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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.

When Education Becomes One Exam After Another

Writer: Smitha Balachandran
Smitha Balachandran
13 hours ago
3 min read

In 2022, I undertook a master’s degree in political science from SNDT University, Mumbai, at the age of 52. I was keen on doing the programme and, as expressed in an introductory letter to the head of the department, I wished to study out of sheer interest, unlike 38 years ago when I did my bachelor’s in the same subject only because I needed a degree. At that time, I had not developed any passion or interest in the subject. I had done that degree almost mechanically, like a robot prepped to complete a set task.


Our batch, which graduated in 2024, was the last to go through the “old” educational system. In 2025, the new educational policy was launched. What struck me immediately was the number of exams our students were made to write—an all-India entrance exam after completing their 12th grade and bachelor’s, another all-India exam after postgraduate studies in order to apply as an assistant professor, and another to apply for a PhD.


Young students from the age of 21 to 25 go through untold stress. Their young minds are sometimes not resilient enough to go through these layers of exams, with ample leaks interspersed.


Coaching classes are profiting immensely, promising these students the moon as far as results are concerned and, as we have seen, occasionally helping in the leaking of papers to students who, stressed and desperate to “do well”, are prepared to compromise themselves ethically and financially.



The programme I entered was impressive. The syllabus was beautifully constructed, relevant, stimulating and enlightening. Our professors were passionate, engendered a true spirit of learning in us, encouraged class discussions, insisted on our attending numerous workshops and lectures by eminent personalities, and fostered a love not only for political science but for other disciplines as well.


We had to write a dissertation in our last semester and defend it. This experience, which was novel to all of us, was a trifle frightening because of its unfamiliarity but greatly expanded our research skills and critical ability.


However, I could see firsthand how much stress there was to handle. I could handle it better, having worked for 16 years as a librarian, during which time I had read extensively and handled a fair amount of tension at the workplace. Experience does help, but even I could visualise how much this load tore into the fabric of intellectual interest that could have flowered within my much younger classmates.

There is enough tension preparing for and appearing for one university exam. Hitherto, at the bachelor’s level, one had to appear for three of them and two more at the postgraduate level. Now the government has added two more—the CUET UG (Common University Entrance Test Undergraduate, to enter undergraduate studies) and the CUET PG (Common University Entrance Test Postgraduate, to enter postgraduate studies).


To give some idea of the number of all India entrance examinations that are now held:

This is frightening. Year after year, not only have cut-off percentages to enter any level of studies increased tremendously, but there are now all-India exams to be written after appearing for the forbidding 12th boards and university exams.


Where are we heading? We have prevented students from enjoying education for a long time by emphasising marks and rote learning primarily. Now, we are producing a generation of students exposed to unbelievable stress and likely to face far more of this ill in the future. Education has lost its ethos and value. All we are producing is a generation of students preparing for one exam after another without really developing any genuine assimilation or critical skills.


(The writer is a Mumbai based educator. Views personal.)

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