Over the past month New Delhi has seemingly chartered a new course of much closer alignment with “The West.” The India-US trade deal in early February was followed by American claims that New Delhi is going to end imports of Russian oil. Initially dismissed as more Trump nonsense, it turned out Indian refiners were indeed reducing Russian imports. India then seized three tankers from the so-called “shadow fleet” that were under US sanctions over alleged links to Iranian oil.
So much for BRICS.
And perhaps biggest of all were the bevy of partnership deals with the EU on economic integration, defence cooperation, and technological alignment, headlined by a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that had stalled for nearly two decades.
These might seem like sudden shifts, especially after India spent the past three years resisting Western pressure on Russian trade and standing firm against Trump’s tariff threats.
Yet all these moves fit in with the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) plan that was first introduced at the September 2023 G20 Summit in New Delhi. The network of railroads, ship-to-rail, road transport routes, energy pipelines and high-speed data cables connecting South Asia, the Gulf and Europe was in theory supposed to be some sort of answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It never made much sense as a logistics corridor as it involves moving cargo via ships from India to the UAE, putting them onto trains going through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, and then back onto ships to go from Israel to Europe.
It looked like IMEC, like so many responses to the BRI, was going to fade into obscurity, but the Trump “America First” administration enthusiastically backed it with Donald calling it calling it the “‘greatest trade routes in all of history.”
Yet the new administration shifted the focus away from a logistics corridor to more of a digital one with each pole of IMEC fortifying a new American hegemony with Israel playing a lead role. What does this IMEC vision prescribe for each of the main players?
US tech sharing in return for a guarantee that AI-enabled exports generated using American chips will be invoiced and settled in dollars—or dollar-backed stablecoins. The EU provides capital and a market—and its FTA with India looks to play a key role (more on that below). The Persian Gulf provides capital, land, and loads of power for data centers and American compute power flowing outwards from the Persian Gulf. Israel provides an AI lab to surveil, control, and murder human beings, constantly tested and fine tuned on Palestinians and others.
An AI superiority invitation from Europe to India written in the blood of genocide. And there are efforts to take the IMEC model global. In December the US State Department also unveiled Pax Silica, an effort to form a political-economic alliance in the field of AI and its supply chains and counts Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the UAE, and Australia as participants.
India announced last week that it too will join the Pax Silica club, which means one of the world’s largest technology markets and a founding member of the BRICS is on board.
AI Slaves Wanted
But what does New Delhi bring to the IMEC table? The FTA with the EU provides plenty of insight.
There’s been plenty of analysis of imports, exports, and tariffs. India will likely increase exports of textiles, garments, jewellery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and electronics to the EU, while more European-made luxury vehicles are expected on Indian streets, for example, due to lower tariffs. It is said EU exports to India could double by 2032, which isn’t saying all that much:
Two ways to look at the Free Trade Agreement with India, “the mother of all deals”:
– It’s an absolute nothingburger at the macro level right for Europe.
– The potential for growth is huge given the very low starting point and India’s growth prospects. pic.twitter.com/OPF4PEEPsF
— Ángel Talavera (@atalaveraEcon) January 26, 2026
And there’s a lot in there about defense-industrial cooperation for an EU that continues to struggle to “rearm” against the “Russian threat.” [1]
But I’m going to go out on a limb here and argue that the biggest component of the FTA is to cement India as an AI sweatshop for global capital.
Because for all the talk about how AI will make human labor obsolete, in reality AI workers—and cheap ones—are in high demand. And that’s a big reason why tech vampires like Sundar Pichai of Google and Sam Altman of OpenAI descended on New Delhi last week for the India AI Impact Summit 2026. Here’s India Narrative:
India’s true strength lies in its unparalleled human capital. The nation leads the world in AI talent acquisition, with an annual hiring rate around 33% and AI skill penetration 2.5 times the global average in relevant occupations. Talent concentration has more than tripled since 2016, and India boasts one of the largest pools of young, technically skilled engineers and developers anywhere. This “AI workforce capital” is in extraordinarily high demand globally. Indian professionals power leading labs, tech giants, and startups from Silicon Valley to Europe, often filling critical gaps in research, engineering, and applied AI. As global AI adoption surges, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are expanding aggressively in India, recognizing it not just as a market but as a strategic hub for talent and experimentation.
