A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

May 6, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

The Indian National Congress has formally extended support to C. Joseph Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) to form the next government in Tamil Nadu, after Vijay’s formal request for the party’s support. In a statement, All India Congress Committee (AICC) in charge for Tamil Nadu Girish Chodankar, said that its five elected representatives would back the alliance, adding that its support comes with a clear condition: keeping “communal forces” out of the alliance – framing the mandate as one for a secular, progressive and welfare-oriented government rooted in constitutional values.

It added: “This alliance between the TVK and the Tamil Nadu Congress will strive to bring back Perunthalaivar Kamaraj’s glory days of Tamil Nadu, with a strong commitment to Thanthai Periyar’s social justice ideals and Dr. BR Ambedkar’s constitutional ideals in the years and decades to come. Notably, the statement suggested that this alliance is a long-term partnership between the Congress and the TVK even for local bodies, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha elections. “This alliance – founded on mutual respect, appropriate share, and shared responsibility between the two parties is not only for the formation of this government, but also for future elections to the local body organisations, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha,” it mentioned.

Further, the statement underlined that the TVK chief and Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha (LoP) and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi jointly pledge to respect this historic verdict of the people of Tamil Nadu for a secular and progressive government, and to “fulfil the dreams and promises of the people especially the youth of Tamil Nadu”. The move is significant considering the Congress has broken its longstanding alliance with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). It remains to be seen how the INDIA bloc reshapes amidst these changing equations.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that talks are on between the DMK and its traditional arch-rival, the Anna DMK, although they may not fructify. The Hindu reported that the ADMK had sent feelers to the DMK but got short shrift. Speculation is rife about possible action by Union government agencies on the five Congress MLAs who have signed up with Vijay’s TVK.

The current West Bengal assembly’s term – and Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as chief minister – will lapse tomorrow but former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi points out that the Constitution says a CM can be in office only as long as they enjoy the confidence of the assembly; as the BJP has ascended to power, she and the Trinamool Congress no longer have that confidence. Now that she has refused to resign, although some argue this does not matter because of the automatic expiration of her term, Quraishi argues that it places President’s Rule as an option on the table. Familiar playbook? The less said, the better.

Indian authorities have moved to expel – not deport – people it deems to be undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh by literally pushing them across the border, something Dhaka has long protested as a violation of its sovereignty. So now that the party whose governments have carried out (and in Assam’s case bragged about) such expulsions and which based its West Bengal poll plank on the idea of ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’,

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

May 5, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

All India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee will not tender her resignation as chief minister of West Bengal to the governor because “we did not lose the elections”. “They have forcefully captured the state. The real villain is the Election Commission,” she said at her first press conference after the counting of votes revealed that the BJP had won over two-thirds of the state’s seats, capping off her 15-year-long consecutive rule. So what happens now? Speaking to The Hindu, former bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar noted that since Banerjee and her government’s tenure will expire on Thursday, her refusal to resign will only be symbolic. “It is like sitting there with expired medicine. What will she do with it even if she does not resign,” he said. Meanwhile, Pinarayi Vijayan and M.K. Stalin, the other CMs who were ousted in the elections, have tendered their resignations to the Lok Bhavans in Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram, and the EC has sent notifications constituting new assemblies in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Bengal to the respective governors.

For the time being, said Banerjee on Tuesday, “now my target is clear … I had made it clear what I will do with other INDIA bloc leaders. I will strengthen the INDIA bloc”. Asked if she would attempt to re-enter the assembly – she stands defeated in her own backyard of Bhabanipur, by the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari – she indicated she would not.

Meanwhile, BJP’s victory celebrations in the state have turned into a state of vandalism.

Still, the question of what impact the EC’s very contentious special intensive revision had on the results in Bengal will likely linger for a while. Some have taken a crack at answering that question: the Hindustan Times‘s Abhishek Jha and Roshan Kishore argue that the SIR probably did not propel the BJP to the finish line. Excluding the 100 seats that either the TMC and its allies or the BJP have won in three consecutive elections, they find that there is “next to no correlation” between the proportion of names deleted from the rolls and the change in their vote shares.

But neither correlations nor identity matching are definitive, the journalist Abir Dasgupta argues. “The numbers could still be a coincidence, in theory,” he says, providing an example. “The answer is fundamentally unknowable for the public with secret ballots.” On a broader level, political scientist Gilles Verniers writes that the very fact there is ambiguity over whether the outcome would have been different had the SIR not been conducted or held in a different way, is a worrying thing. “One cannot know what the results would have been without [the] EC’s interference. Legitimacy rests not on results, but on the integrity of the process … Until there is a full, independent accounting of how [the] SIR was conducted, these results will carry an asterisk that no victory speech can remove,” he has pointed out. Of the nearly 89 lakh names excised from Bengal’s rolls, some 27 lakh people flagged for ‘logical discrepancies’ were left out for want of time.

The reality is so stark to ignore that even Gaudam Adani-owned NDTV has reported that SIR-related deletions may have favoured BJP in West Bengal.

And the numbers only deepen the indictment – Bengal’s so-called 5% edge has exploded into a staggering 125-seat blow to Banerjee, reports Madhuparna Das, detailing how a relatively narrow vote-share difference has translated into a significantly larger seat differential.

Above all, the ground reality – and the new normal – in a new low, is indeed changing:

In other news, the Enforcement Directorate has

Read more

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

May 4, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The results from the assembly elections to West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry are in. The BJP has consolidated its stranglehold over east India – wresting West Bengal and retaining Assam – but still finds South India beyond its reach. The Election Commission has a helpful overview of the results and here are eleven key takeaways.

West Bengal going saffron is arguably the most consequential state assembly election victory the Bharatiya Janata Party has registered since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014. The BJP won 206 of the state’s 294 seats, with the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee confined to just 81 seats – but questions are already being asked about the extent to which the Election Commission’s deletion of voters from the electoral rolls helped the BJP cross the finishing line. The EC removed some 9 million names from the rolls in a less than transparent and fair process known as the Special Intensive Revision. This included 2.7 million (27 lakh) voters who were disqualified simply because the commission used software to flag ‘logical discrepancies’ in their identity documents and then ran out of time to scrutinise and adjudicate their claims.

If one considers that the final gap between the BJP and TMC was just 32 lakh votes, the scale and manner of these deletions may well have helped the BJP defeat Mamata. We will know more about this when constituency level victory margins are compiled and compared with the number of deleted voters. Stay tuned.

The BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari – himself a former TMC leader – defeated Mamata Banerjee in the Bhabanipur constituency and is now a front-runner for the post of chief minister. Given the strategic importance of West Bengal for the BJP’s political and ideological project, however, this is one state that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are likely to take full charge of so who becomes CM is likely to be of secondary importance.

While the Bengal result is a big boost for the BJP, the victory of actor Vijay and his newly launched Tamizhaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) in Tamil Nadu is no less tectonic. The ruling DMK-led alliance was confident going in to the polls but erred in treating its principal rival as the AIADMK, which had teamed up with the BJP. Canny reporters correctly read the wave that had built up for Vijay’s TVK and today’s results saw him win 108 out of 234 seats. Vijay is short of a majority by 10 seats but will find it quite easy to win the support of smaller parties allied to one or the other Dravidian bloc. The Congress, VCK. and Communists have 11 seats between them and would not be averse to backing a TVK government, one would imagine. The AIADMK may also have an incentive to offer support but given Vijay’s statement that the BJP is his ‘ideological enemy’ he may be wary of getting indirectly linked.

In Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s openly communal campaigning, the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries in the recent delimitation exercise and his ability to poach senior leaders from the opposition helped the BJP increase its hold over the assembly. While the Congress was routed there, the party was able to defeat the Left Front in Kerala and come back to power after a gap of 10 years.

Net-net though, today’s results will have repercussions beyond the individual states. The defeat of the DMK has robbed the INDIA opposition alliance of a strong ideo-political anchor, especially when it comes to the fight to defend federalism, secularism and the constitution. The Trinamool Congress too has been an important constituent of the opposition but is bound to feel weakened now that it no longer controls West Bengal. Similarly, the Left’s loss of Kerala means the Communists are without a state government for the first time since 1977. If we add to this mix the fact that the BJP was able to

Read more

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. Today is that day. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

May Day, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Less than 72 hours after state Assembly and local polls in several states concluded, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government increased the price of the standard (i.e. 19-kilo) commercial LPG cylinder by Rs 993, effective Friday, despite the Modi government’s repeated claims that it was “working to ensure the West Asia war has minimal impact on India.” That’s an increase of around 40% and will lead to an increase in food prices at dhabas and restaurants. It had already hiked commercial LPG prices by Rs 144 and nearly Rs 200 in March and April, but this latest, much larger increase underscores the widening gap between rhetoric and reality, with citizens forced to bear the brunt of it. Domestic LPG cylinder prices remain unchanged, as do jet fuel prices for domestic flights, but an unspecified hike has been announced for foreign routes.

The move comes as oil prices have stayed on an upward trajectory and no end is in sight to the West Asia war or Iran’s retaliatory blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that has all but shut traffic along the conduit that is key to global energy security. Axios reported Thursday that the US military’s Central Command was to brief President Donald Trump about potential plans for more military action against Iran, including a takeover of part of Hormuz in order to open up commercial shipping.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has quietly engaged in another act of geopolitical balancing. As the US intensifies pressure on Iran through the Strait, Islamabad has opened six overland trade corridors, giving Tehran a crucial alternative route to keep goods moving and easing some of the economic squeeze from maritime disruptions.

Speaking of priorities, after a 42-month gap the external affairs ministry organised the 11th Heads of Mission conference in New Delhi involving Indian ambassadors and high commissioners around the globe to discuss the country’s diplomatic priorities at a time when it has faced challenges on multiple fronts, including the ongoing West Asia crisis and strained relations with the Trump administration. The ministry framed the conference, which took place between April 28 and 30, as being “centered around the theme ‘Reforming Indian Diplomacy for 2047’”. They also did yoga.

As a result of the crisis, India’s crude oil imports fell to 4.43 million barrels per day on average from five million before the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Its mix of sources too shifted in the month just passed, with Venezuela and Brazil displacing Iraq and the US to become among its top five exporters, Shubhangi Mathur reports citing Kpler data. Iraqi oil in particular fell to zero. The top three exporters were Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Russian oil cargoes decreased 16.7% month-on-month.

This comes even as India’s textile production recorded a sharp decline in March, with key segments such as readymade garments and cotton goods facing mounting pressure as a consequence of the US-Israel war on Iran. Rising input costs for raw materials, packaging and chemicals have further squeezed manufacturers, while disruptions linked to the Iran war have hit shipments and driven up freight expenses, reports the Economic Times.

If you thought March and April were tough, brace yourself for May madness. With US President Trump set to meet the Chinese President this month, India – caught between two of its biggest trading partners – could be heading into an even more volatile phase, warns Menaka Doshi.

Examine the full, 2 hour-36 minute-long audio recording in the ‘Manipur tapes’ case and analyse whether the voice alleged to be former chief minister N. Biren Singh’s is actually his, the Supreme Court directed the National Forensic Sciences University in Gujarat on Thursday. Feeling some deja vu? You’re not to blame: the case has gone on in court for a while now and just in the last hearing, the bench had said that “we are still not getting an answer” despite the clip being sent to two forensic institutions. The NFSU had said it could not confirm whether the voice is Biren Singh’s because the clip given to it had been edited; the petitioners had said that is because the whistleblower edited their own voice out. It is alleged that Biren Singh is heard implicating himself in Manipur’s lethal and protracted ethnic strife in the audio. Conveniently enough, every road from here appears to run through Gujarat.

Dhaka on Thursday summoned Indian acting high commissioner Pawan Badhe to lodge a protest against Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s recent remarks about Bangladesh. The Daily Star reports that Badhe was told Sarma’s remarks were “disparaging” to bilateral ties, and Prothom Alo writes that Dhaka ‘urged Indian political leaders to refrain from making comments in the future that could affect relations between the two countries’. Sarma had told ABP News on April 15 that he “always prays to God that relations between India and Bangladesh do not improve”. He had also endorsed his government’s policy of expelling (not deporting) people across the border. The summoning underlines the challenges that incoming Indian envoy Dinesh Trivedi – who incidentally belongs to the same BJP that rails against ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’ – will face in office.

The Supreme Court has granted anticipatory bail to Congress leader Pawan Khera in connection with the Assam police’s case against him over the party’s allegations against the Assam chief minister and his wife. These allegations and Sarma’s counter-allegations “appear to be politically motivated … rather than disclosing a situation warranting custodial interrogation”, the bench said, holding that any deprivation of the right to personal liberty “must be justified on a higher threshold” in such circumstances. The Gauhati high court had dismissed Khera’s plea for anticipatory bail. Prior to the Assam elections the Congress – in particular Khera – had brandished documents alleging that Sarma’s wife Riniki Bhuyan was a citizen of multiple countries and that Sarma did not disclose some of her assets, but serious doubts have been raised on their veracity.

Repolling will take place Saturday in 15 West Bengal booths – 11 in the Magrahat Paschim and four in the Diamond Harbour constituencies that voted on Wednesday, the Election Commission has announced. This is the first time repolling is taking place in this set of assembly elections. Meanwhile, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee showed up at the counting centre of her Bhabanipur constituency yesterday night amid allegations of tampering. The state’s chief electoral officer in a presser amid the high drama said that postal ballots were being opened according to rules and all political parties had been informed.

The Calcutta High Court said today that there was nothing illegal in the Election Commission’s decision to appoint only Union government or PSU employees as counting supervisors in West Bengal, prompting Mamata Banerjee to approach the Supreme Court with a plea that state government employees cannot be excluded. The matter will be heard Saturday.

