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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.)

Welfare Sham

The ‘Majhi LadkiBahin Yojana’ which involved a monthly handout of Rs. 1,500 to women between the ages of 21 and 65, had been touted as a game changer in the Mahayuti’s electoral strategy. But going by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s recent revelations, the scheme appears to be a cynical, haphazardly administered bribe disguised as welfare. Launched just weeks before the November 2024 state elections, the scheme was timed with precision but implemented with all the carelessness of a government more interested in votes than veracity. That the coalition swept to power, bagging 235 of 288 seats, is less a triumph of public policy than a testament to how brazen populism can pay political dividends.


Pawar has sheepishly admitted that thousands of ineligible beneficiaries, specifically government employees, were enrolled and paid under the scheme. Over Rs. 3.5 crore is being clawed back from some 2,652 women who never should have received a rupee. The scheme’s architects are blaming the election calendar for the mess, as if democracy and due diligence are incompatible. Pawar claimed that the ruling coalition did not have time to check the implementation, as though the sudden emergence of polling dates took everyone by surprise. It is an astonishing confession of negligence dressed up as inevitability.


Any policy that commits the public exchequer to recurring transfers must begin with rigour, verification and clarity. The errors, as lamely explained away by Pawar, were not unfortunate oversights but predictable outcomes of a politically expedient rollout. The only surprise is how quickly the scheme has begun to unravel.


What makes the situation worse is the government’s refusal to take responsibility. The Mahayuti, which won a thumping majority last year government piggybacking on this very scheme, now appears duplicitous. It is trying to have its cake, refund it and eat it too.


The moral hazard is enormous. Programmes like LadkiBahin are not inherently bad. Conditional cash transfers, if designed and executed with care, can lift women out of poverty, increase household autonomy and improve gender equity. But they cannot be tethered to electoral whims. When the purpose is electoral rather than economic, the state ends up subsidising corruption and inefficiency. Worse, it risks discrediting the very idea of targeted social support.


It appears that the Mahayuti had created a situation wherein authorities were pressured to disburse funds without scrutiny and the system bent under the weight of political urgency. This is electoral patronage on steroids. A flagship scheme that cannot distinguish between a daily wager and a salaried bureaucrat is certainly no triumph of women’s welfare. The Mahayuti may have secured votes in the short term, but its long-term legacy is likely to be one of waste and corruption.


If it is serious about women’s empowerment, the Mahayuti should re-engineer LadkiBahin with integrity. Else, it will remain what it already appears to be: a dressed-up dole wrapped in the language of sisterhood, but hollowed out by the politics of expediency.

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