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This is a fireside chat hosted by Rajeev Srinivasan of the IIT Madras Alumni Association, featuring Dr. Suraj Rengarajan, MD and Principal Technologist, Applied Materials India. The discussion centers on the current renaissance of India’s semiconductor industry, highlighting how favorable government policies and shifting global geopolitics have created a unique window for domestic manufacturing. They discuss how supportive government policies, shifts in global geopolitics, and a massive domestic consumer market are creating a unique opportunity for India to establish a manufacturing ecosystem. The dialogue emphasizes the necessity of developing specialized talent and hands-on training to move beyond semiconductor design into actual fabrication. Dr. Rengarajan highlights the potential of AI-driven manufacturing and predictive analytics to improve production efficiency and material discovery. He also explains the critical need to build a supporting ecosystem of suppliers, specialized power, and ultrapure water around newly announced fabrication plants. He emphasizes that while India possesses significant design talent, the country must now focus on hands-on technical training and leveraging AI for manufacturing efficiency. The conversation also addresses the challenges of competing with established global players and the importance of niche applications in the domestic market. Ultimately, the source portrays a hopeful yet realistic outlook on India’s journey toward becoming a global electronics manufacturing hub over the next decade. Here’s a brief profile of Dr. Suraj Rengarajan: Dr. Suraj Rengarajan is the Managing Director and Principal Technologist at Applied Materials India, Bangalore. In this role he drives strategic engagement between Applied Materials India and external technology ecosystems, including universities, research institutions, the start-up eco-system and industry forums. He serves as a key spokesperson for Applied Materials in technology-related events and manage programs that foster innovation, collaboration, and talent development. Suraj started his career at Applied Materials, Santa Clara in 1997, where he held different roles ranging from process engineering, technology, program management, and product marketing for thin film deposition and metallization for interconnects silicides and novel memories. He moved to India in 2007 to head the SunFab group for Applied Materials in India. Later he headed the engineering group for dielectric deposition. As the India CTO, he worked on materials engineering driven inflections to develop and commercialize new technologies. As Semiconductor Products Group India head he drove SPG strategic objectives in India, planning and growing a customer focused organization, building local leadership talent, enabling collaboration across India & Asia region, and strengthening university and ecosystem partnerships. Suraj holds a B. Tech from IIT Madras in Metallurgical Engineering and earned his M.S and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Materials Science. Suraj holds over 15 US patents and has more than 20 publications. The following are courtesy Google notebook LM. Audio podcast (a good summary of the conversation with some AI masala): This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-drones-are-the-new-tanks-time-for-india-to-catch-up-13998019.html The most important lesson (of many) from Gulf War 3 may have been foreshadowed by the Ukraine War and other conflicts: that a combination of a step-change in warfare (military strategy) and disruptive innovation (business strategy) could rewrite the rules. If so, we may need to rethink the value of much expensive hardware. Moreover, nations such as India may need to seriously revamp their arms procurement: to small, cheap, local maybe? The most disturbing aspect of this scenario is that it reduces the human factor, and human control, over warfare. It leads to the specter of robot warfare, of Skynet, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where autonomous intelligences may take rational decisions that have grave consequences for humans, inflicting collateral damage on innocent bystanders in ways that nobody quite understands. We need a real-life version of Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”. But then humans too inflict unthinking collateral damage.. Step-change in warfare, and disruptive innovation There have been numerous instances where a settled and standardized war tactic was suddenly overturned by a new invention, rendering old military assets impotent. One or two examples will suffice: one was the eclipse of heavy cavalry after the invention of massed archers using longbow volleys to mow them down with thousands of synchronized arrows raining down, also inducing panic in their horses in mid-charge. Another example is how battle tanks overwhelmed the previous model of trench warfare. (Ironically, in turn, tanks are now being rendered sitting ducks by drones.) In both cases, long-held assumptions had to be rewritten practically overnight, and entirely new mechanisms had to be put in place. It is a good question (on which reasonable people may differ) as to whether the arrival of drone-and-missile-based warfare is rendering air power, including fighters, bombers and aircraft carriers, essentially obsolescent. Clayton Christensen articulated the theory of disruptive innovation in business, where an entrenched incumbent can be overthrown in short order by an insurgent attacking them from an unexpected direction, often based on lower-cost options. One example is that of Kodak and the film-camera business. Cheap and convenient digital photography dislocated Kodak et al practically overnight. I personally experienced this disruption in the 1990s when I had a key role in operating system strategy for Sun Microsystems, the runaway leader in engineering workstations and servers, which used the Unix operating system. Despite our best efforts, Microsoft+Intel coming in from the low end (as Windows systems became more capable) rapidly captured the key resource, which is third-party software vendors. This caused end users to desert in droves. There were other reasons, too: internecine warfare among firms using Unix, such as IBM, HP, Sun, AT&T, Toshiba, et al. While they bickered, Windows systems became more powerful. Lesson: the ecosystem has to be managed carefully, including supply chains. Putting these three together (step-change, disruptive innovation, and the ground realities of the Gulf War 3) one can speculate that future military doctrine will be vastly different. Here is Iran’s military doctrine, for reference, from the substack NotesonGeopolitics (Disclaimer: I am neither endorsing it or criticizing it, just offering it as an example). The US is adjusting to this reality. There is a book titled “Project Maven”, based on 200+ interviews chronicling the US military’s shift to AI-driven warfare, starting with a 2017 Pentagon project to automate drone footage analysis amid overwhelming data volumes. Project Maven evolved from error-prone early tools (such as misidentifying school buses as threats) to supporting autonomous systems like Goalkeeper drones and Whiplash naval units, now used in conflicts from Ukraine to the Caribbean by 25,000 personnel across 32 companies. Speaking of disruptive innovation, it is ironic to see the US reverse-engineering Iranian Shahed drones, and the Russians doing the same to Ukrainian drones: incumbents learning from insurgents. This is only the beginning, of course. There is a nightmare scenario: murmurating, autonomous drone swarms with a hive mind. A flock of starlings flying in perfect synchrony is a thing of beauty: they do not collide with