“Germany already sells military equipment such as rifles, explosives and ammunition to India, but the submarine deal would mark its first major sale of a flagship weapon system to New Delhi in decades,” reports Nikkei Asia, as both countries deepen strategic ties. Meanwhile, Japan is also exploring a collaborative partnership with India for the manufacture of its modern Mogami warships.

A new working paper published in the National Statistics Office (NSO) journal Sarvekshana has revealed that India does not produce pulses in adequate amounts to meet the nutritional needs of its population. Moreover, other items such as vegetables, milk and protein foods are also failing to reach Indian dinner plates in adequate quantities. Production of dry fruits is also below the quantity needed to meet Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) norms and while the recommended consumption is 1.05 kg per person per month for vegetarians, most rural states record consumption figures between 0.08 and 0.25 kg.

After the Competition Commission of India issued Apple an ultimatum to submit its financial information so that a penalty can be calculated against it for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the app store market, the tech giant has moved the Delhi High Court. The CCI’s “decision to schedule a final hearing represents an escalation in its efforts to usurp the Hon’ble Court’s authority,” Aditya Kalra cites Apple as saying in its filing, marking another escalation in the issue. The firm argues that since it has challenged the way penalties are calculated in India, the CCI ought to wait before demanding its financials.

The BJP is taking advantage of a rift in Adivasi society. Nolina Minj reports that a law meant to empower Adivasis is being used to target Christians in Chhattisgarh.

Thou shalt not visit the premises wearing “half-pants, bermudas, mini skirts, or western outfits such as jeans and tops”, the Baghpat Digambar Jain temple has told women visitors. “The decision has been taken to promote a sense of devotion and discipline among devotees,” a temple committee member told PTI. Digambar Jain monks do not wear any clothes as a mark of their total asceticism.

Two officials were booked earlier this week for allegedly allowing Uttarakhand minister Khajan Dass’s son to hold large-scale wedding preparations at the Sureshwari Devi temple in the core area of the Rajaji Tiger Reserve. Speaking to the Hindustan Times‘s Amit Bathla, the reserve’s acting director denied that permission was sought for the event. The minister, who claimed otherwise, has not faced any action.

On history and its confrontations, read this excerpt from historian Romila Thapar’s upcoming memoir Just Being, published by Seagull Books. [See also Watch Out]

May Day under surveillance in New India

May 1 is May Day – a day that marks the celebration of the labour movement across the world, as workers’ protests erupt globally over rising energy costs linked to the US-Israel war on Iran. But in Noida, which recently witnessed serial widespread protests by frustrated industrial workers against the harsh realities of the Indian labour regime of long hours and low wages, May Day arrived under the shadow of the state.

Gautam Buddha Nagar Police are on high alert, invoking Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to ban unlawful assemblies across the district from 30 April to 8 May. More than 1,700 police personnel have been deployed, with drones monitoring over 50 locations and round-the-clock CCTV surveillance in sensitive industrial areas, including the Hosiery Complex.

Solar is not enough, data shows what India needs is more efficient grid integration

India’s peak electricity demand hit an all-time high of 256 GW on April 26, surpassing the previous record in January, but the country curtailed – i.e. wasted – over 30 GW of renewable energy (RE) in the first three months of this year, highlighting the need to address grid efficiency and integration challenges, according to this analysis by Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The researchers note that the losses, particularly during high renewable generation hours, point to constraints in the grid. “Without investments in battery storage, transmission upgrades, flexible thermal operations, and demand-side management, a rising share of clean electricity risks being wasted even as RE capacity continues to expand,” they noted. This issue is especially significant as India is expected to experience an above-average number of heatwave days in May, which is likely to further drive up electricity demand and intensify pressure on the power system.

India has lost its place in AI?

The Indian market has had a turbulent run in 2026, hit by tariffs, rising energy prices and sustained foreign capital outflows. Market analyst Ruchir Sharma says one major reason for growing investor indifference is India’s weak position in artificial intelligence, arguing that the world today has a “mono-maniacal focus” on AI winners and losers. Speaking at Express Adda, Sharma said that unlike the 1999–2000 tech boom, “most foreigners have taken the view that India is a loser in the AI context,” adding that countries such as Japan and Taiwan are currently seen as better placed in the global AI race.

The Long Cable

Before the Vote, the Verdict: A Communal Campaign and a Tilted Playing Field in West Bengal

Apoorvanand

Voting for the new legislative assembly in West Bengal is over and the results will be declared on May 4. But before that, a consensus is being engineered that suggests Mamata Banerjee has already lost the election. Given the clinical manner in which this exercise was orchestrated, such an outcome may appear natural, even inevitable. While not making any guesses about the verdict, what we can do is to look back at the election campaign and try to understand what its conduct portends for the future of Bengal and the Indian Republic.

The election was, ostensibly, a duel between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress. Yet, the Election Commission acted less as a neutral arbiter and more as a logistical auxiliary of the BJP, placing its vast institutional resources at the disposal of the ruling party at the Centre. The Supreme Court, too, by endorsing everything that the Commission did, provided a silent endorsement of this profound imbalance. If the people accept this model of managed democracy, our elections risk devolving into the hollow rituals once seen in the former Soviet Union — where the destination is determined long before the first step is taken.

Sections of the press characterised this as the ‘toughest battle’ for Mamata Banerjee. It was certainly a ‘war’ if one considers the staggering, almost siege-like deployment of the Central Armed Paramilitary Forces. Observers ironically noted that only the Air Force and Navy were not mobilised. This deployment had less to do with the peaceful conduct of the elections and more to intimidate the Trinamool workers and exert psychological pressure on the electorate. The conduct of these forces was transparently partisan; the act of turning away voters simply for wearing a lungi was a visceral manifestation of a political culture that seeks to “identify people by their clothes.”

The EC had signalled its intent early through a series of menacing proclamations, smoothening the path for the BJP by removing every perceived structural hurdle. Under the guise of ‘purifying’ electoral rolls, over 27 lakh living citizens were disenfranchised. The Commission’s primary interest lay not in the integrity of the vote, but in the surgical excision of an electorate deemed inconvenient to the BJP. The logic used to justify these mass deletions was so convoluted that even the Supreme Court found it “unprecedented and irrational.” Yet, the court displayed no urgency in restoring these fundamental rights, dismissively asking, “What disaster will befall if they cannot vote in this election?” This judicial indifference to the looting of the democratic rights of citizens is surely a bad omen for what lies ahead.

Even polling officials found their own names struck from the lists. To the apex court, this was a mere triviality. They were told to conduct the polls today and worry about their own franchise in the next cycle. It did not go unnoticed that the names deleted were disproportionately Muslim, particularly in constituencies where their presence can be decisive.

Simultaneously, central investigative agencies were unleashed upon the professional firm managing the TMC’s campaign. The objective was a calculated paralysis of the party’s machinery. This was confirmed when, immediately following the final phase of polling, the arrested persons were granted bail without opposition from the Enforcement Directorate. The relentless punitive action against TMC cadres was so brazen that the Calcutta High Court was forced to restrain the Election Commission twice. Yet, the arrests continued. The institutions tasked with safeguarding democracy left no stone unturned to make the task easy for the BJP. It was a race where one contestant’s hands were tied behind their back—a spectacle that some find deeply worrying, but which many others, alas, seem to relish.

The BJP’s slogan of Parivorton (‘change’) served as a thin veil, much like ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ once masked its communal core. Behind this rhetoric, the term used with the most violent frequency was ‘infiltrator.’ Amit Shah repeatedly framed Mamata Banerjee as the patron of these ‘outsiders,’ vowing to oust them ‘one by one.’ The subtext was clear to all.

Shahjahan Sheikh, the TMC leader accused of land-grabbing and violence in Sandeshkhali, was labelled an ‘infiltrator.’ He could have been termed a criminal, but the Home Minister deliberately chose a communal category to reinforce the narrative that the Muslim is an eternal outsider. This was complemented by the convenient emergence of Humayun Kabir, whose rhetoric regarding the Babri Masjid provided the BJP with the perfect excuse to speak about Muslim dominance. Amit Shah seized upon this immediately, declaring that “as long as a single BJP worker is alive,” such a project would be thwarted. In the political geography of Bengal, many suspect Kabir to be a tactical plant of the BJP itself—a tool to provoke the very majoritarian mobilisation the BJP thrives upon.

All BJP leaders kept promising the Uniform Civil Code. We know what it means.

Narendra Modi, in his trademark coded vocabulary, accused Banerjee of obstructing Durga Puja for the sake of “vote-bank politics.” The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh shouted that Urdu would not be allowed to become the language of Bengal, which, apparently, the TMC rule would do. He accused the TMC of conspiring to make Bengal ‘Hindu-shunya’. BJP leader and Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma framed the contest as a civilizational struggle of the ‘indigenous’ against the ‘intruder.’

The local face of the BJP, Suvendu Adhikari, anchored his campaign in the slogan of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, explicitly weaponizing the act of worship: “I am offering puja, Mamata is doing Namaz.” The attempt to polarise the electorate required no further explanation.

The BJP contested this election entirely in the vocabulary of Hindutva, seeking to ‘save’ Hindus from a manufactured Muslim threat. It was a campaign that did not seek the Muslim vote; it sought to consolidate the Hindu vote against them. This communal blitzkrieg, sanctioned by the partisan conduct of the Election Commission, has left the thinking citizens of Bengal in a state of profound anxiety. If a government is inaugurated on the back of such a campaign, the nature of its future reign is not difficult to imagine.

(Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.)

Reportedly

The trigger is the allegation that Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann came to the House drunk but if the leader of the opposition in the Punjab assembly has his way, the desks of legislators may eventually come equipped not just with voting buttons but breathalysers.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Now that swathes of people find themselves out of West Bengal’s voter rolls, what lies next for them? “If Assam is any indication,” cautions co-director of the Citizenship and Immigration Law Clinic Darshana Mitra, “it will be the beginning of a long journey through arbitrary procedures and towards exile”.

Prime number: 40%

The Public Transport Forum and Greenpeace India audited 231 bus stops in ten of Delhi’s 13 districts and found that 40% of them did not have any seating arrangements. Avinash Chanchal of Greenpeace rattles off more discomfiting numbers: “9 out of 10 have no ramp, 8 out of 10 have no pedestrian crossing, and two-third have no lighting. In a city facing extreme heat, 17% of bus stops don’t even have a roof.”

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• On the Modi government’s proposed amendments to the IT Act, which might just obliterate the free internet as we know it – pushing us deeper into self-censorship – Arman Khan writes that “the stakes are particularly high for Muslims like me, who face constant pressure in Mr. Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist India to prove our patriotism even as the ruling party weakens our voting rights and otherwise marginalizes us. When I share a political post on Instagram, it is nearly always followed by a panicked call from my parents, worried about the legal repercussions. Every word I write, including in this essay, is tinged with fear. Like many others, I have become less vocal on social media. With each passing day, our voices are diminished.”

• The rupee’s weakness amid global turmoil and capital outflows may limit RBI’s policy stance, raising risks of rate hikes as inflation, currency pressure and external shocks reshape India’s monetary outlook, notes Andy Mukherjee.

• Rishabh Kachroo argues that India’s once-vital ideal of scientific temper—championed by Nehru as a democratic ethic—has hollowed into rhetoric amid misinformation and cultural nationalism. Reviving it, he contends, requires rebuilding institutions and public spaces that enable questioning, reasoning, and democratic deliberation.

• Kerala’s “consensus” rests on broad social welfare, local democracy, and cross-community equality, built through participatory governance and decentralization, writes Kushanava Choudhury. Rather than a fixed ideology, it reflects a shared commitment to social protection and inclusion—showing that empowering citizens to shape policy can sustain equitable development across caste, class, and religion.

• Writing about the Great Nicobar controversy, Bharat Bhushan argues that the Modi government is using the ‘commercial worth’ and ‘strategic’ nature of the project to bypass scrutiny. He warns of severe ecological damage and geopolitical fallout, urging transparent parliamentary oversight and a wider public debate.

• The government has systematically weakened environmental safeguards to fast-track corporate projects, treating nature as expendable, writes Gurdeep Sappal. Rapid clearances, he contends, have driven deforestation, pollution, and climate stress, prioritising industrial growth while leaving citizens to bear mounting ecological and public health costs.

Listen up

On The Mishal Husain show, Amitav Ghosh says that India is struggling to find its role in the world amid continental competition from China, Russia and Iran.

Watch out

“Some things I might have done a little differently. I don’t regret anything I’ve done, which I suppose is an arrogant comment, but then a whiff of arrogance is almost necessary to keep one going in these times,” says Romila Thapar in this interview to Hartosh Singh Bal, reflecting on her well-lived life.

Over and out

• New York authorities have returned over 657 looted antiquities, valued at $14 million to India. And though Mayor Zohran Mamdani drew praise from some quarters for telling reporters that he would ask King Charles to return the Kohinoor diamond to India if he happened to meet the British monarch, the process of seizure of stolen artifacts in New York began before Mamdani was elected!

• In this guide, Anuj Behal maps Delhi’s queer heritage spaces, tracing sites of belonging and resistance in a city where living openly can still be challenging amid deeply entrenched social mindsets.

• As Ahmedabad launches its first monkey census amid rising attacks, the much-hyped ‘Gujarat Model’ now seems to include urban chaos so advanced that even monkeys have joined the development story.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 30, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

Weighed down by the upward march of oil prices – Brent crude futures have hit a four-year high of $126.4 per barrel – and foreign investment outflows, but also hawkish signalling from some Federal Reserve officials, the rupee touched another all-time low on Thursday, falling to 95.33 to the dollar before closing at 94.91. This, notes Jaspreet Kalra, “has wiped out gains spurred by the [RBI’s] use of rare currency-supportive regulatory measures late last month”, and risks triggering a “negative feedback loop on foreign capital flows”. With the currency plumbing a new low, analysts anticipate that the RBI may be considering more regulatory action.

