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By:

Rajiv Shah

22 September 2025 at 8:32:23 pm

New Alliances, New Pressures, New Fault Lines

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger...

New Alliances, New Pressures, New Fault Lines

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger geopolitical churn in which alliances, energy, trade, currencies and economic coercion are becoming interconnected. India finds itself almost at its centre. The emerging Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan security equation deserves particular attention. Saudi Arabia brings enormous financial and energy influence; Türkiye possesses considerable military strength, NATO experience and an expanding defence industry; Pakistan brings a large military establishment and nuclear capability with the open support of Washington. Any arrangement containing a collective-defence commitment naturally acquires significance beyond ordinary diplomatic cooperation. Alongside it, another strategic convergence has gradually developed among India, Israel and the UAE. It would be incorrect to describe this as a formal military alliance. Yet geopolitics does not operate through defence treaties alone. India's extensive defence and technology relationship with Israel, its rapidly expanding economic and strategic partnership with the UAE, and the UAE-Israel relationship following the Abraham Accords have created considerable common ground. I2U2—bringing together India, Israel, the UAE and the United States—added another institutional dimension. Thus, without necessarily becoming opposing military camps, two interesting strategic formations are visible across West Asia: Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan and the looser India–UAE–Israel convergence. Balancing Challenge India faces a similar balancing challenge. The Gulf is not a distant geopolitical theatre for New Delhi. Nearly nine million Indians live and work there. India's energy security, investments, trade and remittance flows are closely connected with the region. The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor also requires relative stability across this geography. Polarisation in West Asia can therefore rapidly become an Indian economic and strategic problem. There is another question Indian planners cannot ignore. If a future India-Pakistan confrontation escalates, how would any collective-defence commitment involving Pakistan be interpreted by Saudi Arabia and Türkiye? It would be alarmist to assume that either country would automatically enter a conflict against India. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has substantial economic and strategic interests in maintaining good relations with New Delhi. Nevertheless, defence planners are paid to examine possibilities before they become crises. While these equations develop in India's neighbourhood, economic pressure is emerging from Washington. The US Senate has voted 86–11 for legislation intended to increase pressure on Russia by targeting major purchasers of Russian energy. The measure could authorise tariffs reaching 100 per cent against goods from countries continuing large-scale purchases of Russian oil and gas, with India among those potentially exposed. China is powerful enough to shrug off similar challenges from the West." However this does not mean that America has already imposed a 100 per cent tariff on India. Further legislative steps remain necessary, and presidential waiver provisions are important. But the overwhelming Senate vote carries a political message that New Delhi cannot dismiss. Tariffs are no longer merely tools of trade protection; they have become instruments of geopolitical coercion. Washington's argument is understandable: revenues from Russian petroleum help sustain Moscow's economy during the Ukraine war, and reducing those revenues increases pressure on Russia. But in that case what about European countries who too were/are customers of Russian oil? India's question is equally legitimate: who should determine where India purchases the energy required by more than 1.4 billion people? If Russian crude remains commercially advantageous and helps contain domestic energy costs, New Delhi cannot reasonably be expected to make every energy decision according to another country's geopolitical priorities. Strategic partnership cannot become strategic obedience. This is where BRICS enters the larger picture. India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and will host its leaders at an unusually sensitive moment. BRICS is no longer merely the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its expansion has considerably increased its demographic, energy and geopolitical weight. More importantly, discussions around BRICS increasingly touch a sensitive nerve in Washington: alternative payment mechanisms, local-currency trade, development finance and the possibility of gradually reducing dependence upon the dollar-dominated international financial system. The BRICS Summit this time is poised to take some decisive steps which may affect western interests especially US. (The writer is an advocate, legal, geopolitical and public policy analyst. Views personal.)

Reform Without Reach

Maharashtra’s new policy promises to streamline its educational welfare institutions but leaves deeper structural flaws untouched.

