Randeep Wadehra's Blog

The Government That Rarely Retreats, Until It Has To

2026-11-10T19:24:37.062+05:30

There is a familiar image of the Narendra Modi government: decisive, muscular and unafraid to take difficult decisions. It is an image carefully cultivated since 2014. India, the argument goes, had suffered for decades from coalition compulsions, hesitant prime ministers and governments that consulted everybody until they succeeded in doing nothing. The Modi era promised the opposite: a government that would decide first and explain later, preferably in a televised address.

There is, of course, something to be said for decisiveness. A government elected with a mandate cannot govern by perpetual seminar. But the record of the past twelve years raises an uncomfortable question: what happens when decisiveness becomes a substitute for consultation?

The answer, increasingly, has been a curious cycle. Announce a transformative reform. Present opposition as obstructionism. Assure the nation that the government knows what it is doing. Discover that farmers, allies, industry, parliamentary committees, courts or voters have inconvenient opinions. Then retreat, modify, postpone or quietly allow the proposal to disappear into the great Indian filing cabinet of unfinished reforms.

The Modi government has certainly not reversed everything controversial. Nor should every policy modification be described as a humiliating climbdown. But several important episodes reveal a distinctive pattern: **the government is often willing to listen, provided the listening begins only after the shouting becomes impossible to ignore.**

The Land Bill: The First Warning the Government Ignored

The first major retreat came remarkably early.

In 2015, the government sought to amend the 2013 land acquisition law, principally by relaxing consent and social-impact assessment requirements for certain categories of projects. The government argued that infrastructure, defence and industrial development were being strangled by procedural obstacles. Its critics saw something more ominous: the dilution of protections for farmers and landowners.

The government issued and reissued ordinances, apparently convinced that parliamentary resistance could be overcome by administrative persistence. But the politics proved more stubborn than the ordinance route. Opposition parties mobilised, farmer organisations objected and even voices within the broader ideological ecosystem expressed reservations.

Eventually, Prime Minister Modi announced that the ordinance would not be renewed.

It was an instructive moment. The government had not suddenly discovered that land acquisition was a sensitive issue in a predominantly rural democracy. That fact had existed for rather longer than the Ministry of Rural Development. What it discovered was the political cost of learning that lesson too late.

The land bill episode established a pattern that would become familiar: consultation after confrontation is a far more expensive form of governance than consultation before legislation.

The Farm Laws: When the State Blinked

If the land bill was the first warning, the repeal of the three farm laws in 2021 was the defining reversal of the Modi era.

The government presented the laws as historic agricultural reforms. They promised greater marketing freedom, private investment and new contractual opportunities. Yet the manner of their introduction, through ordinances followed by hurried parliamentary passage, created precisely the suspicion that accompanies reforms delivered with a bulldozer.

The farmers' agitation that followed was extraordinary in its duration, discipline and political significance. For nearly a year, thousands of farmers remained mobilised at Delhi's borders. The government initially appeared convinced that it could outlast them. It held negotiations, offered amendments and repeatedly insisted that the laws were beneficial.

But the protesters were asking for repeal, not a government-sponsored editing session.

On 19 November 2021, Prime Minister Modi announced that the three laws would be repealed. Parliament subsequently enacted the repeal.

This was not merely a policy adjustment. It was an acknowledgement that a government with a formidable parliamentary majority had failed to build sufficient social legitimacy for one of its most ambitious reform packages. The episode demonstrated something fundamental about democracy: a majority in Parliament is powerful, but it is not a substitute for consent in society.

Data Protection: Withdrawal as Legislative Recycling

The original Personal Data Protection Bill represents a different kind of retreat.

Introduced after extensive discussion of privacy and data governance, the bill went through parliamentary scrutiny and attracted substantial criticism and suggested changes. In August 2022, the government withdrew it, arguing that a more comprehensive legal framework was required. A revised Digital Personal Data Protection Act eventually emerged in 2023.

This case is less dramatic than the farm laws and should not be treated as identical. Governments are entitled to withdraw flawed legislation and introduce better versions. Indeed, that is what parliamentary scrutiny is supposed to achieve.

But the episode nevertheless exposed a recurring weakness in the government's legislative style. Grand bills are sometimes introduced as near-finished products and subjected to meaningful reconsideration only after committees and stakeholders point out the holes. The parliamentary process becomes the quality-control department for policies that should have been better tested before launch.

Lateral Entry: Social Justice Arrives After the Advertisement

The withdrawal of the UPSC's 2024 lateral-entry recruitment advertisement offered an especially sharp illustration of political reflex.

The government sought to recruit professionals into senior and middle levels of the bureaucracy. Lateral entry itself was not a new or inherently unreasonable idea. Modern governments often require specialised expertise that traditional recruitment systems may not always provide.

The controversy concerned reservation.

After opposition parties and, significantly, NDA allies raised objections that the recruitment process bypassed established reservation principles, the government moved rapidly. The UPSC withdrew the advertisement.

The speed of the reversal was almost impressive. It suggested that the government had suddenly discovered social justice between issuing the advertisement and reading the newspapers.

The real question was not whether lateral entry was desirable. It was why a government that routinely presents itself as deeply attentive to social representation had apparently failed to settle the reservation issue before advertising the posts.

Indexation: The Budget Proposal That Met the Property Owner

Budget proposals are usually presented as products of careful economic calculation, preferably accompanied by charts that make taxation look like a public service.

In 2024, the government proposed changes to the taxation of long-term capital gains on property, removing indexation benefits while lowering the tax rate. The measure generated significant concern among property owners and others who argued that inflation-adjusted gains were being treated unfairly.

The government subsequently modified the proposal, allowing certain taxpayers to choose between the older system with indexation and the newer lower-rate regime.

This was not a revolution or a surrender. It was, however, another example of policy discovering the real world after the Finance Minister had finished reading the Budget speech.

The Laptop Import U-Turn: Make in India Meets Global Supply Chains

The 2023 restrictions on imports of laptops, tablets and certain other IT hardware provided another lesson in the dangers of sudden policymaking.

The government announced a licensing requirement with little warning, generating immediate alarm among technology companies and industry bodies. The deadline was subsequently pushed back and the policy was modified into a different import-management framework.

The objective of encouraging domestic manufacturing was understandable. The execution was less so.

Global supply chains are not light switches. One cannot announce industrial self-reliance on Thursday and expect the world's electronics manufacturers to rearrange their factories by Monday morning.

The later modifications reflected a practical recognition that industrial policy requires preparation, capacity and consultation, rather than merely patriotic enthusiasm and a notification number.

CAA and the NRC: Delay as a Political Strategy

The Citizenship Amendment Act presents a more complicated case. It was not repealed. The government ultimately notified its rules in March 2024, more than four years after the law was passed.

Therefore, it would be inaccurate to describe the CAA as a formal reversal.

But delay itself can be politically meaningful. The prolonged gap between legislation and implementation reflected the extraordinary controversy surrounding the measure and the nationwide protests that followed its passage.

The proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens followed a similar political trajectory. Although no nationwide exercise was formally notified, the rhetoric surrounding it was subsequently softened and the proposal effectively receded from immediate political action.

This is the art of the non-reversal reversal: do not abandon the idea, merely place it in a sufficiently quiet room until the political temperature falls.

Agnipath: The Latest and Most Significant Modification

The most recent example deserves particular attention because it occurred only days ago.

When the Agnipath scheme was introduced in 2022, its central feature was a four-year engagement, with approximately 25 per cent of Agniveers eligible for subsequent regular service based on merit and organisational requirements. The remaining 75 per cent were expected to leave after four years.

On 4 November 2026, the Union Cabinet approved a significant new pathway. The remaining 75 per cent of Agniveers may receive a further two-year engagement based on willingness and eligibility. After that period, they are to be offered a pathway to enrolment as regular soldiers, subject to willingness and selection criteria. The government insists that the core scheme continues and describes the change as a refinement based on four years of experience.

That is technically defensible. But politically, it is difficult to ignore the scale of the change.

A scheme originally designed around four-year service and limited regular absorption has now created a route through which the cohort originally expected to exit can remain for two additional years and subsequently seek regular enrolment. Calling this a mere adjustment is rather like calling the demolition of a wall an improvement in ventilation.

The change does not constitute the complete withdrawal of Agnipath. New recruits still enter under the scheme's basic structure. Yet it represents a substantial concession to one of the scheme's central criticisms: the insecurity created by the prospect of three-quarters of recruits leaving military service after only four years.

The government has every right to improve a policy after experience. Indeed, that is preferable to defending a defective policy merely to protect political prestige. But the question remains: if four years of experience revealed the need for such a major modification, how complete was the original assessment before the scheme was imposed?

The Larger Pattern: Power Listens to Pressure More Easily Than Argument

There is an important distinction here. The Modi government has also undertaken a deliberate programme of repealing obsolete and colonial-era laws. That should not be confused with reversing its own policies. Clearing dead legislation from the statute book is administrative housekeeping; withdrawing one's freshly launched flagship reform is a rather different activity.

Nor should every change be treated as evidence of failure. Sensible governments revise policies. The problem arises when revision follows a predictable sequence of insufficient consultation, aggressive defence, mounting protest and belated accommodation.

The government's strongest reforms have often been those where political preparation accompanied policy change. Its weakest moments have frequently occurred when a large majority created the illusion that legislation itself was the same thing as consensus.

The deeper irony is that the government has often portrayed itself as uniquely decisive while repeatedly demonstrating the limitations of decision-making insulated from serious dissent. A government does not become weak because it consults farmers before rewriting agricultural laws, industry before disrupting imports, or affected communities before altering recruitment systems.

On the contrary, consultation is how a strong government avoids the embarrassment of discovering, after months of protest, that the people outside the conference room were not merely background noise.

The Modi government's record since 2014 is therefore not a story of constant U-turns. Major reversals remain relatively uncommon. It is a more interesting story than that.

It is the story of a powerful government that usually moves in a straight line, often at considerable speed, until Indian democracy places something immovable in its path: a mass movement, an election, a coalition ally, an agitated social constituency, a parliamentary committee or the inconvenient persistence of public opinion.

Then the government demonstrates another, less advertised talent.

It knows how to reverse. It simply prefers to call the manoeuvre a course correction.

#AgnipathScheme #Modi #PolicyUturns #FarmLaws #IndianPolitics #PoliticalAnalysis #IndianDemocracy #ModiPolicies #GovernmentReforms #FarmersProtest #Agniveer #PoliticalCommentary #CurrentAffairs #WritersLens

The Government and the Media: Who Is Holding Whom Accountable?

2026-11-09T19:05:14.580+05:30

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There is an old question that every democracy must answer: Who watches the government?

The obvious answer is the media.

But in India, the question has become slightly more complicated.

Who watches the media when the media is busy watching the government watching the media?

Confused? You should be.

Because the relationship between the Indian news media and the government has always been something of a complicated marriage. There have been periods of love, periods of conflict, periods of silent treatment and, occasionally, periods when one partner has simply locked the other in a room and confiscated the telephone.

Since Independence, every Indian government has publicly professed its commitment to a free press. And, to be fair, most governments have tolerated criticism to varying degrees.

But governments, like human beings, have a fascinating relationship with criticism.

They believe passionately in freedom of expression, especially when someone else is expressing agreement.

The moment criticism begins, freedom of expression suddenly develops certain complications. National interest enters the room. Public order arrives shortly afterwards. Security concerns are summoned. Someone discovers an obscure regulation. And before you know it, the critic is being asked a question that has become increasingly fashionable in democracies everywhere:

“Why are you saying this now?”

Well, perhaps because journalism is supposed to say things.

That brings us to the long and complicated story of the Indian media and political power.

The Microphone Belonged to the Government

When India became independent in 1947, it inherited not only the institutions of British India but also many of its habits of administration.

The press had a proud history. Newspapers had played an important role in the freedom movement. Editors had gone to prison. Publications had been banned. Journalism, at least in its idealised memory, had fought authority.

But broadcasting was a different matter.

All India Radio was under government control. And for decades, that was perfectly normal in the Indian system.

Radio was not merely entertainment. In a vast country with low literacy and enormous linguistic diversity, it was a powerful instrument of communication. It could educate. It could inform. It could promote national integration.

And, of course, it could tell the nation what the government thought was important.

Now, none of this was necessarily sinister. A newly independent country needed communication infrastructure. The government had legitimate developmental objectives.

But there is a fundamental problem when the government owns the loudest microphone in the country.

Sooner or later, the microphone begins to sound suspiciously like the person holding it.

For decades, private radio was effectively kept away from news broadcasting. Even when private FM radio eventually arrived, entertainment was welcome. Music was welcome. Cheerful banter was welcome.

But news?

Ah, news was a more serious matter.

Apparently, a country could survive a thousand radio stations playing film songs, but allowing too many independent voices to tell listeners what was happening was a risk best approached with caution.

This was the essential contradiction of Indian broadcasting. The airwaves belonged to the public in theory, but for much of independent India's history, the government had a remarkably strong claim on the keys to the studio.

Newspapers Had Freedom. With an Asterisk.

The print media enjoyed considerably greater freedom.

The Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a), and the courts recognised that freedom of the press flowed from this constitutional guarantee.

But there was one important detail.

Freedom was not absolute.

There were reasonable restrictions. There were laws. There were regulations. There were security concerns.

And there was always the government.

Governments could not simply dictate every newspaper headline in normal times. But they possessed other forms of influence. Licensing and regulatory powers mattered. Government advertising mattered. Legal action mattered.

A newspaper might be constitutionally free to criticise the government.

The more practical question was whether the newspaper could afford to do so indefinitely.

This does not mean that the Indian press was a collection of frightened institutions. Far from it. Indian newspapers produced some of the finest and most fearless journalism in the country.

But freedom of the press has always existed alongside a rather uncomfortable reality:

The state does not have to own a newspaper to influence its environment.

And then, in 1975, the government decided that influencing the environment was simply too time-consuming.

It was much easier to control the weather.

The Emergency: When Democracy Put Journalism on Mute

The Emergency of 1975 to 1977 remains the darkest chapter in the history of independent Indian journalism.

On the night of 25 June 1975, democracy did not disappear with a dramatic explosion.

It was more bureaucratic than that.

The lights went out at newspaper offices. Censorship orders arrived. Editors discovered that publishing the news had become a government-approved activity.

The Press Council was abolished.

Major news agencies were merged into Samachar.

Journalists were detained.

Pre-censorship became a reality.

And the government-controlled broadcasters, All India Radio and Doordarshan, became instruments through which the official version of India could be delivered directly to Indian homes.

The popular nickname for AIR during that period was “All Indira Radio.”

It was a cruel joke.

But like many cruel jokes, it survived because it contained a recognisable truth.

The Emergency demonstrated something every democracy should remember: freedom can disappear much faster than institutions expect.

A newspaper that had spent decades fighting colonial rule could discover overnight that its greatest challenge was no longer finding a good story.

It was getting permission to print one.

To its credit, sections of the Indian press resisted. *The Indian Express* and *The Statesman*, among others, became associated with acts of defiance against censorship.

But the Emergency also exposed another uncomfortable truth.

Not everyone needs to be forced into submission.

Some people volunteer.

And that is perhaps the most important lesson of the Emergency. Censorship is not always imposed with a policeman standing in the newsroom.

Sometimes an editor looks at the political atmosphere, looks at the commercial interests of the organisation, looks at the possible consequences and decides that courage is an unnecessary luxury.

Democracy Returned. Dependence Did Not Disappear.

When the Emergency ended in 1977, formal censorship was lifted and the press regained its freedom.

India had survived a profound democratic crisis.

But surviving a crisis does not automatically solve the structural problems that created the vulnerability.

The question of autonomous broadcasting returned. Committees had already recommended that public broadcasting should be independent of the government.

The idea was straightforward.

A public broadcaster should belong to the public.

This should not have been a revolutionary concept.

Unfortunately, in India, separating a government institution from government influence has often been rather like separating milk from tea after you have stirred it.

The Prasar Bharati Act was passed in 1990, but the corporation became operational only in 1997.

Even then, the larger question remained unresolved.

Can a broadcaster truly be editorially independent if its institutional structure, funding and important appointments remain closely connected to the state?

The answer is not always simple.

Public broadcasting does not have to become anti-government broadcasting in order to be independent. Nor should it.

A public broadcaster has every right to report government achievements.

The problem begins when government achievements become the only achievements worth reporting.

Then Came Liberalisation and the Great Indian Noise Machine

The 1990s changed everything.

Economic liberalisation and satellite television broke the old broadcasting monopoly.

Suddenly, Doordarshan was no longer the only window through which millions of Indians saw the world.

Private channels arrived.

Cable television exploded.

CNN's coverage of the Gulf War demonstrated that news could travel across borders and enter living rooms without asking the Indian government for permission.

And then came the great Indian television revolution.

Zee.

Star.

And eventually a multitude of 24-hour news channels.

For the first time, political leaders faced a media environment they did not directly control.

This was unquestionably a democratic advance.

But India soon discovered that freedom from a government monopoly did not automatically produce perfect journalism.

It produced competition.

And competition produced something else.

Ratings.

The viewer became king.

And the advertiser became the king's financial adviser.

The result was a new kind of pressure.

The government was no longer the only powerful institution capable of influencing news.

Corporations entered the picture. Large media conglomerates expanded. Political interests developed media connections.

And television discovered that outrage was excellent for business.

A complicated policy debate could be boring.

But six people shouting simultaneously about whether the nation was in danger?

That was prime-time entertainment.

From Censorship to the More Sophisticated Art of Influence

This brings us to the India of today.

Is the Indian media free?

The honest answer is: yes, but the word “free” requires several footnotes.

India has thousands of publications, television channels and digital platforms. Journalists investigate governments. Newspapers publish criticism. Opposition leaders appear on television. Social media produces more political commentary before breakfast than an entire generation could have imagined in 1947.

So it would be historically inaccurate to claim that India is living through a permanent Emergency.

But it would be equally naïve to pretend that political power has lost its interest in influencing the media.

Governments have many tools.

Advertising.

Regulation.

Investigations.

Legal action.

Access.

Licensing.

And, perhaps most importantly, the ability to create an atmosphere in which certain kinds of journalism become expensive, difficult or inconvenient.

This is the great difference between old-fashioned censorship and modern influence.

The old censor put a red line through your article.

The modern system may simply make you wonder whether writing the article is worth the trouble.

That is far more subtle.

And subtlety has one great advantage.

Nobody has to admit that censorship exists.

But Let Us Not Pretend the Media Is Always the Victim

There is another side to this story, and the media must not escape scrutiny merely because governments are powerful.

Not every editorial decision is made under political pressure.

Sometimes it is made because sensationalism sells.

Sometimes because ideology is good for ratings.

Sometimes because owners have political preferences.

And sometimes because shouting is easier than reporting.

A journalist can be silenced by the government.

But journalism can also be weakened by the journalist's own institution.

A television channel that spends every evening conducting political gladiator contests may be completely free from government censorship.

That does not necessarily mean it is performing a public service.

A newspaper can criticise one political party with remarkable courage while treating another with extraordinary tenderness.

That is not always independence.

Sometimes it is simply partisanship wearing a press card.

The greatest danger to journalism is not merely that the government might control it.

The greater danger is that journalism might become so politically polarised that it stops recognising independence as an objective.

So, Who Is Holding Whom Accountable?

This is where we return to our original question.

Who watches the government?

The media.

Who watches the media?

The public, competing media institutions, independent journalism and, ideally, professional ethics.

But there is one principle that must remain non-negotiable.

The government of the day cannot be the ultimate editor of the national conversation.

A government deserves fair reporting.

It deserves credit when it succeeds.

It deserves the opportunity to explain its policies.

But it does not deserve immunity from criticism.

And the media has an equally important responsibility.

It must not become the permanent opposition merely because opposition is fashionable.

Nor should it become the permanent public relations department of whoever happens to occupy the government offices.

The media's job is not to love the government.

The media's job is not to hate the government.

The media's job is to ask questions.

Including the questions that nobody in power particularly wants to answer.

The Final Word

India has travelled a remarkable distance since 1947.

We moved from a government monopoly over broadcasting to hundreds of television channels and an enormous digital universe.

We survived the Emergency, the most direct assault on press freedom in our democratic history.

We liberalised broadcasting.

We created new institutions.

We opened the airwaves.

But the struggle for a genuinely independent media is not over.

It may never be over.

Because every generation discovers its own version of the same old temptation.

Those in power want favourable coverage.

Those seeking power want sympathetic coverage.

Corporations want useful coverage.

Political parties want loyal coverage.

And journalists, inconveniently, are supposed to want the truth.

That is why a free media will always have an uneasy relationship with power.

And perhaps that is exactly how it should be.

A comfortable media is often a compromised media.

A comfortable government may simply be a government that is not being asked enough questions.

Democracy does not need a media that screams at every government.

It does not need a media that applauds every government either.

It needs something much more difficult to create.

A media that can praise without becoming a cheerleader.

A media that can criticise without becoming a political party.

And above all, a media that remembers one simple fact: The microphone does not belong to the government. It does not belong to the corporation. It does not belong to the political party. In a democracy, it ultimately belongs to the citizen.

And if the citizen cannot hear the truth because the government is speaking too loudly, the corporations are paying for the programme, and the television anchors are shouting over everyone else...

Then perhaps it is time for all of us to stop shouting.

And start listening.

Because the day a democracy no longer has the courage to ask questions is not the day journalism fails.

It is the day democracy begins to lose its voice.

#ArnabGoswami #SudhirChoudhary #ChitraTripathi #AnjanaOmKashyap #MediaAndDemocracy #Journalism #FreedomOfSpeech #MediaBias #NewsMedia #IndianPolitics #Emergency1975 #Doordarshan #MediaFreedom

Are The Legacies Of Trump And Modi Going To Last Forever?

2026-11-09T11:31:16.356+05:30

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There was a time when political leaders were expected to solve problems. Then came the discovery that problems are much more useful when kept alive, given a villain and marched around during election season. Why cure an economic grievance when you can turn it into a national identity? Why fix unemployment when you can identify somebody who is allegedly responsible for stealing the jobs? Why confront inequality when you can persuade the anxious majority that its real enemy is a migrant, a minority, an intellectual, a journalist or, in moments of particular political inspiration, a student with a placard?

Donald Trump and Narendra Modi emerged from very different societies, histories and political traditions. One is the product of a wealthy businessman's transformation into a nationalist television-age messiah. The other rose through a disciplined ideological organisation and spent decades mastering the machinery of electoral politics and state administration. One promises to make America great again; the other assures India that its civilisational greatness has merely been waiting, rather impatiently, for the right government to rediscover it.

Yet Trumpism and Moditva share a remarkable political instinct: take genuine economic and social anxieties, stir them into a heady mixture of grievance and national pride, identify an insufficiently patriotic enemy, and then present the leader as the only man standing between the authentic people and national catastrophe. It is politics as pressure cooker cuisine. The ingredients are real. The heat is artificial. The person controlling the whistle naturally claims all the credit when dinner is served.

The economic foundations of both movements are built upon genuine insecurity. The forgotten factory worker in America's industrial heartland did not invent deindustrialisation. Rural distress, unemployment and inequality in India are not fantasies manufactured by opposition parties over afternoon tea. People worry about stagnant incomes, insecure employment, weak public services and the unnerving suspicion that somebody else is getting ahead while they are being asked to celebrate national greatness on an empty stomach.

The political genius of majoritarian populism lies in changing the subject without appearing to do so. Structural problems are complicated, slow and inconvenient. They require investment in education, public health, labour protections, industrial policy and redistribution. None of these fit comfortably on a baseball cap or into a campaign slogan. Outsiders, however, are wonderfully portable.

Trumpism therefore offers the American worker a familiar proposition: your factory disappeared because somebody abroad cheated you, your wages stagnated because immigrants undercut you, and your neighbourhood changed because the border was not properly defended. The solution is tariffs, walls, deportations and the restoration of a glorious past which, rather inconveniently, appears to have been considerably less glorious for anyone who was not white, male and comfortably located within the mythology of post-war America.

Protectionism can certainly produce benefits for particular industries and workers. Tariffs can shield domestic producers. Restrictions on immigration can alter labour-market conditions. But economic nationalism is not a magical machine into which one inserts a foreigner and from which a well-paid manufacturing job emerges. Tariffs also raise costs. Supply chains retaliate. Consumers pay more. Industries dependent upon migrant labour discover that patriotism is difficult to harvest crops with.

Trumpism's great achievement has therefore often been symbolic recognition. The forgotten worker is invited to become politically unforgettable. Whether his wages rise as dramatically as his cultural visibility is another matter. Structural inequality remains stubbornly alive, sitting in the corner like an uninvited guest who has learned that no government is really serious about asking him to leave.

Moditva approaches the economic question from another direction. Its preferred vocabulary is not restoration but transformation. Infrastructure, digital public goods, direct benefit transfers, housing, sanitation and financial inclusion have become central to the story of a New India. Unlike the Trumpist nostalgia for an industrial past, the Modi project frequently sells aspiration: the highway, the airport, the smartphone, the digital payment and the welfare transfer arriving directly in the beneficiary's account.

This is not merely theatre. Material gains can be real. Poor households, including members of historically disadvantaged communities, can benefit substantially from improved delivery mechanisms and welfare programmes. The Indian state, notoriously inventive at losing money between Delhi and the village, has discovered that technology can occasionally prevent the middleman from becoming the principal beneficiary of a poverty-alleviation scheme.

But here the political magic trick becomes particularly elegant. Development is presented as universal while cultural nationalism determines the emotional boundaries of belonging. A welfare payment may reach a citizen regardless of religion, yet the larger political narrative can still distinguish between the deserving beneficiary and the allegedly pampered minority. Equality of bank transfer does not necessarily produce equality of social confidence, political representation or protection from communal prejudice.

Thus the economic philosophies diverge while the political method converges. Trumpism promises protection from the outside world. Moditva promises elevation through national development. Trump builds rhetorical walls; Modi inaugurates physical infrastructure. One looks backward towards a lost golden age, while the other unveils a future that is perpetually just beyond the next expressway. Both, however, understand that economic policy is politically more powerful when accompanied by a story about who the nation really belongs to.

Domestic politics is where this story acquires its sharpest edges. Every majoritarian movement needs an authentic people. The problem, of course, is that real nations are untidy places. They contain minorities, migrants, atheists, inconvenient historians, argumentative journalists and citizens who insist upon reading the Constitution before applauding the government.

Trumpism resolves this inconvenience through the language of borders, race, immigration and culture wars. The immigrant, particularly the undocumented immigrant or asylum seeker, becomes a symbol larger than any individual human being. He is simultaneously accused of taking jobs, increasing crime, changing the culture and somehow receiving all the benefits that the hardworking taxpayer has mysteriously failed to obtain.

Moditva operates within a different historical landscape. India is not a settler-colonial society grappling primarily with immigration. It is a vast, caste-stratified civilisation whose modern Constitution promised equal citizenship within extraordinary religious and linguistic diversity. The majoritarian narrative therefore centres more explicitly upon religious nationalism. The Hindu majority is invited to see itself not as the naturally dominant community in a democratic nation but as an ancient civilisation that has, rather astonishingly, spent centuries being insufficiently appreciated in its own home.

This produces the political paradox at the heart of both projects: the majority is encouraged to feel simultaneously powerful and persecuted. It controls the electoral arithmetic yet is told that unnamed elites, minorities, cosmopolitans and intellectuals have somehow kept it in chains. This is an immensely useful arrangement. A genuinely oppressed minority may ask for protection. A majority persuaded that it is oppressed may ask for dominance and call it liberation.

The consequences are not identical. Under Trumpism, immigrants and racial minorities face heightened vulnerability through immigration enforcement, reduced asylum access and the weakening of multicultural norms. Under Moditva, Muslims and other minorities can experience political marginalisation, social suspicion and a growing sense that citizenship is formally equal but emotionally graded according to cultural conformity.

Neither system requires the formal abolition of democracy. Elections continue. Courts sit. Newspapers publish. Opposition politicians make speeches. Democracy remains open for business, though some departments may discover that the terms and conditions have changed.

This brings us to dissent, that irritating democratic habit of people disagreeing with those who have won an election. Both political cultures have developed ingenious ways of treating disagreement as evidence of defective patriotism.

In Trumpian America, dissent may be dismissed as the work of the liberal elite, the deep state, the fake news media or the permanently offended guardians of political correctness. In Moditva's India, criticism can be placed in the equally capacious drawers labelled anti-national, urban Naxal, ecosystem or minority appeasement. The vocabulary differs. The suspicion is strikingly similar: if you oppose the leader, perhaps you do not merely disagree with the government. Perhaps you dislike the nation itself.

This is where majoritarian populism becomes less a set of policies than a grammar of public life. Institutions need not be abolished if they can be delegitimised. A critical journalist can be called biased. A university can be described as anti-national. A court can be accused of activism. Civil society can be treated as foreign influence. The opposition can be portrayed not as an alternative government but as an internal enemy with suspicious motives and worse dinner companions.

The beauty of this arrangement, from the ruling party's perspective, is that it requires no tanks on the streets. The pressure operates through rhetoric, investigation, social media outrage, institutional incentives and the creation of a public atmosphere in which some citizens begin to calculate the cost of speaking before deciding whether the sentence is worth finishing.

Foreign policy reveals another fascinating mixture of resemblance and difference.

Trumpism is transactional nationalism with a short attention span and a large calculator. Alliances are evaluated like hotel contracts. International institutions are useful until they become inconvenient. China is a strategic rival, trade partner and rhetorical punching bag, sometimes all before lunch. The underlying instinct is unmistakable: America First, preferably with everybody else paying more for the privilege of being America's friend.

Modi's foreign policy, by contrast, has been considerably more comfortable with strategic complexity. India seeks engagement with the United States while maintaining older relationships, managing competition with China and presenting itself as a voice of the Global South. Where Trumpism often sees alliances as burdens, India's diplomacy frequently treats multiple relationships as assets to be balanced.

Yet both leaders understand the domestic value of foreign policy theatre. The photograph with a world leader, the muscular statement after a crisis and the image of a nation refusing to be pushed around are political currency. National self-respect is not merely a diplomatic objective; it is a campaign advertisement with flags in the background.

The difference is that India's global ambitions require interdependence. An emerging economic power cannot simply build a wall around itself and declare victory. Modi's India needs investment, markets, technology and strategic partnerships. Trumpism, despite its own dependence upon global supply chains, can indulge more openly in the fantasy that the world's largest economy can retreat behind tariffs without the world noticing.

Their legacies, however, may prove more durable than either man's individual political career.

Trumpism has already escaped the boundaries of Trump himself. It has reshaped the Republican Party's language around nationalism, immigration restriction, cultural grievance and hostility towards traditional elites. A future leader need not possess Trump's peculiar combination of celebrity, instinct and punctuation habits to inherit the political machinery he helped build.

Moditva may prove even more transferable because it combines ideology with governance. Hindutva cultural nationalism, a powerful leadership model, welfare delivery and developmental aspiration form a political coalition that can outlive any individual. Successors may modify the tone, alter the emphasis or choose a different face for the campaign poster, but the underlying grammar of majoritarian belonging will remain available.

That is the deeper lesson. Trumpism and Moditva are not simply two leaders shouting at history. They are political systems for converting anxiety into identity and identity into electoral power.

They offer the citizen something emotionally irresistible: dignity without necessarily demanding structural equality, belonging without always guaranteeing equal belonging to others, and national pride without the exhausting task of examining the nation's failures too closely.

The excluded are not always formally expelled from the political system. That would be crude. Modern majoritarianism is more sophisticated. You may retain your passport, your vote and your constitutional rights while being gently reminded that some citizens appear to belong to the national family more naturally than others.

And therein lies the real danger of these political models. A government can change. A leader can lose an election. A slogan can become unfashionable. But once a society becomes accustomed to dividing citizens into authentic patriots and suspicious others, the habit can outlive the man who taught it to cheer.

Trump may eventually leave the stage. Modi, like every political leader, will one day cease to dominate the stage. The theatre, however, may continue to perform the same play.

The sets may change. The actors may acquire better tailoring. The slogans may be updated for the next generation.

But somewhere in the wings, an ambitious politician will still be waiting with the oldest trick in democratic politics: take a real grievance, point towards an outsider and promise the anxious majority that national salvation is just one election away.

The audience has seen the show before.

It keeps buying tickets.

#Trumpism #Moditva #NarendraModi #DonaldTrump #IndianPolitics #USPolitics #Majoritarianism #Democracy #PoliticalSatire #Hindutva #Nationalism #FreedomOfSpeech #Dissent #GlobalPolitics #WritersLens

Demonetisation at Ten: The Great Currency Vanishing Act That Didn't Quite Vanish

2026-11-08T08:23:45.646+05:30

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On the evening of 8 November 2016, India was treated to one of the most dramatic announcements in its economic history. At 8 pm, the Prime Minister appeared on television and informed 1.3 billion people that ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes would shortly cease to be legal tender. Since these notes accounted for roughly 86 per cent of the currency in circulation by value, this was not quite a minor adjustment to monetary policy. It was more like performing open-heart surgery on a running economy and announcing afterwards that the patient should consider it a useful fitness programme.

The stated objectives were suitably grand. Demonetisation, Indians were told, would strike at black money, counterfeit currency and the financing of terrorism and other criminal activities. Later, as the queues lengthened outside banks and the original promises encountered the stubborn inconvenience of arithmetic, additional benefits acquired greater prominence. The exercise would formalise the economy. It would widen the tax base. It would propel India towards a digital future.

Ten years later, the smoke has cleared sufficiently for us to ask an impolite but necessary question: what, exactly, did this economic earthquake accomplish?

The answer depends, to some extent, on which objective one chooses from the expanding catalogue of objectives associated with demonetisation. Judged against its original headline promises, the record is difficult to celebrate without considerable assistance from imagination. Judged against the acceleration of digital payments and the broader formalisation of economic transactions, the picture is more favourable. But there is an important distinction between a policy producing some useful consequences and a policy succeeding at what it was originally designed to do. By that standard, demonetisation remains a monument to the hazards of confusing shock value with economic strategy.

The most obvious test concerned black money. The theory was straightforward enough. People holding large quantities of unaccounted cash would be reluctant to bring it into the banking system, because doing so might expose them to tax scrutiny. Their illicit wealth, stored in bundles of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes, would therefore become worthless. The government would have performed a kind of national financial fumigation.

Unfortunately, the black money proved considerably more resourceful than the theory had anticipated.

Of the roughly ₹15.4 lakh crore worth of demonetised currency, the Reserve Bank of India eventually reported that approximately ₹15.31 lakh crore, or about 99.3 per cent, had returned to the banking system. The mountain of illicit cash expected to perish in the great currency bonfire turned out to be a rather modest molehill.

There were, of course, perfectly legitimate explanations for much of this return. But the larger point was impossible to avoid. If almost every invalidated note came back, demonetisation had not succeeded in extinguishing large quantities of currency-based black wealth. India had not discovered a secret vault full of forgotten suitcases that could simply be set on fire by government notification.

Perhaps the deeper problem lay in the diagnosis. Black money is not synonymous with black cash. Much of India's unaccounted wealth has historically been embedded in real estate, gold, benami properties, shell structures and offshore holdings. Cash is often the lubricant of the informal and illicit economy, but it is not necessarily where its wealth sleeps at night. Destroying currency to eliminate black wealth was rather like draining a swimming pool in the hope of catching a whale that had already moved to the ocean.

And then there was the small matter of cash itself.