One of the measures the RBI had taken was to extend a special foreign exchange credit line through the SBI to state-owned oil refiners in order to reduce spot dollar purchases for oil imports. However these reluctant refiners have limited their use of the facility as “they expect the rupee to weaken ​further, which would raise their repayment burden”, Nimesh Vora and Nidhi Verma report citing sources. This too had fuelled concerns that the rupee would fall further.

The Nifty 50 and the Sensex rose 7.5% and 6.9% respectively in April, marking their best monthly run since December 2023, as the Iran ceasefire, “attractive valuations and an earnings season largely free of major negative surprises helped overpower record foreign outflows”, says Bharath Rajeswaran. Speaking of those outflows, the $20 billion that foreign investors pulled out of Indian equities in the first four months of this year – almost all of it after the US and Israel launched their war – is higher than the $18.9 billion they sold in all of last year, Rajeswaran and Pranav Kashyap report. FPI ownership in Indian equities in the March quarter also fell to a 16-year-low of 16%, while domestic investors raised their shareholding to a record 29%, according to Morgan Stanley.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit the UAE and meet President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in mid-May, reports say. The West Asia crisis, rising oil prices and, prominently, Abu Dhabi’s exit from OPEC and OPEC+ would form the background for such a trip.

Vinesh Chandel, founder and director of I-PAC, was granted bail today, one day after polling ended in West Bengal, in the Enforcement Directorate’s case against him in an alleged coal pilferage matter. The agency, which arrested him days ahead of the elections where I-PAC was managing the ruling Trinamool Congress’s campaign, did not oppose his plea for bail.

What are those people among the 27 lakh names left out of West Bengal’s voter rolls supposed to do now that the election is over? While two cases,

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 29, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Despite travel restrictions and the suspension of helicopter services to the Nicobar group of islands from April 28 to May 1, or until further orders, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi managed to reach Great Nicobar, the southernmost island in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, where he sharply criticised the Union government’s proposed Rs 92,000-crore infrastructure push. Gandhi described the massive project – set to replace nearly 160 square kilometres of lush primary rainforest while also threatening coral reefs and turtle nesting sites – as one of the country’s “biggest scams” and the “largest thefts of ecological property.”

He also alleged that the Union government was going ahead with these projects so that Gautam Adani, the owner of the Adani Group, would benefit from this: “It’s amazing that 160 sq km of this forest is going to be chopped up so that one businessman Mr. Adani can fulfill his fantasies. Just the wood here is worth lakhs of crores,” said Gandhi.

At 1:34–1:36 in the video uploaded on X, a rare endemic mammal is briefly visible sprinting along a branch in the background: a Nicobar treeshrew, one of the species whose survival is at stake, as Gandhi speaks while standing beneath the large old-growth rainforest trees of Great Nicobar Island. This was quickly identified by Dr Divya Mudappa, a prominent ecologist with the Nature Conservation Foundation.

The project must be stopped. And it can be stopped if Indians choose to see what he has seen, Gandhi said.

As polling concluded earlier today in an election like no other under the shadow of the SIR of electoral rolls by the Election Commission, the embargo on exit polls lifted at 6:30 pm, with several news channels have unveiled their predictions soon after [See Huge turnout again in Bengal phase 2; exit polls out with forecasts]. Television coverage, as expected, was triumphant with “record voting” through the evening, but much of it may overlook an incredibly important point: the total electorate has shrunk, notes The Hindu’s editorial.

“According to provisional Election Commission of India (ECI) data, 93.2% of voters turned out in the first phase in West Bengal and 85.1% in T.N. These record numbers must be read against the backdrop of the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which led to massive net voter deletions. In T.N., the rolls shrank by 10.5% from the pre-SIR figure, while in West Bengal nearly 13% of the electorate was deleted, with the eligibility of lakhs of voters still being heard by tribunals. If this is factored in, the percentage turnout begins to look inflated by a reduced denominator (total electorate) rather than by genuinely expanded participation (the numerator). The absolute increase in turnout in T.N. — about 27 lakh votes on provisional figures — was in fact among the lowest in recent electoral cycles, suggesting that wrongful deletions may have suppressed real participation even if the SIR did clear the electoral rolls of those who had died or moved out.”

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has

Read more

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 28, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The United Arab Emirates has announced that it is quitting OPEC, the global cartel of oil producers. Since the cartel fixes production quotas for members as a way of keeping oil prices up, UAE’s exit could lead to some softening of oil prices at a time when crude is trading at a high. While that may sound like good news for oil importers like India, the Emirates’ decision will also likely lead to greater instability and volatility in the world oil market, which is not such good news.

As the West Asian crisis triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran enters its third month, the World Bank said that energy prices could jump by 24% in 2026 – reaching their highest level since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago – even if the most severe disruptions from the war ease by May. In its latest Commodity Markets Outlook, the bank warned that prices could climb even higher if hostilities escalate or supply disruptions persist longer than expected. [See below for how airlines are warning of ‘potential shutdowns’ over rising fuel costs]

The Indian rupee fell to a near one-month low on Tuesday, pressured by high oil prices and importer hedging, underscoring concerns for India as a major crude importer. The rupee touched a low of 94.54 per dollar during the trading session, its ‌weakest level ⁠since March ⁠30, before closing at 94.19, down 0.4% on the day.

At the same time, India is battling a severe heatwave across parts of the northwest and central regions, where at least six heat-related deaths have been reported in Odisha and West Bengal, alongside rising heatstroke cases in Maharashtra. Bloomberg notes that extreme heat and below-normal rainfall could further stoke inflation, adding fresh economic strain as policymakers confront mounting energy costs and climate-linked disruptions.

Delhi high court Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma has recused herself from hearing Congress MP Karti Chidambaram’s plea to quash the CBI’s corruption case against him in the Diageo Scotland bribery matter. She did not say why. Earlier this year too, the judge recused herself from hearing Chidambaram’s plea challenging a trial court order in an alleged Chinese visa scam case. Her recusal comes against the backdrop of her refusal to do so in the Delhi liquor policy case as sought by former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who has accused her of bias.

As the rest of West Bengal votes tomorrow to conclude a deeply contentious election, the process has become a nightmare for lakhs on the margins who have been forced to prove their homeland [See Watch Out]. The appellate tribunals set up to hear pleas by those left out of Bengal’s voter rolls even by the judicial officer-led adjudication process have cleared just 1,468 names for

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 27, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Hopes for more talks between Washington and Tehran dimmed over the weekend after Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi left Islamabad for Oman and US President Donald Trump cancelled the visit of his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to the Pakistani capital. Oil prices continued going up and Brent crude appreciated by some 2.5% to roughly $108 a barrel on Monday. The authorities in Islamabad too lifted their lockdown in parts of the city, and the Serena Hotel where US and Iranian delegations had met for their first and only round of talks has started accepting reservations from the public, “in a sign that no face-to-face meetings are planned any time soon”, notes Reuters.

Meanwhile, Ebrahim Rezaei, who is spokesperson for the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iran’s parliament, wrote on X yesterday that although Pakistan “is a good friend and neighbour of ours”, “it is not a suitable intermediary for negotiations. They always take Trump’s interests into account and do not say a word against the Americans’ wishes. For example, they are unwilling to tell the world that America first accepted Pakistan’s proposal but then went back on its word,” he said.

Those who claim that India is neutral in West Asia are wrong. As this report by Suhasini Haidar shows, under Modi, India is firmly on the side of Israel, to the extent that BRICS members were surprised at its insistence on diluting existing language on Israel and Palestine. During the meeting of the grouping’s deputy foreign ministers and special envoys in Delhi last week, officials from the Ministry of External Affairs attempted to soften

“language that criticised Israel for its bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon, as well as dropping a reference to “East Jerusalem” to be established as the capital of the Palestinian state as a part of the two-state solution. Ministry officials even sought to replace references of “Israel” while criticising its operations in the West Bank and Lebanon with the less direct term “occupying power”,” reports Suhasini Haidar.

This was “opposed by almost all other members”, she writes citing sources.

As cash-strapped Pakistan tried to

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. Today is that day. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 24, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

Washington will dispatch special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner to Islamabad on Saturday for a second time to conduct direct talks with Iran, the White House has announced. Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation to the Pakistani capital for the previous round of peace talks, “is on standby and is willing to dispatch to Pakistan if we feel it’s a necessary use of his time”, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Aragchi is already in Islamabad, having arrived on Friday night. For his part he did not say who would meet, writing that his visit relates to “bilateral matters” and consultations on “regional developments”.

Pakistan had been trying to orchestrate a second iteration of talks after the first round ended without an agreement. Trump earlier this week indefinitely extended the ceasefire with Iran but the US continues to blockade Iranian ports on the Strait of Hormuz, something that Tehran had deemed a violation of the ceasefire and which prompted it to resume its own closure of the key chokepoint.

The deputy foreign ministers and special envoys of the BRICS countries met in Delhi on Friday but their meeting did not yield a joint statement; instead India, currently BRICS chair, issued a chair’s statement, highlighting divisions in the expanded grouping: Iran and the UAE, which Tehran has struck in response to the US-Israeli attacks on itself, are both members. The chair’s statement said that attendees “expressed deep concern on the recent conflict in the Middle East and offered views and assessments on the matter”. This is a break from the grouping’s more pointed language last year under Brazil’s leadership. The current impasse also occurs as Iran has urged BRICS to play a “strong” and “constructive” role in addressing the crisis.

High-frequency indicators of economic activity for March “displayed divergent trends” against the background of the West Asia war, wherein “demand conditions remained resilient, despite some pockets of slowdown in economic momentum”, the RBI has said in its ‘State of the Economy’ publication included in its bulletin. The central bank said that although overall demand conditions were resilient, “early signs of deceleration are … evident in select indicators like port cargo, air passenger traffic and the outlook of purchasing managers”.

Elevated oil prices caused by the war as well as a decline in IT stocks took the Nifty 50 and Sensex indices down by 1.9% and 2.3% respectively over the week, ending two weeks of gains. Alongside the heavy foreign portfolio outflows India has witnessed, the spike in oil prices has also eroded the valuation of the rupee relative to other major currencies: its 40-currency real effective exchange rate went down to 92.72 per the RBI’s bulletin. Jaspreet Kalra explains that

“A weaker ‌real-effective exchange ⁠rate helps make exports out of India more competitive, while increasing the cost of imports. It also offers foreign investors a cheaper entry point to the currency, even while hitting the value of their existing investments in Indian equities and fixed income in foreign currency terms.”

As Pakistani officials prepared to host a second round of US-Iranian peace talks on short notice, swathes of Islamabad remained cordoned off, affecting business and travel plans. A produce vendor pointed out speaking to Ariba Shahid that trucks full of fruits and vegetables are idling outside the perimeter, and a bus station manager said that over a thousand passengers have been cut off every day. Journalists are among those affected too: “Camera crews remain poised. Equipment is ready. Phones are checked ​and rechecked. But after a week of waiting, ​there is little to report,” Shahid wrote in her report published before Witkoff and Kushner’s second trip was announced.

Subscribe now

Seventy-three opposition MPs have submitted a second notice seeking the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, citing nine alleged faults including a “partisan asymmetry” in enforcing the model code of conduct, the Election Commission’s “straight talk” post aimed at the Trinamool Congress and the “mass disenfranchisement” caused by the West Bengal special intensive revision, Sravasti Dasgupta reports. The MPs submitted their notice to the Rajya Sabha secretary general days after their previous attempt was rejected by the chairmen of both Houses.

In a move that raises serious questions about access to electoral rights, the Supreme Court refused to hear petitions from electoral officers whose names were struck off the rolls during the Bengal SIR – even as the first phase of voting is over. LiveLaw reports that 65 officers on election duty, complete with EPIC numbers, approached the court after being left out of the rolls. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant sent them back to appellate tribunals that the petitioners said have yet to act on their appeals already filed on April 5. The court’s refusal to entertain the petition will mean that there is a good chance their appeals will not be heard in time. Out of over 14 lakh people found ineligible to vote in the first phase, only 136 were reportedly cleared by the appellate tribunal – barely 0.01% of those affected.

Yesterday the Congress issued a “summary response” to the EC’s notice to party president Mallikarjun Kharge for calling Modi a “terrorist”, denying that it had violated the model code of conduct and objecting to the 24-hour response window given to it as insufficient given that Kharge was in the middle of campaigning. The response, written by party MP Jairam Ramesh to CEC Kumar, also said Modi violated the MCC with his April 19 national address and, allegedly, Shah with his pre-poll remarks but that the EC did nothing then. Ramesh also said that the Congress received two copies of the notice, each signed by a different official and only one of which mentioned the Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien as a complainant [see Drawn and quartered].

Meanwhile, the Indian Express reports that the Enforcement Directorate conducted almost 20 operations in West Bengal over the past two months – involving searches of more than 50 premises across six cities, summons to nine individuals and arrests of four people. The ED has framed many of its interventions as efforts to ensure “free, fair and fearless elections”, a claim strongly contested by the Trinamool Congress.

Among the notable actions were searches at the residence of I-PAC director Pratik Jain and the arrest of fellow director Vinesh Chandel. I-PAC, a political consultancy firm, counts the TMC among its major clients.

As Pavan Korada observes, the pattern is hard to miss: Union agencies like the ED are frequently deployed by the BJP during elections, even as its conviction rate remains low and trials in most Prevention of Money Laundering Act have yet to begin. [See Item 1]

Hearing a case where the Saharanpur police lodged a kidnapping FIR based on a complaint by the father of an 18-year-old woman saying she had eloped with another man, the Allahabad high court was not amused. “No one has business to tell a major, where he or she will stay, or with whom he or she will live, marry or spend his or her life,” the bench comprising Justices J.J. Munir and Tarun Saxena said this week while quashing the FIR. It pointedly added: “The police are doing great disservice by registering FIRs such as these, and more than that, chasing the young couple, [sometimes] with [an] ulterior motive to forcibly separate them … These actions are absolutely illegal and some of them are offences.”

