In July 1999, the prime minister-headed Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approved one of the most ambitious naval modernization plans in the country’s post-Independence history: build 24 submarines in 30 years, establish two parallel production lines, and transform India into a self-sufficient submarine power by 2029. Nearly three decades later, with that deadline now just three years away, India has managed to induct exactly six of those 24 submarines. Six. One presumes the other 18 are still being “actively considered”.

This story of missed deadlines is actually a story of strategic drift at a time when the underwater dimension of the Indian Ocean has never been more contested, more dangerous, or more decisive. While India debated, deliberated, and deferred, China built. Pakistan acquired. And India’s ageing submarine fleet continued its slow march towards obsolescence – one decommissioned diesel-electric boat at a time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, of course; but then, Rome wasn’t trying to build 24 submarines in 30 years either.

The other 18 remain on drawing boards, in procurement limbo, or trapped inside the bureaucratic maze that has come to define our country’s defence-acquisition ecosystem – a maze so elaborate it could, if properly monetized, double as a national heritage site.

A Fading Fleet

India currently operates 17 conventional submarines. On paper, that sounds respectable. In reality, it masks deep structural fragility. Eleven of those 17 boats – the Russian-origin Kilo-class (Sindhughosh) and the German-built Type 209 (Shishumar class) – are nearly 30 years old, kept afloat through serial life-extension programmes that amount to mechanically resuscitating platforms that should have been retired years ago. One imagines the maintenance crews have long since graduated from fixing submarines to performing acts of faith. Given that it takes five to six years to construct a single conventional submarine, every year of delay compounds the gap.

The six Scorpene-class submarines of the Kalvari class – INS Kalvari, INS Khanderi, INS Karanj, INS Vela, INS Vagir, and INS Vagsheer – represent the sole modern conventional force India fields today. Built under Project-75 (P-75) at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) in collaboration with France’s Naval Group, these boats were contracted in October 2005. The first was commissioned in December 2017; the last was acquired in January 2025. Twenty years for six submarines. That tells you much of what you need to know – and most of it, unfortunately, is not flattering.

The P-75 boats are capable – modern, stealthy, armed with long-range torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, and equipped with contemporary sonar suites. But over 60 per cent of each boat remains imported. No transfer of technology meaningful enough to enable indigenous design was achieved, despite the original intent. The programme delivered submarines, but it did not deliver self-sufficiency. France’s Naval Group, one suspects, came away from the arrangement rather more satisfied than India did.

Project-75I: Two Decades of Waiting

If P-75 represents a partial success buried under delay, Project-75I (P-75I) represents something closer to institutional failure – a category India has quietly mastered in the defence-procurement domain. Conceived as the second parallel production line of the 1999 plan – six submarines under the “strategic partnership” (SP) model – P-75I formally received an acceptance of necessity in 2010. The request for proposal was issued to MDL and Larsen & Toubro in July 2021. Only 11 years after the acceptance of necessity, which, by Indian defence-acquisition standards, constitutes something of a sprint.

The response deadline was postponed multiple times – from November 2021 to June 2022, to December 2022, and beyond. Postponing deadlines, it seems, is the one thing this programme has consistently delivered on schedule. As of 2026, Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) has been shortlisted as the foreign original equipment manufacturer (OEM), but the contract remains unsigned. The price tag – reportedly around ₹1.2 lakh crore for six submarines – continues to be a sticking point. Apparently ₹1.2 lakh crore for machines designed to silently patrol the deep ocean and deter nuclear-armed adversaries is considered a touch steep. One wonders what the appropriate budget for such a modest requirement might be.

The P-75I saga is a textbook illustration of “requirement creep” colliding with “acquisition paralysis”. The Indian Navy’s staff qualitative requirements became progressively more ambitious – air-independent propulsion (AIP), advanced stealth, land-attack capability, superior combat management systems. These are legitimate operational demands, but they outpaced what any OEM could offer off the shelf. Russia, France’s Naval Group, and others declined to participate, citing unworkable liability clauses, stringent technology-transfer demands, and unachievable integration timelines. In other words, India asked for a bespoke Savile Row suit and was puzzled when the off-the-rack tailors declined to oblige.

Sixteen years after the programme formally began, India is still negotiating. The best-case scenario now sees P-75I submarines entering service in the mid-2030s – 25 years after the government’s acceptance of necessity. At that rate, by the time the last P-75I boat commissions, some of its sailors may not yet have been born when the programme started.

China’s Undersea Juggernaut

While India was mired in procurement delays, China was building. The People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N) today operates the world’s largest navy by numbers, and its undersea fleet is expanding at a pace that has no modern precedent outside wartime production. By 2040, China is projected to field 88 submarines – 16 SSBNs, 26 SSNs (short form for ship, submersible, nuclear), and 46 conventional submarines. It has six SSNs in service today and is expected to have 13 by 2030, including the formidable Type 095. China, it turns out, did not spend the last two decades postponing deadlines.

India cannot match China’s submarine fleet – not in the next decade, not in the one after. China’s industrial base, shipbuilding capacity, naval R&D investment, and established nuclear propulsion technology are structural advantages that no procurement reform can close quickly. The PLA-N’s presence in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) has grown steadily. Chinese submarines have been detected in the Indian Ocean with increasing frequency. The “string of pearls” – access arrangements at Gwadar, Djibouti, and across the IOR littoral – has become a functioning operational architecture from a theoretical geopolitical construct. What was once dismissed as an alarmist metaphor now has berthing rights.

India’s ability to track, shadow, and deter Chinese nuclear submarines in the IOR is severely constrained by the absence of nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) of its own. Only SSNs can operate effectively in contested waters for extended periods, shadow adversary submarines, and project credible deterrence in depth. India has none. It may have its first by 2038, if the P-77 project stays on schedule – which, given India’s track record, is about as safe a bet as a stock tip from a procurement consultant.

Pakistan’s Underwater Threat

While China represents the long-term structural challenge, Pakistan presents a more immediate and tactically urgent underwater threat. Pakistan has contracted for eight Chinese Yuan-class (Type 039B) submarines, with deliveries expected to be completed by the late 2020s. These are AIP-equipped boats – quieter, more enduring, and more capable than Pakistan’s existing Agosta-class submarines by a significant margin. Pakistan, for all its well-documented fiscal difficulties, has apparently found the budget.

AIP technology allows a conventional submarine to remain submerged without running its diesel engines for extended periods, dramatically reducing acoustic detectability. A Pakistan Navy operating eight AIP-equipped submarines in the Arabian Sea, the approaches to Mumbai, and the sea lanes off India’s western coast changes the threat calculus materially. This makes India’s six P-75 Scorpenes in the western theatre feel thin – particularly given that several older conventional boats may not be operationally reliable enough to constitute genuine force multipliers in a conflict scenario.

India can still address the Pakistani threat if it acts decisively. AIP retrofits planned for the P-75 submarines – using DRDO’s indigenous fuel-cell-based system – would enhance their endurance and stealth significantly. Clearing P-75I at the earliest possible timeline, even at a premium, would add six more modern submarines to the western fleet within the decade. Decisive action, however, is precisely what this programme has historically struggled to produce.

Containing China in the IOR

The loss of parity with China in overall submarine numbers does not mean India cannot maintain meaningful deterrence in the Indian Ocean. The IOR is India’s home waters. Geography, logistics, and familiarity are advantages that China’s navy, however capable, cannot simply purchase. But they are being eroded by inaction – and home-ground advantage has a shelf life, much like the submarines currently being kept alive through mechanical prayers.

India’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines are its most significant strategic asset. Three SSBNs (short form for ship, submersible, ballistic, nuclear) are now in service (under the Strategic Forces Command) – INS Arihant, INS Arighat, and INS Aridhaman. A fourth, expected to be called INS Arisudan, is on sea trials and could join the force in 2027. Armed with K4 SLBMs with a range of over 3,500 kilometres, these submarines guarantee India’s second-strike capability – the cornerstone of the country’s no-first-use nuclear doctrine.

The next-generation S5-class SSBNs, displacing 13,500 tonnes, will each carry 12 K5 or K6 SLBMs. The K6, a three-stage solid-fuel missile with a range of over 6,000 kilometres designed to carry MIRVs, will allow a single S5 boat from the Bay of Bengal to hold virtually every strategic target in China and Pakistan at risk. When India actually builds these, which it eventually will, they will be genuinely formidable. The key phrase there is “when India actually builds these”.

On the conventional side, India’s anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities – built around P-8I Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, surface combatants with modern sonars, and the submarine force – provide a layered detection architecture that China cannot easily replicate in unfamiliar waters. India’s partnerships under the Quad and bilateral maritime frameworks add intelligence-sharing, joint patrols, and interoperability that multiply the effectiveness of India’s own assets.

The lease of a Russian Akula-class SSN (INS Chakra 3), expected to join the Navy around 2028 under a $3 billion agreement, will provide India’s only nuclear attack submarine capability until P-77 SSNs arrive in the late 2030s. In the interim, India will continue to do what it does best in the submarine domain: make do.

P-76, P-77, and the Long Game

Perhaps the most significant development in India’s submarine story is one that has received far less attention than the P-75I drama: the emergence of genuine indigenous design capability. For decades, a strange bifurcation existed. The strategic submarine programme – the Arihant class and successors – was run from the east coast, drawing on an ecosystem of 500-plus Indian companies supplying everything from combat management systems to indigenous steel. The conventional submarine programme on the west coast at MDL continued chasing foreign technology transfers that never fully materialised. The left hand and the right hand, it seems, were not merely uncoordinated; they appeared unaware of each other’s existence.

An internal study found that there was 60 to 70 per cent commonality between conventional and nuclear submarine systems – in fire control, hydraulics, auxiliary power, diving and surface control, and hull materials. India had, without fully realising it, already built much of the industrial and technological foundation needed for indigenous conventional submarine design. It simply had not connected the dots. A revelation that might have been arrived at somewhat earlier, had anyone thought to look.

Project-76 (P-76), a class of 12 indigenously designed conventional submarines, represents the attempt to correct this oversight. Designed by the Navy’s Submarine Design Group (SDG) and drawing extensively on the Arihant-class ecosystem, P-76 submarines will be genuinely Indian – unlike the P-75 Scorpenes, where over 60 per cent remains imported. Equipment orders are projected to begin around 2028, with the first-of-class entering service around 2034. These timelines are, of course, projections – a category of document that has historically enjoyed a complicated relationship with reality in this domain.

These submarines could even be exported, creating the kind of defence-export capability that South Korea built through spiral development. The thought of India as a submarine-exporting nation is genuinely exciting – and, if the procurement history is any guide, it will also take some time to arrive.

Project-77 (P-77), India’s indigenous nuclear-powered attack submarine programme, received Cabinet Committee on Security sanction in October 2024 for the first two units. Six P-77 SSNs are planned. Significantly, these have been redesigned as larger SSGNs (ship, submersible, guided missile, nuclear) of approximately 10,000 tonnes, similar to the Akula class, capable of carrying not just torpedoes and anti-ship missiles but also conventionally armed ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The first P-77 SSGN is expected to be launched around 2036 and commissioned a few years later. The programme is new enough that it has not yet had the opportunity to accumulate delays. One wishes it well.

What India Must Do

Looking at India’s submarine decision-making, one can predict what the government is likely to do, and separately recommend what it must do. These two are not the same thing – a distinction that has defined this domain for the better part of three decades.

The likely trajectory: P-75I inches toward contract conclusion with TKMS in 2026 or 2027; the first P-75I boat enters service around 2037–38. P-76 stays on track with the first hull launched around 2034. The first S5 SSBN commissions around 2035 and the first P-77 SSGN around 2038–40. India’s total submarine force in 2035 will likely stand at around 20 to 22 boats.

Against China’s projected 88 submarines and Pakistan’s expanding Yuan-class fleet, this is a force that will struggle to maintain credible conventional deterrence across both its eastern and western maritime flanks simultaneously. The maths, as they say, does not flatter.

What India should do is different in urgency. First, close the P-75I deal now – not at the perfect price or with perfect technology transfer, but at an acceptable price with a guaranteed production timeline. The opportunity cost of further delay is greater than the cost of an imperfect deal. Perfection, in any case, has not historically proven an available option in this programme. Second, fast-track AIP retrofits for the P-75 Scorpenes.

Third, and most critically, India must resist the temptation to silo its submarine programmes. The SDG designing P-76, the ATV team building S5 SSBNs, and the P-77 design team must operate as an integrated naval-industrial complex with shared personnel, infrastructure, and R&D. The 60 to 70 per cent commonality between conventional and nuclear submarine systems is an asset India has never properly exploited. Fourth, protect P-76 from the requirement inflation that crippled P-75I – it deserves budget priority and political attention, not a waiting list.

Fifth, India needs to be brutally realistic about numbers. For a developed, ocean-dependent Viksit Bharat of 2047 – with 88 per cent of its energy imported by sea – naval experts suggest the minimum submarine force requirement is six SSBNs, 12 SSNs/SSGNs, and 24 conventional submarines: 42 hulls in total. India currently operates 17 conventional submarines and three SSBNs, with no SSNs of its own.

The gap is stark, and it will not close without a sustained 20-year commitment to funding, reform, and execution. Commitment of that duration has not, to put it charitably, been this domain’s strongest suit.

The Hour Is Late, But Not Over

India’s submarine story is ultimately a story about the compounding strategic cost of treating an existential capability as a procurement problem rather than a national priority. The 1999 vision was correct. Had it been executed, India would today possess a submarine force capable of credibly deterring both China and Pakistan while preserving the Navy’s traditional dominance of the IOR. Instead, 26 years later, India is commissioning the very boats that should have been built in the 2010s. History has a way of billing for procrastination at compound interest.