each other, the entire swarm changes direction instantaneously, and there is emergent intelligence in the swarm, much greater than the intelligence of the individual bird. The same is true of beehives and ant colonies, too. A company called ShieldAI in fact has a product named Hivemind that does precisely this. Imagine a murmurating drone swarm of 1,000 or even 10,000: and since they cost so little make, this is not unrealistic. The enemy may shoot down 90% of them, but the 10% that gets through, especially if they are kamikaze drones fitted with explosives, can cause real damage. There is the old joke about quantity: “What do you do when you invade China? First day, you take 10,000 prisoners. Second day, you take 100,000 prisoners. Third day, you surrender!” But we don’t have to go that far: just take two instances where inexpensive drones were able to penetrate the defenses of heavily secured military airports. The first was in Russia in June 2025. Using 117 low-cost drones, Ukrainians struck several airbases at once. There is video footage of FPV drones landing on Tu-95 bombers, destroying them. These are strategic long-range nuclear bombers from the Cold War era, and will be difficult to replace. And then, just last month: at Barksdale Air Force Base in the US, where B-52 nuclear bombers are deployed, there were repeated drone swarm overflights (of 12-15 drones) between March 9th and March 15th, 2026. They couldn’t be jammed, and displayed “non-commercial signal characteristics”, although they did not actually attack the planes. Reconnaissance, it must be assumed. Superpower militaries are unable to contain them. Electronic warfare like jamming may be ineffective anyway as swarms self-repair. But it is true that there are air defense weapons that can shoot down the majority of drones. There are interceptors (but they are much more expensive than the drones themselves). Then new Directed Energy Weapons (including both lasers and high-powered microwaves) are in development. Rail guns, I understand, are overkill for them. Where is India in this arms race? India finds itself left behind in this transition, and remains committed to legacy platforms such as tanks, fighters, and other imported systems. It is true that there were battlefield successes in Operation Sindoor, where X-25 drones (towed on a 100 meter optical cable) emitted the radar signatures of Rafale fighter jets, thus drawing enemy missiles to themselves, without harming the planes. But these were Israeli products; also British-origin Banshee drones were used for spoofing Su-31 and Mig-29 signatures.. Indigenous drone efforts lag China by 3-5 years in scale, AI integration, and mass production; reliance on Chinese components persists despite bans. It does not have to be this way: India should create Production Linked Incentives for drones and missiles, and harness Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at scale. India needs to promote this as a cottage industry, so that many individuals will get involved, as in the following post by a Ukrainian drone-maker, with a hashtag #MadebyHousewives. That country produces as many as 4.5 million cheap drones a year, often using 3d printing. While Ukraine and Iran improvise hive-mind swarms under fire, India’s northeast and border regions face asymmetric threats from low-cost systems. The recent mercenary scandal in the Northeast illustrates the peril. Mercenaries, the Northeast and a new Christian enclave? The March 2026 arrests by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) expose how this drone proliferation directly endangers the Seven Sisters. Six Ukrainians and American mercenary Matthew Aaron Van Dyke were detained across Indian airports. They had repeatedly crossed from restricted Mizoram into Myanmar since 2024, training ethnic insurgent groups in drone assembly, operation, jamming, and electronic warfare. They smuggled European drone consignments through India for insurgent networks, some linked to proscribed Indian groups operating in the northeast. This is no abstract threat: drones enable precision strikes on security forces, surveillance of remote terrain, and supply drops. These capabilities could ignite or sustain insurgencies in India’s volatile borderlands. In the background is former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s explosive 2024 warning. Hasina alleged a “white man’s” conspiracy to carve out a new “Christian nation” (akin to East Timor or South Sudan) from Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin regions, and India’s Northeast. She cited foreign eyes on the Bay of Bengal and ethnic fault lines. Hasina’s claim was dismissed as paranoia then; today, Ukrainian-American actors arming Myanmar’s rebel groups lend credence to a broader destabilization playbook. A hive-mind-enabled drone campaign could empower separatists and create a Christian-majority enclave, exploiting Christian tribal demographics and porous borders. This is hybrid warfare at its most insidious: mercenaries as force multipliers for great-power proxies. If these insurgents can leverage drone swarms to close the Siliguri Corridor or target regional infrastructure, they can create a fait accompli on the ground for India. Conclusion The drone-missile age demands urgent adaptation. Nations must invest in AI swarm doctrine, resilient EW, decentralized deployment, and indigenous mass production ecosyst

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/iran-war-no-winners-oil-de-dollarisation-global-impact-13992276.html War is hell, we all know, and it’s bad for everybody, but there is – usually – a winner. After more than three weeks of the Iran war, I am beginning to believe that there are no winners here, only losers. The principals are overextending themselves, and will suffer as a consequence. Innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders are suffering significant collateral damage. Some are getting hurt more than others, so it’s mostly a question of degree: but the bottom line is that this is war that is just not good for anybody. As usual, Henry Kissinger had a useful aphorism: “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose”, quoth he. (Hat tip to reader Sudarshan M). Well, Henry, both sides are losing this one, so take heart: your wish has come true. Someone made the analogy of going to Family Court with a dispute: there are no winners, as the father, mother, and the children, will all suffer, whatever the outcome. It is best in that situation to listen to a counselor and solve your problems amicably. Similarly, it would be good to find a neutral intermediary to help iron out a ceasefire in this war, too. In a way, this war is the classic idea of irresistible force meeting an immovable object, thus leading to a stalemate, as Walter Russel Mead suggested in the Wall Street Journal. First, the toll on the belligerents, in alphabetical order: * Iran. It is creditable that Iran has held out against the might of the US war machine for three weeks and more. My belief is that they can keep it up for a while longer, because they have been preparing for this eventuality for some decades, ever since the 1979 crisis in which they held Americans hostage for 444 days. They are taking, and will take, horrendous losses, but it will be difficult to completely overthrow the Islamist regime. Among other things, Iran is a large country, about half the size of peninsular India. * The US attack on Kharg Island’s military targets (but not its oil terminals) has shown that Iran’s oil exports could be in jeopardy, pushing global prices up. * Just like their proxy Hamas, it appears Iran has built extensive tunnel complexes, veritable underground labyrinths, where they are hiding all sorts of things, including fast patrol