In light of the AI firm Anthropic claiming that its new model Claude Mythos has identified “thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser” – something that has generated consternation in the financial and regulatory worlds – Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman met the chiefs of various banks along with senior officials from the RBI and the National Payments Corporation of India to take stock of the situation.

Appearing for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, advocate M.R. Shamshad argued in the Supreme Court that while Islam does not prohibit women from going to mosques, they cannot enter through the front door or demand not to be separated from the men inside. The court was considering constitutional questions arising from the challenge against its 2018 Sabarimala judgment as well as a plea by a Muslim couple from Pune. Shamshad also said that “as far as men’s position is concerned, it is obligatory for him to be part of the congregation … For women, it is preferable that she stays at home”, although she is not prohibited from going to the mosque.

When the three-member selection committee comprising the prime minister, the home minister and the Lok Sabha leader of opposition deliberated on whom to appoint as chief information commissioner, Rahul Gandhi had asked that former IAS officer Sumita Dawra be made CIC or, if the panel was inclined to peruse names outside the shortlist prepared, consider former Odisha high court Justice S. Muralidharan or academic Faizan Mustafa too. The government-majority panel ended up selecting Shah’s choice, ex-law secretary Raj Kumar Goyal, as CIC, per documents the Union personnel and training has now made public.

A year after the deadly Pahalgam terrorist attack, Peerzada Ashiq reports that local residents are still struggling with its aftermath. Tourism remains subdued, many have lost their livelihoods and a heavy security presence continues to shape daily life, leaving the community facing an uncertain future.

Earlier this week the CBI arrested one official each from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and Reliance Industries on allegations that they agreed on a bribe to process drone import applications from Reliance subsidiary Asteria Aerospace. Today a Delhi court remanded the duo to judicial custody till May 6. For those of us who have never heard of Asteria before, Reuters has this primer.

Zen Sadavarte, daughter of lawyer Gunratan Sadavarte, has filed a police complaint against the woman who bravely confronted Maharashtra BJP minister Girish Mahajan after his rally against the opposition’s blocking of the Modi government’s delimitation agenda choked up the city’s Worli neighbourhood. Sadavarte alleged that the unidentified woman attempted to trigger a stampede and sought action against her under multiple sections of the BNS. No FIR has been lodged (yet), but one has been registered against members of the BJP morcha for violating the conditions under which the march was greenlit.

Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal, five other AAP Rajya Sabha MPs set to join BJP

Weeks after his public falling out with the Aam Aadmi Party, which moved to replace him as its deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha with Ashok Mittal, Raghav Chadha is now set to join the BJP, which he had called “anpadh gundon ki party” (‘a party of uneducated thugs’) in 2022. In a press conference in Delhi with Mittal and Sandeep Pathak, Chadha announced that he, alongside two-thirds of the AAP’s members in the Rajya Sabha, have decided to “merge ourselves with the BJP”. “Besides us, there are Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney and Swati Maliwal,” he announced, saying that the AAP is no longer working “in the national interest but for personal gain”. This also comes a week after the ED conducted searches at premises linked to Mittal. AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said he will formally ask to have Chadha, Mittal and Pathak disqualified from the House.

The timing is telling. Modi’s home state, Gujarat, is heading for local body elections, which are about more than municipal control [See Prime number]. While the BJP remains comfortable in its home state, the AAP has emerged as a significant rival. Once these seven AAP leaders formally become BJP MPs, the NDA’s strength in the currently 244-member strong Rajya Sabha would further increase to 149 (and the BJP’s to 113).

Telangana police invoke UAPA to extract info on outlet critical of ruling Congress

Telangana’s police have invoked the draconian, anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act to seek information pertaining to the X account of TeluguScribe, a social media outlet whose content is critical of the state’s Congress government and favourable of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. An official of the police’s intelligence wing wrote to X saying that TeluguScribe’s account “is purported to contain derogatory content aimed at defaming in the local Public of Telangana State [sic]”. This content not only “undermines the dignity of a public figure” but could “incite hatred and violence”. TeluguScribe called the move “nothing but a blatant abuse of power”. Activists too have slammed the police’s actions.

Sergio Gor may go to Kathmandu as both US and China court new Balendra Shah govt

Sergio Gor, who apart from being the US’s ambassador to India is also special envoy for South and Central Asia, is planning to visit Kathmandu for four days starting April 30 as both Washington and Beijing forge ties with the new Balendra Shah-led government, reports Anil Giri for the Kathmandu Post. He writes it is not clear if Shah – who became prime minister after a landslide election victory in the wake of the youth-led violent uprising of September – will meet Gor because of his reported policy of meeting only ministers or higher-level officials from abroad. Gor’s visit would occur days after assistant secretary of state S. Paul Kapur’s trip to Kathmandu, which took place concurrently with that of Chinese foreign ministry official Cao Jing.

Book excerpt

Rape, beatings, addiction: the incalculable burdens borne by Delhi’s homeless girls

Harsh Mander

A sullied hand tugs insistently at your clothes. You turn to see a little arm outstretched – peremptory and tentative at the same time – a small head of tousled, matted hair, patchy and pallid skin coated with many days of unwashed dirt, bare sprightly feet, and a loose faded frock almost slipping off the little girl’s slender shoulders. On those shoulders rests the burden of the survival of a large destitute family. And yet, almost miraculously, what shines through the grime is the most beautiful pair of sparkling black eyes.

Delhi has far fewer street girls than boys, but those girls who are forced to work on its mean streets negotiate daily the metropolis at its most predatory. Shahida is barely ten years old. Part of a family of migrants from a village near Kolkata, she is delicate and fragile behind her grubby exterior. Neither she nor her younger sister can hear or speak. Their father is addicted to smack and lolls about all day in a small rented hut in Shastri Nagar. His two daughters beg with wordless insistence at Hanuman Mandir near Yamuna Pushta.

To throngs of waiting beggars, some temple devotees give bananas and other fruits, others bring cooked kulchas and kachoris with halwa; many give away sweetmeats as prasad. On festival days or in memory of loved ones, some even distribute clothes. But the day’s work for the sisters is not complete without collections of alms of cash, coins wheedled out of those who line up for worship at the shrine. Their mother sits on a side lane, and the deaf-mute girls leave with her their collections, and run back for more.

A group of volunteers are sitting outside the temple gates, talking with a group of girls who live by begging. Suddenly Shahida tenses, visibly wilts and tries to hide behind one of the young women volunteers. An older street girl, Shabana, fiercely runs and grabs the shirt of a disabled old man who is walking past. He too cannot speak, but he angrily gesticulates and threatens the girls. Shabana protectively embraces the younger Shahida. Her unspeakably gloomy and sordid tale then unfolds.

Shahida’s mother has sold her daughter to this aged man, a veteran of the temple premises. He rapes her regularly and in return, he gives money to the family to enable it to survive from day to day. We find her mother and urge her to let us take the girl under our care. She declines sadly. “I love my daughter. But if I let her go, how will we live?” While we plan to requisition the police to rescue the girl, I struggle to not judge the utterly defeated older woman. But I find this very hard.

Shabana’s family migrated years ago from Bihar. They had built a tiny shanty in a slum near the iron bridge across the Yamuna River, not far from the cremation grounds, and lived there for 18 years. But more than three years ago, these were razed by government dozers and they were forcibly shifted to a resettlement site in distant Bawana. The house sites there required a down payment of Rs 7,000, which they could not afford to pay. So they now live under a blue plastic sheet on a pavement.

Each day, the family of six takes a two-hour crowded bus ride each way, costing Rs 10 each, to reach the Yamuna Pushta area. Their father used to ply a rickshaw in Chandni Chowk, but these were recently banned by the traffic police, so he mopes unemployed. His four children have been set to work. For the younger two, work is begging at the temple, and for the older ones, earnings are more through ragpicking.

Many street boys courageously negotiate lives alone on the streets, rebelling against abuse and neglect in their homes by severing links with their families. By contrast, most street girls we encounter in Delhi continue to live on pavements or in slums with families, which send them out to earn to support their siblings and parents. This they do stoically and bravely, but with much less of the reckless joyfulness that street boys craft out of their hard-won freedom.

In their early years, street girls mostly beg. As they grow older, the majority rag-pick at waste dumps and markets, earning more than Rs 100 daily. Bullied and molested, they learn to shout swear words, and grapple with their fists. Many chew tobacco or sniff adhesive solution bought from cycle shops for a high. And either through their parents or on their own, many learn early ways to furtively earn larger sums from older men who seek street-sex with children.

Sita is 14, and is often detained by the local police. They call her an incorrigible thief. For years, her family has sent her out to earn, beating her if she returns with less than Rs 150 each evening. Usually this is not difficult, as she is an expert rag-picker. But she is not just her family’s principal bread earner; she is also a child. And there are days when she and her street friends lose track of time in their games in the public park. She realises it is evening, and she will be thrashed if she returns home empty-handed. So she breaks into homes and steals what she can clutch and sell in the black market. Other days, she finds a man who wants sex: they are easy to spot. She takes money in advance, and they quickly conclude their liaison in a dark corner of a park. Sometimes she is able to nimbly run away with the man’s money before he is able to grab her, but mostly she is not so lucky.

Many street girls have single mothers. Zahida’s husband left her ten years ago, and her sons grew into drunken vagabonds. It is her two daughters who help her light the kitchen fires through rag-picking. Asha’s father also left home, leaving behind three brothers and three sisters. Her mother started living with another man, who drinks away the money that the children bring home from rag-picking. For Zahida, the story was the same but it ended in gruesome tragedy five months earlier, when the man she lived with killed her son in rage when she refused to part with her life’s savings of Rs 4,000. He is now in jail, and Zahida is surviving on the pavements of Bawana.

Chandni’s blind mother has begged all her life but heroically taken her five daughters through elementary school. Proud that she has studied up to class VII, Chandni insists on speaking in broken English. But most street girls are not so fortunate. Every single girl we have met on the streets longs to study, but this is possible only if the government opens hundreds of residential schools for them.

The Delhi government has at last agreed to help us open three such residential schools for street children. And many more mothers have agreed than the schools have space for, to sacrifice the earnings of their girls so that they live safe and happy childhoods illuminated by learning.

One girl tells us wistfully, “Even if my father does not let me go, I want to wear a school uniform even for one day. Can I at least do that? Just for one day?”

Excerpted from Under Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of India’s Cities (Yoda Press, February 2026). Harsh Mander is a social worker and writer.

Reportedly

During a discussion at the Hudson Institute on the ‘blind spots’ of the Indo-US relationship, Ram Madhav, who is seen as the RSS’s most credible voice on foreign affairs, asked what India may be doing wrong even after acceding to Washington on Iranian and Russian oil as well as Trump’s 50% tariff. “So where is India lagging behind exactly?” he asked on Thursday. Clearly his comments have embarrassed the Modi government because he took to X on Friday to ‘correct’ himself. “What I said was wrong. India didn’t agree to stopping import of oil from Russia anytime. Also it vigorously protested 50 percent tariff imposition … But factually incorrect. My apologies,” he said.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

After 2019 but especially after the 2024 general elections in which the BJP lost its parliamentary majority, Amit Shah’s public profile has been on the rise. He addressed more rallies in Bihar than Modi during last year’s election, was sitting next to Nitish Kumar as the latter filed his Rajya Sabha nomination this year, and has moved the government’s contentious business in parliament, including its delimitation agenda. Sravasti Dasgupta fleshes out this growth in Shah’s profile against the background of his overall political arc – and considers what it could mean in the short term but also for any succession plans the BJP may have for Modi.

Prime number: 730

In some 730 seats across the local bodies in Gujarat that are set to go to polls on the 26th, there will be no election because only one candidate remained in them after others withdrew their nominations. Here there is a “deeper concern about whether a level playing field existed in the first place”, Mehul Devkala writes in The Telegraph, noting the glaring parallel with the story of the pig Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

However, it isn’t just candidates who are under pressure: the BJP MP for Anand, Mitesh Patel, recently told voters that if they elected a Congress leader then ‘not a single rupee from his development grant would reach them’.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• Without a Quad summit hosted by India last year, and no summit planned for this year, the grouping is on the brink of extinction, writes Derek J. Grossman.

• Against the backdrop of the energy shortages India is facing due to the West Asia war, Andy Mukherjee moots the idea of three time zones for the country. “If morning alarms in the eastern region go off half an hour earlier than now, its factories and offices could start and finish while large solar farms in the west are still pumping cheap electricity into the grid … The load on the national grid would get less spiky if the entire nation doesn’t simultaneously ramp up electric stoves, EV chargers and high-intensity cooling in factories and data centres.”

• Instead of “empowering civil society leaders willing to advance peace and punishing those promoting and engaging in violence”, “political variables focused more on retaining power than achieving peace appear to have kept those seeking to advance hardline views in positions of influence on both sides of the divide” in Manipur under the BJP at the state and Union levels, The Hindu writes in its editorial. The state is reeling from a fresh uptick in unrest.

• The Modi government went ahead with its Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill last week even though it knew it could not cross the two-thirds threshold in the Lok Sabha. In doing so, V. Venkatesan writes, “what is abused is not the amendment but its engineered defeat, recast as opposition obstruction”. The way the Bill was tabled and voted upon “threatens … the [two-thirds] rule’s standing as a serious constitutional instrument. When a government tables an amendment it knows cannot pass, the test the rule was meant to impose never runs.”

• Kiranjot Kaur points out that the Punjab government’s new amendment to the Jaagat Jyot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar Act could end up “[criminalising] natural wear and tear and accidental damage” to copies of the Guru Granth Sahib owned even by individuals and provide legal backing to religious vigilantes. With that in mind, she writes, the fundamental question is this: “can the state protect religious sanctity without encroaching on religious autonomy?”

