By:

Parashram Patil

14 January 2026 at 8:49:45 pm

Crops of Conflict

As water and climate become instruments of geopolitical leverage, India has an opportunity to turn agricultural resilience into a new form of South-South diplomacy. Climate change is making an old truth harder to ignore: food security is national security. As water becomes scarcer, harvests more erratic and trade policies more protectionist, agriculture is moving from the margins of geopolitics to its centre. Nowhere is this clearer than in Africa, where fragile food systems intersect with...

min read

As water and climate become instruments of geopolitical leverage, India has an opportunity to turn agricultural resilience into a new form of South-South diplomacy. Climate change is making an old truth harder to ignore: food security is national security. As water becomes scarcer, harvests more erratic and trade policies more protectionist, agriculture is moving from the margins of geopolitics to its centre. Nowhere is this clearer than in Africa, where fragile food systems intersect with contested rivers, conflict and disrupted supply chains. For India, this presents not merely a humanitarian challenge but an opportunity to practise a more strategic form of food diplomacy. Clear Warning The Nile basin offers the clearest warning. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia depend heavily on the river, directly or indirectly, for agriculture and livelihoods. Egypt obtains roughly 90-95 percent of its water from the Nile, with most of its withdrawals going to agriculture. Wheat, rice, maize and cotton are therefore inseparable from the country's water security. Sudan is similarly dependent on the Main Nile and its Blue and White Nile tributaries for crops including sorghum, wheat, cotton and sugarcane. Ethiopia, by contrast, relies much more heavily on rain-fed agriculture, but the Blue Nile remains crucial to its plans for agricultural and economic expansion. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has transformed this already delicate equation. The Blue Nile supplies roughly 85 percent of the Nile's runoff, giving Ethiopia substantial geographical leverage upstream. Egypt and Sudan, downstream and more dependent on the river, have consequently viewed the dam through the prism of food and water security. The dispute has its roots partly in the 1959 agreement that allocated Nile waters between Egypt and Sudan, but the rise of Ethiopia as a major upstream power has altered the political balance. The stakes are enormous. A disruption to water availability is not simply an environmental problem when millions depend on irrigated agriculture. It can affect food prices, livelihoods, migration and political stability. Across the basin, the consequences potentially extend to hundreds of millions of people. The lesson is straightforward: rivers can become geopolitical infrastructure, and crops can become strategic assets. Critical Role This is where India can play a useful role. Its longstanding diplomatic, commercial and maritime links with Africa give it an established platform. Its experience in producing wheat, rice and millets, meanwhile, gives it something more tangible: the ability to contribute to food-supply resilience. Egypt, for instance, remains heavily dependent on imports and is projected to require around 13 million tonnes of wheat imports to bridge its consumption gap. Sudan’s agricultural crisis is still more acute. Conflict and climate stress have sharply reduced cereal production, leaving output well below recent historical averages. India could therefore build food diplomacy around two complementary tracks. The first is supply. Predictable grain arrangements and strategic food buffers could help vulnerable countries absorb shocks in international markets. The second is technology. India's experience with micro-irrigation, precision farming and water-use efficiency offers tools that may help African farmers produce more with less water. The Per Drop More Crop component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana is one example. Drip irrigation, improved canal management, seepage reduction and precision agriculture cannot resolve a dispute over the Nile, but they can reduce the amount of water required to produce a given crop. For this to become a durable strategy, however, India will need to move beyond individual projects. Bilateral agricultural agreements with African countries could be converted into longer-term trade corridors and grain-supply arrangements. Multilateral platforms, including BRICS, could provide mechanisms for greater transparency in food distribution and market stabilisation. Seed exchanges could focus on drought-tolerant millets, biofortified wheat and heat-resistant maize suited to increasingly volatile climates. Indian private enterprise could be brought into this architecture. Agritech startups and Farmer-Producer Organisations could be encouraged to enter African markets through export-linked grants, incubation programmes and risk-sharing mechanisms. EXIM Bank credit lines and export guarantees could reduce the financial risks of deploying solar cold chains, irrigation systems and agricultural technologies in politically volatile markets. Public-private partnerships could also help Indian firms adapt AI-based crop advisory systems and IoT-enabled water sensors to African soils and farming practices. The larger opportunity is strategic. India’s relationship with Africa need not be confined to trade, infrastructure or diplomatic declarations. Agriculture offers a practical form of South-South cooperation in which food, technology and water efficiency reinforce one another. (The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.

Percentile system sparks row

Abhijit Mulye

Jul 28

5 min read

Mumbai: Following closely on the heels of national testing scandals, Maharashtra’s own engineering and pharmacy entrance test, the MHT-CET, finds itself mired in a deepening controversy. Serious allegations of malpractices and result manipulation have surfaced, raising critical questions about the transparency of the examination process.

At the heart of the storm is a glaring discrepancy that has left students, parents, and political leaders baffled: candidates who barely managed passing marks in their state board examinations have inexplicably secured near-perfect percentiles in the highly competitive MHT-CET.

The controversy stems from a fundamental misunderstanding—or perhaps a deliberate exploitation—of the difference between raw percentage marks and the normalized percentile system. Board exam scores are calculated as straight percentages based on the absolute marks a student obtains out of the total possible marks.