Yeah, the FTA with the EU is full of…”experimentation.”
According to The Wire, that “mother of all deals” goes hand in hand with India’s four new Labour Codes passed at the end of 2025. Together they codify Indian workers exploitation on a global scale.
Here is a list of examples I’ve summarized from The Wire (it’s a long list, but goes to show just what a systematic dismantling of worker protections this is):
- …Rule 34 of the Social Security Rules, which introduces pro-rata gratuity for Fixed-Term Employees (FTEs). By legally validating a structure where the “basic wage” is suppressed, the rule anchors gratuity calculations solely to a shrunken core, partitioning the pay check to ensure the corporate entity retains a larger share of the value produced. The worker’s deferred earnings are legally diminished.
- …the State has constructed a “Floor Wage” framework seemingly designed to trigger a race to the bottom. Rule 4(2) of the Wage Code rules decouples the traditional criteria of sustenance – calories, clothing, rent, fuel, and education, which the Supreme Court previously treated as a “Right to Life” under the Raptakos Brett norms – from the statutory formula. Instead, it leaves the floor wage to a “technical committee,” allowing for a five-year freeze in revisions.
- To keep this wage artificially low, the State relies on the legal fiction of the “Standard Family” as a nuclear unit (three consumption units), erasing the sociological reality of the Indian working class where the burden of caring for ageing parents falls entirely on the worker.
- This extraction extends to the worker’s very time. Rule 9(c) of the Wage Code legalises the uncompensated appropriation of employee time by defining “waiting periods” as non-working hours if the worker is not strictly “at the disposal” of the employer. Read alongside the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code’s overtime waivers and Rule 6’s ambiguous “spread-over” limits, the law effectively permits a de facto 12-hour workday.
- Even the gig economy is trapped in this statutory instability. Rules 49 and 50 replace the traditional concept of the “Employer” with the “Aggregator,” constructing a welfare model based on a nominal cess (1-2% of turnover) rather than rights. By mandating Aadhaar for registration, the State deploys digital gatekeeping against migrant workers, while simultaneously allowing 16-year-olds to enter the algorithmic loop of delivery work – securing a fresh supply of young labour while absolving platforms of liability.
- The State has effectively written the legal strike out of existence…The rules thus operationalise a bureaucratic loop: to strike legally, one must give notice; giving notice triggers conciliation; conciliation makes the strike illegal.
- When workers do attempt to organise, Rule 9(6) (Section 14 of the IR Code) sets an imposing threshold: a single union must command 51% of the workforce to be recognised as the sole negotiating agent. Failing this, they are forced into a “Negotiating Council,” fracturing the collective voice and allowing the employer to divide and rule.
- The ideological shift is perhaps best captured by Form XXVI, the “Employment Information Return,” which requires employers to detail “Manpower Shortages.” It frames human beings not as citizens requiring livelihoods, but as inventory stock – like coal or steel – signalling a shift from welfare to corporate supply.
- Deregulate[s] the factory floor [by allowing] a contractor to obtain a single, pan-India license. A contractor registered in Gujarat can now exploit workers in Odisha, and the local inspector is powerless to intervene. It is the centralisation of impunity.
- …mandates a Safety Committee only for establishments with 500 or more workers, deliberately ignoring the MSME sector where the vast majority of accidents occur.
- …expand[s] the definition of “misconduct” to include “go-slow,” the rules weaponise exhaustion. In an era where production targets are algorithmically pushed to physiological limits, slowing down is often the body’s only defence against collapse. By categorising this biological reality as a firing offence, the law sides with the machine against the metabolism of the worker. Under these orders, to be tired is to be guilty.
Where does the FTA agreement come into play. According to The Wire, the EU deal cements these changes as the trade agreement supersedes national law:
If a progressive state government attempts to amend its laws to genuinely empower local inspectors or protect striking workers, the Centre can invoke its binding commitments to the EU—citing the need for “predictability” for foreign capital – to strike the state law down. The FTA effectively becomes a weapon to bypass federalism.