Listen up

After the Modi government’s Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill leading its delimitation package was defeated in the Lok Sabha, the BJP has turned its attention to the state elections. Modi “has fallen on his nose and now he has turned aggressive,” says Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, journalist and author, in this podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia.

Watch out

Writer and researcher Dhirendra K. Jha discusses the relationship between the RSS and the US with The Caravan’s Vishnu Sharma – explaining that since India’s independence in 1947, the US has sought to strengthen ties with the RSS because it saw the organisation as a counterbalance to the Congress. [In Hindi]

Over and out

Chillies are a staple of Indian cuisine and a vital crop for many women farmers. Despite the labour-intensive nature of the work – which discourages their male counterparts from taking it up – women farmers in Tamil Nadu say it offers a sense of independence that keeps them going. “If we labour hard enough in the fields for those few months, that extra income is enough to keep our homes running for the rest of the year,” one farmer told Kamala Thiagarajan. NPR captures their stories in a striking photo feature.

The MEA’s acquiescent response to Trump’s racist “hellhole” remark is telling. While Iran’s missions across India – from Hyderabad to Mumbai – took sharp digs at Trump, offering a masterclass in public diplomacy, India’s response felt timid and forgettable. Iran appears to be defending India’s reputation and honour stronger than the Modi government is.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 23, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Donald Trump today reposted a racist rant by a supporter on his social media timeline that included a reference to India and China as “hellholes”. The Ministry of External Affairs, noted Christopher Clary, would have been well within its rights to summon the US ambassador “and ask if the US President agrees with the posted letter that India is a “hellhole” (p.1) or that India is attempting through migrants to turn the US into its “colony.” However, it was only last week that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told Trump “the people of India love you” so the US president’s reference to India has left the leaders of Bharat tongue-tied. The Modi government usually bristles when the insults come from Pakistan or even Europe but all the MEA spokesperson had to offer this afternoon when asked by a reporter about Trump’s post was this astonishing response:

“We have seen some reports. That is where I leave it.”

Sensing this was playing badly with even the BJP’s supporters, the ministry decided later in the evening that it needed to say more but its second take too was delightfully vague, so as not to upset Trump:

In response to further questions on a social media post that had referred, among other things, to Indians, Official Spokesperson Shri Randhir Jaiswal said:

We have seen the comments, as also the subsequent statement issued by the US Embassy in response. The remarks are obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste. They certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests.

In case you are wondering what response the US embassy came up with that mollified the MEA, here it is: “The President has said “India is a great country with a very good friend of mine at the top.” In the end, it was left to the Iranian consulate in Hyderabad to put out what the Vishwaguru was unwilling to say:

As usual, memesters are running away with the scene:

The US Navy said it boarded a “stateless vessel” in the Indian Ocean overnight and “carried out a maritime interdiction and right-of-visit boarding of the sanctioned M/T Majestic X, transporting oil from Iran,” the US Department of War said on X. It added that the vessel was operating within the USINDOPACOM (United States Indo-Pacific Command) area of responsibility.

Tamil Nadu and West Bengal voted today, with both states governed by regional parties opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP is seeking to unseat the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC). Voter turnout reached 91.78% in West Bengal’s Phase 1 and 84.69% in

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 22, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

All of Tamil Nadu will vote in a few hours. West Bengal votes in the first phase on Thursday.

The Election Commission issued a notice to Congress chief Mallkarjun Kharge for calling Narendra Modi a “terrorist”. The notice came in response to a complaint by the BJP saying it was a violation of the Model Code of Conduct. The EC has asked Kharge to reply within 24 hours. The Commission’s swift response to the complaint stood out in comparison to the lack of information about its action, if any, on the complaints filed against Modi for his ‘address to the nation’ which had been filed by Opposition parties and a group of around 700 people, including academicians and activists. Kharge, who made his comments in a press conference, later clarified that he meant that Modi was “terrorising people and political parties”.

There are many stories on the travesty wrought upon the Indian electoral system with the EC’s opaque ways in West Bengal especially. But here is a small statistic that illustrates the extent of the suffering. Having decided to go ahead with the election schedule despite pushing 27 lakh voters into the grey zone of ‘under adjudication’, the Supreme Court last week magnanimously ordered the EC to ensure that those voters whose appeals are cleared by the various appellate tribunals in the state be added to the voting list. Well, as of now, the appellate tribunals have considered the cases of only 138 deleted voters. And guess how many they have reinstated? 136 of them.

Stories of voter exclusion will haunt India’s democracy for a long time to come. Aparna Bhattacharya writes that last year, Samserganj in

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 21, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

A year after the deadly Pahalgam terrorist attack, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government is yet to specify the “lapses” that allowed a group of gunmen to stage one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in Jammu & Kashmir, remedial measures taken, and whether accountability has been fixed. Jehangir Ali says this failure is significant given that officials of the Union home ministry including from the Intelligence Bureau had told an all-party meeting in the national capital on April 24, 2025 that “lapses” had led to the carnage.

The Quad leaders’ summit, which is expected to be hosted by India this year, was not held last year and is not on the cards this year either. No invitation has been sent to the leaders of Japan, Australia and the US so far. India is the rotating chair of the grouping. Foreign ministers from the four countries met twice last year and may meet again in May.

The Modi government, feeling the pinch (and punch) of the energy squeeze and mounting uncertainty in West Asia, at last appears to be stepping up its diplomatic outreach to key regional players. In a surprise one-day visit to Riyadh on Monday, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval held talks with his Saudi counterpart, Musaed Al-Aiban, reportedly on the instructions of PM Modi. The visit comes as speculation continues over a possible second round of talks between the US and Iran in Pakistan and the wider West Asia crisis deepening after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran. The Speaker of iran’s Majlis Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has said Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after US President Donald Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire expires on Wednesday without a deal. According to The Hindu, Doval’s visit is also being seen as India’s efforts to shore up ties with the major oil and gas suppliers amidst a possible energy crisis.

Pakistan’s emergence as a key diplomatic player in the ongoing conflict in West Asia is being reportedly attributed to years of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Texas-based firm Linden Strategies, which cultivated deep ties in Washington. What many Pakistanis now see as a moment of national significance did not materialise overnight. It followed sustained backchannel efforts by the Houston-headquartered firm, led by its chairperson, Stephen

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 20, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

News reports from the United States and Pakistan indicate a second round of high-level talks between top US and Iranian leaders might take place in Islamabad on Tuesday or Wednesday, but the fact that there has been no let up in Donald Trump’s rhetoric is not a good omen. As of now, the two-week ceasefire ends at midnight on Wednesday, April 22. The US president insists he will not lift his blockade of Iranian ports until there is a ‘zero nuclear’ deal with Iran and the fact that the US navy used force to interdict an Iranian merchant ship is also hardening Iran’s stand. Iran announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz right after Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon but reversed course when the US refused to end its blockade.

In a cryptic tweet aimed at bond traders, Iran’s top negotiator, M B Ghalibaf, warned that the consequences of renewed hostility would be especially bad for US Treasuries.

Al Jazeera reported that Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir had advised Donald Trump to lift the blockade and that the US president was reportedly considering his advice. There has, however, been no further confirmation of this – neither of the request nor the offer of consideration. Either way, though, Pakistan continues to be a key player in the process and Farah N Jan describes Islamabad as ‘the indispensable broker’:

“A state that can call Trump, Witkoff, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the same week and be taken seriously by all three is not a problem to be managed. It is a resource to be understood.”

In another setback to the Modi government’s strategy of seeking to diplomatically isolate Pakistan, Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its support for Pakistan’s economy by extending an existing $5 billion deposit at the State Bank of Pakistan and announcing an additional $3 billion deposit, according

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. Today is that day. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 17, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

In a major setback to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Lok Sabha tonight defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that would have added more than 300 new members of parliament to the Lok Sabha and set in motion a delimitation of constituencies on the basis of census data that would have enhanced the weight of Hindi-speaking states at the expense of south and east India.

Opportunistically framed by Modi as a move to implement the reservation of one-third of parliamentary seats for women – a measure passed unanimously by all parties in 2023 but still not operationalised – the proposed Constitutional (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 needed the support of a two-thirds majority but a feisty opposition closed ranks and ensured the numbers fell short.

Modi’s delimitation move touched a raw nerve in Tamil Nadu and other southern states and none of the belated assurances he and Union home minister Amit Shah sought to provide about holding each state’s share in parliament constant cut any ice. The DMK used a cricket field to tell Tamil voters what the BJP was trying to do…

For the BJP, says Christophe Jaffrelot, the creation of many small, municipality-like units and constituencies advances the centralisation project and, eventually, the idea and map of “Akhand Bharat”. Quoting a 1957 Bharatiya Jana Sangh manifesto, he read out: “‘Jan Sangh will amend the constitution and declare Bharat to be a unitary state. The establishment of a unitary state will not mean the centralisation of power. Jan Sangh has faith in democracy. To make all people partners in the governance of the country, Jan Sangh will centralise power to the lowest levels of the country.’”

Though the BJP has been quick to present the opposition’s vote as ‘anti-women’, the scuttling of Modi’s hare-brained and dangerous delimitation plan has actually cleared a path for the speedy implementation of women’s reservation – and may even give the opposition an issue to hit the streets over. At the same time, the debate made it clear that the BJP’s commitment to the principle of women’s reservation is linked to male MPs not being displaced. In fact, Amit Shah said this in so many words – arguing that the expansion of the Lok Sabha to 850 members would ensure there is no loss of ‘open’ seats for male politicians.

Sravasti Dasgupta spoke to Seema Chishti and me about the consequences of this defeat and what fights still lie ahead.

In view of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that US President Donald Trump announced yesterday, Iran has declared that the Strait of Hormuz stands “completely open” for all commercial vessels “on the coordinated route” that the Iranian government has announced, until its ceasefire with Washington and Tel Aviv expires on the 21st. On the other hand, Trump has said that while the US is working with Iran to de-mine the strait, the American blockade of Iranian ports and vessels in the waterway will continue “until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete”, something he stated can take place quickly. The president also claimed that the US would retrieve Iran’s buried enriched uranium, but Tehran has not made any announcements over this sticky issue.

As part of a flurry of posts, Trump thanked, alongside the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “Pakistan and its Great Prime Minister and Field Marshall, two fantastic people!!!” Reuters on Friday cited a Pakistani source as saying that a memorandum of understanding is on the table for a future meeting between US and Iranian delegations, which may be followed by a full deal in the next two months. The news agency also cited a senior Iranian official as saying that there has been an agreement to open up billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for opening up the Hormuz strait.

The Independent profiles Munir, Trump’s ‘favourite field marshal’.

In other Hormuz-related news, Nidhi Verma and Nimesh Vora report that IndianOil and Reliance paid for their Iranian crude – floating cargoes for which the US issued a waiver to try and manage oil flows amid Iran’s retaliatory blockade – using Chinese yuan via ICICI Bank. Washington has said it will not renew this waiver as well as the one for Russian oil, which India had lapped up after pausing purchases under pressure from Trump.

Verma, Vora and Jaspreet also report that the RBI has asked Indian oil refiners to dial down spot dollar purchases and instead use a special credit line made available via the SBI for foreign exchange purposes. “Using the ​special credit facility would reduce dollar demand from refiners, helping ease pressure on the rupee,” which has been under pressure from rising oil prices and foreign portfolio outflows, they cite sources as saying. However oil prices tanked after Tehran’s announcement Friday that the Strait of Hormuz is open for commerce.

Is the Quad – the four nation grouping linking the US to India, Australia and Japan – withering on the vine of Trumpian neglect, that too when India was supposed to convene its summit but was unable to? The South China Morning Post reports on how the Modi government has now floated the idea of a ‘leaders level’ meeting of foreign ministers in Delhi for May this year. Most observers in Washington DC see this an idea that is unlikely to breathe life into the body. “Quad is in utter disarray. India is apparently forging ahead with FM-level meeting soon to avoid embarrassment of missing its turn last year when Trump took a wrecking ball to US-India ties,” Derek J Grossman tweeted. “Quad now downgraded and has to suffer leaderless meetings.”

Weeks into the West Asia crisis, is India really coping? In a detailed report, Paridhi Choudhary, Shaswata Kundu Chaudhuri and M Rajshekhar write that “as the energy shortage gets worse on the ground, India’s informal economy has stepped in, providing both black-market gas and firewood. Its solutions are enterprising and customised to local purchasing power.”

Thousands of protesters disregarded prohibitory orders in Manipur’s Imphal West district on Thursday and carried out a torch rally demanding that those behind the Tronglaobi bomb attack earlier this month be arrested. They clashed with security personnel, who fired tear gas and charged the crowd with lathis. Protests have occurred periodically against the attack, in which suspected militants bombed a home near the buffer zone in Bishnupur district, killing two young Meitei children and injuring their mother.

An FIR has been registered against Anil Agarwal, chairperson of Vedanta Resources Limited, along with company manager Devendra Patel and other officials, in connection with the boiler blast at the Vedanta power plant in Chhattisgarh’s Sakti district that killed 20 workers, according to the police.

Teams of the Enforcement Directorate raided properties linked to Punjab industries minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjeev Arora on Friday morning. Arora had reportedly departed for Amsterdam the previous night as part of an official investment initiative. It is not clear why his properties were searched but the ED had raided him in 2024 in connection with allegations of misuse of industrial land. Just two days earlier, the agency had searched properties linked to AAP Rajya Sabha MP and deputy House leader Ashok Kumar Mittal.

The authorities in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal demolished two Muslim religious structures (reports differ on what exactly they were) on the alleged grounds that they were built on government land.

India has officially authorised 15 banks to import both gold and silver from April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2029, after a delay in issuing the approved list disrupted bullion imports. More than 5 metric tons of gold and 8 metric tons of silver had reportedly been stuck at customs while banks waited for the government notification, reports Reuters.

