Pakistan Says Its Nuclear Weapons Will Be Made Available for Saudi Arabia; EC Admits There's a Problem But Is Not Keen to Fix It; The Protest Republics of South Asia

Sep 19, 2025

If you are already a paid subscriber, thank you! And be sure to renew your subscription when it expires.

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. 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 following link - https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable

Please give us at least up to 2 business days to activate/upgrade/renew your subscription

These are one-time payments and there will be no auto-renewal

Snapshot of the day

September 19, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

Pakistan’s defence minister, Khwaja Mohammad Asif, has said that the country’s nuclear weapons “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia under the terms of the mutual defence agreement the two countries have just signed. This marks the first official confirmation of the fact that Saudi Arabia is now under the protection of Islamabad’s ‘nuclear umbrella’, though how comfortable that will make Riyadh feel is a matter of debate. The nuclear issue has acquired renewed salience in the wake of the deadly missile and drone attacks that Israel – a country that possesses nuclear weapons – has launched in recent weeks against Qatar, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, none of which has a nuclear deterrent. AP quotes Asif telling Geo News:

“Let me make one point clear about Pakistan’s nuclear capability: that capability was established long ago when we conducted tests. Since then, we have forces trained for the battlefield. What we have, and the capabilities we possess, will be made available to (Saudi Arabia) according to this agreement.”

The nuclear umbrella concept is as old as the Cold War — Japan and South Korea foreswore the nuclear option in exchange for ‘guarantees’ that the US would use its own nuclear weapons to deter any aggression against them — but has remained untested. Besides, deterrence rests on the assumption of rationality and Tel Aviv’s behaviour over the past two years has been anything but that. So would Pakistan’s nuclear missiles really deter Tel Aviv from attacking Saudi Arabia if push came to shove? Or would the new mutual defence agreement put Pakistan’s strategic assets in Israel’s cross-hairs?

India, meanwhile, responded to questions on the agreement today, with the External Affairs ministry spokesperson noting that Saudi Arabia and India had a strategic partnership and that “we expect that our strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia will be pursued keeping in mind mutual interests and sensitivities.”

Less than a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Manipur since the 2023 ethnic disturbances began, two soldiers were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in was ambushed in Bishnupur district. The attackers are believed to be from the banned Peoples Liberation Army – a secessionist Meitei armed group – though the army has not formally named its attackers. The September 19 incident marks the first attack on Central security forces since May 2023, Vijaita Singh reports. “The ambush occurred on National Highway-2, the same road used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to travel from the Imphal airport to the hills of Churachandpur district on September 13.”

The allegations of ‘vote chori’ made by Rahul Gandhi yesterday found an echo in a press conference held by Aam Aadmi Party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj in which he reiterated AAP’s concerns over the ‘mysterious’ addition and deletion of voters in the run up to the last assembly election in the national capital. Once again, the Election Commission has responded by saying the system was working well and that these allegations were looked into in January 2025 itself.

In its responses, the ECI has spoken in two voices, reports Sravasti Dasgupta. On the one hand it categorically denies the possibility of voters’ names being arbitrarily deleted from, or added to, the rolls on the basis of online applications. On the other, it concedes that attempts were indeed made to do this in Karnataka and Maharashtra – as Gandhi noted yesterday – but that these were thwarted and led to the filing of criminal cases. Which begs several questions:

Who are the individuals or groups who made these attempts?
Have there been instances where such attempts actually succeeded?
What efforts is the ECI making to identify and punish those responsible?
Why has it withheld vital information from the Karnataka police, which is investigating the mass deletion attempt at the Aland constituency?

Kannan Gopinathan is not wrong when he says the ECI’s approach is like saying “there was an attempted mass shooting, but since no one died, no need to find the shooters or their network.”

Earlier this year, in response to the Congress’s request for video footage from certain polling booths, the ECI said it could not share this as this would violate the ‘privacy of women voters’. But privacy concerns did not come in the way of the commission sharing the personal details of voters, including women voters, with the Telangana government in 2019, which in turn made this information available to private contractors. Ayushi Kar has the story.

Incidentally, the EC has now trained its guns on ‘illegal immigrants’ in Delhi and will soon be launching a Bihar-style special intensive revision of voter rolls in order to identify and purge them.

