The Aakhya Weekly

Taking a Little Break

Aakhya India — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 03:30:47 GMT

The Aakhya Weekly #210 | Beyond the Raid: What India’s Food Safety System Needs Next

Aakhya India — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:01:14 GMT

In Focus: Reimagining Food Safety in India

There is something revealing about the way food safety enters public conversation in India. It usually begins with an image: a cockroach in a kitchen, a dirty refrigerator, an adulterated food product, a restaurant being shut down, or a popular brand receiving a notice. The image travels quickly, outrage follows, and suddenly the regulator becomes visible.

The recent actions of Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe have brought precisely this visibility to food safety. His department has intensified inspections across restaurants, food businesses and quick-commerce warehouses, with serious hygiene violations leading to notices, seizures and licence suspensions. In one recent drive, the Maharashtra FD inspected 86 establishments, issued 60 improvement notices and suspended the licences of 12 warehouses.

But the Mundhe moment also presents India with a larger policy question. What does it take to build a food-safety system in which enforcement remains strong, but safety increasingly becomes a property of the system rather than an outcome of individual inspections?

The Real Challenge is Regulatory Capacity

The scale of enforcement itself is substantial. More than 5.18 lakh food samples were analysed over a three-year period, alongside 252 notified food-testing laboratories and 305 Food Safety on Wheels units across 35 States and Union Territories. The numbers reveal a basic administrative reality: the state cannot be everywhere, all the time. This is why India’s movement towards risk-based inspection is more important than it may appear. FSSAI’s framework increasingly uses compliance history, enforcement and surveillance findings, self-compliance testing and third-party audits to determine inspection priorities.

UP Offers an Important Lesson: Regulation at Scale

Uttar Pradesh is particularly instructive because it forces the food-safety question out of the metropolitan restaurant and into the realities of scale. The state’s Food Safety and Drug Administration has increasingly combined enforcement with mobile testing, targeted drives and field-level surveillance.

In January 2026, UP’s FSDA ordered the suspension of licences and closure of 159 packaged drinking-water and mineral-water processing units following statewide inspections that uncovered serious violations. The 2026 Magh Mela in Prayagraj illustrates this particularly well. The FSDA divided the area into three zones, deployed additional food-safety personnel, operated five mobile food-testing laboratories, established a 24-hour camp office and introduced QR-linked feedback mechanisms for visitors.

This points to an important future direction for India: food-safety regulation cannot always wait for the food to reach a laboratory. Sometimes the laboratory has to move towards the food.

FSSAI’s Food Safety on Wheels programme reflects precisely this logic. The network currently has 305 registered mobile units nationally, which together have conducted more than one million sample tests according to the programme’s dashboard. This is what a modern regulatory state should increasingly look like: mobile where it needs to be, digital where it can be, and visible where public trust requires it.

Beyond the Inspection: What India Can Learn from the World

The most important international lesson is that food safety cannot be judged by a single visit from an inspector. The United States moved decisively in this direction with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), enacted in 2011, which shifted the regulatory emphasis from responding to contamination towards preventing it. Food businesses covered by the framework are required to identify reasonably foreseeable hazards, establish preventive controls, monitor them and take corrective action when those controls fail. Singapore has taken this thinking further with its Safety Assurance for Food Establishments (SAFE) framework, introduced in 2026. Instead of treating compliance primarily as a periodic snapshot, SAFE places greater weight on an establishment’s safety record over time, with stronger performers receiving better grades and poorer performers facing greater regulatory attention. Food safety should be treated as a track record, not a photograph. A business that consistently maintains hygiene, trains its workers, documents controls, responds to violations and demonstrates compliance should not necessarily consume the same regulatory bandwidth as a repeat offender.

India has already taken a step in this direction through FSSAI’s hygiene-rating initiatives, but there is scope to make such information considerably more useful: a consumer should eventually be able to understand an establishment’s recent inspection record, hygiene rating, significant violations and corrective action without having to navigate a bureaucratic database.

A meal ordered through an app or a packet delivered through quick commerce may pass through processors, distributors, warehouses and dark stores before reaching the consumer. The European Union’s “one step back, one step forward” traceability principle offers a useful conceptual starting point: businesses should know where their food came from and where it went. India’s expanding digital infrastructure creates the possibility of going further by connecting licensing, inspection, laboratory, complaint and supply-chain information. If a contaminated batch is identified in Mumbai, the ideal regulatory system should be able to identify its origin, trace its movement and determine which businesses and consumers may have been exposed. The objective is not to create another database; it is to give the regulator institutional memory.

India Does Not Need Fewer Raids. It Needs Fewer Reasons for Raids

Visible enforcement therefore has an important deterrent value. The question is what happens after the raid. A mature food-safety system should ensure that every inspection produces information, every laboratory result sharpens future surveillance, every consumer complaint informs risk assessment and every violation affects the establishment’s future regulatory profile.

The success of a regulator should therefore not be measured only by the number of establishments inspected, notices issued or licences suspended. More meaningful indicators would be whether repeat violations are falling, whether compliance is improving, whether high-risk businesses are being identified earlier and whether the time between detection and corrective action is shortening. In that sense, the regulatory system should behave less like an enforcement calendar and more like a learning institution.

This also offers a deeper governance lesson from the current debate around Tukaram Mundhe. Strong enforcement and a business-friendly environment are not contradictory; predictable enforcement can actually protect responsible businesses from being undercut by those who save costs by compromising safety. But firmness must be accompanied by proportionality. The objective is not leniency. It is precision. The real test, therefore, is whether the system can preserve the gains of decisive enforcement even after the individual officer has moved on by turning inspection data into institutional memory, compliance into an incentive and food safety from an episodic government intervention into an everyday business practice.

What India needs next

India’s food-safety journey has already moved a long way from the days when regulation was largely about adulteration raids and isolated prosecutions. The next phase should be built around five shifts.

First, from volume to intelligence. The question should not merely be how many inspections were conducted, but whether inspections are increasingly directed towards the highest-risk establishments.

Second, from snapshots to track records. Compliance should be assessed over time, not only on the day an inspector arrives.

Third, from punishment to incentives. Businesses with sustained good records should benefit from lower regulatory friction, while repeat offenders should face progressively greater scrutiny.

Fourth, from establishments to ecosystems. Food safety must follow food through warehouses, logistics networks, suppliers, processors and digital platforms.

Finally, from regulators alone to a regulatory community. Governments, businesses, laboratories, food handlers, technology platforms and consumers all have a role.

India already has considerable institutional capacity: FSSAI’s national framework, state-level enforcement machinery, hundreds of notified laboratories, mobile testing units and increasingly digital systems. The challenge is to make these pieces speak to one another. The ultimate ambition should not be a country in which every food business fears the next raid. It should be a country in which every food business understands that safe food is simply the cost of doing business. That is the larger lesson of the Tukaram Mundhe moment. The strongest food-safety system is not the one with the most dramatic raids. It is the one that quietly makes safe food the norm.

A Few Good Reads

T.R.B. Rajaa highlights that Tamil Nadu’s industrial strategy must focus beyond attracting investments to identifying future industries, building the skills and capabilities they require, creating high-quality jobs, and enabling MSMEs to benefit from emerging industrial ecosystems.
Americai V. Narayanan argues that Tamil Nadu should prioritise improving revenue collection and spending efficiency before imposing new taxes, with the impact of public expenditure rather than allocations alone serving as the key measure of fiscal performance.
K. VijayRaghavan and Shivaji Sondhi highlight that education systems must prepare students for an unpredictable AI-driven future by prioritising adaptability, exploration and the ability to navigate unfamiliar problems rather than continually adding more material to curricula.
Bhupender Yadav highlights that sustainable development, climate action and inclusive growth can advance together, with BRICS cooperation providing a platform for collective action on environmental challenges.
Yogendra Yadav points to the need for a new, inclusive expression of patriotism that can speak to India’s younger generations and reflect the country’s diversity.

The Aakhya Weekly #209 | Delhi's Cultural Infrastructure: Beyond Heritage, Towards Access

Aakhya India — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 03:30:23 GMT

In Focus: Making Cultural Access a Planning Priority in Delhi

by Mahima Kaul

Delhi’s current master-planning framework, MPD-2021, was notified in 2007 and has remained in force for nearly two decades. While its successor was long drafted and discussed as the Master Plan for Delhi 2041, receiving around 33,000 public objections and suggestions, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) formally shifted the horizon year in August 2026. Re-framed as MPD-2047 to align with the central government’s Viksit Bharat 2047 vision, the revised master plan has now been approved by the DDA and sent to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for final notification. In June 2026, the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Shri. Manohar Lal said the plan would be notified soon.

Once notified, it will become the city’s principal strategic framework for land use, infrastructure, mobility, housing, and spatial development through 2047. This masterplan includes a chapter titled “Heritage, Culture and Public Spaces”. It has a relatively developed framework for protecting and activating existing heritage; however, it is less explicit about planning equitable access to everyday cultural infrastructure across Delhi’s residential areas. It identifies cultural hubs and facilities, but it does not establish a city-wide accessibility standard for everyday cultural infrastructure.

That distinction is what this week’s In Focus sets out to explore. Delhi is not short of cultural assets. The question is whether access to them is planned with the same spatial intent as access to other essential public amenities.

Delhi’s Cultural Institutions

Cultural infrastructure can be defined more broadly than just museums and heritage sites. It includes everyday places where cultural activity takes place, like theatres, libraries, community halls, rehearsal and performance spaces, galleries, cultural centres, and public spaces used for artistic activity. These spaces are not only places where culture is consumed but also where people create, practice, and participate in it. In India’s urban context, this distinction matters because cultural provision is often discussed through the lens of institutions and heritage assets, while the smaller neighbourhood-level spaces that enable participation receive less attention in spatial planning.

In line with this thought process, the MPD 2047 takes a city-wide approach to public space. It calls for improved availability of public spaces across the city, a hierarchy of local parks in both greenfield and brownfield areas, and public plazas as part of new layouts. It also brings cultural activity into this public realm through provisions for public art, performance, and accessible public uses such as libraries.

Delhi has an unusually strong concentration of national cultural institutions and major cultural venues in central areas, and it is home to institutions like the National School of Drama, Sangeet Natak Akademi, Sahitya Akademi, etc., among others. However, the MPD 2047 draft does not provide a city-wide assessment of how these cultural facilities are distributed relative to residential populations, nor does it set a benchmark for residents’ proximity to them. Delhi already has a constituency-level approach to library provision, but the MPD 2047 lacks a comparable spatial framework that treats cultural infrastructure more broadly and integrates it into urban planning.

There is a current Delhi initiative for the defunct Rajghat power plant, with ideas to create a unique cultural/night-time hub. Reports suggest that the proposal includes performance spaces and would involve resolving ownership and agency issues among DDA, the Delhi government, and the Centre.

Drawing on data from more than 120 countries, UNESCO’s 2026 Re|Shaping Policies for Creativity report points to a wider policy challenge. One such challenge alludes to the standard pitfalls administrations face, i.e., ‘recognising culture in development planning is not the same as setting measurable goals for it’. Delhi’s draft MPD-2047 illustrates this distinction. It provides for new recreational and cultural spaces, but it doesn’t set a comparable spatial standard for cultural access.

Why Cultural Infrastructure Matters

Cultural spaces—from community arts centers and performance venues to local libraries—do not merely hold intrinsic value; they serve as fundamental anchors of social, economic, and civic infrastructure. For social cohesion, theatre, art workshops, performances, and local libraries bring together people of different ages, backgrounds, languages, and faiths, much like a park or a local market does. As public investment increasingly leans toward STEM education and digital skills, cultural infrastructure provides a crucial counterweight for human capital development. Engagement in the creative arts nurtures essential non-cognitive capabilities, including critical thinking, adaptive communication, dynamic problem-solving, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. In an increasingly automated economy, these high-order human skills serve as precise complements to technical proficiency, ensuring a well-rounded and future-ready workforce.

Evidence reviewed by the WHO suggests that these spaces also have a public-health dimension. For instance, it suggests that participation in the arts can contribute to the prevention of ill health and the promotion of physical and mental wellbeing, with arts-based interventions showing promise as relatively low-cost, low-risk approaches. As traditional healthcare systems face escalating operational costs, integrating arts-based, non-clinical interventions offers a high-impact, low-risk, and cost-effective approach to preventive care. The UNESCO report calls libraries “essential cultural infrastructure” alongside parks or transit, a reminder that these spaces are economic assets too.

Possible directions for policy

MPD-2047 already contains several mechanisms that could be extended towards cultural access. The plan provides for a GIS-based system to track heritage assets, updated every five years. The same system could map cultural spaces such as theatres, libraries, and rehearsal rooms, not just monuments, enabling stakeholders to identify areas that are underserved. Beyond this, there is an emphasis on formulating a monitoring framework with indicators to track its progress. It could include indicators for cultural access, for example, population within a defined travel time of a functioning public library or cultural facility.

Shahjahanabad is explicitly designated as a ‘cultural enterprise hub’, with the plan seeking to leverage its tangible and intangible heritage for cultural and economic activity. The policy question is whether similar cultural enterprise opportunities should also be created outside areas that already possess significant heritage capital.

The plan already allows adaptive reuse for heritage buildings. A similar principle could be considered for suitable vacant non-heritage public buildings across the city, turning them into neighbourhood cultural spaces without waiting for new construction.

Conservation and participation as two planning objectives

Delhi has spent decades and considerable institutional effort preserving its cultural past, like its monuments, academies, and heritage zones. This work remains important. At the city level, conservation and participation remain distinct planning objectives, and MPD-2047 is more prescriptive about managing heritage assets than about measuring access to everyday cultural infrastructure.

The next master plan cycle offers an opening to consider a related question: not only how well the city protects the culture it already has, but how deliberately it creates conditions for more residents to make, encounter, and share culture closer to where they live. This is as much a question of governance as culture, and Delhi is well placed to address it.

A Few Good Reads

Deepanshu Mohan writes that the proposed UPI Bill deserves wider parliamentary debate, particularly over the future of free UPI transactions and their implications for citizens.
Kiran Gajendra argues that India’s sovereign AI push still relies heavily on foreign chips and technology, making domestic capacity and diversified supply chains crucial for true technological independence.
Shashi Tharoor maintains that India should counter the Mecca pact through deterrence, stronger Gulf ties and defence innovation.
Brig (Retd) Anil Raman cautions that US-Russia tensions could make India collateral damage, affecting trade and strategic ties.
Brahma Chellaney warns that Trump’s G2 vision risks undermining Asian security and the free and open Indo-Pacific framework.

The Aakhya Weekly #208 | Between Rhetoric, Leverage, and Reality: Rethinking India's Options in the Trump Era

Aakhya India — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 06:30:24 GMT

In Focus: When Partners Become Pressure Points- India-US in the Trumpian Universe

by Sasanka Kanuparthi

Image Source: ASPI

India is navigating one of its most consequential diplomatic tests in decades. The last time it faced comparable odds and prevailed, it signed the landmark civil nuclear deal with the United States in 2008, enduring years of Western pressure to first acquiesce to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regimes before any sanctions relief was on offer. India held its ground, negotiated from a position of strategic clarity, and emerged with an agreement that fundamentally altered its place in the global order.

The current moment demands similar clarity, and it remains to be seen if India possesses it.

Trump 2.0’s foreign policy has been defined by transactional coercion deployed across multiple fronts simultaneously. Tariff threats, delays in concluding an interim trade agreement, and the broader weaponisation of economic interdependence have placed India in an uncomfortable position. The United States increasingly believes it holds sufficient leverage across trade, technology transfer, defence supply chains, immigration, and that it can shift outcomes in its favour. Whether that assessment is accurate is a question to ponder over. Whether India has adequately prepared for a world in which a strategic partner pivots radically, with excessive projection of superpower abilities, is a more uncomfortable question.

A Relationship Built on Convenient Assumptions

The warmth of the past two decades of India-US relations was real, but it rested on a foundation of assumptions that were never rigorously stress-tested. Both sides strengthened the strategic partnership gradually through careful calibration of converging interests such as counterterrorism cooperation, Indo-Pacific security architecture, countering Chinese power projections, technology and defence ties, and the relationship did indeed accumulate genuine depth. However, convergence of interests is not the same as alignment of instincts, and India’s strategic thinkers appear to have misread the pace of change and the chances of divergences sabotaging the relationship.

The glaring strategic gap was a misplaced confidence that mutual dependence and shared aspirations would somehow make disagreements self-managing. Even where Indian senior diplomats accounted for scenarios of US pressure, they either underestimated the speed at which radical policy pivots could be implemented, or allowed the positive momentum in relations to function as a kind of analytical sedative.

In retrospect, it could be argued that the warning signs were legible. The friction points were visible across successive US administrations, from the State Department’s persistent reluctance over the decades to fully close the door on Pakistan, to the Obama administration’s calibrated distance on India-Pakistan dynamics and divergences on Afghanistan; the issues existed. In addition, Trump 1.0’s belligerence and threats of retaliation to India during COVID concerning the supply of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), when India supplied the drug at Washington’s request, indicate how India received little in the way of durable goodwill in return. That episode was instructive: it showed precisely what a transactional US administration would do when push came to shove, and India should have drawn explicit doctrinal lessons from it.