SEZ units have asked the government to provide higher duty concessions – and in some cases zero-duty treatment – for supplies to the domestic tariff area, arguing that they need to match the concessional import duties available under FTAs, reports The New Indian Express. According to officials, SEZ firms say they are increasingly competing not with domestic manufacturers, but with imports from China and FTA partner countries such as ASEAN. They have sought concessions for specific HSN categories where imports are dominant, saying this would help SEZ units compete more effectively in the domestic market. The request comes amid broader concerns from industry groups that Indian manufacturers face pressure from lower-cost imports entering under trade agreements.

A scheduled meeting between Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu and US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor was reportedly cancelled at the last moment during Gor’s visit to Malé in March, according to diplomatic sources cited in reports. The development has drawn attention amid evolving geopolitical dynamics involving the Maldives, India, US and China.

Ashwain Rodrigues writes about the MAGA Indians who ‘went all in on Trump’ and why ‘many US right-wingers can’t stand them’.

“A celebrity MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist walked into a conclave in India under fire for mocking Indians as “third-world invaders” with low IQ and bad hygiene, but may have walked out as a new mascot for India’s Islamophobes,” writes Debasish Roy Chowdhury about Laura Loomer.

Remember Maiden Pharma, the Indian company whose cough syrup was linked to the death of 66 childen in Gambia in 2022? Well, the company is back – under a new name, unencumbered by any action from Indian authorities, reports Maria Tesresa Raju.

Meenu Batra, Texas’s only licensed Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu legal interpreter is now languishing in a Raymondville detention center, reports Gaige Davila for the Texas Observer. She’s lived in America since 1991 but now faces deportation to a third country. In 1991, as a young woman, she applied for asylum, her parents having been killed in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom in India.

In Andhra Pradesh, police act against comedians poking fun at deputy CM

Andhra Pradesh’s police have picked up a second comedian on allegations of ‘abusive speech’ against deputy chief minister Pawan Kalyan. This time the Vizag police detained Rafiq Mohammad on Thursday after a Jana Sena Party worker complained that his jokes about Kalyan were ‘capable of inciting hatred among different communities and political parties’. Just on Tuesday the Kakinada police went all the way to Prayagraj to detain comedian Anudeep Katikala for his jokes on Kalyan, again on a JSP functionary’s complaint. Apparently these are the bits the police found serious enough to detain Mohammad for, Pavan Korada reports:

“You Vizag people have rejected our Pawan Kalyan … Vizag people not only rejected Pawan Kalyan, even his three wives also rejected him, dude.”

“Pawan Kalyan has been named as the deputy chief minister. I feel that Pawan Kalyan should be the minister of external affairs … because he is the only Indian who made a Russian go down.”

Police ‘rescue’ targets 163 Muslim children headed to madrasas; families push back

The Railways police have said they “rescued” 163 children aged between seven and 18 from the Patna-Purna Express at Katni in Madhya Pradesh, near Jabalpur, after a local child welfare committee member flagged a potential child trafficking case. However, among these were groups of children travelling to madrasas in Maharashtra and Karnataka, with both their parents in Bihar and the madrasas being aware of their travel, Tabassum Barnagarwala reports. Now these children are in state-run protection homes and a group of 40 parents has pooled in their savings to travel to Katni. A similar case has been reported from Cuttack.

Gautam Adani overtakes Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s richest man

In news that is devoid of all meaning for 1.4 billion Indians, Gautam Adani has surpassed Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ambani, who leads Reliance Industries and oversees the world’s largest refinery, saw his wealth decline by $16.9 billion in 2026 – the steepest fall among Asia’s wealthiest individuals, as reported by the Financial Times. His net worth now stands at $90.8 billion. Meanwhile, Adani, whose Adani Group has major interests in infrastructure, energy, logistics and materials, added $8.1 billion to his fortune, bringing his net worth to $92.6 billion.

The Long Cable

Modi’s Defeat on Friday Will Prove to Be a Turning Point

By Harish Khare

Only a regime hopelessly besotted with its own cleverness could think of seeking passage of a constitutional amendment Bill, fully aware that it did not command a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha. That too, in the middle of crucial campaigning for the Tamil Nadu and West Bengal assembly elections; and, for good dramatic effect, calling a special session of Parliament to push ahead with this sleight of hand. The ruling party’s over-clever and over-cynical floor-managers have ended up doing great damage to parliament’s institutional reputation. Not that they are going to lose their sleep over it.

The ruling regime’s cheer-leaders were all in admiration over how Prime Minister Narendra Modi had very cleverly caught the Opposition on the wrong-foot in the Lok Sabha on Thursday: telling his rivals that if they voted against the move to expand the house to 850 MPs and conduct a delimitation of constituencies on the basis of the latest census data – steps that he inexplicably and illogically sought to link to the reservation of a third of parliamentary seats for women – they would be incurring the permanent wrath of women voters. The sheriff had fired his silver bullet.

How could a cabal which prides itself on its earthiness, on its connect with the masses on the ground, on its ear cocked to the nuances and anxieties in the bazaar, exaggerate the emotional traction of reservations for women in Parliament and assemblies? And, no one knows better than the ruling coterie how it has hollowed out the country’s legislatures. If anything, it is a delicious irony that this very ‘Bharatiya’ dispensation has fallen for a proposal that was first mooted in Parliament by the much-hated Lutyens’ elite.

That apart, Friday’s vote in the Lok Sabha —298 ayes to 230 noes, but well below the two-thirds mark needed —underscores an undeniable erosion of the ruling party’s two assets. First, the prime minister is no longer able to set the narrative; nor is he effective enough to move the reluctant to his own corner. He comes across as a partisan figure, not as a healing guru in a deeply divided nation; more significantly, his trustworthiness quotient seems to have worn out. Public trust was Narendra Modi’s most potent weapon. That stands blunted. No one was willing to believe him or his “solemn” assurances about this tricky business of delimitation that is surreptitiously sought to be pegged on to the women’s reservation.

A prime minister who engages in rhetorical excesses of monumental dimensions outside the house cannot possibly be taken at his face value inside the Lok Sabha. A ferocious partisan at the hustings, Modi cannot easily come to parliament and pretend to be the authentic voice of the nation. Beyond the rejection of the constitutional amendment, the entire National Democratic Alliance government is seen reeking with dishonesty and insincerity. Imagine, the Nari Shakti Vandana Adhyniyam passed was back in September 2023 was finally notified in the Gazette only at 9.55 pm on Thursday night. How pathetically sophomoric!

Second, the treasury benches’ failure to seduce or cajole or otherwise frog-march non-NDA members to vote for the women’s bill marks a decisive moment in national politics. That the Opposition could hold on to its votes suggests that the Modi-induced aura of invincibility is receding. And the consequences of this will be adverse for the ruling dispensation and its operatives.

It must be hoped that the assertion of a kind of parliamentary wholesomeness would also embolden the judiciary to be vigilant in its role as the watchdog of constitutional morality. If the institutional balance in India over the past decade has shifted away from the requisite equilibrium and in favour of a maximalist executive, it is only because at key moments the Supreme Court—under various chief justices—has allowed itself to be overawed by the ruling party’s perceived political momentum. The ruling coterie’s conceit and smugness has made a mockery of the Constitution and its values and principles—and its leaders have been allowed to get away with the violation of constitutional ethics and morality. The moment should be seized and the constitution should be restored to necessary majesty.

The next few weeks would be crucial. Having been taken to the cleaners in the Lok Sabha, the ruling establishment can be relied upon to try to recoup its political fortunes in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Having become addicted to having their way, the Shahenshah and Shah and their spear-carriers are not going to retire to their corner and lick their wounds. Till polling is over in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the saffron establishment will resort to every trick to manufacture a “victory”. This is the time when judicial watchfulness will be tested, given the Election Commission’s unapologetic bias in favour of the ruling party at the Centre. And, of course, beyond the polling, extra-ordinary precautions would be needed on counting day.

Friday the 18^th of April 2026 will turn out to be a very good day in the history of our republic. We are entitled to reinforce the confidence that there are limits to the 21^st century phenomenon of totalitarians using the democratic mandate and democratic procedures to molest and degrade the Constitution. Baba Ambedkar would see Friday’s vote as a belated birthday gift.

Reportedly

When the largest city in the United States recently elected a new mayor with a strong India connection, Narendra Modi demonstrably refrained from congratulating him. But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump from publicly congratulating the new lieutenant governor of India’s largest city, Taranjit Sandhu, on his strong US connection: “Congratulations to Taranjit Sandhu on becoming the new Lt Governor of Delhi! As a seasoned Diplomat and former Ambassador to the United States, he has always shown deep commitment to strengthening the U.S.-India relationship. Wishing him success in leading Delhi’s progress, and furthering global ties! President DONALD J. TRUMP”.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Sikhs living in California’s central valley have been targeted for extortion by gangs, including that of Lawrence Bishnoi, operating in the state as well as from India. Reporting for CalMatters, Gagandeep Singh speaks to those affected and to law enforcement to paint a picture of the nature of this racket and what the police have learned about it over time.

Prime number: Rs 76 lakh

The Union culture ministry spent Rs 76,13,129 on advertisements in the print media alone to mark the centenary celebrations of the RSS, an RTI response has revealed.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• On Pakistan’s role in the West Asia peace process and the Indian reactions to it, T.C.A. Raghavan notes that despite the Modi government’s strategy of diplomatically isolating Pakistan, “Pakistan is not getting isolated.”

• Here’s labour activist Nikhil Dey on the violent protests in Noida earlier this week: “If we continue to view the Noida protests as a “law and order” problem rather than a cry for human dignity, we are deluding ourselves. It is time to provide India’s working class with fair wages, decent working conditions and the right to organise.”

• According to Ajit Ranade, the unrest in Noida and Manesar is not simply about labour disputes, but reflects the deeper strain inflation is placing on ordinary households. He argues that stagnant real wages, particularly in rural India, have left families struggling as the cost of essentials continues to rise faster than incomes. Ranade notes that when wages fail to keep up with inflation, households are forced to make painful sacrifices, including cutting back on nutrition, postponing medical treatment and withdrawing children from private schools. “The government announced a 35% hike in minimum wages for unskilled workers. It is barely enough. The protests are a damning verdict on years of inflation outpacing wage growth.”

• Subhash Chandra Garg’s argument gets straight to the heart of the rupee’s vulnerability: “The ratio of outstanding foreign debt and portfolio liability to India’s foreign currency reserves is a better marker to see where the rupee-dollar exchange rate is headed. India’s foreign debt is about $750 billion. FPIs’ stock is also about the same amount. Together, these volatile foreign debt and portfolio investment assets are about $1.5 trillion, which is about 2.7 times the RBI’s currency reserves. This is India’s real vulnerability. A ratio of more than 1 should worry policymakers and the RBI.”

• Against the background of the delimitation exercise in Assam and the West Bengal SIR, Rahul Verma notes that the “perceived neutrality and fairness of the electoral processes carry greater legitimacy than any defence of changes on the technical and legal grounds”. He writes that “the 2026 elections in Assam and West Bengal risk normalising a campaign in which the rules of the game become contested too”.

• Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya argues that welfare transfers are not simply subsidies for the poor, but indirect support for capital in an economy where wages are too low to sustain livelihoods. To dismiss them as political handouts, he says, is to overlook the structural role they play in conditions of deep inequality and insecure employment.

Listen up

Some Pakistani hospitals themselves are putting children at risk of acquiring HIV. For instance, Ghazal Abbasi of the BBC found over the course of her investigative reportage, that the main hospital in Taunsa near Multan often reused vials and syringes for different children. “Cross-contamination seems inevitable” under such circumstances, she notes.

Watch out

Scroll‘s Ayush Tiwari and Raghav Kakkar visited the Noida neighbourhood where workers who participated in protests this week live in packed conditions. “Some of them earn a little bit more than when they began working 20-25 years ago, leaving them incapable [of dealing] with the rising cost of living,” Tiwari says. Watch their report here:

Over and out

• The “Laaa la la la la” tune made famous by the Liril soap advertisement was not original, according to reports; it appears to have been inspired by an earlier campaign for the German soap brand Fa. Henkel’s Fa advertisement, created in 1968-69 by the Düsseldorf-based agency Troost, featured a similar jingle for its lime-based soap; the tune was composed by German musician Klaus Doldinger. Liril later turned the song into one of the most recognisable advertising jingles in India.

• Pakistan’s memesters have finally made it to the (in)famous New York Post, with one of their memes showing Modi pouring tea in the background while JD Vance and Iran’s Abbas Araghchi pose with Pakistan’s PM Sharif.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 16, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

Today the Modi government introduced its three Bills seeking to expand the Lok Sabha, contentiously on the basis of the “latest published census” available at the time the Delimitation Commission is constituted, ostensibly to implement the 33% reservation for women in the House. Its Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill meant to effect the new quota and which proposes to prematurely remove the 50-year-old freeze on delimitation would require a two-thirds majority to clear the Lok Sabha, which the ruling NDA falls short of by 66 members. Upon the opposition’s insistence the Amendment Bill was put to a voice vote before being introduced, where 251 MPs of the 436 present (58%) said aye.

Amid consternation especially among the southern states over the fact that an expansion of the Lok Sabha based on the 2011 census, it being the last published one, would reduce their shares in the House, the government repeated the claim made via ‘sources’ in the press that all states will undergo a uniform 50% increase in seats. When it was pointed out that the Bills are entirely silent on such an arrangement, the following reply came: “They said this is not mentioned in the Bill … I, Amit Shah, home minister of India, is saying, [as] the one who piloted this Bill.” That, as some have put it on social media, is as reassuring as being told to “trust me bro” simply because the delimitation commission is meant to be an independent body, which is even immune from judicial scrutiny. How can the government then direct it or make that promise without the Bill saying so? But Prime Minister Narendra Modi – who left the House 40 minutes after he walked in – simply said “there will be no change in [the] proportion [of seats]”. Here is a fact check of all that Shah claimed in his speech.