The situation is serious, but it is recoverable – if India is willing to make the hard choices. Catching up with China is not possible. Maintaining meaningful deterrence in the IOR is. Containing Pakistan’s emerging underwater threat is achievable. Building a genuine indigenous submarine-industrial complex – capable of producing both conventional and nuclear boats for the next century – is within reach. None of these outcomes, however, will be delivered by committees that mistake deliberation for action.

India’s SSBNs, quietly patrolling the Bay of Bengal with their nuclear warheads, are proof that when the political will exists, India can build submarines of extraordinary complexity and capability. The question is whether that same will can be summoned for the conventional fleet – the submarines that will actually fight, deter, and prevail in the contested waters of the Indian Ocean in the decades ahead. India has never needed them more than it does right now. The Indian Ocean, for its part, has not been waiting.

^{Note: A more serious version of this article was first published on India Sentinels.}

^{I tweet as @goldenarcher}

My grandfather was a freedom fighter who spent years in a British colonial jail – tortured with the methodical efficiency that only a truly civilized empire could muster. He never complained much. As my grandmother used to say, he believed that oppressed people who resist simply do what must be done.

I never knew him – he passed when I was just a few months old – but I’ve thought of him constantly over the past three years, watching one of the world’s most powerful militaries pound one of its most densely populated territories into rubble, while the architects of that carnage lecture the rest of us on terrorism.

Welcome to the extraordinary moral theatre of the post-October 7, 2023, world – where the occupier is always the victim, the occupied are always the terrorists, and pointing this out gets you labelled antisemitic. Grab your popcorn. Actually, don’t – there’s no popcorn in Gaza. There’s very little of anything there, including children who still have both their legs.

The ‘Surprise’ That Wasn’t

On October 7, 2023, Hamas and allied Palestinian factions launched a coordinated assault from Gaza, resulting in the death of approximately 1,200 Israelis – many of them civilians – and taking more than 240 hostages. It was brutal. It was horrifying. And, if we’re being honest, it was entirely predictable to anyone paying attention – which, as it turns out, included Egyptian intelligence, who warned Israel repeatedly that “something big” was being planned from Gaza.

Israel, flush with confidence in its surveillance apparatus and its “smart fence”, ignored those warnings with the serene self-assurance of someone told their house is on fire who’s too busy rearranging furniture to check.

Israel’s Shin Bet later concluded that Israel had actually obtained Hamas’s detailed battle plan years earlier but dismissed it as unrealistic – presumably filed under “Implausible Scenarios”, somewhere between “Netanyahu Resigns on Principle” and “Settlement Construction Paused for Reflection”. The same report noted that a policy of maintaining “calm” with Hamas had enabled its “massive buildup”.

Translated: the Israeli government knew, looked away, and is now surprised by what it saw.

And here a son of India’s freedom struggle can’t help but ask an uncomfortable question. Our own Revolt of 1857 saw innocent British civilians – women and children among them – killed in the violence that followed. Should we Indians call 1857 terrorism? Should Mangal Pandey be listed alongside the world’s most wanted?

Most Indians, and most of the global south, already know the answer.

Armed resistance against an occupying force is explicitly sanctioned under international law. A substantial body of legal scholarship holds that the Hamas attack, however deeply regrettable in its civilian toll, falls within the framework of legitimate resistance to an occupation now entering its eighth decade.

Netanyahu’s Strategic Genius

Let’s pause to acknowledge Benjamin Netanyahu’s extraordinary strategic vision. For years, he quietly facilitated the transfer of Qatari funds to Hamas – explicitly, as he told his own party in 2019, to prevent a unified Palestinian political front and block movement toward a two-state solution. He was, in his own words, investing in Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority.

The EU’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, and numerous former Israeli intelligence officials have confirmed this with remarkable candour. Funding the organization that later breached your border and triggered your worst crisis in history – in cricket, we’d call that a spectacular misjudgment of the pitch.

Netanyahu has since invoked the Holocaust and the memory of the “six million” to justify a campaign that his own country’s Holocaust scholars are now debating whether to classify as genocidal. Historian Amos Goldberg has argued that institutional Holocaust memory has been weaponized not to restrain but to justify the Gaza war. One wonders what the inmates of Auschwitz would make of their suffering being used as diplomatic cover for bombing schools.

Numbers That Can’t Be Unseen

Let’s talk about numbers, because numbers don’t respond to press releases. By February 2026, compiled estimates put Palestinian deaths in Gaza above 73,000 since October 7, 2023. UN and health-agency data had already recorded approximately 31,000 deaths by mid-March 2024, with a distressingly high proportion of women and children. A record 383 humanitarian workers were killed globally in 2024 – nearly half of them in Gaza.

Foreign doctors returning from Gaza have told European and American media that they treated more than 100 children with single bullet wounds to the head or chest – a pattern that, in their professional judgment, is inconsistent with crossfire and suggests deliberate targeting of minors. The IDF, naturally, disagrees completely. Presumably there’s a PowerPoint somewhere in Tel Aviv explaining why snipers shooting children in the forehead is a defensive measure.

Medical literature has described unprecedented rates of child death relative to other recent conflicts, alongside large numbers of children suffering amputations, malnutrition, and psychological trauma. A generation is being destroyed – not metaphorically, but literally, limb by limb, school by school. The Lancet estimated in July 2024 that over 186,000 Gazans had been killed – and that was less than nine months in. Some scholars put the real death toll upwards of 680,000.

October 7 Hannibal Doctrine

Even the events of October 7 itself are more complicated than the clean victim narrative that was served to the world. Investigations by Israeli outlets, including Haaretz, reported that IDF commanders invoked the controversial “Hannibal directive” – an informal doctrine permitting broad use of force to prevent soldier capture, even at the risk of killing the captives themselves.

Attack drones and helicopters apparently fired on vehicles where abductees were believed to be present. The Knesset also shot down a proposal to establish a state inquiry into October 7. On that day, Israeli doctrine treated its own hostage citizens as acceptable collateral damage. One is reminded of every colonial power that has ever sacrificed its own people to protect the system that sustains them.

World Has Noticed, and Israelis Helped

When polling in the United States – historically Israel’s most faithful cheering section – shows disapproval of Israel’s military actions at around 60 per cent, and when Gallup records support for Israel’s military campaign at a historic low of 32 per cent, something has shifted that is very difficult to unshift.

When over 80 per cent of Israelis supported their government’s Gaza policies – even while most personally disliked Netanyahu – they made a democratic choice with consequences they must now reckon with. The opprobrium raining down on Israel from around the world isn’t a sudden outbreak of global antisemitism. It’s the natural response of a watching world to what it has seen. Seventy thousand dead civilians in 18 months tends to produce a reaction, even among the sympathetic.

Jewish dissent has been remarkable. Organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace have organized mass protests and campaigns explicitly labelling Israel’s actions a genocide. Even inside Israel, growing majorities say it’s time to end the war and that Netanyahu should take responsibility for October 7 and resign. Apparently, even citizens of the country whose government insists the campaign is righteous suspect something has gone very wrong.

Enter Iran, Stage Right, with Missiles

And then – just when it seemed things couldn’t deteriorate further – Netanyahu and Donald Trump found a way. On February 28, Israel, in coordination with the US, launched large-scale airstrikes across Iran, hitting military and government sites in at least two dozen provinces. The strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, at his Tehran residence, along with several family members.

An elementary school for girls in Minab, southern Iran, was hit, killing approximately 170 little schoolgirls between 7 and 12 and some of their teachers in or adjacent to the building. Satellite imagery suggested that a US-made cruise missile struck a compound next to the school. US officials helpfully implied some civilian casualties may have resulted from Iranian air-defence misfires, a claim probably not appreciated by the parents of the dead schoolgirls. In the same day, 20 female volleyball players were killed when a sports facility in Lamerd was struck.

Let’s sit with this. The same country that built its entire post-war diplomatic identity on the principle that the mass killing of civilians – particularly children – is civilization’s supreme crime, has now bombed a girls’ school. In Iran. With American weapons.

Polling data already show that support for Israel’s actions in Iran is even lower than the already-dismal support for its actions in Gaza among Americans. Even Israel’s defenders are struggling to explain how bombing a girls’ school advances civilizational defence.

Iran’s response wasn’t long in coming. Within hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched successive waves of ballistic missile and drone strikes at Israeli territory, several reaching Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa. Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow systems performed creditably – intercepting the majority – but the arithmetic of attrition is unforgiving, and enough got through to kill, damage, and, above all, to demonstrate that deterrence had spectacularly collapsed on the altar of Netanyahu’s audacity.

For a country that had spent decades marketing its military invincibility as a kind of geopolitical brand identity, this wasn’t a good quarter for the brand.

What the architects of the February 28 strikes apparently didn’t fully model was the regional calculus. Hezbollah, already bloodied but far from depleted, resumed its northern bombardment with renewed intensity. Houthi missiles – launched from Yemen, coordinated through channels that Washington insists are directed from Tehran – began landing closer to Ben Gurion Airport than any scenario Israel’s defence planners had publicly acknowledged was plausible. The Red Sea, already contested by months of maritime disruption, tightened further.

Israel had, with one night’s strikes, managed to unite every adversary on its periphery in a shared project. In strategic studies, this is what they call a “sub-optimal outcome”.

The international legal dimension has been equally clarifying. The International Court of Justice, which had already been deliberating South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, found itself confronted with an entirely new body of evidence. Killing a sitting head of state – whatever one thinks of that head of state – occupies a very specific position in international law, one not obviously compatible with the rules-based order that Washington invokes with such regularity. The Biden administration spent four years warning Israel not to strike Iranian leadership.

The Trump administration apparently concluded that this restraint had been insufficiently creative. The world is now living with that creativity.

‘Soundtrack of Accumulated Rage’

The cultural fallout has been vivid. A song titled “Boom! Boom! Tel Aviv”, circulated widely over footage of Iranian missiles striking Israel, became a global viral phenomenon with hundreds of millions of views. Its lyrics frame the strikes as retribution for dead Palestinian children. An Iranian media report described it as a “soundtrack of accumulated rage and hatred against Israeli policies”.

One may find such expressions distasteful – there’s something genuinely uncomfortable about celebrating missiles hitting any civilian area. But the song’s reach is itself diagnostic: across the global south and among western youth, identification has shifted strongly, perhaps irreversibly, away from Israel. A country that once wore victim status as geopolitical armour has, with considerable effort, transformed itself into the villain of the world’s most-watched story.

It didn’t stop at one song. The weeks following the Iran strikes produced an outpouring of art, music, and street murals across the global south that would have confounded anyone still operating on the assumption that the old hierarchies of sympathy hold. In cities from Karachi to Nairobi, from Jakarta to Bogota, images of Iranian missiles arcing across a night sky appeared alongside photos of Gaza’s dead children – stitched together into a single visual grammar of accumulated grievance.

The message wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t trying to be. Subtlety is a luxury of those whose children aren’t being buried under rubble.

Western commentators who found this distasteful made a category error that is worth naming. They confused the messenger with the message. The rage that produced “Boom! Boom! Tel Aviv” wasn’t manufactured by Iranian state media, however enthusiastically Iranian state media amplified it. It was assembled, brick by brick, from two and a half years of footage that the world wasn’t supposed to keep watching but kept watching anyway – the children in the rubble, the hospitals without anaesthesia, the journalists shot in the chest wearing press vests, the flour convoy massacres.

Iranian propagandists didn’t create this sentiment. They simply recognized that the warehouse was full and struck a match.

There is, in this cultural moment, a generational rupture that deserves its own paragraph. Among adults over 50 in the western world, the Holocaust framework – Israel as the world’s permanent exception, its security needs as categorically different from those of other states – still carries considerable gravitational pull. Among those under 35, and particularly those who came of age on social media watching real-time footage of Gaza, it largely doesn’t.

The arguments that worked on their parents – appeals to historical guilt, invocations of antisemitism, warnings about the uniqueness of Jewish suffering – land differently, or don’t land at all, on a cohort that watched a UN agency documenting child famine be defunded by its ostensible protectors. What Israel’s communications apparatus calls “delegitimization” is, in many cases, simply the predictable consequence of people believing what they see.

Reckoning My Grandfather Understood

My grandfather wouldn’t have been surprised by any of this. He would have recognized the pattern immediately – an occupying power convincing itself its violence is defensive, its opponents are terrorists, and the laws of war apply to everyone but itself. He would have recognized the willingness to kill children and call it collateral damage while demanding the world’s sympathy for its own dead.

Netanyahu’s grand strategy – contain the Palestinians through military superiority, keep Gaza quarantined, lean on Washington, let the occupation run indefinitely – has produced its precise logical consequences. It didn’t prevent October 7. It generated a Gaza campaign now widely characterized as genocidal by genocide scholars, Holocaust historians, and international lawyers. It has drawn Israel into an open war with Iran that a majority of Americans consider dangerous and unjustified.

And it has burned – possibly beyond recovery – the moral capital that 80 years of Holocaust memory and democratic self-presentation had carefully accumulated.

Iran is now providing what one might darkly call the “healing touch” referenced in this column’s title – not because Iranian missiles are curative, but because the sight of Israel facing kinetic consequences has offered a kind of catharsis to a world that spent over two years watching Gaza burn with no accountability. This isn’t a good development. Wars between nuclear-adjacent regional powers risk catastrophic escalation.

But Netanyahu – the man who funded Hamas to divide the Palestinians and is now shocked, shocked, that divisions have consequences – has made his bed with remarkable thoroughness.

Israel still has the right to exist. It still has the right to security. What it has forfeited, through choices democratically ratified by 80 per cent of its own population, is the world’s willingness to pretend its security requires the destruction of everyone else’s everything. The international reaction it’s now receiving – from western capitals to the global south, from American polling stations to London streets and European parliaments – isn’t antisemitism. It’s consequence.