Over five years after Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and others were all arrested in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots ‘larger conspiracy’ case, the Supreme Court finally took up their long-pending bail pleas … only to adjourn them. Again. While the last time it adjourned their pleas exactly a week ago on the grounds that they received some files pertaining to the case very late, this time the bench comprising Justice Aravind Kumar and Manmohan deferred the hearing to Monday, without providing a reason, reports Aaratrika Bhaumik.

US President Donald Trump may or may not attend the Quad summit, slated to be held in India later this year, but he will be meeting the Quad’s target – President Xi Jinping of China – at the APEC summit in Korea Oct 31-Nov 1 and will visit China too early next year. Trump made the announcement on Truth Social after what he said was a “productive call” with Xi.

It's very simple, United States President Donald Trump said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers yesterday: “If the price of oil comes down, Putin's gonna drop out, he's gonna have no choice, he's gonna drop out of that [the Ukraine] war.” And as part of his effort to cut off Moscow's oil revenue Trump ‘sanctioned’ India even though he is “very close” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and shares a “very good relationship” with him, as exemplified by their most recent phone call earlier this week, the president said.

One sticking point in this ‘very good’ relationship has reportedly been the conflict between Trump's desire for a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for his claimed role in ending the India-Pakistan military conflict in May, and Modi's flat denial of any such role whatsoever. At any rate the president has continued to repeatedly claim that he brought about the ceasefire using trade as a carrot (and stick). Standing next to Starmer yesterday he said: “Look, we did seven, and most of them were not thought to be settle-able. We did India and we did Pakistan, that's two nuclear — that was purely for trade. ‘You wanna trade with us, you're going to have to get along’. And they were going at it hot and heavy.”

Many observers have partly attributed Trump's decision to levy a 50% tariff on India as New Delhi's refusal to ‘fall in line’ with the president's wishes. Against the backdrop of Trump signalling last week that trade talks between the two sides would resume, Indian chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran has said that he believes the ‘reciprocal’ half of that 50% levy could ‘come down to levels that we earlier anticipated’, i.e. to around 10% or 15%, he said at an event in Kolkata yesterday.

In an effort to reach a deal, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal will likely travel to Washington next week.

The authorities in Kashmir told Hurriyat stalwart Abdul Ghani Bhat's family to bury him on Wednesday night, hours after his passing, even as they were keen to have funeral prayers the next morning to allow well-wishers to bid him a final goodbye, a relative of his told Jehangir Ali. Family members also alleged that security forces sealed Bhat's village to prevent people from attending his last rites yesterday – something the local senior police superintendent denied – while local leaders including Mehbooba Mufti, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Sajad Lone alleged that they were placed under house arrest in order to prevent them from travelling to Sopore to pay their respects to Bhat.

A group of 14 civil society members met Nepal President Ramchandra Paudel on Thursday to voice support for the Gen Z movement against corruption while urging that a solution be sought through elections. According to Nepal-based New Spotlight magazine, the group argued that the dissolution of parliament on the recommendation of interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki was unconstitutional and emphasised the need to hold free and fair elections on time as the primary responsibility of the interim government. Meanwhile, the President explained the reason behind his decision to appoint Sushila Karki as the interim prime minister, and the subsequent decision to dissolve parliament for elections in six months.

Police in Delhi have arrested a number of African refugees, including from conflict-torn Sudan and Somalia, over the last week and sent them to the Lampur detention centre in the capital's north, Rokibuz Zaman reports. Some of them have refugee cards provided by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which protects holders from being sent back to their home countries but which do not give them a right to stay in their host nations. Still, in one instance the police allegedly pressured a Sudanese family to go back home and beat up the wife of a man who was recently picked up, writes Zaman. Opposition MPs John Brittas and Manoj Jha have spoken out against the move, with the latter noting that the government's actions “will define whether we remain true to our values of vasudhaiva kutumbakam or abandon our role as a responsible global citizen”.

After photos and videos emerged of workers – including a minor – engaged in cleaning sewers outside the Supreme Court complex without protective gear, the apex court yesterday imposed a Rs 5 lakh fine on the Delhi public works department. It also noted that the PWD does not appear to have put the concerned contractor on notice or blacklist it. “At this stage, we detest from doing so [directing that an FIR be lodged] for a simple reason that no incident has occurred …” PTI quotes the bench as saying.

