Modi Touted US Trade Deal as 'Win', Now Happy to Hit Pause; No Source Codes, Spectre of Probe Mar New Rafale Deal; Deletion Baba on a Roll; Manipuri Film Wins at BAFTA
India’s AI Vibrancy is Real. So is the Power and Water Crunch, Brain Drain and GPU Gap, Pink Revolution marches on under BJP
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
February 23, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
The Modi government may have greenlit the purchase of 114 additional Rafale jets – to be built in Nagpur by the Dassault-Anil Ambani joint venture – but French financial crime prosecutors are continuing to probe allegations of corruption in the earlier sale of 36 Rafales, Ashis Ray reports. Ray’s story includes the never-before-seen transcript of the police interrogation of Julie Gayet, wife of former French President Francois Hollande in which she is asked questions about her relationship with Ambani – who emerged as Dassault Aviation’s surprise choice for partner back in 2016.
India will not have access to the source code for the Rafale fighter jet’s main electronic warfare suite, the L’Essentiel de l’Éco French business website has reported – this means India will not be able to independently integrate new systems into the platform. Lieutenant General (retired) David Deptula of the US air force had argued last year that the IAF’s loss of at least one Rafale during its clash with Pakistan may have been because of this limitation. It also foregrounds, writes Rahul Bedi, “why technology-transfer negotiations are a critical component of the MRFA programme”. He notes that while New Delhi has opted for a government-to-government framework in its planned acquisition of 114 Rafales in order to hedge against risks, there are a number of potential pitfalls in the programme that will require the defence ministry to operate with rare resolve to see it through.
Before he passed away on Saturday due to complications from the grievous injuries he suffered at the hands of assailants during the Manipur violence in May 2023, BJP MLA Vungzagin Valte had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September noting that no CBI or NIA inquiry was announced into his assault despite its seriousness, Vijaita Singh reports. No one has been arrested yet in connection with the assault – which Valte alleged was committed by the Meitei militia Arambai Tenggol and in which his Kuki-Zo driver was also killed. In that letter to the PM and elsewhere too Valte had advocated for a separate administration for the Kuki-Zo-Hmar people.
In light of the US Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose his ‘reciprocal’ tariffs was illegal, New Delhi and Washington have deferred negotiations that were scheduled for this week over the pending first tranche of their bilateral trade deal, news outlets have reported, citing sources in the Indian government.
This deferment raises a valid question: If the deal struck was indeed as good for India as Modi and his ministers claimed, why delay its implementation?
Under heavy US tariff pressure, Modi agreed to many of Trump’s demands – a move that now leaves India in an awkward bind. The fact that the government