And consequence, as my grandfather could have testified from his prison cell, eventually arrives.

It is just a question of when.

^{I tweet as @goldenarcher}

Let’s all pause and applaud. India – the civilizational superpower, the world’s most populous democracy, the inheritor of a foreign-policy tradition that once had the audacity to coin the very phrase “strategic autonomy” – has just concluded a landmark trade deal with the United States. The commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, beamed as he called it a triumph. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, presumably nodded approvingly from a great moral height.

And somewhere in a New Delhi thinktank, a couple of policy analysts were quietly asked to write a paper explaining why losing is, in fact, winning.

The February 2026 India-US tariff deal, hailed by the government as a decisive reset, deserves a rather different headline: how a $45 billion trade surplus was cashed in for a monitoring mechanism, a $500 billion shopping obligation, and a tariff rate that is still roughly six times higher than what Indian exporters faced before this whole spectacular crisis began. But don’t worry – according to official sources, this is called “progress”.

A Crisis India Walked Into, with Eyes Wide Open

To understand the full splendour of this capitulation, one must appreciate the context. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, India – exercising the famous strategic autonomy – began importing discounted Russian crude at such enthusiasm that, by 2024-25, Moscow accounted for roughly 40% of India’s oil supply. Cheap oil for a price-sensitive, inflation-haunted economy: sensible enough. But then came the second Trump term, and with it, a 50% tariff on Indian goods – a number so alarming that it briefly made Indian economists forget their usual decorum and reach, collectively, for a stiff drink.

Washington imposed an initial 25% “reciprocal” tariff in mid-2025 and then, in a move that combined geopolitical lecturing with economic blunt force, slapped on a further 25% in August 2025 explicitly to punish India for buying Russian oil. Note the elegant hypocrisy: China was purchasing even larger volumes of Russian crude yet faced no such surcharge. The US, it appears, found it considerably easier to financially bludgeon a democracy that was also a strategic partner than to pick that particular fight with Beijing.

India, ever gracious, absorbed the insult – and then sat down to negotiate.

Economists projected that if the tariffs held, India’s GDP could contract by as much as 0.8% and US-bound exports could fall by around $35 billion in a single year. Small and medium enterprises – the beating, underpaid heart of India’s labour-intensive export sector – were, to use the technical term, absolutely hammered. Textile hubs in Tiruppur and Surat reported acute distress.

Reports emerged of order cancellations, layoffs, and a mass migration of buyers toward Vietnam and Bangladesh. India’s weavers, gem-cutters, and leather craftsmen, who had never quite grasped the finer points of US presidential frustration with Indian trade policy, found themselves suddenly and brutally enrolled in a geopolitics seminar.

Surrendering the Surplus, Keeping the Smile

After months of what were described in official communiqués as “constructive negotiations” – a phrase that, in Indian diplomatic parlance, generally means “one side talked, and the other side listened” – New Delhi and Washington announced their framework agreement earlier this month. The headline: US tariffs on Indian goods cut from 50% to 18%. The commerce minister called it “transformative”. The White House called it “historic”. Donald Trump called it “great”.

And so, in the tradition of those who celebrate the partial restoration of what was taken from them, New Delhi declared victory.

Let’s be clear about what 18% actually means. Before this adventure began, the average US tariff on Indian goods sat at a comfortable 2–3%. The new “triumph” leaves Indian exporters paying six to nine times that rate, locked into a deal whose fine print includes a $500 billion purchase commitment for American goods – energy, aircraft, advanced technology, and the like – spread over five years.

India is, in essence, being asked to subsidize American industry while its own exporters remain burdened with tariffs that would have been unthinkable five years ago. But look on the bright side: diamonds and generic pharmaceuticals got zero-tariff access! Surely the mango farmers of Ratnagiri will sleep soundly now.

The Invisible Losers

The government has, with characteristic grace, assured everyone that “sensitive agriculture” has been shielded. This is reassuring, until one reads the fine print. India has agreed to cut or eliminate tariffs on a range of US agricultural imports: tree nuts, fruits, soybean oil, animal feed, wine, and spirits. For Indian farmers who operate on wafer-thin margins – and who lack anything resembling the gargantuan subsidies enjoyed by American agribusinesses – the arrival of cheaper American produce is not a cause for celebration. It is a cause for despair.

A wheat farmer in Punjab and a nut grower in Kashmir don’t have the luxury of absorbing competition from a country that spends tens of billions of dollars annually propping up its own agricultural sector.

India’s MSMEs – a category covering an estimated 63 million enterprises and providing livelihoods to roughly 110 million people – have already lived through the trauma of demonetization, the teething troubles of the GST, and an economy-crippling pandemic. Their reward for this resilience was a front-row seat to a tariff war they had no hand in starting.

The Global Trade Research Initiative thinktank in Delhi has described the deal’s terms as an “uneven exchange”, and the arithmetic bears this out: the US reduces tariffs on about 55% of Indian exports, dropping them from a punitive 50% to a merely uncomfortable 18%, while India opens its markets broadly to American goods. Who negotiated this, one wonders – or did New Delhi simply send its shopping list to Washington and ask them to fill in the concessions column?

The small exporter in Surat who was sending embroidered textiles to boutiques in New Jersey has not been invited to the news conferences. Nor has the farmer in Andhra Pradesh who grows maize and will shortly find himself competing with US corn that has been so thoroughly subsidized that it practically arrives with a complimentary Stars and Stripes.

Future rounds of the promised bilateral trade agreement may push for further agricultural opening, including dairy – a sector so politically and emotionally charged in India that merely mentioning it in the wrong constituency can end political careers. The Modi government has breezily described this as a matter for future negotiations. The farmers involved might describe it rather differently.

‘Strategic Autonomy’ – A Phrase in Search of a Policy

Perhaps the most darkly comic element of this entire episode is what has happened to the phrase “strategic autonomy”. For years, Indian foreign-policy veterans deployed it with the gravity of a sacred mantra. It meant: India buys from whom it wishes, aligns with whom it chooses, and takes instructions from no one. The government applied it robustly when criticizing Pakistan, enthusiastically when defending Russian oil purchases, and reflexively whenever Washington asked uncomfortable questions about human rights or press freedom. It was, in short, a very useful phrase.

It is now considerably less useful. The February deal includes a formal monitoring mechanism – administered by Washington – over India’s future oil-sourcing decisions. This is not a gentle suggestion from a friendly partner. It is a written, US-administered trigger: if Washington decides India is “non-compliant” in its Russian crude imports, the 25% punitive surcharge snaps back into place.

India’s energy policy, once a sovereign decision made in New Delhi, now has a compliance review mechanism operated in Washington. Nagpur logic dictates that we call this what it is: “conditionality”. The kind that the International Monetary Fund used to apply to developing nations in exchange for emergency loans, dressed up here in the language of trade partnership.

To be scrupulously fair: India has not technically signed away its right to buy Russian oil. What it has done is created an arrangement in which exercising that right carries an automatic economic penalty determined unilaterally by Uncle Sam. The distinction, one imagines, brings great comfort to the philosophy department.

For the refineries, the oil ministry, and the current account, the practical effect is somewhat similar. India’s defenders in the government will insist that this is “pragmatism” and that “sovereign states recalibrate all the time”.

This is true. Sovereign states also, all the time, find more polite language for the word “surrender”.

The Precedent Problem

The White House, to its credit, has been admirably candid. Officials noted with undisguised satisfaction that “tariff pressure succeeded where diplomacy alone had not” – compelling India to reduce Russian oil purchases and open its markets more widely to American goods. This is the part that should give every Indian strategic planner a sleepless night. What Washington has just demonstrated, in full public view, is that sufficiently aggressive tariff pressure can extract substantial concessions from even a large, loud, and self-consciously sovereign economy like India. This lesson won’t be forgotten.

It will be filed, annotated, and reapplied.

For the first time in Indian diplomatic history, a formal, written, US-administered mechanism has been established linking India’s energy-sourcing choices to the tariff treatment of its exports. If this template is normalized – and there is every reason to think it will be – it can be reached for again on any number of issues: digital regulation, data localization, defence procurement, treatment of American technology firms operating in India. The ceiling on India’s freedom to manoeuvre has been lowered, quietly and formally, in a document that Goyal and Modi celebrated as a victory. Future US administrations will have read the footnotes even if the celebrants have not.

Scorecard Nobody Wants to Print

Let’s draw up the scorecard as honestly as the government’s communications apparatus won’t. The US gets: a visible, monitoring-backed reduction in Indian purchases of Russian crude; a $500 billion export pipeline for American energy, defence, and industrial firms; meaningfully improved access to India’s vast consumer market, particularly in agricultural goods; and a demonstration, for the benefit of every other trading partner watching, that tariff shock therapy works. India gets: a tariff rate of 18% – which is worse than the baseline that existed before Washington started the crisis – zero duties on diamonds and generic pharmaceuticals, and a promise that the forthcoming bilateral trade agreement will be, if the government’s PR machinery is to be believed, tremendously advantageous.

The government, naturally, compares the 18% rate not with the pre-crisis norm of 2–3% – which would be honest – but with the emergency 50% tariff that Washington itself imposed – which is the intellectual equivalent of praising a mugging victim for having the presence of mind to hand over only their wallet rather than their watch as well. India is apparently beating Vietnam and Bangladesh in the tariff league table by a single percentage point. Given that both countries have managed not to have their trade surplus converted into a Washington monitoring obligation, one suspects they are sleeping better.

What of India’s farmers, its weavers, its gem-cutters, the small factory owners of Tiruppur and Ludhiana, and the millions of MSME employees whose livelihoods hang on export orders? They remain in a worse position than they were in 2024, facing tariffs that are still elevated, watching their government obligate itself to spend half a trillion dollars on American goods, and hoping, with the somewhat desperate optimism of those who have no other option, that the promised bilateral trade agreement will be kinder to them than the interim arrangement has been. The government assures them it will be.

The government also assured them, in 2016, that demonetization would be over in 50 days.

Necessary Compromise, Dishonestly Sold

To be precise – because precision is what distinguishes analysis from propaganda – there is a legitimate case that India had little choice. The sustained 50% tariff threatened to do real and lasting damage to the economy. The arithmetic of cheap Russian oil versus lost export markets was always going to resolve in favour of accommodation. The US is India’s single largest export destination. These are facts, not excuses. A government that continued to absorb the tariff hammer out of wounded national pride would have been making its own exporters and workers pay the price for a philosophical position. There is a real argument for the deal as damage limitation.

The problem is not the compromise. The problem is the dishonesty with which it is being sold. A government with genuine confidence in its own decisions would look the country in the eye and say: we made a pragmatic call, we traded some policy latitude for economic stability, here are the costs, here is how we will manage them, and here is the strategy for ensuring we are never in this position again. That would be leadership. What we are getting instead is a minister with a broad grin announcing that the day’s defeat is, in fact, a glorious morning.

That is PR. It is not governance.

India’s farmers and small exporters, who are the real price-payers in this arrangement, deserve honesty. They deserve to know that their government accepted a monitoring mechanism over its sovereign energy choices. They deserve to know that the tariff rate they will be exporting under is six times the pre-crisis norm. They deserve to know that future rounds of trade negotiations may open sectors – agriculture, dairy – that have thus far been kept partially sheltered. And they deserve a credible government plan for export diversification, market development, and investment in MSME competitiveness that goes beyond announcing a new acronym every budget cycle.

For now, what they have is a commerce minister who is very pleased with himself, a prime minister who has not been seen discussing the monitoring mechanism in any public forum, and a trade deal that the White House is, with commendable candour, describing as proof that pressure works. On that last point, at least, everyone is in agreement. India bent. The deal got done. The commerce minister called it a triumph. And somewhere in Tiruppur, a textile worker waited to hear whether his factory’s next order would come through – or whether it would, once again, go to Vietnam instead.

^{I tweet as @goldenarcher}

Here’s what happens when you build a political movement on vibes instead of vision: it eventually implodes. And what an implosion we’re witnessing. The Make America Great Again coalition – that seemingly unshakable force that weathered impeachments, insurrections, and enough scandals to sink a dozen ordinary politicians – has fractured into warring tribes that now spend more energy attacking each other than they do the Democrats.​

From this side of the world, watching American politics has always been a bit like observing a soap opera where everyone’s simultaneously the villain and the hero. But 2025 has delivered something special: a complete Republican meltdown over issues ranging from skilled immigration to Middle East policy, all while the man who started it all watches his empire crumble in real time.​

The delicious irony? The movement that promised to drain the swamp has instead created its own ecosystem of political quicksand, where yesterday’s allies are today’s mortal enemies, and supporting legal immigration or questioning Israeli policy can get someone labelled a traitor faster than one can say “covfefe”.​

H-1B Visa Wars

Let’s begin with the controversy that lit the fuse: H-1B visas. In December 2024, the president, Donald Trump – who built his entire political brand on keeping foreigners out, suddenly discovered America needs skilled immigrants. “We don’t have enough talented people,” Trump declared, presumably while standing in a nation of 340 million souls.​

The cognitive whiplash was immediate. Right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich captured the mood perfectly: “Trump broke everyone’s heart with this line.” Florida Republican Anthony Sabatini predicted electoral disaster on X with the sort of dramatic flair usually reserved for soap operas: “This is insane – we’re going to lose the midterms so badly.”​

The Republican representative from Georgia’s 14th district, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had previously defended Trump against everything from tax-fraud accusations to attempted-coup allegations, suddenly discovered she had principles. “I am America First and America Only,” Greene proclaimed, positioning herself as defender of American workers against the onslaught of – checks notes – highly educated engineers and doctors.​

Here’s the beautiful contradiction that nobody seems willing to acknowledge: the same movement that spent years railing against illegal immigration has now torn itself apart over legal immigration by people with advanced degrees. One might almost think it was never really about the legality of immigration at all.