The Editors Guild of India (EGI) wrote to Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu on Friday, condemning the recent criminal complaints and FIRs against Telugu daily Sakshi, the mouthpiece of the opposition YSR Congress Party, and several of its staffers. It noted that Sakshi has been “singled out” especially at least in one instance regarding the coverage of a press conference by a political leader that was also carried by several other newspapers and media outlets. The EGI’s statement comes days after the Press Club of India criticised the Naidu government and the state police for the “systematic hounding” of the editor and journalists of the newspaper.

Under Maharashtra's Shiv Bhojan Thali scheme beneficiaries can avail lunches for Rs 10. Operators of outlets under the scheme say it is a boon for ragpickers, daily wage and gig workers, migrant labourers and the relatives of poor patients who come to the city for treatment. However, a number of them are under distress now that the state government hasn't paid them their dues in six months, forcing them to dock their employees' wages or even consider closing shop. Speaking to Tabassum Barnagarwala, one outlet owner claimed that those on high attributed the situation to a fund crunch precipitated by a hiked Ladki Bahin payout – and officials do acknowledge that the Shiv Bhojan scheme hasn't received enough funds this year.

Britain on Thursday returned the first migrant, an Indian national, to France under a new “one in, one out” deal, both governments confirmed, as London bids to curb highly contentious cross-Channel arrivals. The UK interior ministry said it deported the man, who arrived aboard a small boat in August, on a commercial flight. British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood hailed his departure as “an important first step to securing our borders”, insisting it sent a message that “if you enter the UK illegally, we will seek to remove you”.

With the recovery of two bodies today the death toll from flooding and landslides in Uttarakhand's Chamoli has climbed to seven. PTI cites officials as saying that 95 people have been moved to relief camps.

Just a few days after the Indian Army suspended further induction of Sharang artillery guns, the production of Dhanush guns came under the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) scanner. The agency has launched an investigation into the supply of counterfeit components for the Dhanush howitzer. The Dhanush howitzer has been touted as the indigenous successor to the Bofors guns of the Kargil War era. Delhi-based Sidh Sales Syndicate allegedly supplied China-imported “Wire Race Roller Bearings” but falsely certified as German-made. These were delivered to the Gun Carriage Factory (GCF), Jabalpur, despite tests pointing to dimensional flaws.

The Delhi High Court pulled up self-proclaimed Yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved for challenging a single-judge order in July that restrained it from running allegedly disparaging advertisements about a product manufactured by consumer goods company Dabur, Bar and Bench reports. A bench of Justices Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla told Patanjali Ayurved to either withdraw the petition or face costs. It also noted that the July 3 order did not direct the conglomerate to take down the entire advertisement but to modify certain portions of it.

While in Britain yesterday Trump acknowledged for the first time that talks aiming to reclaim for the US the Bagram Air Base outside Kabul may be underway. “We're trying to get it back, by the way … because they need things from us. We want that base back. One of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it's an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons,” the president said. The Taliban rebuffed his remarks, saying it was open to political and economic relations albeit without American troops in Afghanistan.

Another deal-breaker for the Taliban has been the presence of women in higher education, and recently it went a step further in this regard by removing books authored by women from its university education system. Some 18 subjects dealing with women, including those about ‘the role of women in communication’ and ‘women's sociology’, have been prohibited from being taught at the university level too, reports Ali Hussaini. Alongside, Kabul has also cracked down on books written by Iranian scholars, a move which one professor said is a bad idea as their work often serves as a bridge “between Afghanistan's universities and the global academic community”.

What could be behind the spike in highly dangerous amoebic brain infection cases hitting the headlines in Kerala? One reason could just be that in the past these cases were incorrectly attributed to something else. But a risk factor could also be that climate change, making the state's myriad ponds and well-waters warmer, could be creating ideal conditions for these pathogens to thrive in, scientists say. While the mortality rate of amoebic brain infection cases tend to be exceptionally high, it seems to be declining in Kerala, with doctors attributing it to better detection alongside its high-tech labs. Soutik Biswas has the report.