The Structural Problem: Leverage Without the Capacity to Use It

India’s objective position in the world is stronger than its current predicament suggests. It holds meaningful leverage across several domains: its role as the world’s pharmacy through generic pharmaceuticals, its centrality to global food security, human capital pipeline feeding cutting-edge technology development, its indispensability to Indo-Pacific maritime security, and its growing institutional weight in global governance frameworks. These are not trivial assets. However, leverage is only leverage if the conditions exist to exercise it. India’s present constraints — an energy import dependency that limits room for manoeuvre, the turbulence of domestic political cycles, exposure to global supply chain disruptions, and the ongoing rebalancing of its economic relationships — mean that its structural strengths cannot be readily converted into negotiating power on a short timeline. The leverage exists on paper. Its operationalisation remains a challenge, as it is likely to be gradual and, in some cases, wishful.

Effective foreign policy in the contemporary environment requires more than senior strategic thinkers producing sophisticated analyses of leadership profiles and bilateral dynamics. It requires those assessments to be drilled down through the system, semi-corporatised in their operational logic, translated into doctrine that guides the rank and file across ministries, and converted into specific contingency plans that can be activated when equilibrium breaks down. What we witnessed over the past two years should be viewed as certain shortcomings that are both institutional and geostrategic. What followed Operation Sindoor in 2025 was President Trump's erroneous claims and the domestic discourse around India’s choices in the immediate aftermath, which illustrated the cost of the gap between official calibration and public preparedness. Official positions necessarily require careful management to preserve diplomatic elbow room. Moreover, management becomes harder when public discourse lacks inherent independent scaffolding, in addition to dilemmas such as the unfiltered, rash outbursts from an unpredictable leader like Donald Trump.

The Communication Deficit and the Youth Dividend

There is reason for cautious optimism in one area. Recent surveys of young Indians’ attitudes toward strategic partnerships suggest that the post-liberalisation naivety about the benevolence of powerful partners has dissipated. A new generation of Indian thinkers and citizens appears to understand intuitively what took the strategic establishment longer to accept: that great powers act in their own interests, that dependencies are vulnerabilities, and that reducing those dependencies, while maintaining productive relationships, is a generational project worth beginning now.

This shift in public consciousness is an asset that Indian foreign policy has not yet learned to systematically harness. Strategic communications, if designed with genuine intent rather than as an afterthought, can serve multiple functions simultaneously: reinforcing India’s negotiating position, shaping the terms of global narrative contests, and building the domestic consensus necessary for sustained strategic autonomy. The approach needs varied dissemination across channels and audiences, with differentiated messaging that is nonetheless coherent in its underlying vision of what India is, what it wants, and what kind of partner it intends to be in the medium to longer term.

Cultivating individual public voices and domain experts as contributors to this ecosystem, rather than leaving strategic communication entirely to official channels and strategic talk shops, needs to become an embedded doctrinal choice, not an occasional experiment. In a technology-driven information environment, the most credible voices are often not official ones.

The Waiting Game Is Not a Strategy

Perhaps the most dangerous temptation India faces is the assumption that the present difficulties are a Trump-specific anomaly that will self-correct after January 2029. This would be a grave misjudgment if we seek comfort through this assumption. The structural forces driving American transactionalism, domestic political polarisation, the bipartisan consensus on economic nationalism, the fundamental reassessment of alliance costs and benefits, predate Trump and will outlast him. At any rate, ultra-nationalist undercurrents and populist policies will remain relevant, given that the attempts to shift production back to the US remain a long-term endeavour. A return to the pre-2025 warmth is neither guaranteed nor, in its previous form, particularly desirable, since it was warmth built on undertested assumptions.

The most durable lesson from this period is not that the United States is an unreliable partner. It is that no partner is reliable in the absence of a relationship architecture built on clear-eyed mutual interest, contingency planning, and the institutional capacity to absorb shocks without losing strategic direction. India’s growth in the last couple of decades has equipped it with the assets. It now needs architecture that can last.

As the oldest diplomatic axiom has it: there are no permanent enemies or friends, only permanent interests. The work of this moment is to define India’s interests with precision, communicate effectively through its people, partners, and politics, and build the institutional machinery to pursue them regardless of who occupies the White House.

A Few Good Reads

Shashi Tharoor argues that the proposed FCRA Amendment Bill is designed to expand government control over civil society rather than improve transparency, warning that it threatens the autonomy of NGOs and charitable institutions
Srinath Sridharan and Anand Venkatanarayanan highlight that AI leadership is built on strong national innovation ecosystems, not just capital, compute, or ambitious rhetoric
Harit K. Chaturvedi highlights that India’s cancer strategy must shift from expanding treatment capacity to prioritising early detection, arguing that timely diagnosis is the key to improving survival rates and reducing healthcare costs.
Huzefa Tavawalla and Tannvi R. note that the ANI vs OpenAI ruling is only the beginning, with India still needing a clear framework to balance AI development and copyright protection.
Kaushik Basu underscores that effective economic policy depends on expert analysis, with poorly designed interventions often carrying high long-term costs.

The Aakhya Weekly #207 | Beyond E20: India’s Ethanol Policy at the Next Turn

Aakhya India — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 03:30:11 GMT

In Focus: Why Reaching the Blending Target Is Only Half the Policy Journey

by Pankhuri Argal

India’s ethanol programme has arrived at the milestone it spent years building towards. Average ethanol blending in petrol reached 20 per cent during November 2025–June 2026, compared with about 1.5 per cent in 2013–14. That rise is not simply the result of adding more ethanol at fuel stations. It reflects a policy architecture that linked fuel procurement, agricultural feedstocks, distillery finance, vehicle standards and public-sector oil marketing into a single national programme.

The target matters. Yet, it also changes the policy question. Until now, the central task focused on securing adequate supply and infrastructure to reach E20. The next task is to determine whether that system can remain economically credible, environmentally sustainable and transparent to consumers.

A Target Reached Before Its Original Clock

The National Policy on Biofuels, 2018 placed ethanol within a framework of reducing petroleum imports, supporting farmers, using agricultural surplus and waste, and building domestic biofuel capacity. It set an indicative target of 20 per cent ethanol blending by 2030, while widening the feedstock base beyond conventional molasses to include sugarcane juice, damaged food grains and other starch- or sugar-based materials.

The 2022 amendment accelerated the programme. It advanced the E20 deadline to Ethanol Supply Year 2025–26, permitted additional feedstocks and allowed biofuel exports in specified cases. Between these two policy moments, the NITI Aayog–Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India 2020–25 converted ambition into a phased implementation plan.

The roadmap treated E20 as a coordination problem, not merely a blending target. It mapped production requirements, storage and distribution, vehicle compatibility, emission standards and regulatory approvals. Draft and subsequently notified automotive standards helped sequence the shift towards E20-compatible vehicles, while the Bureau of Indian Standards developed specifications for the fuel.

The Machinery Behind the Blend

The programme’s expansion depended on making investment commercially possible. The government administered procurement prices for ethanol from different feedstocks, reduced GST on ethanol supplied for blending, and established interest-subvention schemes for molasses- and grain-based distilleries. Oil Marketing Companies provided demand visibility, offtake assurances and financing arrangements involving banks and project developers.

These measures reduced uncertainty for mills, cooperatives and private producers. They also helped shift ethanol from being largely a by-product of the sugar economy towards a dedicated fuel industry. A 2025 scheme for cooperative sugar mills encouraged the conversion of sugarcane-based facilities into multi-feedstock plants, allowing them to process maize or damaged grains alongside sugar-based feedstocks.

The government reports foreign-exchange savings of more than ₹1.97 lakh crore, substitution of nearly 316 lakh metric tonnes of crude oil, reduction of around 952 lakh metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, and payments exceeding ₹1.66 lakh crore to farmers since Ethanol Supply Year 2014–15. These are official estimates, but they show why ethanol now sits at the intersection of energy security, farm policy and industrial investment.

The Costs That Do Not Appear in the Blending Number

A higher blending percentage is easy to track. The underlying costs are harder to decipher.

The first concerns feedstocks. Sugarcane helped establish the programme; however, its water intensity makes indefinite dependence difficult to justify in every region. Grain-based ethanol broadens supply, yet maize, rice and other grains also serve food and animal-feed markets. The NITI Aayog roadmap itself called for diversification towards lower-water crops and second-generation ethanol produced from agricultural residue. The next phase therefore requires a clearer method for determining which feedstocks are appropriate in which regions and under what market conditions.

The second issue is vehicle compatibility. Government agencies and automobile manufacturers have repeatedly stated that E20 was introduced after laboratory testing, durability trials and field validation. They have also reported no widespread engine failures or abnormal component wear attributable to the fuel. A written reply in the Rajya Sabha, reported on 29 July 2026, has nevertheless added an important qualification. Some BS-III vehicles introduced from April 2005 and manufactured before 2016 may require the replacement of certain rubber components and gaskets when operated on E20. According to the government, these replacements can be undertaken during routine servicing and do not require changes to the engine itself.

This does not amount to evidence of widespread vehicle damage. It does, however, show why the transition cannot rely on general assurances alone. Vehicle owners need model-specific information on which components may require replacement, whether suitable parts remain available for discontinued models and what costs may arise. The government and manufacturers should publish clear compatibility advisories and standard servicing guidance for affected vehicle categories.

Official and industry assessments recognise that mileage could be a serious concern, as fuel efficiency may decline to some extent in certain vehicles designed for lower ethanol blends. Moreover, mileage is also influenced by maintenance, tyre pressure, road conditions and driving practices. The appropriate policy response is therefore neither to dismiss every complaint nor to attribute every performance issue to ethanol, but to publish sufficiently detailed evidence for consumers to distinguish between the two. When it comes to pricing, the trade-offs could add to existing woes, as Ethanol is procured at remunerative rates, partly to support farmers and domestic production capacity. It therefore does not automatically make petrol cheaper. Its policy value lies primarily in reducing dependence on imported crude, developing domestic supply chains and limiting exposure to international oil price volatility.

The parliamentary clarification brings the programme’s next challenge into sharper focus: achieving E20 was principally a supply and infrastructure exercise; sustaining it will require a more developed consumer-protection and vehicle-transition framework.

What Policy Should Measure Next

The next reform priority should be feedstock governance. India needs state-level ethanol plans that account for water availability, crop patterns, local surpluses, biomass residue and distillery capacity. A national target can remain uniform while the route to meeting it varies across regions.

Second-generation ethanol also needs to move from policy promise to dependable commercial supply. The amended Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana, extended to 2028–29, supports advanced biofuels made from agricultural and forestry residue, industrial waste, synthesis gas and algae. Its success will depend on biomass aggregation, transport costs, stable procurement and plant economics.

Consumer information should be a central feature of the formal infrastructure. Fuel pumps should identify the blend being dispensed; manufacturers should provide searchable compatibility guidance; and aggregated warranty, mileage and service findings should be published periodically.

Beyond the Number on the Pump

E20 should not become the sole measure of biofuel policy. Flex-fuel vehicles, advanced biofuels, sustainable aviation fuel and waste-based fuels will each require distinct standards, incentives and demand models. They should also be assessed alongside electric mobility rather than presented as substitutes for it.

India has shown that coordinated procurement, financing, regulation and industrial planning can rapidly alter the national fuel mix. The unfinished task is to measure not only how much ethanol is blended, but where it comes from, what resources it consumes, how vehicles respond and who bears the cost.

Reaching E20 is a significant policy milestone. Making it resilient is the more difficult journey.

A Few Good Reads

Vijay Kelkar and Ajit Ranade scrutinise the Kovind committee’s case for One Nation, One Election, questioning its claims around cost savings, reduced Model Code disruption and higher GDP growth while pointing to deeper electoral reforms that remain unaddressed.
Andy Mukherjee writes about Starbucks developing in-house AI tools to replace vendor systems traditionally maintained by Indian technology firms, signalling a potential shift in the global outsourcing model.
Rajeswari Sengupta explains why India must become more attractive to foreign capital, calling for lower tariffs, simpler customs rules, stronger bilateral investment treaties and greater policy certainty to sustain 8 per cent growth.
Debashis Basu argues that India inverted the East Asian development model by prioritising elite institutions before ensuring basic childhood nutrition, health and schooling, leaving the country with a persistent human-capital deficit.
Sucheta Dalal examines India’s growing stock of “ghost infrastructure”, highlighting unused stations, airports, schools and health facilities to argue for stronger pre-project scrutiny and outcome-based public accountability.

The Aakhya Weekly #206 | India and Japan at a Strategic Crossroads

Aakhya India — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:30:19 GMT

In Focus: Beyond Bilateralism in the Indo-Pacific

by Animesh Chandra

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The current geopolitical landscape is witnessing an ever-growing fragmentation across continents. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, volatility in the Middle East, and US-China strategic competition, coupled with regional conflicts, are seeing a restructuring of the post-World War II order. Along with bolstering the Indo-Japan partnership, New Delhi has to walk the balancing rope between Beijing and Washington to assert itself as a regional leader and espouse the cause of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), climate actions, and regional harmony.

Global Shocks and the Need for Regional Harmony

Against this backdrop, high-level diplomatic engagements like the recent Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s visit to New Delhi take on outsized importance. It was an opportunity to convert rhetoric into concrete projects that shore up regional adaptability. The concurrence on advancing cooperation based on three priority areas- defence and security cooperation; economic partnership, including economic security, energy reliability, technology, and innovation; and people-to-people exchanges is a well-founded structure to complement the partnership.

During the 16th Indo-Japan Annual Bilateral Summit in New Delhi, 129 MoUs were signed to deepen economic cooperation and energy security. The summit was more than a routine diplomatic engagement; it offered New Delhi and Tokyo an opportunity to recalibrate their Special Strategic and Global Partnership towards addressing emerging challenges in economic security, resilient supply chains, maritime governance, and regional stability.

Recent years have exposed how fragile the global order has become; simultaneous shocks from the Middle East and the Russia–Ukraine war have disrupted energy markets, strained food supplies, and snarled shipping lanes, while weak collective action has blunted progress on climate change. These crises cascade through interconnected economies; for countries across Asia, the result is a stark choice between inward protectionism and cooperative regional solutions.

Act East and India’s Leadership Role

India’s Act East Policy has matured from a diplomatic posture into a practical blueprint for regional economic integration. The India–Japan Summit crystallised ways New Delhi can convert intent into tangible projects, especially by linking Northeast India as a gateway to the Bay of Bengal and ASEAN markets. This shift dovetails with Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) and private finance approach through its nodal agency, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is being well-channelled for the development of Northeast India across sectors, most importantly through regional connectivity projects. The recently inaugurated national highway in Meghalaya is a testament to the JICA-sponsored infrastructural development.

The JICA-funded projects in South Asian nations will build and bolster regional harmony, assist in stabilising energy and food supplies, diversify supply chains, and build interoperable emergency responses that require coordinated infrastructure, shared stockpiles, and predictable trade rules. By prioritising project-based collaboration, India can lead a connectivity agenda that is inclusive, standards-driven, and commercially viable, while Japan secures trusted partners for critical technologies and resources. The result is a pragmatic partnership that prioritises regional stability and economic opportunities over narrow geopolitics.

Why does Japan Need India?

Japan’s calculus increasingly points to India as an indispensable partner for a number of solid reasons. Primarily, India is one of the Asian countries that has a stable democracy with rule-of-law institutions. Second, market access, securing the supply chains, and technologies. Demographically, India offers a young, rapidly urbanising workforce and a growing middle class that can sustain long-term demand for Japanese goods and services, from automobiles to advanced electronics. Economically, India’s scale and manufacturing ambitions make it a natural partner for Japan’s push to diversify production away from concentrated hubs: Japanese firms gain a large, cost-competitive base for exports while India attracts investment, technology transfer, and higher-value jobs.

Third, resource security. Japan lacks abundant domestic supplies of critical minerals and advanced battery inputs; India’s expanding exploration, recycling, and mineral-processing initiatives find a place in the subject of bilateral agreements. This will help Tokyo build trusted, resilient supply chains for semiconductors, batteries, and clean-energy technologies. Despite this, bilateral trade is heavily skewed; Japan’s bilateral trade with India totalled US$ 27.47 billion during FY 2025-26. Exports from Japan to India during this period were US$ 21.43 billion, and imports were US$ 6.04 billion.

Natural Complementarity and Counter-China Dynamics

China is Japan’s largest trading partner; however, Japan this year has downgraded China’s diplomatic status, and this is where India fits in. One of the reasons for deepening ties with India is that the operating environment for Japanese companies in China is becoming difficult, and the ties between the two countries have grown tense in recent years, particularly after the exchange of unfortunate comments last year.

China’s population is also declining while Japanese companies are facing stiff competition from local competitors. Already, some leading Japanese banks are exploring substitutes like India and Singapore. Japan is also trying to reduce its reliance on China for critical minerals, and the India-Japan joint statement notes that the two countries “reiterated their grave concerns over the use of economic coercion and non-market policies and practices, including arbitrary export restrictions that may lead to supply chain disruptions.”

The recent MOUs on energy, batteries, AI, and critical minerals crystallise the complementary nature of India-Japan bilateral relations. Japan brings capital, project execution, and standards; India brings scale, talent, and space for diversification. Together they can establish a rules-based economic order in the Indo-Pacific. Furthermore, as the Indian PM in his address to the India-Japan Business Forum stated, “We are opening up every sector of the economy to greater private sector participation,” it’s a clear message to the Japanese business community.

