuli is a student of Mass communication and journalism and currently pursuing Post Graduation from a reputed university.)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Aug 9 (SocialNews.XYZ) It is quite an interesting phenomenon that has taken over the country. Almost everyone is talking about this group -- some with admiration, some in awe, some with fear, and many more with curiosity. Gen Z has become the new catchword. Whether inside homes, communities, industries or, of course, the political world, everyone seems to have suddenly discovered this generation.

Gen Z has become the most sought-after generation today. Special attention is being given to it, particularly by the political class. After all, the future vote pattern may depend on whether Gen Z is happy or unhappy. And that future is not very far away. The 2027 Assembly elections in politically crucial states such as Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are around the corner, followed by the big 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

So, the politicians have begun preparing. And the preparation is not limited to manifestos and speeches. The transformation is visible from head to toe.

The traditional Indian neta, with his kurta-pyjama and serious expression, is slowly disappearing. In his place is emerging a new political species -- the neta with a smart shirt, jeans, chinos, jacket and sneakers, preferably to give a cool look, rather 'drippy' and 'totally slay in that fit' in Gen Z lingo.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi appears particularly keen to strike a chord with Gen Z, and perhaps even Gen Alpha. His 'Chhatron Ki Goonj' interactions are aimed at getting closer to students, while his dressing too has undergone a noticeable change.

The loose T-shirts and baggy trousers have given way to a more carefully put-together look -- slim-fit pink shirt, denims or chinos, and sporty sneakers. The message is clear: politics is also looking relatable.

There is nothing wrong with changing one's wardrobe. But when politicians begin dressing like college students, one wonders whether the next step will be asking them to submit their attendance before addressing a rally. And Rahul Gandhi may have a questionable attendance record, given his frequent secret sojourns.

The Congress leader has also started an "Ask Me Anything" session on Instagram. It was during this session that he shared a glimpse of his personal life, including his pet dog 'Noorie'. His comment about his mother getting angry after he put Noorie on video had the informality that social-media audiences enjoy.

The politician has, perhaps, discovered what every influencer already knows -- sometimes a dog can connect better than a speech.

Then there is the 'Aam Aadmi' neta, Arvind Kejriwal, who, if reports are to be believed, has found an unusual way to cultivate a base among the generations, hoping they will shape the politics of tomorrow. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), born out of viral Internet content, is led by people who have links or have been associated with Kejriwal's AAP.

Whether it is Abhijeet Dipke or Ashutosh Ranka, the AAP shadow is clearly visible. Kejriwal, too, has been consistently using selfie-style videos to connect with the young.

The selfie camera, it appears, has become his new political microphone, and the 'cockroach' has found a way into the political field too.

There is also Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who is seeking another shot at the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister's chair and has also understood the importance of Gen Z.

This was particularly visible during the CJP's Jantar Mantar protest. Dimple Yadav's presence and her emotional interactions with students became an important part of the party's social media narrative. The SP has also been reaching out to influencers, as Akhilesh Yadav has advised senior party leaders to learn the language of reels and remain connected with Gen Z.

One can imagine the old political training manuals being quietly replaced. Earlier, it was first learn how to address a rally, but now it is first learn how to make a reel.

While most politicians are now discovering Gen Z, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been talking about India's young population throughout his years in office. He also has a formidable following among young Indians.

His recent selfie-style Instagram video on examination paper leaks provided another indication of that reach. The video posted on the night of July 23 crossed 303 million views within 24 hours, surpassing the previous global record attributed to American streamer IShowSpeed. His subsequent Instagram videos have also attracted enormous numbers.

Whatever the political interpretation, one thing is clear: the competition for Gen Z is no longer happening only on the ground. It is also happening on the phone screen.

And Gen Z is loving the attention. Perhaps no generation before it has had politicians trying so hard to understand its vibe. No generation before has received this much attention from politicians. And there is an interesting reason for that.

Gen Z is the way it is because the generations before it were different.

Those born between 1946 and 1964 grew up in a world of restrictions. Even watching a film in a cinema hall could itself become a matter of parental investigation if someone saw you and complained. There were rules, there were watchful eyes, and there was always someone asking where you had been.

Generation X, broadly those born between 1965 and 1980, got somewhat more freedom. Technology entered homes, social attitudes changed, and the world began opening up.

Then came the Millennials, or Generation Y, born broadly between 1981 and 1996. They witnessed the arrival of the Internet, mobile phones and digital technology. Freedom expanded further.

And then came Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012 -- raised with smartphones, social media, reels, influencers and a completely different idea of communication.

For Gen Z, a politician is not necessarily someone seen from a distant stage. He can appear on the phone, in the feed, speaking directly to them. He can be serious in one reel, funny in another, and perhaps even show his dog in the third.

The old political generation, therefore, has little choice but to reinvent itself. The kurta may still survive, but the selfie camera has arrived. The rally is still there, but now it needs a reel. And the neta who once wanted to look like a neta now wants to look relatable.

After all, when the voter changes, the politician has to change too. Or, as Gen Z might simply say: Adapt. Or get left on seen.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Aug 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) In Hindu philosophy, there is a belief that everything happens for a reason. If that thought holds, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar has served a purpose far greater than drawing attention to examination paper leaks. It has exposed deep cracks in institutions, the erosion of civility, the weakening of family values and the ease with which sections of the youth could be drawn into outrage, abuse and manipulation.

Long after the slogans have faded, these are the questions that should concern the country the most.

It exposed an examination system that has been rotting for decades, corroded from within by those entrusted with protecting it. It exposed the erosion of the stature once enjoyed by teachers in Indian society. It exposed coaching institutes that increasingly view education as a business rather than a responsibility. It exposed sections of the political ecosystem that are quick to exploit emotions of young people. And perhaps most importantly, it exposed the gradual decline of family values and parenting, leaving many teenagers vulnerable to manipulation and the lure of instant fame.

The CJP protest, therefore, should be seen as a wake-up call -- not just for governments, but for politicians, parents and the youth themselves.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to respond in a manner that went beyond politics. Through a series of social media videos, he attempted to engage directly with young people, projecting himself as the head of a large national family concerned about the direction in which a section of the younger generation is heading.

His first Instagram video on July 23, when the CJP-led protests were still underway, announced fast-track courts to hear paper leak cases and promised legislation prescribing stricter punishment for those involved. A day later, he thanked young people for sending thoughtful suggestions in response to the video, saying his relationship with them would only grow stronger.

On July 26, the Prime Minister announced that a task force headed by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani would study India's examination system and recommend comprehensive reforms. He later followed it up with another video explaining the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026.

However, it was his July 31 message that stood apart.

Beginning with the words, "Hi friends, today I feel like talking only to you", the Prime Minister adopted a deeply personal tone. Referring to the abusive language directed at him and his late mother during the protests, he said the words did not belong in a civilised society and that seeing "daughters" use such language came as a cultural shock.

Instead of demanding harsh punishment, he urged society to view the episode differently. Young people make mistakes, he said, and youth is also the stage when those mistakes can be corrected. Rather than dragging them through endless court proceedings or socially isolating them, society should embrace them and help them find the right path, he said.

To drive home the point, he used a simple analogy of tongue and teeth, saying that the teeth may bite the tongue and it might bleed. "But we do not break the teeth. Both the teeth and the tongue are ours. These youngsters are ours too, and guiding them is our responsibility, " he said.

It was a message that combined firmness with compassion. The July 31 address demonstrated how a leader can respond to a sensitive issue involving young people without reducing it to a purely political contest.

The real test, however, does not lie with the government alone. It lies equally with the opposition and with society.

Throughout the paper leak controversy and the CJP agitation, the opposition failed to convert a genuine public concern into a meaningful national debate.

Instead of engaging seriously with examination reforms, institutional accountability and the future of India's students, much of the discourse descended into political theatrics. Parliament, too, failed to rise to the occasion. Even Rahul Gandhi, who has consistently tried to position himself as a voice of students and the youth, could not offer a substantive agenda. A serious issue eventually got reduced to exchanges over who called whom an "idiot".

But the biggest lesson from the CJP protest is for society itself.

Young people will question authority. They should. Curiosity, idealism, adventurous rebellion are natural characteristics of youth; there is nothing wrong with that. But the real concern arises when that energy is easily hijacked by vested interests pursuing political or personal agendas.

The protests also revealed an uncomfortable reality. Some participants appeared more interested in creating viral content than contributing to a meaningful movement. The abusive language directed at the Prime Minister and his late mother reflected a disturbing coarsening of public discourse. Equally troubling were reports that, in pursuit of better camera angles and social media engagement, some participants were even directing Sonam Wangchuk during his fast to change his position for better visuals.

Such incidents point to a deeper societal problem. Has the pursuit of online popularity begun to overshadow dignity, respect and purpose? Have likes, reels and followers become more important than values?

These are questions that deserve far greater attention than the political slugfest surrounding the protest.

The protest has ended. The protesters have gone home. But the fallout is immense, an eye-opener for society, politicians and the youth themselves.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 29 (SocialNews.XYZ) There are soldiers who become legends because of the battles they fight. Then there are those whose legacy lives on in every battle fought by others. Brigadier Basant K. Ponwar belonged to that rare second category.

For an entire generation of police officers, commandos and young military leaders, he was more than an instructor. He was the man who changed the way India understood jungle warfare. Long before the tide turned against Left Wing Extremism, when vast stretches of central India were considered almost impenetrable, and the Maoists dictated the rhythm of the conflict, Brigadier Ponwar realised that conventional thinking would never produce unconventional victories.

His philosophy was disarmingly simple.

“Fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla.”

It was not merely a slogan. It became a doctrine.

It demanded that the security forces abandon predictable patterns and instead learn to think, move and survive as their adversary did. It meant travelling light, mastering the terrain, operating in small teams, relying on intelligence rather than brute force and treating every inch of the jungle with respect. To Brigadier Ponwar, the forest was not an obstacle to be crossed; it was a battlefield that had to be understood.

Those ideas would go on to reshape India’s approach to the counter-insurgency.

When he established the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CTJWC) at Kanker (Chhattisgarh), he was not merely setting up another training institution. He was laying the foundation for a new way of fighting a war that had already consumed thousands of lives.

The jungles of Bastar do not forgive mistakes.

A moment’s lapse in concentration, a poorly chosen route or an inability to read the terrain can prove fatal. Brigadier Ponwar knew this better than most. Every exercise he designed, every patrol he supervised and every lesson he taught had one purpose: to ensure that the men who entered those forests returned home alive.

For him, training was never about passing a course.

It was about saving lives.

Thousands of personnel from the CRPF, state police forces, specialised anti-Naxal units, Greyhounds, C-60, District Reserve Guard and other security organisations passed through the gates of CTJWC. They came from different states, spoke different languages and wore different uniforms. But they left with something that united them—a common doctrine shaped by Brigadier Ponwar’s experience, discipline, and uncompromising standards.

Many of the officers who would later lead successful operations across Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand may never have realised that the instincts guiding their decisions had been forged on the training grounds of Kanker.

His influence travelled with them.

Every silent patrol.

Every successful ambush.

Every life saved because a young officer remembered a lesson learnt, years earlier.

That became Brigadier Ponwar’s unseen battlefield.

The story of India’s campaign against Maoist insurgency is often narrated through dramatic encounters, surrendered leaders and decisive operations. Those stories deserve to be told. But behind every successful operation stands an invisible army of trainers who prepare others for the day when theory meets reality.

Brigadier Ponwar was one of the finest among them.

He believed that realism in training was an act of compassion. If a trainee struggled during an exercise, he would learn. If he made the same mistake during an operation, someone might not return home. That philosophy demanded high standards, relentless discipline and physical endurance, but it also reflected something deeply human—a profound respect for the lives of those he trained.

There is perhaps no greater tribute that can be paid to an instructor than this: generations of soldiers and policemen walked into danger carrying lessons that had once been taught by him.

As India gradually regained control over regions that had remained trapped in decades of violence, many factors contributed to that success - better intelligence, improved coordination between agencies, courageous leadership, technological advances and the extraordinary sacrifice of countless security personnel. Yet beneath all these achievements lay another truth.

Victories are not won only on the battlefield.

They are first won on the training ground.

That was Brigadier Ponwar’s battlefield.

He rarely sought the spotlight. His greatest satisfaction lay not in personal recognition but in watching others succeed. The medals earned by those he trained, the operations they completed and, most importantly, the lives they brought back safely became the quiet measure of his own success.

History often celebrates the commanders who lead from the front.

It should also remember the teacher who prepared them to do so.

Brigadier Basant K. Ponwar did more than train men for war. He gave them the confidence to confront fear, the wisdom to respect the jungle and the discipline to survive it. In doing so, he left behind something far greater than an institution.

He left behind a way of thinking - A doctrine. A generation of jungle warriors. And a legacy that will continue to echo through India’s forests long after the sound of gunfire has faded.

(The writer is an author and columnist)

Source: IANS

The post The Brigadier who taught India to fight in the jungle appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New Delhi, July 27 (SocialNews.XYZ) The recent student congregation at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi was not merely a protest over an examination controversy. It was a moment of political and social awakening that deserves to be understood beyond the immediate issue. The students may eventually return to their classrooms, but Jantar Mantar has entered their collective consciousness. It has become more than a place; it has become a symbol.

The phrase Jantar Mantar itself carries a deeper metaphor. While historically it is India’s celebrated astronomical observatory, in popular imagination, the words evoke both jantar (an instrument) and mantra (a force or invocation). Democracy, too, functions through such a combination. Institutions are its instruments, but the people’s voice is its mantra. When the institutions fail to transmit that voice, the mantra returns to the streets.

That is precisely what happened.