American online dating companies - Bumble, Tinder and Hinge - have put their India operations on the back burner, with cuts in team sizes and growth spends. That’s despite the boom in homegrown dating apps. Harveen Ahluwalia and Hiral Goyal spoke with eight executives to understand the realities of the tech dating business in India.

The immensely popular Assamese singer Zubeen Garg died today in a drowning accident while snorkelling in Singapore.

SC junks plea against Booker Prize-winning writer Banu Mushtaq’s Dasara invite

The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition challenging the Karnataka High Court’s refusal to interfere with the state government inviting International Booker Prize-winning author Banu Mushtaq as the chief guest to inaugurate the Mysuru Dasara festival. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta refused to entertain the appeal filed by petitioner HS Gaurav, who had argued that the involvement of a non-Hindu in rituals such as lighting a lamp, puja and offering flowers at the Chamundeshwari temple infringed upon Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution and hurt Hindu sentiments. “This is a State programme… how can the State distinguish between A, B and C?” the Bench observed, adding that it had already said “dismissed” multiple times. When the petitioner’s counsel argued that performing puja inside a temple was a religious act and cited precedents, the court cut him short: “What is the Preamble of this country?… We have said ‘dismissed’ three times; how many more times do we have to say it? Next case.”

e-KYC mandatory for Ladki Bahin beneficiaries

With elections well behind it, the Maharashtra government is tightening the hastily rolled out Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana – which provides monthly assistance of Rs 1,500 to women in the age group of 21-65, whose annual family income is not more than Rs 2.5 lakh. Now, e-KYC has been mandatory for beneficiaries, which means going through bureaucratic hoops. The process has to be completed within two months, according to a government resolution issued on Thursday night. Eligible women must complete their verification and authentication within two months to receive the monthly assistance in their bank accounts. If Aadhaar authentication is not done, the benefits will be withheld and the beneficiaries will have to carry out the e-KYC process compulsorily every year.

Modi’s India: Hindi TV survives, creativity and artistic freedom dies

With film sectors around India still hobbling from the blow they were dealt by the pandemic, “Hindi television has become an unlikely sanctuary” whose “relentless weekly grind keeps kitchens running and EMIs paid”, Anushka Halve writes. One writer explains: “We write every day; we produce content seven days a week … It’s cheaper, it’s relentless, and you don’t have to wait a year for the next season”. And for the top quartile of writers in the industry this relentlessness can be quite a lucrative thing too. But not all pieces are in the right place, Halve finds. “Creative energy is being smothered under pragmatic constraints” – such as a demand to rehash older or non-Hindi shows, and interference from marketing teams – while slowing ad revenues mean that “metrics become less forgiving”. There is also the issue of extremely demanding workdays.

The Long Cable

The Protest Republics of South Asia

Shyam Tekwani

On a July night in 2022, Sri Lankan protesters surged past barricades and swarmed the president’s residence, swimming in his pool, marvelling at the gilded interiors, and forcing the Rajapaksas to flee. Two years later, in August 2024, Dhaka’s streets filled with students furious at a rigged job quota system; by dusk on August 5, Sheikh Hasina, South Asia’s longest-serving female leader, had resigned and left the country. And last week, Kathmandu erupted as a ban on social media ignited Nepal’s TikTok generation.

Different places, but a common choreography: drift, corruption, trigger, mobilisation, fracture, collapse. When centralisation, media throttling, and selective repression intersect with sudden shocks – economic collapse, exclusionary rules, or digital bans – the result is mass mobilisation. Those protests turn into regime change when elites fracture: cabinet resignations, military neutrality, or judicial intervention, making repression unsustainable.

A region with protest in its DNA

South Asia has long carried protest in its DNA. Bangladesh’s anti-Ershad movement in 1990 toppled a dictator after weeks of student-led demonstrations. Sri Lanka’s 1953 Hartal paralysed Colombo in fury over food subsidies. Nepal’s Jana Andolans of 1990 and 2006 remade its constitutional order and ended a monarchy. Pakistan’s 2007 Lawyers’ Movement revived judicial independence after General Musharraf’s dismissal of the Chief Justice. India’s JP movement of 1974–75 mobilised youth, students, and workers in ways that helped usher in the Emergency. Even Bhutan, often seen as insulated, has had its share of demonstrations, particularly during its 2008 transition to constitutional monarchy. The Maldives saw youth-led pro-democracy protests in the 2000s, while Afghanistan, under both republic and Taliban rule, has witnessed students, women, and ethnic minorities take to the streets despite immense risks.