And this is crucial to the IMEC vision. Here’s Guy Laron writing at American Affairs Journal:
…[IMEC] has now been repurposed into a privatized artery connecting Gulf compute to Indian talent. This made perfect sense. India has long been seen as the world’s back office: a land of coders, clerks, and call centers. But today it plays a far more strategic role in the AI supply chain. Its 1,600 Global Capability Centers (GCCs), which employ 1.66 million professionals, have moved well beyond basic IT and customer service.14 These fully owned subsidiaries of multinational corporations now handle advanced functions: software engineering, data analytics, AI research, cybersecurity, and even core product development. In effect, they are how the corporate West operationalizes its digital ambitions at scale and at lower cost. The GCC sector already accounts for over a third of India’s services exports and is growing rapidly.15
As these centers begin working with more sophisticated AI models, India and its vast digital labor force will become increasingly dependent on the Gulf’s infrastructure to train and deploy that AI at scale. This gives India a dual role within Trump’s AI corridor: a global labor hub and a regional client of Gulf-based compute power.
Silicon Valley Accelerationists, Joined by Adani, Bring Their Blow Torches
India is on its way to achieving its goal of $200 billion in investments for data centers over the next few years as it scales up its ambitions to become a hub for artificial intelligence, the country’s minister for electronics and information technology said Feb. 17.
Alphabet said in October that it would invest $15 billion over the next five years to build an AI data center hub in southern India. Microsoft followed two months later with its biggest-ever Asia investment announcement of $17.5 billion to advance India’s cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next four years. Amazon too has committed $35 billion investment in India by 2030 to expand its business, specifically targeting AI-driven digitization.
Cerberus, in collaboration with the UAE’s’ Mohamed Bin Zayed University of AI and India’s Center for Development of Advanced Computing, is aiming for a major supercomputing cluster in India capable of 8 exaFLOPS of AI compute.
One wonders if part of India’s role will be to help launder American AI to a Global South increasingly distrustful of Washington. As the AP notes:
“Today, India is being seen as a trusted AI partner to the Global South nations seeking open, affordable and development-focused solutions,” Ashwini Vaishnaw told The Associated Press in an email interview, as New Delhi hosts a major AI Impact Summit this week drawing participation from at least 20 global leaders and a who’s who of the tech industry.
In the meantime one of Asia’s richest individuals has joined the party. The Adani conglomerate on Tuesday announced plans to invest $100 billion to develop renewable energy-powered AI-ready data centers by 2035. It’s aim is to establish the world’s largest integrated data center platform in strategic partnerships with Google.
Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder and chairman of the Adani Group, a multinational conglomerate involved in port development and operations in India, was previously Asia’s richest man, but his wealth dropped from roughly $97 to $66 billion after becoming the target of US Securities and Exchange Commission bribery and fraud charges.
Adani appears fully on board with the US-Israel led IMEC plans now. On top of the $100 billion for “renewable” data centers, Adani is also going nuclear, presumably to help power the AI future in India. From Intellinews:
India’s leading power company, Adani Power Limited (NSE: ADANIPOWER), has incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary, Adani Atomic Energy Limited, marking its formal entry into the country’s nuclear power generation industry at a time when New Delhi has tweaked its nuclear energy policy framework to open the sector to the private sector.
For what it’s worth, in 2023 the Adani Group also purchased Haifa Port in Israel — where many of the IMEC plans currently hinge.
The port sustained heavy damaged in the 12-Day War and stands to get hit hard again in another war on Iran. For now, as IMEC pieces slide into place, what we’re seeing is less focus on shipping infrastructure and more ideological connections with genocide at the center—and ready for export. From India to Europe and the US, it is an elite connected not by horror at the atrocities in West Asia but admiration.
I’ve featured this quote before, but will do so again here because it encapsulates this elite worldview that is being put into place with the EU-India FTA, IMEC, and all the AI and stablecoin schemes.