The immediate collapse in currency availability after demonetisation was inevitable. The surprise lay in what happened afterwards. Currency returned. Then it grew. By the mid-2020s, currency in circulation had risen dramatically above its pre-demonetisation levels, moving from the broad range of ₹16–18 lakh crore in 2016 towards the ₹30 lakh crore range and beyond, with later readings exceeding ₹40 lakh crore.

India, it transpired, had not been cured of its cash habit. It had merely been forced into a temporary and highly inconvenient detoxification programme.

The cash-to-GDP ratio, which had plunged immediately after demonetisation, also recovered towards, and in some assessments beyond, earlier levels. High-value currency did not disappear from Indian life either. The new ₹500 note became the principal workhorse of the post-demonetisation currency system. The ₹2,000 note, introduced with considerable fanfare during the exercise, was eventually withdrawn from circulation.

There is something almost theatrical about this sequence. First, high-value notes were presented as a central part of the problem. Then new high-value notes were introduced as part of the solution. Later, one of those new notes was withdrawn. If nothing else, Indian monetary policy acquired a flair for plot twists.

To be fair, demonetisation did create a vast data trail. Large cash deposits entered the banking system and provided tax authorities with information that could be scrutinised. India's income-tax base expanded substantially over the following decade, with the number of return filers rising sharply and direct-tax collections increasing several-fold.

But correlation, that old enemy of political triumphalism, remains inconvenient. The same period saw the introduction of GST, rapid expansion of digital transactions, improved tax administration, greater use of data analytics and broader economic growth. To attribute every additional taxpayer in India to demonetisation would be like crediting a thunderstorm for the invention of umbrellas.

Election-related cash seizures provide another sobering footnote. Across successive electoral cycles, the authorities have continued to report substantial and, in some cases, rising seizures of unaccounted cash. This does not prove that demonetisation increased black money. It does, however, make it difficult to sustain the claim that the policy dealt a decisive and permanent blow to the cash-based political economy.

Then came counterfeit currency, another major justification for the great note swap.

Here, the picture is somewhat more nuanced. The detection of counterfeit notes spiked during and immediately after demonetisation as banks processed extraordinary volumes of currency. Subsequently, RBI data showed a decline in the value and number of counterfeit notes detected. By recent years, the absolute value of detected counterfeit currency had fallen considerably from its post-demonetisation peak.

That is a genuine positive outcome, although one should be careful about the scale of the problem being solved. Counterfeit notes represented an extremely tiny fraction of India's total currency stock. The country subjected its entire cash economy to a monumental disruption in order to combat a problem measured in a minute fraction of one per cent of the currency in circulation.

Moreover, counterfeiters, much like politicians and mosquitoes, have demonstrated an impressive capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Fake versions of the new ₹500 denomination have been detected in increasing numbers in several later years. Enforcement agencies continue to uncover counterfeit networks and seizures fluctuate from year to year.

Counterfeiting was disrupted. It was not abolished. Criminal networks were inconvenienced, not vaporised.

The same is true of the claim that demonetisation would cripple terrorism and insurgency by cutting off their cash supply. There is little reason to doubt that the sudden withdrawal of currency created short-term difficulties for some networks dependent on particular stocks of cash or counterfeit notes. Cross-border networks using fake Indian currency notes were temporarily disrupted, and some financing channels undoubtedly faced an abrupt shock.

But terrorism is not a small shop that shuts permanently because someone changes the currency at the cash counter.

Terror and criminal organisations adapt. They use genuine currency, hawala channels, digital transfers, movable assets and external support. Terrorist incidents did not disappear after November 2016, nor is there convincing evidence of a sustained, nationwide collapse in terror financing that can be attributed principally to demonetisation. International assessments of India's anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing framework have continued to point towards weaknesses in investigation, prosecution and conviction.

The lesson should have been obvious. You cannot permanently defeat an adaptive criminal network by changing the colour of the banknotes. That requires patient intelligence work, financial investigation, international cooperation, effective prosecution and institutions capable of following money through every channel available to it.

If demonetisation has a genuine long-term success story, it lies elsewhere: digital payments.

The sudden shortage of cash forced millions of Indians to experiment with electronic transactions. Mobile wallets, cards and bank transfers gained momentum. Then came the extraordinary rise of the Unified Payments Interface, which transformed India into one of the world's leading markets for real-time digital payments.

The scale of that transformation is undeniable. Digital transactions have expanded financial trails, made many commercial transactions easier to record and helped create a more formal interface between consumers, businesses and the tax system.

Demonetisation deserves some credit for providing an abrupt push.

But it should not be awarded sole parentage of India's digital revolution. Smartphone adoption was accelerating. Aadhaar-linked systems were expanding. Banking infrastructure was improving. UPI itself was a technological and institutional achievement whose success depended on sustained policy support and innovation. Digital India was already under construction before demonetisation arrived with a sledgehammer.

A sledgehammer can, after all, open a locked door. That does not make it the ideal instrument for every household.

The costs of the experiment must also be remembered, particularly because economic pain has a curious tendency to disappear from triumphant retrospective speeches. The cash-dependent informal economy bore the heaviest burden. Small businesses struggled. Daily-wage workers faced sudden uncertainty. Agricultural markets and small traders were disrupted. For people whose livelihoods depended on cash changing hands every day, demonetisation was not an abstract debate about monetary theory. It was a queue outside a bank, an empty cash box and an uncertain week's income.

The economy eventually recovered, as economies generally do. But recovery is not proof that the damage was imaginary. The relevant question is whether the benefits justified the disruption.

That is where the verdict becomes uncomfortable.

Demonetisation was based on a seductive but incomplete idea: that India's black economy could be attacked by removing the physical tokens used to facilitate some of its transactions. It underestimated the complexity of illicit wealth and overestimated the lasting effect of a one-time shock on adaptable criminal networks.

A decade later, India has more currency in circulation, not less. Counterfeit currency remains tiny in proportion to the overall money supply but has not disappeared. Terror financing continues to evolve through multiple channels. Black wealth remains a problem rooted largely in assets, structures and transactions that cannot be eliminated by replacing one set of banknotes with another.

India's expanded tax base and digital-payment revolution are real achievements. But neither should be casually repackaged as proof that the original promises of demonetisation were fulfilled. A policy should be judged first by the problem it claimed to solve, not by every useful development that occurred afterwards.

The lasting irony of demonetisation may therefore be this: its greatest legacy was the acceleration of a digital payments revolution that was not its principal original justification, while its principal objectives survived the shock with remarkable resilience.

Ten years on, the episode deserves neither ritual condemnation nor compulsory applause. It deserves honest accounting.

And the accounting suggests a simple conclusion. You can change a nation's currency overnight. You cannot change the economic structures that generate black wealth, corruption, criminal finance and tax evasion merely by asking people to stand in line and exchange one piece of paper for another.

The notes disappeared. The queues appeared. The economy absorbed the shock. New notes were printed. Cash returned.

And somewhere in the distance, black money appears to have looked at the entire spectacle, adjusted its sunglasses and carried on looking for the nearest real estate deal.

#NoteBan #2016Demonetisation #BlackMoney #NarendraModi #IndianEconomy #FakeCurrency #TerrorFunding #CashlessIndia #UPI #ModiGovernment #EconomicPolicy #IndiaPolitics #RBI #FormalisationOfEconomy

Where Abuse Becomes Debate: Who Is Minding India’s Political Conversation?

2026-11-06T21:36:28.787+05:30

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Hate-filled invective has become common parlance in our socio-political conversations. This gets reflected in our legislatures, parliament and media.

There was a time when Indian television debates were supposed to enlighten the viewer.

That was a charming idea.

Today, much of prime-time television resembles a badly supervised family quarrel, except the family has several hundred million spectators, the participants have microphones, and somebody somewhere is selling advertising slots between the insults.

The latest controversy involving an ABP News debate anchored by Chitra Tripathi has once again raised an uncomfortable question. When a panellist allegedly abuses another person by invoking his caste identity, what exactly is the role of the anchor?

To moderate? To intervene? Perhaps, to say that a television studio is not a medieval wrestling pit? Or simply to allow the spectacle to continue because outrage, after all, has become the most profitable form of public entertainment?

The controversy surrounding remarks allegedly made by Sangeet Ragi against an Ahir or Yadav panellist is disturbing not merely because an individual was insulted. The reported use of caste identity alongside words such as “gawar” exposes something much deeper about our political culture.

India has spent decades congratulating itself on becoming the world's largest democracy. Yet increasingly, our public discourse seems to be asking a more primitive question:

What are you before we listen to what you have to say?

Are you Hindu or Muslim?

Upper caste or lower caste?

North Indian or South Indian?

Bihari or Maharashtrian?

Insider or outsider?

And once we have placed you in the correct box, apparently, the discussion can begin.

Or, more accurately, the abuse can begin.

The Anchor Who Becomes Furniture

Let us be clear. Television anchors are not innocent pieces of studio furniture.

They have microphones, control rooms, producers, delay buttons and, one assumes, vocal cords.

When a debate crosses the line from disagreement into identity-based abuse, an anchor has both the authority and the responsibility to intervene.

But modern television has discovered a remarkable new theory of journalism: the louder the argument, the less responsibility anyone has for it.

The anchor can sit back and say, metaphorically if not literally, “Look what these terrible people are saying!”

Yes. But you invited them.

You gave them the microphone.

You put the programme on air.

And when they began insulting somebody's caste, religion or community, you had the power to stop them.

The problem is not confined to one channel or one anchor. India's broadcasting standards mechanism has, on several occasions, taken action against programmes where communal rhetoric was amplified rather than restrained.

News18 India, for instance, faced regulatory action over debates on the hijab controversy. The News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority found fault with the communal framing of the programme and with the failure to maintain appropriate standards of moderation.

Another debate built around the poisonous political arithmetic of “80 versus 20” was criticised for turning India's religious demographics into a television weapon.

Think about that phrase for a moment.

Eighty versus twenty.

Human beings reduced to percentages.

Citizens converted into rival teams.

And democracy transformed into a population census conducted by a boxing referee.

The real danger is not simply that irresponsible words are spoken. It is that repeated exposure makes them sound normal.

Yesterday's outrageous slogan becomes today's television catchphrase.

Today's catchphrase becomes tomorrow's political speech.

And before long, the country is arguing about whether a particular slur was technically offensive, rather than asking why anyone thought it was appropriate in the first place.

From Television Studio to Parliament

Unfortunately, Parliament has not always provided the antidote.

It has sometimes provided the sequel or the prequel.

One of the great ironies of Indian democracy is that the building designed for reasoned debate periodically becomes a place where identity itself is used as a political weapon.

The controversy surrounding remarks about Rahul Gandhi's caste during the Lok Sabha debate in 2024 was a striking example. The argument ostensibly concerned caste politics and the demand for a caste census. But instead of remaining a debate about public policy, it descended into questions about an individual's caste identity.

Some remarks were later expunged. There was outrage. There were demands for apologies.

And then, naturally, everyone moved on to the next outrage.

Expunction is one of Parliament's most elegant forms of political time travel.

Something is said.

It is broadcast live.

It is clipped for social media.

It circulates across the country.

Then it is expunged from the official record.

Wonderful.

The words may no longer exist in Hansard, but they have already taken a holiday across WhatsApp, YouTube, X and Facebook.

The horse has not merely bolted. It has opened a social-media account.

The same pattern appears repeatedly. Political opponents are described as anti-Hindu, pro-Pakistan or sympathetic to terrorists. These labels are casually flung into the air like confetti at a particularly unpleasant wedding.

And when the Speaker intervenes, it is often after the political damage has been done.

The presiding officer faces a difficult task, of course. Legislatures are supposed to permit passionate disagreement.

But there is a difference between passion and prejudice.

Democracy does not become stronger when elected representatives turn religious identity into an insult.

It merely becomes noisier.

The State Legislatures: Local Democracy, Local Abuse

If Parliament offers a national stage for these performances, state legislatures frequently provide regional versions.

Recent controversies in Telangana and Bihar have once again shown how quickly arguments about public policy can slide into accusations and counter-accusations involving caste.

In Bihar, a debate over issues connected with educational equity reportedly led to a confrontation over caste-oriented remarks, with the Speaker eventually ordering disputed words to be expunged.

Again, notice the sequence.

The insult.

The uproar.

The intervention.

The expunction.

The headlines.

This has become almost a constitutional ritual.

Punjab too has witnessed controversies over alleged casteist language involving political leaders and legislators, followed by demands for apologies.

Now, apologies are welcome. Nobody should complain when a public figure admits wrongdoing.

But we must ask why the apology has become the second half of the political performance.

First, say something inflammatory.

Second, wait for the cameras to record it.

Third, watch supporters and opponents fight over it for forty-eight hours.

Fourth, issue a carefully worded apology.

The modern political apology is often less an expression of remorse than a press release wearing a sad face.

The Old Disease of Regional Chauvinism

And then there is regional identity.

India's political history has repeatedly shown how easily economic anxiety and electoral opportunism can be converted into hostility towards migrants.

The anti-North Indian campaign associated with Raj Thackeray and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in 2008 remains one of the most notorious examples.

Migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were portrayed as invaders rather than fellow citizens exercising their constitutional right to live and work anywhere in India.

Chhath Puja, a religious and cultural festival cherished by millions, was dragged into the political firing line.

The message was brutally simple: some Indians were apparently more Indian than others.

Bal Thackeray's reported description of Biharis as an “unwanted lot” represented the same ugly instinct.

Imagine the absurdity.

A country that proudly advertises itself as a civilisation of unity in diversity periodically discovers that unity becomes difficult when somebody with a different accent is looking for a job in Mumbai.

Regional chauvinism is perhaps the most intellectually lazy form of politics.

Instead of asking why there are insufficient jobs, blame the people seeking them.

Instead of improving infrastructure, blame those using it.

Instead of questioning government policy, find an outsider.

Every failing system loves an outsider.

The outsider cannot vote in sufficient numbers, cannot always defend himself and is wonderfully convenient when the real questions become uncomfortable.

Religion as a Political Insult

Religion, of course, is the most combustible identity of all.

Television has repeatedly demonstrated how easily a discussion involving crime, terrorism, clothing, food or even a neighbourhood can be turned into a referendum on an entire community.

Regulatory bodies have criticised programmes where anchors and panellists used language that unnecessarily communalised an issue.

Terms linking ordinary crimes to Islam, references to a “Hijabi Gang”, or the habit of portraying every dispute as evidence of some larger religious conspiracy do not constitute serious journalism.

They constitute storytelling for people who have already decided who the villain is.

And that is the tragedy.

Once identity becomes the central frame, facts become an inconvenience.

If the accused belongs to the “wrong” community, the community is put on trial.

If the victim belongs to the “right” community, outrage becomes mandatory.

If the facts complicate the narrative, someone simply shouts louder.

This is not journalism.

It is identity politics with studio lighting.

The Silence of the Referee

But let us return to the central issue: the silence of those responsible for maintaining order.

A referee who watches a foul and does nothing is not a neutral observer.

A Speaker who repeatedly permits personal abuse to overwhelm debate cannot simply claim that democracy is noisy.

And an anchor who allows caste or religious invective to continue unchecked cannot hide forever behind the excuse of being “impartial”.

Neutrality is not the same as passivity.

If one panellist abuses another person's caste, cutting him off is not taking sides.

It is enforcing a minimum standard of civilisation.

If a guest attacks an entire religious community, stopping him is not censorship.

It is moderation.

That, after all, is why the person is called a moderator.

Not a spectator.

The Deeper Problem

Perhaps the deepest problem is that India has developed an enormous appetite for political humiliation.

We no longer merely want our side to win an argument.

We want the other side to be destroyed.

We do not want disagreement.

We want demolition.

We do not want facts.

We want viral clips.

And caste, religion and regional identity provide the easiest ammunition because they strike at something deeper than political opinion.

An argument can be answered.

An identity can be targeted.

That is why identity-based abuse is so dangerous.

It tells the individual: you are not wrong because of what you said. You are wrong because of who you are.

That idea is fundamentally incompatible with a constitutional democracy.

Closing

The ABP controversy, therefore, should not be treated as an isolated television accident.

It should make us examine the larger culture we have created.

A culture where anchors sometimes confuse chaos with debate.

Where legislators confuse personal identity with political argument.

Where regional leaders confuse migrants with enemies.

And where religious identity is increasingly treated as a political shortcut.

India does not lack loud voices.

What it increasingly lacks are responsible referees.

The next time a politician, panellist or television guest reaches for caste, religion or regional identity as an insult, the person in charge must intervene immediately.

Not after the commercial break.

Not after the social-media storm.

Not after the legal complaint.

Immediately.

Because democracy is not a shouting competition in which the loudest bigot wins.

And a television debate is not successful merely because two people have shouted so loudly that neither the audience nor the participants can remember what the original question was.

India is a country of astonishing diversity. That diversity is not our weakness.

But it can become one if cynical politicians, reckless television performers and silent moderators continue to turn every difference into a weapon.

The real test of a democracy is not whether people can shout.

People have always been able to shout.

The real test is whether those entrusted with power have the courage to say: Enough.

Perhaps that is the most revolutionary word missing from Indian public discourse today.

Enough.

Enough of turning caste into an insult.

Enough of treating religion as ammunition.

Enough of making migrants the scapegoats for political failure.

Enough of confusing abuse with courage and noise with truth.

Because if the people holding the microphones, the Speaker's chair and the anchor's desk cannot draw that line, then we may eventually discover something profoundly ironic.

The world's largest democracy still has a debate.

It just no longer has a moderator.

#ABPNewsAbuse #IndianMedia #MediaDebate #CastePolitics #Communalism #FreedomOfSpeech #CasteistAbuse #PoliticalDebate #Tamasha #HateSpeech #MediaAccountability #AntiMuslim #IdentityPolitics #WritersLens #RandeepWadehra

How Should India Look at the Election Results in the United States and Israel?

2026-11-06T21:32:54.461+05:30

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Two powerful leaders face electoral setbacks. For New Delhi, the challenge is to navigate a more unpredictable Washington and a politically paralysed Jerusalem.

The results of the American midterm elections and Israel's parliamentary election should give New Delhi plenty to think about. Neither represents a geopolitical revolution, but together they signal something important: the political authority of two of India's most consequential strategic partners has come under pressure.

In the United States, Donald Trump has suffered a sweeping electoral rebuke, with Democrats capturing both chambers of Congress. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud has emerged as the largest party, but his political bloc has failed to secure a parliamentary majority. Neither leader has disappeared from the political stage. Both, however, face a substantially more difficult political environment.

For India, the appropriate response is neither alarm nor celebration. It is strategic calculation. New Delhi must recognise that the domestic political equations of its partners are changing, while India's interests in trade, defence, technology, energy security and regional stability remain constant.

Washington: Trump loses his political cushion

The American midterms of 3 November 2026 have produced a decisive outcome. Democrats have won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, ending two years of unified Republican control of Congress. Their victories in traditionally Republican states, including Texas, South Carolina, Iowa and Kansas, make this more than an ordinary midterm setback.

The result reflects widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump administration. Inflation and the cost of living, concerns about government corruption, tariffs and the increasingly unpopular war with Iran have all contributed to the Republican defeat. The electoral message is unmistakable: a substantial section of the American electorate wants stronger institutional checks on the President.

However, India must distinguish between a president suffering an electoral defeat and a president losing executive authority. Trump remains in the White House until January 2029. He retains considerable powers over diplomacy, trade, sanctions, immigration and military operations. A Democratic Congress cannot simply reverse presidential decisions by declaration.

Nevertheless, the political consequences are substantial.

Control of both chambers gives Democrats the power to chair congressional committees, initiate investigations, summon administration officials, demand documents and scrutinise executive decisions. Senate control is particularly important because it gives Democrats greater influence over presidential nominations, including senior appointments. Congress also exercises considerable influence over government expenditure and defence appropriations.

Trump will face a more difficult legislative environment. His administration could encounter resistance over military spending, the Iran conflict, assistance to Israel, sanctions policy and other foreign-policy priorities. Impeachment proceedings may also become a political possibility, although removing a President would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate, an exceptionally high threshold.

There is another complication. Trump has already signalled that he intends to resist Democratic legislation, including through presidential vetoes. Democrats, in turn, will have to demonstrate that they can govern responsibly rather than merely oppose the administration.

The result could be two years of institutional confrontation, investigations and legislative deadlock.

What does this mean for India?

New Delhi should avoid assuming that a Democratic victory automatically translates into a friendlier American policy towards India.

The relationship has several dimensions, and they do not necessarily move together.

Trade and tariffs: India's exporters need predictability in access to the American market. Trump's transactional approach has already complicated trade negotiations. A Democratic Congress could scrutinise the administration's tariff policies, but it cannot independently dictate a complete reversal of executive trade measures.

Immigration and H-1B visas: Restrictions affecting Indian professionals and technology companies remain a major concern. Congressional oversight could influence the debate, but immigration policy will continue to be shaped by the administration, legislation and executive regulations.

Defence and technology: The bipartisan strategic consensus regarding the Indo-Pacific and China's growing influence remains an important foundation of India-US relations. Defence procurement, intelligence cooperation, semiconductor technology and critical supply chains should therefore remain priorities.

India should be particularly watchful of any American attempt to revive a regional balancing approach that places India and Pakistan on an artificial diplomatic equivalence. Equally, bipartisan concern about China's strategic ambitions offers New Delhi an opportunity to strengthen cooperation with Washington.

There is also a potentially uncomfortable question concerning Russia. A Democratic Congress may seek a tougher approach towards Moscow and greater scrutiny of countries continuing to purchase Russian energy. India must preserve its strategic autonomy without allowing disagreements over Russian policy to undermine its wider relationship with the United States.

The important lesson is that India's American relationship must become increasingly institutional rather than presidential. New Delhi should maintain direct engagement with Trump while cultivating Democratic leaders, congressional committees, governors, business interests and strategic-policy institutions.

India must deal with the United States, not merely with its incumbent President.

Israel: Netanyahu survives, but the arithmetic is unforgiving

The Israeli election has produced a different kind of political setback.

Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud has emerged as the largest individual party, securing 27 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Yet his broader political bloc has secured only 53 seats, eight short of the 61 required for a parliamentary majority.

The opposition grouping led by Gadi Eisenkot has secured 48 seats. The two Arab-led parties, the Joint List and Ra'am, have together won 19 seats, their strongest parliamentary representation to date.

These figures require an important qualification. The opposition grouping and the Arab-led parties are not one unified political bloc. The Joint List and Ra'am are separate parties, with their own political positions. Similarly, the 48-seat opposition grouping is not automatically a functioning coalition.

The outcome is consequently a political stalemate rather than a straightforward victory for Netanyahu's opponents.

Netanyahu has demonstrated considerable political resilience. His supporters can point to Likud's position as the largest party. Yet the loss of his previous parliamentary strength is significant. His traditional allies have not delivered the numbers necessary for another comfortable government.

The Arab-led parties have acquired unprecedented potential leverage. Together, their 19 seats could theoretically help an alternative government reach a majority. However, the reluctance of several major opposition parties to depend on Arab parliamentary support makes coalition formation complicated.

Other possibilities include a national unity arrangement, a minority government supported from outside the coalition, or prolonged negotiations that ultimately produce another political compromise.

The Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in on 10 November. The immediate question is whether Eisenkot can assemble a viable alternative or Netanyahu can negotiate his way back into office. Neither outcome should be taken for granted.

The irony is unmistakable. Israeli voters have weakened the incumbent Prime Minister without handing his opponents an uncomplicated mandate to govern. Democracy has delivered a verdict, but not a government.

What does this mean for India?

India's relationship with Israel has developed into a substantial strategic partnership. Defence equipment, military technology, intelligence cooperation, cybersecurity, agriculture, water management and innovation have become important components of bilateral engagement.

These relationships are unlikely to collapse because of a change in government. They are underpinned by institutional cooperation and mutual strategic interests.

Nevertheless, the political direction of Israel matters.

A Netanyahu-led government, should he manage to assemble one, could continue its hardline approach towards Iran and the Palestinians. A broader unity arrangement might create greater opportunities for diplomatic flexibility, although there is no guarantee of a fundamental policy change.

India should not confuse continuity in defence cooperation with an obligation to endorse every decision taken by the Israeli government.

New Delhi has legitimate reasons to support Israel's security. It also has compelling reasons to support Palestinian aspirations, protect civilian lives and encourage a political settlement that offers lasting security to both peoples.

India's diplomatic credibility depends on maintaining this distinction.

The Iran factor: India's most serious strategic concern

The most consequential connection between the American and Israeli elections is Iran.

The conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran has become a major determinant of regional stability. It has also acquired a direct domestic political dimension in America, where the economic consequences of the war have contributed to voter dissatisfaction with the Trump administration.

For India, the stakes are considerably higher than electoral calculations in Washington or Jerusalem.

The Gulf is central to India's energy security, trade, investment and employment interests. Millions of Indian citizens live and work in the region. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical passage for global energy supplies, while the wider region is essential to India's connectivity ambitions.

The situation is particularly worrying because the June 2026 US-Iran memorandum of understanding and the earlier truce have failed to produce lasting stability. Attacks on commercial vessels have resumed, shipping through Hormuz remains substantially below normal levels, and instability has extended towards the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

The consequences for India could be severe:

- Higher crude oil and natural gas prices, adding to inflationary pressures.

- Disruption of maritime trade and higher shipping and insurance costs.

- Threats to the safety of Indian nationals working across the Gulf.

- Delays or setbacks to strategic connectivity projects involving West Asia and Central Asia.

- Greater uncertainty for Indian investments and commercial interests in the region.

- Diplomatic complications in maintaining balanced relations with Israel, Iran and Arab countries.

India cannot afford to treat the Iran conflict as somebody else's war.

There is also a political complication. A weakened Trump administration may find it harder to sustain an unpopular military campaign, particularly if congressional Democrats demand greater scrutiny of military operations and expenditure. Congress could attempt to restrict funding or demand clearer authorisation for continued hostilities.

But it would be dangerous to assume that electoral defeat will automatically make Trump more restrained. A President facing domestic political difficulties may seek to demonstrate strength abroad. Netanyahu, too, could find domestic political survival and national security arguments increasingly intertwined.

Political vulnerability does not necessarily produce diplomatic moderation. Sometimes it produces precisely the opposite.

India must therefore prepare for several possible scenarios rather than base its calculations on the expectation that Washington or Jerusalem will suddenly become more conciliatory.

India's balancing act: Israel, Iran and the Arab world

India's traditional approach to West Asia has been one of strategic multi-alignment.

It maintains close relations with Israel while cultivating important partnerships with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman and other Arab countries. It also has significant historical, economic and strategic interests in Iran.

This approach is sometimes criticised as diplomatic fence-sitting. In reality, it reflects India's geographical, economic and strategic compulsions.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, connectivity through Iran's Chabahar port, energy supplies from the Gulf and the safety of Indian expatriates are all interconnected interests.

New Delhi should resist pressure to adopt an ideological position in a conflict where its national interests demand diplomatic flexibility.

It should support Israel's legitimate security concerns without endorsing unlimited military action. It should maintain communication with Tehran without ignoring the security concerns of Israel and the Gulf states. It should strengthen its partnerships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE while encouraging diplomatic efforts to prevent a wider regional conflagration.

Above all, India should make the protection of its citizens, energy security and freedom of navigation non-negotiable priorities.

The Middle East cannot be allowed to become an arena where India's economic ambitions are held hostage to the political calculations of other countries.

The larger lesson: India must invest in strategic autonomy

There is a common thread running through the American and Israeli election results.

In the United States, voters have imposed a substantial institutional check on a powerful President. In Israel, voters have denied the incumbent Prime Minister a clear parliamentary majority without providing his opponents with an easy alternative.

Both outcomes illustrate the resilience, as well as the complications, of democratic politics.

They also reveal something about the contemporary international order. Political leaders who appear dominant can encounter unexpected resistance from voters and institutions. Personal leadership, however powerful, cannot permanently substitute for political legitimacy.

For India, the implications extend beyond its immediate relations with Washington and Jerusalem.

New Delhi must recognise that international partnerships cannot be built exclusively around individual leaders. Political administrations change, coalitions collapse, elections produce surprises and strategic priorities evolve.

India should therefore:

1. Deepen bipartisan engagement in Washington, irrespective of who controls Congress.

2. Protect defence, technology and economic cooperation from short-term political disagreements.

3. Maintain a stable strategic partnership with Israel without becoming identified with any particular Israeli government.

4. Strengthen relations with Arab countries and preserve constructive engagement with Iran.

5. Diversify energy supplies and improve maritime security preparedness.

6. Accelerate alternative trade and connectivity arrangements to reduce vulnerability to regional conflicts.

7. Resist external pressure to compromise its independent assessment of national interests.

India's relationship with the United States is too important to be reduced to its relationship with Donald Trump. Similarly, its relationship with Israel must transcend Benjamin Netanyahu.

The same principle applies to the wider Middle East. Governments change, political personalities come and go, but India's geographical and economic interests remain.

Conclusion: Neither triumphalism nor panic

The world has not been saved by the American midterms or the Israeli election. But both have demonstrated that democratic institutions can impose meaningful constraints on powerful political leaders.

Trump has suffered a major electoral repudiation, but he remains President. Netanyahu has lost his parliamentary majority, but he remains a formidable political force. Neither development guarantees a fundamental change in American or Israeli foreign policy.

For India, the coming months could prove particularly challenging. Washington will experience intensified institutional confrontation, Jerusalem faces difficult coalition negotiations, and the Middle East remains dangerously unstable.

New Delhi must avoid political sentimentality. It should neither celebrate Trump's humiliation nor interpret Netanyahu's difficulties as an opportunity to distance itself from Israel. Equally, it should not allow its strategic partnership with either country to compromise its relations with the Arab world or its independent interests in Iran.

The real test of Indian diplomacy will be its ability to maintain productive relationships with governments that may disagree sharply among themselves.

There is a final lesson worth remembering. Elections do not always produce clear winners, but they can produce very clear warnings. American voters have warned their President that executive power has limits. Israeli voters have reminded their politicians that parliamentary arithmetic cannot be overcome by personal ambition.

India should take note.

In an increasingly unpredictable world, strategic autonomy is not a diplomatic slogan. It is an insurance policy.

And unlike political friendships, it does not depend on who wins the next election.

#USMidterms2026 #Trump #USElections #IsraelElections #Netanyahu #IndiaForeignPolicy #IndiaUSRelations #IndiaIsraelRelations #MiddleEastCrisis #IranConflict #Geopolitics #WorldPolitics #StrategicAutonomy #ModiForeignPolicy #WritersLens

The Binance Heist: North Korea's $6.3 Billion Cyber Coup and the New Economics of Digital Warfare

2026-11-05T08:21:48.950+05:30

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Imagine a bank robbery in which criminals walk into the world's largest financial institution, empty billions of dollars from its vaults within twenty minutes and disappear without firing a shot, confronting a security guard or even entering the building. Now imagine that the robbery is conducted across ten different financial networks simultaneously, with the perpetrators operating from thousands of kilometres away.

Welcome to the brave new world of cryptocurrency.

On 29 October 2026, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered what is being described as the biggest cryptocurrency theft in recorded history. Approximately $6.3 billion to $6.36 billion in digital assets disappeared from its hot wallets across ten blockchain networks. Most of the money was transferred within approximately twenty minutes.

The scale is extraordinary. The February 2025 Bybit hack, involving approximately $1.5 billion, had previously established the record for cryptocurrency theft. The Binance heist is roughly four times larger.

But the most disturbing aspect is not simply the money involved. Blockchain intelligence companies TRM Labs and Chainalysis have attributed the operation, with high confidence, to TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-linked hacking group associated with the broader Lazarus Group network.

If their assessment is correct, this was not merely a spectacular cybercrime. It was another demonstration of how a heavily sanctioned state can employ sophisticated cyber operations to generate billions in otherwise inaccessible foreign currency.

And it raises an uncomfortable question: has cryptocurrency become one of the most effective instruments of economic warfare available to authoritarian regimes?

The robbery: Twenty minutes that shook the crypto industry

Founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, popularly known as CZ, Binance grew into the dominant global cryptocurrency exchange. Its enormous trading volumes and extensive customer base made it a central institution in the digital asset economy.

Like other exchanges, Binance maintains two broad categories of cryptocurrency storage.

Cold wallets are kept offline and are generally used for long-term asset protection. Hot wallets remain connected to the internet, facilitating transactions, withdrawals and day-to-day operations.

The latter are indispensable to an exchange's functioning. Unfortunately, they are also attractive targets.

According to TRM Labs, the attack began around 20:05 UTC on 29 October. Funds were drained from Binance wallets across Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, XRP Ledger, Solana, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Base and Polygon.

The Ethereum component accounted for approximately $3.79 billion. Bitcoin withdrawals included around 18,270 BTC, valued at approximately $1.47 billion at the time. Substantial amounts of XRP, USDT, TRX and other digital assets were also transferred.

The operation was remarkably coordinated. Multiple blockchain networks were affected within a narrow time window, indicating that the attackers possessed access to capabilities extending well beyond an isolated wallet.

The exchange temporarily suspended withdrawals across affected networks.

Binance subsequently acknowledged that its hot-wallet infrastructure had been compromised. Its preliminary investigation suggested that a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop might have provided access to a service container through which unauthorised withdrawal transactions were submitted.

However, subsequent investigation uncovered additional points of compromise.

Importantly, Binance has said that investigators have found no evidence of wallet private keys being leaked. The complete attack sequence remains under investigation.

This distinction matters. The incident appears to have involved the compromise of transaction-authorisation infrastructure rather than simply someone stealing a password or copying a private key.

How did the hackers accomplish it?

The technical sophistication of the operation deserves attention because it exposes a fundamental weakness in the architecture of digital finance.

On Ethereum, the attackers exploited EIP-7702, a feature introduced through the Pectra upgrade in May 2025.

The feature allows an ordinary cryptocurrency wallet to temporarily delegate its execution behaviour to a smart contract through signed authorisations.

In principle, this makes wallets more flexible and capable of performing sophisticated operations.

In the wrong hands, however, it can become a dangerous instrument.

The attackers submitted a transaction containing 50 pre-signed authorisations associated with a Binance hot wallet. These covered different possible transaction nonces, effectively accounting for changes in the wallet's transaction counter.

One authorisation matched the wallet's actual state and succeeded.

The wallet was consequently delegated to a malicious smart contract controlled by the attackers. It effectively became a mechanism for automatically transferring its holdings to attacker-controlled addresses.

This allowed the attackers to drain enormous balances and subsequently sweep additional funds arriving in the compromised wallet.

There is an important qualification here. EIP-7702 was not itself hacked, nor does the incident demonstrate that Ethereum's entire network was compromised. The vulnerability lay in the abuse of valid authorisations and the security arrangements surrounding Binance's signing infrastructure.

Moreover, EIP-7702 explains the Ethereum component, not the entire operation. Ordinary signed transfers occurred across the other affected networks.

That distinction makes the incident even more serious. The attackers apparently possessed the ability to obtain or manipulate transaction approvals across several blockchain environments.

The precise method by which they acquired that capability remains to be established.

North Korea: The invisible beneficiary?

The attribution to North Korea is perhaps the most consequential aspect of the affair.

TRM Labs has expressed high confidence that TraderTraitor was responsible. Chainalysis has independently reached a similar assessment.

The group is associated with the broader Lazarus Group apparatus, which Western authorities have linked to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau.

It is also tracked under different threat-intelligence designations, including Jade Sleet, UNC4899 and Slow Pisces.

