Jaishankar Blundered By Showing India’s Hand on Currency Multipolarity; Supreme Court to Hear Pegasus Case Again; Buy Our Weapons, Open Agri to Reach Trade Deal Says US
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
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Snapshot of the day
March 7, 2025
Siddharth Varadarajan
The Pegasus matter – involving the illegal use of Israeli spyware by the Modi government against opposition politicians, journalists and human rights defenders – will come up again in the Supreme Court on April 12 after a hiatus that has lasted nearly three years. On August 25, 2022, the then Chief Justice of India NV Ramana had revealed that the technical panel appointed by it to probe the unauthorised use of Pegasus found malware in some of the 29 cellphones examined and that the government had refused to cooperate with the probe despite being asked by the Supreme Court to do so.
Israeli authorities claim they rescued ten Indian construction workers from a village in the West Bank after they discovered some Palestinians trying to use their passports at a checkpoint. The ten workers are said to have been promised employment by a resident of the al-Zaim village and had their passports confiscated after they turned up there, following which they were stranded in the village for more than a month without work or documentation.
Thomas Perera from Kerala was fatally shot by Jordanian security personnel while trying to cross over into Israel last month; his brother-in-law Edison Charlas, who was also shot but lived, told Imran Qureshi that the two had moved to Jordan after being promised a well-paying blue-collar job, but that on their arrival they were told there were no jobs. Their agent, Charlas said, suggested they find work in Israel, following which they joined a group of people in attempting to walk to Israel, which is when the duo was shot. While the Indian embassy in Jordan wrote to Perera’s family saying they were shot after they ignored warnings from security forces, Charlas said there was “no such warning … they just shot”.
Granted bail by the Supreme Court after spending six years in Delhi’s Tihar Jail without trial, UK national Christian Michel says he would not accept bail because of fears about his safety outside.
“For me, Delhi is just a larger prison,” he told the court of Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal. “My family cannot come here; they have been told for years it is not safe. You know I have security issues. There have been attempts on my life twice.”
“A new law targets India’s third-biggest landowner: Allah,” says The Economist bluntly but not inaccurately in its profile of the Modi government’s draft Waqf Bill which seeks to establish government control over “thousands of Muslim sites” across the country.
In an astonishing finding, the three-member judicial commission tasked with probing last year’s Hathras stampede – which claimed 121 lives – has said the incident may have been a conspiracy to defame Yogi Adityanath’s government. The stampede followed a satsang by self-styled godman Bhole Baba in Hathras last year. The commission supported this idea by saying that no one was allowed to take photos or videos of the religious gathering and that the media was not allowed to cover it. Omar Rashid recalls that the ‘conspiracy’ angle was mandated by the terms of the commission’s probe and also suggested by Adityanath himself a day after the stampede.
The commission also noted contradictory statements made by witnesses, including by Bhole Baba himself, who was not booked in connection with the stampede. He is said to have alleged in an affidavit that some people sprayed a poisonous substance at the event as part of a conspiracy, but to have denied this allegation in his deposition. The probe panel blamed the satsang organisers for not providing enough facilities and for trying to conceal the stampede, as well as the “callous” police and administration for leaving the event’s management to its organisers.
The ‘conspiracy’ angle is politically important for another reason: right after the Mahakumbh stampede that killed an as yet undetermined number of people in February 2025, Adityanath was quick to blame it on ‘conspirators’. And Godi Media were quick to wheel out ‘scoops’ about how the UP police had already unconvered the ‘conspiracy’. Watch this space.
Videos have emerged purporting to show two Muslim men booked under cow slaughter law being ‘paraded’ and beaten by police in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. The duo is also heard saying things including ‘gaay hamari maata hai’ (‘the cow is our mother’). Mehul Malpani reports that another video shows right-wing activists congratulating police personnel by garlanding them inside the police station; a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader said that the cops’ “way of punishing may vary but if the cops have done a good job, we should thank them”. Ujjain’s additional superintendent of police said that the cops “did not beat” the accused up “like it is being shown”.
The Rajasthan High Court on Thursday criticised the state government for being “hell-bent” on punitive demolitions while ordering a stay on the razing of homes belonging to those accused in a rape and blackmail case in Beawar district. Justice Mahendra Kumar Goyal was hearing petitions filed by the families of the accused, who had received show-cause notices on February 20 for the demolition of their homes. The notices alleged violations of sections 194 and 245 of the Rajasthan Municipality Act, which deal with building norms and unauthorised encroachments.