In February of last year an Israeli business delegation visited New Delhi. The guest list included representatives from over 100 Israeli companies in the areas of cybersecurity, digital health, AI, and big data. During the visit India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal said the following:
“Israel’s capabilities in innovation and security are extraordinary, and the technology demonstrated in ‘Operation Beepers‘ [a reference to Israel’s clandestine operation on the Hezbollah terror group in September 2024] is truly inspiring and unique — we want it here too.”
Notes
[1] Four years into the war, rearmament doesn’t match the enormous amounts of money poured down the drain. There are ammunition shortages persist, missile and air-defense delivery delays stretch on endlessly. European manufacturers are unable to scale production.
According to the Hindustan Times, Indian defense companies will be able to get their hands into the €150 billion Security Action for Europe program, which is another expensive attempt to ramp up the defense industrial base. So Brussels is turning to India, which reserves 70% of its defense capital budget for local production. More from Euractiv:
The result is one of the largest defence manufacturing ecosystems outside Europe and North America, spanning aerospace, shipbuilding, electronics, unmanned systems, ammunition and long-term maintenance infrastructure. For European planners struggling to increase output, this capacity is difficult to ignore. Industrial cooperation is already visible.
The Airbus-Tata C-295 programme marks the first full-scale manufacturing of a European military aircraft outside the EU. Of the 56 aircraft ordered by India, 40 are being assembled in Gujarat – creating a durable production link between Indian factories and European supply chains.
France’s defence relationship with India has followed a similar trajectory. Rafale cooperation has expanded beyond aircraft sales into sustainment, engines and long-term maintenance ecosystems – precisely the areas where Europe itself now faces bottlenecks.
Germany’s engagement under Project-75(I), centred on ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, signals a comparable shift. Submarine construction – among Europe’s most sensitive industrial domains – is now part of structured cooperation rather than pure export.
The EU and India are now engaged in talks on a Security of Information Agreement to enable classified information sharing and technology collaboration usually reserved for NATO partners.
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Amazing to me that India has the example of China right next door that they could follow to become a superpower, but Indian elites would rather follow the original US vision for China instead. A small few would get rich under this regime, (comparatively rich compared to other Indians, but not richer than they could get if they followed the Chinese model), but they will subject themselves to constant US meddling, will forever doom themselves to being a geopolitical backwater that will never be able to develop into a true technological or manufacturing power (at least when compared to the vast potential offered if they were to choose the other path), and let us not forget that immiserating their population will create instability domestically as well (along with potential insurrectionary pressures).
I feel for the Indian people, who will suffer terribly.
What do you think happened in China during the early days of Western companies moving factories there?
Just curious…
The issue is that it appears the Indian elites aren’t interested in industrializing? I think Dr. Chang has a very good discussion in this article at any rate
https://frontline.thehindu.com/interviews/india-industrialisation-ha-joon-chang-interview/article70321699.ece
Interesting excerpt:
Q: “India still has ambitions of becoming a global manufacturing hub. Governments have tried to push it for two decades—Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched “Make in India” in 2014. Yet India has failed. It missed both waves of manufacturing diversification out of China; those investments went to South East Asia instead. Why does India repeatedly fail to industrialise?”
A: “I think, ultimately, that has to do with the political economy. Your business elites do not want serious industrialisation. The business elites are either in the financial sector or, even if they are in the industrial sector, they still have very strong links with financial capital which doesn’t like industrialisation because, for them, the most important thing is the rate of return.
In the short run, if you want to develop a serious industrial base, you need to go through a period when finance is repressed. Because if shareholders keep asking for money [in the form of return on investment], companies would not have the money to invest.
Arguably one of the most famous Indian companies—though I do not know whether it is still legally Indian—is steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal. But Lakshmi Mittal built the company through clever mergers and acquisitions rather than by coming up with innovative technologies. Your elites do not want to wait for 10 or 15 years and sacrifice short-term financial returns to build productive capabilities.
You need to invest in worker skills, infrastructure, and research and development (R&D). I looked up the latest data on R&D in India, and as a proportion of GDP, it is barely 0.6 per cent, compared with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average of 3 per cent, and South Korea’s 5.2 per cent.