Beyond an Examination

The immediate trigger may have been allegations of examination irregularities, but the movement rapidly transcended the issue of one examination. It reflected something much larger—the anxiety of India’s middle class and lower middle class whose dreams are built upon education, merit, and opportunity.

Unlike many earlier political agitations, this movement had no obvious ideological leadership. There was no single political party directing it, no caste mobilisation, no religious slogan defining it. Students travelled voluntarily from small towns and cities across India, often at their own expense. They represented families that have invested everything in education because they believe it is the only path to dignity and social mobility.

When that path appears uncertain, the insecurity becomes existential.

The protest therefore became not merely about an examination but about trust in institutions.

Why Jantar Mantar Matters

Every democracy requires a space where ordinary citizens can be heard before frustration turns into alienation. The Parliament is constitutionally that space. Political parties are expected to amplify public concerns. Ministers are expected to respond. Bureaucracy is expected to resolve problems before they become crises.

When these channels appear inadequate, citizens naturally seek another platform.

Jantar Mantar became that platform.

The significance of this development lies in the fact that thousands of young Indians felt their concerns were not reaching the establishment through normal democratic mechanisms. Their gathering was not an attempt to replace the Parliament. Rather, it was a reminder that democracy cannot be confined within the Parliament alone.

Governments are elected by parliamentary majorities, but they continue to govern through public confidence. Numbers inside the Parliament cannot permanently substitute for communication outside it.

A Different Kind of Student Movement

India has witnessed powerful student movements before. The Navnirman Movement in Gujarat, the Bihar movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, and numerous regional agitations shaped the country’s political evolution. Those movements arose largely from political and regional contexts.

The present movement carries a different character.

Its foundation is aspiration rather than ideology.

Today’s students are digital natives. They are connected through technology rather than traditional organisational structures. They form communities without regard to caste, religion, or regional identities. Social media enabled mobilisation, but the movement gained legitimacy only when students left their mobile screens and occupied public space peacefully.

This marks a significant generational shift.

Their concerns are practical rather than doctrinal. They are asking simple questions: Will merit matter? Will institutions remain credible? Will education secure employment? Will governments listen?

These questions cut across every social divide.

The Middle Class Cannot Be Ignored

Much of India’s developmental discourse understandably focuses on poverty alleviation and rural development. Yet the aspirations of modern India are largely carried by its middle class.

India’s scientists, engineers, teachers, civil servants, armed forces officers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and innovators overwhelmingly emerge from middle-class and lower middle-class families. These are families that save for education, sacrifice for opportunity and believe in hard work more than privilege.

If this section begins to lose confidence in public institutions, the consequences extend far beyond urban politics.

The middle class does not merely influence elections. It shapes national sentiment, technological innovation, administrative capacity, and economic productivity.

Its anxieties therefore deserve careful attention—not because it is politically louder, but because it remains central to India’s long-term development.

Listening Is the First Duty of Governance

Every government naturally seeks stability and efficient administration. But good governance requires something more than administrative control. It requires constant listening.

Constructive criticism should never automatically be viewed as hostility. History repeatedly demonstrates that societies become stronger when governments hear uncomfortable voices early rather than dismiss them as politically motivated.

During the Emergency, public grievances were often attributed to conspiracies or external influences. History ultimately judged that approach harshly. Democracies flourish not by eliminating dissent but by engaging with it.

This responsibility extends equally to ministers and the bureaucracy.

An administration that merely follows instructions without independent initiative gradually loses contact with public reality. Citizens can sense this distance. Their frustrations accumulate quietly until they eventually surface in unexpected forms.

Jantar Mantar is one such reminder.

The Future Lies with India’s Youth

The greatest mistake would be to see this protest only through the lens of education.

The next major challenge may well be employment.

India’s demographic strength can become either its greatest advantage or its greatest vulnerability. The government alone cannot generate sufficient employment. The solution lies in innovation, entrepreneurship, research and partnerships between academia, industry, and government.

Every university should have innovation and incubation centres where students work on real national challenges—from energy security and artificial intelligence to water management, waste-to-energy technologies, agriculture, and healthcare.

Young Indians should not merely prepare for jobs; they should be encouraged to create solutions.

In emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, India may not match the financial investments of larger economies, but it possesses an enormous advantage in human talent. By focusing on practical applications, ethical frameworks and socially relevant innovation, Indian students can make distinctive global contributions.

The Mantra Must Continue

The true significance of Jantar Mantar is not that thousands gathered there for a few days. Its significance lies in reminding the nation that democracy is ultimately sustained by participation, not silence.

India’s civilisational strength has always rested on diversity of thought, freedom of philosophical inquiry and the acceptance of disagreement. For thousands of years, this civilisation has encouraged dialogue over conformity and debate over unquestioning obedience. Modern democracy in India draws strength from that much older tradition.

The students have now dispersed. The placards have disappeared. The slogans have faded.

But the questions remain.

Jantar Mantar has ceased to be merely a geographical location. It has become a democratic conscience. Wise governments will recognise it not as a challenge to authority but as an early warning system—a place where the pulse of the Republic becomes audible before discontent hardens into distrust.

Conclusion

The recent congregation of students at Jantar Mantar should ultimately be remembered not as a moment of confrontation, but as a powerful affirmation of the resilience and credibility of Indian democracy.

Far from exposing institutional weakness, it demonstrated the remarkable capacity of our democratic system to absorb public sentiment, initiate dialogue and respond with flexibility. The sight of senior ministers personally reaching out to fasting students, inviting them for discussions and responding to their legitimate concerns reflected a democratic culture where the highest levels of government remain accessible to the ordinary citizen.

This is India’s greatest strength.

When institutions or bureaucracy fail to adequately address public grievances, the people still possess constitutional spaces where their voice can travel directly to the highest authority.

Jantar Mantar has evolved into one such democratic bridge -- not against the Parliament, but in support of its larger purpose of representing the people. In a world where student movements are often met with prolonged repression or violent suppression, India’s experience offers a different lesson: that dialogue is stronger than force, and responsiveness is stronger than rigidity.

Indian democracy cannot remain confined only to electoral mandates or parliamentary numbers; it draws its enduring legitimacy from continuous engagement with the aspirations of its citizens. Equally, this episode serves as a timely reminder to governments, ministers and the bureaucracy that dissent is not necessarily an act of defiance -- it is often the earliest indicator of public expectations and should be interpreted with sensitivity rather than suspicion.

The true strength of governance lies not in silencing criticism but in listening to it with humility. If Jantar Mantar has become the people’s democratic conscience, it is because it reminds every government that the authority to govern is constantly renewed through dialogue, empathy and trust. That is not a weakness of the Republic; it is the living spirit of India’s democracy and one of its greatest civilisational strengths.

The world has seen the strength of India’s democracy through direct dialogue of students from the street to the highest level of governance.

(The author is a former diplomat and a strategic affairs expert. Views expressed are personal)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) It should never have taken a street protest to force governments to address a problem that has plagued India's examination system for many decades. But that is precisely what the Cockroach Janata Party's (CJP) protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi has exposed.

The protest, though projected as an agitation against examination paper leaks and carrying an unmistakable political hue, has brought to the fore a problem that has plagued the country for decades.

Year after year, India has witnessed discrepancies in examinations. Sometimes paper leaks were detected; perhaps many more went unnoticed and unaddressed. One can only imagine how many doctors, engineers, policemen and other public servants may have secured their positions through unfair means. Every time a leak surfaced, the routine response was to cancel the examination and conduct a retest. That has been the story for decades.

This time, however, students have had enough; their anger forced the government to act, something that should have happened long ago without public pressure.

It was in 1986, under the Rajiv Gandhi government, that the National Policy on Education (NPE) formally acknowledged examination malpractices as a serious threat to academic integrity. It recognised systemic vulnerabilities, noting that everything from evaluation bias to the physical security of question papers required urgent attention. The policy laid the conceptual groundwork for treating paper leaks as a major security issue affecting students, but a comprehensive central law to deal with organised paper-leak syndicates never materialised.

None of the political parties or governments at the Centre that followed seriously attempted to plug these loopholes. Since 1986, Congress remained in power or was in coalition for nearly 23 years until 2014, yet it failed to address the menace through a dedicated legal framework.

It was only in 2024, after nationwide outrage over repeated leaks in major entrance examinations, that India enacted its first dedicated anti-paper leak law -- the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024. The law came into force on June 21, 2024, specifically targeting central testing agencies.

Despite the new legislation, paper leaks have continued, with the 2026 NEET paper leak becoming the latest flashpoint.

The CJP, a collective of young people reportedly backed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and projecting itself as the voice of Gen Z, found an opportunity in the growing public anger. With activist Sonam Wangchuk sitting on a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, the protest acquired momentum and threatened to snowball into a nationwide movement.

The agitation, which turned violent and reportedly left nearly 200 policemen and dozens of protesters injured, should serve as a wake-up call not merely for the government but for the entire political establishment.

Whether certain political forces attempted to fuel the protests or derail them through violence is a separate debate. What cannot be ignored is the deep frustration among the country's youth over a system repeatedly compromised by examination leaks.

For far too long, India's political class has taken people for granted. Fundamental issues have often been overshadowed by the compulsions of electoral politics. Even today, most parties continue to view such issues primarily through the prism of vote-bank calculations.

Take the NEET paper leak as an example. The controversy surfaced in April, but Congress became visibly active only after the CJP protests gathered a certain momentum and Sonam Wangchuk's agitation began attracting public support. Rahul Gandhi, returning after a 20-day foreign tour, suddenly made the issue a political priority as Parliament's Monsoon Session approached. He held special media events, including one near the Prime Minister's residence, to underline his party's concern.

AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, widely perceived as the force behind the CJP, also faces uncomfortable questions. His party's government in Punjab has repeatedly been accused of failing to curb examination scandals in the state. It is alleged that six paper leaks have taken place over the past four years.

The Congress, the Shiromani Akali Dal and the BJP have all accused the Punjab government of recruitment irregularities and repeated examination leaks, demanding the resignation of Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains. Interestingly, whenever CJP leaders are questioned about the Punjab paper leaks, they conveniently sidestep the issue.

The Samajwadi Party, too, has been vocal over the present controversy. But it was the Mulayam Singh Yadav government that abolished Uttar Pradesh's stringent Anti-Copying Act in 1994. The law had been introduced in 1992 by the BJP government led by Chief Minister Kalyan Singh to curb rampant cheating in examinations. After assuming office, the Samajwadi Party repealed it, describing it as excessively harsh on students.

Then, in 2015, when Mulayam Singh Yadav's son Akhilesh Yadav was the Chief Minister, it took the intervention of the Allahabad High Court to force the removal of Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission chairman Anil Yadav.

Anil Yadav was accused of favouring one particular community in recruitment to various government posts. Students repeatedly agitated against him, and several protests ended in police lathi-charge. He also courted controversy after the 2015 PCS (Preliminary) examination paper leak.

Whatever forces may have helped propel the CJP protest, the agitation has undoubtedly shaken the system and compelled the government to respond.

The real lesson from the CJP protests is not about one organisation or one government. It is about a political culture that responds only when public anger spills onto the streets. A system that waits for protests before correcting its failures is not merely inefficient; it has already failed the very people it is meant to serve.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) Every nation fights a battle for the imagination of its youth, and the same is happening in India also. But the real question is -- what kind of future are young Indians being encouraged to dream of?

Recently, a handwritten postcard carrying the words 'Vande Mataram' travelled into space aboard Skyroot's Vikram-1 rocket. Asked why he had chosen that message, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said this year marks the 150th anniversary of the national song and that Vande Mataram has always inspired India's youth.

The symbolism could hardly have been more striking. India celebrated two milestones -- the country's hydrogen-powered train and Vikram-1, a privately built rocket developed by a team of young engineers, most of them under the age of 28. Together, they conveyed a powerful message: when given the right opportunity, Indians, particularly the youth, are capable of building, innovating and competing with the best in the world.

But at the very same time, another contest has been unfolding in the national capital. At Jantar Mantar, attempts have been underway to channel the anger of young aspirants over paper leaks into a larger political movement.

This raises a larger question that goes beyond one protest or one political party.

The paper leak issue is undoubtedly serious. The NEET-UG 2026 controversy has shaken the confidence of lakhs of students and their families. It deserves neither trivialisation nor political point-scoring. But it is equally true that paper leaks are not a recent phenomenon. They have plagued India's examination system for decades. What successive governments failed to do was create a robust mechanism capable of dismantling the networks that flourished within the system itself.

When the teacher becomes the thief, the system stands compromised. More importantly, it reflects the country's social, political and moral condition. Such a system has existed for nearly 78 years, with the Congress party being in power for much of that period. Today, Rahul Gandhi is organising events around paper leaks to target the present government. He appears keen to tap into the sentiments of Gen Z in an attempt to build a larger political movement ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha elections and the Assembly elections due before that, including in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

After spending nearly 20 days abroad, Rahul Gandhi has also sought to regain political visibility ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament. Interestingly, he and his party stayed away from Sonam Wangchuk's hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, which began on June 28, but decided to show solidarity as the Parliament session drew closer. Senior Congress leaders were seen at the protest site, and Rahul Gandhi also posted on social media after Wangchuk was shifted to the hospital.

For nearly the first fortnight, there was no significant mobilisation in Wangchuk's support, with many gatherings at Jantar Mantar revolving around food, selfies and making reels. None of the major opposition parties -- Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, AAP or others -- asked their youth wings to stage a sustained protest at the iconic demonstration site in the heart of Delhi. However, they made a beeline for the venue once it became clear that administrative intervention could follow the Delhi High Court's July 16 order directing the authorities to do whatever was necessary to save Wangchuk's life.

After Wangchuk was shifted to the hospital, opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, became vocal in attacking the government.