This will be cause for concern even if the states retain their existing weightage in an 850-strong House. In such a scenario, Siddharth Varadarajan notes, “the net effect would be to add voice and space to a group of Hindi-speaking states that already have a domineering presence”. There is ironically a similar problem with regard to women’s reservation: although their share of the House would more than double to reach 33%, given that “men tend to occupy more physical and aural space … the effect of having 284 women amongst 566 men will be quite different from having 181 women amongst 362 men”.

Pavan Korada also writes that such a uniform increase would lead to the more populous states having even more people per MP: “We need a more sophisticated formula to account for increased populations, but also to protect the proportional representation of states that successfully implemented family planning.”

The opposition parties, which have vowed to vote against the Bills, said on Thursday that the Bills are a means of carrying out delimitation via the backdoor with women’s reservation as a front. They said they have little reason to trust such a delimitation based on how constituencies were redrawn in Assam, and Jammu and Kashmir. Akhilesh Yadav also said that the government is “running away from the [2027] census because the demand for caste census will rise” after that.

Beyond the headlines, it’s pretty clear that Modi is “using the women’s quota to redraw the electoral map and secure a 2029 win for the BJP”, Menaka Doshi says. Regardless, check out this graphic for a real idea of what Modi’s women empowerment agenda looks like as things stand.

Even as the Lok Sabha is debating advancing the implementation of the women’s reservation Act, the Union law ministry on Thursday night inexplicably issued a notification announcing that the legislation has come into force with immediate effect.

Meanwhile, the Safai Karmachari Andolan’s Bezwada Wilson says that with two more sewer cleaning deaths having

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 15, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

India has slipped in global economic rankings, with a statistical overhaul and a weakening rupee quietly undoing years of political messaging about its rise. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is now the world’s sixth-largest economy according to IMF estimates, down from fourth, even though its economy has grown faster than those of Germany, the UK and Japan. According to the IMF, India’s economy is projected at $3.92tn in 2025, placing it behind the UK at $4tn and Japan at $4.44tn. The US remains far ahead at $30.8tn, followed by China at $19.6tn and Germany at $4.7tn.

The downgrade has been driven less by slowing growth than by a nearly 10% depreciation in the rupee, which has sharply reduced India’s dollar-denominated GDP estimates.

A day ahead of the special parliamentary session called to discuss women’s reservation in parliament and the state assemblies, the opposition INDIA bloc announced on Wednesday that it will vote against the Modi government’s Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill that seeks to increase the cap on Lok Sabha seats from 550 to 850 – seemingly at the expense of the south – ostensibly to implement women’s reservation. Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi says that while the Congress supports women’s reservation, the proposed amendment “is an attempted power grab using delimitation and gerrymandering”.

The Amendment Bill in conjunction with the Delimitation Bill proposes to prematurely lift the freeze on delimitation that is tied to the 1971 census in order to implement women’s reservation, and instead carry out a redrawing of seats based on the “latest published census”, in this case the 2011 one. With the southern states having implemented more effective population control measures than their northern counterparts over the years, using the 2011 census would mean that the north by virtue of its higher population will enjoy increased influence in parliament at the southern states’ expense. Notably, the Bills do not say that the proportion of states’ seats in a larger parliament would be fixed at their present levels.

Pakistani Army

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 14, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that he received a phone call from US President Donald Trump and that the two of them “stressed the importance of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and secure”, apart from discussing the situation in West Asia as well as the “substantial progress achieved in our bilateral cooperation in various sectors”. Their conversation comes amid the US’s blockade of the strait key to global energy flows being enforced after Washington and Tehran failed to reach an agreement after peace talks in Islamabad over the weekend. The exact status of the blockade – applying to vessels moving in and out of Iranian ports, and which elicited warnings of retaliation from Iran – remains unclear as tracking data shows that a number of vessels have passed through the strait, including some that left Iran, the New York Times reports.

Even as the future of the two-week ceasefire remains in limbo after talks in Islamabad did not produce any outcome, Reuters reports citing sources that negotiators from both sides could return to the Pakistani capital as early as later this week to resume talks. An Iranian official told the news agency that a proposal has been sent to the US and Iran to send their delegations once again.

Today the Modi government announced that it seeks to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha from the existing 543 to 850 through the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill that parliament is set to discuss starting Thursday in connection with the early implementation of women’s reservation. The Bill says that seats will be redistributed among states and Union territories based on data from the now-15-year-old 2011 census and will do away with the clause in the women’s reservation Act of 2023 linking the move to the ongoing 2027 census. Opposition parties’ demand for an all-party meeting on the proposed changes after the assembly elections are over was rejected.

Nitish Kumar resigned as chief minister of Bihar today, ending his nearly two-decade-long stint in office. Samrat Choudhary was elected leader of the BJP’s legislature party this afternoon, paving the way for him to become the state’s first CM from the saffron party. This, writes Sravasti Dasgupta, marks the “final move for a play that started during the November 2025 Bihar assembly elections”, where the BJP “made little effort to hide that it was waiting in the wings” during what was widely speculated to be Nitish’s “swan song”.

Beginning with a familiar law-and-order playbook, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was quick to invoke a vague “Naxalism” angle after violence broke out during a workers’ protest in Noida’s industrial belt on Monday. By pointing to shadowy “external elements” and alleged instigators, the administration appeared more intent on casting suspicion than addressing the simmering discontent among labourers, effectively framing the unrest as a conspiracy rather than a consequence of longstanding grievances. What had started as two days of peaceful dharnas by contractual workers soon spiralled into clashes, with stone-pelting, vandalism, and vehicles set ablaze. Only after

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 13, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The United States says it has begun enforcing its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a move essentially aimed at ensuring Iran is unable to export oil or import anything through the narrow waterway which the Iranians have closed for others’ traffic for over a month now. The US blockade, announced by President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the failed ceasefire talks between Iran and the US in Islamabad, will likely set the stage for renewed hostilities between the two countries.

The US blockade is bad news for India, which had managed to reach an understanding with Iran for the easy passage of Indian tankers though the Strait.

For the first time in seven years, Iranian crude has reached India, with a National Iranian Tanker Company VLCC, FELICITY (9183934), delivering about two million barrels after a sanctions waiver from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control. The cargo is understood to be linked to Reliance Industries, after the Modi government permitted Iranian oil tankers to berth for the company, whose refinery operates out of Sikka, with additional shipments expected in the coming days. Separately, Indian Oil Corporation is also reported to have purchased a cargo of Iranian oil under the same waiver, according to Bloomberg, though the vessel involved has not been identified. The exact buyers of the shipments remain unclear. While Indian Oil typically receives crude at Paradip, Sikka is used by Reliance as well as Bharat Petroleum Corporation. Meanwhile, the state refiners and Reliance did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It is also not clear what will happen to planned shipments now that the US says it is enforcing a blockade.

Not surprisingly, Indian markets are reacting to these developments nervously. Reuters reports a further decline in Indian shares and fresh pressure on the rupee.

India’s financial fragility was on full display on Monday. The rupee logged its steepest fall in two weeks, sliding 0.7% to close at 93.3750 against the dollar, as oil prices surged past $100 a barrel and dollar inflows abruptly dried up amid banks unwinding arbitrage positions. The pressure is not limited to

Read more

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. Today is that day. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 10, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Two days after Israel struck targets across Lebanon, killing more than 300 people, India on Friday said it was “deeply concerned” about civilian casualties and that observing territorial integrity was “essential”. Addressing an inter-ministerial briefing on developments in West Asia, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “As a troop contributing country to UNIFIL that is invested in Lebanon’s peace and security, the trajectory of events is very disturbing”.

The rupee has finished its second straight week of gains against the dollar, propelled by the RBI’s curbs on foreign exchange arbitrage and a fall in oil prices triggered by the West Asia ceasefire; the currency clocked in at 92.755 on Friday. However some warn that the RBI’s move is not without cost. “Banks are staring at potential losses running into the hundreds of millions of dollars”, “hedging costs have jumped, making it harder for investors to buy protection” and “foreign investors meanwhile have slashed their bond holdings”, Bloomberg reports.

After it was ‘allowed’ by the US to buy floating Russian oil in view of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, India purchased 1.98 million barrels of the commodity every day in March on average, the highest volume since June 2023, report Rakesh Sharma and Rong Wei Neo. While Indian refiners expect Washington to extend its sanctions waiver set to expire soon, “purchases are unlikely to drop back even without that, given a dearth of supply options”.

The Federation of European Business in India, which includes alcoholic beverage firms Pernod Ricard, AB InBev, Heineken and Carlsberg, has asked the Union government to waive a 10% import duty on glass bottles and aluminium cans because of higher costs owing to the West Asia war. Since most Indian states require government approval for changes in the retail price of alcoholic beverages, these firms face an additional hurdle in that they cannot pass on extra costs to customers, Aditya Kalra notes.

India accounts for the biggest number of passengers using the Dubai International Airport and so Indian airlines stand to be hit hardest by the airport’s decision to let foreign carriers operate only one round-trip flight per day between April 20 and May 31. Indian airlines have written to the Union government asking it to lobby the Dubai airport to lift the restriction and, if that doesn’t work, to consider retaliatory measures on Dubai-based carriers like Emirates and flydubai, who will not be impacted by the flight cap. Abhijith Ganapavaram and Aditya Kalra report.

During the third day of the Supreme Court’s Sabarimala hearings on Thursday the Nair Service Society and a few Ayyappa devotees’ bodies argued that when the apex court in 2018 said it was unconstitutional for the temple to prohibit entry to menstruating women, it did not apply the “sampradaya [sect] test”. Its ruling was incorrectly based on the ‘essential practices test’ that is shaped by the Abrahamic religions, senior advocate C.S. Vaidyanathan argued. Justice M.M. Sundresh said that while “you may have your own personal belief … you cannot try to change the practice or sampradaya followed in a temple … Either you adhere to it or leave it.” Krishnadas Rajagopal reports.

Kunal Kamra on Thursday appeared before the Maharashtra assembly’s privileges committee, which had summoned him after he called deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde a traitor for heading the split of the Shiv Sena (and after which Sena workers vandalised the comedy club where he made these remarks). In his written submission to the panel, the comedian argued that it does not have the jurisdiction to hold these proceedings as he is not a member of the legislature, his show was not related to the business of the assembly, and his show did not affect the proceedings of the House. In fact, Shinde himself had told the press that his work was unaffected, Kamra said. And Bal Thackeray, the Sena’s most prominent figure, had satirised and criticised those on high without facing such proceedings, he pointed out. Vinaya Deshpande Pandit reports.

Later, Kamra also recalled that he was asked by the committee whether he felt any remorse and if he would consider issuing an unconditional apology for his remarks. “No I can’t as the apology would not be sincere. Also it would set a terrible precedent for other artists & their freedom,” he wrote on X.

With people losing money to fraudulent call centres and the scary digital arrest scams, which are enabled by transactions routed through mule accounts, the RBI is considering requiring a one-hour delay in high-value transactions through fast payment channels as well as extra checks for payments made by senior citizens, Ashwin Manikandan and Surbhi Misra report. They recall that the amount of money lost to such scams went up almost forty times between 2021 and 2025 to $2.49 billion.

Although Tata Consultancy Services reported a net increase of over 2,000 employees in the last quarter of FY2025-26, the firm over the course of the entire financial year found itself short of more than 23,000 workers on the net.

Why has the much vaunted joint venture between the world’s largest fund manager BlackRock and India’s Mukesh Ambani not taken off? Assets under management have fallen to Rs 175 billion from Rs 178 billion raised for three funds last year. “The company, which argues that its technology can lower costs, has struggled to make major headway against an entrenched network of distributors that dominate India’s asset management industry.” Analysts say that the joint venture did not follow the standard distribution model.

Proposed amendments to IT Rules will enable Modi govt to remove fact-checking Community Notes from X

The Modi government claims to champion transparency and free digital discourse, but its latest moves suggest otherwise. After X’s Community Notes flagged posts by Modi and other BJP leaders, including Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, New Delhi is formally proposing to bring Community notes – the user-generated fact-checking tool on X – under the ministry of information and broadcasting’s regulatory remit through amendments to the IT Rules, potentially enabling the Union government to seek removal of notes that correct official claims, reports The Hindustan Times, citing an official who is aware of the issue. Under the expanded framework of the proposed amendments, a community note that starts looking like it’s dealing with news, politics or public policy, could come under scrutiny, a ministry of electronics and IT (Meity) official told the newspaper.

This comes alongside a broader push to extend digital regulation to influencers, podcasters and independent journalists, reinforcing criticism that the Modi government’s instinct is not to answer scrutiny, but to regulate and suppress the platforms that enable it.

Justice Yashwant Varma, embroiled in cash-at-home scandal, resigns

Justice Yashwant Varma of the Allahabad High Court has resigned, submitting his resignation to the President a year later while facing an in-house inquiry over allegations linked to a cash discovery at his residence and impeachment process The development comes at a sensitive time, with the possibility of further proceedings, including parliamentary action, still under consideration. Justice Varma had earlier been transferred from the Delhi High Court to the Allahabad High Court following the controversy.

Centre’s ‘U-turn’, Congress demands apology to women of India

The Congress has accused Modi of reversing his stand on the implementation of women’s reservation and attempting to claim sole credit for a policy shift driven by political compulsions ahead of key elections. In a statement, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh alleged that Modi had begun writing articles in the media to project himself as the “sole champion” of women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies from 2029, while ignoring the government’s earlier stance that delayed its rollout. “Actually, he owes an apology to the women of India,” Ramesh said, referring to the Nari Shakhti Vandan Adhiniyam in 2023, which provides for 33% reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, was passed unanimously in Parliament, but the Congress had demanded its implementation from the 2024 elections itself.

