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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.

Triumphant Coup

Correspondent
Apr 29
2 min read

It is not often that India scores a strategic win in a country where the diplomatic odds are stacked against it. The extradition of gangster Salim Dola, A Dongri native and close associate of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, from Istanbul to New Delhi is a triumphant reminder that even in unfriendly terrain, the persistence and ingenuity of Indian security agencies can deliver the goods.


Dola is no small catch. He spent nearly a decade abroad building a sprawling narcotics enterprise stretching across West Asia, Africa and Europe. According to investigators, he functioned as a bulk supplier by feeding drugs into India’s distribution networks. Dola was involved in a synthetic drug trade racket estimated at over a staggering Rs. 5,000 crores, touching everything from heroin and charas to mephedrone and methamphetamine. For years, his name surfaced in high-value seizures in Maharashtra and Gujarat. But he remained a ghost in dossiers maintained by the Narcotics Control Bureau and state police forces.


So, his capture in Istanbul in a joint operation involving Turkish intelligence and local police, was in itself significant. But the real story lies in what followed. India does not have an extradition treaty with Turkey. Nor are bilateral relations especially warm, with Turkey’s strategic alignment with Pakistan often complicating matters. Under such circumstances, the seamless transfer of a high-value target might have seemed improbable.


Yet, Indian agencies appear to have exploited a narrow but decisive opening in Dola’s use of a forged UAE passport. This allowed New Delhi to work through the United Arab Emirates, sidestepping the absence of a formal extradition framework with Turkey, resulting in a swift deportation.


This reflects a broader shift in how India pursues fugitives abroad. Instead of relying solely on slow and contested formal treaties vulnerable to geopolitical friction, Indian agencies are becoming increasingly adept at building operational coalitions. Intelligence-sharing, legal ingenuity and quiet diplomatic engagement are delivering results.


‘Operation Global-Hunt’ (as officials have termed Dola’s capture) also underscores the growing confidence of India’s enforcement architecture. The Narcotics Control Bureau, working alongside international partners, has demonstrated an ability to track, locate and secure high-value targets across jurisdictions. The interrogation of Dola, now underway at an undisclosed location, is likely to yield further insights into the financial and logistical arteries of the D-Company’s drug network.


That network, long shielded by distance and deniability, has taken a hit. The arrest follows the capture of several of Dola’s associates, including those allegedly involved in distributing mephedrone sourced from him.


There is a temptation in such cases to view success purely through the lens of law enforcement. But what distinguishes this episode is the interplay between intelligence work and diplomacy.


The return of Salim Dola suggests that in the long game against transnational crime and the geopolitical equations that shelters dreaded criminals, India’s police and security agencies are learning to play the game with greater subtlety and increased efficiency.

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