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

As Washington weaponizes oil, India must relearn the art of energy self-preservation. India’s energy dilemma has become a case study in the geopolitics of double standards. The country imports more than four-fifths of the crude oil it consumes, making energy security not a technocratic concern but a strategic one. But the global oil market is no longer governed merely by prices and supply curves. It is shaped by sanctions, exemptions, waivers and political discretion, often a

Venezuela’s long crisis lays bare American coercion in geopolitics, leaving countries like India paying the bill. Venezuela has been in almost permanent political crisis since Nicolás Maduro secured a second six-year presidential term in May 2018. The election, organised by a pliant National Electoral Council (CNE), was widely condemned. Leading opposition candidates were barred, jailed or driven into exile; the judiciary and electoral machinery were bent to executive will; t

Miscast as a religious controversy, the Lt. Kamalesan affair underscores the non-negotiable primacy of military discipline in the Indian Armed Forces. AI generated image The controversy surrounding Lieutenant Kamalesan has been framed by its loudest critics as a test of religious freedom. It is nothing of the sort. At heart it is a reminder of an older, sterner truth: armies function by suppressing difference, not by celebrating it. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling, which up

The Supreme Court’s ruling on an officer’s dismissal affirms a hard truth about military service in a plural republic. The recent dismissal of Lieutenant Samuel Kamalesan from the Indian Army has become a minor culture war in uniform. The case has been framed by its critics as a test of India’s secular soul, and by its defenders as a necessary assertion of military discipline. The question at the heart of this affair is how far can personal conscience travel inside an institu

From Gwadar to Mauritius, China’s ‘research’ ships are forcing a reckoning with India in the Indian Ocean. Recently, satellite and AIS data revealed the familiar choreography of four Chinese ‘research’ ships - Lan Hai 101, Lan Hai 201, Shen Hai Yi Hao and Shi Yan 6 - fanning out across waters that India and its partners consider strategically intimate. While Beijing insisted these were benign scientific missions, the hardware bolted to their decks suggests otherwise. The miss