Shocking, truly.​

The battle lines formed quickly. On one side stood Trump’s billionaire tech allies – Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks – arguing America needs foreign talent to compete globally. On the other stood the populist wing led by Steve Bannon, Greene, and Charlie Kirk. Bannon, with his characteristic subtlety, called Musk “truly evil” and advocated for his deportation despite his naturalized citizenship. Because nothing says “America First” quite like deporting naturalized citizens who disagree with you.

The logic is flawless, really.​

When Bibi Became Uncle Sam’s Dad

If the H-1B controversy was divisive, the Israel-Gaza debate split the movement like the Red Sea – except Moses isn’t around to guide anyone, and everyone’s arguing about who gets to be Moses anyway.​

By July 2025, images of starvation in Gaza had catalysed something unprecedented: Republicans questioning American support for Israel. Greene became the first Republican member of Congress to call Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide”. Thomas Massie, the Republican representative from Kentucky’s 4th district, posted on X that the conflict was “so lopsided that there’s no rational argument American taxpayers should be paying for it”.​

These weren’t fringe figures breaking ranks. These were Trump loyalists abandoning ship with the enthusiasm of passengers who’d just spotted the iceberg.​

MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec explained the split: “What we are seeing on Israel is a generational split around the age of 40. Over 40 support, under 40 range from sceptical to wanting to cut all ties.”

A Turning Point focus group revealed that when Gen Z participants were asked to describe Israel, some responded with terms like “liability” and “tax dollars”. Not exactly the ringing endorsement the Republican establishment was hoping for.​

The controversy intensified after Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist Holocaust denier. Because when one is looking to have a nuanced conversation about Middle East policy, obviously the first person to call is someone who denies the Holocaust happened. Carlson mocked “Christian Zionists”.

The interview drew six million views, and suddenly MAGA was having the sort of public reckoning about antisemitism that most movements prefer to have privately, if at all.​

At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s leadership summit, attendees held signs reading “Tucker is not MAGA.” Ben Shapiro, with his 30 million social media followers, branded Carlson “an intellectual coward” and “the most virulent superspreader of vile ideas in America.” Which, coming from someone who once argued Palestinians like living in sewage, is quite the accusation.​

Conservative critics began labelling MAGA as “MIGA” – Make Israel Great Again. They argued the movement had abandoned America First principles by prioritizing Israel’s interests. It’s almost as though simplistic slogans don’t translate well into complex foreign policy realities.

Who could have predicted? Besides literally everyone with a functioning brain, of course.​

Epstein Files Fiasco

Then there’s the Jeffrey Epstein files debacle, which is perhaps the most morally straightforward issue dividing MAGA – and yet Trump managed to end up on the wrong side of it. Greene, Massie, and other Republicans demanded full release of sealed documents, arguing survivors deserved truth and accountability. Trump opposed it, dismissing the push as a “Democrat hoax”.​

Let that marinate for a moment. We’re discussing releasing documents related to a deceased sex offender whose crimes are extensively documented, and somehow this became controversial within the Republican Party. It’s like arguing that releasing evidence of the Titanic sinking might be politically motivated against icebergs.​

Greene told CBS News that Trump’s stance represented a “huge miscalculation”. Massie noted that 89% of Americans supported releasing all Epstein files. Think about that polling for a second. When 89% of Americans agree on anything in 2025, one has achieved a level of consensus typically reserved for propositions like “puppies are cute” or “traffic jams are annoying.”

And yet Trump opposed it, threatened primary challenges against Republicans demanding transparency, and eventually reversed course only after sustained pressure.​

In July, Massie told reporters: “I have the people on my side.” He warned fellow Republicans: “You will have voted to protect paedophiles if you don’t vote to release these files. And the president can’t protect you then.” Which is both morally correct and politically astute – a rare combination in contemporary American politics.​

Finally, seeing no way out, Trump made a stunning U-turn and urged his party members to vote to release the files, apparently because “he had nothing to hide.”

Indeed.​

Forever Wars

Perhaps the Trump administration’s most glaring contradiction involves its foreign policy. Trump campaigned on ending “forever wars” and bringing troops home. His second administration then launched strikes on Yemen’s Houthis, bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, escalated support for Ukraine, and maintained aggressive Middle East engagement. It’s like promising to become vegetarian and then opening a steakhouse.​

Hardcore isolationists like Carlson, Bannon, and Kirk pushed back. Carlson labelled Iran support “complicit in endless war,” while Green and Bannon slammed Iran and Venezuela hawks as “neocons in MAGA clothing.” Because apparently the only thing worse than a neocon is a neocon pretending to be MAGA.​

Yet polling revealed something surprising: 73% of MAGA Republicans supported the view that the United States should “lead on the international stage.” An overwhelming 96% believed a strong military was essential for peace and prosperity. This suggests MAGA voters aren’t truly isolationist – they’re suspicious of elite-driven “globalist” agendas that don’t serve American interests.​ Which is a considerably more nuanced position than campaign slogans suggested.

But nuance doesn’t fit on red baseball caps, does it? “Make America Great Again” has four syllables. “We support a robust military presence that serves demonstrable American interests while avoiding entanglement in conflicts that primarily benefit other nations or corporate entities” has … well, significantly more than four syllables.​

Tariffs and Grocery Prices

Trump’s tariff policies created another fault line. While MAGA-supporting Republican men over 35 remained optimistic, non-MAGA Republicans increasingly soured on economic conditions. Nearly half of non-MAGA Republicans thought the economy had worsened in 2025, while the overwhelming majority of MAGA Republicans believed it had improved – a staggering 66-point gap.​

Grocery prices rose 0.6% in single months. Clothing prices climbed 0.5%. A BBC story captured the mood with a remark by Nancy Garcia, a middle-income New Yorker: “Now I’m doing more price comparison.” Which is polite American for “I can’t afford the things I used to buy.”​

Nearly one in four MAGA-supporting Republicans opposed tariffs. They recognized the tariffs raised costs and hurt businesses. Tariffs are essentially taxes on consumers dressed up in nationalist rhetoric. The fact that even a quarter of MAGA Republicans recognize this suggests reality is starting to penetrate the bubble, like water slowly seeping through a concrete dam.​

Greene seized on economic anxiety to criticize Trump’s focus on foreign affairs over domestic concerns: “Cost of living is far too high. Health insurance is completely out of control.” She argued that prioritizing foreign policy over inflation and healthcare costs represented an abandonment of the economic populism that energized MAGA’s base. In other words: people care more about affording groceries than about military adventures in Yemen.

Revolutionary insight, truly.​

Rogues’ Gallery

The cast of characters in this drama deserves its own analysis. There’s the vice-president, JD Vance, 40, positioning himself as Trump’s heir while maintaining enough ideological flexibility to defend whatever position Trump takes today, regardless of what he said yesterday. Which is exactly what one would expect from someone whose job security depends on Trump’s approval.​

There’s the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who represents the hawkish interventionist wing that believes “America First” somehow means military engagement across the Middle East. He advocated for “disproportionate” responses in Gaza and called for Hamas to be “exterminated”, because nothing says measured diplomacy like advocating for extermination.​

Musk transformed from major campaign donor to Bannon’s sworn enemy after defending H-1B visas. Despite Bannon declaring “MAGA’s done with him,” Musk’s financial resources and tech influence remained significant. It’s almost as though billionaires don’t actually lose influence just because someone declares them cancelled.​

Billionaire David Sacks went from calling Trump’s candidacy “clearly off the table” after the January 6 Capitol Hill riots to likening his return to “Caesar entering Rome.” Because comparing American presidents to dictators who overthrew republics is apparently fine when it’s your dictator.​

On the dissidents’ side, Greene experienced a dramatic fall from grace – from Trump’s most reliable congressional supporter to being called “wacky” and a “traitor” by Trump himself. Just a couple of days ago, she, without taking Trump’s name, hit back at him saying, “Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries (read Israel).”

Carlson positioned himself as an America First purist, his podcast reaching millions of younger conservatives sceptical of foreign entanglements.​ Bannon represented working-class populism, feuding spectacularly with Musk and calling for his deportation. Massie emerged as the libertarian-populist gadfly, defying Trump by leading the Epstein files release campaign.​

Then there’s the truly colourful characters. Prominent pro-Zionist conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Laura Loomer, who describes herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, accused Carlson of being “owned by Muslims” and called him “Tucker Qatarlson”. Because nothing says principled conservatism like playground name-calling with an Islamophobic twist.​

Candace Owens hosted Norman Finkelstein on her podcast, called Gaza a “holocaust”, and accused pro-Israel forces of pressuring Kirk before his assassination. Fuentes, the antisemitic white nationalist, represented the extreme fringe that some America First advocates tolerated or embraced, forcing a reckoning over whether the ideology inevitably attracted extremists.​

This Rupture Cannot Heal

Several structural factors ensure this schism deepens rather than heals. The generational divide cannot be bridged through political manoeuvring. You see, 71% of older Republicans identify as MAGA supporters compared to only 59% of younger Republicans. These cohorts have fundamentally different life experiences and values. One cannot negotiate away the fact that one generation remembers the Cold War and another grew up with social media.​

The economic class conflict between billionaire donors and working-class supporters is equally unbridgeable. One cannot simultaneously serve tech oligarchs who need H-1B visas and workers who feel economically threatened by immigration. Someone loses. It’s basic maths, really, though apparently not the kind of maths they teach at Turning Point USA rallies.​

Trump’s simultaneous embrace of isolationist rhetoric and interventionist action creates cognitive dissonance his supporters cannot ignore indefinitely. One cannot bomb Iran while promising to end forever wars. One cannot escalate military aid to Ukraine while campaigning against foreign entanglements. Eventually, people notice the gap between words and deeds – even people who own multiple MAGA hats.​

The Epstein files controversy uniquely cut across other divides, uniting disparate America First figures behind transparency while Trump opposed it. When 89% of Americans support release but the president resists, any Republican defending Trump faces electoral vulnerability.​

The conservative media ecosystem has fragmented beyond Trump’s control. Carlson’s podcast, Owens’ show, Bannon’s War Room – these create alternative information ecosystems where Trump no longer controls the narrative even among his supporters. It’s like watching a cult leader lose control of the cult’s communication channels.

Awkward.​

The movement’s foundational appeal rested on ideological purity – drain the swamp, end corruption, put America first. Yet governing requires compromise, accommodation of donors, and pragmatic policy choices that contradict campaign rhetoric. Greene articulated this tension: “I believe in the American people more than I believe in any leader or political party.”​

When forced to choose between Trump personally and America First principles, a growing number chose principles. Which would be admirable if the principles themselves weren’t quite so questionable.​

A Telescopic View

As a foreign observer from India who has watched American politics with keen interest for years, there’s admittedly some schadenfreude here. The movement that reshaped American conservatism, that seemed unstoppable in its devotion to Trump, has discovered that cult of personality makes for poor long-term political strategy.​

The contradictions were always there – between populism and plutocracy, between isolationism and interventionism, between loyalty to a person and adherence to principles. Trump’s genius was keeping these contradictions suppressed through force of personality and constant distraction. But governing requires actual policy choices, and policy choices reveal whose interests one truly serves.​

By November this year, we’ve learned that you can’t build a political movement that’ll keep on rolling when it’s all based on worshipping one person and chanting catchy slogans. Eventually, reality intrudes. People notice when their grocery bills rise. They question why American taxpayers fund foreign wars when domestic infrastructure crumbles. They wonder whether “America First” means anything if it changes based on who’s writing the biggest cheques.​

Greene’s admission that political rhetoric had become “poisonous” marked a watershed – one of MAGA’s founding figures acknowledging the movement had lost its way. Kirk’s assassination and all the conspiracy theories swirling around it have only deepened the cracks in what was already a pretty fragmented coalition.

Trump still has his grip on the Republican Party machinery, sure, but the fact that an America First faction has emerged that’s actually willing to stand up to him shows his iron hold isn’t quite what it used to be. The MAGA coalition that swept Trump into power was always a bit of a shaky alliance between groups that didn’t really fit together. By 2025, that alliance has well and truly fallen apart, and there’s no putting it back together again.

What emerges from this rupture will define American conservatism for the next generation. Whether it’s a Trump-loyal MAGA establishment or a renewed America First movement committed to principles over personality remains to be seen.​

One thing is certain, though: movements built on contradiction eventually collapse under their own weight. We’re watching that collapse in real time. And while one certainly wouldn’t have chosen this path for American democracy, there’s no denying it has been extraordinarily entertaining theatre.​

^{I tweet as @goldenarcher}

So, here’s a story that sounds a bit like political fiction but actually happened: a 34-year-old South Asian-origin, African-born democratic socialist with a Muslim identity just won a New York City mayoral race with over 50 per cent of the vote. I know what you are thinking – that sentence alone sounds like political fan fiction. But it actually happened, and the story of how he did it is absolutely wild. But Zohran Kwame Mamdani pulled it off, and honestly, the whole saga reads like someone threw every political third rail into a blender and somehow produced a winning smoothie.

Let me set the scene. Mamdani wasn’t just fighting an uphill battle – he was scaling Everest in sandals while dodging avalanches. The obstacles lined up against him would have buried most campaigns before they had even ordered their first batch of leaflets.

First, there was the US president, Donald Trump, who naturally called him a “communist lunatic” and a “disaster waiting to happen”. Because apparently, subtle political discourse in the US went out of fashion sometime around 2016. Then Elon Musk – yes, that Elon Musk – decided to stick his oar in, endorsing Mamdani’s opponent and warning voters that supporting the democratic socialist would “effectively be votes for disaster”. Nothing says “I understand local politics” quite like a billionaire from Texas telling New Yorkers how to vote, does it?

