France’s surprise veto with Russia and China exposes a fraying Western consensus, raising awkward questions about NATO’s future. For seven decades, the choreography of great-power diplomacy has been comfortingly predictable: when push came to shove at the United Nations, France stood with the United States and United Kingdom, balancing the habitual dissent of Russia and China. That symmetry has now been disrupted. In a jarring diplomatic turn, France recently joined Russia an

The TCS Nashik incident and its grim revelations show that India Inc. needs an urgent cultural reckoning.   India’s corporate sector has long been celebrated as a beacon of meritocracy, diversity, and opportunity. Gleaming office towers in Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Gurugram house millions of working professionals who arrive each morning with ambitions and the presumed expectation of a safe workplace. But beneath the polished surface of this world, a deeply troubl

A fragile pause between Iran, Israel and America exposes the widening gap between diplomatic signalling and military reality. By definition, a ceasefire is a temporary suspension of hostilities. In practice, it is often something murkier: a tactical pause, a diplomatic fig leaf or worse, a convenient illusion. The ceasefire announced on April 7 between Iran, Israel and the United States appears to belong firmly in this latter category. Less a bridge to peace than a pause preg

Red Reckonin g Part 5 Our five-part series examines the rise and decline of India’s Maoist insurgency, once described as the country’s “greatest internal security threat” and the uneasy transition from conflict to control in its last strongholds. From the Puvarti bridge to the Bastar Band, connectivity and culture are reshaping India’s last Maoist redoubt. For decades, Abujhmad (literally “the unknown hill”) was less a place than a void on India’s map. Sprawled across the den

While Dhurandhar 2 dramatises a fake-currency crackdown, the real 2016 shock may have struck far deeper — at the cash lifeline of India’s Maoist insurgency. In the 2026 blockbuster Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge, director Aditya Dhar stages a sequence that has already become a cultural talking point. Using actual footage of the 2016 demonetisation announcement, the film depicts a Rs 60,000 crore fake-currency racket aimed at destabilising Indian elections, collapsing in a single n

Red Reckonin g Part 4 Our five-part series examines the rise and decline of India’s Maoist insurgency, once described as the country’s “greatest internal security threat” and the uneasy transition from conflict to control in its last strongholds. In the Naxal heartland of Bastar, the Indian state is no longer just clearing territory but opening accounts, extending credit and reclaiming everyday life.   Once defined by gunfire and fear, the village of Anandapur in central Chha

Red Reckonin g Part 3 Our five-part series examines the rise and decline of India’s Maoist insurgency, once described as the country’s “greatest internal security threat” and the uneasy transition from conflict to control in its last strongholds. In the rugged terrain of Bastar, long defined in the national imagination by security bulletins and encounter reports, a significant transformation is underway. In Sukma district, one of the most acutely Naxal‑afflicted and logistica

For decades, India’s navy has been a force defined as much by restraint as by reach. It has excelled in sea denial, in guarding chokepoints, and in projecting quiet deterrence across the Indian Ocean. However, it lacked the ability to decisively shape events ashore. That omission is being remedied. Recently, India’s Defence Acquisition Council chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has granted a fresh Acceptance of Necessity for the procurement of four Landing Platform Doc

Red Reckonin g Part 2 Our five-part series examines the rise and decline of India’s Maoist insurgency, once described as the country’s “greatest internal security threat” and the uneasy transition from conflict to control in its last strongholds. The dense, teak-filled forests of Gadchiroli have long been synonymous with the ‘Red Corridor’ - a landscape defined by minefields, ideological rigidity and the persistent hum of an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives. For

Red Reckonin g Part 1 Our five-part series examines the rise and decline of India’s Maoist insurgency, once described as the country’s “greatest internal security threat” and the uneasy transition from conflict to control in its last strongholds. Last month, Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared in Parliament what would once have sounded improbable. The country, he said, was now “Naxal-free.” The Maoist insurgency has spanned nearly six decades, claimed thousands of lives an