Free and Open Indo-Pacific, QUAD, and Balancing China

Much of the discourse surrounding India–Japan cooperation continues to frame the relationship primarily through the lens of balancing China. While Beijing’s growing military assertiveness in the East and South China Seas, expanding naval presence in the Indian Ocean, and use of economic coercion have undoubtedly accelerated convergence between New Delhi and Tokyo, reducing the partnership to an anti-China framework overlooks its broader purpose. The objective is not containment but the preservation of a stable, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific in which sovereignty, freedom of navigation, and international law remain respected.

With the United States punitive tariffs, it raises the political cost of alignment for partners like India. Heavy-handed US economic tools therefore risk shrinking the Quad’s political space by making cooperation appear coercive rather than cooperative.

More recently, the announcement that the US Indo-Pacific Command would be dropping “Indo” from its name and reverting to the long-standing US Pacific Command has drawn criticism. The Trump administration could be in a hurry to close trade deals with China and, in the bargain, go slow on Indo-Pacific and Quad initiatives, or experts suggest it’s the US’s realignment with China.

In all cases, the asymmetries are distinct. Juxtaposing deeper, project-based cooperation with the Quad and sustained, inclusive engagement with China through ASEAN and other multilateral channels best serves India’s development and strategic interests. This dual track preserves New Delhi’s tactical autonomy and keeps ASEAN central, making India a bridge rather than a breaker in regional politics.

Beyond Bilateralism

Tokyo’s engagement with New Delhi has expanded across nearly every instrument of statecraft and is reflected in the diplomatic language in defence cooperation, enhanced logistical interoperability, and institutionalisation of the Foreign and Defence Ministerial (2+2) Dialogue. India’s vision for the Indo-Pacific emphasises an inclusive regional architecture centred on ASEAN, while Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) similarly advocates transparency, connectivity, adherence to international law, and interdependent quality infrastructure.

At a time when the Indo-Pacific is experiencing profound geopolitical and economic transformation, India and Japan are uniquely positioned to shape and not merely respond to the evolving regional order. The challenge is to balance cooperation and deterrence when the elephant is in the room.

A Few Good Reads

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Shankkar Aiyar argues that Punjab’s real story lies beyond political crises, highlighting how women’s entrepreneurship and social leadership are quietly reshaping the state’s development trajectory.

The Aakhya Weekly #205 | The Unfinished Journey of India’s Stolen Antiquities

Aakhya India — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 03:30:24 GMT

In Focus: Why Bringing India’s Artefacts Back is Only Half the Battle

by Chandan Kashyap

On the sidelines of the 3rd India–Australia Annual Summit in Melbourne on July 9, three sacred images from Tamil Nadu were finally promised their way home. A ceremonial trident bearing the Goddess Bhadrakali. A stone Nandi, the bull who has sat facing the sanctum of Shiva temples for centuries. And a six-faced Kartikeya, carved during the Chola period, that once presided over a temple near Kumbakonam before it was lifted from its pedestal, smuggled out of the country, and re-catalogued as “art” in the National Gallery of Australia.

What lifted the moment above the usual summit choreography was the exchange running the other way. In the same gesture, India agreed to return the remains of an Australian First Nations ancestor that remained in the Government Museum in Chennai for close to a century. Two nations, each handing back something that was never theirs to keep.

It is a genuinely good moment. It is also, almost always, where the telling stops, one step short of the critical question that should follow.

A Homecoming that Photographs Well

At some point in the previous decade, the return of stolen antiquities went beyond a quiet legal process and became the centrepiece of cultural diplomacy. According to the culture ministry’s own count, over 660 antiquities have come back since 2014.

For context: in the decade prior, just one antique was officially returned to India. The subsequent achievements are precisely how the government seeks to measure success in cultural diplomacy, to drive both political and foreign policy narratives.

The bigger returns now tend to arrive on the calendar of a Prime Ministerial visit: Washington, London, The Hague, and now Melbourne. Heritage is inexpensive, potent goodwill, easier to offer than a trade concession and far better to be seen giving. This indicates that a country that hands back your antiques is invested in shaping perceptions and how it wants to be seen by you. Given the evidence from recent years, India seems to have learnt from its experience, while asking for the return of its artefacts.

The Australia arrangement carried a grace note that most of the coverage hurried past: the reciprocity. For years India has argued this case as the aggrieved party, the old civilisation emptied by imperialists and unassuming art collectors. Agreeing to return a First Nations ancestor shifts that posture. It places India in the more mature position of a country that also holds what it should not, and is willing to say so. Even for diplomatic posturing, this is arguably a suitable position to adopt, given the intricacies of cultural and civilisational narratives of our times.

The Part that Wins no Photographs

Behind each handover is a stretch of grinding work that rarely makes the frame. The gesture in Melbourne was genuine, but the goodwill on the podium rested on years of patient groundwork back home. For instance, such artefacts were traced over years by the Tamil Nadu Idol Wing, a specialised police unit that reads temple inventories, follows objects through auction records, and matches a deity in a foreign gallery to the bare pedestal it was taken from.

The return process itself navigated a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, the formal channel through which government-to-government engagements focus on gathering evidence and securing the objects in question for a formal handover. Some of these actions usually miss the headlines, as only a few outside the courts and the culture ministry could even define them. Yet, it is the machinery that quietly turns a traced idol into a recovered one.

It is worth remembering how these artefacts left their traditional home in the first place. Many of the idols India has recovered passed through the same handful of trafficking networks, several traced to the dealer Subhash Kapoor, now jailed in India, who supplied temple bronzes to collectors and museums across the West for decades. The laundering was patient and professional: a forged ownership history, a respectable gallery, a museum content not to look too closely.

That chain is precisely what a preventive framework is meant to break, and it is where the more durable policy work has begun to move. India’s 2024 Cultural Property Agreement with the United States works on exactly that logic. It makes it harder to bring smuggled Indian antiquities into the US to begin with, and requires US customs to hand back whatever it seizes. The idea is to block the trade at the border, rather than track down each stolen idol years after it is reported to be missing. The lesson from a career like Kapoor’s is that recovery will always lag the trade, and that the surer gains lie in making provenance harder to fabricate and buyers harder to find.

For the moment, much of the momentum still draws on the goodwill of partner governments and the reported state visits, which is a considerable start even if the process may be inconclusive in the short term. The next phase is to turn a decade of case-by-case wins into standing arrangements that keep working in the quieter years between summits, and that can eventually reach objects held in private hands, where no treaty yet runs.

Home to What, Exactly?

The numbers present a sobering reality. Of the hundreds of antiquities recovered since 2014, only about a dozen have been returned to their places of origin. The rest remain in Delhi, many inside the Archaeological Survey’s high-security Central Antiquity Collection at Purana Qila, some on public display and a good number in storage.

A consecrated bronze is not a painting. It was cast for sacred ritualistic practices, evidenced by centuries-long legacy of reverence, devotion, and personalised care. Placed in a display case, it is preserved as an object while the beliefs of communities on the life that made it a deity rather than a sculpture are quietly set aside. It is fair, then, to ask whether a sacred statue behind glass in a national gallery is meaningfully more at home than it was in foreign lands.

The government has often addressed this question with the right intent, suggesting that these recovered items should be transported to their rightful homes. In line with this, the government cites the Chola copper plates being routed to Tamil Nadu as evidence of their righteous intent. Unfortunately, following through with the final few steps of the process is genuinely hard to administer. Moreover, the challenges are unforeseen, given how the processes and strategies are still evolving in the absence of a formal structure. For instance, many of the temples these idols came from are either non-functional or no longer stand. Some others are situated in sensitive districts, raising critical questions around internal security. In addition, archaeology departments of the states are either underfunded or understaffed. While these are solvable challenges, they have yet to receive the level of attention usually provided for the recovery of antiquities.

That is the gap worth acknowledging. The campaign to reclaim India’s stolen heritage is one of the more quietly effective things the state has done in years, and it has earned its appreciation.
It remains to be seen whether such efforts will extend to ensuring their return to the places of origin. Recovery is the visible half. The harder half is deciding what a returned deity is; the unglamorous work of returning them and creating conducive administrative structures around it.

The stolen antiques are on their way back to Indian soil, and it is time we settle how we define that home.

A Few Good Reads

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Rajeswari Sengupta lays out why India needs to fix tariffs, rebuild bilateral investment treaties, and take other proactive measures to hit 8% growth.
Debashis Basu argues that India inverted the East Asian playbook, focusing only on building elite IITs and B-schools before fixing basic childhood health and schooling, leading to human capital deficit.

The Aakhya Weekly #204 | Inside India's Digital Currency Debate

Aakhya India — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 03:30:40 GMT

In Focus: Two Digital Currencies, One Big Difference

by Shaurya Singh Tyagi

India is one of the largest digital economies in the world, with its digital ecosystem now valued at nearly $400 billion, according to a 2025 report by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). Rapid digitalisation, widespread smartphone adoption, affordable internet access, and government-led Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives have fundamentally transformed the way Indians transact, save, invest, and access financial services.

This transformation is perhaps best reflected in the phenomenal growth of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In June 2026, UPI transactions reached a record ₹28.9 lakh crore, further cementing its position as the backbone of India’s digital payments ecosystem. From street vendors and neighbourhood grocery stores to e-commerce platforms and large corporations, UPI has become an integral part of everyday life. Beyond convenience, it has significantly expanded financial inclusion by bringing millions of previously underserved individuals into the formal financial system while steadily reducing the country’s dependence on cash.

However, the rapid expansion of digital finance has also introduced a new set of challenges. As highlighted in Aakhya Weekly #192, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been preparing a series of measures to combat the growing incidence of digital fraud, identity theft, mule accounts, and money laundering facilitated through digital payment channels. Protecting consumers and preserving trust in India’s rapidly evolving digital financial ecosystem have consequently become central priorities for regulators.

The RBI’s concerns, however, are no longer limited to conventional digital payment systems. As investments in Virtual Digital Assets (VDAs), including cryptocurrencies, continue to grow despite an evolving regulatory landscape, the central bank has increasingly shifted its attention towards strengthening oversight of this emerging sector. Its objective is not merely to regulate a new asset class, but to improve transparency, curb illicit financial flows, and ensure that digital financial innovation develops within a secure and accountable framework.

It was against this backdrop that, during a Parliamentary panel meeting in early July, the RBI once again reiterated its opposition to the legalisation of private Virtual Digital Assets (VDAs) such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The position immediately reignited a familiar question: if the RBI itself is actively promoting a digital currency, why does it continue to oppose cryptocurrencies?

The answer lies in a simple but often overlooked distinction. While both the Digital Rupee and cryptocurrencies exist in digital form, they serve fundamentally different purposes and are built on entirely different principles of issuance, governance, and accountability.

The Digital Rupee: A Sovereign Digital Currency

The Digital Rupee, or e₹, is India’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) a digital version of the Indian rupee issued directly by the Reserve Bank of India as legal tender. Introduced in 2022, the e₹ carries exactly the same value and legal status as a physical banknote. The only difference is its form. Since every Digital Rupee is issued by the RBI, it represents a direct liability of the central bank and enjoys the same sovereign backing and public trust as traditional currency.

Over the past few years, the RBI has gradually expanded the scope of its CBDC pilots beyond simple retail payments. During FY 2025–26, it also launched welfare-linked Digital Rupee pilots across several states, allowing beneficiaries to receive food subsidies through the e₹ under the Public Distribution System (PDS). Unlike conventional cash transfers, these digital tokens were programmable and could only be spent at designated ration shops. This ensured that government subsidies were used exclusively for their intended purpose while reducing leakages, improving transparency, and strengthening the efficiency of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBTs). These pilots also demonstrated how a sovereign digital currency can be designed not merely as a payment instrument, but as a policy tool capable of improving public service delivery.

Digital Rupee vs Cryptocurrencies: What’s the Difference?

It is through this broader perspective that the differences between the Digital Rupee and cryptocurrencies become much clearer.

The most fundamental distinction lies in who issues the currency. The Digital Rupee is sovereign money, created and fully backed by the Reserve Bank of India. Functionally, it is equivalent to a digital banknote and represents a direct claim on the central bank. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, by contrast, are privately created digital assets operating on decentralised blockchain networks. They have no central issuer, no sovereign backing, and no institution guaranteeing their value. Instead, their prices are determined entirely by market demand and supply.

This difference in issuance naturally extends to price stability. One Digital Rupee will always remain equal to one physical rupee. Its purchasing power does not fluctuate independently because it is simply another representation of India’s national currency. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are highly volatile. Their prices can rise or fall dramatically within hours, influenced by speculation, investor sentiment, macroeconomic developments, regulatory announcements, technological events, or even social media activity. Such volatility may make them attractive as speculative investment assets for some investors, but it significantly limits their effectiveness as a stable medium of exchange for everyday transactions.

The RBI also views the issue through the lens of monetary sovereignty. Since the Digital Rupee is issued and managed by the central bank, the RBI retains complete control over its supply and circulation. This allows it to implement monetary policy, manage liquidity, maintain financial stability, and preserve confidence in India’s monetary system. Decentralised cryptocurrencies, by design, operate independently of any central authority. If they were to become widely accepted as a means of payment, they could gradually reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy by shifting economic activity outside the central banking system and weakening the RBI’s ability to influence financial conditions.

Financial integrity represents another major area of distinction. Transactions involving the Digital Rupee take place within India’s regulated financial infrastructure and remain subject to the country’s legal and regulatory framework. This enables authorities to implement Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, monitor suspicious transactions, combat fraud, and strengthen compliance with anti-money laundering regulations.

The RBI has consistently argued that certain private virtual digital assets, particularly those facilitating pseudonymous or cross-border transactions, can be exploited for illicit activities such as money laundering, terror financing, narcotics trafficking, tax evasion, and other forms of financial crime. While blockchain technology itself offers transparency, the global and decentralised nature of many cryptocurrency ecosystems can make regulatory enforcement considerably more challenging than within traditional financial systems.

These concerns have become increasingly relevant as cryptocurrency adoption continues to expand worldwide. Although India has introduced taxation and reporting requirements for VDAs, the broader regulatory framework remains under development. The RBI has therefore continued to advocate a cautious approach, emphasising that technological innovation should not come at the cost of financial stability or consumer protection.

Innovation Needs Trust, Not Just Technology

At first glance, it may appear contradictory for the RBI to champion one digital currency while opposing another. In reality, the distinction has never been about whether money is digital. Rather, it is about who issues it, who regulates it, who guarantees its value, and who remains accountable for maintaining public confidence in the financial system.

As India enters the next phase of its digital transformation, these questions are likely to become even more important. Digital finance is evolving rapidly, bringing with it new opportunities for efficiency, financial inclusion, and innovation, alongside new risks that require equally sophisticated regulatory responses. The future of India’s digital economy will therefore depend not only on embracing technological innovation, but also on striking the right balance between innovation, trust, consumer protection, and effective regulatory oversight.

A Few Good Reads

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M. Govinda Rao highlights that Karnataka’s development story remains incomplete without balanced regional growth and better human development.
Vinay Sarawagi notes that governments are becoming strategic investors, and India should not ignore the opportunity to back its own technology champions.
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The Aakhya Weekly #203 | Securing the Future: India’s Strategic Energy Pivot

Aakhya India — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 03:30:42 GMT

In Focus: Powering Progress Through Energy Diversification

by Shaurya Singh Tyagi

With conflicts across the world continuing to disrupt global trade and energy markets, India has had to navigate a challenging economic environment marked by rising fuel prices, costlier imports and a weakening rupee. These external pressures have exposed the country’s vulnerability to global supply chain disruptions, particularly in the energy sector, while reinforcing the need to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. At the same time, India has remained committed to its long-term vision of becoming both economically self-reliant and environmentally sustainable.

This vision is reflected in the Viksit Bharat Mission, which sets an ambitious target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2070, supported by interim milestones for 2030 and 2047. Achieving these goals will require a fundamental transformation of India’s energy landscape. According to a 2025 EY-CII report, India will need to nearly triple its primary energy supply by 2047 to sustain economic growth, while expanding its non-fossil energy capacity by almost forty times. Such an expansion is essential if nearly two-thirds of the country’s energy demand is to be met through clean sources by the centenary of India’s independence.

Against this backdrop, India’s energy strategy has evolved beyond simply increasing generation capacity. Today, the focus is equally on strengthening energy security, diversifying supply sources, reducing import dependence and investing in technologies that can support long-term decarbonisation. Rather than relying on a single solution, the country is pursuing multiple pathways simultaneously, recognising that resilience will come from diversification.

Strengthening Energy Security in an Uncertain World

The importance of strengthening domestic energy security became particularly evident during the peak of the Iran-US conflict. With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz severely disrupting global LPG shipments, India faced soaring import costs and growing concerns over fuel availability. The episode served as a stark reminder of the country’s continued exposure to geopolitical developments far beyond its borders.

In response, the Government of India accelerated its push for Piped Natural Gas (PNG) as a more reliable and domestically distributed alternative to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). The initiative quickly gained momentum, with more than 5.58 lakh households registering for new PNG connections during March and April alone. Beyond providing consumers with greater protection from volatile international fuel markets, the expansion of PNG also supports India’s broader objective of building a cleaner, more resilient and self-sufficient energy ecosystem.