boats. Their military assets are doubtless ensconced in these tunnels which makes them hard to locate and possibly quite mobile. * Israel. Iran’s consistent rhetoric that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist leads to fears that Iran’s nuclear arsenal (if and when built) will be primarily aimed at Israel. This, and troubles with Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to massive Israeli human intelligence penetration of Iran (as seen in the Stuxnet incident as well as the effective strikes on the Ayatollahs and Hamas, including the pager incident). But Israel is also believed to be taking heavy losses, which it can ill afford, although information has been tightly censored. There were apparently missile attacks near Israel’s nuclear sites at Dimona as well. * The US. The original idea of a decapitation strike that would lead to a rapid regime change as the Iranian public rose up and anointed a new leadership (one more acceptable to the US), was questionable, as I pointed out fairly early. It appears that the CIA and US intelligence have just one playbook, which they used more or less successfully in Iraq, Libya, etc. But that was never going to work in Iran, and now the US is stuck with a tar-baby and may be quietly seeking de-escalation and an off-ramp. * Talk of a Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2500 American soldiers re-deployed from Japan means “boots on the ground” followed inevitably by that dreaded word, “body bags”. The troops will be meant to keep Hormuz open, or perhaps to capture Kharg Island. Whether they can achieve these is unclear right now. * However, overall it appears that the US’ capacity to coerce other countries through economic means is declining, as suggested by the FT in “The era of US dominance in economic warfare is over” on March 17th. Now for the others in the firing line and in the periphery: * The GCC, consisting of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. They have taken the brunt of the Iranian drone and missile attacks, and their oil and gas exports, and economies, are affected by the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. But more alarmingly, their food and water supplies may also be affected, and they are, being desert nations, highly dependent on imported items via the blockaded Hormuz, and critically dependent on their desalination plants. Keeping the Straits of Hormuz open may be critical for them. They have been with human casualties, infrastructure damage, and reputational damage as well. In particular, Dubai, which has been a magnet for high-net-worth individuals, is affected. * Lebanon and Jordan. Lebanon was hit by Israeli fire, and Jordan by Iranian fire, although they are mostly bystanders. Israel has been responding to increased activity by Iranian proxy Hezbollah, and Iran has sent drones and missiles towards Jordan as part of general horizontal escalation. * Pakistan and Turkey. These are wild card nations in the conflict. So far they have not (yet) been affected badly, but they have to walk a tightrope. On the one hand, it is very likely that Pakistan has offered logistical and intelligence support to the US in its air attacks on Iran. On the other, as a fellow-Islamic nation, Iran has, under both the Shah and the mullahs, consistently supported Pakistan (especially against India). * Furthermore, if there is a ground assault on Iran, it will probably involve Balochis from Pakistan and Kurds from Turkey, both attempting to capture land in, respectively, the Sistan and Baluchistan Province, and the heavily Kurdish regions of Iran bordering Turkey. * Turkey, as a NATO member, is obligated to support the US, despite its Islamist leadership which is duty-bound to side with the fellow-Islamic Iranian regime. The traditional Sunni-Shia split, which has been exacerbated by Shia Iran attacking Sunni Gulf nations, sharpens the dilemma for both nations. (Meanwhile, Pakistanis slaughtered 400 Afghans by bombing a hospital, but they get a free pass from, e.g. the BBC.) * The United Nations. It has been rendered superfluous. Nobody even called for a Security Council meeting condemning the war. This is the latest in a long process wherein whatever the UN, or many other multilateral organizations do or say has become immaterial. The UN, hit by a budget crunch, might as well be shut down. * Europe and Britain. The EU and NATO have been noticeably absent in the discussions about the war. Of course, they are likely to be affected by the increase in hydrocarbon prices. In fact, their folly in shuttering their nuclear power plants in pursuit of vague ‘green’ goals has put them at the mercy of Russian oil and gas. In particular, the virtual shutting out of Britain from the entire war is notable, considering that their Whitehall has long managed to treat the US Deep State as their vassals, ‘master-blaster’ style. * Russia. Even though Russia has long been friendly with Iran, it has desisted from doing anything that could bring it into direct conflict with the US. Russia is probably supplying satellite and other reconnaissance data as well as spares for existing systems (such as the S-300 air defense batteries, Su-35 fighters) and possibly Iranian-designed Shahed drones as well. Interestingly enough, Russia may be the one possible winner in the war, considering its oil is now a coveted commodity, prices have soared, and there is less attention being paid to its Ukraine war. Europe, China and India are ever-more dependent on Russian oil, and the windfall profits may be sustainable. The US may even lift its sanctions and bring Russia back into the Western fold. * China. There are wins and losses for China, but in sum it may also be a bit of a winner. * The loss is in energy security: China has lost Venezuelan oil as well as access to Iranian oil, but they have overland pipelines from Russia, as well as access to Russian tankers at sea. Besides, they have a massive strategic petroleum reserve (1 billion barrels), so it should be manageable, for a while at least. Cuba, their reliable ally in the US’ backyard, is now back to the wall with the US enforcing a blockade. * On the other hand, they have acquired a significant military edge: US munitions inventory has been getting depleted at a furious rate, so much so that if China were to attack Taiwan now, the US would be hard pressed to intervene. Even US THAAD (Theater High Altitude Air Defense) systems are being cannibalized: after four of their radars in the GCC were damaged, the US is forced to scavenge for them from their South Korean bases. Now comes news that China is massing both civilian ships and military aircraft near Taiwan, quite possibly a precursor to an actual invasion. * Unfortunately for China, their weapons systems don’t seem to have performed very well in Iran, just as they didn’t in Operation Sindoor. There are sarcastic posts on X, especially about their radar that looks like a big grille and is supposed to detect stealth aircraft, but didn’t quite work. * China has also been on the horns of a dilemma, as it were: what would Xi do when Trump visits in April while in the midst of a war with one of China’s principal allies? It would be “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. If China were to greet him warmly, it would send a negative message to Iran, as well as its other Belt and Road Initiative partners. If China were to treat Trump coldly, then trade wars will continue. Fortunately for Xi, Trump decided to delay his visit; perhaps he intends to continue the war well into April, or maybe he