South Asia is a region where grievances often burst through formal institutions and spill into the streets. Yet outcomes differ. In Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, leaders were driven from office. In Pakistan, elite manoeuvre, a no-confidence vote, mattered more than street heat. In India, farmers forced repeal of laws but did not topple the government. In the Maldives, “India Out” campaigns swayed elections, not barricades.

The Sri Lankan implosion (2022)

Sri Lanka’s drift came through dynastic consolidation. The Rajapaksas filled cabinet seats with family, cowed institutions, and flaunted wealth while the economy cratered. Hare-brained policies, most infamously the sudden ban on chemical fertilisers that devastated agriculture, collided with entrenched corruption and fiscal mismanagement. The trigger was economic collapse: fuel queues that stretched for days, inflation that gutted salaries, shortages that emptied store shelves. Latent discontent turned into the Aragalaya (“struggle”), a coalition of students, unions, clergy, professionals, and even elements of the diaspora.

The state tried tear gas and curfews, but security forces hesitated. The decisive moment came when cabinet ministers resigned en masse and the president fled. The outcome was stark: the Rajapaksa era ended, though the economic malaise and corruption networks endured. Like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka’s economy depended heavily on remittances; instability at home rippled outward to its migrant households abroad, adding another layer of urgency to the protest wave.

Bangladesh’s student revolt (2024)

By 2024, Sheikh Hasina had ruled for more than 15 years, presiding over impressive growth while eroding democratic space. Opposition parties were marginalised, media curbed, patronage entrenched, and corruption increasingly tolerated as the price of loyalty. The trigger was deceptively small: restoration of a job quota system seen as privileging ruling-party loyalists. Students erupted, and repression radicalised moderates.

As protests spread, the government doubled down; imposing internet curbs, using lethal force. Dozens were killed. But repression backfired: more citizens joined, and by August 5, Hasina fled. A caretaker was installed. Here too, remittance dependence shaped the context. Bangladesh’s globalised labour force was acutely sensitive to disruption of communication and trust; any erosion of those links risked compounding discontent at home.

If remittances added urgency to protests in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, in Nepal they defined the very character of mobilisation.

Nepal’s digital-rights revolt (2025)

KP Oli’s government had chipped away at institutions, mixing patronage with corruption scandals, but the sharp trigger was a ban on social-media platforms. In a country where TikTok and Facebook dominate youth culture, the ban was not seen as technical regulation but as an assault on identity and freedom.

Students and Gen-Z users poured into Kathmandu’s streets. The government used lethal force; 20 protestors were killed. The crackdown only hardened resolve. On the second day, there were widespread attacks on symbols of authority and power. The army, wary of mass casualties, pressed for compromise. Oli resigned; Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, became interim prime minister.

But the ban cut deeper than culture. Nepal’s economy is one of the most remittance-dependent in the world; remittances account for nearly 30 percent of GDP. Outflows of workers have doubled in recent years, and families depend on daily digital transfers and conversations to sustain livelihoods. The ban threatened to isolate millions of workers abroad from their households at home. Not long ago, as we argued here, even temporary disruptions to communication undermined trust in governance, markets, and family security. The 2025 ban revived that old truth: when leaders sever citizens from their economic and emotional lifelines, resistance intensifies.

This was South Asia’s first digital-rights revolution: protests centred not only on expression but also on the right to maintain the transnational ties that sustain households. It showed the paradox of digital authoritarianism: shutting down platforms can mobilise the very citizens one seeks to silence.

India’s farmers and the buffers of federalism

India’s protests are often larger than those elsewhere in the region. The 2020–21 farmers’ movement drew hundreds of thousands, sustained encampments for a year, and forced repeal of farm laws. Earlier protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019–20 mobilised students, minorities, and civil society. In 2011, Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign shook Delhi.