Meanwhile, a mosque imam’s use of a loudspeaker to announce Iftar in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur led to a hate campaign by a Hindutva outfit and police intervention, resulting in the arrest of nine Muslims, including the imam. The police termed the act a “new tradition” and removed the loudspeaker from the mosque, citing concerns over public order.
The Supreme Court Collegium has recommended the elevation of Calcutta High Court judge Justice Joymalya Bagchi as a judge of the apex court. According to an official statement, the Collegium zeroed in on Justice Bagchi’s name “after carefully evaluating merit, integrity, competence and also accommodating a plurality of considerations”. If the Collegium’s recommendation is cleared by the Centre, Justice Bagchi would have a tenure of more than six years in the SC, during which he will also serve as the Chief Justice of India.
File this under ‘India’s bizarre language politics’: An RSS leader, Suresh Joshi, makes a purely factual remark about how Marathi is not the only language in Mumbai:
“Mumbai doesn’t have one language. Mumbai has many languages. But every area has a dominant language. The language of the neighbourhood of Ghatkopar is Gujarati. In Girgaum, there are more Marathi speakers than Hindi. So, it is not necessary for people coming to Mumbai to learn Marathi.”
The opposition then attacks him for saying this, with the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray calling for his prosecution for treason, of all things. The upshot: Joshi rushes to make amends and says: “Marathi is the language of Mumbai and Maharashtra, and all living here must learn Marathi”.
It wasn’t just Shehzadi Khan’s execution in the United Arab Emirates that the Ministry of External Affairs was informed of on February 28 – it has said over the last couple days that it was also intimated of the executions of two other Indians, Muhammed Arangilottu and Muraleedharan Valappil, on the same day. Arangilottu was convicted of murdering an Emirati citizen while Valappil was convicted of killing an Indian; the MEA said it filed mercy petitions and pardon requests for both. It didn’t say when either was executed.
India has signed a $248 million contract with Rosoboronexport of Russia to acquire more powerful engines for its Soviet-vintage battle tanks, reports Reuters.
For the third or fourth time in less than a month, Donald Trump has attacked India for its “very high tariffs” but he also revealed that India “has agreed to cut their tariffs way down”.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick wants India to open up its agriculture sector, buy more US defence equipment and lower its tariffs if it wants a successful trade deal. “For sensitive industries like agriculture, which India has long shielded to support its small farmers, Lutnick suggested a trade agreement with quotas and limits but emphasised that India must open up the sector,” says Reuters.
Could Elon Musk’s newfound political influence help him finally crack India open for Tesla and Starlink, asks Hannah Ellis-Petersen in the Guardian.
Jeet Kar brings us up to speed with where India and the European Union are in their negotiations over a free trade agreement.
Bangladesh’s interim head of government Muhammad Yunus is set to visit China on March 26 for a bilateral meeting, Prothom Alo reports. This marks his first trip to the country since assuming office on August 7, 2024. Yunus will begin his visit at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) conference in Hainan on March 25. Diplomatic sources in Dhaka indicate he may meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on March 28. The visit also coincides with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Bangladesh and China, prompting an invitation for official engagements in Beijing. New Delhi has been keeping a close watch on Dhaka’s increasing engagements with China and Pakistan. In the aftermath of Hasina’s ouster, India’s relations with Bangladesh have been shaky.
Meanwhile, Nahid Islam, convener of the new youth-led National Citizen Party (NCP), has expressed concerns that holding a general election this year may be difficult due to the ongoing unrest in Bangladesh. Islam told Reuters that the interim government has struggled to fully ensure public safety. Despite the uncertainty, Nahid asserted that the NCP would be prepared for elections whenever they take place. However, he emphasized that before elections can be held, there must be a consensus on the ‘Proclamation of the July Revolution,’ a charter that the interim government is drafting with input from political parties and student activists.
Former IPL chief and well-known businessman Lalit Modi has played a new trick to escape Indian law. He has given up Indian citizenship and acquired the citizenship of Vanuatu, a small country in the Pacific Ocean, as there is no tax in the country, the Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed. The Vanuatu government runs a Golden Visa program in which citizenship can be easily acquired by paying money.
