top of page

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.

The Czarina of Content

Writer: Aditi Pai
Aditi Pai
Oct 2, 2025
3 min read

The nine days of Navratri celebrate goddesses who embody strength in different forms; valour, compassion, creativity, austerity, devotion, justice, protection, forgiveness and wisdom. In our annual Navratri series, we celebrate the lives of nine women who strive to build happy and safe spaces for themselves and those around them.


PART - 12


Name: Ekta Kapoor | Where: Mumbai, Maharashtra
Name: Ekta Kapoor | Where: Mumbai, Maharashtra

Version 2025 of the hugely popular serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi is back on television and topping the ratings charts, exactly 25 years after its original avatar transformed Indian television. When Ekta Kapoor stepped into the world of television content production, with Balaji Telefilms, in 1994, she was a young woman, barely 20 years old. This year, the ‘Czarina of Indian Television’—as she is often known as—completes three successful decades in the world of content production, through television and then OTT.


Among her early creations was the lovable sitcom Hum Paanch, the father ably played by veteran actor Ashok Saraf and five young actresses playing his daughters, While the show was widely watched and appreciated for its refreshing take on family relationships, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi catapulted Ekta into the big league of enormous recognition and success, only five years later. Those were the days when family dramas on television were fading and channels struggled for mass content. Balaji Telefilms kept Indian glued to their screens with Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii Kasautii Zindagii Kay and many more. All of a sudden, the alphabet K was seen as the lucky charm.


Ekta gave Indian audiences drama-filled family sagas layered with a virtuous leading lady, scheming in-laws, an evil woman, men who were nothing more than fillers in the story. Avant-garde costumes, jewellery and make-up were normalised as routine domestic looks. There was drama and of course, moral conflict. These were stories that women could relate to and yet, were way larger than life. It was a popular joke that the streets would go empty when these daily soaps would be aired.


Ekta brought characters to life and gave thousands of young men and women a chance at fulfilling their dreams in tinsel town. Suburban Mumbai became home to thousands who flocked with new hopes to rise to celebrityhood. All that they needed was the attention of the ‘queen of content’.


The shows came with rightful criticism; Ekta was accused to creating ‘regressive characters’ of women who kept suffering domestic battles. But Ekta put women at the centre of her storytelling—stories of sacrifice, empowerment, survival and resilience resonated with millions of viewers, cutting across the urban-rural divide.


In a recent interview, Ekta said that awareness and innovation are key. Spotting the move from television to digital platforms, the media maven moved her content to the digital world with ALTBalaji, creating content for viewers who didn’t watch the more urbanised shows on Netlfix.


Using new ideas and concepts and new creators, she experimented with new genres—thrillers, romances, crime dramas—that broke away from the traditional saas-bahu mould.


With Balaji Telefilms, she gave viewers movies from the critically acclaimed The Dirty Picture and Udta Punjab to youth stories. Ekta gave several a launchpad to showcase their talent—as writers, moviemakers, actors, musicians and costume designers. Thirty years as a leader in an industry where people’s attention is hard to hold, isn’t a mean feat.

Comments

bottom of page