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com War is hell, we all know, and it’s bad for everybody, but there is – usually – a winner. After more than two weeks of the Iran war, I am beginning to believe that there are no winners here, only losers. The principals are overextending themselves, and will suffer as a consequence. Innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders are suffering significant collateral damage. Some are getting hurt more than others, so it’s mostly a question of degree: but the bottom line is that this is war that is just not good for anybody. As usual, Henry Kissinger had a useful aphorism: “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose”, quoth he. (Hat tip to reader Sudarshan M). Well, Henry, both sides are losing this one, so take heart: your wish has come true. Someone made the analogy of going to Family Court with a dispute: there are no winners, as the father, mother, and the children, will all suffer, whatever the outcome. It is best in that situation to listen to a counselor and solve your problems amicably. Similarly, it would be good to find a neutral intermediary to help iron out a ceasefire in this war, too. In a way, this war is the classic idea of irresistible force meeting an immovable object, thus leading to a stalemate, as Walter Russel Mead suggested in the Wall Street Journal. First, the toll on the belligerents, in alphabetical order: * Iran. It is creditable that Iran has held out against the might of the US war machine for two weeks and more. My belief is that they can keep it up for a while longer, because they have been preparing for this eventuality for some decades, ever since the 1979 crisis in which they held Americans hostage for 444 days. They are taking, and will take, horrendous losses, but it will be difficult to completely overthrow the Islamist regime. Among other things, Iran is a large country, about half the size of peninsular India. * The US attack on Kharg Island’s military targets (but not its oil terminals) has shown that Iran’s oil exports could be in jeopardy, pushing global prices up. * Just like their proxy Hamas, it appears Iran has built extensive tunnel complexes, veritable underground labyrinths, where they are hiding all sorts of things, including fast patrol boats. Their military assets are doubtless ensconced in these tunnels which makes them hard to locate and possibly quite mobile. * Israel. Iran’s consistent rhetoric that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist leads to fears that Iran’s nuclear arsenal (if and when built) will be primarily aimed at Israel. This, and troubles with Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to massive Israeli human intelligence penetration of Iran (as seen in the Stuxnet incident as well as the effective strikes on the Ayatollahs and Hamas, including the pager incident). But Israel is also believed to be taking heavy losses, which it can ill afford, although information has been tightly censored.. * The US. The original idea of a decapitation strike that would lead to a rapid regime change as the Iranian public rose up and anointed a new leadership (one more acceptable to the US), was questionable, as I pointed out fairly early. It appears that the CIA and US intelligence have just one playbook, which they used more or less successfully in Iraq, Libya, etc. But that was never going to work in Iran, and now the US is stuck with a tar-baby and may be quietly seeking de-escalation and an off-ramp. * Talk of a Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2500 American soldiers re-deployed from Japan means “boots on the ground” followed inevitably by that dreaded word, “body bags”. The troops will be meant to keep Hormuz open, or perhaps to capture Kharg Island. Whether they can achieve these is unclear right now. * However, overall it appears that the US’ capacity to coerce other countries through economic means is declining, as suggested by the FT in “The era of US dominance in economic warfare is over” on March 17th.

Just around the same time as the axe fell on Washington Post’s global staff, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I got a message from my Rediff.com editor, Nikhil Lakshman, mentioning it was the 30th anniversary of its founding. An interesting contrast indeed: the old Western flagbearer waning, while the Indian pioneer holds on, despite a plethora of competitors and copycats, including many pushing specific agendas. That also made me think of why there was a bloodbath at the Washington Post, where they gutted the foreign desks, sports, books, and some leading podcasts, and laid off a third of its staff. I suspect there are two reasons: one is the increasing insularity of the US, a retreat into Fortress America, and paradoxically a turning away from the rest of the world at the very moment the rest of the world should be looming more prominently in the rear-view mirror. And two, the economics and the technology of the narrative business have turned. On the one hand, print media have been retreating and losing ad revenue for years, and on the other hand, the rise of generativeAI has made it possible to eliminate entire layers of (at least) entry-level journalists, just as it is decimating paralegals, code-jockeys, and apprentice accountants. Only junior doctors seem immune so far, but we shall see how that goes. I must confess that there was a time when I consumed the Western narrative with gusto: reading Time, Newsweek, and so on, and listening to the BBC. In fact, I actually subscribed to the New York Times for years (ok, in my defense I was living in the New York area), and later The Economist for at least a dozen years. I still listen to some podcasts from the latter, but with considerable caution, as I am far more aware of their biases and proclivities. That’s where my concern about big-name Western media comes from. They are all somehow associated with the Deep State, that amorphous entity, the hidden puppet-master behind pretty much everything that goes on in foreign and domestic policy. For instance, an outlet that I considered the voice of NATO, turns out to be the voice of Whitehall, Britain’s bureaucracy. There has long been a truism that the Washington Post is the mouthpiece of Foggy Bottom, i.e. the US State Department, and the New York Times that of Langley, i.e. the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Noam Chomsky long ago made the insightful observation that they are both in the business of “manufacturing consent”, i.e. narrative-peddling to suit vested interests, specifically the Military-Industrial Complex, which likes, or needs, constant wars. The eclipse of the WaPo is not only a statement about the decreasing influence of the State Department on foreign affairs (in the wake of the decline of the “liberal, rules-based international order”). But it is also because the print media business is no longer lucrative, as the bulk of advertising revenue has now moved online, to the likes of Alphabet, Meta, Amazon et al. Large numbers of smaller US newspapers have closed down over the past few decades. I suspect also that gaslighting at scale is much easier now with the advent of outlets such as Wikipedia. Ashley Rindsberg, author of The Grey Lady Winked (an expose of the NYT), has been chronicling on Twitter how Wikipedia has become a handmaiden of the usual suspects. Editors are often paid agents provocateurs, and stories that do not serve their purpose are simply trashed. There is much that is subjective/motivated about the content. However, since Wikipedia has become the encyclopaedia of record, and generativeAI uses it unabashedly as a genuine source, the level of force-multiplication is immense. Every AI chatbot uses it, and of course all of us are using these chatbots. If it’s not in Wikipedia, it ceases to exist, and I fear this is happening to India’s Traditional Knowledge Systems. This level of groupthink, alas, is not unusual. That is where I