Amid the Iran crisis, India’s quiet convoy war in the much-contested Strait reveals a maturing maritime power. Few bottlenecks are more consequential today than the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime hinge through which a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and vast volumes of gas must pass. Weeks into the escalating Iran–Israel–United States conflict, traffic through Hormuz has slowed to a trickle, as insurers have recoiled and prices have lurched upward. For energy-impor

War in Iran has turned the INSTC, India’s most promising trade shortcut, into a strategic liability. The fog of war in the Middle East has obscured more than battle lines. It has also hidden the quiet unravelling of one of Eurasia’s most ambitious trade experiments: the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). Conceived at the turn of the millennium as a faster, cheaper artery linking South Asia to Europe, the corridor now finds itself a casualty as collateral da

Decades of mistrust, proxy wars and ideological rivalry have brought Iran, Israel and the United States to a perilous crossroads. Once friends, Iran and Israel are now locked in a confrontation that has grown ever more combustible. The 1979 Islamic Revolution transformed Iran from a regional partner of Israel into its most implacable foe, rejecting the Jewish state’s very legitimacy. Since then, Iran has embraced the mantle of proxy warfare, backing groups from Hamas in Gaza

On July 26, 1976 we arrived at the Naval Academy at INS Venduruthy, fresh engineering graduates from across India who had successfully navigated the demanding interviews of the Service Selection Board. We formed what came to be known as the E & L Batch of 1976 under the University Entry Scheme. Most of us arrived dressed in the fashion of the day - bell-bottom trousers, long hair and youthful optimism. The transformation began almost immediately. The hair went first, replaced

The new policy attempts to knit together decades of operational experience in combating terrorism into a coherent national doctrine. With PRAHAAR, India has come forth with a formal nationwide counter-terrorism policy and strategy for the first time. It is not that we have not been tackling terrorism. In fact, we have been at the forefront of tackling the menace for decades in multiple regions of the country. India has always had sound strategic momentum to combat terrorists

India’s latest defence budget marks a decisive tilt toward technology, but the weight of men and pensions still anchors reform. When India’s armed forces executed the Western Corridor offensive under Operation Sindoor in May 2025, the message was not merely tactical. It was fiscal as well. Precision strikes, networked surveillance and indigenous platforms revealed both the promise of home-grown capability and the urgency of accelerating technological change. The Union Budget

China’s march into autonomous undersea warfare is reshaping the Indo-Pacific and forcing India to respond in kind. China is quietly transforming the ocean depths into a new theatre of strategic competition. Its rapid advances in unmanned and autonomous underwater vehicles (UUVs/AUVs) now extend to the development of so-called ‘extra-extra-large’ platforms - autonomous submarines longer than 40 metres, comparable in size to conventional diesel boats, yet unencumbered by human

Beijing’s renewed claims over the Shaksgam Valley lay bare how quiet coercion is redrawing the India-China-Pakistan frontier. A barren tract of ice and rock high in the eastern Karakoram has again re-emerged as a geopolitical fault line at one of Asia’s most volatile junctions. China’s recent reassertion of its claim over the Shaksgam Valley, coupled with fresh justifications for infrastructure development there, has revived an old dispute that India insists is neither settle

A nascent Pakistan–Saudi–Turkey security pact is reshaping West Asia and narrowing India’s room for manoeuvre. Even before the ink on the recent Pakistan–Saudi Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement was dry, its implications were already reverberating across the region.  The pact, treating an attack on one as an attack on both, in language reminiscent of NATO’s Article 5, was Riyadh’s boldest bet yet that its future security no longer lies solely under an American umbrella. The d

An unelected regime, rising fundamentalism and great-power meddling have pushed India-Bangladesh ties to their coldest point in decades. Foreign policy is rarely forged in the chancelleries alone. It rests on sturdier foundations: a government’s legitimacy, public consent and a coherent sense of economic and military purpose. When those pillars weaken, diplomacy becomes reactive and neighbours feel the tremors. Bangladesh today offers a cautionary tale. Its interim administra