The Long Cable

US-Israel’s Iran Misadventure Is Pushing The World In A Diametrically Different Direction From Where 9/11 Took It

Seema Chishti

Any rudimentary assessment of the US and Israel’s Iranian misadventure immediately brings to mind the US and the UK’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But a more pertinent point in the timeline, at least more relevant today, may be the US invasion of Afghanistan, as retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York.

But it is not as if the US-Israel Iran attack parallels Afghanistan. In fact, 25 years on, it appears that the circle that started to be drawn in the 9/11 moment may be closing.

The events that followed the 9/11 tragedy and the response of the US in Afghanistan went on to shape the world and dominate political and cultural global narratives for over two decades. The US and Israel’s war on Iran is having consequences, mostly unintended, which are taking the world in a completely different direction.

1. The audacious terror attacks that destroyed the two World Trade Centers in New York stunned the world and quickly made Islamophobia mainstream. Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations” was the go-to text and phrase.

The US’s sympathetic view of Islamic militancy, driven by a utilitarian view, took a beating. It may have helped the US bring down the USSR, but after 9/11, it was a different story, and the tables had turned. It was a while before Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim could breathe on bookshelves.

Many reports have documented how crude, anti-Muslim sentiment got a big fillip. A 15-country report from Europe spoke of it as a phenomenon in as early as 2002. Lines around this got hardened globally. Contrast that with the US now attacking Iran, and Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, using every metaphor in the book to make it sound like a crude Crusade redux. This is not cutting any ice. No leaf has been left unturned to make it blatantly about Christianity and Christian Zionism (recall Mike Huckabee’s interview with Tucker Carlson?).

As most allies of the US in the region are also Islamic countries, the US administration has tried to make the attack’s purpose ‘Judeo-Christian’, but has been constrained in not making it ‘anti-Islam’. Trump called Iranians “animals”, but global opinion has never been so anti-war in a long time, and the polling bears testimony to that. Support for the war on Afghanistan in 2001 (termed “barbarians”) was 92% in the US. The numbers, at 41%, are at the lowest ever for a war waged by the US. The MAGA base, otherwise proudly racist, has been stridently unsupportive on this.

Globally, most parts of the world, even India (which was an outlier to global support on the Gaza question and it became entangled with anti-Muslim sentiment in the country) have shown visible support for an Iran, which has surprised with its sophistication, resilience and ability to say boo to a bully. Shahed drones along with extremely effective and on point messaging, communication and diplomacy in the face of Trumpian Truth Social posts threatening doomsday, have struck a chord globally.

2. A ‘western alliance’ was something the global map had assumed as a given, ever since the end of World War II. But as Shyam Saran has pointed out, this is the first time since, that the US was unable to get either NATO or Europe onboard. “This confirms the perception of there not being a West with a coherent identity and shared values,” Saran writes.

The attack on Afghanistan in 2001 drew each one of its allies to the US’s side. Something has fundamentally broken on that. This is not a temporary ‘out to lunch’ rupture. The presence of China, with an overwhelming transformation as not just a factory of the world, but as the technological powerhouse, the builder of bridges globally, literally and metaphorically with a new push to BRI, makes consequences of that break look far more serious. The US’s dependability, even for its closest allies, is no longer a given for them. If MAGA’s resentment towards Trump for threatening the end of a “whole civilisation” is refreshing, so is Italian far-right PM Meloni and even France’s far-right Marie Le Pen’s assertion that the war must end, and that attacks on Lebanon by Israel are unacceptable.

3. A corollary to the deep fracture in the ‘West’ is the loss of the West’s status as the standard dispenser of ‘values’ and consequently soft-power that the West was able to deploy. Countries so far content to treat ‘sanctioned’ Iran like a pariah state, are rushing envoys there. Even Iran’s neighbours, not its friends, are taking it seriously, studying not just its gumption, but its low-cost drones, its science and its deep manufacturing base that made its resilience possible.

This is a different world from what was ushered in the face of the 9/11 tragedy. The West as a know-all, whether on how to organise the economy, finances (even currency), its films or even agit-prop is no longer the default position. Soft Iranian power is unintentionally on display even when you re-read the assassinated Ali Larijani’s CV with his two serious papers on Immanuel Kant - or hear from Iranian interlocutors on social media, articulating firm and coherent points of view and their goals. As Bobby Ghosh wrote on his Substack, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, has “even written a book called The Power of Negotiation outlining his philosophy of the craft”.

So Chinese EV vehicles, Iranian drones or degrees possessed by their leaders, have suddenly put many more dishes on the global table. There are many that want to be seated there. There is no automatic deference to the US or Western supremacy that the West can take for granted any more.

4. 25 years ago, as the planes crashed into the twin towers, Pakistan, by virtue of its mistaken pursuit of ‘strategic depth’ with the Taliban, immediately took the hit and got hyphenated, away from India, with Afghanistan as one of the two ‘Af-Pak’ countries. This pushed Pakistan down diplomatically and detracted from its stature.

More so as neighbouring, but plural, diverse India was to emerge as a true showpiece of South Asia at the time and gain economic heft and prestige all the way till at least the middle of the 2010s. Pakistan has broken free of ‘AfPak’, as political scientist Niloufer Siddique argued in Chalkboard Politics. The way the war on Iran has unfolded, that is no longer where Pakistan sits. Following Pakistan and India’s four-day war in 2025, the then unpopular Pakistan military establishment has emerged on the right side of the Trump administration and slowly boosted itself domestically and internationally. But as the Iran war unfolded, Pakistan has seen an exponential leap in its stature.

Analysts like Sushant Singh have written in Foreign Policy that this may also result in a formidable new regional block consisting of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Egypt. Pakistan would be central to that new architecture. Also, Kaiser Kuo in a new series, Missing Voices: Critical Thinking in the Time of a Polycrisis, says, “any talk of post-Western plurality has to be tempered by the reality of Chinese centrality” to what will emerge. There is no doubt about that.

All this is happening in India’s backyard. The reconfiguring of its immediate universe has serious implications for India today and there are many lessons lying there to be learnt. What is not clear is if they will be. Already, apologists for the Modi government trying to shield vishwaguru from the obvious marginalisation, are saying that this is “not our war”. But India has not been ‘neutral’. Modi’s sudden visit to the reviled and controversial prime minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, just 48 hours before Tehran was attacked by Israel and the US has made it clear that India had actually picked a side, even if it meant embracing a war criminal and getting a fake medal.

‘New’ India’s own politics makes its acceptance of this nascent new world difficult. As that would mean the Modi government saying goodbye to its own ideologically driven agenda to use Zionist principles to fundamentally recast plural India.

Contrary to what Indians close to the establishment would like to project as ‘strategic autonomy’, this has been about the Modi government choosing not autonomy, but the wrong side of history. Strategic ‘silent embarrassment’ was the only outcome possible from its choices. This war has many losers. But India must course-correct and now not lose the peace.

Reportedly

A number of those discharged in the Delhi liquor policy case have sought high court Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma’s recusal from hearing the CBI’s challenge against the discharge order, alleging that she is biased. But it has been pointed out that there is another layer to the whole matter: Justice Sharma’s son and daughter are both lawyers who have been empanelled by the Union government, with the legal journalist Saurav Das arguing that Ishaan Sharma has “[accumulated a] large number of panels within a relatively short post-enrolment period as an advocate”. Das asks: can Justice Sharma really

“continue to hear a politically sensitive challenge brought by the CBI, while her kin hold multiple Union government panels and receive work from the same legal establishment whose top officers allocate cases to them and are now appearing before her?”

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Reporting for Data for India, Nileena Suresh tackles the following questions: “what is India’s healthcare professionals to population ratio, where does this number come from, what does it cover and what does it miss, how does it compare with the world, and how is it changing?”

Prime number: 11,000 litres

That much milk was poured into the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore earlier this week as part of a mahayagna. “Such large quantities of organic matter can deplete dissolved oxygen in water, adversely affecting the river ecosystem” and in turn those who depend on it for water and livelihood, environmentalist Ajay Dube told PTI.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• Andy Mukherjee warns that India’s homegrown equity boom may be running into trouble as excessive financialisation begins to show its costs. For a while, he writes, the shift of deposits into markets created a wealth effect and sustained optimism, but much of the bank-funded money flowed into “a speculative frenzy in low-quality, small-cap stocks”. Now, with lenders facing liquidity strains, retail participation slowing, and three-year equity returns evaporating, he argues that both investors and intermediaries “may have a tough slog ahead” and that even a ceasefire in West Asia may not improve the arithmetic of shrinking returns.

• While there are “wide gaps between the American and Iranian positions” that will be exchanged in Islamabad this weekend, “Iran will arrive with far greater leverage than it had in the pre-war talks in Muscat and Geneva”, Stanly Johny writes in this assessment. “During the pre-war talks, the US used the threat of an attack to demand concessions from Tehran. After 40 days of war, that threat is now a spent force,” he notes.

• How did Pakistan emerge as the key facilitator between Iran and the US, moving into a peace space that India used to occupy at one time, asks Bharat Bhushan. “Pakistan demonstrated tactical agility by engaging Washington and Tehran simultaneously. As an Islamic country, it had credibility in the Muslim nations of West Asia. It also shares a border with Iran, as well as deep cultural, religious, and economic ties.” On the other hand, “India’s feebleness in the international arena was clearly constrained by its loyalty to the US and Israel, its election cycle, bureaucratic risk averseness of its foreign policy framers, and its compromised global image.”

• “Indians who once sang [Trump’s] praises” – especially in the BJP – “have now turned viciously against him,” Vir Sanghvi writes. The moral of the story, he says, “is to never personalise diplomacy.”

• India’s long delays in conducting and publishing the census underscore the urgent need to overhaul the country’s statistical architecture as the world undergoes a “great global demographic u-turn,” says Pramit Bhattacharya. With a stronger and more unified statistical agency, he writes, India would not have to wait 16 years for basic demographic estimates and could generate annual district-level population data by pooling census, survey, administrative, and satellite inputs. “Contrary to the fables being spread on social media,” he adds, AI will not fix flawed data systems – “we need human thought and action to reconfigure India’s statistical architecture.”

Listen up

Niloufer Siddiqui and Sushant Singh in this latest episode of the Chalkboard Politics show analysed the “causes, escalation and aftermath” of the India-Pakistan clashes in May last year and also its “broader implications for regional and global politics”. They also spoke about Islamabad’s unexpected role in mediating the West Asia ceasefire this month.

Watch out

“From Ambedkar’s vision to contemporary issues such as bulldozer politics and weakening institutional checks,” Gautam Bhatia and Kunal Kamra in this episode of the latter’s show Nope “critically [assess] the balance between authority and liberty” and “[examine] the foundations of centralised power in India”.

Over and out

India was home to over 4,000 Iranian nationals by the early ‘60s, a time when New Delhi was keen to establish stronger ties with Tehran. One question the Indian authorities grappled with was to what extent this diplomatic outreach should extend to allowing Iranian citizens to settle in a newly independent India. Ajay Kamalakaran takes us through archival documents to find out.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.

Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.

Snapshot of the day

April 9, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

A day after Israel conducted brutal strikes on Lebanon and as Tehran insisted that these attacks explicitly violate the ten-point list on which its ceasefire with Washington and Tel Aviv is based, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this evening said he had ordered “direct negotiations” with Beirut “as soon as possible”. This came even as the Israeli military issued fresh evacuation orders for Beirut. He said these talks would focus on disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon, which currently do not maintain diplomatic ties. This comes after many European countries, including France, and Australia condemned the Israeli strikes on Lebanon, and US President Donald Trump asked Netanyahu in a phone call yesterday to scale back the strikes to help ensure the success of the Iran negotiations, a senior administration official said.

Lebanon has put the death toll from the Israeli attacks at over 300 and the number of injured at around 1,150. Iran had said these attacks “blatantly” violate the ceasefire, which would “carry explicit costs and STRONG responses”. Pakistan while announcing the ceasefire too had said Lebanon would be part of it, but Tel Aviv has claimed otherwise. The message from the Trump administration has been confused, with Vice President JD Vance claiming that Iranian belief stemmed from a “legitimate misunderstanding”. Vance said that “Israelis, as I understand it” had offered “to check themselves a bit in Lebanon, because they wanted to make sure our negotiation is successful”. The worst of Israel’s offensive took place on Wednesday but the AP reports that Israeli attacks have not halted; Reuters cites an Israeli official as saying that talks between Israel and Lebanon are expected to take place in D.C. next week.

Amid this mounting strain on the ceasefire between the United States and Iran – fueled by differing interpretations of its terms and Israel’s escalating bombardment in Lebanon – fresh diplomatic messages were exchanged between Washington and Tehran through Pakistan last night, as confirmed by Iran’s deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh in an interview with the BBC. The exchange comes ahead of the high-stakes ceasefire talks between the US and Iran scheduled to begin this Saturday in Islamabad, where security has been tightened dramatically with authorities sealing off a three-kilometre perimeter around the luxury Serena Hotel, where both delegations are expected to meet.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who formally invited both sides to pursue talks towards a full settlement of the war, strongly condemned Israel’s “ongoing aggression against Lebanon” in a phone call with his Lebanese counterpart, Nawaf Salam. He said that “Pakistan was engaged in sincere efforts for regional peace and it was in this spirit that the peace talks between Iran and the US were being convened,” Sharif’s office added in a statement.

Sharif is reportedly likely to host separate preliminary meetings with both sides on Friday or on Saturday morning, depending on when the delegations arrive. Pakistan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister Ishaq Dar – who has played a central role in backchannel shuttle diplomacy over the course of the conflict – is expected to facilitate the formal negotiations on Saturday, although it remains unclear whether Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, will take part, Al Jazeera writes.

International coverage has prominently highlighted Pakistan’s mediatory role, with

Read more