applaud Rediff. When it appeared in the 1990s, the discourse in India was tremendously skewed to the Left. What was considered “Centrist” in India was, objectively speaking, “Left”, and what was considered “Left” was, in reality, “Lunatic-Fringe Left”. It was simply impossible to get a dissenting opinion published, especially because nobody would hire you if your views didn’t pass a test of fealty. But Rediff offered that possibility. Nikhil Lakshman, the editor, and Ajit Balakrishnan, the publisher, were willing to take risks with other voices, and I personally am grateful. Here I was, a non-specialist, a technologist and product manager in Silicon Valley, and also an unapologetic Hindu nationalist, which would have made me “Lunatic-Fringe Right” in the scheme of things. Rediff gave me a voice. Before me, it also gave a voice to my dear and late friend, Varsha Bhosle. We wrote stuff as we saw it, without self-censoring, and it turned out it resonated with a lot of people, especially in the diaspora, who at that time had much more Internet access than in India. I used to get hundreds of e-mails in response to my columns. Varsha got even more. We had the great advantage that, as non-professionals, we didn’t care about employment or income from journalism. Sun Microsystems paid my way; Varsha was the daughter of the celebrated Asha Bhosle. Conversely, that is a problem today for those JNU products who were planning to enter the field: USAID and Soros funds are down, and their proteges in the Indian online world (you know who they are) aren’t doing all that well. I have an old classmate, a journalist, whom I consider deranged and terminally anti-India, who makes a nice living off, I gather, funds from several countries inimical to India, but the outlook for his tribe is a little dim these days. Rediff was the only game in town in 1996, and it thrived. It was India’s pioneering internet portal with web news, email, shopping, entertainment, and it rode the first dot-com wave and survived multiple cycles (including the 2000 crash). It adapted from a pure portal to an aggregated and news-focused site, outlasting many peers by staying lean, India-centric, unbiased, and low-cost. Rediff represents a digital-native model that persisted through adaptation without the massive overhead of legacy print giants. More power to it! Thank you again, and best wishes! Postscript Those tests of fealty to the ‘cause’ continue. I personally have been ejected from two op-ed columns because my thoughts were apparently impure. One, a few years ago, was at a prominent national daily. After writing occasionally for some time on invitation, my contact ruefully told me that I was persona non grata, in his words, not because my stuff was not good, but because the opinion editor did not agree with my perspectives. More recently, I had a regular monthly column in a well-known regional daily. After having my words over-edited repeatedly, I realized that their opinion editor, who had invited me on board, simply did not like my pro-Hindu stance. So I quit. The remarkable thing is all of the dramatis personae, including me, these two opinion editors, and the Rediff folks, are originally from Kerala. I wonder if this reflects some deep psychosis in the make-believe world in this last bastion of extreme Leftism. Tellingly, the ‘all-India strike’ called by left trade unions on the 12th of February was ignored everywhere except Kerala, where it was total. 1075 words, 10 Feb 2026 updated 13 Feb 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/india-us-trade-deal-trump-skepticism-13977047.html I am beginning to feel quite like ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, who was destined to be ignored. Or maybe I am the boy who cried ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’. For, I was skeptical last week about the India-EU FTA, which I called a triumph of hope over experience. Now I am equally skeptical about the so-called India-US trade ‘deal’, which in fact is not a deal at all, but a sort-of statement of direction about the way to an actual deal. The AI-generated video about this essay Google NotebookLM: I expressed my caution on a Malayalam TV program where the host was a retired Ambassador. He was less skeptical than me, but he understood where I was coming from: after all, a diplomat’s job is to put the best spin on the news (good or bad) from his country’s perspective. And I spent much of my professional career in marketing: I can tell spin when I see it. Reason No. 1: Trump is famous for exaggeration and U-turns. The very first reason for the scepticism about the Indo-US lovefest is that it was announced by President Trump, who, in the past six months, has, in his whimsical way, executed any number of U-turns, as well as Z-turns, and various other pretzel-logic twists, so much so that anything he says, and its opposite, can be equally true, in a quantum Schrodinger’s Cat sort of way. It is prudent not to take him at face value when he swears eternal allegiance to India. Again. Quoth he: “It was an Honor to speak with Prime Minister Modi, of India, this morning. He is one of my greatest friends, and a Powerful and Respected Leader of his Country. We spoke about many things, including Trade, and ending the War with Russia and Ukraine. He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela. This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine, which is taking place right now, with thousands of people dying each and every week! Out of friendship and respect for Prime Minister Modi and, as per his request, effective immediately, we agreed to a Trade Deal between the United States and India, whereby the United States will charge a reduced Reciprocal Tariff, lowering it from 25% to 18%. They will likewise move forward to reduce their Tariffs and Non Tariff Barriers against the United States, to ZERO. The Prime Minister also committed to “BUY AMERICAN,” at a much higher level, in addition to over $500 BILLION DOLLARS of U.S. Energy, Technology, Agricultural, Coal, and many other products. Our amazing relationship with India will be even stronger going forward. Prime Minister Modi and I are two people that GET THINGS DONE, something that cannot be said for most. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Okay. Very interesting. There has been no Indian readout corroborating a number of these claims, especially on agriculture, which I imagine is a redline, a no-go, for India. Besides, these are supposed to be ‘reciprocal’ tariffs. If Indian tariffs go to zero on US products, why is the US imposing 18% on Indian products? Reason No. 2: Desperation of ‘jilted lovers’ The ‘shotgun wedding’ vibe was present in the India-EU FTA as well: a sort of desperation. There is not much choice: you simply have to do this. I am not the only one saying this. Here is a tweet from a senior EU leader, former PM of Sweden and co-chair of the EU Council for foreign relations. Of course you could say that he would say this, wouldn’t he? But it happens to be true. The number of suitors is declining rapidly, so you compromise. But that is not a recipe for the longevity of the relationship, nor for faithfulness. You can expect er… adultery (early and often). The roving eye roveth. Reason No. 3: Agriculture and dairy red-lines We really don’t know much about the fine print. I am aware that sales and marketing people tend to promise anything (even things they are completely aware are impossible) just to get the sale. Thus, when India diversifies away from the US market, and its Q3 numbers are not badly affected by the Trump tariffs, it is incumbent upon Trump and Navarro, Bessent, Lutnick et al to reverse their previous abuse, and be all milk and honey. The problem here, as always, is the agriculture