Reducing dependence on imported crude oil and natural gas has therefore become both an economic necessity and a strategic priority. Alongside strengthening domestic energy security, India is steadily diversifying its energy mix by expanding renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydropower, while simultaneously increasing investment in non-conventional sources including nuclear energy. This dual approach aims to ensure reliable energy access while supporting long-term decarbonisation goals and insulating the economy from geopolitical disruptions that continue to impact global fuel markets.

Building the Energy System of the Future

Among the various pillars of India’s evolving energy strategy, nuclear energy has assumed increasing importance. The country’s growing emphasis on the sector has already been covered extensively in Aakhya Weekly Issues #150 and #157. More recently, attention has shifted to the world’s first nuclear hydrogen plant at Kalpakkam, marking another significant milestone in India’s clean energy journey.

While the project has attracted global recognition as a technological first, its significance extends well beyond that achievement. It represents an important step towards developing integrated energy hubs capable of producing hydrogen, a strategic industrial fuel expected to play a central role in decarbonising sectors such as steel, fertilisers, chemicals and heavy transport. Although large-scale commercial deployment remains some distance away, the project demonstrates India’s ambition to establish leadership in next-generation energy technologies while building domestic capabilities for the emerging hydrogen economy.

At the same time, India is seeking to make better use of its abundant domestic coal reserves through cleaner and more efficient technologies. Rather than abandoning coal altogether, policymakers are attempting to extract greater value from the resource while reducing its environmental impact. This has brought renewed attention to the concept of Coal Gasification Valleys, networked industrial clusters centred around coal-rich regions where coal conversion plants, chemical manufacturing facilities and energy production units are co-located. By integrating these industries within a single ecosystem, the model seeks to reduce transportation costs, improve operational efficiency and create value-added downstream industries.

Driving this transition is the National Coal Gasification Mission, which aims to gasify 100 million tonnes of coal annually by 2030, with the target rising to 250 million tonnes by 2047. To support this ambition, the Government has committed ₹8,500 crore towards eight coal gasification projects that will collectively create around 12 million tonnes of production capacity. A further ₹37,500 crore has been earmarked for future investment, signalling a long-term commitment to developing a domestic coal-based chemicals and clean fuels industry while reducing reliance on imported oil and natural gas.

The transport sector is also undergoing significant change. As global fuel prices have remained volatile, India has accelerated its ethanol blending programme to reduce crude oil imports while lowering transport-related emissions. The most notable development has been the introduction of 85% ethanol-blended fuel in parts of the Delhi NCR region and Maharashtra. Although the fuel is priced lower than the existing E20 blend, it has also generated considerable debate regarding its compatibility with conventional vehicles. Concerns have centred on reduced fuel efficiency, increased wear and tear on engine components, and the potential impact on vehicles not originally designed to function on such high ethanol concentrations.

Addressing these concerns, the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas stated that automobile manufacturers had been consulted and were supportive of the rollout. According to the Ministry, higher ethanol blending is expected to reduce pollution while lowering India’s dependence on imported crude oil, making it both an environmental and an energy security measure.

Diversification as India’s Long-Term Energy Strategy

Taken together, these initiatives illustrate a much broader transformation of India’s energy policy. Diversification is no longer limited to expanding domestic energy production through nuclear power, renewable energy or coal gasification; it also encompasses securing more resilient import supply chains and reducing strategic vulnerabilities.

Recognising the geopolitical risks associated with major maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, India has steadily broadened its network of crude oil suppliers over the past several years. Today, nearly 70% of the country’s crude oil imports originate from sources outside the Strait, significantly reducing exposure to regional conflicts and supply disruptions. This diversification of import sources complements domestic efforts to expand clean energy generation and improve energy resilience.

From expanding its fleet of nuclear reactors and investing in large-scale solar parks, hydropower projects and wind farms to promoting ethanol blending, coal gasification and emerging technologies such as nuclear hydrogen, India is pursuing a genuinely multi-pronged approach to strengthening energy security. Each pathway presents its own technological, economic and environmental trade-offs, and many continue to generate healthy public debate regarding cost, feasibility and long-term sustainability.

Viewed collectively, however, these initiatives reveal a clear national strategy. India is not relying on a single technology or fuel source to achieve its ambitions; instead, it is building a diversified energy system that balances security, affordability and sustainability. In an increasingly uncertain geopolitical landscape, diversification is no longer simply an energy policy objective; it has become a strategic imperative for safeguarding India’s long-term economic growth, environmental commitments and energy independence.

A Few Good Reads

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C. Raja Mohan writes about the Indo-US relations, which have oscillated between anxieties and hope for a strong diplomatic relationship under the Trump administration.
P. Chidambaram outlines the socio-political trends that will shape the future of India over the coming decades.

The Aakhya Weekly #202 | Redrawing the Lines on Foreign Funding

Aakhya India — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 03:30:43 GMT

In Focus: Mapping India's New Guardrails on Foreign Funding

by Kaushiki Kaushalendra Singh

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Rules, 2026, representing the tenth amendment (S.O. 3287(E)) to the rules since their introduction in 2011. The latest amendment overhauls several regulatory areas, introducing a list of permissible activities, expanding the definition of functionaries, requiring disclosures on the geographical scope of each project, and signalling stricter control over how NGOs utilise foreign funds. This comes not long after the introduction of the Foreign Contribution Regulation (Amendment) Bill in March 2026 by Mr Nityanand Rai (Minister of State, Home Affairs).

The amendment will have a direct impact on the operations and future of 14,458 NGOs with active FCRA registrations in India. The need to control and audit foreign funding has been prevalent for decades. Right after the imposition of emergency in 1975, there were concerns about interference of foreign governments, intelligence agencies, foundations, and international organisations that were potentially using the funding avenues to influence political parties, trade unions, and student groups to manipulate the socio-political fabric of the country. These concerns are linked to experiences from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when exposés such as the Church Committee Report (1975) and The CIA & the Cult of Intelligence (1974) surfaced. As a result, parliament deliberated upon the matter and enacted the law regulating the flow of such contributions. This led to the enactment of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act of 1976.

Changes Introduced Under the FCRA Amendment Rules of 2026

The 2026 FCRA amendment rules introduce tighter controls by linking foreign contributions to approved purposes and geographical areas of operation, while also providing greater clarity on permissible activities. A key change is the introduction of a legal definition of “key functionaries” under Rule 2, which now includes directors of companies, partners in firms, trustees of trusts, Karta of a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF), office bearers of societies and associations, and any individual exercising control over the management or affairs of an organisation. The amendments also require organisations seeking registration under Forms FC-3A, FC-3B and FC-3C to specify the purpose or purposes for which registration is sought, along with the States and Union Territories in which they intend to operate. The disclosure requirements have been expanded; Organisations must now furnish details of their websites, social media accounts, publications, operational geography, approved objectives, and governance structures. NGOs are additionally required to declare whether they or their key functionaries have published any books, magazines, newspaper articles, or other publications during the year.

The amendments further introduce a schedule delineating activities that qualify as “religious” for FCRA registration. Permissible activities now expressly include the construction and maintenance of places of worship, preservation and translation of sacred texts, religious education, pilgrim facilities, community kitchens, faith-based cultural activities, and the preservation of indigenous belief systems. The Rules explicitly exclude proselytisation or religious conversion activities from the list of religious activities eligible to receive funding. Another change relates to internal administration of such organisations, with Rule 9(5) providing that associations having foreign nationals, other than Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs), as key functionaries will ordinarily not be considered eligible for registration or prior permission unless specifically approved by the Central Government. The amendments also introduce a benchmark for assessing organisational activity by providing under Rule 14A that, for cancellation under Section 14 and renewal under Section 16, such organisations must utilise foreign contributions of not less than Rs. 10 lakh during the last two financial years. The Government posits that stricter regulation will enhance its ability to monitor foreign-funded activities and promote transparency, traceability, and accountability.

Evolution of India’s Foreign Contribution Regulatory Framework

India introduced the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 1976 to regulate contributions received from abroad. The act aimed to regulate the flow of such funding and functionaries in charge, and ensure that such contributions are not utilised for activities detrimental to the national interest. The Government introduced the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) of 2010, which provided a more detailed and systematic approach to the registration, monitoring, renewal, and enforcement of funding in India. Subsequently, the FCRA Rules 2011 were introduced to ease enforcement of the new laws. The rules were amended on several occasions to help keep up with the evolving landscape. The revisions to FCRA have stricter disclosure requirements for funds, made compliance easier by digitising processes, and have led to a greater review of how funds are used, and have strengthened the government’s power to oversee such funding.

Again in 2020, the FCRA was amended to restrict the transfer of contributions to any other entity, lowered the amount of administrative expenses to 20% from the 50% allowed in the previous law, and required that the main persons responsible for receiving foreign contributions be given an Aadhar number and that all such contributions be received through a central location.

After the passage of the aforementioned act, the FCRA Rules were amended in 2022, 2025, and 2026, revising the procedures for registering to receive contributions, the documentation or materials required to register, the reporting requirements, and defining the permissible activities related to foreign funding.

Regulatory Oversight for Sovereignty

The amendments are consequential for NGOs in India, as the Central Government tightens oversight on non-governmental organisations and civil societies active in the space through financial and administrative scrutiny. As of June 2026, a total of 22,498 FCRA registrations were cancelled, and 15,203 expired registrations were not renewed. These organisations receive approximately Rs. 22,000 crore annually in FCRA contributions. The Ministry of Home Affairs, in its public notice, listed the reasons for cancellation and non-renewal, indicating reasons including: organisations being defunct, concealment of facts, anti-development activities, inciting malicious protests, association with terrorist organisations, and likelihood of personal gain, amongst others.

At the same time, it must be noted that NGOs receiving foreign contributions have played a significant role in supplementing India’s developmental and welfare objectives by supporting activities across the social, educational, economic, cultural, and religious sectors recognised under the FCRA framework. Such organisations have historically complemented government efforts by delivering services in underserved regions and mobilising resources for vulnerable populations. Consequently, some critics believe that the Government has introduced stricter control to curb dissent and further its political agenda.

However, the amendment to the FCRA is in tune with the Supreme Court’s observation, which holds that there is no fundamental right to receive foreign contributions and any amendments will not be violative of the right to freedom of association under Article 19 of the Constitution, if the Government deems it necessary to protect national interests.

“...That cannot be the basis to declare the amended (FCRA) provisions being violative of fundamental rights and more so, because the same are necessitated to overcome the misuse of foreign contribution from foreign sources threatening the sovereignty of the nation.”

~ Noel Harper v Union of India on 8 April, 2022

In an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, strict audits and robust monitoring of foreign contributions are essential. The Government must prioritise regulatory oversight while also enabling an environment that allows legitimate social sector initiatives and development activities undertaken by NGOs receiving foreign contributions.

A Few Good Reads

Syed Zubair Ahmed writes that ruling Britain is a supreme paradox: a massive majority makes winning it look easy, but post-Brexit divisions make surviving it incredibly hard.
Sunjay Sudhir analyses how the temporary opening of the Strait of Hormuz presents a critical 60-day strategic window for India to revive imports of technically compatible Iranian crude and structurally stabilise its energy, trade, and diaspora security.
A Surya Prakash suggests that PM Modi must implement a modern “Kamaraj Plan” to revive the BJP by moving heavyweight ministers into full-time party roles.
Shishir Priyadarshi argues that India and Europe must move past passive “potential” and use their new Free Trade Agreement to co-create tangible outcomes in green energy, technology, and supply chains.
Justin Sherman warns that the war with Iran exposed a major security flaw: adversaries weaponised porous commercial location data and AI to track and target deployed U.S. troops.

The Aakhya Weekly #201 | India Beyond Fertility

Aakhya India — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 03:31:11 GMT

In Focus: Why Care Infrastructure May Be India’s Next Growth Engine

by Leah Miriam George

India’s demographic debate is changing, and not in the direction most expected.

For decades, policymakers worried about population growth. Today, the concern is the opposite. India’s Total Fertility Rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1, joining a growing list of countries grappling with declining fertility. Political leaders in several states have begun advocating larger families, while experts warn of long-term consequences. Yet this emerging discourse risks focusing on symptoms rather than causes.

The real question is not whether Indians are having enough children. It is whether India is building the institutions required for a society in profound demographic transition, one that must simultaneously prepare for an ageing population, changing family structures, rising female workforce participation, and evolving labour markets. Above all, it is a story about care.

The End of a Single Story

For nearly three decades, India’s demographic advantage was viewed through one lens: a large and growing working-age population. That dividend shaped economic projections and development strategies. India was expected to benefit from a youthful workforce capable of driving consumption, innovation and growth.

That opportunity remains real. But demographic transitions do not announce themselves, rather they unfold gradually until a tipping point is reached, and India has already crossed one.

Fertility rates have fallen across most states. Southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu now have fertility levels comparable to developed economies. Urban India is seeing smaller families, delayed marriages and deferred parenthood, while life expectancy continues to rise. The result is a demographic profile that is becoming simultaneously older and more complex. India must now care for hundreds of millions of children and hundreds of millions of elderly citizens at the same time. That demands a fundamentally different policy response than the one currently on offer.

The Invisible Infrastructure we cannot see

When governments discuss infrastructure, we all think of roads, railways, airports and digital networks. There is another form that remains largely invisible despite underpinning the entire economy: care.

Historically, Indian society relied on informal family structures to provide it. That model is now under significant strain. Urbanisation has separated families geographically. Nuclear households have replaced joint families. Migration has become essential for economic mobility. Female educational attainment and workforce aspirations have risen sharply. Yet the burden of care continues to fall disproportionately on women, who spend, on average, 289 minutes per day on unpaid domestic and care work compared to 88 minutes for men. Participation rates tell the same story: over 92% of women aged 15 to 59 engage in unpaid domestic work, compared to just 30% of men.

This is not simply a social challenge. It is a systemic time tax, what researchers call the “care penalty”. It limits women’s access to paid employment, education, and economic mobility. Urban female labour force participation has consequently stagnated at 20 to 25% for nearly two decades, among the lowest for any major economy at India’s stage of development.

The Falling Fertility Rate

Much of the current fertility debate assumes lower birth rates reflect changing preferences. The reality is more structural.

Fertility decisions are closely linked to the cost and availability of caregiving. When childcare is inaccessible or expensive, families postpone having children. When eldercare falls entirely on working-age adults, family formation changes. When housing, education and healthcare costs rise faster than incomes, family size naturally declines. As discussed in the recently released working paper on the care economy, the evidence from India is striking: urban women want, on average, 0.4 more children than they actually have, compared to just 0.1 in rural areas. That gap is not a preference gap. It is a care infrastructure gap.

This helps explain why fertility incentives alone produce limited results. Japan, South Korea, Singapore and China have all experimented with pro-natalist policies with little lasting effect. People do not make family decisions based solely on financial incentives but also based on confidence that they can raise children without sacrificing careers, that ageing parents will be supported, that society has built systems to make family life sustainable.

India should absorb these lessons before demographic anxiety drives policy choices.

Care as Economic Strategy

The recently released EAC-PM working paper “Re-imagining the Care Economy: From Private Burden to Social and Economic Infrastructure” offers an important corrective. Rather than viewing care as welfare expenditure, it frames care as productive economic infrastructure, and the numbers make the case compellingly.

India will need 31 to 38 million formal care workers by 2050, spanning childcare, eldercare and long-term support. Investments of just 2% of GDP in the health and care sector are estimated to generate 11 million jobs, the majority going to women. Meanwhile, urban female labour force participation, especially depressed in households with young children, could rise significantly with accessible, affordable childcare.

Care work is labour-intensive, geographically distributed and resistant to automation. Most importantly, it converts unpaid labour, overwhelmingly performed by women, into recognised economic activity. India’s next wave of employment generation may come not only from manufacturing plants and digital platforms, but from childcare centres, home-care services, assisted-living facilities and community caregiving networks. The care economy can therefore function as both a domestic growth engine and, given the global shortage of trained caregivers, an export opportunity as well.

Looking Forward

Countries that navigate demographic transition successfully build systems in advance rather than reacting to crisis. Germany and the Nordic countries developed care infrastructure that sustained workforce participation across generations. Japan is investing in community-based eldercare to cope with rapid ageing. What these countries share is a common insight: care is not a private family problem. It is public infrastructure.

India has distinct advantages to build on: a large workforce, a rapidly expanding digital ecosystem, growing healthcare capabilities and deep experience in large-scale public service delivery. With the right framework, India could become a global hub for caregiver training and certification, much as Indian nurses, doctors and technology professionals serve global markets today.

But the domestic architecture must come first. That means embedding childcare norms within urban master plans, including repurposing underenrolled government schools as care facilities. It means reforming the current maternity-centric leave structure, which concentrates costs on employers and inadvertently discourages the hiring of women, toward gender-neutral shared parental leave. It means creating financing mechanisms, public funds, PPP concession agreements, and CSR channels, that treat care infrastructure the way India treats roads and ports: as a public good that cannot be left to households alone.

The country’s future prosperity will depend less on whether fertility rises marginally above or below replacement levels, and more on whether its institutions evolve to support people across the full arc of their lives.