But the billionaire brigade didn’t stop there. At least 26 ultra-wealthy individuals and families threw somewhere between $22 million and $28 million into campaigns opposing Mamdani. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg alone chipped in about $13.3 million – nearly half of all the anti-Mamdani spending. That’s a staggering amount of money to prevent one person from winning office.

And then there were the accusations of antisemitism. Mamdani had described the phrase “globalize the intifada” as representing “a profound yearning for equality and rights in advocating for Palestinian human rights”. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, a major voice in fighting antisemitism, condemned him for contributing to “a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism”. The US Holocaust Museum got involved too and noted that since 1987, Jews have faced violence under that banner. Over 1,000 rabbis and cantors signed an open letter calling out the “political normalization” of anti-Zionism.

Wall Street executives were having absolute kittens about his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. They worried this would destroy New York City’s competitiveness under a socialist mayor. Because, you know, nothing says “thriving business environment” quite like workers who can’t afford rent and a transport system held together with duct tape.

Meanwhile, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo – remember him? – positioned himself as the sensible, experienced alternative. And in a plot twist that would make a soap opera writer blush, he eventually secured Trump’s endorsement. Yes, really. Andrew Cuomo, lifelong Democrat, got Trump’s blessing. The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, characterized Mamdani as someone “solidifying the transformation of the Democratic Party into a radical, big-government socialist entity”.

So here’s this relatively unknown state assemblyman from Queens, with limited executive experience, a Muslim identity in post-9/11 America, an anti-Zionist stance in a city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel, facing a coordinated assault from billionaires, a sitting president, and establishment figures from both parties. The smart money said he had absolutely no chance.

And then he won. Decisively.

So how on earth did this happen? Well, here’s where it gets brilliant.

Mamdani’s campaign, backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, knocked on over three million doors by election day. In the final weekend alone, volunteers attempted a record-breaking 200,000-door push, ultimately logging 157,678 doors in 24 hours. That’s the largest single-day canvassing operation in recent New York City history. The New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) went from 7,000 members in 2020 to over 11,000 by late 2025, with 2,400 joining during the campaign alone. Numbers aside, the real masterstroke was his social media game.

Mamdani’s mum is the renowned Indian-origin Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair. And clearly, some of that creative DNA rubbed off on him. He brought a proper filmmaker’s eye to political campaigning, creating energetic videos on TikTok and Instagram that didn’t just inform people – they inspired them to make their own content. It became this brilliant viral snowball effect that transformed him from “who?” to cultural phenomenon.

His videos were proper clever too. Multilingual messaging in Urdu, Hindi, and Spanish, reaching communities that traditional campaigns usually can’t be bothered with. He turned up at mosques, cultural centres, and late-night workplaces to chat with shift workers. He organized citywide scavenger hunts, football tournaments, and all sorts of creative engagement events that got thousands involved. One video explaining ranked-choice voting in Hindi – using mango lassi as an analogy, of all things – got over 5 million views. And here’s the brilliant part: these weren’t paid advertisements. They were just people genuinely excited about his campaign, sharing stuff because they wanted to.

Perhaps most innovatively, the campaign hosted the first-ever influencer briefing for a mayoral race. Seventy online content creators got exclusive access to Mamdani, and their livestream reached nearly 80 million followers. Self-organized groups like “Creators for Zohran”, “Hot Girls for Zohran”, “Gays for Zohran”, and “South Asians for Zohran” expanded his reach exponentially.

The youth turnout was absolutely staggering. Early voting data (as checked at around 10.30–11am IST) showed 117,042 New Yorkers aged 18–29 had cast ballots – a 130.1 per cent surge compared to 2021. A fall 2025 poll showed Mamdani leading overwhelmingly among 18–34-year-olds with 62 per cent support. Researchers at Tufts University called the young turnout “astonishing”, noting that “Mamdani’s victory shows that when campaigns focus on engaging new voters, it works.”

But here’s the thing – while the social media wizardry grabbed headlines, his success fundamentally stemmed from addressing what voters actually cared about: affordability. He relentlessly focused on three ambitious but easily understood proposals: rent freezes for over one million stabilized tenants, free and faster buses, and universal childcare for children under five. Crucially, he insisted these would be funded by taxing the rich – not through market incentives or trickle-down nonsense.

Even critics acknowledged his clarity. Matt Bennett from the centrist thinktank Third Way admitted: “I don’t particularly like his ideas, but he articulated them in ways that really resonated and that people could kind of repeat back to him.”

Meanwhile, Cuomo barely added any votes throughout the campaign. He entered as the frontrunner with 33 per cent support when Mamdani had just 1 per cent. But he finished the primary with only 36.5 per cent to Mamdani’s 43.5 per cent, and in the general election, despite Trump’s endorsement, Cuomo won only 41.6 per cent.

What’s particularly delicious about this whole situation is how it defies conventional Democratic Party wisdom. You know the narrative: move to the centre, don’t scare the moderates, play it safe, don’t talk too much about class because it makes donors uncomfortable. Mamdani’s campaign essentially set that playbook ablaze and danced around the flames.

There was a particularly powerful moment in late October when Mamdani delivered an emotional speech outside the Islamic Cultural Center in the Bronx. After strategically avoiding highlighting his Muslim identity for much of the campaign, he declared: “I will be a Muslim man in New York City. I will not change who I am, I will not change how I eat, I will not change the faith that I am proud to belong to. But there is one thing I will change: I will no longer look for myself in the shadows. I will find myself in the light.” The video was viewed over 25 million times.

This moment of authenticity resonated far beyond New York’s Muslim community. A professor at Brooklyn College compared it to Barack Obama’s 2008 speech on race, noting that Mamdani was confronting prejudice directly rather than sidestepping it.

Here’s what’s fascinating: Mamdani’s anti-Zionist stance, which many viewed as his greatest liability, actually became an asset. Many voters, particularly young and Muslim New Yorkers, saw his unwavering position as evidence of authenticity and courage. His refusal to compromise on Palestinian rights signalled integrity not just on that issue, but more broadly.

When the billionaire class launched their coordinated assault, it probably didn’t help their cause. When Elon Musk is telling working-class New Yorkers that higher corporate taxes will hurt them, while he’s literally the richest person on this planet, the message lands with all the authenticity of a counterfeit tenner.

Now, Mamdani’s victory wasn’t happening in isolation. November 4, 2025, saw Democrats sweep elections across the country – a clear rejection of Trump’s second term. In New Jersey, Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill defeated her Republican opponent by about 12 percentage points. In Virginia, former representative Abigail Spanberger crushed the Republican lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, by an even larger margin. Both are centrists with national security backgrounds – Sherrill’s a former US Navy pilot, Spanberger’s ex-CIA – and they focused relentlessly on affordability.

California voters approved Proposition 50, a redistricting measure designed to redraw five congressional districts to favour Democrats. It was explicitly framed as a response to Trump’s similar efforts in Texas.

CNN exit polling found that in all four major contests, a majority of voters expressed disapproval of Trump. Around half or more viewed their vote as a message directed at Trump – and predominantly one of dissent. Trump’s approval rating stood at 43 per cent, reflecting a 4-point decline since March.

So what does this all mean? Well, that’s where it gets complicated.

Progressives are pointing to Mamdani’s victory as validation that bold, unapologetic left-wing politics can win even facing billionaire opposition. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking from Mamdani’s victory party, emphasized that the win demonstrates Democrats can succeed by “offering a new message”. Bernie Sanders told CBS News: “If he wins, the message goes all over this country: You can stand up to the oligarchs.”

But moderates are warning that Mamdani’s success in liberal Manhattan and Brooklyn can’t be replicated nationally. Matt Bennett of Third Way argued that Mamdani’s win gives Republicans “a pretty potent set of weapons” to use against Democrats in swing districts. He compared it to “defund the police” attacks, noting that Democrats in competitive areas will need to actively distance themselves from Mamdani’s policies.

And here’s the thing – the moderate victories of Spanberger and Sherrill complicate the narrative. Both won decisively in states Kamala Harris narrowly carried during the last presidential election, which suggests that centrist messaging on affordability and opposition to Trump can also deliver results.

Perhaps the real lesson is that American voters in 2025 are united less by ideology than by exhaustion with a failing status quo. They are tired of politicians who dodge questions, serve billionaire donors, and offer incremental tweaks when transformative change feels necessary. They are frustrated by rising costs that make life unaffordable even for those with decent incomes.

Mamdani succeeded not despite his democratic socialism but because he offered clear, ambitious answers to pressing problems – and because voters believed he meant what he said. His refusal to moderate his positions under pressure from billionaires and party elites became evidence of integrity rather than extremism.

Whether his model can be replicated in other cities – in suburbs and towns rather than diverse urban centres – remains to be seen. The 2026 midterms will provide crucial data. But for now, Mamdani has achieved what was dismissed as impossible.

His victory speech captured the moment’s significance: “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. Here, we believe in standing up for those we love. Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall, your struggle is ours too.”

Addressing Trump directly, Mamdani declared: “Donald Trump, since I know you are watching, four words for you: ‘Turn the volume up.’” He vowed to protect immigrants, hold “bad landlords” accountable, freeze rents, expand labour protections, and end the “culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation”.

Then invoking India’s first prime minister, he said: “Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru – a moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance. Tonight, we have stepped out from the old into the new.”

The coming years will test whether these promises can be kept, whether Mamdani’s approach can scale beyond New York City, and whether the coalition he built can be sustained. But on November 4, 2025, against extraordinary odds, Zohran Mamdani proved that a different kind of politics is possible – and that millions of Americans are hungry for it.

The perfect storm everyone predicted would sink Mamdani turned out to be the one that cleared the way for his victory. Sometimes the impossible is just the inevitable wearing a disguise. And sometimes – just sometimes, the outsider with nothing to lose and everything to prove actually wins.

^{I tweet as @goldenarcher}

ধুমুহাৰ স’তে মোৰ,
বহু যুগৰে নাচোন;
এন্ধাৰো সঁচা মোৰ,
বহু দিনৰে আপোন;
নিজানৰ গান মোৰ,
শেষ হ’ব;
ভাবোঁ তোমাৰ বুকুত।

The music world lost more than just a singer on September 19 when Zubeen Garg breathed his last in Singapore at the age of 52. We lost a cultural ambassador, a linguistic bridge-builder, a fearless activist, and most important, a soul who could touch hearts across continents and languages with equal ease. The man born as Zubeen Borthakur on November 18, 1972, in Tura, Meghalaya’s Garo Hills, didn’t just sing – he lived music, breathed melody, and made the world dance to his rhythm for over three decades, all while standing firm for the causes he believed in.

The Lyrical Legacy

Numbers rarely tell the complete story of an artist, but with Zubeen, they certainly help paint the picture of his incredible reach. Over 38,000 songs across 40 different languages and dialects – this isn’t just a discography; it’s a testament to human creativity and linguistic versatility that few artists in world history have ever achieved. From his native Assamese to Hindi, Bengali, English, Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, and dozens of other regional tongues, Zubeen didn’t just sing in these languages – he embraced their cultural nuances and emotional depths.

His musical journey began in the mid-1990s, and by 1995, he had already started experimenting with Hindi versions of his Assamese compositions through albums like “Chandni Raat”. This early cross-linguistic approach would become his signature style, which made him not just Assam’s voice but India’s multilingual musical ambassador.

But music was never just entertainment for Zubeen. It was his weapon of choice in fighting for justice and equality. A self-described socialist who counted Che Guevara as his idol, Zubeen wore his political ideology not as a badge but as a compass that guided his life’s work. Like the Bolivarian revolutionaries of Latin America who fought for the marginalized and oppressed, Zubeen used his platform to amplify voices that were often silenced.

Man Who Played Life Itself

What made Zubeen truly exceptional wasn’t just his vocal range, but his mastery over 12 different musical instruments. The anandalahari, dhol, dotara, drums, guitar, harmonica, harmonium, mandolin, keyboard, tabla, and various percussion instruments – each became an extension of his creative expression. This multi-instrumental expertise allowed him to compose, arrange, and produce his music with a completeness that few contemporary artists could match.

His approach to music wasn’t mechanical or formulaic. Whether he was strumming a guitar for a romantic ballad or beating the dhol for a traditional Bihu celebration, Zubeen infused each performance with an emotional authenticity that resonated with audiences across demographic and geographic boundaries. This wasn’t just technical skill – it was musical storytelling at its finest.

Silence-Shattering Voice

While music remained his first love, Zubeen’s creative ambitions extended miles beyond recording studios. His foray into acting and film direction, including works like “Mission China”, demonstrated his vision of multimedia storytelling. He wasn’t content being just a playback singer; he wanted to create complete artistic experiences.

But it was in the streets, not the studios, where Zubeen’s true character shone brightest. When the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act threatened the secular fabric of India and particularly stirred anxiety in Assam about demographic changes and indigenous rights, Zubeen didn’t hesitate.

He became one of the most prominent voices against the CAA, performing at rallies and speaking truth to power with the same passion he brought to his music. His opposition wasn’t calculated for publicity – it was rooted in his deep socialist convictions and his commitment to protecting the rights of ordinary people.

His environmental activism proved equally fearless. When the government proposed felling trees to build a new flyover in Guwahati’s “College Street” Dighalipukhuri, Zubeen led protests that captured public imagination and forced authorities to postpone the felling. Here was a man who understood that progress without ecological consciousness was not progress at all – a view that aligned perfectly with his broader socialist worldview of sustainable development for all, not just the privileged few.

His philanthropic work often went unnoticed amid the glamour of his musical career and the controversy of his activism, but those who knew him understood that giving back to society was central to his identity. Educational initiatives, health campaigns, and support for unprivileged communities in Assam – these activities reflected the same passion he brought to his music. He recognized that his platform came with responsibility, and he embraced that responsibility with the same dedication he showed towards his art.

