War is costly!

There’s no escape from huge costs of US, Israel war in Iran that has cascading effect on economy, human life, communities & the world K.A.Badarinath Actuals are never known. But, ballpark figures are rounded off to a whopping US $ one trillion as cost of US – Israeli war with Iran beginning February 28. This estimate could include both short term costs, long term liabilities and replacement, replenishment and rejig costs of war machinery for United States. Rebuilding the military and naval bases of US security establishment across West Asia damaged by Iran is again a tough nut to crack and estimating the damages, both actuals and consequential, are tricky. Prof Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at Harvard Kennedy School has been quoted for estimating the cost of war with Iran for US citizens to be US one trillion dollars. This will further push up the country’s deficits. Republican White House headed by President Donald J Trump and his budget office have not provided any guidance on cost of war with Iran. Only two definitive figures available in public domain are that US incurred US $ 11.5 billion in first six days and Pentagon sought another US $ 200 billion towards bankrolling the war machinery especially high cost carriers, ballistic missiles, tom hawks, fighter jets and choppers. An aggregate US $ two billion per day is reportedly the cost Trump administration incurred to keep the war going as per one estimate. Even US $ one trillion estimate made by Prof Linda Bilmes is viewed as very conservative given that US incurred over US $ 5 trillion in conflict with Iraq and Afghanistan. Though defence analysts have different estimates of the war, none may have been comprehensive or wholesome. Also complicated models for estimating the war expenses like replacement costs of munitions could may be big vis-à-vis the actual production costs. Costs incurred by US partner Israel and its adversary Iran may not have been covered in this estimate of Prof Bilmes. And, there are no monetary costs put to their war efforts by either Israel or Iran. Economic impact of the war has also not been considered in this US professor’s projections. Chatham House has estimated that the war may adversely impact West Asian region’s economy by 2 – 3 per cent. It’s not for the entire world and these estimates could undergo a sea change given longevity of the war machine chugging along. Energy markets disrupted by the war are big in terms of cost component where truce seems elusive and tentative. About two months of disruption in crude, LNG, hydrogen fuels, aviation turbine fuel, LPG and piped domestic gas is differential and varied in terms of costs given massive fluctuation in prices of these hydrocarbon based energy products. The war may roil the global economy during next three to four quarters. Decisive factor would be 24-mile Strait of Hormuz which accounts for movement of one fifth oil and its associated commodities. Costs to secure and safe passage of ships on the Strait, tolls being imposed by Iran and US in competition would determine how the energy markets behave here after. American economy may not feel the direct heat immediately given its relative insulation from conflict which may not end anytime soon. But, West Asia, Europe – both Eastern and Western components – South, South Asia would bear the maximum brunt as direct consequence of war. Both direct and indirect costs of war are different for each of the countries. Developing and least developed countries would face the heat with their development budgets going haywire and kitchen budgets of families going through the roof. Multi-lateral agencies like International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are at loss to project the losses to world economy. Not everything is gloomy on economic front owing to the US – Israel war with Iran. Oil companies, aircraft producers, munitions manufacturers, infrastructure firms in a way are also biggest gainers as huge post-war reconstruction contracts would come their way. Reconstruction of war ravaged Iran may be a herculean task. Development agencies, reconstruction players and core sector companies would see big business opportunities. About US $ 500 billion worth infrastructure damages incurred by Iran may open up fresh business prospects for global companies. Iran reportedly made compensating war damages by US as a condition to prolonging war truce. One estimate put the damages suffered by Iran to its ports, airports, bridges, shipping lanes, water ways, water desalination plants, railways and roadways etc. at US $ 270 billion. One way of recovering this by Iran was taxing ships passing through Strait of Hormuz which is completely against set international norms. Consulting firm Rystad Energy has put the damages to energy infrastructure in West Asia at US $ 58 billion. The damages to 80 energy facilities in gulf region do not include what’s collapsed in Iran. Above all, environmental costs of war are too huge for the world fighting climate change and carbon emissions. Five million tonnes of carbon emissions during first 14 days of war were reported by Climate and Community Institute based in UK. Carbon dioxide costs of war surpassed that of 84 countries emissions in those two weeks. Long term damages are too huge and humungous to estimate immediately. Biggest cost of war is the human life and communities living that’s too huge. (Author is veteran journalist, Director & Chief Executive of non-partisan think tank, Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies based in New Delhi)