The paper leak issue is undoubtedly a serious concern and deserves to be dealt with firmly. The recent arrests in the NEET paper leak case have exposed the depth of the racket. Those entrusted with safeguarding the system are the very people accused of betraying it.

The growing demand for structural reforms is therefore justified. The government must ensure that examinations become secure, transparent and beyond manipulation. That alone will restore the confidence of students whose careers depend on a fair system.

Democracy will always have protests, and rightly so. Young people have every reason to question governments, demand accountability and seek justice. But there is a difference between encouraging young minds to seek reform and encouraging them to believe that agitation alone is the path to change.

The contrast before India's youth today is striking. On one hand are young scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs pushing technological frontiers. On the other hand is an attempt to define youth politics primarily through anger and confrontation. Both are messages competing for the attention of the same generation.

The success of Vikram-1 is more than a private space achievement. It demonstrates that Indian talent can create technologies that only a handful of private companies across the world have mastered. The hydrogen-powered train similarly reflects an ambition to build cleaner and more advanced public infrastructure. These achievements are not merely technological milestones; they are expressions of national confidence.

It was therefore fitting that among Vikram-1's symbolic payloads was a handwritten postcard bearing the words Vande Mataram. The phrase has inspired generations of Indians during different phases of the country's journey. The message accompanying the mission was unmistakable: inspire young Indians to build rather than merely react.

Ultimately, the future of the country will not be decided only inside Parliament or at protest sites. It will be shaped in laboratories, classrooms, startups, universities, factories and research centres, where millions of young Indians quietly pursue ideas that can transform the nation.

The battle before India today is not simply political. It is a battle for the imagination of its youth.

Those who succeed will not necessarily be the ones who shout the loudest, make headlines or draw the largest crowds. They will be the ones who convince young Indians that their greatest contribution to the nation lies not merely in protesting against its failures, but in building its future.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 12 (SocialNews.XYZ) Is it a coincidence that Dr Farooq Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and president of the ruling National Conference, has decided to stage a protest in Delhi demanding the restoration of statehood?

The timing certainly invites scrutiny. Barely days after a letter surfaced in which Abdullah was among the signatories urging New Delhi and Islamabad to end their "prolonged hostility", arguing that it was denying millions of young people opportunities, prosperity and a secure future, he wrote to 52 prominent political leaders inviting them to join a protest at Jantar Mantar on July 20, the opening day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament.

The invitees include almost the entire Opposition spectrum and his INDIA bloc allies -- Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, C. Joseph Vijay, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray, Naveen Patnaik, Asaduddin Owaisi, Arvind Kejriwal, CPI(M) General Secretary M.A. Baby and several others. BJP leaders from Jammu and Kashmir have also been invited.

But the most striking name on the list is that of Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

The sequence of events comes at a time when Jammu and Kashmir has largely remained peaceful since the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. Security challenges remain, but the Valley has witnessed a degree of stability that had eluded it for decades.

The protest call also coincides with the deteriorating situation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), where public unrest against the Pakistani establishment has intensified.

Reports suggest that protesters have faced a sweeping crackdown by Pakistani security forces, with dozens of people reportedly killed. Residents have complained of shortages of food, fuel and medicines following what local leaders describe as an economic blockade. Sardar Aman Khan, leader of the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), has even appealed to New Delhi to send humanitarian assistance and open the Line of Control for relief.

For Pakistan's establishment, the unrest in PoK has become an embarrassment. At a time when it is facing criticism over its handling of the region, peace in Jammu and Kashmir only sharpens the contrast. Over the past few years, attempts to push terrorists across the border, revive militancy and create fresh disturbances have repeatedly been foiled by Indian security forces. Several infiltration bids have failed, while plans to create terror modules in different parts of the country have also been neutralised.

The Valley itself has shown encouraging signs of recovery. Tourist arrivals, which had dipped sharply after the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent Operation Sindoor, have steadily picked up again. Businesses have revived, markets are bustling once more, and normal life has largely returned.

It is against this backdrop that Abdullah's protest call assumes significance.

There is, of course, nothing objectionable about organising a peaceful protest. That is the essence of democracy. What raises eyebrows, however, is the decision to invite the Hurriyat Conference, an organisation long associated with separatist politics. Though much of its leadership has either been jailed, sidelined or has died, those who remain, including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, have consistently favoured engagement with Pakistan and international intervention on the Kashmir issue.

Equally noteworthy has been the Mirwaiz's response to the developments in PoK. His comments have been measured, calling for "engagement and peaceful redressal", but he has neither demanded protests against Pakistan nor sought international attention for the plight of the people there.

The silence has not been confined to the Hurriyat. Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, and several other mainstream Kashmiri leaders have been far more restrained in reacting to reports of repression in PoK than they usually are while commenting on security operations within Jammu and Kashmir. At a time when several PoK leaders themselves have sought India's assistance, that silence has inevitably attracted attention.

Instead of championing the cause of the people suffering across the Line of Control, Kashmir's mainstream political leadership appears focused on mobilising opinion over statehood at a politically significant moment.

History also explains why many people view such developments with caution.

The years between 1988 and 1990 witnessed the rise of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir, targeted killings of those perceived to be pro-India and the forced exodus of Kashmiri Hindus. Dr Farooq Abdullah headed the government during much of that turbulent period. His administration failed in its primary duty of enforcing the rule of law as Pakistan-sponsored terrorism tightened its grip on the Valley.

It was during those years that terrorists were released from jail, a large section of the administration and police became compromised, and hundreds of young men crossed into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for arms training before returning to unleash violence.

Farooq Abdullah's government never regained control of the situation. Why it failed, and how that failure altered the course of Kashmir's history, has never been adequately debated. A judicial commission or court of inquiry into the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, the targeted killings of pro-India voices and the collapse of governance was never constituted. Consequently, many questions relating to the roles of the Abdullah leadership and the then Union Home Minister, the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, remain unanswered.

Decades later, Farooq Abdullah is preparing to lead a political mobilisation, this time at Jantar Mantar.

The timing and venue are difficult to ignore. The protest coincides with the opening day of Parliament's Monsoon Session, ensuring maximum political and media attention. Jantar Mantar is also the focal point of some other ongoing protests, including the one led by activist Sonam Wangchuk.

Whether Farooq Abdullah's protest call succeeds in turning the statehood demand into the dominant political narrative in the Union Territory, as the Abdullahs seek, or provokes the predictable reactions from Pakistan remains to be seen. The endorsement by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq also signals that the separatist, pro-Pakistan camp has chosen to back the exercise. The more important question, however, is how the people of Jammu and Kashmir respond.

Perhaps it is all just a coincidence. Perhaps it is simply a protest for statehood. But in Kashmir, where politics has often altered the course of history, timing is rarely dismissed as mere coincidence. That is why Farooq Abdullah's latest move deserves to be viewed with caution -- not because anyone questions his democratic right to protest, but because of the consequences it may have for a Valley that has paid dearly for political miscalculations in the past.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 12 (SocialNews.XYZ) Picture the scene. Perth, January 2008. India's special envoy has come seeking uranium for a power-starved nation of a billion people, from the country that sits atop the largest uranium reserves on earth. The answer is a flat no. Sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty first, India is told, or go home. India goes home.

Now cut to Melbourne, July 2026. The Prime Minister of Australia stands beside the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and announces that Australian uranium will fuel Indian reactors. No sermons this time. No demand for a signature, India has honourably declined for decades. Only the respect due to a responsible nuclear power. The same door that was shut on India's envoy is now held open for India's leader. Between those two frames lies the story of PM Modi's journey through Jakarta, Melbourne and Auckland. It is not a story of travel. It is a story of doors bolted against India for decades, now opening one after another.

The fuel they refused us

The uranium history deserves to be told fully, because memory is the first casualty of political convenience. In 2006, even as Washington embraced civil nuclear commerce with India, Canberra refused to follow. In 2008, Canberra reversed even its own earlier in-principle willingness. Through the entire UPA decade, the position was held. Delhi pleaded. Canberra declined. Australia, remarkably, kept discussing uranium sales to China while denying them to democratic India.

When UPA left office, not one gram of Australian uranium had a legal pathway to India. Within barely a hundred days of taking office, PM Modi signed the long-pending Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in September 2014. This week in Melbourne, the final administrative lock was broken, and supply stands operationalised, fuelling India's march to one hundred gigawatts of nuclear power.

Understand what changed. Not India's stance on a treaty we rightly declined. The world's estimation of India changed, and the rules followed.

The defence arsenal finds its market

If Melbourne rewrote what India may buy, Jakarta rewrote what India now sells. For seventy years, our defence story was a buyer's story, written in queues outside foreign capitals. In Jakarta, the queue reversed.

India and Indonesia signed agreements for the supply of BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, making Indonesia the third nation after the Philippines and Vietnam to stake its security on Indian steel, alongside a pact for Astra air-to-air missile systems. BrahMos carries the credibility of combat, proven in Operation Sindoor. And note the timing, for history rarely offers cleaner symbolism. Southeast Asia's largest economy surveyed a hardening neighbourhood and chose the Indian shield. That is not a transaction. That is a verdict.

Geography as strategy

The map agreed in Jakarta matters even more than the missiles. India will partner in developing Sabang Port at the mouth of the Malacca Strait, barely 160 kilometres from India's upcoming Great Nicobar transshipment hub. Two ports, two flags, one gateway commanding nearly a third of the world's trade. Cooperation deepens in critical minerals, with the nation holding nearly 60 per cent of the world's nickel.

President Prabowo conferred upon PM Modi the Bintang Adipurna, Indonesia's highest civilian and military honour. Then the Prime Minister travelled to Yogyakarta, to the thousand-year-old spires of Prambanan, where India will support the restoration of one of the great Hindu temples on this earth. Missiles for the present. Ports for the future. Temples for eternity. Only one statesman could have negotiated on all three registers in a single visit.

Trade at the speed of trust

The pattern runs through commerce too. The results are now arithmetic, not argument. Since the trade agreement of 2022, bilateral trade with Australia is up 55 per cent, and both Prime Ministers have ordered the full Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement concluded at the earliest. AustralianSuper announced an investment of half a billion Australian dollars in India even as PM Modi beckoned Australia's four trillion-dollar pension pool towards Indian infrastructure. Money is the most honest editorial page in the world. It has endorsed India.

Forty years ended in a morning

New Zealand tells the same story at a higher velocity. No Indian Prime Minister had visited in four decades. Trade talks had meandered without result since the UPA years. This government concluded a full Free Trade Agreement with a swiftness PM Modi called perhaps a global first. In Auckland, welcomed with the traditional Maori Powhiri, he crowned it with a new Strategic Partnership and a Roadmap to 2030 spanning maritime security, counter terrorism and cyber defence, a trade target of seven billion New Zealand dollars, and a mutual logistics pact between the Indian Navy and the New Zealand Defence Force.

An Indian warship may now provision in Auckland. Let that sentence settle. The Indian Navy's writ of friendship runs from the Gulf of Aden to the South Pacific.

One design, many doors

Set the outcomes side by side, and the design declares itself. Uranium refused for two decades now flows. Missiles India once imported are now exported. Trade pacts that gathered dust for years are concluded at a record pace. A nation once lectured about treaties is decorated with the highest honours of the very capitals that once said no.

None of this is an accident. None of it is atmospherics. It is the compound interest of 12 years of credibility, banked patiently and now drawn upon across half the planet. Nations do not decorate supplicants. They decorate those whose respect they seek. When the Prime Minister of Australia stands beside PM Modi before the largest gathering of Indian Australians ever assembled at Melbourne's Marvel Stadium, he is not extending courtesy. He is acknowledging gravity.

A closing thought

Centuries ago, the ships of Kalinga and the Cholas crossed these very waters carrying trade, faith and civilisation eastward. The stones of Prambanan still bear their signature. This week, the Indian Prime Minister retraced that ancient route, not with fleets of conquest but with instruments of partnership, and found every harbour open.

Doors do not open themselves. Someone must arrive with the standing to knock, the patience to persist, and the strength to be welcomed. For decades, the world kept India waiting on the threshold. PM Modi ended the wait. India no longer knocks on the world's doors. The world now holds them open.

(The author is a Senior Advocate practising in the Supreme Court of India)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi: History occasionally produces relationships that are not merely diplomatic but geographical, shaped less by political choice than by immutable strategic realities. India and Bangladesh exemplify one such relationship. Governments may change, political slogans may evolve, and public opinion may fluctuate, but geography remains remarkably indifferent to ideology. Sharing over 4,000 kilometres of border, 54 transboundary rivers, centuries of civilisational interaction, and deeply interconnected economic and security interests, the two nations remain bound by realities that no political narrative can rewrite.

Sections of Bangladesh's contemporary political discourse increasingly project a different picture. Anti-India rhetoric has become a recurring feature of domestic mobilisation, often framed around border issues, sovereignty, religion, or regional politics. While such narratives may generate immediate political dividends, they often obscure a more fundamental truth: Bangladesh's long-term stability and prosperity remain deeply intertwined with constructive engagement with India. Geography has already settled what politics continues to debate.

The relationship between India and Bangladesh rests on civilisational links that long predate modern political borders. Before the Partition of 1947, Bengal was a shared cultural and linguistic space where Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims lived, traded and created a common literary and cultural tradition. The division of Bengal and the creation of East Pakistan transformed that shared civilisational space into an international frontier, but not the deep social, cultural and economic connections across it.

As the political crisis in East Pakistan escalated into the Liberation War of 1971, India became increasingly involved. Nearly 10 million refugees sought shelter across its borders, creating an unprecedented humanitarian and security challenge. Pakistan's air strikes on Indian airfields in December 1971 transformed the crisis into a full-scale war.