The National Voice

Zubeen’s talent didn’t go unrecognized by the industry. His National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer in 2009 for the song “Dilruba” from the film “Kismat” was just one of many accolades that acknowledged his contribution to Indian cinema. But beyond formal recognition, he achieved something far more significant – he became the highest-paid singer in Assam, proving that regional artists could command not only national respect but also commercial success.

Songs like “Ya Ali” from “Gangster” introduced him to Hindi film audiences, while tracks like “Bihutoli” rooted him in Assamese folk traditions. This balance between commercial mainstream appeal and cultural authenticity defined his entire career. He never forgot his roots while reaching for the stars.

People’s Zubeen

Zubeen represented something larger than individual musical success – he embodied the cultural pride of northeastern India and the political consciousness of its people. In a country where regional artists often struggle for national recognition, he broke barriers and opened doors. His success proved that language was no barrier to musical excellence, and that authentic regional expression could find universal appreciation.

His fearless honesty and willingness to speak truth to power made him more than an entertainer – he became a voice for social consciousness. Whether challenging hypocrisy in public life, opposing legislation he believed was unjust, protecting the environment, or supporting marginalized communities, Zubeen used his influence to advocate for positive change. This wasn’t just for public relations; it was genuine commitment to using his platform for social good.

His socialist principles weren’t abstract theoretical constructs – they were lived values that informed every aspect of his public life.

In many ways, Zubeen was the musical embodiment of Che Guevara’s revolutionary spirit transplanted to the cultural scenery of India. Where Che fought with guerrilla warfare, Zubeen fought with songs and solidarity. Where Che inspired Latin American revolutionaries, Zubeen inspired a generation of northeastern youth to take pride in their identity while fighting for social justice. Like his idol, he refused to compromise his principles for commercial success or governmental approval.

A Personal Encounter

Music has this incredible power to create unexpected connections, to bring together strangers across time and space in ways that seem almost magical. For me, that magic happened in June 1992, when I was a Class XI student – a fresh school senior who had just entered the new academic year after shedding the load of “Boards” a couple of months ago. I had nothing more than curiosity and youthful enthusiasm driving me forward.

I had travelled to the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Jorhat’s Rowriah to meet a friend whose father, a civilian, had recently been transferred from No. 14 Wing, Indian Air Force Station, Chabua. It was supposed to be a simple visit – catch up with a close friend, maybe explore the new surroundings, and head back home by the evening Jorhat-Tinsukia bus. But sometimes the most ordinary days become the most extraordinary memories.

That afternoon, around 2.30pm, the school had dispersed; while walking across the school grounds, we heard this voice – raw, powerful, yet incredibly melodious – coming from the one of those room, which I don’t remember. (Was it library room or the staff room, or a storeroom, where all the instruments were kept? I really don’t know!) The sound was unlike anything I had heard – a voice that seemed to carry the weight of mountains and the flow of rivers all at once. We followed the music …

There he was – Zubeen Garg, though I wouldn’t learn his name until later that day. He was younger then, maybe 19 or 20, sitting with a guitar, completely absorbed in his music. His hair fell across his forehead as he sang, and his fingers moved across the strings with an ease that spoke of countless hours of practice. But what struck me most was the emotion in his voice – even in that informal setting, every note carried genuine feeling.

We stood there listening for what felt like hours but was probably only 20 minutes. When he finished, he looked up and saw us watching. Instead of being annoyed by the intrusion, he smiled – that warm, genuine smile that would later become familiar to millions of fans. “Did you like it?” he asked simply.

That question, asked with such genuine curiosity and humility, has stayed with me for over three decades. Here was someone with extraordinary talent, yet he cared enough to ask two random teenagers for their opinion.

We talked for another hour so many things, even my classmate’s Gordon Lightfoot album, which he bought along with what was then an “ultramodern” headset. He spoke about wanting to take his music, especially Assamese music to the world, etc, etc. (Who could remember? Not me, certainly.)

Then I forgot about Zubeen and the encounter completely, until I entered university as an inmate in Deepa Complex, Papareddipalya – a nondescript hillside village in the outskirts of Bangalore, with a bunch of Assamese students.

When I learned over two decades later about his incredible journey – the 38,000 songs, the 40 languages, the National Film Award, the fearless activism, the stands he took against powerful interests – I remembered that young man with the guitar and his simple question: “Did you like it?” That encounter taught me that true greatness always begins with genuine humility and authentic curiosity about connecting with others.

The Unending Echo

Zubeen’s passing leaves an enormous void in the musical world and in the conscience of northeastern India. But his voice – that same voice I heard on a summer afternoon in 1992 – continues to echo across languages, cultures, and generations. In those 38,000 songs, millions of us will always find a piece of that young musician who cared enough to ask if we liked what we heard. In his activism and his commitment to socialist principles, we find a reminder that artists have a responsibility to use their platform for the greater good.

He was a Bolivarian rebel in the truest sense – not through armed struggle, but through the power of music and the courage of conviction. He proved that you could be commercially successful without selling your soul, that you could entertain millions while still fighting for justice, and that regional pride and universal solidarity were not contradictory but complementary forces.

Zubeen Garg didn’t just sing for the people – he sang with them, fought alongside them, and never forgot that his gift was meant to serve something larger than himself. That is the legacy that will outlive the silence.

^{PS: Zubeen’s connection to the school was through his old Jorhat friends, who were “super seniors” – a euphemism for students who never actually passed their Class XII but remained attached to the school to reappear for exams, to represent the school in sports, cultural activities, etc, age limit permitting. My guess is that Zubeen had a few such friends who studied in the school and some juniors still – until that time – linked to the school.}

^{I tweet as @goldenarcher}

Like many other Asian countries, India is staring at a severe water crisis in the coming years. Population growth and industrialization, coupled with the effects of climate change, threaten to make India’s current water sources unsustainable in the near future. Already, many regions of the country are suffering from acute water shortages. Under these circumstances, New Delhi’s poor policies on sharing the waters of transboundary rivers with its neighbours, and its weak approach while dealing with China’s manipulation of the Brahmaputra and Indus river systems in Tibet, is going to have a telling effect on India.

Even getting a fair water-sharing agreement won’t be easy for India as it has to deal with China – its biggest geopolitical rival – and Pakistan – its archenemy. However, India cannot afford to do nothing.

India is still not hit by a severe water crisis in its north and northeast. At this moment, it has a number of cards that it can play against both China and Pakistan to squeeze out fair water-sharing deals involving the Indus and the Brahmaputra (known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet). Let’s first briefly look at the water disputes with China and Pakistan, which were discussed in the previous three articles [1, 2, 3].

With China, India has three broad disputes over transboundary rivers – China is damming and diverting the Brahmaputra and Indus rivers in Tibet (including their tributaries), it is polluting the headwaters of the transboundary rivers and it is reluctant to share the hydrological data of these rivers.

With Pakistan, India has the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) heavily skewed in favour of the former. It can use less than 20 per cent of the water of the Indus river system and that too only in “non-consumptive” ways.

***

To come out of the IWT, India’s political leadership must first understand what is at stake. Although India is allowed run-of-the-river projects, the Kishanganga, Baglihar and Ratle cases leave no doubt that Pakistan wants to deny the people of Jammu & Kashmir even the limited benefits from the three western rivers – Indus, Chenab and Jhelum, which India governs. This is in line with Pakistan’s decades-long strategy to fuel discontent and keep Jammu & Kashmir, especially the Kashmir valley, burning.

Whenever India started a hydroelectric project on these rivers, Pakistan took India to international arbitration and the arbitrators have often treated India unfairly, including prohibiting it from constructing facilities to control the build-up of silt on such dams during the Baglihar hearing, thus severely restricting the commercial viability of future such projects. (The construction of the Baglihar dam was already complete by then.)

Although India is legally bound by the IWT, it can easily come out of it by invoking Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties [pdf]. India has not one, but three trump cards that it can use to withdraw from the treaty:

1. Pakistan’s support to terrorism against India. New Delhi can successfully argue at the International Court of Justice that Islamabad’s continuous proxy war against India through jihadist terror has fundamentally changed the circumstances under which the IWT was signed. (More on terror, treaties, and the ICJ here [pdf].)
2. China’s sly construction of a dam on the Indus near India’s Ladakh, which is already affecting [pdf] the river in a major way.
3. Pakistan’s construction of two dams – Diamer-Bhasha and Bunji – in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on the Indus with Chinese help despite India’s objections.

It is obvious that the Chinese-enabled Pakistani projects on the Indus river have also fundamentally changed the circumstances under which the treaty was signed.

Apart from invoking one or more of the above factors to withdraw from the IWT, New Delhi can also use the effects of climate change on river waters to seek the nullification of the treaty or at least its modification in India’s favour. When the treaty was signed, climate change was mostly an academic topic and its future effects on rivers were not known. Today, the drastic effects of climate change are visible on rivers across the world, including the Indus.

The very premise of India entering the IWT, in 1960, was lasting peace with Pakistan. However, since then Pakistan has launched three wars with India – in 1965, 1971 and 1999 – with the objective to wrest the state of Jammu & Kashmir by force, in at least two of them. By doing so, Pakistan has voluntarily junked its side of the obligation to maintain peace with India, thus fundamentally changing the circumstances in which India agreed to give up over 80 per cent of the water from the Indus river system.

Although India has linked the IWT with Pakistan’s aiding and abetting anti-India terror in 2016, it has refrained from taking further action on this for inexplicable reason(s). Officials from the two countries continue to hold talks under the provisions of the IWT though terrorists from Pakistan continue to bleed India.

***

India faces a far greater challenge against China, compared with Pakistan, when it comes to transboundary rivers which originate in Chinese-controlled Tibet. In Tibet, China has reengineered rivers to change their courses and constructed dams over them on a scale never seen anywhere else on earth. Until recently, rivers that flow into India from Tibet were not touched. However, that’s changing now.

China has dammed the Xiabuqu river – a tributary of the Brahmaputra. Although China has tried to allay India’s fears, the latter has good reasons to be concerned about it. Recently, an arterial tributary of the Brahmaputra – the pristine Siang river, which flows through Arunachal Pradesh – turned black due to suspected Chinese industrial activities in Tibet. Even senior Indian officials blamed China for this.

Apart from this, China violates its agreement with India on sharing upstream hydrological data of transboundary rivers. After India forced China to withdraw from Doklam during the military stand-off in the summer of 2017, Beijing broke its obligation to provide this data. This resulted in India being caught unprepared for the devastating flash floods in the northeast. After a furore in India, China gave a flimsy reason for its failure to share the hydrological data.

It is obvious that China used this leverage to punish India for Doklam and hide its river-diversion activities in Tibet. (More details of Chinese reengineering of rivers here.)

India has a number of cards to play against China to make the latter concede New Delhi’s fair demands on transboundary rivers originating in Tibet:

1. Link the recognition of Tibet as an undisputed part of China with Beijing’s behaviour in treating transboundary rivers and territorial disputes. Since Tibet is a sensitive issue to China with global opinion divided over China’s claims over the Buddhist country, Beijing will not want to have a neighbouring country change its stand. New Delhi’s threat of recanting its Tibet policy [pdf] will set the cat among the pigeons in Beijing, although it may seem to observers that such a move will antagonize China and such a scenario will be detrimental to India’s interests. However, nothing can be more detrimental to India’s interests than not taking a strong stand on the critical issue of water.
2. Since Chinese damming activities in Pakistan are going on in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, India can formally declare that it can guarantee no security to the stretch of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a part of Xi Jinping’s OBOR – that runs through PoK. The much-touted CPEC is already facing hostilities in Pakistan’s Balochistan province from Baloch insurgents.
3. India must also make it clear that it will impose sanctions on those Chinese companies that are associated directly or indirectly with the reengineering of transboundary rivers flowing into India from Tibet. This must include power and infrastructure-building companies. If this doesn’t make China fall in line, New Delhi can leverage its enormous trade imbalance with Beijing. (China routinely uses trade as a weapon to punish countries going against its wishes [1, 2].)

So far, India, for unknown fears, hasn’t shown any resolve to take on China strongly. On the contrary, it has always allowed China to have its way in the belief that China will voluntarily address India’s concerns. Far from playing the Tibet card, whether it was for sharing hydrological data of transboundary rivers or for stopping land-grabbing activities in the Himalayas, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently buckled under Chinese pressure and distanced itself from the Dalai Lama.

***

The inconsistent attitude that India’s leadership displayed towards Pakistan in recent years weakens New Delhi’s position against Islamabad and encourages the latter to carry on with its rogue behaviour towards the former. Since Modi had threatened to link the IWT with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India, terror-related incidents and ceasefire violations along the line of control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir have only increased [1, 2].

Similarly, history has shown that India’s friendly and conceding attitude towards China has proved to be a losing game for New Delhi for decades. In the last decade alone, India lost 2,000 square kilometres of its territory to Chinese salami-slicing. During the Doklam stand-off last year, it closed the Nathula route for Indian Kailash-Mansarovar pilgrims and it continues to remain close, although China didn’t stop trade through the Nathula border. (Since the stand-off ended, China has slyly built permanent military structures on the disputed Doklam plateau showing India can’t guarantee Bhutan’s territorial sovereignty.) Only recently, China has indicated that it will resume sharing the hydrological data of the Brahmaputra with India.

As an aspirant of a seat among global powers, India can’t afford to be soft on its adversaries, especially when it comes to claiming its rightful stake to shared resources. If India can’t play the cards it has against China and Pakistan today, those cards will become useless in the near future. Then, India will have to live at the mercy of these two countries forever.