I am afraid there is no serious attempt to develop manufacturing in India. Yes, earlier India built manufacturing industries, but there was no ambition to join the global economy. And later, [the government and companies] did say that they want to develop manufacturing, but they did not do anything serious because they did not want to forego their short-term interests in order to have a more dynamic, industrially driven economy.“
Basically, China didn’t develop the same kind of oligarchs that exist in India.
(But the global oligarch desire for cheap labor is still there. They just don’t do much detailed industrial policy in any hyper-financialized economy.)
“From India to Europe and the US, it is an elite connected not by horror at the atrocities in West Asia but admiration.”
It’s GLOBAL. None excluded.
All of the alleged systems, “enlightenment”, and reforms over the ages and it always comes back to the same thing: get some slaves.
Regarding “get some slaves” you might get a chuckle from this short Sahra Cooper skit.
I could be very wrong, but I don’t see this whole chip/stablecoin/US$ nexus working out. First of all, it seems to US headstart in chip production was a lucky accident of history for a company that made chips for video games. It was also a lucky accident of geography that the US had no hostile borders in WWII, allowing it to escape pretty much unscathed while the rest of the world had to rebuild. The victory and strong post WWII economy led to the US$ becoming the world reserve currency.
It may be far more convenient to trade in US$, but as we’ve seen over the last several years, it certainly isn’t necessary, and there are alternatives. And trying to tie the chip trade to US$ doesn’t make much sense since these chips aren’t necessary either. If they were, would all the techbros be trying to shove “AI” down everyone’s throats whether they needed it or not? Would so many companies start bringing in “AI” first and then telling their employees to find something useful to do with it later? That tells me people are getting on board due to FOMO, and not because of any pressing need or ability to jack profits. Having oil markets denominated in US$ isn’t necessary either, but it is a lot easier to see why oil itself is a necessity in the current global economy. But that agreement is increasing unstable due to recent world events and the US wants something to replace it, thus the dollars for wafers scheme.
Then there is the trend of crapification already long established in the US. Even if these chips turn out to be the new wheel, it’s highly unlikely that the US will be producing the top of the line models after a few years, given the capitalist incentives not to do so.
Mo-D would do well to listen to Chuck D – Don’t believe the hype
Very interesting development. I was wondering about three tankers seized by India and why a bigger deal wasn’t being made about them. It does seem that BRICS is effectively dead and a new Russia-China-Iran core is taking its place.
Geopolitically, it helps understand the belligerents in the upcoming world war. If one side is the above R-I-C axis, the hostile axis will be comprised of the US, Europe, Israel, UAE, and it looks like India will throw its weight on this side. This may tilt the “Islamic NATO” of Pakistan, Saudi, Egypt and Turkiye, the latter back-stabbing its NATO allies, to support R-I-C. So it’s looking likely that this war will have a third theater in East Asia, although I wouldn’t expect China and India to send any forces deep inside the other’s borders.
The next century looks like it will belong to the countries that sit this one out.
There are no serious political forces in Turkey that question Turkish integration with the collective West. The economic elites are happy with their subordinate but profitable role in European supply chains. The PMC, both secularists and Islamists, are Western-oriented.
10-15 years ago there were some minority factions in the military who floated some “Eurasianist” speculations. They’ve long been purged.
Every now and then Erdoğan makes a show of independence—trying to get a better bargaining position by trying to convince Western powers-that-be that Turkey has other options. It also plays well to the peanut gallery. But don’t confuse that sort of posturing with genuine freedom of action.
Out on limb? That is always my first thought. Data centers and sweatshops as far as the eye can see and still not a reliable product or business plan.
A poor attempt at sarcasm on my part. My first thought as well, and unfortunately, usually proven correct.
This is a terrific article – deeply reported and impressively detailed. The institutional mechanics of IMEC, Pax Silica, the EU-India FTA, labour codes, and the AI corridor are laid out with real care. It’s serious work.
But I can’t shake the sense that we are rearranging industrial architecture on the deck of a ship that is already taking on water.
Foster and Rahmstorf’s updated analysis of global mean temperature trends – adjusting for ENSO, volcanic and solar variability – implies that at current linear rates we are on track to cross 2°C between roughly 2034 and 2039. That is not “end of century.” That is one planning cycle away. And if Hansen’s higher sensitivity estimates prove closer to reality, the timeline compresses further.