Bharat Geopolitics Hindus Nepal

Iran at the Strait of International Law

Iran’s imposition of passage fees in the Strait of Hormuz does not merely test the nerves of the global shipping industry; it strikes at the foundational principle that no state may toll a right the international legal order has vested in the world. Rahul PAWA | X- @imrahulpawa Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps do not present themselves as a toll collector. They present themselves as guarantors of safe conduct, charging vessels transiting the corridor between Qeshm and Larak islands for the security they claim to provide in waters they claim to control. Large crude carriers reportedly face charges approaching two million US dollars per passage, with IRGC demanding settlement in cryptocurrency to circumvent the sanctions architecture that governs Iran’s conventional financial interactions. Tehran frames this as remuneration for a service, a charge for guaranteed passage through a waterway where Iranian forces claim exclusive capacity to maintain order. The United States Navy has responded by threatening to treat compliance as a hostile act, leaving global shipping operators trapped between two sovereign commands. What began as a regional confrontation has rapidly become a direct assault on the international law of navigation. The governing legal framework is principally Part III of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Although Iran has not ratified UNCLOS, its straits provisions, Articles 37 through 44, constitute customary international law binding on all states. These articles establish the right of transit passage: all ships enjoy the right of continuous and expeditious navigation through straits used for international navigation connecting one area of high seas or exclusive economic zone to another. Article 26 reinforces this, providing that no charge may be levied on foreign vessels by reason of their transit through territorial sea alone; dues are permissible only where they correspond to specific services actually rendered to the vessel. IRGC charges satisfy neither condition. They are assessed not for any identifiable service but for the act of passage itself, which in precise legal terms converts a navigational right into a commercial licence. The distinction Iran implicitly contests is one that international law has settled across multiple regimes and over several decades. Suez and Panama canals are sovereign infrastructure constructed under treaty frameworks, the 1888 Constantinople Convention and the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties respectively, that expressly authorise transit dues as service charges for man-made facilities. Natural straits occupy an entirely different legal category, a point the International Court of Justice confirmed in the 1949 Corfu Channel case, where Albania’s attempt to condition warship passage through its territorial waters was held unlawful. International rivers present a related but distinct regime: the Rhine and Danube operate under multilateral treaties permitting service-linked dues but not passage charges, with the Danube governed by the 1948 Belgrade Convention. Archipelagic states such as Indonesia and the Philippines must under UNCLOS Part IV designate sea lanes permitting unimpeded transit without levy. Turkish Straits, governed by the 1936 Montreux Convention, permit Turkey to collect lighthouse and sanitary dues but explicitly prohibit passage fees. Russia’s Northern Sea Route is perhaps the closest live analogue: Moscow levies compulsory icebreaker escort fees on Arctic transits, clothing what critics argue is a functional toll in the language of mandatory safety services. The international legal community remains divided on the Russian position, but even Moscow maintains the formal pretence that vessels are paying for a specific service rather than for passage itself. Iran has not troubled itself with that pretence. What UNCLOS affirmatively permits a strait coastal state to do is narrow and precisely defined. It may designate sea lanes and traffic separation schemes, subject to adoption through International Maritime Organisation. It may enforce internationally recognised standards on safety and pollution prevention, and it retains limited enforcement jurisdiction under Article 233 against technical violations. What it may not do is exploit geographic position to extract financial consideration for transit itself. IRGC regime fails every test: the designated corridor carries no IMO sanction, documentation requirements exceed any recognised safety basis, and the cryptocurrency payment mechanism is not a feature of legitimate service billing but a deliberate evasion of the financial accountability structures that legitimate charges require. IRGC presents its corridor as a service. International law reads it as a seizure. The right of transit passage is not a concession the coastal state extends from geographic advantage; it is a right vested in the international community by customary law, confirmed in the Corfu Channel, codified in UNCLOS, and paralleled imperfectly, controversially, but never as brazenly, in every comparable waterway dispute from the Bosphorus to the Bering Strait. Iran cannot charge for the exercise of a right it has no power to grant, and the cryptocurrency invoices travelling between IRGC officials and tanker operators do not alter that legal reality by a single article. The toll booth is not a novel geopolitical instrument. It is an old claim that international law has refused, in every maritime theatre where it has been seriously advanced. (The author is an international criminal lawyer and director of research at New Delhi based think tank Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS)

Bharat Geopolitics Hindus Nepal

Let’s Reunite For Shared Prosperity

New government in Kathmandu must fully use the opportunity to prove its worth and put country on a different path to prosperity. K.A.Badarinath Himalayan Hindu Kingdom, Nepal is in the midst of a big churn with most established political parties and their leaders getting irrelevant. After Balendra ‘Balen’ Shah of fledgling Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP) took charge as Prime Minister with comfortable majority, major political formations seem to be heading for oblivion. From K.P,Sharma Oli of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) to more liberal Sher Bahadaur Deuba of Nepali Congress and Nepal Communist Party headed by Pushpa Kamal ‘Dahal’ popularly known as Prachanda seem to be on winding up mode. All the three top leaders of these parties have had their ‘hey’ days and now waiting in the wings for rapper turned politician Balen to commit big mistakes in steering the Hindu majority Nepal. And, that would open some political space for them to reconnect with their lost ‘peoples’ antenna. In last few weeks that ‘Balen’ has held fort, he’s got to the business of governing this country differently, if Nepalese media were to be believed. There are no high sounding policy statements made by the RSP leadership that was returned to power with key mandate of cleansing the system from corruption. And, the RSP seems to be keeping its options open and making plans to deliver in next five years’ governance that was hitherto unknown before the Gen-Z agitation over last three decades. Without a bevy of politicians strutting in their large black cavalcades that marked governance in recent past, this new look government of youngsters seem determined to ‘deliver’ on the dot. Well, no political analyst is sticking out his neck to back this government that neither professes an ideology nor a policy paradigm. People in the narrow lanes of Kathmandu to roadside kiosks of Pokhara seem to like it the way political silence has befell the Himalayan kingdom. Till date, hardly did the Prime Minister ‘Balen’ speak for over 3 – 5 minutes in public leave alone laying out elaborate plans of his government before its people, his constituency of youngsters. What’s baffling the political spectrum in Nepal is this ‘deafening’ silence that’s eloquent and signals change in top leadership that made bombastic statements at briefings each day. Even President Xi Jingping’s apparatus of machinations seems to have hit a pause button while Beijing seems to be licking its wounds after having lobbied hard to get shades of Maoists and communists to form a government of its liking. President Trump’s men at South Asia desk also seem to have ‘gone slow for now’ given the Washington DC’s pre-occupation with Iran and West Asia’s dynamic developments. There are already many firsts that the new government is known for and people are talking about it. It has been a norm for newly elected Prime Minister to invite individual envoys ‘one on one’ ahead of engaging with the world leaders or different partner countries. Breaking away from unstructured and informal meetings with envoys of countries like China, US often without involvement of foreign office, Prime Minister ‘Balen’ reset the policy approach. On April 8, he held a meeting with envoys of 17 countries and formally hinted at deliberate and coherent policy approach though nothing concrete was put on offer. Some analysts hinted that it was ‘strategic diplomatic reset’ the way envoys were told of ‘development oriented’, ‘nation first’ approach. Trust, mutual respect and shared prosperity were the key to diplomatic engagement that the new government laid out to international engagement. Well, ‘balanced approach’ to foreign policy formulation hinted by Prime Minister ‘Balen’ Shah has been read differently in circles across stakeholders. One thing that seems to have been put to rest: Kathmandu will not play ‘favourites’ game hitherto hallmark of diplomacy depending on who held reins in Kathmandu. What has come as a big talking point is acceptance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to his Nepali counterpart ‘Balen’ to visit New Delhi for a bilateral engagement. Many analysts, both Indian and Nepali, think that it augurs well for the two neighbours whose engagement has been defined by shared civilizational, cultural and people to people ties. Nepal’s expectations from Bharat may be expansive given the intrinsic relations notwithstanding the US and Chinese factors that are coming into increasing play. Still, Balen may utilize the opportunity to take things one by one with New Delhi and not rush through with a raft of proposals. Deliberate and structured approach may define both Nepal and Bharat relations going forward. On home turf, Nepal’s Prime Minister seems to be earning big on the 100-point agenda based on his party’s manifesto rolled out before polls. Rejecting VIP culture detested by common Nepali folks may is getting big applause for ‘Balen’s government of youngsters. Setting up high powered panel headed by a former Supreme Court judge to tackle corruption and cleansing the educational institutions from influence of political parties has been widely debated. While Nepal’s new government seeks to find a new way to serving its people, Bharat could be the biggest support in its journey to prosperity. The new government in Kathmandu must get a full chance to prove its worth and bring the civilizational ties and shared ancestry with Bharat back to bloom. (author is a veteran journalist, Director & Chief Executive of non-partisan think tank based in New Delhi, Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies).