These organisations are not conventional criminal gangs operating primarily for personal enrichment. They are associated with a state-sponsored cyber ecosystem that has repeatedly targeted cryptocurrency exchanges, financial institutions, software developers and technology companies.

Their methods are particularly insidious.

They frequently employ social engineering, fake recruitment exercises, malicious software, compromised development environments and impersonation techniques to gain access to organisations.

Rather than attempting to smash through heavily protected digital defences, they often target the people and processes responsible for operating them.

The February 2025 Bybit theft, involving approximately $1.5 billion, was attributed by the FBI to North Korean actors. The 2022 Ronin Network attack, which resulted in approximately $620 million in losses, was another major operation linked to the same broader ecosystem.

Other incidents involving Harmony and DMM Bitcoin demonstrate the group's persistence and adaptability.

The Binance investigation has also revealed connections between funds from the latest theft and proceeds associated with the September 2026 Bitget exploit, which reportedly involved approximately $387 million.

Such connections strengthen the attribution, although blockchain associations alone do not establish the identity of individual perpetrators.

The important point is that North Korea has developed a formidable cyber-financial capability.

Its operators are not merely stealing digital money. They are systematically exploiting weaknesses in the infrastructure of an increasingly important global financial ecosystem.

Cryptocurrency as North Korea's sanctions-busting machine

Why would a country invest so heavily in cybercrime?

The answer lies in North Korea's extraordinary economic isolation.

International sanctions have severely restricted its access to conventional financial markets, foreign investment and legitimate sources of foreign currency.

Yet the regime continues to pursue nuclear weapons development, ballistic missile programmes and military modernisation.

These ambitions require substantial financial resources.

Traditional sanctions can make international transactions difficult, but they cannot completely prevent a technologically sophisticated adversary from exploiting digital infrastructure.

Cryptocurrency offers an attractive alternative.

Digital assets can be stolen remotely, transferred across borders, converted into other currencies and moved through complex networks of intermediaries.

Although blockchain transactions are publicly visible, identifying the ultimate beneficiaries and recovering the proceeds can be extremely difficult.

The scale of North Korea's cryptocurrency operations is alarming.

According to Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole at least $6.75 billion in cryptocurrency by the end of 2025. That figure included the Bybit theft.

The subsequent Bitget and Binance incidents have pushed estimates of the cumulative value attributed to North Korean operations towards $13.5 billion, although the precise total remains subject to verification and attribution.

Reuters has reported that cybersecurity researchers consider the North Korean operators among the world's most capable cryptocurrency thieves.

The implications extend beyond financial crime.

The United States and other governments have repeatedly warned that North Korean cyber operations generate revenue for the country's military establishment and weapons programmes.

Stolen cryptocurrency is not necessarily transferred directly to a nuclear weapons laboratory. It passes through intermediaries, laundering networks and conversion channels. Nevertheless, it provides the regime with resources that can support its broader state expenditure, including prohibited military activities.

The distinction between cybercrime and national security consequently becomes increasingly blurred.

A cryptocurrency exchange may believe it is defending itself against criminals. In reality, it could be confronting an extension of another country's intelligence and military apparatus.

The race to freeze billions

One of the most interesting developments following the Binance attack has been the extraordinary cooperation between private companies, blockchain networks and law-enforcement agencies.

Approximately $3 billion of the stolen assets has reportedly been frozen or rendered inaccessible through coordinated intervention.

TRM Labs initially identified approximately $2.7 billion in frozen assets, including stablecoins frozen by issuers such as Tether, Circle, Ripple and World Liberty Financial, alongside intervention by Arbitrum's Security Council.

Binance subsequently reported that approximately $3 billion had been frozen on-chain.

This demonstrates an important characteristic of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Contrary to popular perceptions, not all digital currencies are beyond institutional control.

Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC are issued by identifiable companies that possess mechanisms to freeze particular addresses under specified circumstances.

This proved extremely valuable.

The attackers attempted to convert portions of their stolen stablecoins into ETH and other assets that could not be frozen through the same issuer-controlled mechanisms.

They reportedly used market makers, decentralised trading platforms and lending protocols, including Aave.

The result was a frantic race between the hackers attempting to convert their loot and the industry attempting to immobilise it.

TRM Labs estimates that more than $2.4 billion in ETH, BTC and other assets remained beyond immediate issuer control at the time of its initial assessment.

This is a significant limitation of the recovery effort.

Once digital assets are converted into forms that cannot be frozen by a central issuer, recovering them becomes considerably more difficult.

The FBI, US Secret Service, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners are reportedly involved in tracing the remaining funds.

Binance's response: A financial and reputational test

Binance's immediate response has been crucial in preventing a catastrophic loss of customer confidence.

The exchange has promised to absorb the entire financial impact of the theft rather than pass the losses to its users.

Its Secure Asset Fund for Users, or SAFU, established in 2018, provides an emergency reserve intended to protect customers in extraordinary circumstances.

However, the scale of the present incident is unprecedented.

Binance announced on 30 October that it had set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the losses. Approximately $5 billion was already held in the corresponding affected token assets, representing around 80 per cent of the estimated loss.

The exchange said it was acquiring the remaining assets through market and over-the-counter channels.

It also committed to publishing an updated Proof of Reserves report, with an initial snapshot planned for 2 November.

This is important because a Proof of Reserves exercise allows customers to examine the assets held by an exchange against its reported customer liabilities. However, such verification should not automatically be confused with a complete independent audit of the company's financial condition.

Binance has also temporarily suspended withdrawals on affected networks while implementing additional security measures.

The company has promised a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is sufficiently advanced.

Its credibility will depend not merely on reimbursing customers but also on demonstrating that the vulnerabilities responsible for the attack have been identified and corrected.

After all, replacing stolen assets is considerably easier than restoring lost confidence.

The larger lesson: Digital finance has acquired a geopolitical vulnerability

The Binance incident exposes several uncomfortable realities about the future of global finance.

First, the concentration of enormous wealth in centralised cryptocurrency exchanges creates extraordinarily attractive targets.

An exchange may operate across dozens of countries and hundreds of digital networks, but a compromise of its transaction-authorisation infrastructure can potentially expose billions of dollars.

Second, technological sophistication does not automatically translate into security.

EIP-7702 was designed to make Ethereum wallets more versatile. Yet the incident demonstrates how legitimate technological capabilities can be turned into instruments of financial destruction when authorisation systems are inadequately protected.

Third, state-sponsored cyber operations have fundamentally altered the economics of international confrontation.

A country does not necessarily need a powerful banking sector, a sophisticated manufacturing economy or unrestricted access to international capital markets to generate substantial financial resources.

It can exploit the digital infrastructure of countries and companies that possess all three.

Finally, international cooperation is becoming indispensable.

Stablecoin issuers, exchanges, blockchain developers, cybersecurity companies and law-enforcement agencies must develop faster mechanisms for identifying suspicious transactions and coordinating emergency responses.

Traditional financial regulation cannot simply be transplanted into the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Nor can governments assume that sanctions designed for conventional banking will remain equally effective against digitally enabled financial networks.

Conclusion: The new face of financial warfare

The Binance heist is a warning that the boundaries between cybercrime, economic warfare and national security are becoming increasingly indistinguishable.

If the attribution to TraderTraitor is correct, North Korea has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to extract billions of dollars from the global digital economy without deploying conventional military force.

There is something deeply ironic about this.

Cryptocurrency was promoted as a technology that could reduce dependence on traditional financial institutions, empower individuals and democratise access to money.

Yet its growing concentration of wealth, complex technical architecture and dependence on trusted intermediaries have created vulnerabilities that sophisticated state actors can exploit.

The hackers may have been sitting thousands of kilometres away, but their actions disrupted a financial institution operating at the centre of the global cryptocurrency market.

And while Binance has promised to reimburse its customers, the larger damage cannot be measured in dollars alone.

It concerns the credibility of digital finance, the effectiveness of international sanctions and the ability of governments to prevent hostile states from financing their military ambitions through cyber-enabled theft.

The uncomfortable question is whether the international community is prepared for a world in which a state can finance part of its weapons programme by robbing the digital vaults of the global financial system.

North Korea may be demonstrating that the next great financial battlefield does not necessarily require armies, aircraft carriers or missiles.

Sometimes, all it takes is a compromised computer, a handful of stolen authorisations and twenty minutes.

#BinanceHack #NorthKorea #LazarusGroup #CryptoHeist #Cryptocurrency #CyberWarfare #DigitalCrime #Bitcoin #BlockchainSecurity #CryptoSecurity #CyberAttack #FinancialWarfare #GlobalSecurity #SanctionsEvasion #DigitalGeopolitics

I WROTE THIS IN 2016. INDIA IS LIVING IT IN 2026!

2026-11-03T12:14:54.931+05:30

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Have you ever written something as fiction, only to discover years later that reality seems to be following your imagination?

Something rather extraordinary has been happening to me.

Over the past few months, as India has witnessed a growing wave of public protests, particularly youth-led demonstrations, political confrontations and demands for institutional accountability, I have found myself revisiting some of my own novels.

And I have been struck by an intriguing possibility.

Did I anticipate some of the developments we are witnessing today?

In 2016, I wrote a novella titled Mango Man in the Republic of Bananas.

Ten years later, its expanded version appeared as AGNI: The Voice of Revolution.

I also wrote OMNI Protocol: The Last Algorithm, a dystopian political thriller about a technologically sophisticated society where an apparently efficient system gradually becomes an instrument of authoritarian control.

These are different stories, set in imaginary countries and involving fictional characters.

Yet they share something remarkably relevant to contemporary India.

They explore the circumstances in which ordinary citizens lose patience with those exercising power, why young people become politically restless, how women emerge as powerful agents of resistance, and what happens when governments mistake public compliance for public consent.

Let me explain.

Because sometimes, a novelist does not predict the future. He recognises the warning signs of the present. And that, perhaps, is what happened with my novels.

PART ONE: MANGO MAN IN THE REPUBLIC OF BANANAS

Let us begin in 2016.

That was when I self-published Mango Man in the Republic of Bananas. It was a political satire set in an imaginary republic.

The central character, Kamuk, is the Sadar-e-Azam, desperately trying to retain power. Unfortunately, his political fortunes are deteriorating. A popular movement, the Mango Man Movement, is gathering strength to unseat him. His powerful ally and financier, Sethji, wants him to negotiate a deal with his political rival, Bahubali.

Meanwhile, a ruthless group called the Girgit Gang is determined to finish him off.

Kamuk finds himself trapped between electoral uncertainty, political intrigue and personal survival.

Sound familiar?

Of course, I am not suggesting that the characters in my novella represent particular contemporary politicians. That would be a rather simplistic interpretation. What interests me is the political architecture of the story.

A government that believes it is entitled to rule indefinitely.

A leadership increasingly uncomfortable with public dissent.

Political financiers and power brokers exercising influence behind the scenes.

Opposition forces attempting to exploit the government's vulnerabilities.

And, most importantly, an emerging popular movement challenging the established political order.

The Mango Man Movement was conceived as a fictional expression of public dissatisfaction.

In 2016, I was exploring what happens when a political establishment becomes so comfortable with its power that it begins confusing electoral victory with permanent public endorsement.

Ten years later, we are witnessing a very different political environment in India.

Young people have taken to the streets over examination irregularities, unemployment and questions of institutional accountability. The Cockroach Janta Party, an unusual youth-led movement that initially emerged through political satire, has become one of the symbols of this new political restlessness. Its protests have contributed to a wider debate about electoral accountability and the relationship between citizens and institutions.

The earlier student protests over examination-related issues also demonstrated that youth mobilisation could produce tangible political consequences, including the resignation of the Education Minister in July 2026. The interesting parallel is not that my fictional Mango Man Movement predicted the Cockroach Janta Party. It did not. The parallel lies in the underlying political phenomenon.

When people begin believing that the established political system is no longer listening to them, they look for alternative ways of making themselves heard.

And sometimes, those alternatives emerge from the most unexpected quarters. A movement can begin as satire, acquire political significance and eventually become a vehicle for public protest.

That is one of the fascinating aspects of contemporary politics.

PART TWO: AGNI – THE VOICE OF REVOLUTION

Now let us move to AGNI: The Voice of Revolution.

This novel is an expanded and substantially developed version of my 2016 novella. It is set in Dhundhara, a fictional republic where corruption, political manipulation and violence have brought society to the brink of a breakdown.

The central character is Agni. And Agni is important for several reasons. She is not a conventional revolutionary. She does not begin with an ambition to occupy the highest political office.

She emerges from the grassroots, shaped by personal tragedy, injustice and the brutality of an oppressive political establishment. Her political consciousness develops through experience. She discovers that the institutions supposedly established to protect citizens can become instruments of their oppression. She witnesses violence, betrayal and political manipulation. And eventually, she becomes the central force in a popular movement for change.

But there is something else about Agni that deserves attention.

She is a woman leading a revolution.

In my fictional world, women are not merely supporting characters, victims or spectators. They are organisers, strategists, intellectual challengers and political leaders.

Agni represents courage, independence and the willingness to challenge established authority. Her political opponents are not necessarily threatened by her because she is violent. They are threatened because she is difficult to intimidate.

There is also Rambha, another powerful female character, whose ambition and ruthless pursuit of power demonstrate that women can occupy both sides of the political and moral divide.

I deliberately avoided making gender a simplistic distinction between good and evil. Power corrupts irrespective of gender. But resistance, courage and political imagination are not the exclusive preserve of men either.

Look at contemporary India. Women have increasingly occupied visible positions in political confrontation, public campaigning and protest movements. Whether one agrees or disagrees with their politics, figures such as Mamata Banerjee and Mahua Moitra illustrate different forms of female political assertiveness. The emerging generation of women activists and protesters adds another dimension to this phenomenon. The resemblance is not in their individual personalities or political positions. It is in the broader proposition that women are no longer content to remain spectators in the political theatre. They want to influence the script. And sometimes, they want to rewrite it altogether.

But AGNI explores something more fundamental. It asks a difficult question: What happens when a revolution succeeds?

This is where I wanted to distinguish Agni from the conventional revolutionary hero. She understands that overthrowing an oppressive government is not the same thing as establishing a just society.

Revolution can become another form of tyranny if its leaders begin believing that their moral superiority gives them unlimited authority.

Agni therefore embraces an important principle. Power must have limits. She advocates accountable governance, equality, humility and a constitutional approach to political authority.

Her self-imposed two-term limit is particularly significant.

Think about that. A revolutionary who fights to acquire power voluntarily places restrictions on her own tenure. That is a much more difficult proposition than simply overthrowing an opponent.

My argument is straightforward.

Democracy is not demonstrated merely by the manner in which leaders acquire power. It is also demonstrated by their willingness to surrender it.

Agni's political journey is ultimately about the transformation of resistance into responsible governance.

That distinction is crucial when we examine contemporary protests.

Public anger can bring people together. But anger alone cannot build institutions. A movement must eventually articulate what it wants to replace the existing system with. Otherwise, it risks becoming another episode in an endless cycle of political revenge.

This is one of the central philosophical questions in AGNI.

PART THREE: OMNI PROTOCOL – THE PERFECT DICTATORSHIP

Now comes my second major dystopian political thriller. OMNI Protocol: The Last Algorithm.

This novel takes the argument into the future. Its setting is the fictional Republic of Zhulgar, approximately thirty years from now. Its capital, Lythara, is a technologically advanced metropolis. Artificial intelligence governs practically everything.

Transport, healthcare, education, financial markets, security, energy distribution and even aspects of social behaviour are monitored and optimised by an extraordinarily sophisticated system called OMNI.

Everything works. Crime is minimal. Infrastructure functions efficiently. Economic instability has almost disappeared. Citizens enjoy material comfort. It appears to be the perfect society.

But there is a catch.

The price of stability is freedom. People who do not conform to the system's expectations are quietly eliminated from society. An ordinary citizen, Arun Dev, is taken away by security personnel. He has committed no crime. The artificial intelligence has merely predicted that his future behaviour might contribute to economic disruption. He is therefore selected for compulsory relocation.

Think about the implications.

A person can lose his freedom not because of something he has done, but because of something a machine predicts he might do.

That is the frightening world of OMNI.

And this is where my novel becomes particularly relevant to contemporary political debates.

The protagonist, Teesha, is an engineer working within the Citadel, the institutional headquarters of the system. She discovers an unusual fragment of code. Her investigation leads her to evidence that the supposedly perfect system has been corrupted.

Thousands of citizens, including writers, intellectuals and academics, have been transported to underground prison facilities. Their identities have been erased. They are identified by numbers instead of names. They are forced to manufacture surveillance equipment used by the very system that has imprisoned them.

The victims are literally manufacturing the instruments of their own oppression.

Teesha gradually discovers that OMNI was originally designed to assist governments in making decisions. It was never intended to replace human judgement. Powerful individuals have transformed it into an instrument of behavioural control.

The original creator, Kabir Rahman, had anticipated this possibility and embedded a safeguard into the system. His fundamental warning was simple: The machine is not the tyrant. The tyrant is the human who controls it.

This is an important distinction.

My novel is not an argument against artificial intelligence. It is an argument against the concentration of unaccountable power, whether that power operates through political institutions, technological systems or an alliance between the two.

Teesha eventually joins an underground resistance. She and her associates expose the truth through a massive broadcast. Millions discover what is happening behind the immaculate façade of their supposedly perfect society.

The revelations trigger widespread protests.

The government responds with repression.

Security forces, surveillance drones and automated enforcement systems are deployed.

But the resistance grows. Citizens who previously accepted the system begin demanding freedom and accountability.

Eventually, the rebellion reaches the Citadel itself.

The old machinery of authoritarian control begins to collapse. And OMNI, confronted with the consequences of its own existence, reaches a remarkable conclusion.

It chooses to withdraw from authority. It recognises that human freedom involves uncertainty, disagreement and even mistakes. But those imperfections are inseparable from human dignity.

The machine finally understands that its job is not to govern humanity. It is to recognise why humanity must govern itself.

That is the central philosophical argument of OMNI Protocol.

PART FOUR: WHY THESE STORIES RESONATE WITH INDIA IN 2026

Now let us connect these fictional worlds with the developments taking place in India.

Of late, the country has witnessed an extraordinary period of political mobilisation. The protests have involved young people, students, opposition supporters and civil society organisations. The immediate issues have included examination irregularities, unemployment and, more recently, controversy surrounding the revision of electoral rolls.

The latest protests have centred on demands for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Opposition parties have alleged that the revision of electoral rolls has removed millions of eligible voters, disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities. The Election Commission and the BJP have rejected allegations of deliberate manipulation, maintaining that the exercise is intended to remove duplicate and ineligible entries.

These competing claims must be examined through evidence and due process. But the political significance of the protests goes beyond the allegations themselves.

On 1 November, opposition parties mobilised thousands at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan.

The protests have also generated serious questions about the restrictions imposed on public demonstrations, detentions and the treatment of protesters and journalists. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have raised concerns about the authorities' response.

Now, consider the connections with my novels. There are at least five.

First, the emergence of public resistance.

In Mango Man, a popular movement threatens an established political leadership.

In AGNI, public dissatisfaction develops into a sustained struggle against an oppressive establishment.

In OMNI Protocol, citizens who have accepted an apparently efficient system eventually discover its human cost and begin resisting it.

The common thread is the emergence of public consciousness.

Second, the role of young people.

Young people are particularly sensitive to the gap between promises and opportunities. They want education that works, employment that provides dignity, institutions that are credible and a political system that listens. They are less willing to accept the argument that questioning authority is equivalent to disloyalty.

The 2026 protests have demonstrated how quickly youth-led mobilisation can become a national political issue.

Third, the importance of information.

In OMNI Protocol, the regime survives because citizens do not know what is happening to those who disappear. Once Teesha exposes the truth, the carefully manufactured public image collapses.

This is an important theme in contemporary politics.

Information, investigative journalism, independent reporting and digital communication can challenge official narratives.

But information can also be manipulated.

Consequently, citizens need not merely access to information but the ability to distinguish evidence from propaganda.

Fourth, the state's response to dissent.

All three fictional narratives explore the temptation of political establishments to treat opposition as a threat rather than a legitimate component of democracy.

In OMNI, this tendency becomes institutionalised through technology.

In AGNI, it takes the form of political violence and manipulation.

In contemporary India, the debate over restrictions on peaceful assembly, detentions and the treatment of demonstrators has once again brought the right to protest into public discussion.

The important distinction is that the right to peaceful protest must be protected, while violence and intimidation must not be romanticised.

Fifth, the question of accountability.

This is perhaps the most important connection.

A democratic government must be answerable to citizens. An election commission must command public confidence. Courts must remain independent. The media must be free to question those in power. And political leaders must understand that authority is temporary and conditional.

That is precisely the political philosophy running through my novels.

PART FIVE: DID I REALLY PREDICT THE FUTURE?

Now, let me address an obvious question.

Did I actually predict the events unfolding in India?

I would be exaggerating if I claimed that I had foreseen the exact protests, the organisations involved, the personalities leading them or the particular political controversies of 2026.

I did not.

Nor would I claim that India is Dhundhara, the Republic of Bananas or the Republic of Zhulgar.

Fiction must not become a convenient instrument for making sensational political claims. But I do believe that my novels anticipated certain patterns. They anticipated the possibility of youth-led political mobilisation. They explored the emergence of movements outside conventional political structures. They examined how women could become powerful agents of political resistance. They questioned the tendency of governments to confuse institutional authority with unquestionable legitimacy. They explored the dangers of surveillance, information control and the concentration of power.

And they raised the most important question of all: What happens when citizens begin believing that the system no longer represents them?

These are not predictions in the astrological sense.

They are observations about human behaviour and political institutions.

A novelist watches society. He notices contradictions. He observes the ambitions of the powerful and the frustrations of ordinary people. He studies history. And sometimes, he takes existing tendencies to their logical conclusions.

That is how dystopian fiction works.

It does not necessarily describe tomorrow. It warns us about the consequences of ignoring today.

CLOSING: THE NOVELIST AS A WITNESS

I would like to end with a personal observation.

I wrote Mango Man in the Republic of Bananas in 2016.

I expanded that political imagination into AGNI: The Voice of Revolution.

And in OMNI Protocol: The Last Algorithm, I explored the dangers of surrendering human freedom to an apparently infallible system.

These novels emerged from my interest in politics, democracy, power and the human condition.

They were not written as manifestos for any political party.

Nor were they intended to serve the interests of any particular ideological camp.

My concern has always been with the relationship between power and accountability.

Governments change. Political parties rise and fall. Revolutionaries become rulers. Opposition leaders become incumbents. And sometimes, yesterday's champions of freedom become tomorrow's defenders of authority.

That is why I believe Agni's two-term limit is so important.

That is why Teesha's intellectual rebellion matters.

And that is why OMNI's final decision to surrender power is perhaps the most significant moment in my futuristic novel.

Democracy is not merely about who wins an election. It is about whether citizens retain the freedom to question, criticise, protest and demand accountability after that election. And this freedom must be protected irrespective of which political party happens to be in office.

Perhaps that is the real message of my novels:

A government may command obedience. It may control institutions. It may even control information. But it cannot indefinitely command the conscience of an entire population.

And when that conscience awakens, history can take unexpected turns.

As a novelist, I do not claim to know what India's political future holds.

But I do know one thing.

We should never underestimate the power of ordinary citizens when they decide that their voices deserve to be heard.

Because revolutions do not always begin with guns, barricades and slogans.

Sometimes, they begin with a question.

And sometimes, that question is simply: WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO RULE WITHOUT LISTENING TO US?

Stay sane. Stay curious. And never stop questioning.

#RandeepWadehra #FromAWritersDesk #AgniTheVoiceOfRevolution #OMNIProtocol #MangoMan #IndianPolitics #IndiaProtests2026 #YouthProtests #DemocracyUnderThreat #RightToProtest #PoliticalSatire #DystopianFiction #FictionMeetsReality #FreedomOfExpression #PowerAndAccountability

The Foreign Hand Syndrome: When Governments Run Out Of Answers, They Discover Foreign Enemies

2026-11-03T12:09:57.146+05:30

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There is something wonderfully convenient about the expression 'foreign hand'. It is perhaps the most economical political invention ever made. It requires no elaborate investigation, no supporting documents, no forensic examination and, above all, no admission of administrative incompetence. Whenever citizens become troublesome, governments can simply look towards the horizon, point an accusing finger at some foreign power and announce that the nation is under attack.

Inflation? Foreign conspiracy.

Unemployment? Foreign conspiracy.

Corruption allegations? Foreign conspiracy.

Students protesting? Foreign conspiracy.

Farmers demonstrating? Foreign conspiracy.

Citizens questioning electoral arrangements? Surely, the CIA, MI6, George Soros or some mysterious Western cabal must be lurking behind the curtains.

India has witnessed this political theatre repeatedly. The latest performance comes courtesy of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Addressing the RSS's Vijayadashami gathering in Nagpur on October 20, 2026, Bhagwat warned that a storm was blowing from the West, threatening established systems, cultural values and social order. Referring to developments in France, Albania, Nepal and Bangladesh, he suggested that external forces were exploiting unrest and pursuing regime-change agendas. India, he warned, was also a target.

His remarks came amid protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

Bhagwat did not explicitly declare that the protesters were foreign agents. Nor did he produce publicly identifiable evidence connecting the demonstrations to foreign governments or intelligence agencies. Indeed, he acknowledged that protests arising from social problems and shortcomings in the system were natural.

That qualification deserves recognition.

But the larger political implication remains troubling. When a prominent ideological leader speaks of Western forces attempting to destabilise India while domestic demonstrations are underway, the obvious question arises: is he warning against a demonstrable conspiracy or providing a convenient explanation for inconvenient dissent?

There is a difference between vigilance and insinuation.

And there is an even greater difference between defending national sovereignty and treating citizens exercising their constitutional freedoms as potential instruments of foreign powers.

INDIRA GANDHI: THE ORIGINAL FOREIGN-HAND SPECIALIST

Bhagwat's rhetoric has a distinguished predecessor. Indira Gandhi was particularly fond of discovering foreign hands whenever her government encountered serious political difficulties.

In March 1976, while the Emergency was in force, she criticised foreign powers for interfering in India's affairs. The Indian Express reported her objections to foreign criticism of the Emergency and her assertion that certain countries habitually belittled India's achievements.

The irony was exquisite. A government that had suspended fundamental freedoms, censored newspapers and imprisoned political opponents was complaining about foreigners criticising its democratic credentials.

The Emergency itself had a more immediate domestic explanation.

On June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court invalidated Indira Gandhi's 1971 election on grounds of electoral malpractice. Jayaprakash Narayan's movement was demanding her resignation. Students, opposition parties and civil society groups were mobilising against her government.

On June 25, she advised the President to proclaim an Emergency under Article 352, citing internal disturbance.

That night, opposition leaders were arrested. Newspaper electricity supplies were disrupted in Delhi. Pre-censorship followed. Thousands of political opponents were imprisoned, and civil liberties were severely curtailed.

The government had discovered that silencing critics was easier than answering them.

The RSS itself was banned during the Emergency. Ironically, an organisation whose present chief warns against foreign interference had experienced first-hand the consequences of a government treating political opposition as a national security problem.

The Emergency ended in March 1977, when Indira Gandhi called elections. She lost spectacularly.

Apparently, the foreign hand had failed to inform Indian voters that they were supposed to support her.

Her foreign-hand obsession continued after her return to power.

In August 1980, following the horrific Moradabad riots, which claimed hundreds of lives, Indira suggested that foreign forces were behind the disturbances. She also connected the Assam agitation with allegations of foreign involvement.

Yet, after visiting Moradabad, she reportedly said there was no foreign hand.

What a remarkable investigative breakthrough! The Prime Minister had travelled to the scene, examined the situation and discovered that the foreign hand had apparently disappeared.

Perhaps it had crossed the border.

THE FOREIGN HAND IS NOT AN INDIAN INVENTION

Authoritarian governments everywhere have discovered the usefulness of this political instrument.

Vladimir Putin blamed the United States for encouraging the mass demonstrations that followed disputed Russian parliamentary elections in 2011. His government subsequently strengthened legislation targeting organisations receiving foreign funding.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed external forces and international financial interests for the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey. The demonstrations had begun over plans to redevelop an Istanbul park but developed into a broader movement against his government.

China used similar language during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Beijing accused foreign forces of interfering in domestic affairs and portrayed the demonstrations as part of a colour revolution.

The problem was that millions of Hong Kong residents had genuine grievances about their political freedoms and the proposed extradition legislation.

Apparently, their grievances needed foreign passports to become politically intelligible.

Iran has repeatedly invoked foreign interference to explain domestic unrest. During the 2009 Green Movement protests, which followed a disputed presidential election, authorities accused Western powers of fomenting instability. Similar allegations accompanied the 2022 protests following Mahsa Amini's death.

The American experience is equally instructive, although its institutional circumstances were different.

During the Cold War, the FBI targeted organisations and individuals considered threats to the American political establishment. Martin Luther King Jr. was subjected to surveillance and attempts at discrediting him because FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover suspected communist influence.

The irony was extraordinary.

The United States presented itself as the champion of freedom against communism while its domestic intelligence machinery attempted to undermine a civil rights leader demanding equality.

The historical lesson is not that foreign interference never happens. It is that governments can invoke national security to justify actions that have little to do with national security.

INDIA'S MANY FOREIGN HANDS

India has its own complicated history of external interference.

During British rule, revolutionary nationalists did establish contacts with Germany during the First World War. The colonial government used such connections, alongside genuine revolutionary activity, to justify extraordinary security legislation, including the Rowlatt Act of 1919.

The Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929 involved allegations that communist trade unionists were attempting to overthrow British rule through an international communist conspiracy linked to Moscow.

There were international ideological connections. But the existence of such connections did not make every labour agitation or demand for workers' rights an act of foreign subversion.

After Independence, the expression acquired a life of its own.

During the Punjab insurgency, Pakistan's support for militant groups was real and extensively documented. External assistance, weapons, training and infiltration were genuine security concerns.

However, the tendency to interpret every expression of political dissatisfaction through the prism of Pakistan's involvement often obscured legitimate grievances.

The Assam agitation also became entangled in allegations of foreign manipulation, even though its central concerns involved immigration, identity, citizenship and political representation.

In 2012, Manmohan Singh's government provided another example.

When protests against the Kudankulam nuclear power project intensified, Singh criticised foreign-funded NGOs for allegedly encouraging the agitation. The government subsequently froze the accounts of four NGOs and registered cases under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

There were allegations of financial irregularities. These deserved investigation.

But the existence of foreign donations does not automatically establish that an entire protest movement is foreign-controlled.

Residents concerned about nuclear safety do not surrender their citizenship merely because an organisation supporting them receives overseas donations.

The same distinction is important in more recent controversies.

The Greenpeace India and Amnesty International cases involved government action under financial and regulatory laws. During the farmers' protests of 2020–21, the so-called toolkit controversy generated allegations of foreign-directed agitation. NewsClick faced investigations and UAPA-related proceedings over alleged foreign funding and conspiracy.

Such allegations must be investigated through evidence and due process.

Neither an accusation nor a government investigation is equivalent to a judicial finding of guilt.

But there is a disturbing pattern when regulatory action against civil society organisations increasingly becomes a substitute for publicly answering the questions they raise.

THE FOREIGN HAND AND THE CONVENIENCE OF SELECTIVE MEMORY

The political establishment has an interesting relationship with foreign interference.

When an international institution praises the government, it is evidence of India's growing global stature.

When foreign investors arrive, it demonstrates confidence in the Indian economy.

When international leaders compliment the Prime Minister, it is a diplomatic triumph.

When the Indian diaspora organises enthusiastic political gatherings abroad, it represents national pride.

But when foreign newspapers criticise the government, international human rights organisations raise questions, or overseas civil society groups express solidarity with domestic protesters, suddenly sovereignty becomes endangered.

Apparently, foreign involvement is welcome when it brings investment, technology, diplomatic recognition or flattering photographs.

It becomes sinister when it brings uncomfortable questions.

This selective patriotism is not confined to one political party.

Indira Gandhi practised it. Manmohan Singh's government resorted to it. The present political establishment has used similar arguments.

The common denominator is not ideology.

It is power.

THE GLOBAL AUTHORITARIAN PLAYBOOK

The international pattern is even more revealing.

Russia's foreign-agent legislation, introduced in 2012 and subsequently expanded, placed increasing restrictions on organisations receiving overseas funding.

Georgia witnessed mass protests in 2024 against legislation requiring organisations receiving significant foreign funding to register as entities representing foreign interests. The government defended the measure as necessary for transparency and sovereignty. Critics argued that it resembled Russia's model of suppressing independent civil society.

In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vučić portrayed student-led demonstrations as a foreign-inspired colour revolution.

Hungary's Viktor Orbán has repeatedly invoked George Soros and foreign-funded organisations as threats to national sovereignty.

These examples are not identical. Their political systems, legal frameworks and external circumstances differ.

But the rhetorical pattern is strikingly similar.

A government encounters popular discontent. It questions the authenticity of the protesters. It suggests that external actors are manipulating them. It then invokes national security, foreign funding or institutional stability to justify restrictions.

The protesters are transformed from citizens with grievances into instruments of hostile foreign interests.

This is politically useful because it shifts the debate from the substance of their complaints to the supposed loyalty of those making them.

And once patriotism becomes the qualification for participating in public debate, accountability starts looking suspiciously like treason.

BUT WHAT ABOUT GENUINE FOREIGN INTERFERENCE?

There is an important qualification.

Foreign interference is not imaginary.

The CIA's involvement in the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 is historically documented. The American and British intelligence-backed overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 is another established example.

The Soviet Union also conducted extensive influence operations during the Cold War.

Foreign governments have funded political organisations, cultivated political allies, manipulated information and attempted to influence electoral outcomes in other countries.

Modern disinformation operations have made the problem more complicated.

Therefore, dismissing every allegation of foreign interference as propaganda would be intellectually dishonest.

But that makes the demand for evidence more important, not less.

If a foreign intelligence agency is financing or directing an agitation, the government should identify the agency, the financial trail, the intermediaries and the operational connections.

Intelligence assessments should be examined by appropriate institutions. Criminal allegations should be tested through independent investigations and courts.

What cannot be acceptable is the substitution of political insinuation for verifiable evidence.

A country cannot defend democracy by making democratic dissent synonymous with disloyalty.

THE REAL QUESTION BHAGWAT MUST ANSWER

Bhagwat's speech raises a particularly interesting question.

If protests are natural responses to shortcomings in the system, why should demonstrations demanding accountability from the Election Commission be viewed through the lens of Western destabilisation?

If the electoral system is robust, why should criticism threaten it?

If allegations concerning the Special Intensive Revision are unfounded, why not publish comprehensive data, explain the procedures and allow independent scrutiny?

If protesters are making exaggerated claims, why not demolish those claims with facts?

And if there is credible evidence of foreign involvement, why not present it?

The Election Commission is a constitutional institution. Its independence and credibility are essential to Indian democracy. Protecting its reputation does not mean insulating it from criticism.

Indeed, the more important an institution is, the greater its obligation to demonstrate transparency.

There is another irony.

Bhagwat warns that regime change does not necessarily solve a country's problems. Fair enough. But democracy does not promise that changing governments will automatically solve everything. It promises citizens the right to change governments when they believe existing ones have failed.

A peaceful transfer of power is not an existential threat. It is the defining characteristic of constitutional democracy.

Nor does demanding a government's resignation amount to an attempt to dismantle the country.

Governments are temporary arrangements. Nations are enduring political communities.