The Indian Railways has cancelled the selection of employees for promotions within the Group-C category that weren’t announced as of Tuesday and admitted ‘several irregularities’ in selections held in the ‘recent past’, S Vijay Kumar reports. This, a day after the CBI unearthed a leak in the question paper for candidates applying to be chief loco inspectors in Uttar Pradesh.
Higher latitudes on the moon with slopes facing the poles "are not only scientifically interesting but also pose less technical challenges for exploration [of water] in comparison with regions closer to the poles of the moon,” says a new study on India’s Chandrayan-3 lunar mission, reports Sharmila Kuthunur.
United States President Donald Trump said Elon Musk is readying a starship to bring back Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded on the International Space Station for the past nine months. Asked about his message for the two astronauts, Trump said: “We love you, and we’re coming up to get you. And you shouldn’t have been up there so long.” “And I see the woman with the wild hair,” he said about Sunita Williams. “Good solid head of hair she’s got. There’s no kidding. There’s no games with her hair.”
In a groundbreaking revelation, Rajasthan Governor Haribhau Kisanrao Bagde has declared that Isaac Newton was just late to the party – gravity was already chilling in the Vedic texts centuries before 1687. Speaking at IGNOU’s convocation in Jaipur, Bagde also credited ancient Indian sages for inventing electricity, airplanes and possibly WiFi. According to him, Maharshi Bhardwaj even documented aircraft technology, and NASA – apparently running low on Google – wrote a letter 50 years ago begging for a copy. Rumour has it they are still waiting.
Trinamool gears up for battle over electoral roll ‘manipulation’ in Parliament
As Parliament reconvenes next week, the Trinamool Congress is preparing for an all-out offensive against the BJP-led Centre over alleged electoral roll malpractices in both houses. The party plans to fire its first salvo – submitting notices in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for a calling attention motion and short-duration discussion, ensuring the issue dominates proceedings. “This is not just about politics; it’s about protecting democracy,” a Trinamool MP said to The Telegraph, confident that other opposition parties, including the Congress, would rally behind the cause.
With Mamata Banerjee leading the charge, Trinamool is sharpening its attack, accusing the BJP of rigging voter rolls to manipulate outcomes – a fight that is now heading straight to Parliament.
Paid reviews are ‘killing Bollywood’
Suparna Sharma in Al Jazeera investigates how the ecosystem of paid reviews, PR and social media marketing has inflated box office collections but also turned into a Frankenstein. Bollywood’s murky side of paid reviews is part of a system where fake praise, rate cards, threats and extortion thrive. With 60% of a film’s revenue relying on theatrical success, artificial hype ensures strong openings. Streaming platforms have also shifted strategies, prioritising box office performance over star power, further fueling this cycle.
How the CBI’s endless — and fruitless — corruption probes stymied India’s defence modernisation
Fruitless investigations by the CBI into various defence deals dragged on for long periods of time, stymied the military’s modernisation and dented the operational efficiency of all three services. These, notes Rahul Bedi, include the Bofors investigation that ended in 2011 with no convictions and worsened the army’s shortfall of artillery; the CBI’s probe into a submarine deal with the German firm HDW that caused submarine construction to idle and specialised talent to move abroad (these too were investigations that were closed without outcome); as well as its investigation into alleged corruption by South Africa’s state-owned armaments maker Denel, which was ultimately unsuccessful and deprived India of competitively priced weapons it could have used. These are just three examples.
The Long Cable
Jaishankar Has Blundered By Prematurely Showing India’s Hand on Currency Multipolarity
MK Venu
External Affairs minister S. Jaishankar clearly committed a blunder by publicly declaring in London that there was no unified position within BRiCS on currency multipolarity. He further added that India would support US led financial architecture.
Does Jaishankar even know what the evolving US-led global financial architecture under Trump 2.0 might be since everything is in such a flux?
In any case, where was the need to make such a premature commitment when overall tariff negotiations are underway and no one—including the non-biological being to whom the minister reports—has a clue where reciprocal tariff talks may be headed?