Bharat China Geopolitics Policy Security

China’s Infatuation with India’s Arunachal Pradesh

Beijing has spent decades trying to claim a land it has never governed, never administered, and never convinced the world is its own. The infatuation tells us less about Arunachal Pradesh and more about the insecurities driving Chinese foreign policy. Rahul PAWA | X- @imrahulpawa The flight to Tokyo was supposed to be the easy part. Pema Wangjom Thongdok had already made the long haul from London. All that remained was a three-hour layover at Shanghai Pudong, a coffee maybe, then the short hop to Narita. She had done this route before, through this same airport, without trouble. It did not go that way. Last November, Chinese immigration officials at Pudong pulled Thongdok aside, took her Indian passport, studied it, and informed her it was invalid. The problem was not an expired visa or a missing stamp. The problem was a single line on the document: birthplace, Arunachal Pradesh. That, the officials told her, was Chinese territory. She was not, in their assessment, Indian. For eighteen hours, Thongdok sat in the transit area without food, without explanation, without a boarding pass, pressured to verbally accept Beijing’s position on her own nationality. She would not. The Indian consulate, reached through a desperate call by a friend in England, got her onto a flight that night. Not to Tokyo. To Bangkok. The cheapest seat out of China. Thongdok is from Rupa, a town of a few thousand people in West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh. She is Sherdukpen, one of twenty-six tribes whose homeland sits in the eastern Himalayas where India meets Tibet. What happened to her was not a rogue officer having a bad shift. It was the sharp end of a policy Beijing has refined over decades, using visas, accreditation cards, and county registers to wage a quiet, persistent campaign against Indian sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh. Since 2005, China has issued stapled visas to Indians born in Arunachal, loose paper slips instead of passport stamps, arguing it cannot grant regular visas to people it considers Chinese nationals. India has rightly refused to accept them. Every stapled visa acknowledged would be a quiet concession that Arunachalis inhabit some grey zone between Indian and Chinese nationality. In July 2023, three wushu athletes from Arunachal were issued stapled visas for the World University Games in Chengdu. India pulled out its entire team. The same three were then blocked from the Hangzhou Asian Games. India’s Sports Minister boycotted the ceremony. These were young Indians shut out of international sport because a foreign government refused to recognise their passports. The pattern is older than this generation. In the 1990s, Gegong Apang, then Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, the elected leader of a full Indian state, was denied a Chinese visa on the grounds that as a “Chinese citizen” he did not need one to visit his “own country.” In 1981, the Speaker of Arunachal’s legislature was refused a visa while travelling with an Indian parliamentary delegation because he represented “disputed territory.” Four decades of this. Not a single year in which it became any less absurd. If the visa regime targets people, the renaming campaign targets the land. Since 2017, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs has been publishing invented Chinese names for places inside Arunachal Pradesh, places that already have names, used by communities who have lived there for centuries, recorded in Indian revenue maps, marked on Indian military charts. Six in 2017. Fifteen in 2021. Eleven in 2023. Thirty in 2024. Twenty-seven in 2025. Twenty-three more on April 10, 2026, including eight mountain passes of direct tactical significance. Over ninety fabricated names for locations inside a state where Indians have voted since 1952 and the Indian Army patrols every single day. MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal called the latest batch “fictitious” and “mischievous”: Arunachal Pradesh “was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India.” The timing is never innocent. The 2017 list followed the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang. The 2024 batch came the week Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Sela Tunnel at 13,000 feet, giving the Indian military all-weather access to the frontier. The 2026 list dropped during active diplomatic re-engagement. Every Indian step that deepens sovereignty in Arunachal is met with a Communist Party of China (CPC) gesture designed to contest it on paper. Why Arunachal? Because this is really about Tibet. The McMahon Line, drawn in 1914 between British India and Tibet, is the boundary India inherited at independence and has administered ever since. China rejects it not because the line is defective but because accepting it would mean conceding that Tibet possessed sovereign authority to negotiate a border, a concession that would crack the foundation of China’s own claim over Tibet. Tawang, home to a seventeenth-century monastery that is the second largest in Tibetan Buddhism, sits at the centre of this contest. The 90,000 square kilometres China claims in the eastern sector serve as a permanent instrument of leverage. Every road, tunnel, election, and troop deployment that deepens Indian reality on the ground becomes, in Beijing’s framing, a provocation, because each one makes the truth a little more irreversible. The simultaneous creation of Cenling County in Xinjiang on March 26, 2026, near Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, confirms this pressure is orchestrated across the entire frontier. For all this machinery, the returns have been thin. The United States Senate has passed a bipartisan resolution recognising Arunachal as Indian territory and the McMahon Line as the international boundary. No major government treats the state as legitimately disputed. India has responded with the unhurried work of state-building: roads, tunnels, airfields, schools, elections on schedule, courts in session. The democratic infrastructure of an Indian state, functioning in full view, is the most effective rebuttal to a claim sustained by repetition alone. China’s infatuation with Arunachal Pradesh has lasted decades. It has produced invented names, stapled visas, harassed travellers, and blocked athletes. What it has not produced is a single square metre of control or a single convert among the world’s