For decades, India’s federalism and competitive elections absorbed dissent: opposition-ruled states gave platforms to critics, courts offered occasional relief, voters could punish incumbents. These buffers bent governments but did not break them.

The lesson from the neighbourhood, however, is that buffers can erode. Sri Lanka’s institutions bent until they snapped. Bangladesh’s growth masked narrowing civic space until a quota dispute ignited fury. Nepal’s federal experiment could not shield it from the force of digital-age mobilisation. India still has stronger guardrails, from scale to electoral cycles to military neutrality. But resilience is not immunity; buffers bend until they break. India’s experience shows both resilience and risk: institutions bent once, during the farmers’ protest, and will need to remain flexible if they are to withstand sharper pressures in the future.

Patterns across the region

Across South Asia the choreography repeats. Leaders consolidate power, narrow civic space, throttle the press, and lean on patronage to secure loyalty. For a time, drift is tolerated. Then comes the trigger: fuel queues in Colombo, a quota rule in Dhaka, a social-media ban in Kathmandu. Suddenly grievances that seemed scattered ignite into fire.

Youth and students lead, unions and professionals follow, the middle classes join. Governments reach for familiar tools: curfews, shutdowns, live fire, but find repression swelling protests rather than stilling them. The turning point comes not in the streets but in the corridors of power: cabinets fracture, soldiers hold back, judges refuse to rubber-stamp.

Then leaders fall, hurriedly, often by night. Drift, corruption, trigger, mobilisation, fracture, collapse: the rhythm of South Asia’s protest politics.

External influences: amplifiers, not initiators

It is tempting to see a heavy external hand. But in case after case, protests were about domestic failures, not India, China, or the West. India appears mainly in the aftermath: stabiliser in Sri Lanka, lightning rod in Bangladesh, peripheral in Nepal. China looms in the background: debt in Sri Lanka, influence in Nepal, but rarely sparks protest. Western governments issue statements, but cannot ignite discontent.

The lesson is sobering: external actors amplify; the cause is internal. When leaders overreach, by banning social media, reinstating quotas, or flaunting palatial wealth, citizens act.

Protest as South Asia’s reckoning

South Asia’s streets have always been a stage for politics. What is new is the speed with which today’s youth can mobilise, the visibility of repression in an age of livestreams, and the fragility of governments that mistake autocratic drift for permanence.

The lesson for the region’s leaders is stark: autocratisation buys time, not immunity. And when the choreography begins, it ends not with applause but with flight into the dark.

Shyam Tekwani is a professor and columnist specialising in security affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.

Reportedly

Is the Maoist movement in India on the verge of abandoning armed struggle? Santoshi Markam reports on a letter/appeal issued by a section of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) apologising for its singular focus on armed action to the exclusion of political mobilisation. But not everyone within the party is aligned to this thinking, she writes.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

“Cities can't be created by private capital alone and the state cannot merely acquire land, hand it over to private entities, and collect taxes. Cities are made collectively by the state, private interests, and the people who occupy them.” On Gurgaon by Ankita Dhar Karmakar.

`Prime number: 90%`

India’s millionaire households have nearly doubled in the past four years, underscoring the country’s rapid wealth creation and rising affluence, according to the newly released Mercedes-Benz Hurun India Wealth Report 2025. The report estimates that India is home to 8,71,700 millionaire households (net worth of Rs 8.5 crore or USD 1 million and above), up from 4,58,000 in 2021 – a 90% increase. These households now account for 0.31% of all Indian households, highlighting the rapid expansion of affluence in the country.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