Any rookie diplomat would tell you that in the current uncertainty enveloping the global trading system, currency policy is a definitive bargaining chip. Yet, Jaishankar sought to give it away for nothing. Trump has already thrown subtle hints that he would seek currency adjustments favourable to the US from strong trading nations like China, Japan , Brazil etc. Who knows, India too may be a target.
One will not be surprised if there is a sort of replay of the 1985 Plaza Accord, under which the US forced Japan and other strong trading partners like Germany to strengthen their currencies so that US exports get propped up artificially. Japan in the 1980s was beating America badly in exports of auto, electronics and textiles and the only way the US could fight this was by forcing Japan to appreciate their currency and make its own exports less competitive. The US exploited this instrument and tried to protect its own auto industry. But thankfully the China of 2025 is not like Japan of the 1980s. Beijing will not take such threats lying down – as is already evident from their foreign minister’s statement that China is prepared for any kind of war, trade related or otherwise.
Given that currency is an extraordinarily potent weapon in a trade war, it was unwise on Jaishankar's part to make such an impromptu public commitment to unequivocally be part of the US-led financial architecture.
Purely as a cautionary tale, Jaishankar should have just recalled what Trump did just before leaving office in 2020 end. He put India officially under a currency manipulation watch along with a few other countries like Taiwan and South Korea which were formally US allies.
It should not come as a surprise if Trump resumes that project as added ballast to high reciprocal tariffs. Simply put, forcing a trading partner to appreciate their currency has the same effect as imposing higher import tariffs by the US.
So Jaishankar's statement about BRICs and the Indian position on multipolarity of currency was rather ill timed and even self harming. Perhaps Jaishankar was also indiscreet in suggesting publicly that BRICS had no unified position on currency multipolarity. In such times when the US is brazenly bulldozing the open international trading system, it would have been more sensible to consult other BRICs countries and use the grouping to knock some sense into the US. That might have been deft diplomacy.
Trump is showering Russia with unprecedented favours but catch Russia speaking about BRICs in the tone Jaishankar has deployed.
Purely on facts, it is evident that many developed and developing countries , even those outside BRICs, have been gradually diluting their dollar reserves and stocking up on more and more gold. Post Ukraine war and the US freezing ofRussia's dollar assets, many developed and developing nation central banks have doubled their annual purchase of gold in their reserves. This has clearly come at the cost of the dollar. India itself resorted to massive purchases of Russian crude by paying in rupees. Otherwise this trade would have been in dollars if the sanctions on Russia were partial.
Trump doesn't realise it is America's draconian sanctions in recent years that have motivated nations to stock up more gold at the expense of dollars in their reserves. Over 100 countries have been under comprehensive or partial US economic sanctions of varying nature. The US is inadvertently causing de-dollarisation by its own behaviour. India itself is a signatory to earlier BRICs agreements that encourage local currency trade between nations of this grouping.
Trump's threat that he would impose 100% tariffs on BRICS nations (which now includes UAE, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia among others willing to join) is at best empty rhetoric. A 100% tariff on China and India will likely cause inflation riots in America. Trump knows this.
No wonder he has postponed his promised 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico by a month after seeing the US stock market meltdown as reaction to such draconian moves in the name of making America great again. At least on the economic and trade front, Trump is clearly misreading the mandate he has got from the electorate.
That is why it is inexplicable that India should be making such loose commitments in public as S. Jaishankar did when he sought to put all eggs in the US basket. US-led financial architecture has its own structural vulnerabilities. Many sensible economists believe that the Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion from about $800 billion in 2008 to about $5 trillion in the years after the global financial crises—and then to about $9 trillion dollars after Covid via the relentless printing of dollars post Covid to stimulate the economy—has not produced proportionate real economy growth. It has implicitly weakened the dollar and created a financial bubble.
Today, the dollar is not necessarily in a good place. This is partly reflected in US tech stocks bubble, where about a dozen big shares account for more than a third of the total US market capitalisation. This is a dangerous skew. These stocks suffered a jolt when China produced a much cheaper and equally effective AI product, DeepSeek. Other such products are expected to follow from China. This can make the dollar more vulnerable in the future. Trump's chaotic approach may thrive in the short to medium term and attract global capital as a "safe haven" economy but the underlying fundamentals of this so called safe haven are undoubtedly weak. India is well advised to hedge her bets via a truly multipolar trade, investment and currency strategy in the longer run.
