Hridbina Chatterjee

India’s 2026 chairmanship of the summit must keep an expanded grouping focused on Global South cooperation without burning Western bridges As New Delhi prepares to host the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam, the global order sits at a precarious crossroads. What began two decades ago as an economic acronym for high-growth emerging markets has morphed into an expanded, multi-continental bloc representing nearly half the world’s population. For India, taking the helm as BRICS Chair in 2026...

As the Indus Waters Treaty collapses under the weight of arbitral boycotts and upstream infrastructure competition, South Asia’s river basins are fast becoming the region’s defining geopolitical flashpoint. For over six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 stood as a singular, almost miraculous anomaly in the turbulent geopolitical landscape of South Asia. Brokered by the World Bank after nine years of painstaking diplomacy, the treaty successfully withstood three major wars, sharp...

Violence and retaliatory blockades on the Assam–Meghalaya corridor show how quickly local grievances can become a regional economic crisis The equilibrium of Northeast India is frequently tested along its inter-state boundaries, but flashpoints that erupt on the streets of Shillong resonate far beyond mere physical lines on a map. When public demonstrations organized by local pressure groups deteriorate into targeted vandalism against out-of-state commercial vehicles, a localized...