READ ALSO
Water Games – 1: Rising thirst in Asia
Water Games – 2: China’s intransigent hold over Asian rivers
Water Games – 3: India’s self-defeating generosity

I tweet as @goldenarcher
I toot as @goldenarcher

India dominates the South Asian landscape, stretching across the Himalayan range from the west to the east. On the other side of the Himalayas in the north lies Tibet – the “Water Tower of Asia” – from where most of the continent’s important rivers flow. As discussed in the previous article, Water games – 2: China’s intransigent hold over Asian rivers, China has been controlling the headwaters of most of Asia’s transboundary rivers after it annexed Xinjiang and Tibet in mid-20^th century. By virtue of its size and location, India too holds the key to the major rivers flowing into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Some minor rivers too flow into Bangladesh and Myanmar from India.

After Partition in 1947, the control of the Indus river system in the north and the Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems in the east remained with India. Therefore, both the eastern and western parts of Pakistan were at the mercy of India’s possible manipulation of the rivers. West Pakistan was particularly vulnerable because the Indus and its tributaries passed through gorges in Jammu & Kashmir, which could be dammed.

After failing to annex J&K through an invasion in 1948, Pakistan demanded India give it sovereign rights over the waters of the rivers forming the Indus river system. When East Pakistan won its independence from Pakistan in 1971 and became Bangladesh, it too started demanding more water from the Ganga; it later expanded the demand to more water from the Teesta as well.

***

In 1960, following protracted negotiations, India and Pakistan signed a water-sharing agreement – Indus Water Treaty (IWT) – with the World Bank as a party to it. The Bank’s mandate was to keep the process of dispute settlement moving in the event of either country not following the arbitration procedure laid down in the treaty.

Two points may be noted here. One, although the Indus originates from Tibet, China was kept out of the treaty, which left the possibility open for a future Chinese manipulation of the river. This has already started [pdf]. And two, impact of climate change [pdf] on these rivers was overlooked. At that time, climate change wasn’t as big an international issue as it is today. (More on these two points later.)

The IWT deals with the Indus river system, comprising the Indus and its five tributaries – Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej. The system is classified into eastern rivers (Beas, Ravi and Sutlej) and western rivers (Indus, Chenab and Jhelum).

The IWT, signed by the-then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the-then president of Pakistan, General Ayub Khan, gave India the right to govern the eastern rivers while Pakistan got the right to control the western rivers. Although the Indus and its five tributaries flow from Indian territory, the treaty gave India the right to use less than 20 per cent of the river system’s water while giving Pakistan the right to use the rest. This made the IWT the most lopsided water-sharing pact in the world.

It wasn’t long before India realized the enormity of the blunder it had committed by agreeing to the terms of the treaty, which at that time Nehru, to the world’s applause, declared as a “goodwill gesture” towards Pakistan.

Although the treaty allowed India to use the western rivers for “non-consumptive” needs like irrigation, storage and electricity generation, India has not utilized its rights fully. This has left large parts of J&K and Punjab deprived of water for irrigation and made it tough and expensive for India to provide power to the water-starved parts of the two states. When India tried to assert its rights, Pakistan cried foul and took it to international arbitration.

Pakistan objected to India’s use of Indus waters for the Baglihar and Ratle dams on the Chenab, and the Kishanganga dam on the Jhelum – all run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects. Under the provisions of the IWT, India is allowed to build such dams.

In 2005, after the failure of bilateral talks between India and Pakistan over the Baglihar project, Islamabad took the dispute to the World Bank. In 2007, while upholding a couple of minor objections, the adjudicator appointed by the Bank gave its verdict in favour of India. Later, in 2010, the two countries “resolved” the issue.

Perhaps the most serious of these water disputes is the one over the Kishanganga project. Pakistan objected to the project saying the dam would divert a portion of the Neelum river from Pakistan, which will reduce power generation at the Neelum-Jhelum hydropower plant in the country. It took the case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague arguing that the dam violated the IWT.

The court rejected Pakistan’s application but asked India to stop all permanent constructions that might hamper restoring the river to its original state. However, it upheld India’s right to use the water in a non-consumptive manner to generate power. In December 2013, following appeals and India’s presentation of new technical details, the court gave India the go-ahead to build the dam. In October 2016, however, Pakistan raised new objections and demanded that the World Bank set up a court of arbitration to hear its case.

This time, Islamabad included the Ratle hydroelectric plant, which India planned to build on the Chenab river. New Delhi, on the other hand, asked for the appointment of a neutral expert to look into the objections raised. In August 2017, after talks between India and Pakistan in the presence of its representatives, the World Bank said India could build the two dams with some restrictions.

***

India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers, big and small, including the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, which flow into Bangladesh from India. Also, some major tributaries of these two rivers flow into Bangladesh from India, like the Teesta – a tributary of the Brahmaputra. The main branch of the Ganga in Bangladesh is known as Padma, which joins the Jamuna river – the biggest distributary of the Brahmaputra. Further downstream, the Meghna river – Brahmaputra’s second-biggest distributary – joins it and is called as Meghna from there onwards. It eventually branches out and drains into the Bay of Bengal.

For a country of its size, Bangladesh is arguably the most riverine nation on earth. Yet, it asks for more water from India because of its failure to optimally use its surplus water resources.

In March 1972, the-then prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and the-then prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, signed the wide-ranging Indo-Bangladeshi Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace, which included joint action in the fields of flood control, hydroelectricity, irrigation and river-basin development. This led to the setting up of the Joint River Commission between the two countries later that year.

In 1975, India commissioned the Farakka barrage on the Ganga in West Bengal, which is 16km from the international border with Bangladesh. The main objective of the barrage was to divert adequate water from the Ganga to its distributary system – the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river system – through a 38km-long feeder canal for flushing out silt to preserve and maintain the Kolkata port without the need for regular dredging and significantly improve its navigation channels during the dry season. The other objective was to reduce the salinity of the Bhagirathi by infusing more water from the Ganga’s main branch into it for the consumption of Kolkata and neighbouring areas.

Besides, the rail-cum-road bridge built over the barrage linked India’s northeast to the south. This made the Farakka barrage one of the most important infrastructure projects in the country.

In 1974, before the Farakka barrage became operational, India and Bangladesh made a joint declaration to resolve water-sharing issues that might arise because of the barrage. Following this, the two countries signed an interim agreement, in 1975, to test the barrage’s impact on Bangladesh for 40 days during the dry season. Bangladesh claimed that rivers on its side were drying up as a result of India’s drawing of “excessive” water from the Ganga.

After the assassination of Mujibur Rahman in 1976, the ties between the two countries deteriorated and India withdrew from the interim agreement. Bangladesh raised the issue at the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations. International leaders urged resumption of talks, but without any result.

In 1977, the-then Indian prime minister, Morarji Desai, and the-then president of Bangladesh, Ziaur Rahman, signed a five-year water-sharing treaty, which expired without being renewed. Bangladesh again raised the issue at the South Asian Association for Region Cooperation (Saarc) and the UN, but nothing happened.

Finally, in December 1996, the-then Indian prime minister, HD Deve Gowda, and the-then Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, signed a comprehensive 30-year treaty [pdf] on water sharing. However, the Sheikh Hasina-led Bangladesh Awami League’s main opposition, the Khaleda Zia-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party, attacked the treaty as unfair, although it didn’t withdraw from the treaty when Khaleda Zia came to power in 2001. The BNP, which is in the opposition now, and some other groups continue to oppose the treaty, calling it unfair, despite India relinquishing its rights to large volumes of water that its own people need so desperately.

Later, Bangladesh expanded its demand and asked for more Teesta water. According to an Asian Foundation 2013 report [pdf], the Teesta’s floodplain covers about 14 per cent of Bangladesh’s total cultivated area, which provides direct livelihood opportunities to approximately 73 per cent of its population. However, for India, almost a dozen districts with a total population of 15 million in West Bengal’s north depend on the river.

In 1983, India and Bangladesh signed an ad hoc treaty on Teesta, which expired in 1985. Bangladesh wanted 50 per cent of the Teesta’s water in the lean season between December and May every year. It said the barrage it built on the river at Lalmonirhat for irrigation was getting inadequate water from upstream in India.

After protracted talks, the two countries came close to signing a comprehensive 15-year Teesta water-sharing treaty, in which India was supposed to get at least 42.5 per cent and Bangladesh 37.5 per cent of the river’s water during the lean season. Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, opposed the treaty citing “global warming”. This was not without basis. There are reports of climate change affecting the Sikkim glaciers where the Teesta originates.

Because river waters come under states’ domain in India, with Banerjee’s veto the treaty was left unsigned. However, chances remain that the two countries will finally sign the Teesta treaty after general elections in both the countries in 2019.

***

The Indus Water Treaty now looks like a self-induced, festering wound for India. With Islamabad unwilling to cease its four-decade-long campaign of aiding and abetting terrorism in India, New Delhi can cite many reasons to withdraw from the treaty and start harnessing the waters of the Indus river system for its domestic needs.

China, which uses its “all-weather friend” Pakistan against India to keep the latter engaged on its western front, has slyly built a dam on the Indus in Tibet, where the river originates, near Demchok in India’s Ladakh. Alice Albinia, a British journalist, discovered the dam by chance while tracking the source of the Indus in Tibet. According to an Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization report [pdf], the dam has apparently stopped most of the river’s flow. That’s not all. China is helping Pakistan build two megadams – Diamer-Bhasha dam and Bunji dam – in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’s Gilgit-Baltistan region over the Indus despite India’s objection.

These are reasons enough to declare the IWT null and void. So far, India has refrained from linking the treaty strongly with these dams.

After the September 2016 Uri terror attack in J&K, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, said “blood and water cannot flow together”, hinting at leveraging the IWT to make Pakistan pay for training and sending terrorists into India. Later, he reiterated that Indus waters belong to India and Indian farmers more than to others. Reports suggested that the prime minister held talks with officials to weigh India’s options on this matter.

However, India has taken no steps in that direction and officials from the two countries continue to hold talks under the provisions of the IWT. Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to bleed India through its terror proxies.

When the IWT was signed, climate change was mostly an academic topic. The effects climate change would have on rivers in the future were not known. However, in the 21^st century, it has become a major political and security issue the world over. The drastic effects of global warming are seen on rivers everywhere and the rivers originating from Tibet are no exception [pdf].

India is yet to wake up to this ground reality, let alone push for a renegotiation of the IWT based on the threat the Indus river system faces from global warming.

India must also take into account the effects of climate change on its rivers in any future negotiation on sharing waters with Bangladesh. India must also include an assessment of the depletion of water in its internal rivers that might force it to draw or divert more water from the rivers it shares with its eastern neighbour.

Although India has had excellent relations with Sheikh Hasina’s government, in 2001, when Khaleda Zia came to power, Bangladesh started supporting anti-India insurgents and Pakistan-backed jihadist groups. An angry New Delhi called off all high-level talks with Dhaka. In future talks, India must leverage its transboundary rivers and link the sharing of their waters with Dhaka’s efforts to contain insurgent and jihadist groups.

So far, India, as an upstream country, has been pursuing a self-defeating policy on its transboundary rivers. The time has come for it to adopt a policy that serves its domestic and strategic interests best.

READ ALSO
Water Games – 1: Rising thirst in Asia
Water Games – 2: China’s intransigent hold over Asian rivers
Water Games – 4: India’s do-or-die moment

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China’s expansionism is well known. Today it has land and maritime territorial disputes with as many as 23 countries, although it shares land boundaries with only 14. At times, it grabs land through brazen invasion and annexation, as in the case of Xinjiang to its northwest and Tibet to its south. At other times, it resorts to salami-slicing, as in the Himalayas with India. The world seems to have largely forgotten the annexation of Xinjiang and given up hope for a free Tibet.

Until the Doklam stand-off, the world barely took notice of China’s land-grabbing manoeuvres in the Himalayas. What was noticed was its territorial grab of the South China Sea, where it has built artificial islands and militarized them. The world vociferously opposes it and sometimes indulges in symbolic acts of defiance.

However, China’s most ambitious and far-reaching manoeuvre to force Asia on its knees and become its overlord – the gradual control and manipulation of the continent’s fresh water – still appears to be going on virtually unnoticed.

It began with the “peaceful takeover” of Xinjiang by the People’s Liberation Army – the militia of Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party – from the Republic of China’s coalition government comprising the Chinese Nationalist Party and representatives of the-then Second East Turkestan Republic during the waning days of the Chinese Civil War, in 1949. This gave China access to two big transboundary freshwater sources – the Ili and Irtysh rivers, which flow to the thirsty Central Asian region of what is now Kazakhstan.

In the following year, 1950, the PLA invaded and annexed Tibet – an independent country with a landmass of 2.5 million square kilometres. (Beijing set up the Tibet Autonomous Region for administrative purposes in 1965, which is much smaller than the original size of Tibet.)

The annexation of Tibet, which is also called the “Water Tower of Asia”, gave China control of some of the most important freshwater sources in Asia – mighty rivers, like the Brahmaputra, Indus, Mekong, Salween and Yangtze; their arterial tributaries; and major lakes from which some of these rivers and tributaries originate. More than 1.5 billion people downstream depend upon the rivers, many of which flow into other countries. China’s policies on Tibetan rivers affect nine countries [pdf] to its south – Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

***

During China’s so-called “peaceful rise” from the late 1970s through the 1990s, the communist country adopted a unique model of market economy, in which it allowed and helped private players to build industries and infrastructure. The pace of development was such that China, which was one of the poorest nations on earth, is the world’s second-largest economy today. This required water and lots of it – for power generation and other uses for the rapidly expanding industries, industrial townships and cities.

To meet this colossal requirement of water, it turned to the rivers originating in Tibet.