and dairy product front. It is an absolute red line for India: no government can afford to piss off its farmers, nor to open up the country, home of much of the world’s genetic diversity, to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) including Terminator Seeds (that would forever put farmers at the mercy of Cargill and friends). Not only that, non-veg milk (that is, milk from cows that have been fed, among other things, ground-up animal bodies) is abhorrent to a large number of Indians. Not to mention the risk of things like Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease or mad-cow disease (transmitted via feed that includes the ground-up brains of diseased cattle: see also the fatal brain disease Kuru, transmitted between cannibals in Papua New Guinea). The US rather urgently needs to get rid of its soybean and corn mountains and milk lakes (in contrast with the EU’s butter mountain and wine lakes) and in both, exporters salivate at the prospect of the proverbial billion-customer market. (The Chinese expertly used this rather illusory meme to attract foreign makers of consumer goods. That didn’t end well). In the case of India, there is no demand for soybeans, and the one place where I can see demand for corn is in ethanol, especially for blending into petrol. That would be a win-win, because it would reduce the need for India to grow highly thirsty sugarcane, thus drawing down the already alarmingly depleted water-table. Reason No. 4: Russian oil and energy in general The unseemly pressure over Russian oil raises hackles on the Indian side. After all, this is not the only time India has been pushed to the wall by American sanctions: there was the post-’Buddha is smiling’ period, and the prevention of the sale of ex-Soviet cryogenic rocket technology, as immortalized in Nambi Narayanan’s story in “Rocketry: The Nambi Effect”. Earlier, there was the embargo on supercomputers. In each of these cases, India rode out the sanctions and denials. But the question arises: why should India not use Russian oil if it makes commercial sense to India? Just because there is a conflict between Russia and Ukraine? That is really not India’s problem: India does not have a dog in that fight. Now there is the allegedly impending US attack on Iran. India has been denied Iranian oil for some time, and now under US pressure, it is being forced to ramp down its involvement in Chabahar Port in Iran that India built, and views as a gateway to Central Asia. Notably, China continues to import Iranian crude. Is India getting some relief there? It is not realistic to imagine that large amounts of Venezuelan crude will now flow to India if it abjures the Russian stuff. For one, even though Reliance’s Jamnagar refiner can process the heavy, sour Venezuelan oil, it is said that Venezuela will take some time and a lot of money to ramp up its output because of years of neglect, lack of naphtha to dilute and pump out the crude, and so on. Reason No. 5: Non-tariff barriers and subsidies. The US claims that India will drop all its non-tariff barriers, but what is the guarantee that the US will not raise an impenetrable wall on their side? It is a simple matter to impose difficult-to-comply-with rules that basically say “Your products are not welcome”. These may include environmental, carbon tax, quality, and various other demands. For example, there is the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 that insists that only American owned/built/crewed ships can transport goods between US ports. Then there are Buy American Act procurement restrictions that handicap foreign-origin products. Furthermore, quality standards e.g. on hormone-treated meat products, and on certification that seafood is tuna-safe have been used to keep out imported products. The US Farm Bill provides gigantic subsidies for five major crops – corn, soy, wheat, rice and cotton – amounting to $9.3 billion in 2024. Reports suggest that crop insurance and new benefits from the ‘bridge payments’ announced in 2025 may add another $10 billion+ to this sum. That is an enormous subsidy, pricing competitors out of the market. Reason No. 6: Loss of trust Finally, there is a sixth and critical reason: the loss of trust. For the longest time, India had convinced itself that it was an essential strategic partner to the US, if for nothing else to contain China. But that illusion is now gone, quite possibly because the US has decided to create a G2 condominium with China and retreat into Fortress America. The US administration now considers India, at best, a transactional vassal, and at worst, a potential rival to apply the Thucydides Trap to: and what better than to do war by economic means? India has to adjust. On the other hand, there are indeed positives. In the interest of fairness, here are the immediate views of Citibank and Bank of America, who both considered it a net positive for India. If you accept the tariff reductions by the US at face value, then India at 18% is doing marginally better than several other nations, including Vietnam, Thailand and Bangladesh. Ironically, Trump’s recent best-friend-forever Pakistan is hit with 19%. There was a video circulating showing Raghuram Rajan, the economist who wants to be to Rahul Gandhi who Manmohan Singh was to his mother, gloating earlier that India was suffering from 50% tariffs compared to Pakistan’s 19%. That brings up one more observation: the Opposition in India is screaming bloody murder about this supposed India-US ‘deal’ not because they claim India is getting a bad deal, but apparently because they think India is getting a good deal. They should see

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-epstein-files-expose-elite-depravity-13975791.html Here is the AI-generated video version of this podcast. I am not going to get into the political aspects of the infamous Epstein Files, nor so much into the morality thereof, but what amazes me is the fact that everyone seems shocked at the kinds of things that apparently went on in Epstein Island and elsewhere in his empire. I have long thought of the Epstein Files (and earlier Watergate, Wikileaks, Cablegate, even the silly Steele Dossier) as a mere sideshow, entertaining but hardly earth-shattering. To be candid, what they reveal is what we already knew: politicians and the rich are different from you and me, as Jay Gatsby might say. Yes, they can be vile monsters and get away with it. F. Scott Fitzgerald describes how extreme wealth fosters a sense of superiority, cynicism, carelessness with consequences, and emotional insulation: all qualities that make the rich operate by different rules, often viewing themselves as exempt from ordinary accountability. Extreme wealth provides insurance, or insulation, against consequences. We were warned with graphic images in cinema: “Eyes Wide Shut” by Stanley Kubrick was a revelation. It fits strikingly into the context of Fitzgerald’s “the rich are different” and the Epstein files, a cinematic bridge between literary critique and real-world revelations of predatory privilege. In Kubrick’s world of orgies where masked super-elites play, the victims are from lower strata (they are treated as disposable), while the elite retreat into impunity. The film was prescient about how money, secrecy, and impunity create inevitable nexuses of abuse. There was a dramatic and possibly relevant video of a young Mexican model, distraught, screaming, “They are eating babies!”, after attending one of the Epstein parties. She was, it is said, arrested, and ‘disappeared’, and was never seen again. Yet, it is “Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom” that I am most reminded of. This is quite possibly the most disturbing film ever made, at least among those that I have