For years, Maharashtra’s alphabet soup of educational welfare institutions - SARTHI, BARTI, Mahajyoti, TRTI and AMRUT - has invited the same complaints. Students have grappled with differing eligibility rules, opaque procedures and uneven implementation. A unified policy governing these bodies, announced by the state government on July 1st, ought therefore to have been an occasion for celebration. Uniformity, transparency and predictability are virtues in public administration. Yet the new circular risks achieving uniformity by standardising limits rather than expanding opportunity.


The decision to allow candidates preparing for the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) and the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examinations to avail themselves of coaching benefits twice, instead of only once, is sensible. So too is the recognition that Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes may require distinct financial provisions and implementation guidelines. But these improvements are overshadowed by a larger problem. The reforms appear to be administrative rather than transformative.


Inadequate Reforms

Nothing illustrates this better than the decision to cap research fellowships at just 100 for each institution. In a state that boasts some of India’s largest universities and produces thousands of postgraduate and doctoral students every year, such a ceiling appears detached from reality. Research is not an expenditure to be rationed like a scarce commodity. It is an investment in knowledge, innovation and future productivity.


The same logic applies to competitive-examination coaching. Providing coaching to 1,000 MPSC aspirants and 400 UPSC candidates sounds generous until one remembers the scale of the demand. Every year, lakhs of young Maharashtrians compete for a tiny number of government jobs. Against that backdrop, these figures resemble pilot projects rather than statewide interventions. The state’s ambition seems oddly modest compared with the aspirations of its students.


More troubling is what the circular does not address. The costs of higher education have risen sharply. Inflation has eroded the value of stipends. Overseas education has become more expensive even as international exposure becomes increasingly valuable. Yet the policy makes no meaningful expansion in foreign scholarship schemes, subsistence allowances or other financial support programmes that could genuinely broaden access.


This reflects a deeper misunderstanding of what these institutions were meant to become. Bodies such as SARTHI, BARTI and Mahajyoti were never intended to function merely as scholarship-disbursing offices. Their names themselves emphasise research, training and capacity-building. Yet, over time, many have become administrative clearing houses that outsource training programmes to external agencies while developing little expertise of their own. They have failed to build permanent academic ecosystems capable of nurturing talent over the long term.


Governance Deficit

The consequences are visible. Maharashtra still lacks robust policy research centres linked to these institutions. Employment-oriented curricula remain underdeveloped. Partnerships with industry are sporadic. Dedicated study centres capable of preparing students for advanced research or public-service careers remain the exception rather than the rule. Institutions designed to produce intellectual capital have gradually been reduced to processing applications and releasing funds.


Nor does the circular address the governance deficit that has long plagued these bodies. Independent operational guidelines remain absent. Budgetary allocations have not risen commensurately with expanding demand. Social audits, which could improve transparency, remain missing. Students continue to lack an independent grievance-redress mechanism. Advisory systems incorporating student representation have yet to emerge. Regulatory boards often meet irregularly, while key decisions remain concentrated within the ministry, diminishing the autonomy that these supposedly independent institutions were created to enjoy.


Centralisation may simplify administration, but it rarely encourages innovation. Institutions deprived of autonomy inevitably become cautious, procedural and slow to respond to changing educational needs.


The broader question is what Maharashtra expects from these bodies. If they are expected to prepare disadvantaged students to compete in an increasingly global economy, the policy falls well short.


Today’s students seek more than financial assistance. They require advanced skills, research opportunities, international exposure, professional networks and institutions capable of adapting to rapidly changing labour markets. The state’s challenge is no longer merely to widen access to education. It is to improve its quality and relevance.


Unless Maharashtra expands funding, strengthens governance and allows these institutions to evolve into genuine centres of research and training, the latest reforms will only have standardised scarcity. For a generation that sees education as the surest path to social mobility, that would be a particularly costly form of efficiency.


(The writer is a lawyer and president, Student Helping Hands. Views personal.)

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