India's role during Bangladesh's Liberation War was not merely a military intervention but the beginning of a partnership that has gradually evolved into one of South Asia's most significant bilateral relationships. Over the decades, cooperation has expanded well beyond regional security. Unlike relationships driven solely by diplomatic convenience, India-Bangladesh ties have increasingly become institutionalised through shared infrastructure and mutual dependence.

Perhaps nowhere is this interdependence more evident than in the energy sector. India exports approximately 1,200 MW of electricity to Bangladesh through cross-border transmission links, accounting for a significant share of Bangladesh's peak electricity demand. The India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline, capable of transporting one million metric tonnes of diesel annually, has further strengthened Bangladesh's fuel security. Water presents an equally compelling example. Of Bangladesh's 57 transboundary rivers, 54 originate in India, making upstream cooperation indispensable. The 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty continues to provide predictable dry-season flows that remain vital for Bangladesh's agriculture, ecology and livelihoods.

The same pattern is visible across infrastructure. Bangladesh today is the largest recipient of Indian concessional development financing, with nearly US$8 billion extended through Lines of Credit. These investments have not been symbolic diplomatic gestures. They have financed railway modernisation, roads, bridges, inland waterways, integrated check posts, port connectivity and cross-border logistics that facilitate trade while reducing transportation costs. Projects such as the Akhaura-Agartala Rail Link and the Khulna-Mongla Port Rail Line strengthen not only bilateral commerce but Bangladesh's aspiration to emerge as a regional connectivity hub linking South and Southeast Asia.

Security cooperation has followed a similarly pragmatic trajectory. Defence cooperation expanded significantly following the agreements signed in 2017, encompassing military training, intelligence sharing, counterterrorism cooperation and joint exercises such as Exercise SAMPRITI. These initiatives are not directed against any third country; rather, they strengthen Bangladesh's own ability to confront cross-border militancy, terrorism financing, illegal arms trafficking and organised criminal networks. In a region where security threats increasingly transcend borders, cooperation has become less a matter of political preference than of operational necessity.

The 2015 implementation of the Land Boundary Agreement demonstrated what mature diplomacy can achieve. For decades, the enclaves along the India-Bangladesh border represented one of the world's most complicated territorial anomalies, creating administrative uncertainty and opportunities for criminal exploitation. Their peaceful resolution transformed a chronic security challenge into an enduring example of political statesmanship, improving governance, border management and the everyday lives of thousands of people on both sides.

Beyond strategy and economics lies an equally important human dimension. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis travel to India seeking specialised medical care in fields ranging from oncology and cardiology to neurology and organ transplantation. Before the pandemic, India issued nearly 1.5 million visas annually to Bangladeshi citizens, making Bangladesh one of the largest recipients of Indian visas worldwide. During the Covid-19 crisis, India supplied more than two million doses of Covishield vaccines, helping launch Bangladesh's national vaccination programme. Even during the Ukraine conflict, India evacuated Bangladeshi citizens under Operation Ganga alongside its own nationals.

Such episodes illustrate that the relationship extends beyond diplomacy into humanitarian responsibility.

This extensive cooperation makes the growing anti-India discourse in sections of Bangladesh's political landscape particularly striking. Legitimate disagreements between neighbouring countries are neither unusual nor unexpected. Border management, migration, water sharing and trade disputes will continue to arise. However, these issues increasingly risk being absorbed into broader ideological campaigns that portray India not as a partner but as a strategic adversary. Such narratives may resonate within domestic politics, yet they often fail to acknowledge the structural realities that underpin Bangladesh's own development.

The growing anti-India narrative cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider geopolitical environment. Any weakening of India-Bangladesh relations inevitably creates space for external actors whose strategic interests do not always align with regional stability.

Pakistan has historically sought to exploit anti-India sentiment and ideological networks across South Asia as part of its broader strategic calculus, while China increasingly views Bangladesh through the prism of regional influence, economic leverage and strategic competition in the Bay of Bengal. Their methods differ, but both stand to gain from any weakening of the India-Bangladesh partnership.

Yet the larger reality remains unchanged. Neither ideological mobilisation nor external influence can alter the fundamentals of geography.

No external power can replicate India's geographical proximity, shared river systems, integrated energy networks, expanding connectivity corridors or immediate stake in Bangladesh's peace, stability and prosperity. These are advantages created not by diplomacy alone, but by geography itself.

In the end, geography does not negotiate. It continues to shape the choices that politics can only temporarily contest.

(The writer is an author and columnist. Views expressed are personal)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi: For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has presented itself as the loudest defender of the Palestinian cause. Every year, Tehran marks "Quds Day" with speeches condemning Israel, senior Iranian officials routinely describe Palestine as the "central issue" of the Muslim world, and support for Palestinian armed groups has been a pillar of Iran's revolutionary identity.

Yet recent events have exposed a striking contradiction between rhetoric and strategic behavior. The months following the Israel-Hamas war have demonstrated that while Iran is willing to support proxies, issue fiery statements, and celebrate the language of "resistance," it has shown remarkable restraint whenever its own national interests have been directly at stake. The contrast has become even more visible amid attempts to reduce tensions involving the United States and Israel.

This is not to suggest that Iran has abandoned every connection with Palestinian groups. Tehran continues to provide political backing and has long been associated with military and financial support for organisations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. However, there is a widening gap between symbolic leadership of the Palestinian cause and a willingness to bear the costs of defending it militarily.

That distinction matters. A useful way to understand Iran's strategy is through an old Middle Eastern proverb: 'Raise your voice, but keep your sword sheathed until your own house is threatened'. Whether or not Iranian leaders would describe their policy this way, recent events closely resemble this logic.

Whenever negotiations or de-escalation efforts involving Iran emerge, the conversation often expands to include Lebanon and Hezbollah because Hezbollah represents Tehran's most powerful regional deterrent. Israeli calculations regarding Lebanon are deeply connected to Iran's influence over Hezbollah.

Yet one question remains conspicuously absent. Why has Gaza rarely become a central bargaining point?

If Iran truly considers Palestine its foremost regional priority, one would expect Tehran to insist that any broader regional understanding include meaningful pressure to reduce Israeli military operations in Gaza, humanitarian guarantees, or political concessions for Palestinians. Instead, Gaza has frequently remained separate from discussions concerning Iran's own strategic interests.

That separation reveals priorities. Countries negotiate hardest over issues they genuinely regard as vital to their national security. Iran has consistently negotiated over sanctions, nuclear issues, regional influence, and deterrence. Palestine, despite occupying a central place in official speeches, has rarely appeared as an indispensable condition for Iran's own diplomatic engagement.

Perhaps no episode illustrates this contradiction more vividly than the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in 2024. If one of Iran's closest Palestinian partners could be assassinated inside the Iranian capital, it represented not merely an intelligence failure but a symbolic blow to Iran's image as the protector of the 'Axis of Resistance'.

Iran vowed retaliation. The rhetoric was unmistakable. The eventual response, however, remained calibrated and carefully managed to avoid an uncontrollable regional war. While Tehran sought to preserve deterrence, it simultaneously demonstrated an equally strong desire to prevent direct military escalation with Israel and the United States. For Palestinians watching from Gaza, the contrast was difficult to ignore. The capital of the self-declared guardian of Palestine had been penetrated, yet the broader strategic calculus remained centered on Iran's own security rather than Palestinian objectives.

Iran's regional strategy has never relied solely on Palestinians. Its strongest and most sophisticated partner has always been Hezbollah in Lebanon. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah provides Iran with strategic depth directly on Israel's northern border. It possesses far greater military capabilities and serves as a key element of Iran's deterrence architecture. That explains why developments involving Hezbollah often receive greater strategic attention in Tehran than those unfolding in Gaza.

The distinction is revealing. For Iran, Hezbollah is an asset tied directly to national security. Palestinian groups, by contrast, have often functioned as components of broader regional influence rather than ends in themselves.

History repeatedly demonstrates that states ultimately prioritise survival over ideology. The Soviet Union supported revolutionary movements across continents but abandoned many allies once geopolitical priorities shifted. The United States has similarly altered alliances when strategic interests demanded it. Iran is no exception. Despite revolutionary slogans, Iranian policymakers operate according to familiar principles of statecraft. They calculate costs, assess risks, and avoid actions that could threaten regime survival.

That explains why Iran has generally avoided entering a full-scale conventional war with Israel over Gaza despite the enormous civilian suffering and repeated declarations supporting Palestine. The leadership appears to have concluded that preserving the Islamic Republic outweighs military intervention on behalf of Palestinians. From a realist perspective, that calculation is unsurprising. From the standpoint of Iran's revolutionary narrative, however, it exposes an uncomfortable inconsistency.

Iran also faces a credibility challenge. Many across the Middle East increasingly distinguish between supporting the 'Palestinian cause' and supporting Iran's regional ambitions. Arab public opinion remains deeply sympathetic toward Palestinians while simultaneously questioning whether Tehran's policies primarily serve Palestinian interests or Iranian geopolitical influence. This distinction has become sharper during recent conflicts. Critics argue that Palestinian suffering has often been invoked rhetorically while remaining secondary whenever Iranian national priorities collide with Palestinian needs.

None of this means Iran has become indifferent to Palestine. Its ideological commitment remains genuine in important respects, and its long-standing relationships with Palestinian factions are well documented. However, commitment exists on a spectrum. The evidence suggests Iran is prepared to support Palestinians up to the point where doing so does not fundamentally endanger its own strategic interests. Beyond that threshold, caution replaces confrontation. This is not unique to Iran.

It is, in many respects, how states behave. The disappointment stems from the gap between expectations created by decades of revolutionary rhetoric and the more restrained conduct visible during moments of greatest crisis. Iran continues to portray itself as the standard-bearer of the Palestinian struggle. Yet its actions suggest that Palestine remains an important cause but not necessarily the defining priority of Iranian state policy.

For observers across the Middle East, the lesson is sobering. Governments may speak the language of solidarity, resistance, and shared destiny. But when strategic survival collides with ideological commitment, states almost always choose survival. Palestine, once again, has found itself caught between powerful narratives and even more powerful national interests.

(Dr Shujaat Ali Quadri is the National Convener of Muslim Youth Organisation of India. Views expressed are personal)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 7: China, on July 1, 2026, did not merely bring a new statute into force - it gave legal language to a long-running project of cultural control. The Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress is presented by Beijing as a framework for harmony among China’s 56 officially recognised ethnic groups. But for Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, Hui, Kazakhs and others, its real danger lies in how it turns identity into a matter of state discipline.

Across the world, Tibetan organisations and supporters marked the law’s implementation with coordinated protests, including in Dharamshala, warning that the law gives formal legal backing to policies that have already weakened minority languages, religions, family life, education, and diaspora activism.

The heart of the law is Article 6, which declares that a “sense of the community of the Chinese people” is the root of ethnic unity and bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity” or “create ethnic division.” The danger is not only in what the article says, but in what it does not define. In China’s political vocabulary, “ethnic division” has often been stretched to cover peaceful speech, cultural advocacy, religious expression and criticism of state policy. Amnesty International has warned that these broad terms risk arbitrary enforcement and could further criminalize activities such as promoting minority languages, documenting abuses, or campaigning for detainees.

Article 10 widens the threat by saying ethnic unity work must not be interfered with by “foreign forces” and that acts using “ethnicity, religion, or human rights” to undermine China must be opposed. This is deeply concerning because it frames human rights scrutiny itself as hostile interference. The article does not distinguish between a government-sponsored destabilisation campaign and a Tibetan exile asking for language rights, a Uyghur family searching for a missing relative or an international journalist investigating forced assimilation. This language fits a familiar Chinese state pattern - when minorities speak of rights, Beijing often recasts their claims as separatism or foreign manipulation.

The language provisions are among the most alarming. Article 15 makes the “national common language and script” the basic language of teaching and official work, promotes Mandarin learning from preschool, and requires Mandarin to be given prominence when used alongside minority languages. Article 16 then pushes the “community of the Chinese people” through the entire education process, including classrooms, textbooks, social practice and online education. On paper, the law says minority languages are respected; in practice, it places Mandarin and state ideology above mother-tongue education.

The case study already exists in Inner Mongolia. In 2020, authorities moved to replace Mongolian with Mandarin as the language of instruction for key subjects including language and literature, morality and law and history. Human Rights Watch documented protests, school boycotts, censorship, detentions, and the shutdown of Bainu, the only Mongolian-language social media platform in China. The lesson is clear: once the state defines Mandarin-first education as “unity,” defending mother-tongue learning can be treated as resistance.

Tibet shows the same pattern. Human Rights Watch found that Chinese-medium teaching was expanding in Tibetan primary schools and that Tibetan-medium schooling was being steadily squeezed through teacher transfers, textbook controls, school consolidation and pressure on informal Tibetan-language education. The case of Tashi Wangchuk remains a warning: after publicly advocating for Tibetan language rights, he was sentenced to five years in prison for “incitement to split the country.” Under the new law, the same kind of peaceful language advocacy can be framed even more easily as undermining “ethnic unity.”

Article 20 takes the law inside the home. It says governments should integrate the requirements of forging a Chinese national community into families and family education, and it requires parents or guardians to guide minors to love the Communist Party, the motherland, the people, and the Chinese nation. It also says guardians must not instil ideas “not conducive” to ethnic unity. This turns family memory into a political battlefield. A Tibetan parent teaching a child about exile, a Uyghur parent teaching religious heritage, or a Mongol parent defending native language could be placed under suspicion if that teaching conflicts with the state’s version of unity.

This is not theoretical. United Nations experts warned in 2023 that around one million Tibetan children were affected by Chinese government boarding-school policies aimed at cultural assimilation. These schools separate children from their families and place them in Mandarin-heavy, state-run environments where Tibetan language, religion, and local identity are pushed to the margins. When Article 20 is read with Articles 15 and 16, the law appears to legitimise exactly this kind of state intrusion into childhood.