India’s demographic dividend is not ending. It is evolving. The question is whether the country is ready for what comes next.

A Few Good Reads

Shashi Tharoor dissects the diplomatic chasm between Washington and Tehran. He explores why diplomacy has failed so far, delving into realpolitik and historical rivalries between the two countries.
Purushraj Patnaik explores the contrasts between India’s lack of consumer protection laws for AI emotional dependence and the rigorous guardrails recently enacted by the European Union, the United States, and China.
Ita Mehrotra writes about graphic novelist Joe Sacco’s book ‘The Once and Future Riots’, which investigates the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. The publishing house Penguin India recently flagged issues and halted the distribution of the book in the country.
Manoj Joshi analyzes India’s border strategy with China. He highlights how India’s successful use of bilateral mechanisms has helped manage boundary disputes that have worsened since the 2020 Chinese blockades and troop deployments.

The Aakhya Weekly #200 | From Highways to High-Rises: Haryana's EV Mandate and the Future of Urban Mobility

Aakhya India — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 03:30:29 GMT

In Focus: What Haryana’s EV Charging Rules Reveal About India’s Mobility Transition

by Diksha Bharti

India’s electric vehicle (EV) transition has largely been framed as a story of manufacturing incentives, battery production, charging stations, and consumer subsidies. From the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme to Production Linked Incentives (PLI) for advanced chemistry cells, policymakers have focused considerable attention on expanding supply and lowering costs. Yet one critical piece of the puzzle has remained comparatively neglected: the built environment.

This is why Haryana’s recent amendment to the Building Code, mandating EV charging infrastructure in new and renovated residential and commercial developments, deserves attention beyond the state’s borders. The amendment requires designated charging provisions, EV-ready electrical conduits, and supporting infrastructure, while exempting charging facilities from Floor Area Ratio (FAR) calculations. On the surface, it appears to be a routine regulatory change. In practice, it represents a shift in how governments are beginning to think about electric mobility not merely as a transport issue, but as an urban planning challenge.

The significance of the amendment lies in a simple reality: India’s EV ambitions will ultimately be determined not by the number of charging stations on highways, but by whether urban residents can conveniently charge vehicles where they live and work.

The Missing Link in India’s EV Strategy

India’s EV adoption has grown steadily over the past five years, particularly in the two-wheeler and commercial fleet segments. However, private passenger vehicle adoption remains constrained by a problem that is often overlooked in policy debates: access to reliable home charging.

Unlike countries such as the United States, where detached homes dominate suburban landscapes, urban India is increasingly defined by apartment complexes, gated communities, and high-rise residential developments. In cities such as Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru, and Mumbai, parking spaces are shared assets governed by Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), builders, and maintenance agencies. Installing a private charger often requires navigating multiple approvals, electrical modifications, and concerns about common infrastructure.

This challenge is not unique to India. In the United Kingdom, policymakers identified apartment charging as a major barrier to EV adoption nearly a decade ago. Studies found that residents without dedicated charging access were significantly less likely to purchase EVs despite favorable incentives. Similar concerns emerged across Europe, prompting governments to move beyond vehicle-focused policies and integrate charging infrastructure directly into building regulations.

The underlying logic is straightforward. Retrofitting charging infrastructure after a building has been constructed is expensive and administratively complex. Electrical conduits, transformer capacity, wiring systems, and parking layouts are easier and cheaper to incorporate during construction than years later. This is where Haryana’s amendment becomes significant. It acknowledges that EV infrastructure must become part of the urban development process rather than remain an external add-on. In doing so, it addresses a structural issue that subsidy-driven approaches alone cannot solve.

What Global Best Practices Reveal

Many of the world’s leading EV markets reached this conclusion years ago.

Norway, often cited as the global leader in EV adoption, is frequently associated with tax incentives and consumer subsidies. However, a less discussed aspect of its success was the systematic integration of charging infrastructure into housing policy through the “Right to Charge.” Building regulations gradually evolved to ensure that residential developments could accommodate future charging demand. By reducing uncertainty around access to charging, policymakers strengthened consumer confidence in EV ownership.

The Netherlands adopted a similar approach. Municipal authorities increasingly required new developments to include charging-ready infrastructure, while local governments actively coordinated with utilities and developers to anticipate future electricity demand. Rather than waiting for charging shortages to emerge, planners sought to build capacity ahead of adoption curves.

Perhaps the most relevant example for India comes from China. Faced with rapid urbanisation and widespread apartment living, Chinese cities recognised early that charging access would become a bottleneck. National guidelines encouraged new residential developments to reserve electrical capacity for future EV charging. Several municipalities mandated charging-ready parking spaces and integrated charging requirements into planning approvals.

The common lesson across these jurisdictions is that EV adoption accelerated when charging infrastructure became embedded within urban planning frameworks. Governments stopped treating charging as a standalone transport asset and instead recognised it as a component of essential urban infrastructure.

Haryana’s amendment reflects elements of this approach. However, replicating international success will require more than updating building codes.

The Implementation Challenge: Legacy Buildings, Grid Capacity and Institutional Coordination

The true test of Haryana’s policy lies not in new developments but in existing urban settlements.

A significant proportion of India’s future EV owners will reside in buildings constructed long before EV charging was considered. These structures often face electrical constraints, limited parking flexibility and fragmented governance arrangements. In many cases, RWAs lack technical expertise to assess charging proposals, while residents remain uncertain about installation rights and liabilities.

Fire safety concerns further complicate the discussion. Globally, a series of high-profile incidents involving vehicle fires in enclosed parking structures has heightened public scrutiny of EV charging infrastructure. Although available evidence suggests that EV fires are not necessarily more frequent than internal combustion vehicle fires, battery-related incidents require different response protocols and specialised safety measures.

Consequently, building code amendments alone are insufficient. They must be accompanied by updated fire safety standards, charging installation guidelines, emergency response protocols and periodic inspection mechanisms. Without these supporting frameworks, regulatory uncertainty could persist despite the amendment.

Grid readiness presents another challenge. The concentration of charging demand within residential clusters could create localised pressure on distribution infrastructure. While India currently possesses surplus generation capacity at the national level, distribution networks in rapidly growing urban centres often face operational constraints.

International experience suggests that unmanaged charging can increase peak electricity demand and necessitate costly network upgrades. Countries such as Singapore and the Netherlands have increasingly promoted smart charging systems that distribute demand across time periods and minimise stress on local grids. Haryana’s policy would benefit from a similar forward-looking approach, linking charging infrastructure expansion with utility planning and digital energy management systems.

Most importantly, institutional coordination remains critical. Urban local bodies, electricity distribution companies, fire departments, developers and RWAs must operate within a predictable regulatory framework. The absence of clearly defined responsibilities risks creating bureaucratic friction that undermines the very objective of the policy.

From EV Policy to Urban Infrastructure Policy

Haryana’s amendment signals an important evolution in India’s approach to electric mobility. It reflects a growing recognition that the next phase of the EV transition will be determined less by vehicle technology and more by infrastructure readiness.

Yet the amendment should be viewed as a starting point rather than a complete solution.

The logical next step would be the development of a comprehensive national framework for EV-ready buildings. Such a framework could establish uniform standards for residential charging, clarify rights and responsibilities within apartment complexes, create model guidelines for RWAs, standardise fire safety requirements and encourage utilities to plan proactively for rising charging demand.

Equally important is the need to address existing building stock. Incentive programmes for retrofitting residential complexes, concessional financing for electrical upgrades and technical support for RWAs could help bridge the gap between new and old developments. Without such measures, EV-ready infrastructure risks becoming concentrated in premium projects while older urban neighbourhoods remain excluded from the transition.

The broader policy lesson extends beyond Haryana. India’s clean mobility ambitions increasingly intersect with housing policy, electricity regulation, urban governance and infrastructure planning. Electric vehicles are no longer merely a transport sector concern; they are becoming a test of how effectively cities can adapt to a rapidly changing energy landscape.

In that context, Haryana’s amendment may ultimately be remembered less as a building code revision and more as an early attempt to redefine what urban infrastructure must look like in an electrified future. Whether it succeeds will depend not on the regulation itself but on the ecosystem of institutions, standards and investments that emerge around it.

A Few Good Reads

This comprehensive special report by Shivam Shekhawat and Sushant Sareen assesses Pakistan’s internal political, military, and economic developments, as well as its shifting external relations and diplomatic positioning, in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor.

Devansh Shah explores the growing intersection of environmental sustainability and dispute resolution, emphasising the vital role “green arbitrators” play in adopting eco-friendly practices and navigating complex climate-related disputes.

Bharat Joshi analyses the bottlenecks stalling India’s Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), arguing that India must temper its overly defensive “de-legalisation” approach to restore foreign investor confidence while still protecting its sovereign regulatory rights.

Harsh V. Pant details how Chinese intelligence operatives utilise fake corporate profiles on LinkedIn to target and spy on global policy and defence professionals.

Shivkumar Kalyanaraman and Kishore Paknikar emphasise that an innovation-driven India must look beyond manufacturing to transform scientific research into a broader, self-sustaining societal movement funded by public-private partnerships.

The Aakhya Weekly #199 | The Right to Cool: India's Next Urban Rights Frontier

Aakhya India — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 03:31:05 GMT

In Focus: Heat, Rights and Urban India

by Mahima Kaul

For most of modern India’s urban history, access to cooling has been treated as a private matter, a function of income, housing and individual consumption. But as extreme heat becomes a defining feature of urban life, that assumption is beginning to break down. When temperatures routinely surpass safe limits, the ability to access shade, drinking water, ventilation and thermally safe public spaces ceases to be about comfort; instead, it raises questions on health, livelihoods, and equal citizenship.

Today, on World Environment Day 2026, under the theme “Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future”, India finds itself at an inflexion point where cooling is no longer merely an environmental or infrastructure concern. It is emerging as one of the country’s most important urban governance challenges and increasingly, as a matter of rights.

The City that Warms Unevenly

During the unprecedented heatwave of late April 2026, India accounted for 95 of the world’s 100 hottest cities. India has always had summers. What is new is the duration, the frequency and above all, the spatial inequality in who experiences the heat and who escapes it.

Indian cities have warmed at roughly 0.53°C per decade in nighttime land surface temperature. Nearly 60% of the additional heat experienced in cities comes from the cities themselves. Concrete, asphalt, metal roofs, and glass façades absorb heat during the day and continue radiating it long after sunset. The urban heat island effect is therefore a policy outcome. Heat is not just a climate story; it maps onto class and geography in ways that are increasingly hard to separate from questions of rights and governance.

The numbers make it concrete. Only 24% of Indian households own an air conditioner or air cooler, according to NFHS-5. Ceiling fans remain the primary, and often the only method of cooling for over 90% of urban Indian households. Compare this with AC ownership rates of over 85% in Japan, South Korea and the United States. This is not merely a comfort gap. It is a health gap. The ILO estimates heat exposure results in 22.85 million non-fatal injuries, and nearly 19,000 deaths annually, and a 2026 SAGE journal study found bridging the cooling divide must be central to India’s public health agenda.

The economics of the divide are equally significant. Research tracking nearly 400 informal workers in two Delhi slums in summer 2019 found that every 1°C rise in wet-bulb temperature reduced net daily earnings by 19%.

The Framework that Exists and Where it Falls Short

Here is the most important and least reported fact in India’s heat governance conversation: the legal foundation for a Right to Cool already exists. It was laid in March 2024 by the Supreme Court of India itself.

In M.K. Ranjitsinh and Others v. Union of India (March 21, 2024), a three-judge bench led by then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud formally recognised a new constitutional right: the right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change, derived from Article 21 and Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. The Court held that since the right to a clean environment and the right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change are effectively two sides of the same coin, there was, by 2024, a need to explicitly articulate this as a distinct fundamental right, given the growing menace.

The judgment is two years old. The policy infrastructure to operationalise it has yet to be implemented, but legal advocates increasingly have the constitutional language to demand that it does. In 2019, India launched the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), a comprehensive 20-year national framework to address cooling requirements across sectors. Its goals include reducing cooling demand across sectors by 20-25%, promoting passive cooling through building design and efficient ACs, expanding cold chain infrastructure and integrating cooling objectives with the Smart Cities Mission and PMAY.

The ICAP has succeeded in shifting the conversation; cooling is now discussed across ministries as a developmental necessity rather than a consumer product. But the harder task of implementation accountability remains unfinished. The document itself proposed that an existing inter-ministerial committee ‘could’ be tasked with overseeing implementation of ICAP. Yet institutional arrangements for monitoring and reporting remain limited. Seven years on, publicly available information on progress remains sparse, with no regular public reporting mechanism in place.

The Workers Who Fall Through Every Framework

Millions of informal workers in India lack access to cooling mechanisms or workplace protections, and the recent Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code sidesteps gig workers. Meanwhile, even for covered workers, the future of specific heat-protection standards previously found in some state factory rules remains uncertain under the evolving OSH framework.

A joint survey by the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union and HeatWatch in 2024 found that 51.81% of gig worker participants had experienced heat exhaustion while working, 27% reported dehydration, and 18.07% had experienced sunburn or other skin issues.

A 2025 study across 3,300 women in 15 districts across seven states found that 70% in high heat-vulnerability districts reported fatigue, dizziness and dehydration during peak summer months, with 97% reporting income losses averaging more than Rs 1,500 (between April-June) in sectors like agriculture, construction and informal service work that account for the majority of female employment. Heat is also a gendered crisis. The policy frameworks that govern informal work, wage protection, and occupational safety have not yet specifically addressed this dimension.

EPW’s May 2026 editorial noted that heat deaths remain systematically undercounted in official data, and argued that Heat Action Plans must move from guidelines to enforceable obligations with statutory backing. Alluding to Kerala’s mandatory work break for outdoor workers as a model, it called for a transition from device-centric cooling toward passive cooling of the larger environment.

The Patchwork of Progress

Among the states, Tamil Nadu’s approach to urban cooling is one of the most institutionally comprehensive in India. It declared heatwaves a state-specific disaster, enabling the use of State Disaster Response Fund for preparation and relief, not just emergency response after deaths occur. Its Urban Greening Policy mandates at least 15% green cover in urban areas. Its Green Schools initiative has reduced classroom temperatures by 3-4°C through cool roof coatings applied across government schools.

UNEP’s Cool Coalition has also been active across India’s two most critical cooling gaps: public infrastructure and affordable housing. In Delhi, in partnership with government bodies, it is installing a cool roof at the Kashmere Gate interstate bus terminal, covering nearly 150,000 square feet, reflecting at least 80% of solar heat.

On affordable housing, UNEP is working directly with PMAY to integrate passive cooling features into the 10 million homes the government targets for delivery by 2029. This meaningful action and uneven reach extends across India’s cities, where effective cooling solutions keep getting paved over by development priorities. The science is clear. Research finds that increasing tree canopy cover by 10-30% can lower city-wide temperatures by up to 1.3°C and reduce heat-related deaths by around 30%. Cool roofs have been shown to reduce indoor temperatures in informal dwellings by 1-1.5°C during peak summer days. Permeable surfaces, restored water bodies and shaded corridors collectively cool the neighbourhood, not just the room.

No Indian city has legally protected its urban tree cover or green commons as climate infrastructure in its master plan, though Ahmedabad, Telangana, Bhubaneswar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Kerala, and Delhi are moving in that direction. These moves remain, however, a patchwork. The national framework: ICAP, ECBC, Smart Cities Mission, exists on paper, but compliance is uneven, enforcement is voluntary in practice and long-term interventions like tree cover, cool roofs and thermally safe public spaces are still treated as optional upgrades rather than minimum standards.

What an Actual Right to Cool Would Require

The Right to Cool is not a single law. It is a cluster of enforceable entitlements that, taken together, would change the thermal reality of the majority of Indians who currently have no protection from heat, not in their homes, their workplaces, or their public spaces.

It means passive cooling standards mandated in all new construction, particularly under PMAY, not as aspiration, but as minimum. It means binding targets in Heat Action Plans for free drinking water and shaded rest within 200 metres of every registered vending zone. It means heat thresholds are reinstated in the OSH Code with earnings protection so that a mandated cooling break avoids imposing a lost day’s wage. It means heatwaves classified as a notified national disaster. Lastly, it means the ICAP approves a mandatory monitoring mechanism, annual reporting and binding timelines, so that India’s own national cooling plan becomes something the state is accountable to, not just credited for.

Inspired by Nature

World Environment Day 2026 asks the world to be inspired by nature for climate, to treat shade, water and thermally safe public space as basic urban infrastructure as clean water and street lighting already are. The policy framework exists. The gap is the institutional bridge between the existing pieces.

India’s Right to Cool will not arrive as a single law. It will accumulate, standard by standard, entitlement by entitlement. The Earth is sending its signal. What India builds in response for informal workers, its street vendors, its delivery riders, its children sitting in unventilated classrooms, is the signal it sends back.