Bharat Disinformation Hindus Media Misinformation World

Reheating the “Fascist” Leftovers: A Methodological Deconstruction of the TNI “Global Far-Right” Narrative

The Transnational Institute (TNI) report, “Hindutva as a Global Far-Right Project” (Shayan Shaukat, 2026), represents a quintessential exercise in Polemical Historiography. It is a document that uses the veneer of academic/scholarly inquiry to pursue a pre-determined political objective, failing the fundamental tests of Mechanism Demand and Inferential Necessity. By imposing Western socio-political categories – specifically 20th-century European Fascism, Neoliberalism, and Surveillance Capitalism onto a decentralised Indian civilizational phenomenon, the author commits a series of persistent category errors. Additionally, the report appears to have been created, as is the research pre-work, in isolation by compiling publicly available information into a bouquet of tropes. The report does not cite a single first-person interaction or provide even an orthogonal quote, which suggests the ends were established before the means. This essay demonstrates that the “global fascist nexus” described by the TNI is an analytical mirage created by Adversarial Semantic Laundering – a process where organic cultural affinity is recoded as a centralised command-and-control conspiracy. Utilizing the Starfish model in Organisational Theory, we show that the phenomenon is better explained as a distributed, open-source cultural protocol rather than a monolithic “Spider” hierarchy. The following deconstruction identifies the persistent evidentiary voids and logical contradictions that render the TNI’s thesis analytically inert, offering instead a superior/better model grounded in civilizational sociology and state capacity restoration.

Human Rights Pakistan Security Terrorism

Balochistan’s Disappeared: Inside Pakistan’s Kill-and-Dump Campaign

In Pakistan’s largest province, Baloch families no longer ask only whether their loved ones will come home. They ask whether they will return alive, broken, or as a body left by the roadside.Rahul PAWA | X- @imrahulpawa In Balochistan, disappearance has become more than an allegation. It has become a method of rule, a language of fear, and, for many families, the most intimate face of the Pakistani state. A son leaves for college and does not return. A brother is picked up at a checkpoint and vanishes into an unmarked system. A body appears days later, bearing the marks of custody but not the burden of official acknowledgment. This is why the crisis in Balochistan can no longer be described as a peripheral human-rights issue. It now sits at the centre of the province’s politics, shaping how the state is seen, how dissent is expressed, and how the conflict itself reproduces. Balochistan has never sat easily inside Pakistan. Forcibly annexed in 1948 through military aggression, the province has been governed less as a constituent territory than as an occupied resource frontier, its people subjected to successive military operations, its political leaders jailed, exiled, or killed, its wealth extracted while its communities remain among the poorest in South Asia. The Pakistani army, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, and the civilian bureaucracy that answers to both have together built an architecture of control in the province that relies not on consent but on coercion. Enforced disappearance is its sharpest instrument. For years, Baloch families have spoken of men seized from hostels, lifted from homes in front of witnesses, or taken at security posts, only to disappear into a military and intelligence maze that rarely concedes it holds them. What follows has hardened into ritual: protests outside press clubs, sit-ins on national highways, petitions before courts that issue orders the deep state ignores, and mothers holding photographs that become, with time, the only official record they possess. Paank, the human-rights wing of the Baloch National Movement, documented 1,355 enforced disappearances in 2025 and 225 killings it describes as extrajudicial. Its monthly tallies show the pattern continuing into 2026, with 82 disappearances in January and 109 in February. These are activist figures but even if read conservatively, they describe something far larger than sporadic abuse. They describe a system that is persistent, province-wide, and increasingly willing to move from secret detention to what families and activists have long called “kill and dump.” That charge now carries weight beyond the activist circuit. After a fact-finding mission to the province, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called enforced disappearances Balochistan’s most urgent human-rights crisis and said testimony from victims and families pointed to a practice that had become systematic. Drawing on police data shared during its visit, HRCP reported 356 disappearance cases, of which 116 people had been traced, 36 were removed for incomplete information, 12 were listed as killed in police encounters, and 192 remained unresolved. Balochistan police alone registered 46 new cases in 2025. More alarming still, the commission described what witnesses called a faster “kill-and-dump cycle,” in which the interval between abduction and the recovery of a body appears to be shrinking. The targets are students, activists, human-rights defenders, journalists, and politically vocal young men and women. Anyone who speaks for Baloch rights, organises peacefully, or simply draws attention risks being categorised by the ISI and military intelligence as a threat to national security. HRCP documented that students had been surveilled and pressured over political expression on campus. In March 2025, UN special procedures experts demanded the release of detained Baloch human-rights defenders and called for an end to the crackdown on peaceful protest. A month later, the same body warned of the “unrelenting use” of enforced disappearances in the province and pressed for independent investigations, criminal accountability, and protection for victims families. The Pakistani state presents Balochistan through the vocabulary of security. The rights record reveals something closer to collective punishment of an occupied people. Islamabad’s counter-narrative rests on the existence of a separatist insurgency. After the March 2025 Jaffar Express attack, the Pakistan Army and the ISI found fresh justification for a harsher crackdown across Balochistan. But this repression is not an aberration. It is the logical outcome of decades of military control, resource extraction without political representation, and a security order that has long treated the Baloch as a population to be managed rather than Baloch to be heard. Pakistan’s institutions acknowledge the problem, but only in the bloodless language of bureaucracy. In October 2025, the government reported that the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances had received 10,636 cases nationwide since 2011, disposed of 8,986, and left 1,650 under investigation. The numbers give Islamabad a defence of procedure. They do not answer the question that shadows Balochistan: why, after years of commissions, petitions, and court orders, do disappearances remain woven into everyday life? Why do families still pass between morgues, protest camps, police stations, and roadsides searching for men the state insists it cannot find? The answer may be that disappearance has outgrown its origins as a tactic. It has become governance by intimidation, the organising logic of an occupation that cannot justify itself by any other means. Each abduction removes one person but disciplines an entire social circle: a family that stops speaking, a campus that falls quiet, a town that learns the price of visibility. HRCP warned in 2025 that shrinking civic space, institutional impunity, and the conflation of human-rights advocacy with militancy were deepening alienation across the province. Here lies the central paradox of Pakistan’s campaign in Balochistan. It is designed to suppress dissent, yet it multiplies grievance. It is meant to restore control, yet it steadily drains the state of legitimacy. Balochistan’s disappeared are not merely a humanitarian ledger. They are the human index of a military occupation failing in plain sight. A state can compel silence for a time. It can deny custody, delay hearings, disperse protests, and reduce the missing to rows