In other words: 2°C is not a distant threshold. It is upon us.
Against that backdrop, the obsession with AI corridors, dollar-settled chip exports, labour flexibilisation, data center build-outs, and supply-chain sovereignty begins to look surreal. We are debating whether India will serve as an AI labour platform within a US-EU-Gulf axis while the physical climate system is compounding at rates that imply systemic destabilization within fifteen years – especially in India.
If the Indian government, the EU Commission, and the architects of these FTAs were openly talking about how to manage a climate crisis that will hit like a club inside a single investment horizon, it would be one thing. If IMEC were framed as emergency decarbonization logistics, mass electrification corridors, managed contraction of fossil throughput that would be sobering but rational.
Instead, the discourse is about scaling compute, protecting capital predictability, and securing labour discipline.
What on earth are we thinking?
We are locking in energy-intensive infrastructure (AI data centers, semiconductor fabs, militarized supply chains) precisely at the moment when physics tells us we need rapid absolute reductions in fossil throughput not marginal efficiency gains inside growth paradigms.
The article shows how geopolitical blocs are consolidating. What it does not fully grapple with – because almost no policy architecture does – is timeline compression. The climate system does not negotiate trade agreements. It compounds.
If 2°C arrives by the mid-2030s, today’s “strategic alignment” decisions will be judged very differently.
The question is no longer whether IMEC competes with BRICS.
The question is whether any of this industrial choreography survives a world that crosses major climate thresholds within the next decade.
I have the impression that Modi wants India to be a superpower and having India put AI at the heart of their development plans is the way to do it because they have such a successful IT sector. But what happens if AI proves to be a bust before the end of the decade? Where does that leave India then? They also seem to want to tie their future to Israel as well as that India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) terminates in Israel before going on to Europe. And that means that Israel will have a chock-hold on India’s trade along that route. Modi is steering India into a very deep ditch from what I can see.
I assume Modi sees AI as India’s leap-to-superpower moment. The country has a strong IT base, deep talent pools, and global outsourcing infrastructure. If AI is the next electricity, that’s a rational bet.
But that’s a very big “if.”
Large language models are impressive but they are not “intelligent” in any meaningful sense. They don’t understand the world. They predict the next word based on patterns in previous language. That’s sophisticated statistical extrapolation, not knowledge.
Will it become “general intelligence”? Nobody knows. It’s not a law of evolution.
And even if it keeps improving, AI doesn’t dig ditches, grow food, build factories, repair grids, load ships, or secure water supplies. It writes documents – if anyone is around to read them.
In a world facing accelerating climate disruption, doubling down on compute-heavy infrastructure and geopolitical AI corridors looks less like strategy and more like misallocation. Material resilience still determines power.
If AI turns out to be narrower than advertised, or energy constraints bite, tying national destiny to it could be a very expensive mistake.
At some point you have to ask: are we building physical capacity for a hotter, more volatile world?
Or are we scaling text generators while Rome burns?
The algorithms are being promoted as “assistants” but actually will be around for control and surveillance. It’s about keeping people within limited, predictable patterns like the ones they operate within.
Notwithstanding this very well written piece, I think that the main issue here is unreliability. Countries like India, Turkiye, Armenia, AzerbIjan, the stans,, etc. keep flip flopping, and I think it will end badly for them all.
A Different Perspective on India’s Foreign Policy and Domestic Governance
A lot of commentary simplifies India’s current geopolitical positioning without acknowledging the historical context that shapes its decisions.
1. Historical Reliability of Western Powers
India’s caution in fully aligning with the “collective West” is not new — it is historically rooted.
During the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, the United States under Richard Nixon deployed the United States Seventh Fleet, including the USS Enterprise, into the Bay of Bengal — widely interpreted in India as a show of support toward Pakistan.
During multiple conflicts with Pakistan and China, Western military assistance flowed disproportionately to Pakistan, particularly during the Cold War period.
India’s policy of Non-Alignment, shaped by leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, emerged precisely because neither bloc could be fully relied upon.