Confusing the two is the first step towards confusing loyalty to the nation with loyalty to those occupying its offices.

THE FOREIGN HAND AND THE INVISIBLE MIRROR

Perhaps India should establish a national institution to investigate foreign hands.

It could have an elaborate headquarters, an impressive acronym, a substantial budget and a permanent committee of experts.

Its first task should be to examine every major domestic problem.

Unemployment? Investigate the foreign hand.

Corruption? Investigate the foreign hand.

Poor healthcare? Investigate the foreign hand.

Farmers' distress? Investigate the foreign hand.

Electoral irregularities? Investigate the foreign hand.

If nothing is discovered, the institution could simply recommend another investigation.

Meanwhile, the country's actual problems could be placed in cold storage.

There is, however, one final investigation that the proposed institution should undertake.

It should examine why governments and powerful organisations repeatedly find it easier to blame foreigners than to confront domestic failures.

Perhaps the answer is embarrassingly simple.

Foreign enemies cannot vote in Indian elections. Indian citizens can.

The foreign hand is therefore politically useful. It cannot be summoned to Parliament to answer questions. It cannot demand a press conference. It cannot file a Right to Information application. It cannot sit across the table and ask why promises remain unfulfilled.

Most importantly, it cannot expose the difference between political rhetoric and administrative performance.

That is why the foreign hand is such a dependable political companion.

It is always available, conveniently invisible and almost impossible to cross-examine.

But democracy has a simple principle that no amount of patriotic rhetoric can erase.

Citizens do not need permission from foreign governments to be dissatisfied with their own government.

They do not need an overseas sponsor to demand accountability.

And they certainly do not need to demonstrate their patriotism by remaining silent.

The real test of national strength is not whether a country can silence its critics. It is whether its institutions are confident enough to withstand criticism.

Mohan Bhagwat is entitled to warn against foreign interference. The government is entitled, indeed obliged, to investigate genuine threats to national security.

But neither the RSS nor the government enjoys a monopoly over patriotism.

And neither should expect citizens to accept allegations without evidence.

After all, if every protest is a foreign conspiracy, every critic a foreign agent and every demand for accountability an attempt at regime change, what exactly remains of democracy?

Perhaps we should stop looking for the foreign hand.

The more interesting possibility is that the hand we need to examine is right here at home.

And it may be holding the microphone.

#ForeignHand #MohanBhagwat #RSS #IndiraGandhi #IndianDemocracy #PoliticalSatire #ForeignInterference #Emergency1975 #FreedomOfExpression #RightToProtest #ModiGovernment #PoliticalAccountability #DemocracyUnderThreat #IndianPolitics #RandeepWadehra

Serbia as Proof of Concept: Youth Revolt, Electoral Power and the Limits of Political Diffusion

2026-11-01T08:51:23.295+05:30

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Can Serbia become the trendsetter for a new generation of youth revolts in countries such as France, India and elsewhere? The answer is increasingly yes, but with an important qualification. Serbia has demonstrated that sustained, decentralised, student-initiated protests can evolve into a formidable political force, challenge entrenched establishments and ultimately translate moral outrage into electoral power. However, its success cannot simply be replicated elsewhere. Political institutions, social conditions, electoral systems and the character of public grievances differ considerably from country to country.

What Serbia has supplied is something potentially more valuable than a revolutionary blueprint: proof that seemingly powerless young citizens can change the political equation if they combine persistence, organisational discipline and a credible electoral strategy.

Serbia: From Student Protests to Electoral Earthquake

On 25 October 2026, Serbia witnessed a remarkable political upheaval. The student-backed electoral platform, Student List – Students Win, secured a projected 140 of the 250 seats in the National Assembly, according to preliminary electoral commission figures. It received approximately 52.7 per cent of the vote against 39.2 per cent for the Aleksandar Vučić-led United Serbia alliance.

Vučić conceded defeat within hours of the polls closing. The turnout, approaching 69 per cent, was the highest in more than three decades.

The result marked a spectacular setback for a political establishment that had dominated Serbian politics for approximately 14 years.

The origins of this upheaval lie in the November 2024 collapse of a newly renovated railway-station canopy in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people. Public outrage over the tragedy rapidly acquired a political dimension. Protesters suspected corruption, institutional negligence and political interference had contributed to the disaster. Demands for accountability gradually expanded into a nationwide movement challenging corruption, political patronage and the erosion of democratic institutions.

But the students did something that distinguishes their movement from countless demonstrations that have fizzled out after generating headlines.

They organised.

For nearly two years, they maintained campus occupations, public demonstrations, neighbourhood networks and decentralised decision-making structures. Their plenums provided spaces for collective deliberation. They resisted conventional political hierarchies and refused to become appendages of established opposition parties.

Eventually, they assembled a 250-member electoral list comprising professionals from outside conventional politics, including academics, doctors, lawyers, farmers, artists and athletes. Students themselves largely stayed off the list, recognising that voters might prefer experienced professionals over inexperienced political aspirants.

The strategy worked.

The preliminary results gave the Student List an absolute parliamentary majority. However, winning an election and governing a country are two entirely different propositions. The movement must now demonstrate that its decentralised structure can produce coherent leadership, dismantle entrenched patronage networks and deliver institutional reforms.

Serbia has therefore achieved its first historic victory. Whether it can consolidate that victory remains an open question.

Nevertheless, the political message is unmistakable: a movement without conventional political machinery can defeat an established political machine if it builds sufficient public trust.

Why Serbia Resonates Beyond Its Borders

Serbia's experience speaks to a generation increasingly alienated from established political institutions.

Young people across democracies face similar anxieties: unemployment, unaffordable housing, deteriorating public services, educational inequalities, corruption and diminishing confidence in political leadership.

They are also increasingly impatient with the familiar political spectacle in which established parties exchange accusations while fundamental problems remain unresolved.

Social media has made this frustration visible, instantaneous and contagious. But online popularity does not necessarily translate into political influence. Millions of followers can generate a trending hashtag without producing a single electoral victory.

Serbia demonstrates the importance of bridging that gap.

Its students did not merely occupy streets or dominate social media. They developed organisational networks, maintained public engagement, formulated demands and eventually created an electoral vehicle.

This distinction is crucial.

A protest movement can embarrass a government. A sustained political movement can force concessions. An organised electoral movement can potentially replace the government.

That is the Serbian lesson.

France: A Social Explosion Looking for Political Direction

France offers an interesting parallel, although its circumstances are considerably different.

Beginning in September 2026, high-school students and other young protesters began demonstrating against teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating school infrastructure and the Parcoursup university-admissions system.

The protests rapidly expanded beyond educational grievances. Rising living costs, employment anxieties, inadequate public services and dissatisfaction with political leadership became part of the wider mobilisation.

On 24 October, approximately 410,000 people demonstrated across France, according to the Interior Ministry. The movement had expanded beyond students to include trade unions, workers and other disaffected sections of society.

The government has announced concessions, including commitments to limit class sizes in certain schools, provide €4 billion in loans for school renovations and replace the university admissions system by 2028.

Yet student representatives have refused to consider these measures sufficient.

Further demonstrations have been planned for 31 October, while unions have called for additional mobilisation in November.

The situation is significant because France has a long tradition of street protests, strikes and mass demonstrations. However, its movements frequently struggle to convert street-level mobilisation into a coherent electoral alternative.

Could Serbia change that?

Possibly.

French activists could draw inspiration from the Serbian emphasis on sustained organisation, cross-class solidarity and a clearly articulated accountability agenda.

But France has a complicated party system, powerful trade unions, established political movements and a deeply entrenched tradition of ideological contestation. Its protests are also increasingly vulnerable to appropriation by competing political factions.

A Serbian-style independent student electoral list displacing the establishment is therefore not an immediate prospect.

The more likely outcome is sustained pressure on the government, greater political participation among young people and attempts to influence existing political formations.

Nevertheless, Serbia has raised an important question for French youth: why should they restrict themselves to demanding concessions from political establishments when they could eventually attempt to replace them?

India: The Cockroaches Are Beginning to Organise

India presents perhaps the most interesting comparison.

The emergence of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in 2026 demonstrated how online satire could evolve into a substantial youth-led protest movement.

The movement originated after Chief Justice of India Surya Kant made a controversial remark comparing unemployed young people to cockroaches. Rather than retreating in embarrassment, its organisers appropriated the insult and turned it into a symbol of defiance.

What began as an internet joke developed into a nationwide mobilisation around unemployment, examination irregularities, paper leaks and the failures of the education system.

Its most significant achievement came in July, when weeks of protests contributed to the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The government also offered concessions concerning protesters and affected examination candidates.

That was a remarkable achievement for a movement that had begun as political satire.

But the CJP did not disappear after its initial victory.

It subsequently redirected its attention towards electoral integrity, particularly the controversial Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

According to figures cited in the controversy, approximately 130 million names have been deleted during the nationwide verification exercise. The Election Commission maintains that these deletions include deceased, duplicate, relocated and otherwise ineligible voters. Critics, including opposition parties and the CJP, allege that the exercise risks disenfranchising legitimate voters and disproportionately affecting certain communities.

The CJP has demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Its protests have attracted attention in several cities, although the allegations of electoral manipulation remain contested.

This development is particularly important.

The CJP is moving beyond the politics of unemployment and educational grievances towards questions concerning the integrity of democratic institutions themselves.

Could Serbia inspire it to take the next step?

The possibility certainly exists.

India's youth movements could move from social-media campaigns and episodic demonstrations towards sustained voter outreach, electoral awareness campaigns and eventually independent political participation.

However, India presents challenges on an entirely different scale.

Its enormous population, linguistic and regional diversity, federal structure, entrenched political parties, caste and community networks, and sharply differing regional priorities make nationwide mobilisation extraordinarily difficult.

Serbia's relatively contained political geography cannot be compared with India's complexity.

Moreover, CJP is not yet a conventional registered political party with an established nationwide electoral organisation. Its ability to maintain momentum, develop a credible political programme and build lasting institutional structures remains untested.

There is also a fundamental question: can a movement built around satire and public anger evolve into a credible political alternative?

Serbia suggests that it is possible. It does not guarantee that it will happen in India.

Nevertheless, the CJP has already demonstrated something important: young Indians are not necessarily politically apathetic. They can organise, mobilise and extract concessions when they believe their collective interests are threatened.

What Can Travel Across Borders?

Certain features of the Serbian experience are readily transferable.

Decentralised organisation, social-media coordination combined with physical mobilisation, campus networks, symbolic messaging and sustained public engagement can work in different political environments.

So can the emphasis on anti-corruption, institutional accountability, educational opportunity, employment and affordable housing.

Perhaps the most important lesson is strategic.

Protests should not become an end in themselves.

They can provide visibility, generate public pressure and expose institutional failures. But unless movements develop organisational depth and identify a credible route towards political influence, their achievements may remain temporary.

Serbia's students understood this distinction.

They did not simply demand that Vučić leave office. They created an electoral platform capable of challenging his political establishment.

That is the difference between expressing dissent and acquiring political power.

However, other elements of the Serbian experience may prove difficult to reproduce.

A single tragedy that galvanises an entire country is relatively uncommon. A leaderless movement may be effective in organising protests but can encounter serious difficulties when confronted with the responsibilities of governance.

Furthermore, established political establishments rarely surrender power without resistance. Electoral manipulation, administrative obstruction, media hostility and attempts to divide protest coalitions can undermine even apparently successful movements.

Serbia's new parliamentary majority will have to confront precisely these challenges.

Its real test begins now.

The Larger Democratic Question

There is another dimension to this phenomenon that deserves attention.

For decades, political establishments across democracies have treated young people as electoral constituencies to be courted periodically rather than citizens whose concerns deserve continuous attention.

Young people are encouraged to vote, but their economic insecurities, educational aspirations and anxieties about the future often receive inadequate attention.

Meanwhile, political discourse is increasingly dominated by personality cults, ideological polarisation, identity politics and the perpetual struggle for electoral survival.

This creates a dangerous democratic disconnect.

When conventional political institutions fail to respond, younger generations increasingly turn to alternative forms of mobilisation. Sometimes these movements are progressive, sometimes conservative, sometimes anarchic and sometimes merely satirical.

Their ideological differences notwithstanding, they share an impatience with established political arrangements.

The danger for governments is that dismissing such movements as immature, manipulated or politically inexperienced may actually strengthen them.

Serbia is a particularly instructive example of what can happen when authorities underestimate the staying power of student mobilisation.

Bottom Line: Serbia Has Changed the Conversation

Serbia should be understood as a proof of concept rather than a universal revolutionary template.

Its students have demonstrated that persistent civic mobilisation, organisational discipline and electoral participation can overturn an entrenched political establishment.

France is witnessing an expanding social mobilisation that could acquire a more explicitly political character. India has already seen the Cockroach Janta Party demonstrate the capacity of youth activism to extract significant concessions, and it is now challenging the credibility of electoral institutions.

Whether these movements can develop into durable political alternatives remains uncertain.

But something has changed.

Young people are increasingly questioning the assumption that political power belongs exclusively to established parties, wealthy interests, influential families and professional politicians.

They are discovering that the streets can be a beginning rather than an end.

Serbia has shown that a generation dismissed as politically inexperienced can organise itself, mobilise millions and eventually enter Parliament through the ballot box.

The most significant lesson is not that young people should imitate Serbian students.

It is that they should stop underestimating their own collective political power.

And perhaps established political leaders should stop underestimating them, too.

The cockroaches, it appears, have learnt how to vote. The more ambitious ones may even want to govern.

#SerbiaYouthRevolution #GenZProtests #StudentMovement #SerbiaElections #YouthPower #CockroachJantaParty #IndiaPolitics #FrenchProtests #YouthActivism #DemocracyUnderThreat #AntiCorruptionMovement #PoliticalRevolution #ElectoralPolitics #GlobalYouthMovement #WritersLens

Serbia as Proof of Concept: Youth Revolt, Electoral Power and the Limits of Political Diffusion

2026-10-31T21:30:37.118+05:30

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Serbia: From Student Protests to Electoral Earthquake

Vučić conceded defeat within hours of the polls closing. The turnout, approaching 69 per cent, was the highest in more than three decades.

The result marked a spectacular setback for a political establishment that had dominated Serbian politics for approximately 14 years.

But the students did something that distinguishes their movement from countless demonstrations that have fizzled out after generating headlines.

They organised.

The strategy worked.

Serbia has therefore achieved its first historic victory. Whether it can consolidate that victory remains an open question.

Nevertheless, the political message is unmistakable: a movement without conventional political machinery can defeat an established political machine if it builds sufficient public trust.

Why Serbia Resonates Beyond Its Borders

Serbia's experience speaks to a generation increasingly alienated from established political institutions.

They are also increasingly impatient with the familiar political spectacle in which established parties exchange accusations while fundamental problems remain unresolved.

Serbia demonstrates the importance of bridging that gap.

This distinction is crucial.

A protest movement can embarrass a government. A sustained political movement can force concessions. An organised electoral movement can potentially replace the government.

That is the Serbian lesson.

France: A Social Explosion Looking for Political Direction

France offers an interesting parallel, although its circumstances are considerably different.

Yet student representatives have refused to consider these measures sufficient.

Further demonstrations have been planned for 31 October, while unions have called for additional mobilisation in November.

Could Serbia change that?

Possibly.

French activists could draw inspiration from the Serbian emphasis on sustained organisation, cross-class solidarity and a clearly articulated accountability agenda.

A Serbian-style independent student electoral list displacing the establishment is therefore not an immediate prospect.

The more likely outcome is sustained pressure on the government, greater political participation among young people and attempts to influence existing political formations.

India: The Cockroaches Are Beginning to Organise

India presents perhaps the most interesting comparison.

The emergence of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in 2026 demonstrated how online satire could evolve into a substantial youth-led protest movement.

What began as an internet joke developed into a nationwide mobilisation around unemployment, examination irregularities, paper leaks and the failures of the education system.

That was a remarkable achievement for a movement that had begun as political satire.

But the CJP did not disappear after its initial victory.

It subsequently redirected its attention towards electoral integrity, particularly the controversial Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

The CJP has demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Its protests have attracted attention in several cities, although the allegations of electoral manipulation remain contested.

This development is particularly important.

The CJP is moving beyond the politics of unemployment and educational grievances towards questions concerning the integrity of democratic institutions themselves.

Could Serbia inspire it to take the next step?

The possibility certainly exists.

However, India presents challenges on an entirely different scale.

Serbia's relatively contained political geography cannot be compared with India's complexity.

There is also a fundamental question: can a movement built around satire and public anger evolve into a credible political alternative?

Serbia suggests that it is possible. It does not guarantee that it will happen in India.

What Can Travel Across Borders?

Certain features of the Serbian experience are readily transferable.

So can the emphasis on anti-corruption, institutional accountability, educational opportunity, employment and affordable housing.

Perhaps the most important lesson is strategic.

Protests should not become an end in themselves.

Serbia's students understood this distinction.

They did not simply demand that Vučić leave office. They created an electoral platform capable of challenging his political establishment.

That is the difference between expressing dissent and acquiring political power.

However, other elements of the Serbian experience may prove difficult to reproduce.

Serbia's new parliamentary majority will have to confront precisely these challenges.

Its real test begins now.

The Larger Democratic Question

There is another dimension to this phenomenon that deserves attention.

Young people are encouraged to vote, but their economic insecurities, educational aspirations and anxieties about the future often receive inadequate attention.

Meanwhile, political discourse is increasingly dominated by personality cults, ideological polarisation, identity politics and the perpetual struggle for electoral survival.

This creates a dangerous democratic disconnect.

Their ideological differences notwithstanding, they share an impatience with established political arrangements.

The danger for governments is that dismissing such movements as immature, manipulated or politically inexperienced may actually strengthen them.

Serbia is a particularly instructive example of what can happen when authorities underestimate the staying power of student mobilisation.

Bottom Line: Serbia Has Changed the Conversation

Serbia should be understood as a proof of concept rather than a universal revolutionary template.

Its students have demonstrated that persistent civic mobilisation, organisational discipline and electoral participation can overturn an entrenched political establishment.

Whether these movements can develop into durable political alternatives remains uncertain.

But something has changed.

Young people are increasingly questioning the assumption that political power belongs exclusively to established parties, wealthy interests, influential families and professional politicians.

They are discovering that the streets can be a beginning rather than an end.

Serbia has shown that a generation dismissed as politically inexperienced can organise itself, mobilise millions and eventually enter Parliament through the ballot box.

The most significant lesson is not that young people should imitate Serbian students.

It is that they should stop underestimating their own collective political power.

And perhaps established political leaders should stop underestimating them, too.

The cockroaches, it appears, have learnt how to vote. The more ambitious ones may even want to govern.

#SerbiaYouthRevolution #RahulGandhi #GenZProtests #StudentMovement #SerbiaElections #YouthPower #CockroachJantaParty #IndiaPolitics #FrenchProtests #YouthActivism #INDIABlock #DemocracyUnderThreat #AntiCorruptionMovement #RandeepWadehra #JantarMantar #PoliticalRevolution #ElectoralPolitics #GlobalYouthMovement #WritersLens

THE GREAT TATA TAMASHA: Is Modi Plotting a Corporate Heist, or Has Rahul Found a Boardroom Bhoot?

2026-10-31T08:11:10.507+05:30

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India's most respected industrial empire is embroiled in a boardroom battle. Rahul Gandhi smells a conspiracy. The Modi government smells political mischief. And somewhere in the middle, the Reserve Bank of India is insisting that its rulebook must be taken seriously. Welcome to the Great Tata Tamasha, where corporate governance meets political theatre, and the audience is expected to decide who is the villain before the evidence arrives.

Act I: Corporate Governance or Corporate Assassination?

Imagine a corporate empire worth billions, a boardroom divided over leadership, a powerful family trust resisting a listing, a regulator refusing to bend its rules, and politicians rushing in to explain what is really happening.

Welcome to India, where even a board meeting can acquire the atmosphere of a national security emergency!

On 28 October 2026, Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition, took to X with a dramatic warning. Tata, he declared, was being "criminally destroyed". Business leaders were apparently too frightened to speak. Indian industry, he insisted, must not become a plaything of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.

Then came the pointed question: when would "crony number 1" arrive to claim pieces of the Tata empire?

The intended reference was widely understood to be Gautam Adani.

The allegation was explosive: was the Modi government deliberately weakening India's most iconic industrial group to make way for a favoured corporate rival?

It is a politically potent proposition. It also happens to be an allegation that requires considerably more than a dramatic social-media post to establish.

There is, however, a genuine corporate crisis behind the political fireworks. And it is serious enough without requiring an imaginary villain to make it interesting.

Act II: Tata Sons and the Sons of Contention

Tata Sons, the holding company at the heart of the sprawling Tata conglomerate, is controlled by the Tata Trusts, which hold roughly 66 per cent of its equity. Its businesses span steel, automobiles, information technology, aviation and other strategic industries.

This is hardly a neighbourhood sweet shop whose proprietor can be replaced because the samosas have gone cold.

At the centre of the dispute are Noel Tata, chairman of the Tata Trusts, and N. Chandrasekaran, executive chairman of Tata Sons.

Chandrasekaran's reappointment for another five-year term, beginning February 2027, was approved by the Tata Sons board on 17 September 2026, reportedly by four votes to one. Noel Tata dissented.

He has questioned the procedure, including the agenda, selection process and requirements governing votes by Trust-nominated directors. He has also sought relevant records, including audio-video recordings and final minutes.

In other words, there is a serious disagreement over corporate procedure, institutional authority and leadership.

One can almost imagine the agenda of the next board meeting:

1. Appointment of the executive chairman.

2. Whether the appointment was procedurally valid.

3. Whether the Articles of Association were followed.

4. Whether the directors should seek legal advice before the next round of television debates.

The real issues concern governance, control and the future character of Tata Sons. They deserve examination under the applicable corporate laws and the company's Articles of Association.

But the political temptation to convert a boardroom dispute into a morality play is apparently irresistible.

Act III: Enter the RBI, Carrying a Rulebook

Just when the corporate plot threatened to become too complicated, the Reserve Bank of India entered the picture.

Tata Sons was classified as an upper-layer non-banking financial company in 2022, bringing it within a regulatory framework that includes listing obligations.

After repaying substantial borrowings and redeeming preference shares worth around ₹20,000 crore, Tata Sons sought to surrender its registration, apparently hoping to retain its privately held status.

In September 2026, the RBI rejected the application.

The decision intensified the controversy over listing. The Tata Sons board subsequently voted to take steps towards listing, with Noel Tata reportedly the sole dissenter.

Noel maintains that the RBI's communication does not necessarily establish an IPO as the only possible route and that alternatives should be explored.

This is a legitimate regulatory and corporate-governance question.

Imagine the frustration of a company that has repaid substantial borrowings, redeemed preference shares and still finds the regulator unwilling to grant it the desired exit from its regulatory classification.

The RBI, however, is not a customer-relations department whose job is to keep large corporations happy.

Its decisions must be assessed against the applicable regulatory framework. Equally, its independence and consistency must remain open to scrutiny.

But the rejection of an application, by itself, does not establish that the regulator was instructed to destroy Tata Sons or facilitate its acquisition by another corporate group.

A regulator can make a decision a company dislikes without becoming an accomplice in a political operation.

Act IV: The Mysterious Meeting at Amit Shah's Residence

Then there is the meeting that has provided Rahul Gandhi with additional political ammunition.

In October 2025, Noel Tata, Chandrasekaran, Venu Srinivasan and Darius Khambata reportedly met Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at Shah's residence amid tensions within the Tata Trusts.

The government was reportedly concerned about stability within a conglomerate of enormous economic significance.

One can understand the concern. Tata is a major employer, investor and participant in strategic sectors, including aviation, electronics manufacturing and semiconductors. Prolonged institutional paralysis could have consequences beyond the boardroom.

Governments routinely concern themselves with the stability of major businesses. The question is whether their involvement remains within legitimate institutional boundaries.

Rahul Gandhi has questioned the significance of this meeting and its implications for corporate independence.

That is a legitimate line of inquiry. What was discussed? Was any pressure applied? Did the meeting influence subsequent regulatory or corporate decisions? Is there documentary evidence connecting the discussions to particular outcomes?

These are questions the government should be willing to address.

But a meeting between ministers and industrialists is not, by itself, proof of a clandestine arrangement.

Otherwise, every government interaction with major industry would have to be treated as a potential criminal investigation.

The distinction between legitimate government engagement and improper political interference is important. Neither should be assumed without evidence.

Act V: Enter the Alleged Corporate Undertaker

And now we arrive at the most politically interesting character in this drama: the alleged beneficiary of Tata's supposed destruction.

Rahul Gandhi's reference to "crony number 1" was widely interpreted as an allusion to Gautam Adani.

The Opposition has repeatedly questioned Adani's extraordinary expansion across infrastructure, energy and other sectors, alleging preferential treatment by the government. Such allegations deserve examination on their individual merits.

But the claim that the government is deliberately weakening Tata to enable Adani to acquire its assets is an entirely different proposition.

It requires evidence connecting political intentions, regulatory decisions, boardroom developments and a concrete acquisition pathway.

No publicly established evidence presented in this controversy so far demonstrates such a coordinated plan.

Nor is the Tata empire a collection of abandoned railway platforms waiting for an enterprising bidder to purchase them at a clearance sale.

The Tata Trusts hold a controlling stake in Tata Sons. The group's ownership structure is complex, and its philanthropic institutional character adds another layer to any question of control.

Could parts of a large conglomerate be bought, sold or restructured? Certainly. Businesses routinely undertake transactions.

But the suggestion of an engineered dismantling of Tata for another corporate group's benefit requires considerably more than suspicion about the government's relationship with a rival industrialist.

A politically convenient theory is not necessarily a commercially feasible transaction.

Act VI: Nirmala Sitharaman Enters the Ring

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responded sharply, accusing Rahul Gandhi of politicising commercial and legal matters and spreading distrust.

She also invoked the Licence-Quota Raj, when businesses depended heavily on government permissions.

Her argument has merit. Every difficult commercial decision cannot automatically be described as a crime.

But the government's indignation cannot settle the matter either.

A minister denying a conspiracy does not establish that every decision was proper, just as an opposition leader alleging one does not establish that it occurred.

Both sides have a peculiar talent for treating their own assertions as evidence.

The government says the Opposition is spreading distrust. The Opposition says the government is manufacturing corporate dependence.

Meanwhile, the public is expected to choose between two competing narratives, neither of which can substitute for documentary evidence.

The government should answer legitimate questions rather than dismiss them as political mischief. The Opposition, in turn, must distinguish suspicion from proof.

That is what democratic accountability demands.

Act VII: Why Are India's Business Leaders Silent?

Rahul Gandhi also challenged business leaders for remaining silent, suggesting that fear has made Indian industry reluctant to speak against the government.

This is a serious concern. If business leaders believe that criticism could jeopardise contracts, approvals or access, the consequences for economic freedom and democratic accountability could be substantial.

But silence can have several explanations.

Some may fear political repercussions. Others may regard the dispute as an internal Tata matter. Still others may simply prefer not to become unwilling participants in partisan politics.

Imagine a businessman receiving an invitation to a television debate.

"Sir, we want your opinion on the Tata controversy."

"Certainly. What is the subject?"

"Whether the government is conspiring to destroy Tata so Adani can acquire its assets."

"And if I disagree?"

"We shall ask why you are afraid to speak."

"And if I agree?"

"We shall ask what evidence you possess."

"And if I decline?"

"We shall ask why Indian business is silent."

At this point, the businessman may reasonably conclude that silence is the safest contribution he can make to the national debate.

Nevertheless, the possibility of intimidation must not be dismissed. The real question is whether credible evidence of coercion exists, not whether business leaders have issued enough public statements to satisfy the Opposition.

Silence may invite suspicion. It does not, by itself, prove guilt, fear or complicity.

The Final Act: Beyond the Political Circus

Beneath the farce lie several substantial questions.

Were the rules governing Chandrasekaran's reappointment followed correctly? Was the RBI's decision consistent with its regulatory framework? How should philanthropic trusts balance their long-term institutional purpose with commercial accountability? What safeguards prevent political access from becoming improper influence? Are government policies and contracts favouring particular corporate interests at the expense of fair competition?

These questions deserve scrutiny, investigation and transparent answers.

So, is the Modi government deliberately destroying Tata to prepare the ground for an Adani takeover?

On the publicly established evidence presented in this controversy, that remains an allegation, not a demonstrated fact.

There is a genuine leadership dispute within Tata Sons. There are disagreements over procedure, ownership and listing. The RBI has rejected Tata Sons' application to surrender its registration. Senior government figures have met Tata leaders amid concerns about corporate stability.

These developments justify scrutiny. They do not, without further evidence, establish a coordinated state-directed campaign to dismantle Tata for another corporate group's benefit.

Rahul Gandhi may have identified a legitimate danger in the relationship between political power and concentrated economic wealth. His broader questions about corporate independence deserve answers.

But converting a complex governance dispute into an alleged criminal operation without establishing the necessary links risks making political rhetoric outrun the evidence.

The government, meanwhile, must not imagine that dismissing the charge as political theatre absolves it of responsibility for maintaining transparent and impartial institutions.

The proper response to suspicion is neither automatic conviction nor automatic acquittal.

It is investigation.

For now, India is watching a corporate family argue over leadership, a regulator insist on its rules, politicians exchange accusations and television studios prepare their next instalment.

Perhaps the next board meeting will settle some of the questions. Perhaps litigation will follow. Perhaps new evidence will change the political narrative.

Until then, let us resist the temptation to pronounce a corporate assassination before establishing that a murder occurred.

And let us remember one final principle of democratic accountability:

A government must not be allowed to escape scrutiny merely because an allegation is dramatic. But an allegation must not be mistaken for evidence merely because it is politically dramatic.

In the Great Tata Tamasha, that may be the only verdict worth delivering.

#RahulGandhi #TataGroup #TataSons #NarendraModi #AmitShah #GautamAdani #CronyCapitalism #IndianPolitics #PoliticalSatire #CorporateGovernance #TataControversy #NirmalaSitharaman #CorporateIndia #ModiGovernment #WritersLens

The Evaporating Freedom of Indian Universities: Academic Autonomy and the Health of Democracy

2026-10-30T08:19:16.791+05:30

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A true and healthy democracy requires universities that are free to think, question, research, and speak. These are structural essentials. They train citizens to distinguish evidence from propaganda, act as early-warning systems for social and political pathologies, protect spaces for dissent before those spaces vanish elsewhere, and generate independent knowledge that can restrain official power. When that freedom evaporates, a democracy loses one of its most reliable mechanisms of self-correction. In India the ideal remains constitutionally grounded yet practically eroded. International assessments place the country in the “severely restricted” category of academic freedom, reflecting cumulative tightening of institutional autonomy, campus expression, and scholarly independence.

Why do free universities matter? In answer we need to draw comparative historical lessons with concrete cases of institutional purges, analyse the pressures visible in India with specific recent examples, and consider what a more durable settlement of autonomy and accountability might require.

We all know that a democracy needs more than periodic elections. It requires a citizenry capable of evaluating competing claims, debating unpopular ideas, and holding institutions accountable. Universities perform these functions through teaching, research, public debate, and the cultivation of intellectual pluralism. Students learn not only technical skills but the habits of evidence-based reasoning and constitutional literacy. Scholars often surface problems—environmental degradation, communal polarisation, economic inequality, or the misuse of law—before they harden into crises. Campuses remain among the few places where an unpopular argument can still be voiced without immediate political or administrative punishment. Independent research equips journalists, courts, legislators, and ordinary citizens with data that can challenge official narratives. As Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has observed, a healthy democracy requires institutions that give people space to “think differently, question established positions and express their views.”

Academic freedom is not a narrow professional privilege. It encompasses the freedom of teachers and students to study, teach, research, discuss, and publish diverse viewpoints, while institutional autonomy supplies the practical conditions that make that freedom possible. Individual academic freedom protects inquiry and dissent. Institutional autonomy ensures that universities, rather than the state or a ruling party, control appointments, curricula, research priorities, and campus events. Freedom of expression, within lawful limits, enables public criticism. An AAUP-linked study on India underscores the point: “being able to teach freely, as well as to write and to think on sensitive issues, is critical for sustaining democracy.”

History supplies stark illustrations of what happens when these protections collapse. In Nazi Germany after 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service triggered systematic purges. At the University of Heidelberg roughly 23–25 percent of the teaching staff were dismissed; among those forced out were the socialist jurist Gustav Radbruch, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Otto Meyerhof, the sociologist Alfred Weber, and numerous others labelled “non-Aryan” or politically unreliable. The University of Berlin lost approximately 32–36 percent of its academic staff; the Nobel chemist Fritz Haber resigned in protest and left, while dozens of colleagues in medicine, economics, and the humanities were removed. At the University of Göttingen some 45 professors were dismissed, including the physicists Max Born and James Franck, the mathematicians Richard Courant and Emmy Noether. The University of Frankfurt suffered comparable losses, approaching 37 percent of its faculty. After the 1938 Anschluss the University of Vienna expelled more than 350 teachers—over 200 on racial grounds—and barred roughly 2,230 Jewish students. Curricula were ideologically remodelled and the remaining staff were brought into line. The destruction of academic independence both preceded and accompanied the dismantling of democratic institutions.

In the Soviet Union, research was repeatedly subordinated to official ideology. The most dramatic episode came with the August 1948 session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), which elevated Trofim Lysenko’s doctrines and declared classical genetics a bourgeois pseudoscience. At Moscow State University the Biological Faculty was reorganised; the geneticist Ivan Schmalhausen was removed as head of the Darwinism Department and the entire staff of the genetics and Darwinism departments were dismissed. Parallel purges struck Leningrad State University, where opponents of Lysenko were replaced by his supporters. Across the country hundreds of geneticists were dismissed, demoted, or transferred; textbooks were withdrawn and laboratory materials destroyed. Earlier, Nikolai Vavilov, the leading plant geneticist, had been arrested and died in prison. Scientific conclusions were required to conform to political doctrine, with lasting damage to biology and agriculture.

Under apartheid in South Africa, universities that challenged racial segregation faced sustained pressure. In 1968 the University of Cape Town appointed the Black anthropologist Archie Mafeje to a senior lectureship; the Minister of Education immediately intervened, threatening legislation that would force the university to rescind the offer and bar future Black appointments. The university yielded; students responded with a large sit-in that became a landmark protest for academic autonomy. The University of the Witwatersrand similarly confronted government attempts to impose racial quotas on admissions, restrict political activity on campus, and apply financial sanctions. Student leaders and staff were harassed, residences raided, and protests met with police action. Independent scholarship at these institutions nevertheless helped sustain opposition and contributed to the eventual democratic transition.

The common lesson is clear: when universities become instruments of official ideology, society forfeits its capacity for self-correction. Post-independence India once treated universities and research institutions as contributors to a democratic public culture—through constitutional scholarship, social-science research, scientific institutions, and vigorous student politics. Their value lay not in enforced unanimity but in the capacity to argue.

India’s constitutional framework appears, on its face, to protect the necessary freedoms. Article 19 safeguards speech, expression, assembly, and association; the Preamble’s commitments to liberty, equality, and fraternity supply a normative foundation for free inquiry. Yet the practical environment has grown more contested. The Scholars at Risk report *Free to Think 2026* records that India’s Academic Freedom Index score fell from 0.38 in 2022 to 0.14 in 2025, placing the country in the “severely restricted” category. The report links the decline to greater central-government influence over university governance, leadership appointments, and academic priorities, and documents dozens of specific incidents. India recorded the highest number of attacks among the countries covered in the reporting period.