Bharat Media Misinformation United States

103

Bias or Blind Spot?

Freedom House’s Western Biases, Methodological Flaws & Lack of Understanding of India’s Democratic Realities N. C. Bipindra American think tank Freedom House’s latest 2026 annual report rates India as “Partly Free” with a score of 62 on maximum 100 points. This has once again triggered a debate on how global democracy indexes assess nations, particularly large and complex ones like India. The report posits India within the broader narrative that Freedom House is building off twenty-year global decline in freedoms. A closer look at the assessment shows that Freedom House conclusions rest on methodological limitations, normative biases and insufficient contextualisation of India’s democratic ecosystem. The Freedom House’s methodological framing aggregates diverse indicators such as political rights, civil liberties, media freedom and minority protection into a single numerical score. While Freedom House may be targeting simplicity while quantifying the complex study, this clearly risks obscuring the immense heterogeneity of India’s federal structure. India’s governance standards, political competition and civil liberties vary significantly in different states and the entire nation is not universally governed by one single political formation or a uniform demographic composition. India is not a monolithic political entity but a vast and layered democracy of over 1.4 billion people. Reducing its democratic health to a single number inevitably leads to analytical compression or deviations where localised or episodic concerns are interpreted as systemic decline. Moreover, critics have long argued that Freedom House’s framework reflects a Western and liberal template of democracy, shaped by political and historical experience of United States and Europe. This raises questions about whether the same benchmarks can be uniformly applied to societies grappling with different challenges, including post-colonial state-building, socio-economic inequality and persistent security threats. In India’s case, the need to balance civil liberties with national security concerns, particularly in the context of cross-border terrorism and internal insurgencies, complicates any straightforward classification. The report’s broader claim of a continuous global decline in freedom over two decades also warrants scrutiny. While there is no denying the rise of authoritarian tendencies in certain regions, such a sweeping narrative risks over-generalisation. It tends to overlook democratic resilience in parts of the Global South and conflates governance challenges with democratic backsliding. In India, visible tensions within the political system may, in fact, reflect democratic contestation rather than erosion. A noisy, conflict-ridden public sphere is not necessarily evidence of authoritarianism; it can also indicate a system where competing interests continue to be negotiated in the open. One of the central concerns raised by the report is the alleged harassment of journalists, civil society organisations and political opponents. While individual cases and controversies undoubtedly exist, it is important to situate them within the broader landscape of Indian public life. India hosts one of world’s most expansive and diverse media ecosystems, spanning print, television and digital platforms. Critical reporting on government policies is widespread and investigative journalism continues to shape public discourse. Legal actions against media entities or non-governmental organisations are often framed in the report as politically motivated. But in many instances, they are rooted in regulatory compliance issues, particularly concerning financial transparency and foreign funding norms. The distinction between the enforcement of law and the suppression of dissent is crucial and often blurred in external assessments. Similarly, the claim that political opposition is under systematic pressure must be weighed against empirical realities. Opposition parties continue to win elections at the state level, govern key regions and mount significant electoral and political challenges. The regularity of elections, high voter turnout and peaceful transitions of power underscore the continued vitality of India’s democratic framework. Institutions such as the Election Commission of India play a central role in ensuring electoral integrity and despite criticisms, they remain broadly functional and credible. All criticisms of India’s Election Commission haven’t stood judicial scrutiny in the last decade. This goes on to prove that the poll body’s institutional functioning met quality standards in consonance with the constitutional framework and election laws. The report’s emphasis on the marginalisation of minority communities, including Muslims, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, touches upon a deeply important issue. However, it is essential to distinguish between structural socio-economic inequalities and deliberate state-led democratic regression. India’s social fabric has long been shaped by hierarchies and disparities that predate contemporary political developments. Successive governments have implemented policies aimed at addressing these challenges, including affirmative action, targeted welfare schemes and financial inclusion initiatives. While gaps remain and must be addressed, framing these issues solely as indicators of declining freedom risks overlooking both historical context and ongoing policy interventions. Another area of concern highlighted in the report is the perceived weakening of political pluralism, including practices such as “resort politics” and challenges in implementation of the Right to Information framework. Yet, these phenomena are not unique to India and are often characteristic of competitive democracies. Political manoeuvring, party defections and coalition instability are features seen in many parliamentary systems. Crucially, such developments in India are subject to legal scrutiny and institutional oversight. The Right to Information Act, despite implementation challenges, continues to empower citizens and remains one of the most robust transparency mechanisms globally. Isolated administrative bottlenecks do not necessarily amount to a systemic erosion of accountability. The report also draws attention to the controversial practice of punitive demolitions, sometimes described as “bulldozer justice,” and references a 2024 ruling by the Supreme Court of India that deemed such actions unconstitutional. While the concerns surrounding due process are valid, the very fact that the judiciary intervened to check executive overreach highlights the resilience of India’s institutional framework. The availability of legal remedies, the role of an independent judiciary and the intensity of public debate all point to a system capable of self-correction. Rather than indicating authoritarian drift, such episodes demonstrate the dynamic tension between different arms of the state, which is intrinsic to a functioning democracy. A comprehensive evaluation of India must also take into account the scale and complexity of its electoral processes. Regular elections involving hundreds of millions of voters are conducted with remarkable logistical