Derek Grossman is bearish about the prospects for the Quad, which he says is on a “downward spiral that may be irreversible”. The anti-China grouping died once before, in 2008, because its members – especially India, Australia and the US – were not so sure about the wisdom of collectively confronting Beijing. and it was Donald Trump who revived it in 2017. But today, it is Trump who is undermining it:
“This time around, the primary reason for the Quad's demise will be more worrisome: America is actively ruining each of its strategic partnerships (with Australia, India, and Japan) through a combination of levying reciprocal tariffs, threatening to downgrade key elements of bilateral partnerships and irrational bullying.”
The IAF had only begun modernising with MiG-21s during the 1965 war, while the PAF fielded more advanced US-supplied fighter planes, says ex-Central Air Command chief Air Marshal RGK Kapoor (retd). He writes,
“It is important to drive home the advantage against the enemy to create long-lasting deterrence. The PAF would have been largely neutralised had the war continued. This is true even today. However, political and military objectives have to be aligned. It calls for clarity on outcomes and pre-war dialogue.”
Against the backdrop of landslides and floods, the need of the hour is to involve scientists in crafting developmental projects for the entire Himalayan terrain, writes Yaspal Sundriyal. “The fragility of the Himalayan terrain is due to climate and seismicity. The ecosystem is susceptible even with slight external perturbations such as road widening and tunnel construction work. Human intervention is the main factor that has accelerated the magnitude of disasters.”
Thought social justice has become a rallying cry in electoral politics, its transformative potential remains limited without concrete action, writes Harish Wankhede:
“While the BJP has pledged to uphold social justice, its decade-long tenure has seen a rise in caste-based violence and a dilution of policies aimed at SC/ST upliftment. Though at the symbolic level it offered prominent gestures (like electing Draupadi Murmu as President) there is an absence of new initiatives to enhance their representation in public and private sectors.”
Gautam Bhatia looks at the case of the ‘very strange presidential reference’, a game in which the Modi government has used Article 143 – the rarely invoked prerogative of the President of India to ‘consult the Supreme Court on a question of law or fact’ – to re-litigate a settled matter. Specifically, the government has sought to reopen the issue of how long governors can sit on laws passed by state legislatures, thereby delaying legislation indefinitely. The Supreme Court had already ruled that gubernatorial delays cannot be endless but has gone along with the government’s novel way of trying to get the judgment changed.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes about an ‘imaginary conversation between Donald and Narendra.’ “On tariffs, trade and leaders who make nations great”.

Listen up

Journalist and analyst James Crabtree in a new paper titled ‘Pivot to Europe’ argues that with Indo-American ties coming under strain, the time has come for “Europe to shine and to make the case that it is India’s most promising alternative in a shifting global order”. To explain his argument and to discuss “the turmoil in US-India relations, the historical underperformance of Europe-India relations, the looming China challenge … and how Europe can avoid short-termism to forge stronger bonds with India over the long haul” among other things, he joins Milan Vaishnav on his Grand Tamasha podcast this week.

Watch out

Edward Luce, the US National Editor and Chief US Commentator of the Financial Times, dissects Donald Trump’s bluster on India – his contradictory rants and Twitter outbursts – questioning whether he seriously thinks he can strong-arm it out of buying Russian oil, or if his talk of a trade deal is just another hollow boast.

Over and out

The daughter of an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father, Kamala Harris shares her candid reflections in her new book 107 Days about her 2024 presidential campaign against Donald Trump – “hitting the reader on the head with a central argument about why she lost the presidential race”, says The New York Times. “I didn’t have enough time,” she writes in the book.
Following the India-Pakistan flare-up in May, interest in VPN services spiked as Indian viewers sought ways to bypass restrictions. YouTube creators quickly filled the gap with step-by-step tutorials on unblocking VPNs, and many Indians began relying on them to keep up with Pakistani dramas, reports Nikkei Asia. “The Indian and Pakistani public’s persistence in circumventing government-imposed curbs [proves that many] remain curious about the people across the border who look, sound and dress like us, yet we are told they are our enemies.”
Author Amitav Ghosh has been named the winner of the 14th Pak Kyongni Prize, Korea’s most prestigious international literary award, often described as the country’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The jury unanimously selected Ghosh after a year-long review process that began with 113 nominees, praising his role in expanding the frontiers of postcolonial and ecological literature and for giving voice to marginalized perspectives, including those of nature itself.
Director Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound – based on a story by Basharat Peer, produced by Karan Johar and Adar Poonawalla, starring Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor in lead roles – has been chosen as India’s official entry for the 2026 Academy Awards in the Best International Feature category, chairperson of the selection committee N Chandra said on Friday. Addressing a press conference in Kolkata, Chandra said a total of 24 films in different languages were in contention for representing the country at the Oscars. “It was a very difficult choice. These were films that touched the lives of people,” he said.

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.

The India Cable