A Few Good Reads

Tara Kartha argues that the Quad remains a lightweight enterprise because it continually evades hard defence integration, choosing soft, non-military cooperation over a serious counterweight to China’s rapid regional dominance.
Samiran Mishra reports that a powerful alliance between Al Qaeda-linked jihadists and Tuareg rebels has pushed Mali’s Russian-backed military junta to the brink of collapse, triggering a volatility that West Africa is entirely unprepared for.
Subimal Bhattacharjee argues that CBSE’s disastrous failure with its digital Online Screen Marking (OSM) evaluation system stems from a blind faith in technology over human judgment, calling for an urgent overhaul of the board’s opaque grading practices.
Govind Gupta argues that amid persistent global shocks, India must pivot from ad hoc, market-distorting subsidies to an institutionalised, digital cash-based “shock absorber” system to protect vulnerable households.
Divya Rai warns that India’s delayed transition to local energy self-reliance and critical mineral processing creates a ticking economic clock, with the immediate savings of stalling far outweighed by the staggering costs of future supply chain crises.

The Aakhya Weekly #198 | The Other Chokepoint: India's Subsea Cables in a West Asian Storm

Aakhya India — Fri, 29 May 2026 03:31:00 GMT

In Focus: Safeguarding India’s Digital Economy Through a War Zone

by Pankhuri Argal

At 05:45 UTC on a Saturday morning in September 2025, something snapped roughly 100 metres beneath the surface of the Red Sea, just off Jeddah. No explosion, no headline that interrupted the morning news in Mumbai. However, within minutes, traders watching oil markets, teams running payrolls, and cloud engineers in the technology hubs of India all noticed the same thing: the internet had gone sluggish.

Two of the world’s most important submarine cable systems, SMW4 and IMEWE, the latter literally named the India–Middle East–Western Europe cable, had been severed. Internet monitor NetBlocks recorded degraded connectivity across India, Pakistan and the UAE, and Microsoft was forced to reroute Azure traffic through longer paths. Cloud services recovered within a day; however, it was understood that repairing the physical cables would take weeks. Moreover, this would not be the first time such incidents occurred, and catastrophes were averted. In February 2024, the Rubymar, a cargo ship struck by a Houthi missile in the same waters, drifted with its anchor dragging and sliced through three major cables, disrupting close to a quarter of all internet traffic between Asia, Europe and the Middle East. A single wounded ship briefly degraded the digital arteries of three continents.

The uncomfortable truth these incidents expose: the same narrow stretches of West Asian water that carry India’s oil also carry its data, and the region’s conflict has quietly turned both into single points of failure.

A Dual Chokepoint: Barrels and Bandwidth

We are used to thinking of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb as energy corridors. Less appreciated is that these same chokepoints are where the world’s information is funnelled. Over 95–97% of international data traffic travels not by satellite but through fibre-optic cables on the ocean floor. The Red Sea alone carries an estimated 17% of global internet traffic, with roughly 80% of Asia-to-West data riding through that single passage.

The energy crisis and the connectivity crisis are no longer separate stories; they can now arrive from the same contested sea. And the risk is escalating: amid rising tensions with Iran, Meta and its partners recently paused construction of the ambitious 2 Africa Pearls cable in the Persian Gulf. A corridor long understood through the language of barrels is fast revealing itself as a corridor of bandwidth.

What’s at Stake for India

For India, the stakes are not abstract. MeitY’s Estimation and Measurement of India’s Digital Economy report found the digital economy already accounted for 11.74% of national income in 2022–23 — about ₹31.64 lakh crore (~USD 402 billion) and projected to reach nearly a fifth of GDP by 2030, growing at twice the pace of the wider economy. UPI rails, IT exports, data centres, fintech and cloud-dependent enterprise all rest on one unspoken assumption: that international connectivity is always on.

In India’s case, that assumption is geographically fragile, as its subsea connectivity lands at a handful of stations clustered across just five cities, Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Tuticorin and Trivandrum, and much of its westbound traffic threads through the very corridor now under strain. After the September cuts, operators reported no domestic outage, citing multiple alternate routes. But redundancy is not immunity: rerouting buys continuity at the cost of latency, and many “alternate” paths still pass through the same gateway. A buffer built for the occasional accidental anchor-drag is a very different thing from resilience built for sustained, deliberate disruption.

Where India’s Policy Stands

India has a regulatory scaffolding for subsea cables, but it was built to ease commerce, not withstand conflict. Under the Telecommunications Act, 2023, the DoT issues licences, and companies laying cables in Indian waters must hold an International Long Distance licence and run Cable Landing Stations (CLS) under TRAI’s rules.

The pivotal intervention came in June 2023, when TRAI released its recommendations on the Licensing Framework and Regulatory Mechanism for Submarine Cable Landing in India, introducing a two-tier Main CLS / CLS-PoP model. Crucially for resilience, TRAI also recommended recognising cable operations as critical and essential services, exempting repair equipment from customs duty and GST, and mandating Indian entity-owned vessels for repair to cut reliance on foreign ships. More recently, the Captive Telecommunication Services Rules (drafted September 2025, finalised early 2026) let hyperscalers and large enterprises land their own private cables.

The gap is now visible. Almost all of this machinery is oriented toward easing landing and ownership, far less toward addressing resilience, route diversity and repairing sovereignty when the threat is geopolitical. Several of TRAI’s most security-relevant ideas remain recommendations rather than mandates.

What the Government Should Do

If 2025 made the threat undeniable, the next window is the time to act. Five priorities stand out:

Operationalise “critical infrastructure” status- move TRAI’s recommendation into statute, with a nodal security agency, mandatory incident reporting, and fastest-tier clearance for repair.
Mandate route diversity- incentivise cable systems that bypass the Red Sea–Hormuz corridor, so a single conflict cannot throttle westbound traffic.
Build repair sovereignty- fast-track the Indian-flagged repair-vessel proposal, converting a multi-week vulnerability into a manageable one.
Diversify landing geography- expand beyond the five-city cluster so one disrupted node does not cascade nationally.
Institutionalise a Centre–industry resilience forum- a standing body for the DoT, security agencies and cable consortia to share intelligence, run drills, and maintain a public incident protocol.

The Inflexion Point

India cannot move the war, nor the geography. What it can decide is whether the fifth of its economy running on digital rails rests on a corridor it does not control. The new cables — IAX, IEX, 2Africa are still being commissioned; the captive-cable rules are freshly minted; the resilience playbook is still being written. The moment to embed security into that architecture is now, before the next anchor drags across the seabed.

For a nation aspiring to Viksit Bharat 2047, Energy security has long been an article of strategic faith. It is time bandwidth security earned the same status. The barrels and the bytes now travel the same troubled waters and India’s policy must learn to protect both.

The Aakhya Weekly #197 | When Memes Take the Stage

Aakhya India — Fri, 22 May 2026 03:30:32 GMT

In Focus: The Cockroach Effect – How Satire Shapes Youth Engagement

by Lovenish Kumar

Source: https://cockroachjantaparty.org/

Imagine waking up one morning and realising your political “career” started with a cockroach joke. That’s exactly what happened when Abhijeet Dipke posted, “What if all cockroaches came together?” The spark came from India’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant, who compared unemployed youth to cockroaches. While the comment was aimed at those misusing fraudulent degrees, millions of young Indians saw something bigger: a chance to turn an insult into a conversation, and maybe, just maybe, into a movement.

The response was lightning-fast. Within days, memes, posters, a website, and a manifesto appeared online. The Cockroach Janta Party called itself the “Voice of the Lazy & Unemployed,” and slogans like “Membership: Free, Lifelong & Revocable Only by You” gave it identity and charm. The movement primarily speaks to those with access to language, education, and digital platforms, offering them a stage to express frustration and engage politically. However, it inevitably leaves behind those lacking access to these tools. It sparked debates, caught media attention, and even drew official scrutiny when Dipke’s X account was suspended following reports of an investigation spearheaded by the authorities.

The question lingers: can it be called a movement? Or is it just a viral stunt? Could a joke about cockroaches actually open doors for serious conversations about youth, policy, and participation?

Youth Voice Their Frustrations

The popularity of the Cockroach Janta Party can be traced to economic and social pressures faced by India’s youth. According to the 2026 State of Working India Report by Azim Premji University, nearly 40 per cent of 15‑ to 25‑year-olds and 20 per cent of 25‑ to 29‑year-olds remain unemployed. Millions of graduates enter a labour market unable to absorb them, while rising fuel prices, inflation, and urban living costs make financial independence difficult. These factors contribute to frustration with traditional channels of participation.

Historically, localised youth movements in India have emerged in response to similar pressures. Examples include student protests over examination schedules and recruitment policies in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; campaigns addressing urban infrastructure and governance concerns. These movements often provided visible avenues for young people to express their concerns and challenge administrative decisions, demonstrating the persistent need for engagement mechanisms tailored to the realities of the youth. Both left- and right‑leaning political groups have monitored these trends, using alternative strategies to reach young citizens and communicate policy perspectives.

These movements show that Indian youth have often channelled their energy into structured spaces where community organising meets public policy demands. Political parties of all ideological stripes have taken notice, experimenting with digital outreach, targeted messaging, and engagement strategies aimed at younger demographics. This reflects a broader shift in how civic participation is understood, as something that can begin with local concerns and extend into wider visibility.

International parallels further illustrate how unconventional forms of engagement have been adopted elsewhere:

In the United States, the Yippies (Youth International Party) in the 1960s used theatrical and symbolic actions to question political norms, including nominating a pig, “Pigasus,” for president in 1968. The aim was not to win power but to force public reflection on the nature of electoral politics.
In the UK, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has been a registered party since the 1970s, introducing absurd policy ideas to draw attention to the gap between political promise and public expectation.
The Polish Beer Lovers Party in 1990 translated a light‑hearted platform into parliamentary success, winning sixteen seats and demonstrating how non‑traditional campaigns can garner genuine support.
Canada’s Rhinoceros Party offered impossible policies, like repealing gravity to paving mountains, as a way of critiquing conventional political promises and engaging voters who felt alienated from mainstream choices.

In each of these cases, unconventional strategies, whether theatrical, symbolic, or satirical, provided alternative channels for public engagement. They allowed citizens who felt distanced from formal politics to participate in discourse, question institutional assumptions, and express collective concerns in ways that traditional campaigning did not always permit

The Role of Satire in Policy and Politics

In India, satire provides an important way for citizens to engage with politics and policies. When traditional channels are slow or distant, satire gives young people a chance to raise concerns, attract attention, and spark conversations that might not happen otherwise.

Political debates sometimes show how attention can be diverted. Opposition parties occasionally use controversies to push their own narratives. For example, the Trans Rights Bill could have been discussed to improve public understanding, but the conversation was limited. In contrast, debates on the Delimitation Bill became complex and symbolic, leaving ordinary citizens unsure of the issues. Creative expression and commentary can simplify such topics and reveal where policy communication falls short.

Satire goes beyond entertainment. It highlights where policies fail to reach people and where public voices are missing from decision-making. Movements like the Cockroach Janta Party use exaggeration and irony to express frustration, raise questions, and create a space for participation that might otherwise be closed.

Turning Viral Attention into Constructive Influence

While being controversial, this incident has captured attention and sparked conversation across the country. But this energy should not be treated as just another online trend. Young people cannot let political parties use the movement to push their own agendas without thinking about the issues behind it. There is a real opportunity here to move beyond immediate frustrations like unemployment and look at deeper challenges. Education, gender equality, access to decision-making, and transparency in governance are all areas where youth can have an impact.

To make a difference, the focus should be on the right priorities. Engaging with structural and social challenges is more meaningful than reacting to short-term controversies. Participation can be strengthened by combining online discussion with local forums, petitions, or community initiatives that give policymakers direct input. Digital conversations work best when they are connected to real-world action, creating momentum that lasts beyond a viral moment. It is also important to think critically. Young people should be aware when movements are being used to serve political narratives. Staying focused on areas where change is possible allows energy to translate into concrete outcomes.

This incident shows the scale of attention and creativity that youth can bring to public life. If this energy is guided thoughtfully, it has the potential to shape policy discussions, open up space for meaningful participation, and turn a viral trend into a lasting influence on citizens’ engagement, creating alternate pathways for deliberations on governance.

A Few Good Reads

Harsh V. Pant, Nilanjan Ghosh, Sayantan Haldar, Shivam Shekawat, Kabir Taneja, and Sahil Deo explore how India’s urban youth perceive the nation’s evolving diplomatic, economic, and strategic partnerships amidst a shifting global order.
Surjit S Bhalla argues that despite the BJP’s historic electoral triumphs, the government is mismanaging and derailing India’s economic growth by shifting blame and ignoring a deepening crisis.
Shamika Ravi asserts that with global institutions embracing state-led industrial policy, India must move past the myth of being uniquely protectionist and craft a transparent, time-bound framework tailored to its markets and democratic realities.
C. Raja Mohan argues that instead of worrying over shifting US-China-Russia dynamics, India must focus on its own domestic and economic modernisation to navigate the changing world order.
Nanditha Krishna highlights the Netherlands’ formal return of the 11th-century Chola copper plates to India, illustrating how these ancient artefacts reflect the dynasty’s vast maritime reach, religious tolerance, and historic diplomatic ties with Southeast Asia.

The Aakhya Weekly #196 | Can India’s Infrastructure Sustain Its Hyperscaler Ambitions?

Aakhya India — Fri, 15 May 2026 03:31:13 GMT

In Focus: India’s Data Centre Ambitions Must Contend with Operational Realities.

by Kaushiki Kaushalendra Singh

“Data is the new oil.” ~Clive Humby

Every industry today is engaged in collecting, storing, and analysing vast volumes of information to drive decisions, optimise operations, and shape future strategies. But where does all this data actually reside? While “the cloud” is often described as an abstract digital space, it is grounded in physical infrastructure, vast facilities that depend on significant energy resources. Across the world, countries are racing to build multi-megawatt and gigawatt-scale Data Centres. The United States currently leads this race, hosting nearly 45% of the world’s data centre capacity.

India’s digital economy is also growing at an unprecedented scale, and its capacity is projected to reach nearly 6.5 GW by 2030, positioning the country as one of the fastest-growing data centre markets globally. These facilities, however, are highly dependent on power availability. Higher capacity enables greater computing and storage capability, but also creates enormous requirements for electricity, cooling systems, and land. This has led to serious regulatory and environmental concerns surrounding the rapidly emerging industry. This piece examines the Indian ecosystem, the policy incentives being offered by various states, and the operational challenges associated with setting up Data Centres.

India’s Data Centre Ecosystem: State Policies and Incentives For the Industry

In its Draft Data Centre Policy of 2020, India positioned itself as a global hub by proposing easier land allocation, single-window clearances, subsidised power, and fiscal incentives. The policy aimed to promote domestic data storage and cloud infrastructure, and sought to attract investments worth Rs 3 lakh crore over five years. It also recommended setting up specialised Data Centre Economic Zones (DCEZs) and encouraged states to establish dedicated parks. However, the draft policy is yet to be notified. The Indian Government has considered recognising them as an “Essential Service” under the Essential Services Maintenance Act, 1968 (ESMA), highlighting the criticality of digital infrastructure.

India’s data centre ecosystem has evolved from small enterprise hosting facilities to hyperscale infrastructure supporting cloud computing, AI workloads, streaming services, financial services, and digital public infrastructure. The launch of India’s first commercial concurrently maintainable Data Centres by Sify Technologies in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, in September 2000 marked an important milestone in the country’s digital infrastructure journey. Since then, the ecosystem has expanded rapidly, particularly in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Pune, and increasingly in Visakhapatnam. However, India does not have a unified national law; instead, the ecosystem combines central digital infrastructure with state-level initiatives.

Indian States that have either notified Data Centres Policy or regulate them through broader IT or Industrial Policies (As of May, 2026)

Currently, India is witnessing a shift from traditional colocation facilities to AI-oriented mega campuses capable of supporting extremely high power densities. In October 2025, Google announced a $15 billion investment in an Artificial Intelligence Data Centres project in Andhra Pradesh, while in December, Microsoft announced a $17.5 billion investment until 2030, to build AI-focused Data Centres in India. Additionally, Amazon has announced a $35 billion investment in India by 2030 to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities and increase exports. Various state governments have also introduced numerous incentives to attract investors and industry players with favourable terms.

Operational and Practical Concerns

A key challenge for India is that state governments are promising hyperscale investments without enhancing their readiness in power, water, and transmission infrastructure, or skilled workforce. Data Centres require continuous high-quality power, but several Indian states still struggle with industrial reliability, peak deficits, and distribution constraints. At least 15 Indian States have notified their policies to regulate the Data Centre ecosystem. The incentives offered by the various States appear to follow a similar framework and focus on four key aspects: Energy subsidies, fiscal, non-fiscal incentives and infrastructure. The table below lists out incentives offered by Data Centres in the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.

Note: The table provides an indicative overview of incentives offered by various State Governments and is not exhaustive; Source: Tamil Nadu Data Centre Policy 2021, Telangana Data Centre Policy 2016, Odisha Data Centre Policy 2022, & Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2021

While the incentives offered by various Indian states appear attractive, it is important to contextualise them against the infrastructural, operational, and resource constraints. Let us consider the two case studies below. The policies of both UP and Tamil Nadu reveal a widening disconnect between policy ambitions and the everyday operational realities.