In contrast, the MHT-CET employs a percentile system, which indicates a student’s relative performance compared to all other candidates who appeared for the exam in the same session.

A 100 percentile does not mean the student scored 100 percent of the marks; rather, it signifies that the candidate scored higher than 99.9 percent of their peers. The normalization process is inherently designed to ensure equity across multiple exam batches, compensating for variations in the difficulty levels of different question papers.

Flawed Formula

However, this complex statistical adjustment has now become the epicenter of suspicion. Critics argue that the normalization formula might be flawed or intentionally manipulated, creating an opaque system where raw merit is overshadowed by an algorithmic adjustment. Parents and experts remain bewildered as to how a student failing to grasp basic concepts in subjective board exams could suddenly demonstrate absolute mastery in the objective format of the MHT-CET.

The sheer mathematical improbability of students with profoundly weak foundational knowledge outperforming the state's brightest minds in a rigorous entrance test has triggered widespread alarm across the academic community.

Political leaders across the state have seized upon these statistical anomalies, demanding an immediate and impartial investigation to ensure robust public policy and administrative oversight within the state's educational framework.

Politics Intensifies

Senior Congress leader and AICC secretary Sachin Sawant was among the first to blow the whistle, asserting that the scale of irregularities is incredibly concerning. Sawant stated to the media that students who scored merely 35 to 40 percent in their Class 12 board exams had astonishingly secured a perfect 100 percentile in the MHT-CET.

He cited specific cases where top-ranked candidates in the CET Mathematics section had barely passed their board exams in the same subject, calling the situation highly suspicious and demanding a high-level inquiry to punish those responsible.

The political heat intensified recently in Nanded, adding another layer to the unfolding drama. Congress state spokesperson Balaji Gade Patil publicly accused a local BJP corporator of result manipulation after the corporator's twin children allegedly secured 99 percentiles in the MHT-CET.

Patil pointed out the glaring inconsistency, noting that the twins had scored a mediocre 56 percent and 51 percent in their Class 12 Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics group, and had performed poorly in the national JEE exam.

Other prominent opposition leaders have aggressively joined the fray, escalating the pressure on the state government. Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray challenged the fundamental structure of the exam, pointing out that conducting a single subject's paper across twenty-four distinct batches inevitably creates gross disparities in difficulty levels.

Thackeray vehemently demanded absolute transparency, stating that merely publishing percentiles is misleading; he insisted that the actual raw marks and the students' answer sheets must be disclosed immediately to expose the truth.

Adding weight to these concerns, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction) legislator Rohit Pawar has publicly alleged the existence of an organized racket operating within the state.

Pawar asserted that unscrupulous elements are actively taking vast sums of money to artificially inflate candidates' percentiles in the MHT-CET, guaranteeing them lucrative admissions into premier educational institutions at the cost of deserving students.

Minister Defends

In response to the mounting outrage, Higher and Technical Education Minister Chandrakant Patil, under whose department the CET Cell operates, has found himself facing severe backlash.

While confronted with demands for a judicial probe led by retired High Court judges, Patil and the state administration have maintained that the examination process remains untainted.

The state government and the CET Cell have consistently denied any foul play, defending the integrity of the normalisation process and clarifying that the results were declared using an established percentile method without the awarding of any grace marks.

Officials argue that the mismatch between board scores and entrance percentiles is not an anomaly but a common occurrence across different testing formats. They explain that the structure of a subjective board exam differs drastically from a multiple-choice entrance test, leading to expected variations in student performance.

Despite these administrative assurances, the growing chorus of voices demanding the release of raw marks and a forensic audit of the results suggests that the controversy is far from over.

'Special' exam centre offered to student in audio clip

An audio clip of a woman allegedly offering a "special" exam centre to an engineering aspirant for Rs 12 lakh has surfaced, prompting the Maharashtra CET Cell to lodge a police complaint, officials said on Tuesday.

Several students, parents and the Opposition Congress questioned the credibility of the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) for engineering colleges, claiming that some candidates with modest academic records secured near-perfect percentiles.

They demanded a thorough probe, saying the future of meritorious students was at stake.

In the clip, a woman is purportedly heard offering an unidentified parent a "special" examination centre for nearly Rs 12 lakh. She claims the arrangement would help the student secure an exceptionally high percentile and gain admission to a reputed government-aided engineering college.

State CET Cell Commissioner and CEO Dilip Sardesai said they have taken cognisance of the unverified audio clip.

"The MH-CET Cell has not received any complaint in connection with the audio clip. We have taken cognisance of it and lodged complaints with the State Cyber Cell and the Azad Maidan police (in Mumbai)," Sardesai told reporters.

He, however, rejected allegations that candidates could influence the allotment of examination centres.

"A student can choose four preferred examination centres. Female candidates can opt for centres within their district. A week before the exam, students are informed only about the city/town where they will appear. The exact name and address of the centre are shared two days before the exam. No student has the final say in selecting the examination centre. It is allotted randomly through a computerised process," he said.

"We will analyse the students under suspicion. But on this information alone, we cannot conclude that those who scored very high percentiles did anything wrong," he said.