Articles 22 to 27 promote “interaction, exchange, and integration” through housing, population management, student movement, employment, teacher exchanges, and youth activities. The language sounds soft, but it is built around state-directed social engineering. In minority regions, “integration” often means weakening the social spaces where minority life survives: villages, monasteries, local schools, community networks, and language environments. Article 14 also instructs authorities to highlight shared Chinese cultural symbols in public facilities, architecture, exhibitions, place names, and public activities. In Xinjiang, rights groups documented the renaming of roughly 630 Uyghur villages and towns to remove religious, cultural, or historical references and replace them with names reflecting Communist Party ideology or slogans such as unity and harmony. The religious provisions are equally serious.

Article 46 orders religious groups, religious schools, and religious activity sites to carry out education on the Chinese national community, follow the “Sinicization” of religion, adapt religion to socialist society, and guide believers toward patriotism. Article 62 then links “religious extremism” with criminal responsibility. In a country where “extremism” has already been used against ordinary Islamic practice, Tibetan Buddhist devotion, and independent religious education, these provisions give the state more room to police belief.

Xinjiang is the most severe case study. Human Rights Watch reported that revised Xinjiang religious regulations effective February 2024 tightened controls over Uyghur religious practice, required religions to follow socialist values and Sinicization, and gave grassroots cadres power to monitor “illegal” religious activity. The same report notes that since 2017, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have faced mass detention, torture, disappearances, mass surveillance, family separation, forced labour, and religious persecution; a 2022 United Nations assessment found that abuses in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

Article 31 brings the digital state into the project. It encourages the use of the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence to promote ethnic unity and requires network operators to stop, delete, preserve records of, and report content that undermines ethnic unity. Article 61 adds penalties for network operators that fail to perform these management duties. This creates a legal bridge between ideology and censorship: a post, image, video, sermon, song, or classroom material can be removed and reported if it conflicts with Beijing’s definition of unity.

Xinjiang again shows the danger. Human Rights Watch reverse-engineered the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, a police big-data system used to flag Turkic Muslims for investigation and possible detention on the basis of broad, non-criminal behaviour. HRW described a system in which surveillance technology, political policing, and mass detention reinforce one another. Under the new ethnic unity law, the state’s use of AI and big data is not treated as a rights risk; it is written into the legal architecture of ethnic governance.

Article 54 encourages citizens to report conduct that undermines ethnic unity and allows procuratorates to bring public interest litigation when such conduct harms national or public interests. Articles 57 to 60 add enforcement duties and penalties for organisations, institutions, enterprises, and staff who fail to stop such behaviour. This makes society itself part of the policing system. Schools, companies, neighbourhood committees, religious sites, media platforms, and even families are pushed to monitor speech and identity.

Finally, Article 63 is the clearest warning to the outside world. It says organisations and individuals outside mainland China who commit acts aimed at China that undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division can be pursued for legal responsibility. Beijing has defended this provision as lawful and necessary, but the European Union has expressed concern that the law may restrict cultural, linguistic, and religious rights and enable transnational repression. Reuters reported that Taiwan also called it intimidation through “malicious transnational repression.”

The case studies are already there. Amnesty International has documented Uyghurs abroad facing intimidation, surveillance, pressure through family members in China, and information gathering by Chinese embassies and consulates. Freedom House describes China as running the world’s most sophisticated and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression, targeting Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Inner Mongolians, religious communities, journalists, activists, and political dissidents across continents. Article 63 risks giving this campaign a new legal costume.

This law should therefore not be read as an isolated statute. It is a national codification of policies already tested in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, and the diaspora: Mandarin-first schooling, ideological textbooks, religious Sinicization, digital surveillance, village renaming, family pressure, citizen reporting, and overseas intimidation. Its danger lies in its smooth vocabulary. “Unity” sounds peaceful. “Progress” sounds modern. But when unity means obedience, and progress means the disappearance of living cultures into a single state-approved identity, the law becomes an instrument of erasure.

As World Tibet Day and the Dalai Lama’s birthday on July 6 approach, the world should remember that Tibet’s struggle is not only about territory. It is about language spoken at home, prayers whispered in monasteries, children learning their own names, and exiles speaking without fear. A law that makes those things suspicious does not create harmony. It creates silence — and calls that silence: unity.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, July 5 (SocialNews.XYZ) Thirty-six years is a long time -- long enough for hopes of justice to fade and tears of grief to dry. And when every door of justice and political will seemed firmly shut, one case has given an entire community reason to believe that justice, however delayed, may still be possible.

For the beleaguered Kashmiri Hindus, the chargesheet filed in the kidnapping and murder case of Sarla Bhat has rekindled long-lost hopes of justice and redemption. For more than three decades, the community has knocked on the doors of governments, the judiciary and even those who champion human rights. Nothing moved until the last week of June 2026, when investigators finally filed a chargesheet in the case.

Sarla Bhat's is only one among hundreds of cases in which families long ago stopped expecting justice. Officially, there is no comprehensive record of the violence inflicted upon the Kashmiri Pandit community after terrorism erupted in the Valley in 1989. Many cases were never properly documented.

The local administration and the political establishment of the time, functioning under the shadow of terrorism and the pro-Pakistan separatist ecosystem, either failed to register cases or did not pursue them seriously. Even many human rights groups and sections of civil society remained silent as persecuted Hindus were left with little choice but to flee the Valley in the early 1990s.

According to community estimates, more than seven lakh Kashmiri Hindus were forced to leave their homes and become refugees in their own country.

A report compiled by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in 2008, based on its own records, stated that militants had killed 209 Kashmiri Pandits from 1989 onwards, including 109 in 1990 alone. Kashmiri Pandit organisations, however, maintain that the actual number could be closer to 700. In the absence of complete official records, the figures remain disputed. Many victim families chose to flee to protect their women and children rather than approach a police force they believed had become compromised during those years.

The uncertainty is not confined to the number of murders. There are no definitive records of kidnappings, rapes, gang rapes, arson, loot, extortion, illegal occupation of properties, land encroachments and desecration of temples. The violence unleashed on Kashmiri Pandits was brutal. Equally disturbing has been the manner in which, during the pre-Article 370 abrogation years, influential sections of the political and intellectual ecosystem appeared more inclined to look away than confront what had happened.

On February 2, 1990, young businessman Satish Tickoo was shot in the legs outside his residence in the Karfalli locality of Habba Kadal in Srinagar. JKLF terrorist Bitta Karate allegedly led the group that attacked the unarmed Tickoo. He was beaten, kicked and left bleeding as slogans were raised around him. He bled to death. The members of the local Muslim neighbourhood, according to accounts of the incident, did not come to his rescue.

It is pertinent to recall that in a media interview, Bitta Karate had claimed to have killed at least 20 Kashmiri Pandits, perhaps even "30-40", in 1990 on the instructions of his handlers. He later retracted the statement, claiming the interview had been recorded under duress. Nothing moved after his much-televised 'confession'.

Equally striking is the fact that Karate was granted bail after spending 16 years in jail. The court reportedly observed that the prosecution had shown little interest in pursuing the case, reflecting the lack of seriousness with which such cases were handled for years. Such was the ecosystem which has been consistently trying to whitewash the violence perpetrated on the Hindu minority in the Valley.

The cases of brutality are many, but at least a few have finally begun to move.

The first case from the 1989-90 killings to be reopened by the Government of India was that of Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, who was assassinated in 1989 by JKLF terrorists led by Yasin Malik. Justice Ganjoo had earlier sentenced JKLF terrorist Maqbool Bhat, who was hanged for the 1966 murder of a police officer.

There are many other cases which await justice -- telecommunications engineer B.K. Ganjoo (pumped with bullets as he tried to hide in a drum); Girja Tickoo (her autopsy revealed that she was brutally gang-raped and tortured, and was alive when she was cut into two pieces with a carpenter's saw, right through the middle of her body); Radio Kashmir Director Lassa Kaul, political leader Tika Lal Taploo, poet Sarwanand Premi and his son, among many others. The bodies of the Premi father-son duo were discovered hanging, bearing horrific signs of torture, including cigarette burns, broken limbs, and gouged eyes.

The stories of brutality are endless. For over three decades, Kashmiri Pandit organisations have consistently demanded a dedicated judicial commission to comprehensively investigate the targeted killings and the mass exodus of the community from the Kashmir Valley. No government has accepted that demand.

The Supreme Court, too, repeatedly declined requests for a fresh probe. In July 2017, it dismissed a public interest litigation seeking an investigation into the killings of Kashmiri Pandits and the prosecution of accused separatists, observing that it would be extremely difficult to collect evidence and conduct a meaningful investigation more than 27 years after the events.

Those repeated disappointments -- in courts as well as governments, both in the erstwhile state and at the Centre -- steadily eroded whatever hope the community still held.

That is why the chargesheet in the Sarla Bhat case carries significance beyond a single prosecution. It has reopened a window that many believed had been permanently sealed. Whether it ultimately leads to convictions remains to be seen, but for thousands of families who have waited for decades, it signals that the search for justice has not ended.

Thirty-six years is enough for memories to fade. But for those who lost parents, children, siblings, homes, temples and an entire way of life, those memories remain painfully alive.

The pain has travelled from one generation to the next. Having lived for decades as refugees in their own country, often with few voices willing to speak for them, Kashmiri Hindus see the Sarla Bhat case as more than just another criminal prosecution.

It offers a small but significant glimmer of hope that justice, however delayed, may finally begin to find its way. And perhaps, one day, it may also bring them closer to returning to Kashmir -- their native land, believed to have emerged from the ancient Satisar Lake through the efforts of Sage Kashyapa.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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Washington: There is an ongoing controversy in Pakistani media about the role of the Pakistan-occupied Jammu-Kashmir (PoJK) diaspora in crimes in Europe. The so-called experts further denigrate PoJK residents by implying that their criminal behaviour is linked to ethnicity, language, and societal beliefs. Till date, Pakistani media has ignored or disguised Kashmiris' involvement in these crimes. So, what prompted their sudden adjustment in attitude against PoJK inhabitants?

Pakistan regards the people of the PoJK, including Gilgit Baltistan, as colonial subjects, denying them basic rights and freedoms. To maintain absolute hegemony, the rulers keep residents on handouts with limited development funds and legislative authority. This contrasts with the vast abundance of natural resources that PoJK provides to Pakistan, such as forests, precious stones, heavy metals, gold, copper, and uranium. Pakistan has built multiple dams to suit its energy needs, with PoJK providing the majority of the water Pakistan uses.

PoJK provides Pakistan with the only, free transit route to its most vital strategic partner, China. For decades, locals have let Pakistan use them as cheap strategic fodder against India and Afghanistan, as needed by the Pakistani military. Throughout this time, Pakistani military Generals have made billions of dollars by using the territory and people of PoJK against India.

However, as the economic and political situation in Indian Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh improves tremendously, PoJK citizens are growing increasingly frustrated.

PoJK residents believe that India has done significantly more for Jammu and Kashmir than the Muslim Pakistan for the occupied region under its control. This has spurred protests and calls for improved care in Pakistan. Locals are seeking constitutional and citizenship rights, as well as internal autonomy.

However, due to mismanagement and corruption, Pakistan has little room to address the needs of disgruntled people. After 78 years, Pakistan's national GDP remains lower than that of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Pakistan's per capita income has fallen since 2025, and its education and health budgets have been cut due to a shortage of funding.

The population of India's Ladakh has uninterrupted electricity, whereas in Pakistan-occupied Gilgit Baltistan, there is an average 20-hour outage each day. The Pakistani government has placed one of Asia's highest fuel taxes on inhabitants to meet their expenses. This has triggered widespread discontent against the government and military.

To deflect matters, the Pakistani army is implementing the same crowd management policies in PoJK that were used in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and Balochistan.

On the one hand, army relentlessly targets local demonstrators, killing dozens and kidnapping hundreds. On the other, it utilises the loyal media to incite its citizenry against the people of PoJK to legitimise bare brutality and unlawful hegemony.

When East Pakistanis came on streets for basic rights, Pakistani media began portraying them as savages, disparaging their ethnicity, physical appearance, culinary customs, and other aspects of their heritage. They aimed to show that Bengalis are ungrateful, uncivilised, and inferior barbarians who require military force and iron-fisted authority. They tried to prove that conversations and other peaceful forms of communication would be useless because locals were doing India's dirty work.

Today, the media tries to persuade Pakistani citizens that military action in PoJK is the fault of the locals and that there is no other way to control criminals, terrorists, and traitors.

However, people in PoJK have learned from East Pakistan, Pashtunistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan about how Islamabad employs racism to deny rights and prolong occupation. Therefore, PoJK locals reject the rulers and their tactics and demand immediate withdrawal because Pakistani occupiers are incapable of providing dignified care for them.

(Senge Sering is the founder of Washington-based Institute for Gilgit Baltistan Studies. Views expressed are personal)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, June 28: Located roughly 1,000 miles from the Indian mainland, Great Nicobar is one of the 500-plus islands that make up the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. The island is historically tied to two distinct indigenous groups: the Shompen and the Great Nicobarese.

The Shompen are an isolated community of roughly 200 to 400 individuals who avoid the outside world and maintain a traditional lifestyle as some of the world’s last remaining hunter-gatherers and farmers. The Great Nicobarese originally inhabited the island’s western coastline until the catastrophic 2004 tsunami either claimed their lives or forced them to relocate.

