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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...

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 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.

Protest to save 45000 mangroves

Minal Sancheti
May 18
3 min read

Mumbai: On Saturday, a group of people gathered to raise their voice against the destruction of 45,000 mangroves for the construction of the Mumbai Coastal Road. The peaceful protest saw hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds participating on Carter Road in Bandra West.


The protest was initially planned to form a human chain, but ended up becoming a musical event to spread awareness about the importance of mangroves. The co-founder of Save Mumbai Mangroves, Ketaki Yelgaonkar, said, “Our movement is never loud. We always have artists like poets, singers, or street plays to spread awareness about the cause. Today we had intended to have a human chain, but it ended up becoming a beautiful musical performance.”


Mumbaikars, especially the senior citizens, feel emotional about the destruction of the city’s nature that they have been seeing since their childhood. An environmentalist and a senior citizen who was also born and brought up in the city, L V Keshav said, “ I have seen a good part of Mumbai. I want to help by taking part in protests wherever I can. Our voice has become so weak. You concretise everything just for a few people. Look at Marine Drive, what it was before, and what it has become now. Coastal roads and other infrastructures have come in. How many really benefit out of it, and how many trees have you destroyed for that? In the whole bargain, it doesn’t work out. The balance sheet doesn’t match at all. Feels like crying when you see such trees disappear for the sake of money.”


When another senior citizen, Anil Jain’s daughter, told him about the cause and the protest, he decided to become a part of it, even if it meant travelling from Rajasthan to Mumbai. He said, “I am very fond of the environment and nature. In Rajasthan, I have planted more than 50 trees, and they are all flourishing well. Humans are deeply connected with the trees. We are a part of nature. So it is extremely important that, at any cost, we take care of the environment. So when my daughter told me about the protest for saving the environment, I immediately decided to travel to Mumbai to support the cause.”


Vande Mataram

The national song, ‘Vande Mataram’, of India mentions the nature and environment in our country. Young protestor Asif Sheik strongly believes we should support the cause and protect the environment. He said, “In the song Vande Mataram, there is a stanza that says Sujalam Sufalam Malayaja Sheetalam. The sentence basically talks about the beauty of our country’s natural environment. And now the system is cutting down the mangroves, which are the heart of Mumbai and the heart of our waterbodies.”


Supporting the cause was a school teacher who emphasized that it is important to teach our children why we need mangroves. Fatima Menezes is a geography teacher who believes it’s her moral obligation to spread awareness about mangroves and talk about what is happening in the city to the younger generation. She says, “I teach my own students in schools regarding taking care of the environment. The whole world is very much anxious about saving the environment. So it is also our responsibility as a part of our teaching faculty to talk about the environment. It is my bounden duty to take care of the environment.”


Saviour Mangroves

She adds, “Mangroves are a part of our sea coast, and they are our saviours, and therefore preserving them is a must. Pope Francis has given us Laudato si, which is a document that talks about taking care of the environment. He was inspired by St Francis of Assisi, who is the patron saint of ecology. So, we who are part of nature, it is our duty to take care of Mother Earth.


Yelgaonkar explained how the government can choose ways that can reduce the destruction as well as help the city develop. She adds, “Although the local government is not helping, the central government has responded to their message that they had sent to the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change of India.”

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