Today China has 87,000 dams, including some of the biggest and most environment-threatening ones, like the “Three Gorges Dam”. The country accounts for over 20 per cent of the largest dams in the world, and is building more dams than ever before. This has affected tens of millions of people within China itself who continue to suffer the impact of displacement and dislocation. Coupled with damming rivers, China is also diverting their waters.

A recent study revealed that China has, until now, developed a total reservoir capacity of 794 cubic kilometres, which is by far the largest on earth. Because of this, a total of 26,870 square kilometres of  water-surface area has appeared. However, 350 lakes with more than 1 square kilometre of surface area have disappeared, amounting to the disappearance of a total of 18,151 square kilometres of water-surface area. One of the most remarkable achievements of China’s damming spree is that 20 per cent of the accessed river basins in its north and northeast can store more water than the entire annual flow of the rivers.

At this moment, China is working on the “South-North Water Transfer Project”, which seeks to channel 45 billion cubic metres of fresh water annually from the Yangtze river and its tributaries in the country’s south to the arid and more industrialized north. Already, China has spent nearly $80 billion on the project, making it one of the most expensive engineering projects on earth. However, the most contentious part of the project, which has probably started now, is the western route called the “Big Western Line”.

In addition to diverting water from the headwaters of the Yangtze to the headwaters of the Yellow river by building huge dams and long tunnels to cross the Qinghai-Tibetan and Western Yunnan plateaus, China aims to divert about 200 billion cubic metres of water annually from the upstream sections of six rivers in its southwest. Three of these rivers – the Brahmaputra, Mekong and Salween – flow into other countries. This is bound to affect India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar.

Apart from this, China’s reckless industrialization and mining activities have polluted most of the rivers in its territory, including the headwaters of transboundary rivers. This has become a grave health hazard for not only the Chinese but also the people of downstream countries.

***

China lies at the centre of an array of disputes arising from the abuse and exploitation of transboundary rivers by it. As discussed in the previous article, Water games – 1: Rising thirst in Asia, there are three broad categories of disputes – over the Mekong (involving Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam), over the Brahmaputra (involving India), and over the Ili and Irtysh (involving Kazakhstan). The number of affected counties is expected to grow: Bangladesh and Myanmar will start feeling the heat soon. Besides, the number of rivers in such disputes is bound to increase when transboundary tributaries are disturbed or abused.

For example, in 2016, China blocked the Xiabuqu river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra. The impact on the Brahmaputra, called Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, is still not known. Recently, India witnessed the pristine Siang river, an arterial tributary of the Brahmaputra, turn black. Indian officials blamed the Chinese for it.

China is not just damming, diverting and polluting the transboundary rivers in the territories it controls, it is also changing their courses and reshaping them for its ambitions Silk Road push. In 2017, alarmed Thai officials protested against China’s plan to widen and deepen parts of the Mekong by blasting sections of the river to enable the navigation of heavy cargo ships for its trade. They said the move would sound the death knell of the Mekong, which China has already dammed heavily.

Problems the downstream countries face while dealing with China are many. To begin with, China doesn’t have a water-sharing agreement with any country or group of countries. It refuses to become a full member of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) because that would put it under some kind of legal obligation. China doesn’t believe in any such treaty and asserts absolute sovereignty over the water on the territories it controls and claims the right to use it in whatever manner it deems fit. In line with its hegemonic policy, it has rejected the UN Convention on Non-Navigable Use of International Watercourses [pdf].

Apart from this, China, which has border disputes with almost all its neighbours, seeks to use water as a weapon. Although there is an agreement between India and China to share hydrological data, which would help India predict and manage the floods caused by the water coming from Chinese-controlled territory to India, China withheld this data after the military stand-off between the two countries in Doklam last year. After the unprecedented flash floods in India’s northeast in late 2017, Indian officials blamed China and called its refusal “mischief”. For its part, China gave an unconvincing reason for not sharing the data with India.

In 2016, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, warned Pakistan that New Delhi might modify its unfairly generous water-sharing pact – Indus Water Treaty – with Islamabad if it continued to aid and abet terrorist strikes in India. Pakistani commentators reminded India that Pakistan’s all-weather friend, China, could take countermeasures against India with the Brahmaputra. China has been using Pakistan as a strategic asset to keep India busy on its western front so that New Delhi remains stretched and less focused on Beijing’s military and land-grabbing activities along the line of actual control (LAC) in the north and northeast.

As China cannot be forced to enter into water-sharing treaties, the best bet for smaller countries is to partner other countries and mount a joint opposition to it. The four MRC countries have failed to speak in one voice against China so far. Together, they have a significant trade leverage with China, although Beijing is rapidly chipping away that leverage with “debt-trap diplomacy”. Similarly, Kazakhstan, through which Xi Jinping’s ambitious OBOR project runs, can partner Russia as the latter’s Ob river is affected by Chinese diversion and pollution of the Irtysh. Russia also has major issues with China over the pollution of the Amur river from the Chinese side of the border. India has trade and other leverages against China that it can use should Chinese activities threaten the Brahmaputra and/or other rivers originating in territories under Chinese control.

Tension has been building up across Asia due to China’s intransigence over water. Already, there are warnings that hostilities over water may rapidly get mixed up with other disputes and escalate into armed conflicts in the continent.

To counter China and bring it to the table for effective negotiations on river-water sharing, the affected countries will have to display a strong political will. Time is running out. They must act now.

READ ALSO
Water Games – 1: Rising thirst in Asia
Water Games – 3: India’s self-defeating generosity
Water Games – 4: India’s do-or-die moment

I tweet as @goldenarcher

Asia, the world’s largest continent and home to almost 60 per cent of its population, is endowed with many of the largest and longest rivers on the planet. In fact, the abundance of fresh water from dozens of large rivers makes the Asian plains highly fertile and enables them to support large populations.

However, the situation is changing rapidly.

In the second-half of the 20^th century, the continent witnessed rapid industrialization and an exponential growth in population. The pressure on water resources started mounting. Demand for huge quantities of water for intensive agriculture to feed the population and run industries began to rise. Then, the migration of hundreds of millions of people towards cities for a better livelihood provided by the industrial and infrastructural development compounded the stress on water resources. This resulted in severe depletion of groundwater in and around urban centres.

The UN World Water Development Report 2015 [pdf] revealed that India, China, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan alone account for nearly half of the world’s total groundwater use. Overuse of groundwater in coastal regions has resulted in seawater replacing fresh water in aquifers and permanently killing groundwater sources.

Rivers, constantly dammed upstream for power generation and canalled for agriculture, lost volume as people started drawing more water from them than ever before. On top of this, industries and rising populations in riverside urban centres polluted the rivers, making their water unusable downstream.

To make things worse, climate change has started to have a calamitous effect on glaciers and lakes, where rivers originate.

All these factors present a grim scenario for the continent in the coming days. A study by MIT scientists in 2016 found that by 2050, economic and population growth coupled with climate change could lead to serious water shortages across a large part of Asia. Suddenly, Asia is staring at a water crisis it never thought was possible until just 30 years ago.

Already, many large Asian cities from Teheran to Jakarta, which had ample water before, are witnessing long queues in front of water suppliers and public taps for fresh water. This has resulted in intercommunity tensions over water sharing and has given rise to “water mafias”. Many cities have started rationing water, with some charging a steep price for it. On the other hand, riparian communities that made a living out of the rivers, like fishing, farming on river marshlands, drawing river water through short canals for agriculture, etc, suddenly find their source of livelihood depleted.

The growing scarcity of water is making urban and rural communities across Asia angry. With governments struggling to provide their rising populations and industries with adequate fresh water and electricity and optimally use inland waterways for public and trade navigation due to depleting river volumes, water has become a serious political issue in many countries. This includes both intranational and international tensions over river waters.

International water disputes tend to be complex and assume geostrategic dimensions. They fuel tension and animosity between countries.

Today, with as many as 57 transboundary river and lake basins in Asia, water sharing has become a major cause of dispute between countries. Downstream countries blame the activities of upstream countries for their domestic water crises. This is true in many cases where upstream countries are unfairly drawing more water from transboundary rivers and/or damming or diverting them for their own developmental activities, depriving downstream countries of their fair share.

As a result, downstream countries, especially those with political, territorial or other disputes with upstream countries, are now even accusing them of weaponizing water for asserting their regional hegemony.

Although there are water disputes between some Asian countries over transboundary rivers, like the one between India and Bangladesh and the one in Central Asia, the centre of major disputes is China, which controls most of the continent’s transboundary rivers today. It gained control of these rivers after annexing Tibet in 1950 and Xinjiang in 1949. Tibet is the source of big and important transboundary rivers like Mekong – the lifeline of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam – and Brahmaputra – the lifeline of northeast India and Bangladesh. Xinjiang is the source of the Irtysh and Ili rivers, which flow to Kazakhstan and Russia. Apart from this, many arterial tributaries and secondary tributaries of these rivers originate from or flow through these Chinese-annexed territories.

China underwent rapid industrial development from the late 1970s, which saw it overtaking Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. To meet its economic and domestic political ambitions, it needed water – and plenty of it. It drew water from Tibetan rivers and dammed them recklessly for decades, triggering a crisis in the downstream countries. The situation is worsening today.

With an astounding 87,000 dams, China has more large dams than any other country in the world today and it is building more of them. To complicate matters, China has territorial disputes with as many as 23 countries, although it shares land boundaries with 14. It has no water-sharing pact with any country. It has rejected the UN Convention on Non-Navigable Use of International Watercourses [pdf] and asserts absolute sovereignty over the waters on the territories it controls. It claims the right to use the rivers, including damming and diverting them, irrespective of the effects on downstream countries.

Some of the most notable water disputes involving China are:

Mekong river dispute

This is, on paper, a dispute between the Southeast Asian countries that share the Mekong river basin. The affected parties in this are Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. The upstream countries, China and Myanmar, being “indirectly relevant”. This was the basis of the Mekong Committee, which was formed in 1957 to address the issues and concerns regarding sharing and using the Mekong river. The Mekong Committee went through some transformations over the decades and now has taken the shape of the Mekong River Commission (MRC).

The drought in the Mekong basin in 2016 only exacerbated the dispute between the four directly affected nations. Although China blamed El Nino for the drought in the Mekong delta, Vietnamese officials also blamed upstream hydroelectric dams. China did release some water then from one of its dams to “alleviate” the drought situation downstream, but that was a mere eyewash. After all, China has seven megadams on the Mekong river and plans to build 21 more. So far, the MRC’s failure to pose a united challenge to China has given Beijing a freehand to abuse the great river without caring about how it would affect the downstream countries. China continues to refuse to become a full member of the commission for the obvious reason of getting entangled in some obligations.

Brahmaputra river dispute

The Brahmaputra river in India is called Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, where it originates. From India, the river flows into Bangladesh, where it branches out and merges with other rivers before emptying into the sea.

In 2000, tension started brewing between India and China – two Asian giants with a long and outstanding border dispute – when a dam burst in Tibet triggered flash floods in India’s northeast. It caused widespread damage and resulted in the deaths of about 40 people. India accused China of not sharing the upstream hydrological data of the river, which would have helped New Delhi anticipate the floods and take measures to manage the situation.

Although the two countries later managed to sign a memorandum of understanding that required China to share hydrological data with India, Beijing has not been consistent in keeping its part of the deal. After the recent furore in India over the unexpectedly heavy floods in the northeast, China said it couldn’t provide data because it was upgrading the data-collecting centre in Tibet. And there is a reason behind it.

China is building dams and plans to divert water from the river in Tibet. Whenever India raised concerns over China’s dams in Tibet, China tried to play them down [1, 2]. However, India has serious reasons to be worried about Chinese activities on the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra. Some of these reasons are of great concern to Bangladesh as well.

Ili and Irtysh rivers dispute

Kazakhstan, one of the world’s most water-stressed countries, is staring at a major water crisis as China’s activities in Xinjiang province are jeopardizing two of its key rivers – the Ili and the Irtysh.

The Ili flows from Xinjiang into Kazakhstan providing water for agriculture along its route before terminating into the Balkhash lake. However, the farmlands along the Ili are now threatened [pdf] as China is drawing a huge amount of water from it not just for its people, but for its rapidly growing number of industrial projects, which in turn are dumping large amounts of pollutants into the river. Besides, the Balkhash lake, 80 per cent of whose water comes from the river, is now losing water at an unprecedented rate. Environmentalists say China’s reckless drawing of water from the Ili threatens to turn the lake into a deadly dry region like the Aral Sea.

China’s abuse is also threatening the Irtysh river, which is another major source of water for Kazakhstan. The river originates in the Altay mountains in Xinjiang and passes through the Central Asian country before flowing into Russia, where it merges with other rivers to form the Ob river. The Irtysh provides drinking water to Astana – the capital of Kazakhstan. Reckless Chinese projects are polluting the river with toxic chemicals and other harmful effluents. Apart from polluting the Irtysh, China has built a canal to draw water from it for the growing oil township of Karamay in Xinjiang, which has further compounded Kazakhstan’s water woes.

Experts say China is cooperating with Kazakhstan on water sharing because of Beijing’s high stake in the OBOR project, which runs through the Central Asian country. However, Beijing seems to be in no hurry. It knows that Kazakhstan will lose its ability to play hardball as the burden of debt from China for economic and developmental activities increases.

The key to quench the rising thirst in Asia today lies in how the downstream countries manage and use their domestic water resources. However, more importantly, it depends on how they tackle China’s hegemony over the continent’s water tap. As tempers run high from Astana to Hanoi, the stakes are extremely high for a fair share of the most precious natural resource on the planet.

READ ALSO
Water Games – 2: China’s intransigent hold over Asian rivers
Water Games – 3: India’s self-defeating generosity
Water Games – 4: India’s do-or-die moment

I tweet as @goldenarcher