Bharat Defence Security Technology

103

INS Aridaman: Designed, Built and Armed at Home

No foreign blueprints. No borrowed reactor. No licensed hull. India built its third nuclear-powered submarine from scratch.Rahul PAWA | X – @imrahulpawa The commissioning of INS Aridhaman on 3 April 2026 completes a threshold that India’s strategic community has been working toward for the better part of three decades. With three nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines now in the active fleet, India crosses from a state that possesses a nuclear triad in principle to one that can sustain it in practice. The distinction matters more than it might appear. A single hull proves a concept. Two hulls suggest a programme. Three hulls represent a fleet, with the rotation depth, maintenance margins and operational flexibility that serious continuous deterrence requires. That this fleet was designed, engineered and built within India, without a foreign prime contractor and without publicly acknowledged technology transfer, places the programme in a category occupied by very few states. The platform’s sovereign character is not peripheral context. It is central to understanding what Aridhaman’s induction actually signals, both regionally and globally. To appreciate what Aridhaman represents, the fundamentals of Submarine Submerged Ballistic Nuclear (SSBN) strategy are worth stating plainly. A nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine is the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad, and among the three legs, land, air and sea, it is the one that gives deterrence planners the most confidence and adversaries the least. Land-based missiles are fixed, mappable and theoretically destroyable in a coordinated first strike. Aircraft require airfields that can be struck before bombers scramble. A submarine running silent at operational depth in three-dimensional oceanic space presents an entirely different targeting problem. It cannot be located with confidence, which means it cannot be neutralised with confidence, which means any adversary contemplating a nuclear first strike against India must factor in near-certain retaliation from a platform they cannot find. That is the essence of second-strike credibility, and it is the foundation upon which India’s No First Use doctrine ultimately rests. Aridhaman makes that foundation harder to crack and India built it entirely herself. The boat emerged from the Advanced Technology Vessel programme, one of the most closely guarded and strategically consequential defence programmes India has ever run. Displacement is reported at approximately 7,000 tonnes. The propulsion plant is a pressurised water reactor, almost certainly an evolved version of the 83-megawatt unit fitted in INS Arihant, itself designed and built in India. The missile payload architecture is where Aridhaman steps forward most visibly. The boat carries both the K-15 Sagarika, a two-stage solid-fuel submarine-launched ballistic missile with a range of approximately 750 kilometres, and the considerably more capable K-4, with an estimated range of 3,500 kilometres and a nuclear warhead in the sub-tonne class. Both missiles are Indian. Critically, some reporting attributes eight vertical launch tubes to Aridhaman, against the four fitted in INS Arihant. If accurate, this doubles the platform’s operational magazine, a meaningful increase in what India can hold at risk from a single submerged hull, and a significant qualitative step beyond its predecessors. The strategic arithmetic follows directly from that technical baseline. A submarine carrying eight K-4 missiles, operating from the Bay of Bengal at patrol depth, can range targets across virtually the entire Chinese landmass. India’s nuclear posture against Pakistan has long been addressed adequately by land-based Agni variants and air-delivered weapons. China presents a structurally different problem. The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force fields a large and increasingly survivable land-based arsenal. The People’s Liberation Army Navy operates its own SSBN fleet, with Type 094 Jin-class boats based at Yulin Naval Base on Hainan Island, armed with the JL-2 with range sufficient to cover major Indian cities. For India to maintain credible deterrence against a nuclear adversary of that scale and sophistication, it requires a platform that can hold Chinese strategic assets at risk from a position Beijing cannot locate or neutralise in advance. A submerged SSBN operating in the eastern Indian Ocean addresses that requirement on India’s own terms, with India’s own technology. The question of sustainability is where Aridhaman’s induction carries the most analytical weight. INS Arihant, commissioned in 2016, established that India possessed the scientific and industrial capacity to build and operate a nuclear submarine indigenously, an achievement that took decades of investment to realise. INS Arighaat, commissioned in August 2024, demonstrated that the capability was replicable and that a production line existed. Aridhaman now gives India three hulls in the active fleet, which is the threshold at which Continuous At-Sea Deterrence becomes operationally achievable. CASD, the standard maintained by the United Kingdom and France among others, requires a minimum one submarine on patrol at all times. With three hulls, accounting for maintenance cycles, crew rotations and refit schedules, that standard moves from aspirational to realistic. India has not formally declared CASD status, but the structure of the programme makes the intent evident. The strategic signalling embedded in Aridhaman’s commissioning operates across multiple audiences simultaneously. For Pakistan, it reinforces an already understood reality: India’s second-strike capability is secure and expanding. For China, it introduces a more capable and considerably harder-to-track underwater threat at strategic depth, one armed with missiles of Indian design and sufficient range to cover targets deep within Chinese territory. For Washington and its partners, it underscores the character of India’s deterrent posture, sovereign in the most complete sense, designed, built and operated without dependence on any external power, which has direct implications for how India’s strategic autonomy is read within the broader Indo-Pacific architecture. Reports of a fourth and fifth SSBN in various stages of development indicate the programme’s ambition has not peaked. In deterrence theory, credibility rests on two pillars: capability and survivability. India has now demonstrated both, and it has done so entirely on its own terms. The author is an international criminal lawyer and director of research at New Delhi based think tank Centre for Integrated and HolisticStudies (CIHS).