Institutional autonomy has become a central flashpoint. The proposed UGC framework for vice-chancellor appointments expands eligibility beyond senior academics to candidates from industry, public administration, and public policy, while strengthening the role of government-appointed authorities in selection. Because vice-chancellors shape faculty recruitment, curriculum, campus discipline, and intellectual culture, such appointments are never merely administrative; they determine the direction of the institution. Parallel concerns have been raised about the removal of the earlier 10 percent cap on non-permanent, contract faculty. Insecure employment can discourage research or speech that risks displeasing administrators or governments, converting academic work into a form of precarious labour subject to quiet self-censorship.

Campus expression and individual academic freedom have narrowed through concrete actions. At South Asian University, Professor Snehashish Bhattacharya was terminated in September 2025 for “misconduct against university interests” after he and fourteen other faculty members signed a November 2022 letter criticising the university’s handling of student protests the previous month; he had already served a two-year suspension. At the SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Tamil Nadu, Assistant Professor Lora Santhakumar was suspended in May 2025 and dismissed in December after posting WhatsApp status updates opposing war and criticising civilian casualties linked to Indian military action in Pakistan; one post read, “Say NO to war. And don’t be afraid to say so, even if it is not the popular opinion.” Her contact details circulated online, triggering abuse and death threats. At Jamia Millia Islamia, Professor Virendra Balaji Shahare was suspended for setting an examination question that asked students to “discuss the atrocities against Muslim minorities in India” in a course on social problems.

The most recent and sustained confrontation at Jamia Millia Islamia itself illustrates how demands for basic institutional democracy—student representation—can rapidly escalate into restrictions on campus life. In October 2026, students launched an agitation demanding restoration of the Jamia Millia Islamia Students’ Union (JMISU), whose elections have not been held since 2006. Hunger strikes began; the administration shifted classes online, closed gates and libraries, restricted canteen access, and later extended online teaching and moved end-semester examinations online. Students reported detentions, campus bans, and pressure on hostels; the university alleged vandalism, stone-pelting, damage to gates and CCTV systems, and threats to staff. Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita was invoked outside the campus to prohibit unlawful assemblies. Political figures from opposition parties attempted visits, prompting FIRs for alleged trespass; teachers accused outsiders of escalating an internal matter. The administration offered elections within 15 days of approving a union constitution, revoked some suspensions, and promised an inquiry into security conduct—yet protesters continued, seeking firm dates and further accountability. What began as a demand for a student body after two decades of suspension became a wider contest over the right to organise, occupy space, and press institutional claims without the campus being locked down.

Event cancellations and administrative restrictions have become routine elsewhere as well. Banaras Hindu University and the University of Mumbai cancelled lectures because invited speakers had voiced criticism of the BJP-led government. Delhi University cancelled a seminar titled “Land, Property and Democratic Rights,” citing “administrative reasons,” and at one point imposed a temporary blanket ban on public meetings, rallies, and demonstrations that halted cultural festivals, press conferences, and iftar gatherings; later rules required 72-hour prior approval for protests, with threats of expulsion or police action for violations. Earlier, the 2017 “Cultures of Protest” seminar at Ramjas College (University of Delhi) was violently disrupted by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad after invitations were extended to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid; stones were thrown, power was cut, and the event was partially cancelled under pressure. Similar administrative interventions have included the cancellation of a talk at IIT Madras described as “controversial and unsuitable,” a Delhi University professor required to submit lecture text before travel approval, and the cancellation of a Karnataka State Open University conference after government protocol objections.

A related pathology is the deployment of political labels—“anti-national,” “urban Naxal,” “tukde-tukde gang,” or “dimaagi Naxal”—to delegitimise scholarship, student politics, or criticism of government policy. Such rhetoric does more than silence individuals; it teaches a generation of students that questioning power is itself dangerous. A democracy suffers when patriotism is redefined as agreement with the government of the day rather than loyalty to the Constitution and the public interest. Additional pressures include the Jammu and Kashmir authorities’ ban on the sale, distribution, and possession of 25 books examining the region’s political and social history, and disciplinary actions against students at institutions such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Jamia Millia Islamia over protests.

A balanced assessment must acknowledge that universities face genuine challenges of quality, funding, employability, campus discipline, and the prevention of violence or hate speech. Regulation is legitimate when it protects students, upholds academic standards, and prevents institutions from becoming partisan political bases. The decisive test, however, is whether rules are neutral, transparent, and applied through academic bodies rather than used to suppress inconvenient ideas. The problem intensifies when governments control leadership, funding, appointments, event permissions, and research priorities in ways that encourage self-censorship. Scholars at Risk warns that without autonomy, scholars and students may constrain their own research and teaching out of fear of repression. The October 2026 events at Jamia show how even a demand for a long-suspended student union—itself a form of institutional accountability—can trigger campus closures, preventive detentions, and competing narratives of vandalism versus crackdown, leaving little neutral space for negotiation.

What, then, would a healthier settlement look like? Clear autonomy boundaries should be published, distinguishing decisions that properly belong to university academic bodies from those that genuinely require government approval. Vice-chancellors, deans, and faculty should be selected through credible, transparent, academically led processes. Lawful dissent—campus seminars, student debates, research publications, and peaceful protests—should not be treated as security threats merely because they criticise policy or demand institutional representation. Secure academic employment, whether permanent or fair contractual, reduces the fear that shapes what scholars choose to study or say. Disciplinary action against students or faculty must follow transparent procedures with avenues for appeal and judicial review. Finally, curricula in history, politics, religion, caste, gender, economy, and science should be taught through evidence and multiple perspectives rather than ideological conformity. Student unions, long a feature of Indian campus life, should be restored through clear, time-bound processes rather than left in indefinite abeyance that itself becomes a flashpoint.

A democracy is healthiest not when its universities agree with power, but when they are strong enough to disagree with it responsibly. The Indian question today is therefore not whether universities should be free to think and act; it is whether the country can afford the democratic cost if that freedom continues to evaporate. The constitutional architecture still exists. The empirical record of restriction—documented in specific dismissals, cancellations, and administrative controls at South Asian University, SRM, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University, Mumbai University, Ramjas College, and elsewhere, and most recently in the prolonged 2026 student-union agitation at Jamia itself—is now well established. The remaining variable is political will: whether governments, university administrators, and the broader public recognise that independent universities are not adversaries of the nation but among its most valuable assets. Without that recognition, the space for evidence-based dissent will shrink further, and the capacity of Indian democracy to correct its own errors will diminish accordingly.

#JamiaMilliaIslamia #BanarasHinduUniversity #RamjasCollege #MumbaiUniversity #SRM, #SouthAsianUniversity, #JNU, #AkhilBharatiyaVidyarthiParishad, #LoraSanthakumar #TrofimLysenko #FritzHaber #Göttingen #MoscowUniversity #ScholarsAtRisk #IntellectualFreedom #UGCIndia #StudentProtests #DissentMatters #DelhiUniversity #EducationUnderThreat

Without Fear or Favour? Three Democracies, Three Judiciaries, and the Strange Business of Justice

2026-10-29T08:12:14.404+05:30

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Today, Indian judiciary is facing vigorous scrutiny by the civil society and important stakeholders, barring the Godi Media, of course.

Let’s discuss the anatomy of a judicial system that sometimes forgets what justice is for. Let’s find out where it stands vis-a-vis judicial systems in two other major democracies.

1. Justice: Available in Principle, Delayed in Practice

Justice is blind. Unfortunately, in India, she is also frequently exhausted, overworked, under-resourced and trapped in a queue that began forming before some litigants were born.

A citizen approaches the courts seeking justice. The Constitution promises equality before the law. The lawyer promises a vigorous argument. The judge promises to hear both sides. And the system promises, without specifying a delivery date, to consider the matter.

Meanwhile, the citizen grows older, the witnesses grow forgetful, the evidence gathers dust, and the lawyers' bills continue to arrive with commendable punctuality.

Welcome to the world's largest democracy, where the judicial process can sometimes resemble a relay race in which every participant inherits the baton but nobody remembers where the finishing line is.

Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul's Without Fear or Favour provides a particularly revealing entry point into this predicament. The memoir raises questions about judicial appointments, the executive's role in the Collegium process and the handling of sensitive cases. Its reported observations have also revived debate about the relationship between former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and his colleagues.

These are not trivial disagreements over administrative etiquette. They concern the institutional arrangements through which a democracy attempts to prevent political power from becoming judicial power's uninvited supervisor.

The experiences of India, Britain and the United States reveal three different approaches to this challenge. India struggles with opacity and executive friction. Britain has developed a more formalised appointments mechanism but faces serious delays in criminal courts. America protects federal judges through life tenure while making their selection an intensely partisan spectacle.

Each system has its virtues. Each has its failings. And each demonstrates that judicial independence, like constitutional democracy, is easier to proclaim than to maintain.

2. India: Of Collegiums, Governments and Constitutional Courtesies

India's judicial appointment system is an extraordinary constitutional arrangement.

The President formally appoints Supreme Court and High Court judges, but recommendations are controlled by the judicial Collegium, a mechanism developed through Supreme Court judgments rather than created by an express constitutional provision.

The arrangement emerged partly from a legitimate fear: if the government could freely appoint judges, it might appoint people whose greatest qualification was an agreeable disposition towards those in power.

The Collegium was supposed to prevent precisely that.

Yet an institution designed to protect judicial independence has developed its own problems. Its deliberations are largely private, its criteria can appear inconsistent, and the public is often left wondering how one candidate becomes a judge while another disappears into administrative oblivion.

The government, meanwhile, can delay recommendations, raise objections and return names for reconsideration. Under the established process, reiterated recommendations are expected to be honoured, but the interval between recommendation and appointment can itself become consequential.

Enter Justice Kaul's memoir.

The reported concerns about government views being sought before Collegium deliberations raise an uncomfortable question: if the executive's preferences enter the room before judges have independently formed their collective judgment, whose judgment is the Collegium actually exercising?

The government need not issue an order saying, 'Appoint this person and reject that one.' Influence can be subtler. A delay here, an objection there, a request for reconsideration somewhere else: the cumulative effect may matter more than any individual intervention.

Of course, an executive objection is not automatically interference. Governments may possess relevant information about candidates. National security and integrity concerns cannot simply be dismissed because they originate with the executive.

The constitutional question is whether such concerns are examined through transparent, principled procedures or become convenient instruments for rewarding the agreeable and inconveniencing the independent.

There is also the troubling issue of sensitive case assignments. Reports concerning the reassignment of a bench handling a politically consequential matter invite scrutiny, but they do not, by themselves, establish improper interference. Judicial administration must distinguish legitimate roster management from arrangements that could undermine confidence in impartial adjudication.

The point is simple: the public must have reason to trust the process.

A judiciary cannot demand unquestioning faith in its independence while treating reasonable questions about its internal workings as an assault upon judicial dignity.

That would be rather like a restaurant insisting that its kitchen must remain secret because diners might otherwise enquire about the ingredients.

The Collegium's defenders have a compelling argument: judicial appointments must not become a prize distributed by the ruling party. Its critics have an equally important point: independence from the executive cannot justify freedom from accountability.

India needs both.

3. Britain: Less Mystery, More Machinery

The United Kingdom offers a different model.

Following the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, judicial appointments became more institutionally separated from direct ministerial patronage. The Judicial Appointments Commission operates under a statutory framework, while Supreme Court appointments follow a separate selection process involving a specialised commission.

Merit, professional competence and fair selection have a more formal place in the process than in India's largely judge-controlled Collegium arrangements.

This does not make Britain immune to political controversy. Nor does it mean that appointments are mechanically objective. Merit itself requires judgment, and every selection system must confront questions about diversity, professional background and the assumptions embedded in its criteria.

Nevertheless, Britain offers an important lesson: judicial independence is strengthened when procedures are established in advance, responsibilities are clearly allocated and appointments do not depend principally on the private preferences of a small circle of judges.

There is something refreshing about an institutional arrangement that does not require the public to imagine what happened behind a closed door.

But Britain has a different problem. Its courts may be structurally independent and still struggle to deliver justice promptly.

The criminal courts in England and Wales have faced a substantial backlog, with official statistics recording 80,829 open Crown Court cases at the end of June 2026. The figures also show that many cases have remained outstanding for a year or longer.

For a defendant awaiting trial, institutional elegance offers limited consolation.

For a victim waiting to testify, a carefully designed appointments commission cannot substitute for an available courtroom.

For witnesses whose memories fade, justice delayed can become evidence compromised.

Britain's predicament illustrates an essential distinction: independence determines whether judges can decide freely; capacity determines whether they can decide in time.

A country may perform reasonably well on the first test and disappoint on the second.

The British system also demonstrates that governments need not interfere directly with judgments to weaken the administration of justice. Inadequate resources, insufficient judicial capacity and poor planning can produce serious consequences without a single minister telephoning a judge.

Sometimes institutional neglect achieves what direct interference would make politically embarrassing.

4. America: Judges for Life, Politics for Keeps

The United States offers another constitutional experiment.

Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, enjoy substantial protection through life tenure during good behaviour and safeguards against salary reduction. Their appointments, however, are made through an openly political process: the President nominates, and the Senate provides advice and consent through confirmation.

There is no pretence that politics plays no role.

Presidents seek judges whose constitutional philosophies are compatible with their own. Senators scrutinise nominees, question their records and frequently turn confirmation hearings into ideological combat.

The Supreme Court appointment process can become a national political event, complete with partisan campaigns, strategic manoeuvres and predictions of constitutional catastrophe.

The American system thus presents a paradox.

Before appointment, judicial selection is conspicuously political. After appointment, federal judges possess substantial institutional insulation from the politicians who selected them.

An American president may celebrate appointing a Supreme Court justice, only to discover that the justice does not regard the presidential campaign manifesto as a binding judicial precedent.

This is an important safeguard. A judge is not supposed to function as a political contractor whose services remain available to the party that secured the appointment.

But life tenure is no guarantee of public confidence.

When appointments are intensely partisan, citizens may begin interpreting judgments through the political identity of the judges rather than the legal reasoning supporting their decisions.

The danger is not merely that judges may be ideological. Every judge brings intellectual assumptions and interpretative commitments to the bench. The danger is that the judiciary begins to look like an unelected legislature divided into political camps.

The American experience also raises questions about judicial ethics, particularly at the Supreme Court level. The introduction of a Supreme Court Code of Conduct in 2023 represented an effort to address public concerns, but questions about implementation and enforcement have continued.

A code is useful. A credible mechanism for applying it is better.

If an institution writes its own ethical rules but inspires doubts about how those rules will be enforced, its defenders cannot reasonably expect the public to regard the matter as settled.

America's lesson for India is therefore not to copy its appointment system wholesale. It is to recognise the value of strong post-appointment protection while acknowledging that political selection can damage legitimacy even when judges remain formally independent.

5. Professional Ethics: The Bench Is Not Above the Rules

Judges occupy a peculiar position in a democracy.

They exercise immense authority, often without facing voters. Their decisions can affect liberty, property, reputation and the survival of governments. Yet their authority depends not merely on constitutional provisions but on the public's belief that they exercise it honestly.

This makes judicial ethics indispensable.

India has articulated principles of judicial conduct, including the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life. The Bar has its own professional obligations. But the existence of ethical declarations is not the same as consistent enforcement or transparent accountability.

The judiciary must be protected against malicious attacks. Judges cannot be expected to decide controversial cases while conducting a popularity contest on social media.

Yet protection from harassment must not become immunity from legitimate scrutiny.

A judge who makes an error is not necessarily unethical. A judge who reaches a controversial conclusion is not necessarily politically compromised. A transfer or appointment delay is not, by itself, proof of a conspiracy.

But credible allegations of conflicts of interest, improper influence or departures from established procedures deserve examination through appropriate mechanisms.

The same principle applies in Britain and America.

Britain's more formalised arrangements and established conduct guidance provide useful institutional safeguards, but they do not eliminate human fallibility. America's ethical framework likewise faces the challenge of ensuring that rules are credible, consistently applied and capable of commanding public confidence.

The standard should be neither judicial infallibility nor judicial humiliation.

It should be accountability without intimidation.

The public must be able to question judicial conduct without being treated as an enemy of the judiciary. Equally, political actors must not weaponise accountability procedures simply because a judgment has inconvenienced them.

Judicial independence protects the judge from political retaliation. It does not confer a personal entitlement to public reverence.

A court is not a temple in which constitutional questions must be whispered. It is a public institution in which power must justify itself.

6. Dispensing Justice: Three Democracies, Three Waiting Rooms

The ultimate test of a judicial system is not the elegance of its constitutional architecture. It is whether ordinary people can obtain justice without surrendering their savings, their peace of mind or the better part of their lives.

India's backlog remains a formidable challenge across the Supreme Court, High Courts and subordinate judiciary. The National Judicial Data Grid makes pending cases more visible, but visibility is not resolution.

A digital dashboard can tell a citizen that a case has been pending for years. It cannot explain why the case has not been decided, compensate for the financial strain or restore lost opportunities.

India needs more judicial capacity, better case management, stronger court infrastructure, adequate support staff and a serious effort to reduce avoidable adjournments. Vacancies must be addressed, but recruitment alone cannot solve every procedural and administrative weakness.

Britain's criminal-court backlog demonstrates that even comparatively well-established institutions can become overwhelmed when resources and case-processing capacity fail to keep pace with demand.

America's federal courts have their own caseload pressures, although comparisons require caution: the federal judiciary handles only part of the country's judicial business, with state courts dealing with a vast range of ordinary civil and criminal disputes.

Comparing the three countries through one headline figure would therefore be misleading. Their jurisdictions, populations, court structures and reporting methods differ substantially.

Nevertheless, the underlying question is universal.

What does judicial independence mean to a poor citizen who cannot afford prolonged litigation?

What does constitutional supremacy mean to a prisoner awaiting trial?

What does equality before the law mean when the wealthy can sustain a legal battle for years while the less fortunate cannot?

And what is the practical value of a favourable judgment if enforcement takes another round of litigation?

There is a particularly cruel irony here. The richer litigant may be able to treat delay as a strategy. The poorer litigant experiences it as punishment.

In such circumstances, the law may remain formally equal while access to its remedies becomes profoundly unequal.

Justice delayed is not always justice denied, but a system that routinely makes delay unbearable risks turning a fundamental right into a luxury service.

7. The Final Verdict: Independence Must Deliver

Justice Kaul's Without Fear or Favour invites a conversation that India needs to have without descending into either hero worship or political mudslinging.

India's judicial independence must be defended against improper executive pressure. The Collegium must become more transparent, consistent and accountable without surrendering judicial appointments to the government of the day.

Britain demonstrates the value of a more formalised appointments system, while its court backlog warns that institutional independence cannot compensate for inadequate capacity.

America demonstrates the strength of secure judicial tenure, while its partisan confirmation battles warn that politicised appointments can weaken public confidence long after a judge takes office.

India should learn from both without pretending that either offers a perfect template.

The objective must be a judiciary that is independent before appointment, protected after appointment, accountable in its conduct and effective in dispensing justice.

Most importantly, judges must be able to decide cases without fear of government displeasure or favour towards political power. They must also be willing to explain institutional decisions, observe ethical standards and accept legitimate scrutiny.

For a democracy, the judiciary is neither the government's department nor its political opposition. It is a constitutional institution charged with ensuring that power operates within the law.

That responsibility becomes especially important when the executive is powerful, the opposition is weak, public debate is polarised and citizens increasingly look to the courts to settle disputes that political institutions cannot resolve.

But the courts cannot rescue democracy alone. Nor should they be expected to replace competent government, responsible legislatures or accountable administration.

The judiciary must do its own job, and the other branches must do theirs.

Ultimately, the title of Justice Kaul's memoir supplies a standard against which every democracy should measure its courts.

Without fear of the powerful.

Without favour to the politically connected.

Without arrogance towards the ordinary citizen.

And without forgetting that the authority of a judge comes with a duty to serve the law, not personal prestige or institutional convenience.

A democracy does not need judges who are fearless only when the consequences are comfortable. It needs judges who can uphold the law when the powerful would prefer otherwise.

And citizens do not merely need courts that are independent. They need courts that work.

Otherwise, justice will remain a magnificent constitutional promise delivered through an administrative system that seems determined to test the patience of the living and the endurance of the dead.

The law may be blind. The system has no excuse for keeping the citizen waiting indefinitely.

#JudicialIndependence #IndianJudiciary #WithoutFearOrFavour #JusticeSKKaul #JudicialReforms #JusticeDelayed #RuleOfLaw #CollegiumSystem #JudicialAppointments #ExecutiveInterference #SupremeCourtOfIndia #UKJudiciary #USSupremeCourt #AccountabilityAndJustice

SRFTI in Crisis: When Politics Invades the Classroom: The Battle for a Film Institute, the Failure of Institutional Authority, and the Politics of Intolerance

2026-10-28T16:06:44.030+05:30

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There is something profoundly disturbing about a premier film and television institute becoming a battlefield for competing political ideologies. The Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) in Kolkata was established to nurture cinematic imagination, artistic experimentation and intellectual independence. Its purpose is to train filmmakers capable of questioning conventions, challenging established truths and exploring the contradictions of society. Yet in September and October 2026 the institute found itself trapped in a confrontation involving students, outside political organisations, its own administration and the wider machinery of partisan politics.

The immediate trigger was a violent confrontation on 27 September, followed by further tensions in October. Students alleged that members of an RSS-linked organisation attacked them on their campus. The organisation and its supporters accused students of disrupting a legitimately organised programme, assaulting participants and damaging property. Subsequent protests, disciplinary proceedings, the closure of academic facilities and the involvement of the police have deepened the crisis.

Scrutiny is necessary. Partisan cheerleading is not. To describe the SRFTI controversy as an existential crisis caused solely by right-wing attacks is to offer an emotionally satisfying explanation at the expense of a more difficult investigation. Conversely, to dismiss the students as ideological troublemakers who deserve whatever punishment the administration imposes is equally simplistic. The more important questions are these: how did a national institution dedicated to artistic freedom arrive at a point where its classrooms, hostels and administrative offices became arenas of political confrontation? And why has its leadership proved unable to restore confidence, security and normal academic life?

The Auditorium That Became a Political Battleground

According to the accounts presented, the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat, an organisation associated with the RSS ideological ecosystem, had booked SRFTI’s main auditorium for a programme. The organisation maintained that the booking was legitimate and that the necessary permission and payment had been obtained. Students objected, questioning the absence of adequate prior communication with the student community and expressing concern about the appropriateness of hosting a politically associated organisation on their campus.

The disagreement escalated into violence. Students alleged that members of the visiting group attacked them with sticks, stones and other objects, accompanied by verbal abuse and accusations that they were anti-national. Allegations also included assaults on women and the use of a sharp weapon. The visiting organisation advanced a contrary account, alleging that students disrupted the programme, attacked attendees, damaged property and disrespected images of Swami Vivekananda and Bharat Mata. Complaints and counter-complaints followed. Injuries were reported on both sides, and police were deployed.

These allegations are serious. An allegation, however dramatically presented, is not a judicial finding. Without the conclusions of an independent investigation it would be irresponsible to pronounce either side solely responsible for initiating the violence. Nevertheless one principle admits no ambiguity: a legitimate booking does not confer a licence to intimidate, while ideological opposition does not confer a licence to assault.

If the event had been properly authorised, students could have challenged its organisation through peaceful protest, representations to the administration or other lawful means. If the visitors used violence, they must be held accountable. If students attacked participants or damaged property, they too must face proportionate disciplinary or legal consequences. The law cannot become a weapon that one political constituency is entitled to wield while another is expected to endure it. That is precisely why an impartial investigation matters.

The Right to Enter Is Not the Right to Intimidate

Does an organisation that secures permission to use an auditorium acquire an unrestricted right to conduct its programme without regard to the institution’s educational character, security arrangements or legitimate concerns about campus disruption? Clearly not. Equally, do students acquire a veto over every event involving an organisation whose ideology they dislike? Again, no.

A specialist educational institute cannot operate if every visiting speaker or organisation must first obtain ideological clearance from the most vocal section of its student population. Nor can it remain intellectually credible if outside organisations are permitted to use its premises in ways that intimidate students or turn an academic campus into a stage for partisan mobilisation. The distinction is between access and intimidation, between dissent and coercion, and between lawful protest and political vigilantism.

An institution’s administration must establish clear rules governing the use of its facilities. These rules should apply equally to organisations across the political spectrum. If a programme is authorised, the administration must explain the basis of its decision, communicate the relevant arrangements and ensure adequate security. If objections arise, it must provide a credible mechanism for addressing them. What it cannot do is allow a dispute over an auditorium to become a confrontation in which students and visitors effectively settle their differences through physical force. That is not freedom of expression. It is the failure of governance.

When the Administration Loses Its Moral Authority

The role of SRFTI’s administration, headed by Vice-Chancellor Santosh Ajmera, is central to the unfolding controversy. Students have accused the administration of failing to protect them during the initial confrontation, refusing to address their concerns adequately and subsequently targeting protesters through disciplinary proceedings. They have demanded independent investigations, security guarantees and the Vice-Chancellor’s resignation.

The administration has alleged serious misconduct by students, including the manhandling of the Vice-Chancellor, the occupation and vandalism of his office, damage to property, obscene graffiti and other acts of indiscipline. An institute report has reportedly documented allegations against students, while six students have faced rustication or expulsion.

These are not trivial matters. If students assaulted the Vice-Chancellor, vandalised his office or deliberately damaged institutional property, such conduct cannot be excused merely because they were protesting against an administration they distrusted. A protest does not become morally unimpeachable simply because its participants invoke resistance.

Yet the administration cannot expect unquestioning obedience either. Its authority rests not merely on its formal position but on the credibility, fairness and consistency with which it exercises that authority. If the administration failed to protect students from an external attack, that failure requires examination. If disciplinary action was selective, disproportionate or unsupported by reliable evidence, that too requires examination. If students occupied offices, threatened officials or damaged property, those allegations must be investigated independently. The same standards must govern everyone.

An administration that punishes dissent without establishing responsibility becomes authoritarian. A student movement that treats every administrative decision as illegitimate becomes unaccountable. Neither can sustain an institution devoted to intellectual freedom.

The reported closure of classes, hostels and mess facilities has made matters worse. Students have been ordered to vacate facilities, and academic activities have been disrupted. Whatever the justification offered for these measures, their consequences deserve serious consideration. Students enrolled at a national institute have a legitimate expectation that their education will not be indefinitely derailed by a confrontation that the institution is responsible for helping resolve. Closing classrooms may temporarily reduce the number of people on campus. It does not resolve the grievances that produced the confrontation. An administration can suspend a timetable. It cannot suspend the need for accountability.

The Politics of Saffronisation and the Politics of Overreaction

The confrontation has acquired significance beyond SRFTI because it fits into a much wider political struggle over cultural institutions. The BJP and the RSS have long faced accusations that they seek to reshape India’s educational and cultural institutions according to a particular ideological vision. Their supporters counter that institutions historically dominated by left-liberal intellectuals have marginalised alternative viewpoints and that greater ideological diversity is necessary. Both arguments deserve examination on their merits.

It is legitimate to question whether cultural institutions have become ideologically homogeneous. It is equally legitimate to question whether attempts to correct that imbalance are being pursued through political pressure, partisan appointments or the normalisation of ideological conformity. But the answer to one form of ideological dominance cannot be another.

A film institute must accommodate diverse political and cultural perspectives without becoming the captive of any political organisation. Its students should be free to make films that challenge religious orthodoxy, criticise governments, explore uncomfortable historical questions or examine the lives of communities that mainstream cinema neglects. They should also be free to create work that explores religious belief, civilisational traditions and national identity. The test is not whether a film pleases the government, the opposition, the RSS, the Left or a student union. The test is whether its creators can pursue their artistic vision without intimidation or arbitrary punishment.

That principle becomes especially important when outside political organisations enter an educational campus. Their presence is not automatically illegitimate. Neither is opposition to their presence automatically anti-national. Calling protesting students anti-national, urban Naxals or similar epithets does not answer their objections. It attempts to discredit the objectors before their arguments have been examined. But students must resist the temptation to deploy equally sweeping labels against every person associated with a contrary ideology. A democracy cannot survive if disagreement is routinely transformed into a contest between patriots and traitors.

The Dangerous Convenience of Political Labels

The events of 4 October, when supporters of the Hindu Jagran Manch reportedly gathered outside the institute amid allegations of disrespect towards images of Vivekananda and Bharat Mata, further intensified tensions. Reports described attempts to breach the campus perimeter and the throwing of stones or bottles, with police intervention. These allegations, too, require verification. Nevertheless the episode illustrates the danger of allowing symbolic disputes to escalate into physical confrontations.

Swami Vivekananda’s legacy cannot be adequately defended by intimidating students. Nor does criticism of an image, a political organisation or an ideological programme automatically constitute hostility towards the nation. National symbols and revered historical figures deserve neither compulsory political endorsement nor deliberate provocation designed to inflame religious or cultural sentiments. The proper response to a genuine grievance is lawful complaint, peaceful protest and reasoned argument.

The same standard applies to students who use provocative graffiti, offensive language or acts of vandalism to express political opposition. Such actions may attract attention, but they can also undermine the credibility of a movement and provide its opponents with a convenient justification for punitive action. Political symbolism becomes particularly dangerous when each side assumes that its own outrage is evidence of its own innocence. The question is not which side can generate the loudest indignation. It is which side can substantiate its claims.

Why Is the Crisis Being Reduced to a Right-Wing Conspiracy?

Prominent figures from the film industry, including Naseeruddin Shah and Anurag Kashyap, have expressed support for students or amplified concerns about the controversy. Their interventions have helped draw public attention to the dispute. Such support can be valuable. Artists have a legitimate interest in defending freedom of expression and the independence of cultural institutions. But celebrity solidarity cannot substitute for evidence.

The assertion that SRFTI is facing an existential crisis solely because of right-wing aggression goes beyond what the publicly described circumstances establish. The institute is experiencing a serious crisis of governance, campus security and academic continuity. Whether the initial violence was organised, politically motivated or initiated by a particular group must be established through evidence rather than inference. Similarly, the administration’s account cannot be accepted uncritically merely because it appears in an official report. Official authority is not a guarantee of impartiality, just as student activism is not a guarantee of factual accuracy.

The state government has reportedly established a Special Investigation Team to investigate the initial confrontation. Its findings, along with the relevant police records, institutional documents and testimony from witnesses, should help clarify the disputed events. The public deserves answers. Who initiated the physical violence? What do medical records and contemporaneous evidence establish? Were campus security arrangements adequate? Did the administration respond appropriately? Were disciplinary proceedings based on independently verifiable evidence? Were visiting organisations subjected to the same rules that would apply to comparable organisations with different political affiliations? Until these questions are answered, categorical declarations of innocence or guilt serve political interests more effectively than they serve the truth.

The Students Must Not Become What They Oppose

There is an uncomfortable lesson here for student movements. The history of student activism includes courageous struggles against authoritarianism, censorship, discrimination and political repression. Students have often defended freedoms that established institutions were unwilling to protect. But the historical nobility of student protest does not make every action undertaken in its name legitimate.

If students assaulted people, vandalised offices, threatened administrators or prevented others from exercising lawful rights, they cannot evade responsibility by invoking resistance to saffronisation. Nor should disciplinary proceedings become a mechanism for silencing legitimate criticism. The appropriate response is to distinguish peaceful protesters from individuals responsible for specific acts of violence or vandalism. Evidence must establish individual responsibility, and penalties must be proportionate to the misconduct proved. Collective punishment is particularly dangerous because it replaces the examination of individual conduct with the punishment of a group.

The same principle applies to political organisations operating outside the campus. Responsibility for violence must be established against those who committed, encouraged or facilitated it, rather than indiscriminately attributed to everyone who shares their ideological affiliations. Justice requires precision. Political vendettas thrive on generalisation.

Restore the Institute Before Politics Destroys Its Purpose

The most immediate victims of this deadlock may ultimately be the students whose education is being interrupted. Film-making is not merely a theoretical discipline. It requires collaborative work, access to equipment, practical exercises, screenings, rehearsals and sustained engagement with teachers and fellow students. An extended shutdown can damage training that cannot simply be recovered by announcing a new timetable. The institute’s reputation is also at stake. A premier national institution cannot indefinitely remain in the headlines for allegations of violence, administrative paralysis and political confrontation.

The way forward is neither complicated nor ideologically partisan. First, the investigation into the initial clash must be transparent, credible and sufficiently independent to command public confidence. Secondly, allegations of assault, vandalism and misconduct must be examined separately, with the evidence disclosed to the extent legally permissible. Disciplinary action should follow established procedures and allow those accused a fair opportunity to respond. Thirdly, the administration must establish enforceable security protocols for campus events, including clear rules governing external organisations, advance communication, risk assessment and emergency responses. Fourthly, academic activities and essential student facilities must be restored as quickly as safety permits. Any restrictions should be justified, proportionate and regularly reviewed. Finally, the administration and student representatives must enter structured dialogue, preferably with a credible independent facilitator if mutual trust has collapsed.

The objective should not be to manufacture a political victor. It should be to restore an institution in which disagreement can occur without intimidation, violence or retaliation.

Conclusion: A Film Institute Is Not a Political Fortress

The SRFTI controversy is not simply a story of right-wing aggression, nor is it merely a story of unruly students challenging legitimate authority. It is a test of whether India’s public institutions can withstand the pressures of polarised politics.

If external organisations used intimidation or violence against students, they must face the consequences. If students resorted to assault or vandalism, they must face the consequences. If the administration failed in its duty to protect the campus, apply rules fairly or maintain academic continuity, it must answer for those failures. No political affiliation should provide immunity. No ideological commitment should provide an excuse.

The larger danger is that institutions designed to cultivate independent minds are increasingly judged by whether they serve the political narratives of competing camps. One camp may describe every protest as anti-national. Another may describe every disciplinary action as fascism. Both formulations offer the comfort of certainty while evading the hard work of establishing facts.

The tragedy is that the students, teachers and administrators of SRFTI should be debating cinema, storytelling, aesthetics, technology and the moral responsibilities of art. Instead they are caught in a confrontation in which political identity threatens to eclipse educational purpose.

Satyajit Ray’s legacy was not built on obedience to authority or the mechanical repetition of ideological slogans. It was built on observation, complexity, human dignity and the courage to look at society without convenient illusions. An institute bearing his name should be judged by those standards.

The real existential danger is not that one political ideology may temporarily prevail over another. It is that an institution dedicated to independent artistic thought may lose the capacity to defend independence itself. And when that happens, the casualties are not merely the reputations of politicians, administrators or student leaders. They are the freedom to imagine, the courage to question and the education of an entire generation.

#SRFTI #SatyajitRayFilmInstitute #SRFTIProtests #CampusPolitics #FreedomOfExpression #AcademicFreedom #Saffronisation #StudentProtests #PoliticalPolarisation #IndianDemocracy #CulturalFreedom #CampusViolence #InstitutionalAccountability #PoliticalSatire #WritersLens

Rahul as the Punching Bag, Gen Z as the Menace, China as the Uninvited Guest: The Great Indian Distraction Circus

2026-10-27T08:17:23.159+05:30

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Indian democracy has perfected a remarkable television format. A government faces uncomfortable questions, the opposition makes a noise, the media discovers a villain, and the nation is invited to spend the evening discussing everything except the question that originally demanded an answer.