In contrast, the Russia (and previously the Soviet Union) consistently supplied defence equipment and diplomatic backing, including vetoes at the UN Security Council during sensitive periods.
This historical memory informs present-day strategic caution.
2. Strategic Autonomy, Not Blind Alignment
Under Narendra Modi, India initially deepened engagement with the United States, including:
Strengthening the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD)
Expanding defence cooperation agreements
Increasing technology and trade ties
However, U.S. policy shifts — including tariff measures introduced under Donald Trump — reinforced India’s long-standing view that major powers ultimately prioritise their own interests.
India’s response has been pragmatic:
Purchasing discounted Russian oil to manage domestic inflation.
Expanding the “Make in India” manufacturing push.
Negotiating trade terms rather than reacting ideologically.
This reflects strategic autonomy, not inconsistency.
3. Welfare and Development Without Religious Targeting
Claims that domestic policy favours one religion often ignore delivery data.
Flagship schemes such as:
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (housing)
Ayushman Bharat (health coverage)
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (LPG access)
Swachh Bharat Mission
have been implemented based on socioeconomic criteria, not religion.
Similarly, during the COVID-19 crisis:
COVAX participation
The “Vaccine Maitri” initiative distributing vaccines to lower-income countries
were undertaken without religious or geopolitical conditionality.
4. Evacuations and Crisis Management
India has conducted large-scale evacuation missions across political administrations, including:
Operation Rahat
Operation Ganga
These evacuations did not distinguish citizens by religion — the objective was protection of all Indian nationals.
5. Balancing Israel and Gaza
India has:
Condemned terrorism (including attacks by Hamas),
Maintained relations with Israel,
Continued humanitarian advocacy for civilians in Gaza Strip.
This reflects calibrated diplomacy rather than ideological alignment.
6. Honouring Citizens Across Communities
State honours and public recognition under Modi have included athletes, film personalities, and ordinary citizens from across religious communities. For example:
Mohammed Shami (cricket)
Mirabai Chanu (sport)
A. R. Rahman (arts)
Awards such as the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan have been conferred across religious and regional lines.
Conclusion
India’s current foreign policy is less about ideology and more about:
Energy security
Defence preparedness
Economic resilience
Protection of its citizens
Long-term strategic autonomy
Given Russia’s growing dependence on China, and shifting Western domestic politics, India faces a complex geopolitical landscape. Decisions such as discounted oil imports or tariff negotiations are not signals of weakness — they are attempts to shield ordinary Indians from global shocks.
Criticism is natural in a democracy. But analysis should acknowledge both historical experience and the constraints of a multipolar world.
Pankaj Mishra explains in “The World after Gaza” that Hindu Nationalists, e.g., Modi, admire Israel and want to imitate it, something to keep in mind when interpreting India’s actions. In India there is growing apartheid as well as the class warfare referred to in this article.
I’ve become less enamoured with her work on geopolitical economy as of late, but I still recommend as essential Radhika Desai’s analysis of the BJP electoral machine and its deft manipulation of class to broaden its appeal. While grabbing links to examples I notice she just published another one!
https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/bjp-savarna-resurgence-2026/article70646432.ece/amp/
some older stuff from the Indian magazine EPW:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24480495
I came across this on Substack earlier . I don’t know anything about the author but I found his perspective interesting .
https://theuaob.substack.com/p/the-liquidation-of-india-ltd-why?triedRedirect=true
Paint me skeptical, but I do not see in the data any effort to build out a grid to meet data center needs in India (above its rapidly growing needs due to climate change and urbanization, etc.) – putting a data center in the tropics makes about as selling air conditioners in Alaska.
https://www.cag.org.in/blogs/trends-electricity-consumption-india
My take is that just as the US is going to lose the AI race because its electricity is too unstable, expensive and inadequate – meanwhile, India kicking coal, which provides the vast majority of its electricity, while also there is rapidly growing electric car usage.
Glad you sourced and gave a shout out to the wire. Great independent media source about India.
Sorry unsure which guideline I have broken now. I have given links to every story now. Please do let me know how can i correct whatever guideline i have broken as I would love to know my mistake. So I can learn. Thanks
I sent you an explanation to the e-mail address you provided on February 28, very shortly after your earlier attempt to comment.