seen. Only “In the Realm of the Senses”, by Nagisa Oshima, a staggering tale of sexual obsession, comes close in shock value. A couple are caught up in a vortex or vicious cycle of increasingly dangerous sexual behavior. The unsimulated, explicit sex scenes in fact produce not prurience, but horror in the viewer. The film’s intensity peaks with its violent conclusion, where the female protagonist strangles her lover to death during erotic asphyxiation and then castrates his corpse, carrying the severed penis with her, blending extreme eroticism with graphic mutilation and murder in a way that challenged societal taboos on sex, obsession, and violence. Tellingly, it is based on a real-life story, but then it is a private tale, not one that involved powerful, public, men. “Salo”, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a loose adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s 1785 novel “The 120 Days of Sodom”, relocated to the final days of Mussolini’s fascist Republic of Salo (1943–1945) in northern Italy. Four powerful libertines: a Duke (nobility), Bishop (church), Magistrate (law/state), and President (finance/capital) are the protagonists. They kidnap 18 young victims (mostly teenagers) and subject them to escalating cycles of sexual torture, degradation, humiliation, and murder in a remote villa. I remember the horrifying close-up of a young man’s eye being plucked out. This isn’t mere shock exploitation; Pasolini uses de Sade’s framework as a scorching allegory for: * Absolute power corrupting absolutely, where the elite treat bodies (especially vulnerable young ones) as disposable objects for consumption and control. * Fascism as the ultimate expression of capitalist/consumerist nihilism. The libertines embody the “anarchy of power” in a permissive, totalitarian system where rules exist only to protect the perpetrators. * Moral detachment and cynicism: the rich aren’t just wealthier; they’re philosophically and emotionally severed from humanity, viewing others as means to gratification without consequence. Is this how powerful men are? Is this how those with absolute power, especially men, have always acted? Or is it culture-specific? That’s a good question. But are elites generally debauched, depraved, and dissolute? There are several unconfirmed rumors that many of the rich and famous were associated with Epstein. But a certain royal was drummed out of the family and lost all his privileges for his (confirmed) participation in Epstein orgies. Others include captains of industry and political bigwigs, including US Presidents, a major leftist ideologue, and a film director. So it was apparently the in-thing in the US, sort of like the most sought-after restaurant in New York City, where the hoi-polloi were strictly excluded. This, in a country that allegedly finds its moral compass in the Puritans, people who were so religious that even Britain couldn’t stand them. And has been accused of being into moralization, not into morals. As of now, if you ignore the extreme claims (cannibalism) it is clear that the following happened: * Recruitment and grooming of underage girls * Sexual assault on minors * Distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material * Trafficking across State and International Borders Frankly, this is probably just business as usual in many elite circles. If you have immunity, you tend to be very naughty. I expect this, too, will blow over, and public attention will move on. The apparent fact that many in political power in the US are part of the Epstein network is neither here nor there. This may be the way all powerful men work. Sad, but true. 895 words, Feb 2, 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com I’m sorry to be so cynical so early, on the very day it was signed, but let me be honest: the much-ballyhooed (“mother of all trade deals”, quoth Ursula von der Leyen, boss of the EU) signing of the Free Trade Agreement between India and the European Union leaves me cold. Or maybe just underwhelmed. Because the words that come to mind are “desperation”, “buyer power”, and maybe “shotgun wedding”, or perhaps, as Hari, a friend, said, “rebound chicks”. Ok, so I am bad, but somehow, “revenge porn” also seems oddly appropriate. Are the Europeans now going to spill the beans about all their ahem… rendezvous with their erstwhile boyfriends? Bottom line, since I am a pessimist, I think this isn’t going to end well. If I were an optimist, perhaps I’d have said the inflated expectations will come to nought. The first clue is that India and the EU have been negotiating this trade deal for twenty, yes twenty, years. And now it’s a done deal in weeks. Did someone say, “shotgun wedding”? The second is that the EU has huge agricultural surpluses from coddling their farmers, referred to memorably by my favorite Whitehall simps, The Economist magazine, as the “butter mountain” and “wine lakes”. I really don’t think Euro-farmers are going to grin and bear it when India refuses their stuff, and worse, Indian agri-products start showing up there. The third is that it seems like it was only yesterday that the Europeans were, in their usual supercilious manner, scolding India for not following their edicts about cutting off all trade with, and in effect un-personing (or whatever the equivalent is for a country) Russia. The fourth is that their media, especially Deutsche Welle, has kept up a steady stream of invective against India, allegedly the epicenter of colossal Hindutva crimes against sundry cuddly minorities such as Kashmiri separatists, Khalistani splittists, Rohingya illegal aliens, und so weiter. (Of course the BBC, The Economist, The Guardian et al are in a different, exalted league altogether, but I guess after Brexit, I can’t blame the EU for their sins). I can sure I can think of several other reasons, which you, gentle reader, may or may not resonate with, but you get the drift. The good reasons, of course, are there: * Trump has basically abandoned the EU and hinted at winding down NATO. No more free lunch on defense. No more preferential treatment as good white countries. * The Chinese market has essentially slammed shut for Europeans. The perigee of this is the fact that Volkswagen is now planning to sell what in effect are white-labelled Chinese-designed and -built cars in China. To me that spells total surrender especially because Chinese EVs produced cheaply, at scale, are now eating them for breakfast everywhere. So now they need a new market. Why, India has 1.4 billion people! Bring on the BMWs! Because otherwise the crown jewels of German engineering, both the entire automotive industry and the famed mittelstand, are going to bite the dust. Hint to India’s 180 IQ mandarins: bone up on “buyer power”. * Europe needs a supply chain that is independent of both the US and China to the extent possible. India may well provide a good part of it. For instance, in computing, it needs to stop being so cruelly dependent on US Big Tech, as argued by a Lund University professor in Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology (https://theconversation.com/europe-wants-to-end-its-dangerous-reliance-on-us-internet-technology-274042). Amen, brother. Ditto India, and maybe a few EU GCCs in India will do the trick. Or maybe they could just phone Sridhar Vembu. * Europe is falling off a demographic cliff at warp speed. They simply will not have the manpower, especially as any growth there will be primarily from immigrants. India will not reach zero population growth for some time, and therefore skilled Indian migrants on short term work visas will be positive All of these are good for the EU, but what’s in it for India? As my friend Bapa asked, “So what is India getting? Are Europeans going to buy Indian shrimp?”