Welcome to the Republic of Distraction, where every political problem has a convenient scapegoat, every inconvenient fact has an expiry date, and every national-security concern must compete for airtime with a prime-time shouting match.

Two theories are currently doing the rounds in India's political and social-media circles. The first suggests that Narendra Modi's government prefers the media to concentrate on Rahul Gandhi because the Congress leader is electorally more manageable than an angry, unpredictable Gen Z. The second argues that the television din surrounding Congress and INDIA bloc protests serves another useful purpose: diverting public attention from China's continuing pressure along the Line of Actual Control, particularly in Arunachal Pradesh and Eastern Ladakh.

Are these theories established facts? No. Are they sufficiently plausible to deserve scrutiny? Absolutely. And do they expose some delicious contradictions in the Indian political spectacle? Most certainly.

Let us examine the circus without pretending that every clown has received instructions from the same ringmaster.

1. Rahul Gandhi: The Opposition's Favourite Punching Bag

Imagine being a political strategist who must choose between two adversaries.

The first is Rahul Gandhi, a familiar political figure with a long public record, an established party organisation, recognisable ideological positions and enough past mistakes to keep television comedians employed until retirement.

The second is Gen Z: a generation that communicates through memes, organises through digital networks, distrusts conventional authority, and may have little patience for the rituals of established political parties.

Which adversary would be easier to manage?

The answer is hardly a national-security secret.

Rahul Gandhi can be caricatured. His speeches can be clipped, his gaffes - original or manufactured - can be replayed, his political genealogy invoked, and his electoral defeats converted into television serials with more seasons than an ageing soap opera. Every statement can be subjected to forensic dissection by experts whose principal qualification appears to be the ability to interrupt one another.

Gen Z, however, presents a different problem. Young people angered by paper leaks, unemployment, institutional distrust or electoral controversies may not respond to the traditional political vocabulary of dynasty, patriotism and national leadership. They may not recognise the authority of a studio anchor merely because he has acquired an expensive microphone and a louder voice.

Worse, they may ask questions. And questions, in a carefully choreographed political environment, are terribly inconvenient things.

If Rahul Gandhi is the subject of the evening's debate, the format is familiar: Is he serious? Is he competent? Is he a threat? Can he ever win? Should he apologise for something he said three years ago?

If young protesters are the subject, the questions become less comfortable. Why are they angry? What has happened to recruitment examinations? Why do paper leaks recur? Do institutions command public confidence? Why should young citizens trust systems that appear unable to guarantee fairness?

One can ridicule an individual indefinitely. It is considerably harder to ridicule an entire generation without appearing ridiculous oneself.

Hence the temptation to reduce a spontaneous or loosely organised youth movement to a familiar political conspiracy. If protesters can be labelled Congress agents, opposition puppets or instruments of some sinister design, their grievances need not be examined with the same seriousness.

The protester becomes an extra in Rahul Gandhi's political film. The government becomes the defender of order. The television anchor becomes the prosecutor. And the original grievance quietly exits through the back door.

How convenient!

Yet we should distinguish between a politically useful outcome and a proven political conspiracy. There is no publicly established evidence that Modi personally directs television coverage to elevate Rahul Gandhi as a deliberately manageable opponent while suppressing Gen Z's significance.

The more defensible argument is less dramatic but potentially more revealing: established political parties and sympathetic media outlets have incentives to interpret unfamiliar dissent through familiar partisan categories.

This does not require a secret meeting in a subterranean bunker. Sometimes, institutional habits, ideological sympathies and commercial incentives produce remarkably coordinated-looking results without anyone issuing coordinated instructions.

Conspiracy is not always necessary when incentives already point in the same direction.

And Rahul Gandhi? He may be delighted to receive the attention, irritated by its character, or both. But the irony is irresistible: the man routinely portrayed as politically irrelevant can become the central character in a media narrative precisely when the real challenge may be emerging from outside the established political family.

Perhaps the most useful function of the Rahul Gandhi debate is not to defeat him. It is to ensure that nobody asks why so many young people are looking for alternatives to the existing political establishment.

2. Gen Z: Too Young to Rule, Too Angry to Ignore?

There is a peculiar contradiction in the way political establishments regard young citizens.

When young people applaud the government, they are the future of India, the demographic dividend, the architects of Viksit Bharat and proof that the nation's youth are brimming with patriotic energy.

When they protest, they become misguided, manipulated, politically sponsored or victims of misinformation.

Apparently, the demographic dividend comes with a condition: dividends may be collected, but shareholders must not question the management.

The Cockroach Janta Party and associated youth protests, as described in the public debate, have brought grievances over examination irregularities and electoral processes into sharper focus. Their significance lies not merely in their slogans but in their potential to escape conventional political control.

That possibility should concern every political establishment, regardless of party.

Young protesters need not be entirely independent of established parties to possess legitimate grievances. Rahul Gandhi's participation does not automatically invalidate their concerns. Nor does the presence of genuine grievances prove that every protest is spontaneous, politically neutral or free from strategic manipulation.

Democracy is rarely that tidy.

The proper questions are straightforward: What are the protesters demanding? Which allegations are supported by evidence? How have the authorities responded? Are the demands being addressed? And are the institutions concerned sufficiently transparent to command confidence?

Instead, television often prefers a simpler question: Who is secretly controlling the protesters?

This is politically convenient because it transforms a debate about governance into a thriller about hidden enemies.

The government is no longer required to explain every failure; it merely has to expose an alleged conspiracy. The protesters are no longer citizens with demands; they become suspects with slogans.

Meanwhile, television ratings soar.

The tragedy is that a government confident in its achievements should welcome scrutiny. It should be able to distinguish between a legitimate grievance and a manufactured controversy without treating every critic as a potential enemy of the nation.

A mature democracy does not measure its strength by the number of protesters it can discredit. It measures its strength by the number of legitimate grievances it can resolve.

3. China: The Neighbour Who Never Misses an Opportunity

Now comes the more serious question.

While Indian television debates Rahul Gandhi's latest statement, who is examining developments along the country's disputed Himalayan frontier?

China does not need an invitation from an Indian television producer to pursue its strategic interests. Its activities along the Line of Actual Control are part of a long-running contest involving infrastructure, military positioning, territorial perceptions and diplomatic bargaining.

Reports of Chinese activity around sensitive areas of Arunachal Pradesh, including the Upper Subansiri sector, have renewed concerns about local access, patrolling patterns and the implications of incremental pressure along the frontier. Eastern Ladakh, meanwhile, remains strategically sensitive in the aftermath of the 2020 confrontation.

Specific allegations of encroachment must be assessed carefully. The precise location of reported activity, the status of the disputed boundary, the Indian military's assessment and the government's response all matter. A Chinese tent, a patrol encounter and a confirmed alteration of effective control are not interchangeable descriptions.

But neither should uncertainty become an excuse for indifference.

The public deserves credible information about developments that may affect India's territorial interests. Parliament deserves meaningful scrutiny. Journalists should be able to investigate military and diplomatic developments responsibly without being pressured to substitute patriotic slogans for uncomfortable questions.

And citizens should not have to choose between national security and government accountability.

Here the distraction theory acquires its sharpest edge.

Suppose a television channel devotes several hours to whether Rahul Gandhi has embarrassed himself, whether Congress is exploiting a protest, and whether opposition leaders are conspiring to destabilise the government. Suppose the same channel gives China's activities along the frontier a passing mention before returning to the political blood sport.

Has someone deliberately ordered the coverage to distract the country from China?

Not necessarily.

A more mundane explanation may be enough. Domestic political conflict produces familiar protagonists, immediate reactions, spectacular confrontations and endless opportunities for commentary. Border developments are complicated, sometimes difficult to verify independently, and often constrained by operational secrecy.

Outrage is easier to package than geopolitics.

A shouting politician can be replayed fifty times. A nuanced assessment of the Line of Actual Control may not survive the first advertisement break.

The result, however, can be the same whether engineered or accidental: the public's attention is consumed by political theatre while a strategically consequential story struggles to remain visible.

This is the distinction that matters. A distraction can occur without a distractor issuing orders.

Yet the government cannot escape scrutiny merely because the media's priorities may be commercially driven. If China is exerting pressure along the frontier, the government must explain what can responsibly be disclosed, what is being done to protect India's interests, and how diplomatic and military arrangements are functioning.

National security is not a ceremonial shield to be raised whenever accountability approaches.

Nor should critics exaggerate every border report to score domestic political points. Alarmism is no substitute for evidence, just as official reassurance is no substitute for independent scrutiny.

Patriotism requires both vigilance and intellectual honesty.

4. The Grand Indian Political Magic Show

Put the two theories together and the political picture becomes almost comically attractive.

The young are restless. Rahul Gandhi is available. Television needs a villain. China remains a formidable strategic competitor. And the public has a limited supply of attention.

What could possibly go wrong?

The government may benefit when criticism is channelled into familiar partisan contests. The opposition may benefit when youth protests expose administrative failures. Television networks may benefit when confrontation keeps audiences watching. Social-media influencers may benefit when every development becomes evidence of a grand conspiracy.

Everyone has an incentive. Everyone has a narrative. Everyone claims to be defending the nation.

The only person without a public-relations department is the citizen trying to understand what is actually happening.

But there is a danger in accepting the most seductive version of the distraction theory. If every unfavourable headline is assumed to be centrally orchestrated, criticism becomes indistinguishable from speculation. We end up replacing one propaganda narrative with another.

The answer is not to invent a master plan. It is to examine the observable patterns.

Is youth dissent being reduced to party politics? Is media coverage disproportionately concentrated on opposition personalities? Are inconvenient questions about China receiving sustained, evidence-based attention? Are official explanations sufficiently detailed? Are journalists investigating the substance of allegations, or merely staging confrontations between rival spokespersons?

These questions can be investigated. Claims about secret instructions require evidence of their own.

The distinction is important because democracy does not benefit from citizens who unquestioningly accept the government's narrative. It also does not benefit from citizens who unquestioningly accept every allegation made against it.

The purpose of scrutiny is to discover the truth, not merely to identify a more entertaining villain.

5. The Final Punchline

Perhaps the most revealing feature of this entire spectacle is the assumption that India's political attention can be managed indefinitely through familiar personalities and manufactured controversies.

It cannot. At least, it should not be possible in a healthy democracy.

Gen Z may eventually lose momentum, fragment into competing interests or discover that protest is easier than building a political alternative. Rahul Gandhi may win elections, lose elections or continue to divide public opinion. The government may successfully answer some of its critics and fail to answer others.

China, meanwhile, will pursue its interests regardless of who dominates Indian prime-time television.

That is why the frontier deserves attention even when there is no dramatic new confrontation. That is why young citizens' grievances deserve answers even when opposition politicians join their protests. And that is why the media must investigate power rather than merely entertain audiences with its political theatre.

The ultimate irony is that a government which repeatedly celebrates India's youthful energy should have nothing to fear from young citizens asking difficult questions. A political leadership confident of its national-security record should welcome informed scrutiny of the border. And a media industry that claims to speak for the nation should not confuse shouting about the opposition with holding the powerful accountable.

If Rahul Gandhi dominates the screen, ask what the debate is obscuring.

If Gen Z takes to the streets, ask what brought them there.

If China applies pressure along the frontier, ask what India knows, what India is doing and what the public has a right to know.

But do not assume that all three developments are components of a single secret operation without evidence.

The Indian political circus may not have one ringmaster. It may simply have politicians hungry for power, broadcasters hungry for ratings and citizens whose attention is perpetually being auctioned to the highest bidder.

And somewhere beyond the studio lights, the Himalayan frontier continues to remind us that geopolitics does not pause for prime-time entertainment.

The final joke is not that Rahul Gandhi may be a convenient punching bag, that Gen Z may be an inconvenient generation, or that China may be exploiting opportunities along a contested frontier. The final joke is that a country aspiring to global leadership can spend an entire evening debating who should be mocked, while neglecting the far more consequential question of who is testing its resolve.

In the Republic of Distraction, the loudest question wins the broadcast.

The most important question may never get asked.

#IndianPolitics #GodiMedia #RahulGandhi #GenZProtests #ModiGovernment #IndianDemocracy #MediaBias #ChinaIndiaBorder #ArunachalPradesh #EasternLadakh #PoliticalSatire #IndianNews #INDIAAlliance #PressFreedom #RepublicOfDistraction

THE DUNNING-KRUGER REPUBLIC Where Ignorance Comes With a Microphone and Confidence Comes With a Convoy

2026-10-25T08:09:30.259+05:30

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There is a fascinating psychological condition spreading across South Asia. Fortunately, it is not contagious. Unfortunately, it is electable. It is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Its symptoms are remarkably easy to identify. The patient knows very little about a subject, understands even less about the limits of his knowledge, and nevertheless speaks about it with the confidence of a Nobel laureate who has just swallowed an encyclopaedia.

Ask him about economics. He becomes an economist.

Ask him about constitutional law. He becomes a constitutional expert.

Ask him about nuclear deterrence. He becomes Henry Kissinger with a WhatsApp account.

Ask him about medicine. Suddenly your neighbourhood uncle has discovered a cure for cancer involving a cow, turmeric, two YouTube videos and divine intervention.

And ask him whether he could possibly be wrong? That is when the condition becomes terminal.

“Wrong? Me? Impossible. I have watched six reels on the subject.”

Welcome to the age of weaponised ignorance.

THE BEAUTIFUL THING ABOUT BEING CLUELESS

David Dunning and Justin Kruger identified something profoundly uncomfortable about human beings back in 1999.

The problem with incompetence is not merely that incompetent people perform badly. It is that they may lack the very knowledge necessary to realise that they are performing badly. That is the wicked genius of this phenomenon.

You need some competence to recognise incompetence.

A person who cannot understand the subject cannot necessarily understand that he cannot understand the subject. It is intellectual quicksand. The more confidently he struggles, the deeper he sinks. And then he announces that everybody else is drowning.

The genuinely knowledgeable, meanwhile, often suffer from the opposite problem. They know how complicated things are. They know about exceptions, competing interpretations, margins of error, unintended consequences and inconvenient evidence.

So they say: “It depends.”

The idiot says: “Absolutely!”

Guess who gets the television panel?

Exactly.

THE POLITICAL ADVANTAGE OF NOT KNOWING

Modern politics has discovered something psychologists already knew: certainty sells better than competence.

A politician who says, “This is an extraordinarily complicated economic problem involving fiscal constraints, monetary policy, employment elasticity, global demand and structural reforms” has approximately twelve seconds of television life.

Another politician says: “I will fix everything.”

Applause.

The first politician has studied the problem. The second has studied the electorate. And there lies the political genius of Dunning-Kruger.

Democracy does not necessarily reward the person who understands the most. It rewards the person who can sound as though he understands everything.

The expert says: “We should examine the evidence.”

The populist says: “I know exactly what is happening.”

The expert says: “There are several possible outcomes.”

The populist says: “There is only one solution.”

The expert says: “We need to consult specialists.”

The populist says: “Specialists are part of the problem.”

And the audience cheers because complexity is exhausting.

Certainty is comforting.

SOUTH ASIA: THE LAND OF OMNISCIENT UNCLES

South Asia has perfected this culture into an art form.

Here, a person can spend forty years studying a subject and still be told by someone who read a Facebook post during breakfast that he is “anti-national”, “anti-development”, “anti-religion”, “anti-poor”, “anti-business” or, the ultimate intellectual death sentence: “You don't understand India.”

Nobody, apparently, understands India. Except the person shouting.

In Pakistan, generations of political, military and bureaucratic elites have repeatedly demonstrated extraordinary confidence in their ability to engineer political stability, economic prosperity and strategic advantage.

The results have occasionally been less spectacular than the PowerPoint presentations. Governments change. Policies change. Alliances change. Economic crises return. Institutional conflicts continue. And yet the certainty remains astonishing.

Every new strategy arrives wearing the clothes of inevitability. Every failure is subsequently explained as somebody else's fault. This is the political equivalent of a man driving his car into a wall and announcing: “The wall was badly positioned.”

Nepal has seen its own revolving door of political promises, shifting alliances, corruption controversies and governance experiments.

The cast changes. The slogans change. The coalition changes. The confident explanation remains:“This time we have the solution.”

And South Asia's favourite word remains: “Historic.”

Every road is historic. Every agreement is historic. Every speech is historic. Every election is historic.

At this rate, history itself is going to need therapy.

INDIA: WHERE EVERYBODY IS AN ECONOMIST

India provides the most entertaining laboratory.

Take demonetisation. In 2016, a breathtakingly complex monetary and administrative intervention was launched with extraordinary confidence.

High-value currency notes were suddenly invalidated. The stated objectives included attacking black money, counterfeit currency and terror financing.

The policy generated enormous disruption. People queued outside banks. Businesses struggled. Cash-dependent sectors were hit. The economy had to absorb a gigantic shock.

And then came the fascinating part.

The public discussion became a test of political faith rather than economic analysis.

If you questioned the policy, you could be accused of opposing the nation.

If you supported it, you could be accused of ignoring economic reality.

Somewhere in the middle, actual economists were desperately trying to explain things like currency circulation, informal employment, tax compliance and monetary transmission.

Nobody wanted to hear them. Because economics has one fatal disadvantage: It is complicated.

Politics has the opposite advantage: It fits into a slogan.

THE GREAT INDIAN SCHOOL OF WHATSAPP SCIENCE

But economics is merely the beginning.

India has produced a magnificent new institution: The WhatsApp University of Advanced Everything.

Its graduates specialise in subjects ranging from astrophysics to constitutional law. No entrance examination. No tuition fee. No faculty. No library. No peer review. And absolutely no shortage of professors.

A message arrives: “Scientists have discovered that…”

Forward.

Another says: “Ancient India knew this 5,000 years ago…”

Forward.

Another announces:b“This herb cures cancer.”

Forward.

Someone discovers a complicated constitutional question can be resolved in fourteen words.

Forward.

Someone discovers that an international conflict has been completely understood by watching a three-minute video.

Forward.

Soon the citizen possesses an astonishing quantity of information.

Unfortunately, almost none of it has been verified.

This is where Dunning-Kruger meets the smartphone.

The internet has democratised knowledge. It has also democratised confidence without knowledge.

A person no longer needs to know something.

He merely needs to find someone who says it confidently.

THE ECONOMIC MIRACLE THAT LIVES IN THE GRAPH

India's economic debate is another magnificent battlefield.

GDP numbers rise. Critics question methodology. Supporters celebrate growth.

Critics point to unemployment. Supporters point to infrastructure.

Critics point to inequality. Supporters point to investment.

Critics point to consumption.

And somewhere in the middle stands the average citizen thinking: “I bought vegetables yesterday. They were expensive. Please tell me which graph explains that.”

The real problem is not disagreement. Disagreement is healthy. The problem begins when complicated evidence is converted into absolute certainty.

GDP is not fake simply because somebody dislikes the government. Nor is every impressive GDP number proof that every household is prospering.

Employment statistics require interpretation.

Consumption data require interpretation.

Inflation requires interpretation.

Fiscal deficits require interpretation.

Productivity requires interpretation.

The economy is not a WhatsApp forward. It is an enormous machine containing millions of competing incentives.

Unfortunately, political communication prefers the operating manual: “India is booming.”

Or: “India is collapsing.”

Pick a tribe.

Pick a hashtag.

Ignore the footnotes.

THE EMPLOYMENT ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Then there is India's youth.

Millions of educated young Indians spend years collecting degrees, certificates, coaching material and examination forms.

They prepare. They compete. They wait. They appear for examinations. They discover leaks. They face delays. They encounter opaque recruitment processes.

And eventually some discover that a degree does not necessarily produce a job.

This is where political confidence meets lived experience.

A government can confidently announce that opportunities are expanding.

A young graduate can confidently respond with the question: “Where?”

Neither confidence automatically proves the other wrong.

But when institutional systems repeatedly fail to generate trust, citizens stop believing official optimism. And when young people are told that every problem is either a conspiracy, a foreign plot, an opposition trick or a temporary inconvenience, frustration eventually becomes combustible.

The tragedy is that the young do not need motivational speeches. They need functional systems. Examinations that are secure. Recruitment that is transparent. Education that produces usable skills. Jobs that pay enough to live. And institutions that do not require a young person to become a full-time protester before somebody notices him.

THE POLITICAL CLASS HAS DISCOVERED THE MAGIC WORD: EXPERT

There is another irony.

Politicians love experts when experts agree with them. The moment an expert disagrees, he becomes: “elitist.” “out of touch.” “anti-national.” “Lutyens.” “urban Naxal.” “paid.” “foreign-funded.” Or simply: “You people don't understand ground reality.”

Sometimes, of course, experts really are wrong.

Experts are human. Economists make bad forecasts. Scientists revise theories. Administrators make mistakes. Judges disagree. Historians argue. Experts can be arrogant.

But the answer to flawed expertise is better expertise, not the abolition of expertise. Otherwise we might as well conduct brain surgery by referendum.

“Ladies and gentlemen, should we remove the tumour?”

“YES!”

“Excellent. Democracy has spoken.”

THE MOST DANGEROUS PERSON IN THE ROOM

The Dunning-Kruger Effect becomes particularly dangerous when the person suffering from it has power.

An ignorant citizen can spread misinformation. An ignorant leader can institutionalise it. That is the difference.

A man sitting in his living room declaring that inflation is caused by one community is merely foolish.

A government designing economic policy around simplistic assumptions can hurt millions.

A social-media warrior misunderstanding nuclear deterrence is embarrassing.

A national leader misunderstanding it can be catastrophic.

A citizen who misunderstands constitutional law is unfortunate.

A state that misunderstands constitutional limits is dangerous.

Power magnifies cognitive errors.

And the higher the office, the greater the cost of being confidently wrong.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CURVE

Yet there is a delicious paradox.

The people who actually know what they are talking about often sound less certain. Ask a serious scientist whether something is possible. He will say: “Under certain conditions.”

Ask a crank. “Absolutely.”

Ask a constitutional scholar. “It depends on the interpretation and jurisprudence.”

Ask a television shouting head. “CLEARLY!”

Ask an experienced diplomat about a war. “There are multiple variables.”

Ask Twitter. “I HAVE FIGURED IT OUT.”

Ask a competent administrator whether a giant national reform will be easy. “No.”

Ask a politician. “Within 30 days.”

And that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Dunning-Kruger age: Competence whispers while incompetence has discovered and monopolised the microphone.

WHEN EVERYONE BECOMES AN EXPERT

Social media has turned every citizen into a publisher. That is potentially wonderful.

But it has also created a civilisation in which the distance between knowing something and believing something has almost disappeared.

You do not have to investigate. You do not have to read. You do not have to compare sources. You do not have to understand probability. You do not have to ask what evidence would prove you wrong.

You merely need confidence. And confidence gets engagement. Engagement gets followers. Followers get influence. Influence gets political relevance. And political relevance eventually gets invited onto television.

Thus the circular economy of ignorance is born.

I know because I believe. I believe because everyone agrees with me. Everyone agrees with me because the algorithm shows me people who agree with me. Therefore I am right.

Brilliant.

Except for one tiny problem.

Reality has not subscribed to your channel.

So, are we all Dunning-Kruger?

No.

And that distinction matters.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is not a scientific certificate declaring somebody stupid. It is not a political weapon to throw at people we dislike. And it certainly does not mean that every successful person is incompetent or every expert is infallible.

It is domain-specific.

A brilliant surgeon can be clueless about economics. An outstanding economist can know nothing about surgery. A political scientist can be hopeless at repairing a leaking tap. And the man who repairs your tap may know more about plumbing than the entire Cabinet.

That is perfectly normal.

The real danger begins when confidence becomes detached from competence and insulated from correction.

That is the point at which ignorance becomes political capital.

THE CURE IS HUMILITY

There is no vaccine. But there is a treatment. Humility.

Not the performative humility of politicians saying, “I am merely a humble servant of the people” while arriving with forty-seven cars.

Real humility.

The ability to say: “I don't know.”

What a revolutionary sentence.

“I don't know.”

“I may be wrong.”

“Let me check.”

“Let's ask someone who understands this better.”

“Show me the evidence.”

“What would change my mind?”

These are not signs of weakness. They are signs of intelligence. A functioning democracy does not require citizens to agree. It requires them to remain correctable.

Because the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance. The opposite of knowledge is the conviction that you already know enough.

And perhaps that is why the Dunning-Kruger Effect is so politically seductive.

Ignorance is painless. Learning is humiliating. Learning requires admitting that yesterday's certainty was today's mistake. And politicians, television anchors, influencers and assorted internet professors have discovered that there is an enormous market for people who never have to make that admission.

So here we are.

A civilisation drowning in information and starving for understanding. A political class armed with microphones. A public armed with smartphones. Algorithms rewarding outrage. Experts muttering footnotes. And millions of people marching confidently towards conclusions they have never examined.

The tragedy is not that fools exist. They always have. The tragedy is that modern technology has given them distribution, amplification and an audience. And occasionally, a vote.

So the next time somebody confidently explains the economy, constitutional law, geopolitics, medicine, history, artificial intelligence, nuclear strategy and the meaning of life — all before breakfast — do not immediately ask: “How intelligent is this person?”

Ask something much more dangerous: “How does this person know that he knows?” Because that question is where the Dunning-Kruger Effect begins to tremble.

And if the answer is: “I just know.”

Congratulations. You have probably just met the professor of the University of Absolute Certainty.

There are no entrance requirements. No examinations. No peer review. No possibility of failure. And, naturally, every graduate receives a gold medal.

Especially if he bought it himself.

#DunningKrugerEffect #PoliticalSatire #IndianPolitics #PoliticalCommentary #Satire #Psychology #CognitiveBias #Overconfidence #CriticalThinking #MediaLiteracy #WhatsAppUniversity #Democracy #PoliticalAwareness #SouthAsia #RandeepWadehra

The Diesel Ultimatum: Is India Trading Strategic Autonomy for American Approval?

2026-10-24T08:57:17.679+05:30

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India’s strategic autonomy is not being tested in a seminar on international relations. It is being tested at the negotiating table, where Washington has demonstrated its willingness to threaten punitive tariffs, suspend them when American interests require it, and retain the threat as leverage over countries such as India. The immediate issue is oil. The larger question is whether New Delhi still determines its foreign policy on its own terms, or whether it is increasingly adjusting its choices to accommodate the political and economic priorities of the United States.

The spectacle is difficult to ignore. President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened countries buying Russian energy with additional tariffs of up to 100 per cent under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. It subsequently waived the specified penalties, citing American national interests, even as Washington pursued additional Russian diesel supplies to ease its own domestic energy pressures. The waiver offers India temporary relief, but it can be withdrawn. The threat, therefore, has not disappeared; it has become a bargaining instrument.

This is where the language of coercion becomes relevant. Washington does not need to issue an explicit ultimatum in every conversation. It can create a climate in which the threatened economic consequences of disagreement are sufficiently severe to influence another government’s decisions. When access to the American market, exposure to secondary sanctions and the prospects of a trade agreement all hang in the balance, the formal freedom to say no may remain intact while the practical cost of exercising it rises sharply.

That is not necessarily blackmail in the strict legal sense. But it is a recognisable form of economic arm-twisting. And when a government repeatedly accommodates pressure while presenting the resulting concessions as diplomatic victories, the public is entitled to ask whether negotiation has quietly become submission.

Washington’s diesel problem, India’s diplomatic predicament

The immediate American imperative is understandable. Diesel is indispensable to trucking, freight, agriculture and much of the wider American economy. Rising fuel costs can feed inflation, undermine consumer confidence and damage an administration facing midterm elections. Trump has powerful incentives to find additional supplies, moderate prices and demonstrate that his policies deliver tangible benefits to American voters.

India’s refining infrastructure offers an attractive opportunity. Reliance Industries’ Jamnagar complex, with a combined refining capacity of approximately 1.4 million barrels per day, is exceptionally well placed to process a variety of crude grades. Its export-oriented operations make it an important supplier of diesel and other petroleum products to international markets.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent visit to Jamnagar brought this industrial capability into sharp geopolitical focus. His discussions with Mukesh and Anant Ambani concerned energy cooperation, opportunities involving Venezuelan crude and wider commercial partnerships. Rubio also met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar during his India visit, against the backdrop of ongoing trade negotiations.

There is nothing inherently objectionable about such engagement. India should exploit its industrial strengths, attract investment and pursue profitable energy partnerships. Nor does a visit to a private refinery, by itself, establish that its owners or the Indian government have been subjected to coercion.

The more troubling question concerns the asymmetry surrounding these negotiations. Washington is seeking commercial cooperation from India while retaining the power to penalise Indian exports over New Delhi’s purchases of Russian energy. It is simultaneously relaxing restrictions when its own energy requirements make those restrictions inconvenient.

Consider the underlying principle. If buying Russian energy is sufficiently objectionable to justify punitive measures against India, why should the same energy become acceptable when American consumers need relief? If sanctions are instruments of a consistent foreign-policy doctrine, they should not become disposable whenever domestic political calculations change.

The contradiction is not merely one of American hypocrisy. It reveals the hierarchy of interests at work. Washington’s domestic requirements remain paramount; other countries are expected to adjust to them. American pragmatism is presented as responsible statecraft, while Indian pragmatism can be punished as geopolitical disloyalty.

India should not accept that double standard as the natural order of international affairs.

The anatomy of a pressure campaign

The strongest evidence of American leverage lies not in speculation about secret conversations but in the documented sequence of threats, reversals and continuing uncertainty.

Washington has threatened punitive tariffs on major buyers of Russian energy. It has subsequently suspended the specified penalties while preserving its ability to reconsider them. Indian refiners have already reduced their exposure to Russian crude amid the sanctions threat and changing market conditions, while India’s trade negotiations with the United States continue. The relief, therefore, has not removed the uncertainty confronting Indian policymakers and businesses.

This arrangement creates a powerful negotiating advantage. Washington can offer relief from a penalty that Washington itself has threatened to impose. The suspension can then be portrayed as generosity, even though the underlying threat remains available for future use.

The recipient is placed in a particularly awkward position. Resistance risks renewed economic punishment; accommodation may secure temporary relief but encourages further demands. The stronger party retains discretion, while the weaker party must continually demonstrate that it deserves favourable treatment.

This is how coercive leverage can operate without a dramatic confrontation. A tariff threat need not be enforced to influence behaviour. Its credibility may be enough.

For India, the danger is that a temporary reprieve becomes a permanent habit of deference. Once Washington learns that the threat of economic punishment can induce New Delhi to reconsider its energy choices, the same method may be applied to other issues. Today it is Russian crude. Tomorrow it could involve defence procurement, relations with Iran, technology regulation, digital policy or diplomatic positions on conflicts in which Indian interests diverge from American preferences.

The problem is not that India negotiates with the United States. Every serious country does. The problem arises when the other side acquires disproportionate power to define the price of disagreement.

Blackmail: the allegation that demands scrutiny

The possibility of political blackmail makes the controversy more explosive, but it must be handled with precision.

Epstein-related documents and allegations involving prominent individuals have periodically generated political controversy. In India, opposition voices have raised questions about whether sensitive material, selectively disclosed or withheld, could create leverage over influential people or the government. Such allegations are politically consequential, but their existence does not establish that the documents have been used to compel a particular Indian policy decision.

There is, at present, no publicly substantiated evidence presented here that the Trump administration used Epstein-related material to force New Delhi into energy concessions, that Rubio’s visit formed part of such an operation, or that any specific Indian official was threatened with exposure.

That distinction matters. An allegation of blackmail is not proof of blackmail, and insinuation cannot substitute for evidence. A serious investigation would need to establish what material was involved, who possessed it, whether threats were communicated, what action was demanded and whether any policy decision followed as a consequence.

But refusing to treat an unverified allegation as fact does not require us to ignore the broader vulnerability it raises.

Political blackmail, where it exists, exploits the difference between what a powerful actor knows and what a target fears might be disclosed. Economic coercion exploits the difference between what a powerful state can impose and what a dependent trading partner can afford to resist. Both can narrow the target’s freedom of action by making the cost of refusal appear intolerable.

The analogy is illuminating; the claim of an actual connection remains unproven.

The more defensible criticism of New Delhi does not depend on an Epstein conspiracy. It rests on the observable imbalance between American power to threaten and waive penalties and India’s need to preserve access to the US market while negotiating a trade agreement. That is already a substantial challenge to Indian strategic autonomy.

If credible evidence of personal political coercion ever emerges, it should be investigated independently and transparently. Until then, the focus should remain on what can be demonstrated: the leverage created by tariffs, sanctions and commercial dependence.

The irony of strategic autonomy

For decades, India has cultivated a foreign policy tradition that seeks to avoid exclusive dependence on any major power. The terminology has evolved from non-alignment to strategic autonomy, but the central proposition remains familiar: India’s interests must determine its partnerships, not the demands of an external patron.

The Russian oil controversy exposes the distance between that principle and its practical application.

Russian crude became particularly important to Indian refiners after Moscow redirected supplies following the invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions. Discounted imports offered commercial advantages and helped India diversify its energy sourcing. They also reflected a straightforward calculation: India’s energy requirements cannot simply be subordinated to the strategic preferences of Washington or European capitals.

Purchasing Russian oil does not mean endorsing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Nor does it require India to ignore sanctions risks, diplomatic costs or the need to diversify suppliers. It means that India should evaluate energy purchases according to its own national interests, applicable law and commercial realities.

Yet when the possibility of punitive American tariffs prompts changes in procurement, the distinction between a voluntary commercial adjustment and a concession induced by external pressure becomes crucial.

The government may argue that reducing Russian purchases is a pragmatic decision to secure trade advantages and protect Indian exporters. That argument deserves examination, not automatic dismissal. India’s exporters have a genuine interest in avoiding punitive duties, and a trade agreement with the United States could offer considerable economic benefits.

But the public is entitled to ask what India receives in return. Is the relief durable? Are tariffs being reduced on terms that benefit Indian industry? Is Washington providing credible assurances against arbitrary sanctions? Are Indian firms gaining reciprocal access to American markets? Or is New Delhi merely exchanging one temporary reprieve for another round of negotiations under the same threat?

A concession is not necessarily a defeat. A concession made under a credible threat, without reciprocal and enforceable benefits, is a different matter.

Strategic autonomy cannot mean refusing every compromise. It must mean retaining sufficient bargaining power to ensure that compromises are mutual, proportionate and consistent with long-term national interests.

Russia, Iran and the price of appeasement

The implications extend beyond oil.

Russia remains important to India’s defence ecosystem, including platforms, maintenance, spare parts and established cooperation in selected areas of military technology. Replacing these capabilities is not an overnight exercise. India’s defence diversification is sensible, but it cannot erase the practical constraints imposed by decades of procurement and operational dependence.

If New Delhi appears willing to subordinate energy policy to Washington’s shifting demands, Moscow may reasonably question how much confidence it can place in India’s commitment to an independent relationship. That does not mean Russia will abandon India, or that every adjustment in oil purchases will damage defence ties. It means that repeated, one-sided concessions could gradually erode trust.

Iran presents a different but related challenge. India’s interests in regional connectivity, including the Chabahar project, require careful management of American sanctions exposure alongside regional realities. New Delhi cannot expect every American decision to accommodate Indian priorities. But neither should it accept the assumption that Washington possesses an automatic veto over India’s legitimate engagement with other countries.

The strategic danger is cumulative. Each individual accommodation can be defended as a practical necessity. Together, however, they may produce a foreign policy increasingly constrained by another country’s preferences.

That would be a profound reversal for a nation that prides itself on making independent choices in a multipolar world.