Multi-Layered Security in the Indo-Pacific

In this era of intensifying strategic competition with China, Great Nicobar is not just a remote island but will soon be a critical geopolitical asset for India upon completion of the project. Situated 40 nautical miles from the Strait of Malacca – the conduit for over 80% of China’s oil imports – this strategic vantage point empowers India to monitor, influence and secure this invaluable maritime chokepoint by enabling continuous surveillance over the eastern Indian Ocean’s sea lanes of communication (SLOCs), rapid asset deployment, logistical depth for sustained operations and strengthened regional deterrence. Any action concerning the Strait of Malacca will always be a last resort due to its importance to global trade and commerce. The capability and intent to disrupt this SLOC serves as a powerful deterrent to ensure strategic equilibrium.

With the world realising the value of multi-layered defences following the October 7th attack, war in the Middle East and Indian defences during Operation Sindoor, New Delhi is adopting a tiered strategy when it comes to its Indo-Pacific strategy. It is deepening geopolitical and military ties to strengthen regional partners the Philippines and Indonesia to develop a network of trust, partnerships and shared maritime interests. A strong case in point is the Brahmos export to Manila, highlighting the growing defence cooperation and interoperability. Jakarta and Hanoi have signed a deal for the missile system too. Multilateral naval cooperation like Exercise Malabar enhance coordination, readiness and interoperability with like-minded partners to promote a free, open, inclusive, secure and rules-based Indo-Pacific. India continues to expand its maritime surveillance through a ‘space-to-seabed’ approach – developing and utilising surface, sub-surface, seabed, air, space and cyber-space assets in a single, integrated system. Modernisation of the Navy and Air Force ensure credible force projection across the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

Approaches into the IOR

The Indian Navy has stated that its anti-submarine efforts are due to the growing Chinese sub-surface threat in the IOR, impacting Indian influence in its sphere of influence. In January 2016, the Indian Navy deployed its premier intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) asset – two Boeing P8Is – to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to obtain intelligence on People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) submarines in the region. the following year, 17 PLAN ships were spotted in the IOR, supported by submarines for ‘anti-piracy’ operations. 2024 was another year in which the IOR witnessed significant and frequent PLAN and supporting-vessel deployments.

Economically-viable commerce from Africa, Europe and beyond cannot flow through either the Lombok or Sunda Strait. The Sunda Strait is quite shallow, with an average depth of 50 metres while the Lombok Strait is deeper, making it easier to allow submarines through. Both straits have had submarine transits, with India’s first submarine to use the Sunda Strait being the INS Sindhukesari (S60) in February 2023.

The Malacca Strait is the fastest and most cost-effective transit route for goods from Africa and Europe going to East Asia. It is not a chokepoint unlike the Suez and Panama Canals or the Strait of Hormuz because a major blockage in the Malacca Strait will not cause as much of an impact as in the others. With the IOR having evolved from an ‘era of cooperation’ to an ‘era of [strategic] competition’, India is employing both sea control and sea denial in its naval strategy.

Sea Control and Sea Denial

In 2015, the Indian Navy articulated its strategy for conflict to include both sea control and sea denial. Strategies of sea control is when there is “… freedom of action to use an area for one’s own purposes for a period of time and, if required, to deny its use to an opponent”. On the other hand, sea denial aims to prevent another force from using the sea. While its focus is on defense, the strategy can utilise offensive measures if required.

Indian intent for sea control can be seen in its 15-year roadmap to develop a third indigenous aircraft carrier, albeit nuclear-powered; order for 114 Dassault Rafales, additional P8Is, MQ-9B SeaGuardian UAVs, Airbus C-295-based Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft (MMMA), Dornier DO-228s, Air-Ship Based High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (AS-HAPS), among other platforms. These measures can also be well-utilised for sea denial by establishing an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) grid, supported by geography, sensors and long-range targeting solutions like the Brahmos missile system.

To this end, Air Force Station (AFS) Carnicobar witnessed Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan inaugurate the upgraded runway at the AFS in January 2026, now capable of deploying Sukhoi Su-30 MKIs, Mirage-2000s, SEPECAT-Jaguars, Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules, Mil Mi-17 V5s and Boeing P8Is. The runways of existing airports in the islands will be expanded to 3,000 kilometres, two new airports will be constructed in Sri Vijayapuram and on Great Nicobar, and all airports will be dual-use, as stated by Lieutenant Governor Admiral DK Joshi. The Indian Government has dropped its plans to extend the runway of INS Baaz due to aviation safety, environmental and societal reasons. Instead, it will build a greenfield dual-use airport with a 3,300-kilometre runway on Great Nicobar Island near Galathea Bay, operated by the Indian Air Force.

The Strategic Synergy of Aircraft Carriers and Forward Bases

India’s naval doctrine envisions the need for three aircraft carriers – two operational and one in reserve – to effectively manage a simultaneous two-front contingency involving China and Pakistan across the northern sector and maritime domain. However, due to current capacity constraints, India operates only two. To compensate and project power effectively, these mobile Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) rely heavily on India’s natural geography as force-multipliers.

While aircraft carriers are flexible, mobile assets essential for sea control and strategic signalling far from shore, forward bases provide the fixed, sustaining support needed for long-term endurance. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands perfectly fulfil this role, extending India’s operational reach and enhancing the effectiveness of its Armed Forces.

India’s ‘Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier’

The development of Great Nicobar Island is not an act of aggression but a strategic necessity to secure India’s maritime future in the face of China’s expanding regional footprint. The island functions as a highly resilient, cost-effective ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier.’ Unlike expensive and vulnerable man-made ships, this permanent land-based infrastructure cannot be easily neutralised or sunk, thereby raising India’s self-reliance and reducing its dependence on external military assets.

By leveraging this geographic advantage, India achieves several distinct operational and geopolitical objectives:

1. Unmatched Surveillance and Sea Control: Positioned perfectly in the Eastern Indian Ocean, the island allows India to closely monitor adversarial movements across critical Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) and physically dominate vital Indo-Pacific chokepoints.

2. Logistical Depth and Rapid Response: The island serves as a permanent launchpad for the rapid deployment of aerial and maritime assets. It provides the necessary logistical depth to sustain long-duration operations without requiring resupply from the mainland.

3. Credible Deterrence and Regional Stability: Acting as a stabilising military platform, the island anchors the balance of power in the region. It ensures continuous deterrence against adversaries, safeguards India’s maritime interests and enables deeper cooperation with like-minded nations to guarantee a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific.

Conclusion

The Great Nicobar Project represents a cornerstone of India’s evolving, multi-layered Indo-Pacific defense strategy. By developing Great Nicobar Island in this manner, New Delhi is accounting for its security, developmental, economic, societal and environmental needs. It allows for unmatched logistical depth, rapid asset deployment capabilities and continuous ‘space-to-seabed’ surveillance over vital SLOCs. Alongside deepening defence ties with regional partners like the Philippines and Indonesia, this strategic vantage point acts as a powerful deterrent to safeguard maritime equilibrium. Ultimately, Great Nicobar Island is an indispensable bridge to a safe, secure and sovereign India, seamlessly connecting the nation’s destiny to the broader oceans.

(The writer is a senior research associate at NatStrat)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, June 27 (SocialNews.XYZ) Seven opinion pieces in two years. Three focused on Gaza and Iran. Sonia Gandhi's repeated focus on West Asia has triggered a fresh political debate over her priorities and the intent behind her criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government.

In her latest op-ed, the Congress leader accuses the Centre of maintaining "silence" on Gaza and claims India is drifting away from its traditional foreign policy.

However, government sources reject the charge, pointing to India's repeated calls for dialogue, humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, support for a two-state solution, and diplomatic engagement acknowledged even by Iran.

The contrast has prompted government sources and political observers to raise a broader question: Is Sonia Gandhi highlighting a genuine foreign policy concern, or is her repeated focus on Gaza and Iran aimed at sending a political message to a key domestic constituency?

Sonia Gandhi's charge that India has maintained "silence" and displayed an "abdication" of its moral and diplomatic responsibilities does not square with New Delhi's consistent diplomatic engagement in West Asia.

Officials point out that India has repeatedly reiterated its support for a two-state solution, humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people, and a peaceful resolution to the Gaza conflict while simultaneously maintaining strong strategic ties with Israel.

Government sources further note that India's diplomatic outreach has been acknowledged internationally. They recall how during heightened tensions in the region earlier this year, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a conversation.

The Iranian leader had described India as a “trusted friend”. He also appreciated New Delhi's consistent advocacy for dialogue, diplomacy, and de-escalation.

Moreover, Iranian officials and the Iranian Embassy in India also publicly appreciated India's humanitarian assistance. They also lauded India’s “balanced diplomatic approach”.

With this in view, BJP leaders argue that Sonia Gandhi ignores India's actual diplomatic record. India has neither abandoned Palestine nor uncritically aligned itself with Israel, they contend.

What India has done is it has instead attempted to maintain a calibrated position that safeguards humanitarian concerns, regional stability, energy security, and India's national interests, say analysts.

Government sources also point to what they describe as a noticeable pattern in Sonia Gandhi's writings over the past two years. She has authored seven opinion pieces over the past two years, with three focusing on Gaza or Iran, they remark.

This, they argue, raises legitimate political questions about why these issues receive repeated attention while several humanitarian crises closer to India's immediate strategic concerns receive comparatively little attention.

Repeated criticism by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi over Gaza is intended to resonate with sections of Muslim voters ahead of future elections rather than contribute to a substantive debate on foreign policy, political analysts argue.

They wonder whether the Congress leadership is attempting to frame India's foreign policy through a domestic political lens.

Political observers ask whether Gandhi has been equally vocal on issues such as the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, the exodus of Afghan Sikhs following the Taliban's return to power, or the displacement of Kashmiri Hindus.

The “selective” emphasis reflects political priorities rather than a comprehensive human rights perspective, BJP leaders argue.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, June 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) The yoga mats have been rolled up and the photographs uploaded; however, after watching the annual event, one cannot help but question whether politicians truly require formal yoga training, as many appear to have been engaging in more advanced asanas for years.

In fact, politics increasingly resembles one giant yoga camp where every party has developed its own signature posture.

The ruling establishment, for example, has mastered what may be called the Victory Asana.

This is an advanced pose that requires practitioners to maintain the confidence of a champion athlete regardless of circumstances. Electoral victories have helped build a strong national presence, and people are generally happy. The true test of the posture is maintaining the same confidence after practising for more than a decade, which this dispensation is doing so repeatedly, at the Centre and in states.

The latest being West Bengal, where the most difficult battle was won with what can only be described as Precision Yoga -- a combination of several difficult asanas performed in perfect sequence.

The ruling party is usually careful about how it approaches these asanas. But occasional glitches do appear, as seen in the Karnataka MLC polls, where some members cross-voted.

The Opposition, meanwhile, specialises in a very different discipline: the Eternal Protest Pose.

The rules are simple. If the government moves left, oppose it, and if it moves right, oppose it. If it remains still, again oppose by labelling it as an inability to move. The objective is consistency through disagreement, and a few practitioners have adopted this posture with greater dedication than Rahul Gandhi.

He has become the chief practitioner of what may be the most demanding posture in contemporary politics: the Eternal Discontent Asana.

For years, he has practised dissatisfaction regardless of the political weather. If the government announces progress, the progress is questioned. If it backtracks, the reversal is criticised, and even if it stands still, stagnation becomes the subject of criticism.

The discipline is sustained across election cycles with remarkable consistency. In this form of yoga, contentment is not the goal -- continuity of critique is. The practitioner must also convince the country that he is the natural alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reassure Congress workers that victory is achievable, and assure alliance partners that he can be the leader, and Gandhi has been doing all this.

If Rahul Gandhi is committed to Eternal Discontent Asana, others in the Opposition are attempting similar postures -- with one key difference: they want national hand-holding while maintaining regional supremacy. Maintaining that balance, under such conditions, deserves professional recognition.

Akhilesh Yadav has perfected what may be called the Coalition Contortion Asana; rather, it is a kind of Alliance Stretch. Ideological muscles are extended far beyond their natural limits without quite tearing. Yesterday’s rival becomes today’s ally, and today’s ally becomes tomorrow’s negotiation. Yoga teaches flexibility, and coalition politics has worked on it.

Arvind Kejriwal once practised what might be called the Rapid Motion Asana. For years, he seemed to be everywhere at once -- campaigning, governing, protesting, debating, accusing, and defending. More recently, after electoral losses, he appears to have entered a more demanding discipline: Strategic Meditation. The challenge now is to remain politically relevant while speaking less than before. Anyone who has tried meditation knows how difficult it can be.

Mamata Banerjee, meanwhile, has become the unexpected face of the Defiant Reality Asana. The posture is a careful balance between acceptance and resistance -- held even when the ground beneath begins to shift.

For years, she appeared politically indestructible. Election after election, challenge after challenge, she convinced supporters that Bengal politics revolved around her. Then came 2026, and her government fell. The party suffered its biggest setback, and even she lost her seat.

Politics, much like yoga, has a habit of testing those who become too comfortable in a position. The challenge before her now is not defeating opponents, but rebuilding confidence among supporters who had forgotten what defeat looked like.

Her INDIA bloc colleague Uddhav Thackeray has become the undisputed master of the Shrinking Circle Asana. This is a posture in which practitioners continue to claim ownership of a tradition even as organisations, representatives, symbols and even flags gradually move elsewhere.

His political journey in recent years resembles a long workshop on regaining balance after repeated falls. His government collapsed, and the Shiv Sena split. The party symbol became a subject of legal and political dispute. And now even his parliamentary colleagues have chosen different paths. He, however, seems to be trapped in the Illusion Yoga posture, insisting he represents the authentic legacy.

Collectively, however, the Opposition’s greatest contribution to political yoga remains the INDIA bloc Pranayama. The exercise begins with a deep inhalation of unity, and the participants then hold their breath through seat-sharing negotiations. A long exhalation follows when disagreements emerge. The cycle repeats before every major election.