Bharat Geopolitics

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From Vision to Strategy: India-Japan Advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific

Vivek Raina The partnership between Japan and India has developed into a key component of modern Indo-Pacific geopolitics, signifying a change from an economic partnership to a full strategic alignment. This collaboration, which is based on a commitment to a rules-based system, mutual trust and shared democratic principles, is now crucial in tackling new regional issues. This document highlights how India and Japan are changing their engagement from transactional cooperation into a forward-looking strategic enterprise by further aligning their views and capacities to foster stability, resilience and inclusive prosperity as the Indo-Pacific power dynamics continue to change. Context India-Japan collaboration has become one of the key strategic alliances of the twenty-first century, with results that go well beyond bilateral interaction. A fully institutionalised, all-encompassing strategic alliance based on common democratic ideals, the rule of law and a shared commitment to regional stability has developed from what started as an economic association focused on the trade of cars and electronics. These days, this partnership is motivated by a distinct convergence of geopolitical interests, especially in reaction to the Indo-Pacific region’s changing power dynamics. Its fundamental goal is to maintain a rules-based international order and guarantee the continued freedom, openness, inclusivity and security of the Indo-Pacific region. In addition to enhancing bilateral relations, India and Japan are influencing the larger regional architecture through collaboration in vital areas like supply chain resilience, infrastructure development, maritime security and emerging technologies. As a result, this collaboration is now transformational rather than transactional, establishing both countries as key players in preserving security and prosperity throughout the Indo-Pacific. Strategic Importance of the Indo-Pacific Indo-Pacific region has emerged as a central pillar of global geopolitics and economics, making it critically important for both India and Japan. Spanning Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, it accounts for over 60% of global GDP and nearly 65% of the world’s population, positioning it as the core of global economic activity. The region hosts vital Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) and key maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca, through which a significant portion of global trade and energy supplies flow, making maritime security and stability in areas like the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal essential. For India and Japan, the Indo-Pacific is also a strategic space to counterbalance China’s growing influence, particularly through coordinated infrastructure and connectivity initiatives in countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as alternatives to the Belt and Road Initiative, alongside cooperation with partners such as the United States, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Both countries advocate a Free and Open Indo-Pacific based on rule of law, freedom of navigation and an inclusive, rules-based economic order. The region’s strategic importance is further reinforced by ASEAN’s central role in linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with India supporting a unified ASEAN to ensure regional stability and prevent fragmentation. Additionally, the Indo-Pacific sits at the crossroads of global energy flows and supply chains, with a substantial share of global exports and millions of barrels of crude oil transiting through it annually, making its security vital for economic resilience. Together, these factors underscore why the Indo-Pacific is not only a geographic construct but a strategic imperative for India and Japan in shaping a stable, balanced, and prosperous regional order. India–Japan Partnership in the Indo-Pacific Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision has emerged as one of the most influential strategic frameworks shaping regional geopolitics over the past decade. Conceived to ensure that the Indo-Pacific remains free, inclusive, rules-based, and open to commerce, FOIP reflects Tokyo’s response to shifting power balances, maritime insecurity and the growing salience of connectivity and economic resilience. For India, FOIP has not only complemented its own strategic outlook but has also deepened one of its most consequential partnerships with Japan. At its core, FOIP is anchored in three principles: the rule of law, freedom of navigation and the promotion of connectivity through quality infrastructure. These principles resonate strongly with India’s own vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) and its broader Indo-Pacific policy. The convergence is not accidental. Both India and Japan are maritime democracies with a shared interest in maintaining stability across vital sea lanes that carry energy supplies, trade and digital connectivity. The India–Japan partnership has evolved significantly in tandem with FOIP. What began as an economic relationship has matured into a comprehensive strategic partnership encompassing defence, infrastructure, technology and multilateral coordination. The institutionalisation of this partnership is evident in regular 2+2 ministerial dialogues, defence exercises such as Malabar and increasing interoperability between the Indian Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. These developments are not merely symbolic; they reflect a shared understanding that maritime security is central to regional stability. A key dimension of FOIP is connectivity, where Japan has played a pivotal role in supporting infrastructure development across the Indo-Pacific. In India, Japanese investments in projects like the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor and industrial corridors underscore a commitment to high-quality, transparent and sustainable infrastructure. Beyond India, both countries have collaborated in third-country projects, particularly in South Asia and Africa, offering alternatives to debt-driven infrastructure models. This cooperative approach strengthens regional resilience while reinforcing norms of transparency and sustainability. FOIP also intersects with the evolving role of minilateral groupings, most notably the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), comprising India, Japan, the United States, and Australia. While FOIP predates the revival of the Quad, it has provided an intellectual and strategic foundation for its agenda. For India and Japan, the Quad is not a military alliance but a platform for coordinating responses to shared challenges, including maritime security, disaster relief, supply chain resilience and emerging technologies. This flexible, issue-based cooperation reflects the pragmatic nature of FOIP. The economic dimension of FOIP is equally significant. The Indo-Pacific accounts for a substantial share of global GDP and trade and disruptions in this region have far-reaching consequences. India and Japan have increasingly aligned their economic strategies, particularly in supply chain diversification. Initiatives such as the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) aim to

Bharat Pakistan Terrorism United States USA War World

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Pakistan May Use Iran as a Smokescreen to Spread Terror in India