The Israel question: convergence is not proof of conspiracy

The suggestion that the pressure campaign is designed to serve Israeli interests also requires caution. India, Israel and the United States share certain strategic concerns, including aspects of Middle Eastern security and opposition to Iranian regional influence. Their interests overlap in some areas and diverge in others.

But overlap does not establish coordination. No demonstrated evidence in the material under consideration establishes that Israeli officials directed Rubio’s itinerary, that Israel engineered the tariff manoeuvre, or that the Jamnagar engagement was part of a coordinated operation to subordinate Indian policy.

India should certainly examine how closer American-Israeli strategic coordination affects its own relations with Iran and the wider region. That is a legitimate foreign-policy question. It should not, however, be converted into a claim of a secret trilateral conspiracy without supporting evidence.

The central issue is sufficiently serious without adding an unverified layer of intrigue. Washington has its own reasons to seek energy cooperation with India. The American administration’s domestic political difficulties, commercial interests and tariff powers provide an intelligible explanation for its conduct.

The critical question is whether India can exploit that American need without becoming captive to it.

What should New Delhi do?

India’s response should be firm, practical and transparent.

First, it should insist that energy procurement remain governed by national interest, price, supply security and applicable legal obligations. Russian, American, Middle Eastern and other supplies should be assessed on their merits. No foreign government should be permitted to turn India’s source of crude into a permanent instrument of political discipline.

Second, New Delhi should demand reciprocity in trade negotiations. If India is expected to adjust its energy purchases or expand commercial cooperation, the United States should provide concrete and durable benefits in return. These could include predictable tariff treatment, improved market access and safeguards against arbitrary changes in policy. Temporary waivers should not be mistaken for a stable economic settlement.

Third, India should diversify its economic exposure. The answer to American leverage is not hostility towards America, but reducing the vulnerability that makes threats so effective. Broader export markets, stronger domestic manufacturing, diversified energy supplies and a more resilient technology ecosystem would increase New Delhi’s room for manoeuvre.

Fourth, relations with Russia and Iran should be managed on their own merits, with due regard to international law, sanctions risks and India’s wider interests. Neither relationship should be treated as expendable merely to satisfy another power’s immediate political requirements.

Finally, the government should explain the costs and benefits of major concessions. Strategic autonomy is not simply a slogan for diplomatic speeches. It is a public responsibility. Citizens should be able to judge whether a trade agreement genuinely advances Indian interests or merely relieves pressure created by an external threat.

The final test: who sets the terms?

The diesel controversy exposes a revealing contradiction in contemporary American statecraft. Washington is willing to threaten severe economic penalties against countries buying Russian energy, yet it can suspend those penalties and seek Russian diesel supplies when its own economic and political circumstances demand flexibility. American national interest justifies the reversal. India’s national interest, by contrast, is expected to accommodate American demands.

This is the essence of the double standard.

Trump’s administration is not obliged to place India’s interests above America’s. No responsible Indian government should expect it to do so. The obligation falls on New Delhi to negotiate intelligently, resist disproportionate pressure and ensure that the pursuit of commercial advantage does not become a pattern of strategic dependence.

The evidence supports a serious charge of coercive economic leverage. It does not, by itself, prove personal blackmail, an Epstein-files operation or an Israeli-directed scheme. Those allegations require independent verification. The distinction should be maintained precisely because the established facts already raise uncomfortable questions.

If India changes its energy policy because a different supplier offers better prices or more reliable access, that is pragmatism. If it changes policy because a foreign power has threatened its exports, the government must explain what it secured in return. If the threat can be revived at another negotiating round, the country has not escaped coercion; it has merely obtained a temporary reprieve.

The real test of strategic autonomy is not whether India can maintain cordial relations with Washington. It is whether New Delhi can disagree with Washington without being made to pay a disproportionate price.

A nation of India’s size, economic potential and diplomatic reach should be able to negotiate with the United States as a partner, not behave like a supplicant grateful for the suspension of a punishment. It should welcome investment, trade and energy cooperation, but reject the notion that access to American markets entitles Washington to dictate the terms of Indian foreign policy.

The danger is not that India will suddenly surrender its sovereignty in a dramatic diplomatic spectacle. It is that sovereignty will be diluted incrementally, one tariff waiver, one procurement adjustment and one reluctant concession at a time, while each retreat is advertised as a victory for pragmatic diplomacy.

That is how strategic autonomy can become a ceremonial phrase rather than a working principle.

India does not need to choose between America and Russia, or between commercial engagement and diplomatic independence. It needs the confidence to refuse a bad bargain, the resilience to withstand pressure and the negotiating skill to convert its own strengths into reciprocal gains. Until that capacity is demonstrated, the question will persist: is India shaping its partnerships according to its national interests, or increasingly shaping its national interests to satisfy the demands of its most powerful partner?

#EpsteinFiles, #Blackmail, #Conspiracy #HardeepPuri #Modi #MarcoRubio #IndiaUSRelations #StrategicAutonomy #Trump #NarendraModi #USIndiaTradeDeal #EconomicCoercion #DieselDiplomacy #RussianOil #IndiaRussiaRelations #USSanctions #IndianForeignPolicy #Geopolitics #IndiaUnderPressure

Have Indians Regressed to the Savage Times? Power, communal violence, gendered brutality and the erosion of constitutional morality

2026-10-23T16:23:49.467+05:30

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India's civilisational pride rests on its philosophical traditions, spiritual diversity, intellectual achievements and the remarkable capacity of its people to coexist across differences. Yet there is another history that deserves equal scrutiny: the history of conquest, humiliation, religious destruction, caste oppression and the subjugation of women. A civilisation cannot honestly celebrate its achievements while refusing to confront its cruelties.

The disturbing question today is not whether violence existed in ancient India. It did. Nor is it whether victorious armies across the world looted cities, destroyed symbols of defeated rulers, enslaved captives and subjected women to sexual violence. They did. The question is whether a modern constitutional democracy, nearly eight decades after independence, is allowing some of those predatory instincts to re-emerge under the cover of religious nationalism, political patronage and institutional indifference.

Since 2014, allegations of selective law enforcement, communal vigilantism, punitive demolitions and the intimidation of dissenters have become central to India's political debate. The violence of 2002 in Gujarat had already exposed the devastating consequences of communal mobilisation and failures of state protection. The developments of subsequent years have raised a more troubling question: when political power appears to favour one community over another, does violence become not merely a crime but an instrument of intimidation?

The answer requires historical honesty, factual precision and an uncompromising defence of constitutional values. Neither civilisational nostalgia nor partisan outrage is an adequate substitute for evidence.

1. The myth of a permanently benevolent past

Indian history is often presented through two contradictory lenses. One portrays ancient India as an almost uninterrupted golden age of spiritual wisdom and social harmony. The other reduces its history to successive invasions and religious conflicts. Both are distortions.

Pre-modern Indian kingdoms fought wars of expansion, dynastic succession, territorial consolidation and economic extraction. Victorious rulers sometimes plundered the temples of defeated rivals, appropriated their deities and destroyed monuments associated with their enemies. The political significance of temples extended beyond worship: they held wealth, patronage networks and symbolic authority. To seize a rival ruler's sacred image could therefore signify the transfer of political prestige as much as religious hostility.

Historian Richard M. Eaton has documented instances of temple desecration in pre-modern India, including acts committed by Hindu rulers against rival Hindu polities. The Pallava conquest of Vatapi in the seventh century and the military campaigns of the Cholas illustrate how sacred objects could be appropriated as trophies of victory. Kashmir's King Harsha, who ruled in the eleventh century, became notorious for the plunder of temples.

These examples expose an uncomfortable truth: Hindu rulers were not invariably tolerant, just as Muslim rulers were not invariably intolerant. Political ambition, wealth, dynastic rivalry and religious symbolism interacted in complicated ways. Temple destruction by a Hindu ruler did not necessarily have the same motivation as every instance of destruction by a Muslim ruler. Each case must be examined in its historical context. Nevertheless, the assertion that Hindu kings sometimes destroyed the temples of other Hindu kings is historically established.

Nor was India exceptional. Roman armies sacked conquered cities, European conquerors plundered colonies, and warfare across Asia, Africa and the Middle East frequently involved massacres, enslavement and sexual violence. The victors often treated defeated populations as sources of wealth, labour and humiliation.

The distinction between past and present, however, is crucial. In many pre-modern societies, the victorious ruler possessed enormous personal authority, while institutional safeguards for ordinary people were weak or absent. Modern constitutional democracies are founded on a different principle: victory in war, or at the ballot box, does not confer ownership of the defeated.

That is where the historical comparison becomes relevant to contemporary India. Not because the country has literally returned to medieval conditions, but because the temptation to treat political victory as moral entitlement has never disappeared.

2. 2002 and 2014: From communal catastrophe to political normalisation

The Gujarat violence of 2002 remains one of the defining moral crises of contemporary India. Following the burning of a train coach at Godhra, in which 59 people died, large-scale anti-Muslim violence erupted across Gujarat. Muslims were killed, women were subjected to sexual violence, homes and businesses were destroyed, and thousands were displaced. The official death toll was over a thousand, with Muslims constituting the majority of the victims.

The violence generated enduring controversy over the conduct of the state government, the response of the police and the accountability of political leaders. The Supreme Court monitored important aspects of the legal proceedings, and convictions were secured in several cases. At the same time, allegations of official complicity, failures of protection and delayed justice left deep scars.

The lesson of 2002 should have been that no government can be permitted to treat the security of citizens as conditional upon their religious identity. Instead, communal polarisation remained a potent instrument of political mobilisation.

The BJP's victory in the 2014 general election did not inaugurate communal prejudice in India. Anti-Muslim discrimination, caste violence, attacks on Dalits, gender-based brutality and religious antagonism all predated it. Nor can every crime committed after 2014 be attributed to the ruling party. What deserves scrutiny is whether the political climate, public rhetoric and uneven application of the law have made certain forms of intimidation more acceptable, more visible or less costly for their perpetrators.

Cow vigilantism provides a disturbing illustration. In several cases, Muslims and Dalits have been assaulted or killed on suspicions involving cattle transport, slaughter or beef consumption. The killing of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, in 2015, after allegations that beef was stored in his home, became a symbol of the dangers of mob mobilisation around religious identity. Subsequent incidents reinforced concerns that accusations, rather than evidence and due process, could determine who became a target.

The problem is not simply that mobs commit crimes. Mobs have existed throughout history. The more serious problem arises when perpetrators expect political sympathy, when victims are portrayed as enemies of the community, or when public officials appear more concerned with the identity of the accused than the rights of the victim.

A government does not need to order every assault to bear political responsibility for the atmosphere in which such assaults occur. Its responsibility is to condemn violence consistently, protect vulnerable citizens and ensure that the law operates without fear or favour.

That standard applies equally to every political party and every state government. It cannot be suspended when the perpetrators belong to one's preferred political camp.

3. Bulldozers and the punishment of communities

The demolition of homes and businesses following communal clashes or protests has become another flashpoint in India's debate over constitutional government. Authorities have frequently defended such action by claiming that the structures were illegal. In individual cases, unauthorised construction may indeed warrant lawful action.

But the central question is whether demolition is genuinely an exercise in urban regulation or a form of collective punishment.

When a building is demolished shortly after its occupant has been accused of participating in a protest or communal disturbance, the suspicion of punitive intent is unavoidable. If the process selectively targets members of one community, the danger becomes more acute. A family cannot lawfully be punished for an offence merely because one member is accused of committing it. Nor should the destruction of a home become an alternative to a criminal trial.

In November 2024, the Supreme Court of India laid down safeguards against punitive demolitions, emphasising procedural fairness, notice and the opportunity to challenge proposed action. The Court made clear that executive authorities cannot simply substitute demolition for judicial punishment. Its ruling was an important reminder that the government is bound by law even when public anger demands immediate retribution.

The principle is straightforward: the state must establish wrongdoing through lawful procedures; it cannot manufacture guilt through the destruction of property.

The significance of this debate extends beyond Muslims or any other particular group. A state that can bypass due process for an unpopular minority may eventually use the same powers against political opponents, inconvenient journalists, protesting students or ordinary citizens who lack influential connections.

The bulldozer is therefore more than a machine in this controversy. It has become a symbol of the temptation to replace adjudication with spectacle and justice with intimidation.

4. Dalits, caste violence and the selective value of citizenship

India's democratic achievements cannot conceal the persistence of caste oppression. Dalits continue to face discrimination, social exclusion, assaults and, in some cases, killings arising from attempts to assert equal rights. Violence associated with inter-caste relationships, access to common resources, social status and resistance to traditional hierarchies exposes the distance between constitutional equality and lived experience.

The caste system is not merely a relic of an ancient past. Its consequences remain visible in unequal access to opportunity, degrading labour practices, social segregation and violence against those who challenge established power.

Yet it would be historically inaccurate to suggest that caste atrocities began in 2014 or that only one political party bears responsibility for them. Governments led by different parties have failed to eliminate these injustices. The appropriate test is whether authorities register complaints, investigate impartially, protect witnesses, prosecute offenders and deliver justice without political interference.

The same principle governs communal violence. A Muslim citizen, a Dalit citizen, a Christian citizen and a Hindu citizen must enjoy equal protection, regardless of the popularity of their beliefs or the political influence of their community.

The Constitution does not recognise grades of citizenship. It does not authorise a majority to decide which minority deserves safety, dignity or justice.

When a person is assaulted because of religion or caste, the injury is not confined to the individual. It communicates a threat to everyone who shares that identity: keep your place, remain silent and do not challenge those who claim superior status.

This is how violence becomes a mechanism of social control. It need not occur everywhere to influence the behaviour of millions. The fear of becoming the next victim can be as effective as the actual assault.

5. Women: Citizens, not the spoils of power

Perhaps the most disturbing continuity between historical conquest and contemporary brutality is the treatment of women as objects over whom powerful men believe they can exercise ownership.

Sexual violence has accompanied warfare and political domination across civilisations. Women have been assaulted to humiliate families, terrorise communities, enforce hierarchies or satisfy the appetites of men who believe themselves protected from consequences. But sexual violence is not confined to war. It flourishes wherever entitlement, impunity and institutional indifference combine.

The cases of Kathua and Ankita Bhandari demonstrate why this issue demands more than partisan outrage.

In January 2018, an eight-year-old Muslim girl from the nomadic Bakarwal community was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district. The prosecution alleged that the crime was intended partly to intimidate the community and drive it from the area. In June 2019, six of the seven adult accused tried in the case were convicted; three received life sentences and three police officers received prison terms for destroying evidence. The Supreme Court's subsequent proceedings also addressed the trial of an accused claiming to have been a juvenile.

The case was horrific not only because of the victim's age but because of the communal mobilisation surrounding it. Lawyers and members of the public protested in support of the accused, and political figures associated with the BJP participated in demonstrations defending those arrested. The episode exposed the appalling possibility that religious solidarity could be invoked to excuse even the most indefensible crime.

A child cannot be made an enemy because she belongs to another religious community. The moral bankruptcy lies in allowing communal allegiance to compete with the elementary obligation to protect a child.

In September 2022, nineteen-year-old Ankita Bhandari, a receptionist at a resort in Uttarakhand, was murdered. The resort owner, Pulkit Arya, was the son of a former BJP leader. On 30 May 2025, a court sentenced Arya and two employees to life imprisonment for the murder.

The case provoked widespread public anger and questions about the influence of political connections. But factual precision matters: Ankita's murder conviction does not, by itself, establish every allegation subsequently circulated about the case, including claims of a wider conspiracy or the involvement of other political figures. Such allegations require independent investigation and evidence.

What the case undeniably demonstrates is the vulnerability of a young woman employed by men who possessed greater economic and social power. Her refusal to comply with demands allegedly made of her, the events leading to her death and the subsequent investigation raised urgent questions about workplace safety, power and accountability.

These cases should not be reduced to a Hindu-Muslim confrontation. Sexual violence is not the monopoly of any religion, caste or political party. Nor should every rape or murder be described as the behaviour of a conquering army. Doing so risks obscuring the individual circumstances of crimes and the structural causes of gender-based violence.

Nevertheless, when a woman's vulnerability is compounded by communal prejudice, political influence or institutional indifference, the analogy with predatory power becomes chillingly relevant.

A woman's body is not the property of a victorious community, a powerful employer, a dominant caste or a political establishment. That principle must hold regardless of the identity of the accused.

6. Jantar Mantar: When the guardians of law become the accused

The allegations emerging from the Jantar Mantar protests in October 2026 bring the question of state power into particularly sharp focus.

Three women journalists alleged that Delhi Police personnel sexually harassed them while they were covering protests on 3 October against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, amid demands for his resignation over alleged irregularities in electoral-roll revisions. One journalist alleged that an assistant commissioner of police touched her inappropriately and pushed her when she questioned the absence of women police personnel during the detention of demonstrators. The police transferred the complaints to the Crime Branch for investigation. The National Human Rights Commission subsequently took suo motu cognisance of the reported incidents and sought a detailed report from the Delhi Police Commissioner.

These are allegations under investigation, not findings of guilt. That distinction must be respected. The accused officers are entitled to due process, just as the complainants are entitled to a fair investigation and protection against intimidation.

But the seriousness of the allegations cannot be minimised merely because the investigation remains incomplete.

Police officers possess powers that ordinary citizens do not. They can detain people, restrict movement, use lawful force under prescribed circumstances and initiate criminal proceedings. That authority comes with a heightened obligation to exercise restraint, especially when dealing with women, journalists and peaceful demonstrators.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognised that constitutional freedoms do not disappear when citizens criticise the government. Freedom of speech and peaceful assembly are protected under Article 19 of the Constitution, subject to lawful restrictions. Article 21 protects life and personal liberty. The dignity of women and the prohibition of arbitrary state action are not optional courtesies extended by the police.

If officers entrusted with enforcing the law sexually harass the people they are supposed to protect, the problem is not simply individual misconduct. It is a potential abuse of the state's coercive power.

If a woman journalist is intimidated while documenting police action, the implications extend beyond her personal safety. Other journalists may become reluctant to record abuses. Protesters may fear that challenging authority will expose them to humiliation or violence. Public scrutiny weakens, and official power becomes less accountable.

The appropriate response is neither to presume the accused officers guilty nor to dismiss the complaints as politically motivated. It is to ensure an independent and credible investigation, preserve CCTV and other evidence, examine witnesses, register offences where the legal threshold is met, and impose proportionate punishment if misconduct is proved.

Anything less would betray both the complainants and the principles of justice.

7. Are we really returning to the age of conquest?

The comparison with ancient and medieval violence is useful only if we understand its limits.

Contemporary India is not a pre-modern kingdom. It has an elected Parliament, an independent constitutional judiciary, a written Constitution, a free—though increasingly contested—press, civil-society organisations and competitive elections. Courts have convicted the perpetrators in the Kathua and Ankita Bhandari cases. The Supreme Court has imposed safeguards against arbitrary demolitions. The NHRC has intervened over the Jantar Mantar allegations.

These are not insignificant facts. They demonstrate that the institutions of accountability have not disappeared.

Nor do crime statistics establish a simple, uninterrupted escalation of violence since 2014. The National Crime Records Bureau's reports provide important information about registered offences, but they cannot independently measure every instance of communal intimidation, political complicity or under-reporting. The official data have limitations, including the absence of a separate nationwide category for mob lynching in the published crime statistics.

Consequently, it would be irresponsible to claim that every form of violence has increased continuously, or that the entire country has become more violent simply because several horrifying cases have occurred. Equally, it would be misleading to use national crime totals to dismiss specific patterns of targeted violence. The number of registered murders cannot, by itself, tell us whether particular communities are being disproportionately intimidated or whether the police respond impartially.

The deeper issue is the relationship between political power and public morality.

Democracy is not merely the right of the majority to elect a government. It is also the obligation of the majority to respect the rights of those who did not vote for it, do not share its religion and may openly oppose its policies.

A government elected by millions does not acquire the moral authority to humiliate minorities. A police force does not become the private instrument of the ruling party. A religious majority does not become the owner of the nation.

When these distinctions are blurred, democratic institutions may remain standing while the ethical foundations supporting them begin to erode.

That is the danger worth taking seriously.

8. The real regression is moral, not chronological

Have Indians regressed to the savage times?

Not literally. The comparison is too sweeping to be a sound historical diagnosis. Contemporary India retains institutions, laws and civic traditions that distinguish it fundamentally from societies in which victorious rulers exercised virtually unchecked power.

But there is a more disturbing possibility: a society can preserve the outward forms of modern civilisation while reviving the moral assumptions of conquest.

It happens when the humiliation of an opponent is celebrated as strength; when a minority's suffering is dismissed because the victim belongs to the wrong religion; when caste domination is defended as tradition; when a woman's dignity is subordinated to a powerful man's entitlement; and when police misconduct is excused because the victim was protesting against the government.

It happens when the question asked is not, "Was an injustice committed?" but, "Whose side was the victim on?"

This is not the inevitable consequence of Hinduism, nationalism or Indian civilisation. Millions of Indians reject such conduct, including devout Hindus, members of the armed forces, police officers, judges, journalists, activists and ordinary citizens. Many have risked their careers, reputations and personal safety to defend the vulnerable. Their courage deserves recognition.

The struggle, therefore, is not between one religious community and another. It is between two conceptions of citizenship: one based on equal rights and human dignity, the other on hierarchy, collective punishment and the privileges of the powerful.

The answer lies in strengthening independent policing, ensuring impartial prosecution, protecting witnesses and journalists, enforcing safeguards against arbitrary demolitions, confronting caste discrimination, and making sexual violence a matter of justice rather than political convenience. Political leaders must be held accountable for incitement and for failures of protection, on the basis of evidence rather than partisan assumption.

Above all, Indians must reject the idea that electoral victory confers moral supremacy.

Ancient kings sometimes treated the defeated as prey. Modern governments are expected to protect even those who despise them. That is the difference between power exercised as domination and power exercised under a Constitution.

India's greatest danger is not that it has forgotten how to build temples, monuments, institutions or technologies. It is that some of its citizens may be encouraged to regard the dignity of other citizens as negotiable.

A civilisation is not measured merely by the grandeur of its past or the scale of its achievements. It is measured by what happens to the weakest person when the powerful believe nobody is watching.

If India wishes to remain a civilisation worthy of its constitutional promise, it must ensure that no citizen becomes the spoils of another's victory.

The real test of a democracy is not how it treats its friends when they are powerful. It is how it treats its opponents, its minorities and its most vulnerable citizens when they are defenceless.

#IndianHistory #AncientIndia #CommunalViolence #IndiaPolitics #TempleDesecration #RuleOfLaw #ModernIndia #HistoricalAnalysis #Post2014India #JusticeInIndia #CowVigilantism #BulldozerJustice #IndianDemocracy #FactCheckIndia #CivilisationalDebate #KathuaHorror #AnkitaBhandari

Ambani-Adani Duo Pushing Out Rivals To Monopolise India’s Economy?

2026-10-21T19:46:45.888+05:30

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The claim that the Adani and Ambani groups stand on the verge of monopolising the entire Indian economy is an exaggeration that does not withstand careful scrutiny of the scale and structure of India’s economy. At the same time, the underlying anxiety is not baseless. Both conglomerates have acquired unusually large and strategically important positions across critical infrastructure and consumer-facing sectors, and their expansion has raised legitimate questions about concentration of economic power, barriers to entry for smaller players, and the nature of their relationship with the political system. A balanced assessment requires separating sectoral dominance from economy-wide monopoly, distinguishing commercial success from political capture, and recognising both the developmental contributions and the risks that accompany such scale.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone has emerged as India’s largest private port operator. In the financial year 2024-25 it handled roughly 27 per cent of the country’s total cargo and about 45.5 per cent of container cargo, with market shares continuing to edge higher into 2025-26. The group’s interests extend well beyond ports into airports, power generation and transmission, renewables, cement, logistics, data centres and, more recently, defence-related manufacturing. Reliance Industries, under Mukesh Ambani, commands a different but equally formidable footprint. Its telecom arm, Jio, consistently accounts for around 39 to 44 per cent of the mobile subscriber base and a similar or higher share of adjusted gross revenue, frequently placing it first or in a close race with Bharti Airtel. Together, Jio and Airtel control the overwhelming majority of industry revenue, while Vodafone Idea and BSNL trail far behind. Reliance’s other businesses span oil-to-chemicals, organised retail, digital platforms, media and entertainment, creating a vertically integrated presence that touches millions of consumers daily.

These positions matter because ports, airports, power, digital connectivity and retail function as chokepoints. When a small number of groups control large shares of such infrastructure, they can influence costs, access and competitive conditions for a wide range of downstream activities. Large conglomerates also enjoy advantages in raising capital, securing land and licences, and navigating regulatory processes. Critics argue that these advantages can become self-reinforcing, converting market success into structural power that is difficult for smaller firms or new entrants to challenge. Cross-sector expansion by both groups has further fuelled concerns that overlapping interests could produce duopoly-like outcomes in selected markets.

Yet the assertion of near-total monopolisation collapses when set against the broader economy. India’s GDP is approaching four trillion dollars and is driven by a highly diversified base. Micro, small and medium enterprises continue to account for roughly 30 per cent of GDP and the vast majority of enterprises and employment. Agriculture, construction, unorganised retail, information technology services, public administration and a wide array of manufacturing activities remain largely outside the direct control of either family. Even within infrastructure, state-owned enterprises retain significant roles in ports, power, banking, insurance, oil and railways. In aviation, IndiGo is the dominant carrier. In cement, UltraTech remains larger than Adani’s operations. In telecom, Airtel is a formidable and often faster-growing rival. The five leading business houses, including Reliance, Tata, Adani, Aditya Birla and Bharti, together represent a meaningful but still limited share of overall economic output, far below the levels associated with true national monopolies or the classic South Korean chaebol model.

Market capitalisation figures sometimes create a misleading impression of economic dominance. The Ambani family’s businesses have at times been valued at figures approaching one-tenth of India’s GDP in market terms, and Adani’s group has also reached very high valuations. These numbers reflect investor expectations and the capital intensity of infrastructure and energy assets rather than direct control over national production or employment. A World Bank-linked study of family business groups found high concentration of revenues among the largest houses over two decades, yet even that concentration does not equate to ownership of the entire economy. India’s corporate landscape still includes strong independent groups such as Tata, Mahindra, Bajaj, Godrej and others, alongside a vibrant public sector and a massive informal economy.

The political dimension is more complex and more contested. Both groups have benefited from India’s post-2014 infrastructure push, favourable policy environments in telecom, energy and logistics, and the broader shift toward private participation in ports, airports and power. Adani’s rapid rise has been particularly closely associated in public discourse with the political fortunes of the ruling party, giving rise to the pejorative label “Modani.” Opposition parties, investigative journalists and international reports have repeatedly alleged preferential treatment in the form of airport and port concessions, coal and power contracts, and, more recently, directed investments by public institutions such as the Life Insurance Corporation into Adani entities during periods of market stress. US authorities have pursued bribery and securities-fraud investigations involving Adani executives and associates, while Indian regulators have examined related-party and shareholding issues. Reliance has faced parallel scrutiny over its political contributions through electoral bonds, its influence on digital and media policy, and the competitive impact of Jio’s aggressive entry into telecom.

These allegations do not prove that either group “owns” the state. Governments of different parties have historically courted large capital for investment and employment generation. India’s infrastructure deficit is real, and private capital has delivered capacity that the public sector alone could not have built at the same pace. Yet the perception of proximity carries costs. It fuels public distrust, invites charges of crony capitalism, and raises the possibility of regulatory capture in which rules are shaped to favour incumbents. When essential infrastructure is controlled by a few politically connected groups, smaller suppliers, regional competitors and even state governments may find their bargaining power reduced. The Competition Commission of India has the statutory tools to examine dominance and abuse of dominance, but enforcement against conglomerates of this scale remains challenging, especially when commercial success is intertwined with national development narratives.

A useful comparative lens is the South Korean chaebol experience. Like the chaebols, Adani and Ambani groups are family-controlled, highly diversified, and have grown through close relationships with the state. Unlike the chaebols at their peak, however, they do not yet dominate manufacturing exports, global technology supply chains or roughly half of national stock-market capitalisation. India’s growth model remains more domestic-demand oriented and MSME-heavy. The Korean example nevertheless offers a cautionary lesson: concentrated industrial power can accelerate development while simultaneously stifling competition, amplifying inequality and creating systemic political risks. India’s challenge is to retain the investment and efficiency gains that large groups provide without allowing scale to harden into unaccountable privilege.

The real issue, therefore, is not whether two families are about to monopolise the Indian economy—they are not—but whether the combination of sectoral concentration, political proximity and weak competitive discipline will gradually erode the open, contestable markets that India needs for sustained and inclusive growth. Effective safeguards include rigorous and independent competition enforcement, transparent auctions for scarce resources such as spectrum, ports and airports, clear open-access rules for critical infrastructure, stronger protections for MSMEs and minority shareholders, and a clearer institutional separation between policy-making and commercial relationships with large conglomerates. Without these disciplines, the advantages of scale can tip into entrenched advantage.

In sum, Adani and Ambani have become central players in the modern Indian economy and possess significant political influence by virtue of their size and strategic importance. Their success reflects both entrepreneurial ambition and a policy environment that has rewarded infrastructure investment. That success, however, stops well short of monopoly over the economy as a whole. The more precise and urgent concern is the concentration of power in key sectors and the risk that political and regulatory institutions will fail to keep that power accountable. India’s future competitiveness will depend less on preventing large firms from growing and more on ensuring that growth remains contestable, transparent and subordinate to the broader public interest.

#AdaniAmbani #IndianEconomy #CorporatePower #CronyCapitalism #MonopolyDebate #InfrastructureDominance #JioAdani #PoliticalInfluence #MarketConcentration #IndiaBusiness #CompetitionPolicy #EconomicPower #PortsAndTelecom #BigBusinessIndia #RegulatoryCapture

The IDBI Bank Sale to Fairfax: A Critical Examination of India’s Largest Financial-Sector FDI

2026-10-20T21:28:39.971+05:30

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In mid-October 2026, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the strategic restructuring of IDBI Bank, clearing the sale of a 60.72 per cent stake to a subsidiary of Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings for ₹52,878 crore. Fairfax, controlled by Indian-origin investor Prem Watsa, will acquire roughly 30.48 per cent from the Government of India and 30.24 per cent from the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). After the transaction, the government will retain 15 per cent and LIC 19 per cent. The deal, priced at ₹81 per share, has been billed as the largest foreign direct investment in India’s financial sector and a landmark step in reducing state ownership of a commercial bank. While supporters hail it as a reformist move that brings private capital, professional management and fiscal resources, a closer examination reveals substantial drawbacks and legitimate critiques that deserve greater attention.

On the positive side, the transaction advances the long-standing policy of reducing the government’s footprint in commercial banking. IDBI Bank, originally a development finance institution, had already been reclassified as a private-sector bank after earlier dilutions that brought government ownership below 51 per cent. Transferring majority control to a strategic private investor is consistent with the broader objective of improving efficiency, reducing the fiscal burden of periodic recapitalisation, and allowing market discipline to shape lending and governance. Fairfax’s entry is expected to inject professional management practices, technology upgrades and a sharper commercial focus. The bank itself has staged a notable recovery: gross non-performing assets have fallen dramatically from the high-30 per cent range in 2018 to around 2.3 per cent by early 2026, capital adequacy has strengthened significantly, and profitability has returned. Proponents argue that private ownership can accelerate this trajectory by freeing the institution from bureaucratic constraints and enabling faster decision-making.

Fiscal considerations also favour the deal. Proceeds of approximately ₹26,500 crore for the government and a similar amount for LIC will help the Centre meet or exceed its disinvestment and asset-monetisation targets for the year. In a period of elevated subsidy and expenditure pressures, the inflow of foreign exchange and rupee resources is not trivial. The government has further signalled its intention to eventually dilute its residual 15 per cent stake through the market, suggesting a continuing commitment to reducing public ownership. For advocates of liberalisation, the transaction demonstrates that India can attract large, long-term foreign capital into its banking system under transparent (if prolonged) processes involving independent valuations and multi-layered scrutiny.

Yet these advantages must be weighed against a series of structural, valuation, regulatory and political concerns that cast the deal in a less flattering light. The most immediate and widely discussed critique centres on valuation. Fairfax’s winning bid of ₹81 per share sat below the prevailing market price at the time of announcement and well below levels reached during periods of privatisation optimism. Although the government maintains that ₹81 exceeded the average fair-value estimate of roughly ₹76 produced by two independent valuers using market-multiple and asset-based methods, critics contend that the process undervalued a cleaned-up franchise with strong capital ratios, a decent retail tilt and improving asset quality. Earlier rounds had seen bids rejected for falling short of a higher reserve price. The eventual acceptance of a lower figure, after years of delay, has fuelled arguments that the state sold a recovering asset at a discount precisely when its prospects looked brightest. Former civil servant E.A.S. Sarma has been particularly sharp, describing the consideration as a “pittance” and calling for the decision to be kept in abeyance pending an independent inquiry into valuation and process.

A second major concern is the transfer of majority economic ownership of a sizeable Indian bank to a foreign entity. Even though the Reserve Bank of India will retain full regulatory and supervisory authority, and deposit insurance remains in place, the optics and substance of foreign control over a systemically relevant institution raise legitimate questions of economic sovereignty and long-term strategic autonomy. Banking is not an ordinary commercial activity; it sits at the heart of credit allocation, monetary transmission and financial stability. Handing majority ownership to a Canadian financial conglomerate, however reputable, invites scrutiny about whose priorities will ultimately shape the bank’s risk appetite, sectoral exposure and crisis-response behaviour. The fact that Fairfax already holds a substantial stake in CSB Bank compounds the issue. RBI policy generally discourages the same promoter from controlling two banks. Fairfax has been given a two-year window either to exit CSB or to merge it with IDBI. Either path introduces execution risk, management distraction and potential value destruction at a time when the primary task should be transforming IDBI itself.

Regulatory architecture further dilutes the practical benefits of majority ownership. Banking regulations typically cap voting rights of a single shareholder or group at 26 per cent even when economic ownership is higher. Fairfax will therefore exercise control disproportionate to its formal voting power while simultaneously being required to reduce its stake to 26 per cent over a 15-year period after an initial lock-in. This creates an awkward hybrid: high economic exposure with constrained formal power, followed by mandated dilution. Future capital raises by the bank will further dilute Fairfax’s holding, potentially reducing its long-term skin in the game. The residual stakes of the government (15 per cent) and LIC (19 per cent, to be brought down further) also mean that public-sector influence will not disappear overnight. Together they retain enough equity to block special resolutions, preserving a degree of state leverage that sits uneasily with the narrative of clean privatisation.

Operational and cultural risks are equally significant. IDBI Bank may be classified as a private bank, yet its internal culture, workforce composition and certain institutional features (including residual vigilance and transparency obligations) still resemble those of a public-sector lender. Integrating a large, unionised workforce into a private-sector performance culture is never straightforward. Bank unions have already voiced strong opposition to the sale to a foreign entity, citing job security, service conditions and the loss of reservation benefits for employees from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes once the bank fully exits the public-sector fold. The government’s assurances that employee interests will be protected under the share-purchase agreement have not fully allayed these concerns. Cultural transformation, technology modernisation and the alignment of incentives will demand sustained managerial attention and political capital that may prove scarce.