Tamil Nadu

Under the Tamil Nadu Data Centre Policy, 2021, the state aspires to emerge as the “data centre capital”, strategically highlighting its proximity to submarine cable connections and coastal location. However, there are multiple operational challenges for the Government to consider to host hyperscalers. Chennai has been experiencing severe water crises, which raises questions about how the state would ensure a continuous supply of water required for cooling these facilities. Additionally, the rising temperatures have increased energy demand and operating costs for server farms. Peak demand during the summer goes up to 21,000 megawatts, while daily consumption often exceeds 450 million units. Artificial Intelligence-driven Data Centre facilities, which require more power and cooling than conventional data centres, will further burden the already high energy demand. Thus, without major grid expansion, robust integration of renewable energy sources, water recycling systems and bolstering climate resilient infrastructure, Tamil Nadu’s hyperscale ambitions may end up mired in operational constraints, missing the opportunity to emerge as a significant player in the industry.

Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh has positioned Noida and Greater Noida as India’s largest hyperscaler corridor under the Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2021. The State announced its ambitions to attract investments worth Rs. 20,000 crores to build high-capacity facilities for hyperscalers. The targets and aspirations of the State Government require reconciliation with the logistical constraints, such as power reliability concerns, lack of urban infrastructure, and regulatory challenges. The relevant departments of the Government of UP are struggling to secure and provide industrial land at the required pace. It has also been reported that while more than 4 lakh hectares had been notified for industrial and urban development across Noida, Greater Noida, and YEIDA regions, only about 40,000 hectares had actually been acquired, leaving large portions legally or administratively inaccessible. Additionally, externalities of resource constraints, such as energy & water scarcity, have already begun surfacing. Following the inauguration of the Yotta Data Centre Park in 2022, nearly 2,000 surrounding villages reportedly faced acute water scarcity, highlighting how hyperscales can intensify pressure on already strained water and power systems and why robust risk assessments are essential. The first step towards such assessments is understanding and accounting for the practical constraints that may ultimately determine the sustainability of hyperscale expansion.

Building on the Momentum

India’s aspirations to emerge as a global data centre capital must be grounded in a more sustainable and operationally resilient model. The IEA estimates that globally, ~20% of planned data centre projects may face delays because electricity grids are ill-equipped to absorb concentrated new demand. The energy consumption of data centres is estimated to have reached around 415 terawatt hours (TWh), or about 1.5% of the total global electricity consumption in 2024. In fact, the demand is projected to double to reach around 945 TWh by 2030. This is the case when only 92% of the world’s population now has basic access to electricity, leaving over 666 million people without access. Some reports also allude to the massive dependence on water and the high levels of consumption. For instance, some of these facilities require up to 18.92 lakh litres of water every day to support the expansive hardware units installed for their operations. While state policies have successfully attracted investor interest and accelerated infrastructure announcements, long-term viability will depend on whether hyperscalers’ expansion can be sustained at this scale.

Moving forward, greater emphasis will need to be placed on renewable energy integration, climate-resilient infrastructure, water-efficient cooling systems, transmission readiness, and integrated urban planning. The next phase of India’s data centre growth will ultimately be defined not by the scale of policy announcements, but by the country’s ability to build infrastructure ecosystems capable of sustaining them.

A Few Good Reads

TCA Raghavan examines the one-year aftermath of Operation Sindoor, analysing how India’s decision to place the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance has forced a geopolitical recalibration in Pakistan.
Dilip Cherian highlights the PMO’s push for a new generation of “technocrat-babus” with domain expertise in AI and semiconductors, while warning that political friction and a risk-averse culture continue to hinder deep-rooted governance reforms.
Saikiran Kannan argues that India’s Great Nicobar project is not merely an infrastructure play, but a long-term strategic bet to position India at the centre of Indo-Pacific trade and maritime power.
Shiv Visvanathan explores the rise of Vijay in TN politics, arguing that his “bearable lightness of being”, a style defined by cinematic playfulness, offers a futuristic, non-ideological alternative to the rigid dualism of the DMK and AIADMK.
Shishir Priyadarshi reflects on how power and governance are evolving in a fragmented, interdependent world, arguing that modern states can no longer rely on control alone but must instead shape systems through coordination, resilience, and strategic influence.

The Aakhya Weekly #195 | Influence Inc.: The Marketplace of Misinformation

Aakhya India — Fri, 08 May 2026 03:31:12 GMT

In Focus: The New Rules of the Creator Economy

by Mohini Tiwari

Remember in 2025, a Chinese creator’s viral video falsely claimed that luxury brands like Hermès and Louis Vuitton sourced bags from low-cost factories. Within days, outrage spread globally, counterfeit sales surged, and billions in brand reputation came under threat. The video went viral, and within 48 hours, thousands of comments flooded in from outraged consumers. The hashtag #ChineseManufacturer accumulated millions of views. At the same time, three of the world’s most powerful luxury houses, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel, found themselves at the centre of a global reputation crisis. Later confirmed that the claims were largely fabricated. The videos were part of a well-oiled machine promoting counterfeit goods under the guise of “exposing” the truth, a geopolitical trade-war gambit disguised as consumer advocacy.

One creator. One smartphone. Billions of dollars in brand equity are at risk.

The Industry that Rewrote the Rules of Trust

There was a time when trust in advertising was bought through expensive television slots and magazines’ double-page spreads. That era is over. Today, trust is built and destroyed by people with phones, ring lights, and follower counts. The influencer and creator economy is no longer a sideshow to mainstream media. It is the main stage. What began as a trend for hobbyist bloggers and YouTubers has evolved into a professionalised, multi-billion-dollar industry that moves stock prices, elects politicians, shapes diets, and dictates fashion. It has democratised the idea of who gets to speak and to how many people.

The scale of this transformation is unprecedented. The global influencer marketing industry grew from $1.4 billion in 2014 to nearly $32.5 billion in 2025 and is projected to cross $40 billion by 2026. Brands today earn an estimated $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer campaigns, making creators one of the most powerful tools in modern advertising. While the USA remains a dominant market, Asia is driving the next phase of expansion. China alone is expected to record over $23 billion in influencer advertising expenditure in 2025, while India, with more than 360 million Instagram users and one of the world’s youngest digital populations, is emerging as a major creator economy.

Opportunity Meets Ambiguity

India’s creator economy is rapidly evolving into a structured commercial ecosystem, but its growth has outpaced the development of accountability mechanisms. In an algorithm-driven digital environment, viral content is often consumed and circulated without scrutiny, while engagement is rewarded over accuracy, and outrage spreads faster than facts.

A major policy challenge lies in the absence of regulatory clarity for creators, who simultaneously function as advertisers, publishers, entertainers, and opinion-makers, devoid of a unified legal framework. This fragmented oversight has created uneven compliance standards, particularly between large professional creators and smaller influencers operating without awareness of advertising norms or legal liabilities. Further, platform algorithms incentivise sensational and emotionally charged content, increasing the spread of misinformation and misleading promotions. Influencers today shape consumer behaviour, financial decisions, and public discourse, often without adequate verification standards. This regulatory vacuum highlights the urgent need for a balanced governance framework that protects innovation while ensuring transparency, accountability, and public trust.

Global Crackdown: What Other Countries Are Doing

As the creator economy expands, governments across the world are moving from voluntary self-regulation to formal legal oversight.

China has adopted one of the most stringent approaches. Authorities have imposed tight controls on livestreaming, influencer income, and online content, requiring creators to comply with state-defined ethical and cultural standards. Financial disclosures, identity verification, and restrictions on “vulgar” or misleading content form part of a broader state-led digital governance model.
In contrast, Western jurisdictions have largely focused on transparency and accountability. The United States and the European Union mandate disclosure of paid promotions and sponsored content under advertising and consumer protection laws. Regulators increasingly impose penalties on creators and brands for deceptive endorsements, undisclosed advertisements, and misleading claims, particularly in sectors such as finance, health, and crypto-assets.
The United Kingdom has emerged as a leading case study in regulating “finfluencers.” In 2025, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), along with regulators from Australia, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, and the UAE, launched a coordinated crackdown on influencers illegally promoting financial products online.
Similarly, countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have introduced licensing frameworks requiring influencers engaged in commercial promotion to obtain permits and comply with advertising regulations.

The global trend is therefore clear: governments are no longer treating the creator economy as an unregulated extension of free expression. Instead, creators are increasingly being integrated into existing frameworks of consumer protection, advertising regulation, financial compliance, and digital governance. The central policy question is no longer whether the creator economy should be regulated, but how to regulate it without undermining innovation and freedom of expression.

India’s Regulatory Crossroads

India’s regulatory approach toward the creator economy is gradually evolving from voluntary self-regulation to a more structured digital governance framework. The government has signalled a greater focus on intermediary accountability, misinformation control, AI-generated content disclosures, SGI labelling mandates, and faster grievance redressal mechanisms. Simultaneously, industry-led bodies such as the Indian Influencer Governing Council (IIGC) and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) are attempting to introduce ethical standards and self-regulatory practices for influencer marketing. However, the current ecosystem remains fragmented, with overlapping jurisdiction between advertising standards, consumer protection laws, IT regulations, and platform policies. Therefore, India requires a balanced and future-oriented “Creator Economy Governance Framework” that combines innovation with accountability.

First, the law must clearly define categories of creators based on scale, revenue, and content type. Such classification would allow differentiated regulation, ensuring that compliance obligations remain proportionate to influence and risk. For example, creators operating in high-impact sectors such as finance, healthcare, education, or political communication should be subject to stricter disclosure, verification, and liability standards compared to lifestyle or entertainment creators.
Second, accountability mechanisms need to be institutionalised across the creator economy value chain. This includes mandatory disclosure norms, standardised brand contracts, grievance-redressal frameworks, and clear liability provisions for harmful or misleading content.
Third, through incentive-based governance. Instead of relying on punitive measures, compliant creators could be rewarded through verified credibility badges, tax incentives for transparent disclosures, or preferential visibility in platform partnerships. Industry certification programmes—similar to professional accreditation systems could create a trust-based digital ecosystem where credibility becomes commercially valuable.
Another key area for reform is platform accountability. Platforms must submit annual Algorithmic Risk Assessment Reports to disclose details on how recommendation systems amplify content in sensitive categories. The EU’s DSA Article 40 researcher data access provision, now in force since October 2025, provides the template. India’s February 2026 IT Rules already mandate SGI metadata embedding; extending that logic to algorithmic transparency is incremental, not radical.

Balancing Freedom and Responsibility

The central policy challenge is to strike a balance between enabling innovation and safeguarding public interest. Overregulation risks stifling creativity and limiting opportunities for new entrants, while underregulation can erode trust and cause systemic harm. The question is no longer whether the ecosystem should be regulated, but how regulation can evolve without undermining creativity and free expression. The objective is to build responsible digital governance.

A future-ready framework must combine transparency and accountability, with digital literacy and co-regulation. Equally important is recognising creators as part of India’s formal digital economy through clarity in taxation, skilling, and institutional support.

A Few Good Reads

Tara Kartha writes that while Operation Sindoor demonstrated calibrated escalation and strategic restraint under a nuclear overhang, any future India–Pakistan confrontation will unfold in a far more volatile environment.
Pramit Bhattacharya argues that India’s fragmented labour regime, marked by unequal protections, weak enforcement, and excessive regulatory complexity, has constrained manufacturing growth and job creation.
Debadityo Sinha argues that the Supreme Court’s endorsement of a narrow, elevation-based definition of the Aravalli Range risks weakening long-standing ecological protections.
Katja Hoyer contends that attempts to ban the AfD risk repeating the mistakes of the Weimar Republic era.
Noah Smith examines the AI industry’s emerging shift from portraying artificial intelligence as a job-destroying force to positioning it as a human-augmenting technology.

The Aakhya Weekly #194 | Delhi’s EV Push Enters the Next Phase

Aakhya India — Fri, 01 May 2026 03:31:07 GMT

In Focus: Delhi’s EV Transition Now Faces Its Real Test

by Yashvika Malhan

It is no longer accurate to describe air pollution in Delhi as a seasonal crisis that spikes briefly and fades with changing weather patterns. It has become a persistent, structural problem that shapes everyday life in the capital and increasingly dictates the direction of public policy. Across multiple editions of Aakhya Weekly, we have returned to this issue in different contexts. Yet, the underlying concern remains unchanged, with vehicular emissions consistently sitting at the centre of both public discourse and regulatory focus. The data reinforces this centrality with the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), in its January 2026 report to the Supreme Court, identifying vehicular emissions as the single largest contributor to winter air pollution in Delhi NCR, accounting for 23%

This prioritisation is not new, and can be traced back to earlier interventions such as the odd-even scheme, which marked a visible attempt to curb transport-related pollution and set the tone for future policy action. Over time, this focus has evolved into a more sustained, forward-looking push toward electric mobility, with the Delhi government positioning electric vehicles as a key lever to address air quality challenges and reshape the city’s transport ecosystem.

After months of extensions, prolonged deliberations, and scattered updates indicating that a revised framework was in the works, a new draft of the Delhi EV Policy has finally been placed in the public domain. At first glance, it may seem like just another iteration in an ongoing policy cycle, but such a view risks underestimating its significance in the current context. This draft carries far more weight than a routine update, as it represents both a continuation of intent and an opportunity to strengthen execution where earlier efforts have fallen short.

From Incentives to Enforcement

The draft policy is, in essence, a more authoritative and aggressive iteration of its predecessor. One of the key shifts it places is “only electric three-wheelers (L5) shall be permitted” from January 2027 and “only electric two-wheelers shall be permitted” from April 2028, along with restrictions that “no conventional ICE vehicles… shall be inducted” in identified fleet categories from 2026. Importantly, these mandates are designed around new registrations rather than existing vehicles. This distinction matters. Instead of forcing abrupt changes through bans or compulsory conversions, the policy uses the point of entry into the vehicle fleet as the primary lever. Over time, this ensures a gradual but irreversible shift in the composition of vehicles on the road, without creating immediate disruption.

Alongside regulatory mandates, the policy reworks the structure of financial incentives. It introduces a tapering model where purchase incentives decline over time. For electric two-wheelers, incentives reduce from ₹10,000 per kWh in the first year to ₹3,300 per kWh by the third year, with similar reductions across other segments. At the same time, scrappage incentives are strengthened, with support of up to ₹1 lakh for eligible electric car purchases. This dual approach signals a shift away from long-term subsidy dependence. Instead, it encourages early adoption while gradually pushing the market toward self-sufficiency. The emphasis is no longer on making EVs perpetually cheaper through incentives, but on accelerating the point at which they become viable without state support. This is a strong signal, given that incentives through schemes such as FAME I and FAME II have already been in place for nearly a decade.

The policy also explicitly acknowledges that two-wheelers account for the majority of the vehicle base and that high-usage categories such as three-wheelers and goods carriers contribute disproportionately due to their daily mileage. This informs both the sequencing of mandates and the allocation of incentives. Instead of treating all vehicle categories equally, the policy prioritises those where electrification can deliver the most immediate and measurable benefits.

Fixing the Infrastructure and Ecosystem Gap

Delhi already has a relatively extensive EV charging network compared to most other states, with around 1,957 charging stations, second only to states like Karnataka and Maharashtra. However, the expansion of infrastructure has not always translated into reliability or a consistent user experience, with multiple reports indicating that several stations are either poorly maintained or non-functional.

The draft policy attempts to address this gap by introducing a more coordinated approach, with Delhi Transco Limited (DTL) designated as the “nodal agency for planning, coordination, and implementation” of charging and battery swapping infrastructure. This includes responsibility for identifying locations, managing grid requirements, and streamlining approvals through a single-window system. The policy also requires OEMs to establish charging facilities at dealership locations, effectively leveraging existing networks to expand access. The shift is from fragmented expansion to planned deployment. Whether this translates into better uptime and usability will depend on how effectively DTL implements and maintains these systems.

The 2020 policy only acknowledged the need for battery recycling and reuse, encouraging ecosystem development but without mandating compliance or defining responsibilities. The 2026 draft, in contrast, clearly puts in place enforceable mechanisms. It mandates compliance with the Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022, which means OEMs and other entities are now legally responsible under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for collecting and processing used batteries. It also introduces specific systems such as battery collection centres across Delhi, standard operating procedures for safe handling and transport, mandatory reporting to authorities, and a traceability system using unique battery identifiers to track batteries through their lifecycle. This marks a clear shift from broad intent to defined responsibilities, infrastructure, and monitoring.

Execution, Awareness, and What Comes Next

In effect, while the draft is well-designed and ambitious in its scope, its success will ultimately depend on how effectively it is implemented on the ground, particularly in light of Delhi’s own experience with similar regulatory frameworks. The Delhi Motor Vehicle Aggregator and Delivery Service Provider Scheme (2023), which introduced fleet electrification mandates, offers a useful reference point, as it has been in operation for a few years but has encountered practical challenges such as compliance portals that do not function consistently, reporting requirements that remain complex for operators, and ambiguity around enforcement, including whether vehicles registered outside Delhi should be counted toward compliance. These issues are not merely administrative, as they directly influence how seriously mandates are adhered to, and highlight that institutional capacity, clarity in rules, and consistent oversight will be critical in determining whether the EV Policy 2026 delivers on its intended outcomes.