The ruling side has developed its own breathing exercise: inhale electoral victories, exhale confidence -- often in generous quantities. Occasionally, so much confidence is released that discussions begin about elections still years away.

The most remarkable thing about Indian politics, perhaps, is that everyone believes they are practising different philosophies while performing remarkably similar movements.

But in all this, voters quietly go about their lives. Every election season, they remind everyone who the real yoga masters are. They alone have the ability to make powerful leaders lose their balance through the Voter Asana.

It is only the voter who knows how to pull the rug from under the mat and topple a leader.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, June 20 (SocialNews.XYZ) The real story of NEET re-examination is not the leak itself but the scale of the response it triggered. Once the integrity of 3 May examination was compromised, the challenge before the state was far larger than conducting another test.

It had to restore confidence among millions of students and parents, reassure the public that merit would prevail, and demonstrate that a national examination could still command trust. In just a few weeks, an extensive security and administrative apparatus was assembled to meet that challenge.

The measures put in place for the June 21 re-examination offer a revealing glimpse into the capacities of the state when confronted with a crisis that strikes at the heart of public faith in institutions.

The first step was a clear diagnosis. A leak is rarely a failure of intent. It is a failure of the chain, the long route a question paper travels from the printing press to the candidate's desk. Somewhere along that route the security broke. So, the fix had to secure every link, from the moment of printing to the moment the seal is opened in the hall. The arrangements made for June 21 follow that logic closely.

Consider the transport of the paper itself. The question papers are being moved with the help of the Indian Air Force, which compresses the ground transit window and shrinks the opportunity for interception. The Ministry of Home Affairs has drawn in the central armed police forces, with the CRPF and the CISF providing layered security around the movement of the papers. The printing hubs, the most sensitive nodes of all, are being handled with corresponding care. This is the part of the system that failed last time, and it is the part that has been hardened most.

At the centre, the focus shifts from the paper to the person. Biometric verification and facial recognition are being used to confirm that the candidate in the seat is the candidate on the roll. AI-enabled CCTV adds a layer of monitoring that does not tire or look away. Multiple rounds of frisking guard against devices that have, in past scandals, turned a fair test into a marketplace. None of this is glamorous. All of it is necessary, because the integrity of an examination lives or dies in these small procedural details.

Around the test sits the quieter arrangements that rarely make news. Railways are running special trains to carry candidates to their centres on time. Free bus services have been organised in several places. Where large gatherings near centres could create risk, local authorities have imposed prohibitory orders to keep the immediate environment calm. These measures treat the aspirant not as an afterthought but as the point of the entire exercise.

Holding all of this together is coordination at the top. The Cabinet Secretary has chaired a series of review meetings, first with the secretaries of central ministries, then with the chief secretaries of the states and then with the testing agency itself. The purpose of these meetings is not ceremony. It is to make a federal system pull in one direction, so that the centre, the states and the agency are working to a single plan. This is the unglamorous core of state capacity, the ability to align many hands behind one task under a tight deadline.

What does the sum of these efforts signify. At one level it is simply good administration under pressure. At another, it is a deliberate act of trust repair. The damage from a leak is not only practical. It is psychological. It tells students that the system cannot be relied upon. Visible, serious security is the state's answer to that doubt. Each layer is also a signal, meant to tell a wary candidate that this time the paper is safe and the test is real. The security is for the integrity of the exam, but it is also for the confidence of the examinee.

A fair assessment must note the cost. Heavy security carries its own burden, and some have warned that an elaborate apparatus can add to the pressure on already anxious students. The point is well taken. The true measure of success on June 21 will not be the number of forces deployed. It will be a calm and clean examination that ends without incident, where the safeguards are felt as reassurance rather than as menace. A fortress that frightens the people it protects has missed its purpose. The art lies in security that steadies nerves instead of fraying them.

Seen as a whole, the exercise is larger than a single test. The state is, in effect, building a template for how to secure high-stakes public examination at scale. The lessons of this leak, once the dust settles, can be written into standing procedure, so that the next examination does not have to be rescued in a crisis but is protected by design. That is the real prize. Not a single clean re-exam, but a system that learns to hold the chain of trust intact on its own.

The forces will stand down once the papers are collected and the halls are cleared. The capability assembled to protect this one examination should not. If the machinery built in haste this June becomes the routine of every exam hereafter, then a painful episode will have left something durable behind. The measure of a serious state is whether it turns its crises into capacity. On this examination, it has set out to do exactly that.

Source: IANS

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Washington: After months of stalled talks, Pakistan's occupying authority dismissed the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on June 5, declaring it as an Indian agent and terrorist. Many locals now believe that the discussions were a ruse to buy time, causing schisms among leaders and immobilising the movement.

JAAC calls for structural reforms to ensure genuine autonomy. It seeks the abolition of allowances, perks, and privileges for Pakistani officers stationed in Pakistan-occupied territory. It demands an independent accountability body to combat corruption. JAAC wants the authorities to eliminate excessive tariffs and taxes, especially as PoK is not part of Pakistan. JAAC intends to put an end to the theft of native lands and natural resources. Uncontrolled deforestation and the construction of mega dams are key causes of water scarcity and environmental issues.

Pakistan regards the people of PoK as nothing more than a useful tool against India, and intends to continue treating them as colonial subjects. Granting communities' requests for autonomy also decreases Pakistan's chances of stealing their land and resources.

The main demands include the abolition of 12 seats in the assembly, which are occupied by Pakistanis. These people claim to have descended from refugees from Kashmir Valley and Jammu. Many of them hold high-level positions in government and the judiciary. One such individual is the present chief justice of the regional "Supreme Court".

The present high-ranking police officers in Mirpur and Kotli claim to be descendants of Kashmiri refugees. Many of them also run the local branch of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. The JAAC accuses these individuals of assisting Pakistani secret service officials in forming and dissolving governments in PoK. To raise awareness about these issues, the JAAC staged a successful shutter down and wheel jam strike in Muzaffarabad, the so called capital of PoK, on June 9.

Instead of heeding the fair demands, Pakistan dispatched 26,000 police and military forces to subdue the protesters. The media reports that the local puppet administration is helpless because the Pakistani military has taken matters into its own hands to carry out the hegemonic commands.

According to accounts, 14 people were killed as a result of attacks on demonstrators. Over 1000 individuals including women and children were injured and 300 still missing, including some critically injured who were taken from hospitals to unknown location for torture.

In numerous spots, the military is utilising snipers to shoot and murder protestors. To encourage the murder of JAAC leaders, the army has placed millions of rupee bounty on their heads. The army has banned the media and disabled phone and internet connections. Some people are using various other means to broadcast videos of shootings and violence to the outside world. The military is torturing and arresting journalists for recording the incidents. They are infiltrating mosques, pushing clergy to condemn JAAC and discourage their followers from joining the strike.

In hospitals, they intimidate physicians and staff while obstructing care for injured protesters. The army is holding dozens of corpses hostage and refuses to release them to their family. Despite this, millions of people are moving towards the capital, Muzaffarabad. The entire PoK appears to be backing JAAC, having respected the June 9 shutter down and wheel jam strike.

During the protests, Pakistani law enforcement officers forced their way into homes and shops, looting jewelry, money, and causing significant damage. Women were assaulted and raped in numerous cities and towns. As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and these heinous activities bring to mind the events of 1947, when Pakistanis entered the Kashmir valley to plunder homes and rape women.

The army is concerned that protests would disrupt the assembly election, which is scheduled for July 27. On June 7, Pakistan staged an assembly election in occupied Gilgit Baltistan, another region of the PoK, which the military rigged in favour of the ruling party. The people of PoK are considering boycotting Pakistani parties. Nationalists and separatists in PoK do not contest because they are required to submit an affidavit of loyalty to Pakistan.

Asim Munir, President Trump's "favourite General", is carrying out a bloodbath in PoK. Every time US and Chinese officials wrap their arms around Pakistani Generals, it opens up financial and strategic window to inflict agony and suffering on minorities in Balochistan, Pashtunistan, and PoK.

A country like Pakistan, which does not ensure peace for its own inhabitants, cannot be trusted to assist in creating peace between Iran and the United States. How could President Trump trust Asim Munir, who is despised by his own people, to bring love to the neighbourhood? Americans should understand that Pakistan's financial and geopolitical interests are prolonging the standoff rather than ending it.

Munir also intended to perpetrate acts of terrorism in India. However, he sees that opportunity disappearing owing to the upheaval in PoK. It's probable that he's using brute force against the Kashmiris as a punishment for preventing him from seizing this opportunity.

People in PoK are also disappointed with the Kashmiris on the Indian side, for failing to turn out in significant numbers to oppose Pakistani occupiers' brutal acts. They feel that they can support Palestine and Iran, but not their own compatriots under Pakistani tyranny.

Many people in PoK want India to bring a complaint against Pakistan in the International Court of Justice. They want the UN to call a special session to discuss the tragedy in PoK. The UN should urge Pakistan to keep its promise made in 1948 to withdraw completely from PoK, including Gilgit Baltistan.

(Senge Sering is the founder of Washington-based Institute for Gilgit Baltistan Studies. Views expressed are personal)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, June 7 (SocialNews.XYZ) When historian Ramachandra Guha remarked that he did not believe Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was equipped to handle major national challenges such as an energy crisis or a war, he gave voice to a question that has lingered in Indian politics for years.

The significance of the observation lay less in the remark itself and more in who made it. Guha is hardly known for being sympathetic to Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the BJP. His criticism of the government has been consistent and often unsparing. Therefore, when someone from outside the BJP's political ecosystem raises doubts about the Opposition's leadership credentials, the comment inevitably carries greater weight.

The debate is about Rahul Gandhi and the larger condition of India's Opposition and its ability to present itself as a credible alternative government.

Over the past decade, the Modi government has faced a succession of challenges, from the Covid-19 pandemic and border tensions to economic disruptions and global geopolitical shocks. Supporters of the government argue that despite criticism and setbacks, it has managed to retain public confidence. Critics may disagree with many of its decisions, but there is little doubt that PM Modi continues to enjoy a level of political trust that no other contemporary leader can match.

That reality poses a difficult question for the Opposition. If large sections of the electorate continue to back the ruling leadership despite economic pressures and periodic crises, where exactly is the Opposition falling short?

Many voters may be dissatisfied with specific policies, rising prices, or local governance issues, but they do not necessarily see a convincing national alternative waiting in the wings. Elections are not decided merely by dissatisfaction with incumbents; they are also determined by confidence in those seeking to replace them.

This is where the Rahul-led Opposition appears to struggle. Too often, its politics seems driven by opposition for its own sake rather than by a clearly articulated vision of governance. Personal attacks on PM Modi frequently generate headlines, but headlines alone do not build public confidence. Voters eventually look beyond slogans and ask a simpler question: if not the present government, then who, and with what plan?

Recent political developments illustrate this challenge. Across different states, voters have displayed a remarkable willingness to make independent choices based on local realities rather than broad national narratives. State-specific factors, anti-incumbency sentiments, and regional dynamics often shape electoral outcomes. Despite these fluctuations, the Opposition has found it difficult to translate episodic discontent into a sustained national political movement.

The problem is not a shortage of issues. Inflation, unemployment, agrarian distress, and social tensions provide ample political ammunition. The challenge is converting criticism into credibility.

That is why many of the movements and campaigns that were projected as major turning points against the BJP have ultimately failed to produce the political consequences their supporters anticipated. The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, the agitation over farm laws, the wrestlers' protest and several social media-driven campaigns generated enormous attention and, in some cases, forced the government to respond. But they did not fundamentally alter the BJP's electoral dominance.

There is criticism of the government, but there is no corresponding confidence in the Opposition. The space for a strong national challenger exists, but no political force has been able to occupy it convincingly.

The emergence of groups seeking to fill this vacuum is therefore not surprising. Some gain visibility on social media; others capture public attention for a brief period, and a few even generate excitement among anti-establishment voters. Indian politics has repeatedly demonstrated that public attention and electoral success are not the same thing.

Even the Aam Aadmi Party, once seen as the most serious challenger to the traditional political order, has found the transition from movement politics to long-term national expansion far more difficult than expected. The lesson is simple: discontent alone cannot sustain a political alternative. Leadership, organisation, credibility, and a coherent vision matter just as much.

Seen in that context, Guha's remarks acquire significance. They revive an uncomfortable question for the Congress leadership: has it done enough to convince voters that it is prepared to govern during moments of national difficulty?

The issue is not whether Rahul Gandhi has the right to criticise the Prime Minister. In a democracy, criticism of those in power is both legitimate and necessary. The real issue is whether that criticism is accompanied by an alternative vision. Oppositions do not earn public trust merely by highlighting the government's failures; they earn it by demonstrating their own readiness to govern.

The irony is that the constitutional book that Rahul Gandhi frequently flashes places enormous importance on the role of the Opposition. Dr B.R. Ambedkar regarded a vigilant Opposition as essential for democratic accountability. Similarly, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee believed that criticism was most effective when it was rooted in policy, principle, and national interest rather than personal hostility. But today, is the Rahul Gandhi-led Opposition doing so?

The real challenge before the Rahul Gandhi-led Opposition, therefore, is not finding a sharper slogan against PM Modi or a more effective political attack. It is building the kind of responsible, persuasive, and credible Opposition that can convince voters it is ready for power. Until that happens, observations such as Guha's will continue to resonate because many voters see them as reflecting a political reality.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, May 31 (SocialNews.XYZ) When Union Home Minister Amit Shah set out to review and secure India's international borders, it may have appeared to be a routine exercise. After all, border security falls squarely within the Home Ministry's responsibilities. But there is something different about this exercise.