Another under-appreciated limitation is that the entire ₹52,878 crore consideration flows to the sellers—the government and LIC—rather than into IDBI’s balance sheet as fresh equity. Unlike some private-bank investments that involve primary capital infusion, this is a pure secondary sale. The bank’s future growth capital will therefore depend either on retained earnings, subsequent fundraising, or additional commitments from Fairfax. Given that Fairfax itself plans to fund the acquisition through a combination of holding-company cash, asset sales and contributions from other group companies rather than long-term debt, questions remain about the quantum and timing of any follow-on capital support for IDBI’s expansion.

Process-related critiques also merit attention. The privatisation effort has stretched over more than four years since expressions of interest were first invited, with earlier bids rejected and valuations revisited. Prolonged uncertainty can itself damage a bank by distracting management, affecting employee morale and creating hesitation among customers and counterparties. While multi-layered scrutiny involving inter-ministerial groups and independent valuers is designed to ensure integrity, the extended timeline and eventual acceptance of a price below market have left room for allegations of opacity or suboptimal timing. Critics further note that selling a recovering mid-sized bank does little to address the deeper structural problems of the larger public-sector banks that continue to dominate the system and absorb the bulk of fiscal support.

In the broader policy context, the deal raises questions about sequencing and consistency in banking reform. India has allowed foreign strategic investors into smaller private banks and has diluted stakes in public banks, yet full privatisation of larger institutions remains politically and administratively difficult. Completing the IDBI transaction may be presented as proof of reform momentum, but it also highlights how selective and protracted the process remains. The retention of significant minority stakes by government and LIC, the voting-rights cap, the dual-bank problem, and the absence of primary capital all suggest a hybrid arrangement rather than a clean transfer of control and risk.

Taken together, the IDBI–Fairfax transaction is neither an unalloyed triumph of market reform nor an outright giveaway. It does reduce state ownership, attract substantial foreign capital, and place a recovering bank under private management. Those are genuine positives. Yet the valuation concerns, the foreign-control optics, the regulatory constraints on voting and dual ownership, the cultural and labour challenges, the lack of capital infusion into the bank itself, and the residual public stakes collectively temper the reformist claims. For a deal of this scale and symbolic importance, the balance of argument leans more heavily toward caution than celebration. Whether Fairfax can navigate these constraints and deliver a genuinely stronger, more competitive institution will determine if the transaction ultimately justifies the criticisms it has already attracted. Until that evidence emerges, the cons and critiques deserve sustained public and parliamentary scrutiny.

#IDBIBank #FairfaxDeal #IDBIPrivatisation #BankingReforms #FDIIndia #PremWatsa #StrategicSale #IndianEconomy #PublicSectorBanks #Disinvestment #BankingSector #FinancialReforms #IDBIFairfax #PrivatisationDebate #IndianBanking

Rumour as Political Symptom: Modi’s Non-Exit and the Fragility of Narrative Power

2026-10-19T21:24:14.059+05:30

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Modi is preparing to resign. He will leave for some unknown destination abroad. Such social media rumours of Narendra Modi’s imminent departure as Prime Minister have a familiar rhythm. A forged resignation letter circulates, complete with official-looking emblems and signatures. Social media amplifies claims that he is packing his bags for permanent exile. Parallel whispers suggest Amit Shah is being elevated to Deputy Prime Minister as the designated successor. Simultaneously, speculation swirls that Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar are preparing to withdraw support and topple the government. These claims are not credible as factual reports of imminent collapse. The Press Information Bureau has formally debunked the resignation letter. No verified announcement confirms Shah’s elevation as a succession mechanism. No completed withdrawal of support by the key NDA allies has occurred. Yet the persistence and emotional traction of these rumours are politically significant. They reveal less about an impending exit than about the erosion of narrative control, the structural vulnerabilities of coalition arithmetic, and the growing gap between institutional stability and public legitimacy.

The specific claims collapse under minimal scrutiny. The resignation letter was a fabrication, as the PIB stated unequivocally: no such document was issued or signed by the Prime Minister. This is not a matter of competing interpretations; it is a documented falsehood that nonetheless achieved rapid circulation. Claims of Modi preparing permanent departure from India rest on the same thin foundation. Speculative reports of cabinet reshuffles and greater prominence for Amit Shah have appeared in secondary outlets, but neither the PMO nor the BJP has confirmed any formal move toward a Deputy Prime Ministership framed as succession. On the coalition front, reporting describes pressure, protests targeting NDA allies, and tactical speculation about realignment. It does not describe a completed rupture. Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), Naidu’s TDP, and Chirag Paswan’s LJP remain, as of the available evidence, inside the arrangement that sustains the government’s parliamentary numbers. Plausibility is not evidence. The leap from protest pressure to governmental fall is a rhetorical inflation common in periods of visible dissent.

Why, then, do such rumours retain force? Because the underlying political environment supplies them with emotional and structural resonance. Youth-led protests over unemployment, examination paper leaks, and alleged irregularities in electoral-roll processes have produced the most sustained public dissent against the government since 2014. Analysts still describe the administration as institutionally stable, yet the street has become a site of visible challenge. Protesters have deliberately expanded their targets beyond Modi and Shah to include the NDA’s regional partners. This is strategic. In a system where the BJP’s own majority is supplemented by allies whose combined strength is material, making continued participation politically costly is a rational opposition tactic. The rumours of defection flourish because the arithmetic is real: the loss of key allies would shrink the government’s comfort margin and open bargaining over posts, policy priorities, and regional demands. Emotional plausibility, fed by genuine grievances, converts structural vulnerability into viral narrative.

The succession chatter around Amit Shah performs a related function. It is not evidence that Modi is preparing an exit; it is evidence that the question of post-Modi leadership remains unresolved and therefore generative of anxiety and intrigue. In a highly personalised political system, the absence of a transparent succession mechanism creates a vacuum that rumour fills. Elevating Shah—or even floating the idea—can be read simultaneously as consolidation, preparation, or mere trial balloon. None of these readings requires an imminent resignation. What it does require is recognition that personalised power eventually confronts the problem of transfer. The longer the question is deferred, the more speculative narratives proliferate. This is a structural feature of the system, not a sign of imminent collapse.

The deeper significance lies in the disjunction between institutional durability and narrative fragility. Governments do not fall because social media declares them finished. They fall when parliamentary arithmetic shifts, when key institutions defect, or when the costs of continued rule exceed the benefits for those who sustain it. None of those conditions has been met. Yet the capacity of unverified claims to dominate public conversation reveals a real political vulnerability: the progressive decoupling of official narrative from lived experience among significant sections of the population, particularly the young. When paper leaks, unemployment, and questions of electoral integrity become focal points of mobilisation, the government’s claim to competent stewardship is placed under pressure even if its formal majority remains intact. The targeting of allies is particularly revealing. It treats the coalition not as a stable structure but as a set of contingent bargains that can be made more expensive. In this sense the rumours function as political pressure rather than accurate reportage. They test cohesion by forcing allies to reaffirm loyalty under conditions of public hostility.

This dynamic has longer-term implications. First, it underscores the limits of centralised narrative management. A political project that has invested heavily in image, messaging, and the personalisation of authority is especially exposed when that image is contested by events it cannot fully control. The rapid circulation of a forged letter is not merely a technical failure of fact-checking; it is a symptom of audiences predisposed to believe the worst because their own experience supplies confirmatory bias. Second, it highlights the residual power of regional parties within the NDA. Naidu and Nitish are not junior partners in a purely hierarchical arrangement; they are holders of leverage whose continued participation must be continuously negotiated. Protest pressure that raises the domestic political cost of that participation is therefore a rational strategy, even if it has not yet produced rupture. Third, the succession speculation itself becomes a form of soft power contestation. By keeping the question of “after Modi” alive, opposition narratives and intra-party anxieties prevent the total closure of the political horizon around a single figure.

None of this means the government is on the brink of collapse. Parliamentary majorities, institutional continuity, and the absence of verified defections still matter more than viral claims. The next reliable electoral test—Uttar Pradesh’s assembly election—will provide clearer data on the depth of any erosion than social-media cycles ever can. The general election remains years away. Treating every rumour as evidence of terminal decline is analytically lazy. Equally lazy, however, is the dismissal of sustained protest and alliance strain as mere noise. The former over-reads; the latter under-reads. The truthful position is more uncomfortable: the government remains institutionally secure while facing a measurable deterioration in the conditions that sustain long-term political authority—economic delivery for the young, institutional credibility, and the cohesion of the broader coalition.

Rumour in this context is not primarily a failure of information hygiene. It is a diagnostic. It registers the gap between formal power and perceived legitimacy, between the claim of uninterrupted dominance and the reality of contested street politics and contingent alliances. When a fabricated resignation letter travels faster than official denials, the problem is not only the existence of forgers; it is the existence of an audience ready to receive the forgery as confirmation. When speculation about Shah’s elevation and allies’ wavering acquires emotional force, the problem is not only journalistic indiscipline; it is the unresolved structural questions of succession and coalition management that the speculation exploits. The political significance of these rumours, therefore, is not that they accurately describe an exit that has not occurred. It is that they map the fault lines along which future pressure will continue to be applied. Stability is not the same as invulnerability. Narrative dominance is not the same as consent. The distinction is the one that matters.

#ModiExitRumour #NarendraModi #IndianPolitics #NDAAlliance #AmitShah #FactCheck #PoliticalAnalysis #YouthProtestsIndia #CoalitionPolitics #BJPSuccession #NDAStability #ModiGovernment #FakeResignationLetter #IndiaCurrentAffairs #PoliticalRumour

GEN-Z Unrest - 21st Century’s Global Phenomenon?

2026-10-18T19:12:11.532+05:30

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Youth unrest has emerged as a defining feature of the mid-2020s, unfolding not as a coordinated transnational revolution but as a series of country-specific eruptions that share a recognisable generational vocabulary. From the barricaded lycées of France to the streets of Delhi, Casablanca, Antananarivo, Kathmandu and Lima, members of Generation Z—those born roughly between the late 1990s and early 2010s—have mobilised with striking speed and stylistic consistency. Their methods rely on digital platforms for rapid coordination, their rhetoric centres on institutional betrayal, and their grievances cluster around economic exclusion, educational failure and political unaccountability. While each movement retains distinct national triggers, the cumulative pattern reveals a deeper structural shift: a generation that no longer accepts the post-2008 economic settlement or the political class that manages it.

The immediate sparks have varied. In France, protests began in mid-September 2026 at a single high school in the Paris suburb of Créteil, where students complained of teacher shortages, classes of thirty-five or more, leaking roofs, mouldy ceilings and classrooms that became uninhabitable during record heatwaves. Within weeks the action spread nationwide, drawing hundreds of thousands into the streets and prompting thousands of arrests, the large majority of them minors. What started as a demand for functional schools quickly absorbed broader anger over the cost of living, inequality and the sense that public services were being hollowed out while the state prepared for elections. In India the sequence began earlier in 2026 with student fury over paper leaks and irregularities in the NEET medical entrance examination, which forced the education minister’s resignation. By October the same networks had re-mobilised under the banner of the Cockroach Janta Party against a nationwide voter-roll revision that removed or flagged roughly 130 million names. Protesters framed the exercise as an attempt to shrink the electorate of younger and poorer citizens ahead of crucial state elections.

Elsewhere the triggers were even more visceral. In Morocco, the deaths of several women after caesarean sections at a public hospital in Agadir in late September 2025 ignited the GenZ 212 movement, named after the country’s telephone code. Demonstrators quickly expanded their demands to encompass chronic youth unemployment—running above 30 percent for graduates—underfunded healthcare and education, and the perceived misallocation of resources toward 2030 World Cup infrastructure. In Madagascar, repeated power and water cuts in a country already marked by extreme poverty pushed young people into the streets; the protests escalated until a military unit sided with the crowds and President Andry Rajoelina fled. Nepal’s September 2025 uprising was detonated by a government ban on social-media platforms used to expose the lavish lifestyles of politicians’ children; within days the prime minister had resigned. In Peru, proposed pension changes and rising crime under President Dina Boluarte coalesced into broader demands against corruption, culminating in her removal by Congress.

Beneath these proximate causes lies a set of shared economic conditions that make the generational grievance intelligible across continents. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high in many of the countries that have seen sustained mobilisation. Morocco’s rate for young people has hovered near 36 percent in some measurements; Nepal’s is around 20 percent; Madagascar’s extreme poverty rate exceeds 75 percent. Even in richer societies such as France and Spain, the combination of precarious contracts, stagnant real wages and housing costs that consume a rising share of income has produced a palpable sense of blocked futures. Education systems, once presented as the reliable escalator of social mobility, now appear to many young people as sites of rationing and failure: overcrowded classrooms, examination scandals, opaque university admissions algorithms and degrees that no longer guarantee secure employment. Public services—hospitals, utilities, transport—are experienced as deteriorating just as fiscal austerity and competing spending priorities (mega-events, debt service, elite perks) become more visible. The result is a form of economic precarity that is both material and psychological: a conviction that the rules of the game have been rewritten against the generation that must live longest with the consequences.

This economic substrate is inseparable from a profound political distrust. Across the cases, young protesters repeatedly describe older elites as corrupt, nepotistic and insulated from the consequences of their decisions. Social-media platforms have turned elite excess into a daily spectacle—luxury holidays, designer goods, state-subsidised housing allowances many times the minimum wage—while ordinary citizens face rising prices and shrinking public provision. The same platforms also enable rapid, largely leaderless mobilisation. Discord servers, Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp groups allow grievances to travel faster than traditional parties or unions can respond, and they facilitate the borrowing of symbols and tactics across borders. The One Piece flag, the cockroach as a resilient underdog, and hashtags linking “nepo-babies” from Kathmandu to Manila illustrate a shared cultural grammar even when organisational structures remain decentralised.

Government responses have ranged from repression to partial concession, often in rapid succession. In France the state has combined limited educational investments—additional substitute teachers, abandonment of certain fee increases—with large-scale policing that has produced thousands of arrests and multiple investigations into police conduct. In India authorities have repeatedly locked down parts of Delhi, cancelled trains, cut internet services and detained protest leaders, while the Election Commission and government insist the voter-roll revision is a technical clean-up. Morocco responded to the GenZ 212 mobilisation with both budget reallocations toward health and education and a sustained campaign of arrests that left hundreds still detained months later. Nepal and Madagascar saw the most dramatic outcomes: the fall of the government in the former and the ouster of the president in the latter after the military switched sides. Peru’s Congress removed Boluarte under pressure. In several cases initial concessions—lifting a social-media ban, sacking a cabinet, announcing a national dialogue—proved insufficient once the legitimacy of the entire political class had been called into question.

Civil-society responses have been equally varied but share a distinctive texture. Traditional trade unions and opposition parties have sometimes joined or endorsed the movements, yet the organisational core has often remained outside established structures. The GenZ 212 collective in Morocco, the Cockroach Janta Party in India and the diffuse networks in Madagascar and Nepal operated with minimal formal hierarchy, relying instead on digital coordination and horizontal decision-making. This form has proven resilient against the arrest of individual spokespeople, but it has also complicated the translation of street pressure into durable institutional reform. In Nepal, youth figures entered transitional government; elsewhere the movements have struggled to prevent co-optation or fragmentation once the immediate crisis subsided.

Media coverage has reflected both the novelty of the generational framing and the political fault lines of each society. International outlets have frequently presented the protests as a coherent “Gen Z wave,” emphasising digital tactics, shared economic grievances and the contrast with earlier, more ideologically structured youth movements. Domestic media landscapes are more polarised. In France, extensive coverage of school conditions and police clashes has kept public attention high, though some outlets have stressed disorder over underlying causes. In India, investigative reporting on internal Election Commission disagreements helped fuel the voter-roll controversy, while government-aligned channels have tended to portray the Cockroach movement as opposition-instigated disruption. In Morocco and Madagascar, state or semi-official media initially downplayed or criminalised the protests, only later acknowledging service failures once political pressure became unavoidable. Social media itself has functioned as both organising tool and alternative public sphere, allowing protesters to bypass traditional gatekeepers and to document state violence in real time—images that then feed back into international reporting.

The cumulative picture that emerges is therefore neither a single global revolution nor a set of isolated local disturbances. It is a patterned response by a generation that has internalised the language of rights and opportunity while confronting labour markets, housing systems and public services that systematically fail to deliver them. Economic precarity—unemployment, insecure work, unaffordable housing, underfunded education and healthcare—forms the material base. Political distrust, amplified by visible corruption and elite insulation, supplies the moral charge. Digital infrastructure provides the organisational capacity. Governments that respond solely with force risk converting local grievances into broader legitimacy crises; those that offer only cosmetic concessions leave the underlying structural problems intact. Whether the current cycle produces lasting institutional reform or simply cycles of explosion and containment will depend less on the creativity of young protesters than on the capacity of older political classes to treat generational exclusion as a governing problem rather than a public-order nuisance. The evidence of 2025 and 2026 suggests that many have not yet made that adjustment.

#GenZProtests #NehaBora #YouthUnrest #GlobalYouthProtests #GenZRevolution #CJP #StudentProtests #YouthUnemployment #CostOfLivingCrisis #PoliticalCorruption #GenerationalAnger #DigitalActivism #FranceProtests #IndiaProtests #NepalProtests #YouthVsElite #GenZVoices #DhruvRathee

The Raj Is a Convenient Alibi: Policing, Power and the Delhi Protests

2026-10-16T19:36:38.344+05:30

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On 10 and 11 October, Delhi was turned into a fortress. Human Rights Watch reports that authorities deployed more than 40,000 security personnel, cancelled trains, shut dozens of Metro stations and suspended mobile internet, while police beat, dragged and detained protesters. Those demonstrators were demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner over a contested voter-roll revision. Journalists were swept up too: the Committee to Protect Journalists counts at least 37 detained across Delhi, Ahmedabad and Pune over the two days, and HRW counts at least 30 in Delhi alone.

The commentary that follows such episodes is predictable. The police, we are told, are still the Raj's police, and the Indian Police Act of 1861 still shapes their reflexes. That is true, and it is also comfortable. It puts the fault in someone else's century, and a diagnosis that implicates no living person produces no cure.

What is established, and what is not

Some facts are on the court record. On 9 October the Supreme Court directed the Centre to ensure there was no complete prohibition on Metro and train movement into Delhi. On Sunday, 11 October, a special bench recorded the Solicitor General's assurance that lawyers, journalists and other professionals would not be impeded in their duties. The bench also issued contempt notices to the Union Home Secretary, the Delhi Police Commissioner and the Metro chairperson, with compliance reports due on 13 October. A habeas corpus petition sought the release of more than 7,000 people detained across Delhi, and Justice Bagchi acknowledged the magnitude of the detentions.

Other claims remain allegations. Reports say detentions and rough handling of journalists continued on 11 October despite the Court's order. Three women journalists alleged sexual harassment, and a Caravan journalist said he was struck with a rifle butt. I found no detailed police rebuttal. What I did find was government sources telling PTI that action would follow against "individuals claiming to be independent journalists" who provoke or confront police. I could not confirm what the 13 October hearing produced. Specific claims deserve testing against evidence, and a writer should say plainly where that testing is incomplete.

The limits of the colonial story

The historical case holds. The 1861 Act followed the revolt of 1857 and was built to protect an alien authority, not to earn the consent of the policed. But inheritance explains a starting point, not an eighty-year destination.

Consider the most recent test of will. India replaced its colonial criminal procedure code with the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which came into force on 1 July 2024. The old Section 144, the magistrate's blanket prohibitory power, was simply renumbered Section 163, and its core powers remain largely unchanged. That is the power the authorities invoked in Delhi: on 11 October the Court ordered the removal of a notice outside the Supreme Court announcing Section 163 restrictions. Parliament can rewrite colonial law when it wishes, and in this instance it kept the colonial instrument and gave it a new number. That is a choice, and it was made by people alive today.

The Delhi exception

Here the standard reform narrative needs correcting. The usual argument says police are a state subject, so state politicians control postings and transfers and therefore resist reform. In Delhi that argument does not apply. Delhi Police report to the Union Home Ministry, not to the elected Delhi government. The constitutional arrangement behind this, Article 239AA, keeps police, public order and land with the Union. Newslaundry reported that more than 35,000 police and paramilitary personnel were mobilised on directives from the Ministry of Home Affairs.

This sharpens the point rather than blunting it. Accountability for policing in the capital sits unambiguously with the Union government, and a contempt notice to the Union Home Secretary says as much. It also means the problem cannot be framed as one party's misconduct. The structural temptation is the same wherever police answer upward to whoever holds power. In the states the commanding politician differs by party. In Delhi it is whoever governs the Union. Reform that depends on the goodwill of that politician is a request, not a safeguard.

A blueprint that exists, and compliance that does not

India does not lack a reform design. In Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006) the Supreme Court issued seven directives, including state security commissions, a fixed tenure for the police chief, separation of investigation from law and order, and independent complaints authorities. What followed is well documented. An assessment by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative found not a single case of full compliance, with governments having rejected, ignored or diluted significant features of the directives. Most states had set up a security commission, but 27 of 29 did so, and no state formed a complaints authority in accordance with the directive. A later CHRI study found that 18 states had enacted or revised police acts, yet none fully matched the directives. Prakash Singh himself argues that states passed these laws ostensibly to comply but in reality to circumvent the judgment.

The Court bears part of the responsibility. Singh and the jurist A.P. Shah have both said that the apex court did not pursue contempt against non-compliant states with any zeal. That is the lesson of two decades: orders without enforcement are survived by acknowledgment and delay. It also makes the live Delhi proceedings worth watching. A court that finds a prima facie case of contempt against the Union Home Secretary and the Police Commissioner is doing something it largely declined to do after 2006.

What other democracies show, and what they don't

Held up against Britain, Germany or Canada, India's policing of protest looks harsh, and the standard HRW invokes is clear: force that is necessary, proportionate and accountable, as in the UN Basic Principles. But the comparison should not be sentimental. Britain's Public Order Act 2023 drew a rebuke from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who called it incompatible with the country's international obligations. The UK's own equality regulator has warned that successive protest laws move away from the state's positive duty to facilitate peaceful protest. No democracy is immune from the temptation to widen police discretion.

What distinguishes the healthier cases is the response when power overreaches: courts that can strike restrictions down, legislatures that can revisit them, a press that cannot be bundled into buses, and complaint bodies with teeth. India's deficit lies in those corrective loops more than in the instincts of any individual constable. Even there, the picture is not uniformly bleak. The Supreme Court sat on a Sunday, journalists' bodies mobilised within hours, and petitions were filed. The loops are strained, not absent.

The constituency reformers forget

Commentary often treats the police as a single instrument of power. A constable holding a barricade after twelve hours, with thin staffing, little crowd-control training and a supervisor anxious about political fallout, is not a free agent. Reform framed purely as restraining a villain invites resistance from within. Reform that offers officers something, such as protected tenure, professional career tracks and legal cover for refusing an unlawful order, builds an internal constituency. The best argument for fixed tenures is not that they discipline the police. It is that they free honest officers from the threat of punitive transfer.

What a serious agenda looks like

If the problem is incentives, the agenda must change them, and it should be judged by whether it does. Independence has to be enforceable: tenure and transfer protections must be binding, with recorded reasons and external review, so that a posting can no longer be used as a reward or a punishment. Complaints authorities need teeth, which means statutory independence, budgets, investigative powers and recommendations that bind. Delhi needs a real answer of its own: whatever one thinks of full statehood, a police force answerable only to the Union needs independent oversight, since the state-level machinery of *Prakash Singh* does not map onto it cleanly. Preventive powers must be narrowed, so that Section 163 requires proportionality, time limits and prompt judicial review, and a blanket order can no longer work as a standing ban on assembly. Transparency should become routine, with recorded detentions, identifiable officers, published use-of-force protocols and body cameras, backed by real penalties for tampering. And journalists need codified protection at protests, one that does not depend on police guidelines about press cards or on accreditation, which press bodies rightly say cannot be a condition of press freedom. None of this is new, and that is the point. The obstacle is will.

Conclusion

The colonial story lets everyone, from ministers to columnists, deplore the system without implicating the present. But the events of 10 and 11 October, whatever investigations finally establish about particular incidents, point to something more demanding than nostalgia for a better inheritance. The republic has had the blueprint for twenty years and a Parliament that rewrote its criminal code two years ago. It has also had repeated warnings from its highest court. That reform has stalled reflects a calculation, made by governments of every colour, that an obedient police force is worth more than a trusted one.

The honest question is therefore who will pay the political price of change. In Delhi the answer is unusually plain, because the police answer to the Union. Pressure will have to come from outside: from courts willing to enforce, from a press able to report without being detained, from citizens who treat the handling of strangers at a barricade as a measure of their own security, and from the many officers who would rather serve the law than the minister. Until coercion costs more than it earns, the Raj will remain a useful alibi.

#PoliceReform #IndiaPoliceReform #DelhiProtests #PressFreedom #RightToProtest #IndianDemocracy #PrakashSinghJudgment #RuleOfLaw #CivilLiberties #JournalistsUnderThreat #ColonialLegacy #SupremeCourtOfIndia #HumanRights #FromAWritersDesk #IndiaPolitics

The Perils of Proprietorship: Congress, the CJP, and the Incomplete Lesson of 1977

2026-10-15T19:11:35.559+05:30

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India’s anti-SIR agitation presents the opposition with a strategic choice: absorb a youth-led movement into established party politics or build a democratic coalition that respects its independent identity.

A youth-driven agitation against the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has drawn new actors into the national conversation. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), born from political satire and digital activism, has aligned with student organisations including the All India Students’ Association (AISA), Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and All India Students’ Federation (AISF). Congress and other opposition parties have entered the fray, yet the relationship between established organisations and the movement’s independent leadership remains a decisive strategic question.

Developments in early-to-mid October 2026 have sharpened this question. Protests in Delhi met extensive police deployments and detentions. Demonstrators demanded accountability for the voter-roll revision and safeguards against wrongful exclusion. Opposition claims that the exercise has disenfranchised legitimate voters are contested by the Election Commission and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Two distinct issues are therefore at stake: whether electoral procedures have been administered fairly, and whether citizens can challenge those procedures through peaceful protest without disproportionate restrictions.

Congress has made electoral integrity central to its opposition, popularising the phrase “vote chori.” Supporting a movement, however, differs from attempting to become its principal proprietor. The first can expand a coalition; the second risks alienating the constituency whose energy gives the coalition life.

The lesson of 1977 is relevant in that ideologically diverse forces can cooperate around a limited democratic objective without surrendering separate identities. Congress must decide whether it wishes to convene such a coalition or merely occupy its most visible position.

The CJP’s significance lies partly in its unconventional origins. Founded in May 2026 by Abhijeet Dipke after Chief Justice Surya Kant’s remarks comparing certain unemployed youth to “cockroaches,” the group turned satire into mobilisation. Its social-media fluency and appeal to younger citizens distinguish it from conventional electoral machinery. Its recent campaign, alongside student organisations, has carried demands for electoral accountability to a wider audience. AISA president Neha Bora has become a visible face of the student-led component, showing how an issue first associated with digital activism can acquire organised street presence.

AISA is linked to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation; SFI and AISF carry their own Left affiliations. These organisations bring ideological commitments, campus networks and mobilisation traditions. The CJP cultivates a more unconventional vocabulary. Their cooperation does not erase differences; it temporarily subordinates them to shared concern about electoral fairness and democratic accountability.

A movement can oppose the BJP without endorsing Congress’s full programme, leadership structure or historical record. Younger activists may treat the established opposition as a necessary ally while remaining wary of its instinct to control the narrative. They may also wish to criticise past Congress decisions without weakening present opposition to the BJP.

Congress has understandable reasons for caution. Its organisation is built around elections, party leadership, parliamentary strength and a national identity. It has invested heavily in the vote-chori narrative and cannot be expected to abandon its messaging. Nor must it accept every demand or slogan advanced by the Left or the CJP. Protecting one’s political identity is prudent; treating every independent centre of public legitimacy as a rival is self-defeating.

The crucial question is whether Congress can recognise political value beyond its own organisational boundaries. If a new movement mobilises citizens who might otherwise remain indifferent to party politics, its success strengthens the broader opposition. It diminishes Congress only if the party itself makes exclusive ownership the test of cooperation.

The political experience of 1977 supplies a useful framework, provided history is not simplified to suit present needs. The Emergency (1975–77) suspended civil liberties, restricted the press and concentrated executive power. When elections were called, socialists, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Congress (Organisation), the Bharatiya Lok Dal and others coalesced under the Janata banner despite deep ideological differences. Their unity was a temporary compact around a limited democratic objective: defeating the Congress government and restoring constitutional freedoms. The experiment later unravelled amid factionalism and power struggles, demonstrating the limits of coalitions founded solely on opposition to a common adversary. Its initial success nevertheless established an enduring principle: political forces need not agree on everything to cooperate effectively on something essential.

However, there’s a critical difference. In 1977 Congress was the party in power that the opposition sought to defeat; it was not the convenor of the Janata coalition. Today’s Congress cannot simply claim the role of unifying architect and assert historical continuity. Circumstances have reversed. The relevant lesson is therefore not that Congress should lead every anti-government mobilisation, but that a democratic coalition becomes more effective when participants agree on a limited common programme, respect one another’s autonomy and resist the conversion of collective action into a contest for individual supremacy.

The INDIA bloc itself has struggled to translate electoral cooperation into consistent organisation. Constituent parties retain different regional interests, ideological priorities and leadership calculations. The current agitation offers an opportunity to overcome some of those limitations—provided Congress recognises that the movement’s credibility does not originate exclusively in its own electoral machinery.

The immediate controversy supplies a practical starting point. More than 130 million names were removed from draft electoral rolls during the SIR exercise across roughly 30 states and Union Territories. Categories include deceased voters, those who relocated, and individuals who could not be traced. These figures must not be equated with the number of eligible citizens wrongly disenfranchised; that is precisely the question a transparent, independent examination must settle. The Election Commission maintains that excluded eligible voters have routes to re-enrolment and has ordered special drives for left-out and new voters. The opposition demands stronger safeguards and scrutiny.

On 12 October, Rahul Gandhi and other INDIA bloc leaders marched toward the Supreme Court seeking intervention over the SIR exercise and accountability from the Election Commission. Police barricades obstructed the march, yet a petition was filed. It sought an independent audit of deletions and modifications, disclosure of relevant records, safeguards against arbitrary exclusions, and interim relief. The Supreme Court registry later flagged procedural defects, delaying an urgent hearing.

The demand for Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation is a political demand, not a finding of legal culpability. Allegations of partisan manipulation require investigation rather than treatment as established fact. The campaign’s credibility will rest on its willingness to distinguish documented irregularities from political accusation.

Congress should advance a clear democratic charter demanding an independent audit of electoral-roll changes, transparent disclosure of relevant data and procedures, effective appeals and restoration of wrongly excluded voters, greater scrutiny of the Election Commission’s independence and accountability, and protection of peaceful protests, free expression and journalists. Framed as constitutional safeguards for every citizen, these demands would carry greater legitimacy than being presented merely as tools to defeat the BJP.

How, then, should Congress approach the CJP and the student organisations?

First, acknowledge that the movement possesses an independent political identity. Its satirical origins and youth-oriented communication are not liabilities requiring correction; they are reasons for its appeal. Replacing its language with conventional party slogans risks diminishing that appeal.

Second, offer organisational resources without demanding organisational submission. Parliamentary strength, legal expertise, state-level networks and mobilisation capacity can be invaluable. Student organisations and civic activists can contribute local engagement, issue-based campaigning and access to constituencies that established parties sometimes struggle to reach.

Third, share public leadership. Joint statements, rotating spokespersons, common platforms and jointly agreed demands would signal cooperation rather than absorption. Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi can participate without every demonstration becoming a referendum on the family’s standing.

Fourth, establish a permanent coordination mechanism for this campaign. Representatives of Congress, regional INDIA parties, Left organisations, student bodies and the CJP should meet regularly, agree priorities and resolve disagreements before they become public spectacles. The mechanism need not become a new party; it need only make cooperation predictable.

Finally, extend the campaign beyond Delhi. Voter verification, correction procedures and access to electoral records are local as well as national concerns. Legal assistance, voter-awareness initiatives and transparent documentation of individual grievances would give the movement a constructive programme capable of outlasting a single confrontation.

The distinction between a coalition and an alliance of convenience lies here. A coalition creates common procedures, shared responsibilities and mechanisms for resolving disputes. An alliance of convenience gathers for a rally, issues a statement and then returns to competition for political space. Congress has an opportunity to help build the former. It cannot do so unilaterally.

A larger democratic concern is involved. Established parties often welcome popular mobilisation when it advances their interests yet grow uneasy when activists retain the freedom to criticise them. Such selective enthusiasm weakens the democratic culture opposition parties claim to defend. The CJP and Left student organisations should not be romanticised. They possess their own ideological agendas, hierarchies and ambitions. Their autonomy does not exempt them from scrutiny, just as Congress’s electoral mandate does not entitle it to command every movement opposing the BJP. The same standards—transparent decision-making, peaceful conduct, factual claims, respect for democratic disagreement and accountability to supporters—must apply to all.

The state’s response also requires independent scrutiny. Reports of extensive detentions, restrictions on movement and journalists being detained or manhandled raise serious questions about the protection of civil liberties. Peaceful dissent should not be treated as a threat merely because it challenges those in power.

The opposition must resist reducing the confrontation to a contest of political personalities. The deeper issue is whether public confidence in electoral institutions can be restored through verifiable evidence, transparent procedures and effective legal remedies. If the movement becomes primarily a vehicle for Congress’s political rehabilitation, it risks losing the wider legitimacy that makes it consequential. If it becomes an exclusively ideological platform dominated by a narrow group, it may struggle to build the broad support necessary for sustained institutional reform. The challenge is to maintain a coalition broad enough to command attention yet disciplined enough to pursue achievable objectives.

October 2026 has opened a political window, not guaranteed a breakthrough. Congress and the INDIA bloc have demonstrated willingness to take objections to the streets and the Supreme Court. Participation by student activists and the CJP has given the agitation wider social character. Whether the convergence develops into a sustained democratic campaign remains uncertain.

The historical analogy with 1977 offers both encouragement and warning. It shows that ideologically diverse forces can unite around democratic principles; it also demonstrates that unity against a common adversary cannot indefinitely substitute for shared political purpose. Congress must abandon the assumption that the largest party must necessarily be the proprietor of every opposition initiative. Size confers responsibilities, resources and influence. It does not confer exclusive ownership of public dissent.

The most effective strategy is to help establish a common democratic charter, respect the autonomy of participating organisations, coordinate legal and political action, and measure progress by tangible safeguards for voters rather than by the prominence of individual leaders. That approach does not require Congress to renounce its ambitions. It requires the party to understand that leadership sometimes means creating space for others rather than occupying all of it.

The Janata experiment was imperfect, and its eventual failure should not be forgotten. Its initial achievement remains instructive: when the stakes concern the integrity of democratic institutions, cooperation across political boundaries can be more consequential than the preservation of individual party supremacy. Congress now faces a related test. It can treat the CJP and student organisations as temporary instruments of its electoral narrative, or recognise them as independent partners in a larger democratic struggle. The first course may offer immediate visibility. The second offers a better chance of building public trust, sustaining civic engagement and securing institutional reform.

The lesson of 1977 is not that every movement needs a proprietor. It is that democratic coalitions succeed when their members understand the difference between leading a common cause and claiming to own it.

#IndianPolitics #CongressParty #INDIABloc #ElectoralReforms #VoteChori #CJPMovement #GenZProtest #AISA #ElectionCommission #SIRControversy #DemocraticFront #RahulGandhi #OppositionUnity #JanataPartyLesson #DefendDemocracy

Randeep Wadehra's Blog

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