Reportedly
When senior bureaucrat and trusted Modi aide AK Sharma resigned from the IAS two years ago and joined the BJP, the rumour was that he would become deputy chief minister in Uttar Pradesh. Saddled with a minor portfolio, he has found other ways to make himself useful, finds Rajiv Shah, including ensuring VIP visitors from Gujarat to the Mahakumbh were well looked after.
Deep dive
As India liberalises its civil nuclear sector, two key hurdles need to be addressed: the need for an independent regulator and clear liability rules for private players. Hely Desai writes on potential amendments to the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA).
Prime number: 6.98 lakh 🐢
In the ten days between February 16 and 26 this year, 6.89 lakh Olive Ridley turtles swam ashore the Rushikulya beach in Odisha, and scientists who study the animals say this is the largest instance of mass nesting they have seen in the 20 years they have documented it for, writes Aathira Perinchery. This, experts said, suggests the turtles are doing well.Opeds you don’t want to miss
What’s behind the stratospheric rise of one of the richest men in the world? Sushant Singh unpacks the political, economic and legal troubles plaguing the empire of Gautam Adani. “Modi may have intended to position Adani as a sign of his global strength, but the beleaguered businessman has ended up becoming India’s strategic vulnerability.”
India’s new central bank governor is right to ease consumer credit, says Andy Mukherjee. But a fresh buildup of small-ticket loans could store up trouble.
Hindutva enthusiasts use an India-Pak match as a pretext to incite hatred, writes Julio Ribeiro. “What is unacceptable is that the police go to the extent of ignoring the law of the land, which has not criminalised the support of a lad for the underdog as an anti-national manifestation. Further, the action of the sarpanch and the officials who participated in the demolition of the irregular construction without following the proper procedure will surely attract “contempt of court” provisions even if it is felt that the police action of arresting the Muslim couple prevented communal riots.”
There are two “tempting tropes” that ought to be avoided in order to have a “genuine debate on the delimitation question”, writes Suhas Palshikar, who also proposes two ways to address the present concerns around the aforesaid question.
While undocumented Indian migrants in the United States are “predominantly from three north Indian states, a high number of illegal agents are from south Indian states,” writes MA Kalam, who attempts to explain this “mind-boggling” north-south divide in deported Indians from US”.
Sandeep Bharadwaj writes that US “boosterism for India since the early 2000s” has been crucial in the country getting ‘Rising Power’ status. “India must recognise that the US narrative is not always objective but shaped by its ideological, geopolitical, and commercial agendas, which shifts with American priorities.”
In an insightful interview, Filippo Menga, an Italian expert in international riparian law, speaks about the Teesta water dispute between India and Bangladesh and says the current standoff is yet another example of the “unilateral approach in water resources management.”
Listen up
In Mission Manipur : A Frontline Podcast, Greeshma Kuthar throws “light on solidarity initiatives spearheaded by women-led collectives, such as the Kuki Women’s Organisation for Human Rights and ETA Northeast, which have emerged as beacons of hope, providing crucial support to affected communities amidst the turmoil caused by the ongoing Manipur conflict.” Listen here.
Watch out
MK Venu and former Union finance and external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha discuss Trump’s threat of reciprocal tariffs on India and the effect they could have on the Indian economy. For the time being, says Sinha, New Delhi is in a ‘surrender mudra’ vis-a-vis Trump’s threats.
Over and out
Geeta Pandey of the BBC writes about Sthal, a 2023 Marathi film directed by Jayant Digambar Somalkar, that shows “the bride's 'humiliation' in an arranged marriage” in rural Maharashtra, or rural-anywhere-in-India.
Sarah Archer in the New York Times profiles Brinda Dudhat, a young designer from Surat who is “determined to connect her country’s pattern-rich textile heritage with a modern, abstract sensibility”.
In Variety magazine, Naman Ramachandran has the details of a new Telugu film, The Paradise, described as India’s answer to Mad Max. “An examination of societal prejudice set against the backdrop of 1980s Secunderabad… the film follows a marginalized tribe stripped of their rights who find hope in an unlikely leader — a character described simply as “a bastard” — who guides their fight for citizenship and recognition in a system designed to keep them oppressed.”
Sohee Kim profiles Diljit Dosanjh, “India's rising music star” who is “breaking the Bollywood mould”
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.