In nearly eight decades of Independence, India has rarely witnessed a government pursue border security with such intensity and political focus. Previous governments spoke about strengthening national security. The Modi government is attempting something far more expansive. It wants to identify infiltration networks, check illegal encroachments, plug loopholes in the system and address what it sees as the long-term consequences of unchecked illegal migration across India's borders.

That is why this mission deserves attention.

As the Modi government enters its thirteenth year in office, it is taking decisions that affect not only external security but also internal stability. For decades, infiltration from across India's borders, particularly from Bangladesh and Pakistan, remained a subject of political debate but rarely received sustained administrative attention.

Today, the issue can no longer be ignored. The situation has reached a point where the government believes that illegal infiltrators are not only compromising national security but also placing pressure on public resources. They are taking away employment opportunities from local youth and, most worryingly, contributing to a demographic shift.

What makes the present debate unusual is the emphasis on demography. Never before has a government at the Centre spoken so openly about demographic change as a matter of national concern. For decades, such discussions remained confined to academic studies, census reports and occasional political speeches. Today, they are part of mainstream political discourse. It is perhaps for the first time in independent India's history that attempts to alter demographic balances are being discussed and treated as a matter of national concern.

Census data shows that Hindus constituted about 84 per cent of India's population in 1951, while Muslims accounted for 9.8 per cent. By 2011, the Hindu share had declined to around 79.8 per cent, while the Muslim share had risen to 14.2 per cent.

The debate over demography cannot be separated from the legacy of Partition. The creation of Pakistan was justified on the basis of religion, but millions of Muslims chose to remain in India and became equal citizens of the new Republic.

Over the decades, concerns have periodically surfaced over demographic changes in certain regions, particularly along India's eastern border. These changes cannot be viewed in isolation from illegal immigration from neighbouring countries. The Muslim population growth rate remains higher than that of Hindus and several other communities. This stands in sharp contrast to Pakistan and Bangladesh, where the share of religious minorities has steadily declined over the decades.

Different political groups draw different conclusions from these figures. But they have undoubtedly become a major reference point in discussions on demography and migration.

Addressing the Narendra Mohan Memorial Lecture in October 2025 on the theme of 'Infiltration, Demographic Change and Democracy', Amit Shah said that demographic shifts in several border regions were linked not only to fertility rates but also to decades of illegal infiltration from neighbouring countries.

West Bengal has emerged as the most prominent example in this debate. Recent reports and investigations relating to undocumented Bangladeshi migrants, forged identity documents and alleged infiltration networks have intensified political scrutiny.

BJP leaders have accused the Trinamool Congress of facilitating such networks for electoral gain. They argue that resistance to complete border fencing under the Mamata Banerjee government must be viewed in this context. According to this argument, gaps in enforcement created conditions in which infiltration networks could flourish and eventually become part of a larger vote-bank ecosystem.

Questions are now being asked that were rarely asked with such urgency before. How did illegal entrants obtain documentation? Who enabled them? How widespread are these networks? And why were corrective measures delayed for so long?

Similar concerns have been raised in Assam and other parts of the Northeast. Amit Shah has previously pointed to Census trends in Assam and argued that demographic changes in several districts cannot be understood without taking infiltration into account.

He has noted that the decadal growth rate of the Muslim population in Assam, according to the 2011 Census, stood at 29.6 per cent and argued that such growth could not be explained without considering illegal immigration. He has made similar observations about districts in West Bengal and about demographic changes affecting tribal populations in parts of Jharkhand.

These developments have revived long-standing concerns that were often dismissed or treated as secondary in public discourse. For decades, infiltration was treated primarily as a law-and-order issue. The Modi government is treating it as a demographic, political and national security issue as well.

That shift explains the Centre's decision to constitute a High-Level Committee to study demographic changes arising from illegal immigration and other abnormal factors. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement of a Demography Mission in 2025 reflected the government's intention to place the issue at the heart of policymaking.

As the Modi government enters its thirteenth year in office with a historic win in West Bengal, the political ground is shifting beneath the feet of parties that relied on identity-based vote-bank calculations.

For the BJP, border security is no longer merely an administrative responsibility. It has become part of a larger political project. The slogan of "detect, delete and deport" has moved from campaign rhetoric to government policy.

Whether this approach delivers the results remains to be seen. But it is increasingly finding resonance among a large section of the population who believe that infiltration, demography and national security can no longer be discussed separately.

For decades, the issue of infiltration surfaced periodically in political debates and then faded from public attention. Today, it occupies the centre of national discourse. Whether the Modi government's approach ultimately succeeds or faces resistance, one thing is clear: border security is no longer being discussed only in terms of fences and checkpoints. It is now tied to questions of identity, representation, resources and the future character of regions along India's frontiers. After years of silence, the country is having a conversation it avoided for far too long.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, May 28 (SocialNews.XYZ) In the past few weeks, several Opposition parties have once again pushed for the revival of the INDIA bloc or the formation of a similar anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) platform amid the ruling party's expanding political footprint across the country, including in regions where it earlier struggled to open its account.

After Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's call for a broader anti-BJP platform, her political rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), urged the INDIA bloc to reunite. This was followed by Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav backing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s statement that the Union government would collapse within a year.

Almost every electoral success or political consolidation by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) appears to revive Opposition hopes of unity, even though many constituent parties continue to prefer contesting separately on the ground.

In Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) contested the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Congress. However, the alliance failed to win any of the seven Parliamentary seats in the national capital.

In the subsequent Assembly elections, AAP chose to contest independently and eventually lost the electoral battle.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee had consistently maintained distance from a broader Opposition alliance in practical political terms, but recent electoral setbacks appear to have renewed her interest in Opposition consolidation.

The INDIA bloc emerged out of political necessity when Opposition parties came together to counter PM Modi, driven by concerns over what they described as the Centre’s tightening grip over democratic institutions and the rise of assertive Hindu nationalism.

Despite deep internal contradictions, the alliance initially celebrated slowing the BJP’s momentum in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where the ruling party remained below the majority mark on its own with 240 seats.

However, any momentum towards deeper unity weakened soon after the results.

Parties began clashing over seat-sharing arrangements and regional influence. Several regional leaders accused the Congress of attempting to expand its footprint in states where regional parties considered themselves dominant political forces.

With Congress candidates contesting in constituencies where INDIA bloc allies expected accommodation, the grand old party was accused by some partners of undermining alliance discipline.

Amid episodes of cross-voting and internal distrust, Congress also faced criticism from allies who felt its leadership had failed to consolidate support among OBCs, EBCs and Dalits, while allegedly prioritising its own electoral interests.

Leaders such as Mamata Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav were also reported to be uncomfortable projecting Rahul Gandhi as the face of the Opposition alliance, instead favouring a “collective leadership” structure.

In states such as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, Opposition parties often fought fragmented campaigns despite calls for broader unity.

In West Bengal and Kerala, several alliance partners remain long-standing political rivals, making sustained cooperation difficult.

Recent Assembly election results have further tested the bloc’s cohesion. Electoral setbacks suffered by key regional players weakened some of the alliance’s strongest pillars, while simultaneously increasing concerns among allies about Congress becoming more dominant within the grouping.

Competitive positioning among alliance partners was also visible during seat-sharing negotiations ahead of last year’s Bihar elections.

Political observers say the challenge facing the INDIA bloc is not merely tactical but also structural and emotional, since several regional parties were historically built in opposition to the Congress itself.

Many allies continue to accuse the Congress of treating them as junior partners rather than political equals. Seat-sharing negotiations are frequently viewed by regional parties as being driven disproportionately by Congress calculations.

Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra generated political visibility and support in sections of the Opposition ecosystem, but scepticism over leadership and electoral viability persists among several regional players.

The INDIA bloc thus continues to remain a broad but fragile coalition of more than two dozen parties united primarily by opposition to the PM Modi-led BJP, while remaining divided by leadership ambitions, regional compulsions and ideological contradictions.

Each state presents distinct electoral equations, making cohesive Opposition unity at the ground level difficult to sustain.

Although Akhilesh Yadav recently endorsed Rahul Gandhi’s remarks about the Union government and indicated that the INDIA bloc could jointly contest the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, political observers believe such statements currently remain more aspirational than organisationally concrete.

The alliance has not projected a consistently united political front since the declaration of the 2024 Lok Sabha election results.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, May 22: The headlines last week, read like dispatches from a war room. Oil tankers rerouting around the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude climbing by the hour. Fertiliser and diesel prices twitching in sympathy across continents. The war in Europe digging in for another summer with no armistice in sight. Into the middle of this frightened, churning world walked an Indian Prime Minister, boarding a flight to Abu Dhabi with the calm of a man who knew exactly what he had gone to fetch.

Six days later, after Abu Dhabi, The Hague, Gothenburg, Oslo and Rome, PM Modi flew home. He brought back no souvenirs. He brought back three shields, raised around a billion and a half people. Energy. Economy. Defence. The three things no nation can improvise once the world is already ablaze.

The storm, and the strategy

Understand first what kind of crisis this is. Not a single shock but a convergence of them. A war in West Asia threatening the arteries of global oil. A war in Europe that has scrambled the continent's energy and its grain, sending frightened capital racing back to whatever it imagines safe. In such a moment lesser governments freeze, issue statements and wait for the weather to change. PM Modi did the opposite. He read the map of India's vulnerabilities, picked five countries that each held a piece of the answer, and went to collect.

The First Shield: Energy

Roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and a large share of India's crude comes from precisely that neighbourhood. When PM Modi recently urged citizens to go easy on petrol and to think twice before buying gold, the Prime Minister was not preaching austerity he was getting the nation a little time while he went out to secure its fuel supplies.

Abu Dhabi as the first stop was no accident. The Emirates, even while absorbing attacks on their own soil, committed 5 billion dollars in fresh investment to India and reaffirmed to keep our refineries humming. Then in Oslo, where no Indian PM had set foot in more than four decades, PM Modi went looking not for yesterday's oil but for tomorrow's fuel. Norway is among Europe's largest gas suppliers and a serious force in green hydrogen and offshore wind. The two nations sealed a Green Strategic Partnership, and the wider India Nordic summit produced a Green Tech and Strategic Partnership across all Nordic states. The message is simple. India will neither be held hostage by a single strait nor left behind in the energy transition.

The Second Shield: Economy

If energy keeps the lights on, the economy decides whether a country grows in the dark or shrinks in it. In The Hague, before PM Modi, Tata Electronics signed with ASML, the one Dutch firm on earth holding a monopoly on the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines without which no advanced chip can be made. This move provides Rs 91,000 crore semiconductor Fab at Dholera and quietly admits India into the most exclusive industrial club in the world.

Sweden holds some of Europe's richest deposits of critical minerals, the raw material of tomorrow's batteries and chips, and a new corridor will weave 6G, artificial intelligence and quantum computing into the partnership. Rome supplied the grand connective tissue. India and Italy elevated their ties to a Special Strategic Partnership and set a trade target of Euro 20 billion by 2029, while pushing forward the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, a route that will one day carry Indian goods to Europe in days rather than weeks, sidestepping the very chokepoints now under threat.

The Third Shield: Defence

A nation that cannot defend itself is finished. This third shield was the quietest of the three, and the most far-reaching. In Abu Dhabi, India and the UAE advanced a framework defence cooperation agreement of a breadth that would have seemed fanciful a decade ago. In Sweden, the defence major 'Saab' is now building its first military equipment plant anywhere outside its home country, at Jhajjar, India's first 100 per cent foreign funded defence manufacturing project. The Netherlands committed to a defence industrial roadmap linking manufacturers and research centres on both sides. The thread is unmistakable. India no longer wishes to remain the world's largest importer of arms. It means to make them at home, with the finest partners, on its own soil. Aatmanirbharta has stopped being a slogan. It has become a supply chain.

And the world rose to honour

There was a quieter dimension too. In Sweden, PM Modi was conferred the Royal Order of the Polar Star, that nation's highest honour. In Oslo, King Harald V invested him with the Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. And in a fitting coda, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation handed him the Agricola Medal, for a food security net feeding some 800 million Indians and supporting over 110 million farmers. PM Modi accepted each in the name of the people of India. A generation ago this country went out into the world asking to be understood. Today the oldest monarchies of Europe rise to honour her. That shift, even more than any joint statement, is the truest measure of New India's strength.

The Opposition's hypocrisy

Congress-led Opposition sees none of this. Not the chip. Not the Saab line at Jhajjar. Not a Norwegian king's Grand Cross. It sees only an occasion to carp and rant. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. In November 1948, with Independence barely 15 months old, Bapu's assassination nine months past and Partition's refugees still sleeping on railway platforms, the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru took a full month to tour Europe. He returned and wrote, that what wearied him at home was the “pettiness and narrow mindedness” of his own countrymen. Nehru went to Europe for full month and came home complaining about Indians. PM Modi goes to the world for Indians and comes home with what India needs which is called statecraft.

The thread that binds them

Step away from the itinerary and the design stands clear. Energy from the Gulf and the Arctic. Economic muscle from chips, minerals and trade corridors. Defence built at home alongside the world's best. Three shields, raised in six days, against a storm that has paralysed several nations. The leaders of five capitals did not host PM Modi out of mere protocol. They hosted him because, in a world running scared, India has become the rare safe harbour where the prudent still place their longest bets. That standing was not gifted to us. It was earned, capital by capital.

A closing thought

The Colosseum has watched many empires but on Tuesday evening it watched something exemplary. Indian PM Modi who understands that in an age of fire, the wise nation does not shout. It builds. PM Modi spent six days raising three shields for a billion and a half people. The shields will certainly outlast the storm.

{The author is a Senior Advocate Practising in Supreme Court of India}

Source: IANS

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