At the same time, while the policy makes a strong effort to address charging infrastructure by placing DTL at the centre of planning, coordination, and implementation, questions around grid readiness remain insufficiently addressed, particularly in a city where electricity demand already peaks sharply during summer cooling and winter heating periods. As EV adoption increases, the impact of simultaneous charging loads could become significant, and without clear projections, phased upgrades, and mechanisms for load balancing, there is a risk that infrastructure expansion may outpace system capacity, leading to reliability concerns and affecting user confidence. The policy sets up the institutional framework for planning, but the operational clarity required to ensure resilience under peak demand conditions will be equally important.

In addition to infrastructure and governance challenges, there is also a behavioural dimension that the policy alone cannot fully resolve, as private users continue to remain hesitant due to concerns around charging reliability, battery performance, resale value, and upfront costs, even in the presence of incentives. While regulatory mandates are likely to drive adoption in high-usage segments such as fleets and commercial vehicles, broader market acceptance will require sustained efforts to build confidence, where collaboration with OEMs becomes critical not just for deploying charging infrastructure but also for strengthening service networks, improving financing access, offering reliable warranties, and ensuring consistent after-sales support. Alongside this, there is a clear need for more structured awareness efforts that go beyond policy announcements, including targeted engagement with consumers, drivers, and small operators to explain the economics of EVs, address concerns around usage and maintenance, and make the transition more tangible.

Ultimately, while the policy sets a clear direction, its effectiveness will depend on how well these gaps are addressed in practice and how actively stakeholders engage with it at this stage. As consumers and participants in this transition, the role goes beyond passive adoption and includes engaging with the policy itself, especially since the draft, released on 11 April 2026, is open for public consultation until 10 May 2026. This window provides an opportunity to flag concerns, offer practical inputs, and help shape the kind of Delhi we will live in, while contributing to efforts to curb the city’s persistent air pollution.

A Few Good Reads

Mannat Jaspal explains how the UAE’s exit from OPEC signals a structural shift in global energy governance, raising questions about Saudi Arabia’s ability to stabilise oil markets alone.
Lloyd Mathias and Gaurav Bhagowati highlight the growing gap between India’s rapid AI ecosystem growth and its slower institutional readiness, cautioning that unchecked expansion could erode trust and create systemic risks.
C. Raja Mohan examines how AI is reshaping diplomacy and national security decision-making.
Andrew Finkel analyses how regional conflict may test Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s long-standing political model, arguing that persistent economic stress and democratic backsliding pose risks to regime stability.
Noah Smith reflects on the limits of understanding AI consciousness, arguing that the “problem of other minds” makes it inherently difficult to determine whether AI systems possess subjective experience.

The Aakhya Weekly #193 | A Constitutional Paradox: When Process Delays Women’s Reservation

Aakhya India — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 03:30:58 GMT

In Focus: Women’s Reservation and the Delimitation Dilemma

by Animesh Chandra

The special parliamentary session held from April 16 to 18, 2026, could have been a watershed moment in the history of the Indian Parliament. The Women’s Reservation Bill, which heavily weighs on the political empowerment of women, once again failed to reach the required majority. It is unfortunate that the constitutional procedural pathway for census and delimitation resulted in political fallout and continues to shadow a historic overdue reform that promises gender representation.

The government tabled the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, and the Delimitation Bill, 2026, in the parliament with a special session. Collectively, these Bills were slated to increase the size of the Lok Sabha, enabling delimitation based on the 2011 census, and pave the way for women’s reservation. The Union Territories (UTs) Laws Bill gives effect to similar provisions for Puducherry, Delhi, and Jammu & Kashmir. Instead of ushering in institutional reform, the debate on the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (The Women’s Reservation Bill/WRB) led to a political gridlock and the houses were adjourned sine die without any conclusion.

Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam

The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, commonly known as the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB), and covered in Aakhya Weekly #65, seeks to reserve one-third (33%) of seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women. The Bill rests on three core provisions. First, it mandates a 33% reservation for women across all seats, including a sub-quota within existing Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) reservations, ensuring that one-third of SC/ST seats are also allocated to women from these communities; this framework extends to the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Second, the reservation will come into effect only after the next Census is conducted and a delimitation exercise is carried out based on its findings. Third, the reserved seats are to be rotated after each delimitation cycle. Although the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 was passed by both Houses of Parliament in September 2023, its rollout has remained politically contentious, particularly due to the conditionality tied to Census and delimitation, as well as debates around representation and the absence of additional sub-quotas.

The Union Ministry of Law and Justice has notified April 16, 2026, as the date on which the provisions of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023) came into force. This marks the formal operationalisation of the Act in legal terms. However, this should not be conflated with the immediate implementation of women’s reservation in legislatures. The Act itself makes implementation conditional on the completion of a fresh Census followed by a delimitation exercise, and this distinction is critical.

Interpreting the Provisions

While the notification may be interpreted as triggering the Act’s 15-year duration clause, there remains ambiguity over whether this period should begin from the date of notification or from the point at which the reservation is actually implemented. The original constitutional framework specifies the duration of reservation but does not clearly resolve this question, leaving room for legal and policy interpretation. Further, the Act explicitly states that the 33% reservation will come into effect only after the publication of the next Census and the completion of delimitation based on it. Although earlier discussions tentatively pointed to a post-2027 timeline, the absence of a confirmed Census schedule makes the rollout uncertain.

Understanding this dependency makes it essential to examine delimitation itself. It involves the long process of redrawing electoral constituency boundaries based on population changes to ensure equitable representation. Articles 82 and 170 of the Constitution mandate such exercises after every Census. The last Delimitation Commission, constituted in 2002 based on the 2001 Census, implemented its recommendations in 2008, readjusting constituency boundaries without altering the total number of seats. In effect, while the law is now in force, its core promise, political reservation for women, remains contingent on future institutional processes, making delimitation the key trigger for its eventual implementation. In this context, the Women’s Reservation framework is directly tied to the next delimitation cycle, making delimitation not just a technical exercise, but a critical trigger for operationalising political reservation for women.

Why did the Government link it with WRB?

Under the 2023 arrangement, the government would have to wait for the 2027 Census and subsequent delimitation, which could potentially delay the implementation of women’s reservation until as late as 2034. Therefore, the government sought to bring the implementation forward. With the amendments, the reservation policy could have been implemented as early as the 2029 general elections.

Undoubtedly, the government’s attempt to link the two can be justified within a strong constitutional framework. First, technical feasibility requires that reservations be applied to properly demarcated constituencies. Second, legal robustness implies that implementing the one-third rule without delimitation would violate constitutional provisions. Third, it adheres to the norm of a rotational mechanism, ensuring that the benefits of reservation are distributed across constituencies over time. Therefore, this approach strengthens both the structure and uniformity of the system.

Where is the Conflict?

Even though the government intended to implement the reservation in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections based on the 2011 Census, this would rely on data that is 18 years old. Waiting for the next Census, along with delimitation in either case, would only delay the implementation further, effectively prolonging women’s wait for representation. By linking women’s reservation to delimitation, the Act ties a social justice reform to a politically contentious process; even if not explicit, this undercurrent remains strong.
Expansion of seats and Delimitation: The expansion of Lok Sabha seats to roughly 850, in order to accommodate 33 per cent reservation for women, could significantly affect southern states in terms of representation.
The 42nd Constitutional Amendment froze the total number of seats allocated to each state in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies based on the 1971 Census, initially until the first Census after 2000. The 84th Constitutional Amendment (2001) extended this freeze until the first Census after 2026. This was intended as an incentive for states to pursue population stabilisation.
While increasing the number of seats in Parliament is necessary to ensure representation remains proportional to population, delimitation, though a technical exercise, is also politically sensitive. This cannot be overlooked, particularly in the context of Assembly elections underway in states such as Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal.
Federal imbalance creating North vs South Divide: Another major point of contention relates to seat allocation in the Lok Sabha. Projected changes have raised concerns about a potential dilution of political voice in certain regions. This also raises questions about whether states that have performed better on population control and broader development indicators may be relatively disadvantaged under a revised seat distribution framework.
Undermining the power of Rajya Sabha: The proposal for a proportional increase of about 50 per cent in Lok Sabha seats remains silent on corresponding changes in the Rajya Sabha. This raises concerns that the government of the day could, in effect, command numbers that risk destabilising the federal balance, which is a core pillar of India’s constitutional framework and part of its basic structure.
Image 1: Possible projection of seat sharing after Delimitation
Source: Hindustan Times

Image 2: Projected seat sharing state-wise

At a time when the world has witnessed the achievements of Nari Shakti across sectors, the procedural requirements of the Census and delimitation appear to impede the long-overdue implementation of women’s reservation in the corridors of power. India already has a working case study in the form of women’s representation in local governance, and a similar model could help make the one-third reservation a reality at higher levels.

While there are clear differences in terms of procedural requirements, particularly the role of delimitation and the need for institutional deliberation, it is evident that there is a broad national consensus on enhancing women’s representation. Bridging political differences and creating a clear implementation pathway will be key to operationalising the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam in both letter and spirit.

A Few Good Reads

Syed Akbaruddin underscores that calls to revive the Indus Waters Treaty overlook a core reality- without restoring political trust undermined by terrorism, procedural cooperation risks becoming an artificial substitute for a broken compact.
India’s World argues that the Section 301 probe marks a critical moment for India, testing its trade resilience, manufacturing ambitions, and negotiating leverage with the US, even as it pushes to position itself as a credible alternative in global supply chains.
Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan argues that the debate on women’s reservation is less about intent and more about political trade-offs, where decisions on delimitation and seat allocation risk overshadowing both national unity and meaningful representation.
C. Raja Mohan notes, despite deep mistrust and structural challenges, the US–Iran talks signal a shift from incrementalism to a high-stakes “grand bargain” that could reshape regional stability if both sides manage mutual concessions.
Syed Munir Khasru suggests that West Bengal’s elections matter to Bangladesh not for outcomes alone but for how state-level politics shape cross-border issues, migration narratives, and the broader tone of India–Bangladesh relations.

The Aakhya Weekly #192 | Inside RBI’s Plan to Rein in Rising UPI Fraud

Aakhya India — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 03:30:53 GMT

In Focus: Convenience vs Security in UPI

by Shaurya Singh Tyagi

How often does the average person use UPI apps in a single day? The answer varies widely. For some, it may involve just one major transaction, such as paying rent or settling a bill. For others, it is woven into nearly every routine activity, enabling a steady stream of small payments: buying groceries, paying for transport, splitting meals, or ordering food. This wide variation reflects how deeply digital payments have embedded themselves into everyday life in India. The scale of this transformation is remarkable. In 2025, UPI transactions reached approximately 228.4 billion, and the number continues to rise rapidly. What began as a convenient payment option has evolved into the backbone of India’s retail payment ecosystem. From metropolitan cities to small towns and rural markets, UPI has improved accessibility and made financial transactions faster, simpler, and more inclusive.

However, this rapid expansion has also exposed underlying vulnerabilities. Nearly a decade after digital payments became mainstream, concerns around security are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has flagged several recurring issues, particularly in the domain of cybersecurity. The data highlights the scale of the problem. In 2025 alone, close to 28 lakh cases of cyber fraud were reported through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. Even more concerning is the cumulative impact: between 2021 and 2025, Indians collectively lost nearly ₹22,900 crore to cyber fraud. These figures reveal a stark reality that while digital payments have brought unprecedented convenience, they have also created new avenues for exploitation.

A closer look at UPI-specific figures further reinforces this concern. In FY24, around 1.34 million cases of UPI-related fraud were reported, leading to losses of approximately ₹1,087 crore. These are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern, suggesting systemic gaps that need to be addressed. As adoption grows, so too does the incentive for fraudsters, making stronger safeguards increasingly necessary.

Understanding the Nature of UPI Fraud and Vulnerable Groups

UPI-related fraud is not limited to a single demographic; it cuts across age groups, income levels, and regions. However, certain groups appear to be more vulnerable. Digitally inexperienced individuals, lower-income households, and rural users are often targeted due to limited awareness or access to reliable information. At the same time, younger users aged 18–25 and middle-aged individuals between 41–60 have also emerged as frequent targets, highlighting that familiarity with technology does not always translate into caution.

The methods used by scammers are varied and constantly evolving. One common tactic is the fake “collect request” scam, where users are tricked into approving a payment request under the impression that they are receiving money. In reality, they end up transferring funds to the fraudster. Similarly, fake QR code scams involve replacing legitimate QR codes with fraudulent ones, redirecting payments without the user realizing it. Phishing scams continue to be a major concern. These often appear as fake SMS messages, WhatsApp texts, emails, or links that prompt users to share sensitive information such as UPI credentials or OTPs. Once this information is compromised, fraudsters can quickly gain access to accounts. Fake customer care scams add another layer of deception, with perpetrators posing as bank or app representatives and convincing users to disclose confidential details. More sophisticated techniques, such as SIM swap fraud, further complicate the issue. In such cases, scammers take control of a user’s mobile number by transferring it to another SIM card, allowing them to intercept OTPs and bypass authentication systems.

What makes these scams particularly effective is their reliance on psychological manipulation. Fraudsters frequently create a sense of urgency, claiming that an account will be blocked or a payment will fail to push users into making quick decisions without verification. They may also impersonate authority figures or exploit emotional triggers to gain trust. This combination of technical and psychological tactics makes UPI fraud both pervasive and difficult to combat. Given the diversity and sophistication of these methods, addressing the issue requires more than just technical fixes. It calls for a combination of user awareness, institutional safeguards, and proactive regulatory measures.

A Layered Approach to UPI Security

In response to the growing risks, the RBI has proposed a set of safeguards aimed at strengthening the security of digital payments. One of the most notable measures is the introduction of a time lag for transactions exceeding ₹10,000. Under this system, such payments would not be processed instantly. Instead, the bank would provisionally debit the amount, giving users a window of time to cancel the transaction if they suspect fraud. This measure is intended to counter urgency-based scams, where victims are pressured into making immediate payments. By introducing a delay, users are given an opportunity to reconsider and verify the legitimacy of the transaction.

Another proposal involves an additional authentication layer that includes a third trusted person. This is designed to protect individuals who may be more susceptible to manipulation, providing an extra checkpoint before completing certain transactions. Alongside this, the RBI has suggested introducing a digital payment control mechanism, including an on/off “kill switch” and customizable transaction limits at the account level. These features would allow users to quickly disable payments if their device is compromised and to better manage their financial exposure. The RBI has also focused on tackling mule accounts which are bank accounts used by fraudsters to move and launder stolen funds. To address this, it has proposed capping incoming credits into certain accounts unless a legitimate business relationship is verified. This would help identify suspicious activity early and reduce the ability of scammers to layer transactions and obscure money trails.

Together, these measures aim to address some of the most common forms of fraud. The time lag targets urgency-driven scams, additional authentication disrupts impersonation tactics, and the kill switch empowers users with greater control. Meanwhile, stricter monitoring of account activity seeks to weaken the infrastructure that supports large-scale fraud.

Balancing Protection and Convenience: The Road Ahead

However, these proposals have also raised concerns about their practical effectiveness. One of the primary criticisms is the potential impact of the time lag on user experience. UPI’s success has largely been built on its speed and convenience, and introducing delays even for high-value transactions could undermine this advantage. For many users, especially in fast-paced environments, instant payments are not just a convenience but a necessity. There is also concern that such friction could push users back toward cash transactions, particularly for larger payments. Similarly, the requirement for third-party authentication may be seen as intrusive, especially by older individuals who value their independence in managing finances.

Another major criticism is that the framework appears too generalized. Digital fraud is highly nuanced, with different scams requiring different countermeasures. A uniform approach may not be flexible enough to address the full range of threats effectively. Additionally, there are concerns that existing mechanisms to detect and prevent mule accounts are already insufficient, raising questions about how effectively new measures would be implemented.

Despite these challenges, the need for stronger safeguards is clear. As digital payments continue to expand, a larger share of everyday transactions will move online. Without adequate protections in place, the scale of potential fraud could increase significantly. Ultimately, the RBI’s proposals should be viewed as a starting point rather than a final solution. They create an opportunity for dialogue between regulators, banks, and users to refine and improve the framework. The goal is not just to introduce safeguards but to ensure they are both effective and user-friendly.

The central challenge lies in balancing security with convenience. Too much friction could discourage adoption, while too little could leave users vulnerable. Striking this balance will be critical to sustaining trust in India’s digital payment ecosystem. If done right, these measures could help ensure that as digital transactions continue to grow, they do so within a framework that prioritizes both innovation and safety.

A Few Good Reads

Naushad Forbes argues that in a world too dependent on other countries, India should move beyond self-reliance and pursue interdependence by building domestic strength and ensuring others are as dependent on it.
Shyam Saran writes that a post-Iran war West Asia order can open strategic space for India as a US-led security architecture in the region, including Israel as a key pillar, has diminishing prospects.
Rajiv Memani frames the Jan Vishwas reforms as a move towards a trust-based regulatory framework by decriminalising actions that should never have been punishable, while calling for a comprehensive audit and deeper clean-up of remaining laws.
Sreelakshmi Hariharan and Mukund Govind Rajan emphasise that MSMEs sit at the centre of the country’s economic development but receive only a small fraction of green finance flows, making new financing structures critical.
Dani Rodrik notes that for AI to work for us, it must not think for us, warning of the displacement of human thought and the erosion of the knowledge base it depends on.

The Aakhya Weekly

Taking a Little Break

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