Intelligence warnings are flashing red. The arrests are piling up. Pakistan does not need a reason to export terror to India. It needs an opportunity. And right now, with West Asia in open conflict, Pakistan’s deep state believes it has exactly that. Rahul PAWA | X – @imrahulpawa Every major world crisis has provided Pakistan’s terror machinery with operational cover to strike India, timed with cold precision to moments of maximum international distraction or diplomatic leverage. On March 20, 2000, the eve of Bill Clinton’s arrival in India, 35 Sikh men were lined up and shot dead in Chittisinghpora village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district. The terrorists wore Indian Army uniforms and spoke Punjabi and Urdu, a calculated false flag designed to hand the visiting American president fresh images of fabricated Indian Army atrocities in Jammu and Kashmir. It was Lashkar-e-Taiba, operating under the Pakistan Army’s direction and its foreign intelligence agency ISI’s direct command. After 9/11, with American attention consumed by Afghanistan and the world watching Islamabad perform as a frontline ally in its “war against terror”, Pakistan’s deep state moved with characteristic audacity. On December 13, 2001, LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists stormed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, killing nine security personnel and nearly triggering a full-scale war. The attack was not opportunistic. It was a calculated attempt to internationalise Jammu and Kashmir at a moment when the world was already in crisis and the Islamic world was split. In November 2008, as Gaza descended into violent escalation and global Islamic outrage peaked, ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists sailed into Mumbai and held the city hostage for sixty hours, killing 166 people across multiple coordinated sites including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and the Nariman House Jewish centre. The terrorist attack was meticulously planned, with Pakistan Army and its ISI providing training, logistics, and real-time operational guidance. This is not Pakistan-sponsored terrorism born of desperation. It was Pakistan Army strategy, executed with maximum cynicism. In 2001 it wore the mask of America’s indispensable ally against terror while simultaneously directing terror at India. Today it wears the mask of a responsible Islamic middle power and self-appointed Iran mediator while running active cells across Indian cities. The mask changes. The target never does. Domestically, the amendment of Article 370 of the Indian constitution in August 2019 began delivering what Pakistan had spent decades of propaganda insisting was impossible. Pakistani generals watched in horror as peace and normalcy returned to Jammu and Kashmir. Tourism surged. Investment flowed. A new generation of Kashmiris was experiencing connectivity and economic opportunity rather than terror branded as jihad. The Kashmir valley, whose civilisational roots run deep into Hindu tradition, whose saints and ancient temples reflect centuries of Hindu practice long preceding the region’s recent history, was beginning to rediscover itself on its own terms. The Pakistan Army could not allow this. A peaceful, prosperous Jammu and Kashmir demolished the foundational premise of Pakistan’s existence and its seventy-year investment in terror, war, and propaganda. So it recalibrated and struck. On April 22, 2025, three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists armed with American M4 carbines, AK-47s, and a GoPro camera traced to a Chinese distributor and activated in Dongguan fourteen months before the attack, descended into Baisaran Valley and separated Hindu men from their wives and children before executing them in cold blood. They fled before Indian security forces arrived and were hunted down a few months later, with Home Minister Amit Shah confirming their elimination in Indian Parliament on July 29. From the bodies of attackers, investigators recovered Pakistani voter ID slips linked to Lahore constituency NA-125 and Gujranwala constituency NA-79, and biometric data from Pakistan’s National Database on a micro-SD card recovered from a broken satellite phone. The objective, as evidenced by the immediate operational claim on social media by The Resistance Front, a proscribed outfit and proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba operating out of Muridke, was precise. Blame Hindus, declare Kashmir exclusively Islamic land, and manufacture an outsider and insider narrative implying that the very Hindus who form the civilisational core of Kashmir since its existence were settlers and occupiers. A fabricated narrative lifted directly from recent collaborators Hamas and Hezbollah’s playbooks in West Asia, designed to erase the Hindu soul of a valley Pakistan has spent decades trying to destabilise. India’s response was decisive and precise. Operation Sindoor struck nine confirmed terrorist training sites: Markaz Taiba in Muridke, LeT’s headquarters where the 26/11 Mumbai attackers were trained; Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, Jaish-e-Mohammed’s nerve centre; the Masjid Syedna Bilal camp in Muzaffarabad; the Gulpur camp in Kotli; the Sawai Nala camp in Muzaffarabad; the Abbas camp in Kotli; the Mehmoona Joya facility of Hizbul Mujahideen in Sialkot; the Barnala camp in Bhimber; and the Sarjal facility at Tehra Kalan, a key weapons storage site. These were not arbitrary targets. They were the nerve centres behind decades of attacks on India including the IC-814 hijacking, the 2001 Indian Parliament attacks, and the 2008 Mumbai carnage. Pakistan’s response was to have its generals and senior officers attend the funerals of globally proscribed terrorists and then escalate. Pakistani forces deployed KARGU-2 loitering munitions and Bayraktar TB2 drones procured from Turkey and China in waves against Indian civilian and military targets. On the night of May 9 to 10, Indian air defence intercepted a Pakistani Fatah-II hypersonic ballistic missile over Sirsa in Haryana, aimed at targets near Delhi. In response to Pakistani escalation, Indian armed forces struck eleven Pakistani airbases including Nur Khan in Rawalpindi, the Pakistan Air Force’s central command and logistics hub, Rafiqui in Shorkot, Sargodha’s Mushaf Base, Murid in Chakwal, Skardu in Gilgit-Baltistan, and Bholari in Sindh, degrading frontline squadrons, runway infrastructure, drone hubs, and radar installations across the country. SEAD operations disabled air defence radars in Lahore and Gujranwala. The Indian Navy’s Western Fleet, including an aircraft carrier, repositioned in the northern Arabian Sea within operational range of Karachi. The intensity and reach of India’s strikes forced Pakistan’s DGMO to call his Indian counterpart and

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