Alternative view.
the new Labour Codes as a systematic dismantling of worker protections. However, several of the claims would benefit from closer examination of the statutory language and the stated objectives of the reforms.
For example, the pro-rata gratuity provision for Fixed-Term Employees under the Social Security Code can also be interpreted as extending gratuity eligibility to categories of workers who previously did not qualify unless they completed five years of continuous service. Whether this results in “diminished deferred earnings” depends on how wage structures are implemented in practice.
Similarly, the “floor wage” mechanism under the Code on Wages centralises the determination process at the national level. Critics argue this risks downward pressure, but supporters contend that a national floor prevents states from undercutting each other and formalises minimum protections in sectors previously outside enforcement.
On the strike provisions, the requirement of notice and conciliation is not entirely new to Indian labour law; structured notice requirements have existed under the Industrial Disputes Act framework. The debate is whether the updated thresholds meaningfully restrict collective bargaining, or whether they aim to reduce sudden industrial disruption.
With respect to gig workers, the introduction of a statutory social security framework funded through a cess on aggregators represents a new legal recognition of that category of workers. Whether 1–2% is adequate is a policy question, but the existence of a codified framework is itself a departure from the earlier legal vacuum.
In short, the characterisation of the reforms as purely exploitative reflects one interpretive position. A fuller assessment would weigh both the deregulatory elements and the areas where formal coverage has been expanded. The impact will ultimately depend on enforcement, wage structuring, and how the rules are operationalised at state level.
C’mon. You’re tying yourself in knots.
“The debate is whether the updated thresholds meaningfully restrict collective bargaining, or whether they aim to reduce sudden industrial disruption.”
If we’re talking about labor power and worker protections, industrial disruption is the whole dang point.
“the existence of a codified framework is itself a departure from the earlier legal vacuum.” Wonderful. As The Wire puts it, we’ve codified “allowing 16-year-olds to enter the algorithmic loop of delivery work – securing a fresh supply of young labour while absolving platforms of liability.”
Meanwhile you leave out perhaps the most crucial argument The Wire author made:
Under Article 253 of the Constitution, the Union government has the power to legislate on any subject – even those on the concurrent List, like labour – to implement an international treaty. If a progressive state government attempts to amend its laws to genuinely empower local inspectors or protect striking workers, the Centre can invoke its binding commitments to the EU—citing the need for “predictability” for foreign capital – to strike the state law down. The FTA effectively becomes a weapon to bypass federalism.
So how exactly do you propose to interpret around that?
You raise an important constitutional point regarding Article 253 and the Centre’s power to legislate in order to implement treaty obligations. However, that power is not unlimited in the way it is sometimes portrayed.
Article 253 allows Parliament to enact laws to implement international agreements, but those laws must still operate within the broader constitutional framework, including judicial review. Courts have historically examined whether legislation genuinely implements treaty obligations or exceeds that purpose. An FTA cannot automatically invalidate state labour laws unless Parliament has enacted specific implementing legislation that directly conflicts with them.
On the federalism concern: labour is on the Concurrent List, meaning both Parliament and states can legislate. In case of conflict, central law prevails under Article 254 — but that mechanism predates any FTA. It is not unique to this agreement. The key legal question would be whether Parliament passes legislation explicitly tying labour standards to treaty compliance in a way that pre-empts state variation. That would likely face constitutional scrutiny.
Regarding industrial action: structured notice requirements can indeed reduce disruption. Whether that weakens labour power or balances competing economic interests is a normative policy debate. But framing it as eliminating the right to strike altogether may overstate the legal position, since regulated strike frameworks have existed in Indian labour law for decades.
On gig workers and age thresholds: the concern about platform liability is serious and worth debating. At the same time, bringing gig work under a statutory regime creates enforceable obligations where previously there were few. The adequacy of the cess model and age safeguards is a policy design issue, not necessarily evidence of deliberate deregulation.
The real test will be implementation: how courts interpret conflicts between treaty obligations and state autonomy, and how enforcement operates on the ground. That constitutional interaction is more complex than the suggestion that an FTA automatically becomes a “weapon” against federalism.