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-donald-trump-and-global-disorder-the-unravelling-of-the-old-world-order-has-begun-13970884.html There is a general air of uncertainty in international relations right now, and there is the distinct feeling that the old order changeth. The upheaval is likely to bring difficult times to all of us. The long-predicted end of the “liberal, rules-based international order” seems to be upon us, with a definite fin-de-siecle feeling. The certainties that we have long held on to are no longer reliable. Foremost, of course, is the role of the United States, which bestrode the world like a colossus in the aftermath of the Second World War, and again after the end of the Cold War. Those of us born in the post-war years looked up to America, the “City on the Hill”, the beacon, celebrated in song and film, a cultural anchor in addition to a military and economic superpower. I remember the day my dad walked into the dining room with his newspaper and told us, “Marilyn Monroe is dead”. I was a small boy, and I had no idea who Marilyn Monroe was, but I remember that moment. I vaguely remember the Kennedy assassination. And every month, SPAN magazine brought images of the good life. My father did his PhD on John Steinbeck. Thus, for me and for those of my generation, it was only natural to look up to the US as an exemplar. In college, we used to refer to it, only half-jokingly, as ‘God’s own country’. (This was before Amitabh Kant applied this moniker to Kerala, and it stuck). I remember us reading Time and Newsweek in the IIT Madras hostel common room. We read them cover to cover. So it was but natural for us to write the GRE and apply to US universities; and many of us got in, with good scores and good grades. It was relatively easy in the late 1970s. And it was a revelation for us to go to a country that pretty much worked well; the standard of living was quite a bit higher than back at home, where you had to wait 6 years for a phone or a scooter. But fifty years later, things are not the same. The gap in the standard of living between India and the US had narrowed considerably, although the rule of law, clean air and public spaces, and the lack of petty corruption, plus the tendency to stick to the letter of agreements (ok, I grant that Trump may be an exception) are all still much more prevalent in the US. What has happened, though, is the relative decline of the US in almost every way. Take research. Or manufacturing. Or popular culture. Others are narrowing the gap steadily. Or take the streets of, say, San Francisco. The pristine, well kept streets I encountered when I first moved there are now in shambles, sometimes covered in human feces, with homeless people and needles all over the place. The US, and it hurts me to say this, as I am an unabashed Americophile (if that’s a word), over-extended itself through unnecessary wars and unwise crusades which the Deep State promoted for self-preservation, but which in fact turned out to be counterproductive. As I wrote recently in relation the Venezuela gamble, the US may well be following in the footsteps of other countries that once held the reserve currency, but fell into a trifecta of excessive debt, reduced core competence, complacency and overextension. The resulting retreat into “Fortress America” as outlined in the National Security Strategy, as well as the unabashed pursuit of American interests at the expense of allies and friends, is causing everything to fall apart, as in W B Yeats’ warning. The reaction of the US’s closest allies to various Trump diktats has been instructive. Europeans and the British applauded when Trump chose to peremptorily remove President Maduro from Venezuela and make a play for that nation’s massive oil reserves. But when he began in earnest to pursue Greenland, there were loud protests from some parts of NATO. That alliance appears to be crumbling as Trump, not unreasonably, suggests that Europeans need to pay for their own security, instead of expecting the US to finance it forever. Also, despite the appearance of a land-grab, Greenland has a trade and security rationale: as the Arctic Sea becomes more ice-free due to climate change, the fabled Northwest Passage and other trade routes open up, China is already ready for its own land-grab with its “Polar Silk Road”. Here’s a tweet from Ken Noriyasu of the Nikkei, highlighting future trade routes: But the threat to Denmark’s territorial integrity, in case Greenland opts to join the US, has rattled NATO members. Threats of escalating tariffs (10–25%) on Denmark and other NATO allies have sparked outrage. Joint Nordic/European statements reaffirm sovereignty; U.S. rhetoric treats it as a strategic necessity (Arctic resources, China/Russia competition). This treats allies as transactional subordinates, eroding NATO cohesion. The end of NATO would be a seismic shift, but I have long argued that Western Europe should bury its hatchet with Russia, because their real long-term foe is China, which has its eye on Siberia on the one hand, and Europe’s entire industrial might on the other. There is more: Ongoing wars (Ukraine, Middle East), tariff wars, alliance strains, and rising “spheres of influence” logic. Davos 2026 panels describe it as the “last-chance saloon” for the old order. UN Secretary-General Guterres warns leaders are “running roughshod over international law.” Think tanks (Brookings, Stimson) call it an interregnum: the liberal order is dying, no coherent replacement has emerged, and “monsters” fill the vacuum. Is “some rough beast” slouching towards Bethlehem to be born, as in the apocalyptic prophecy? What will rise from the ruins of the old world order? We can only wonder, as there are several possible answers: * Transactionalist multipolarity. Great powers (U.S., China, India, EU/Russia bloc) negotiate deals based on leverage, not universal rules. Might means right, backed by economic coercion or force. * Fragmented regional orders. Spheres where dominant powers set norms (U.S. in Americas/Arctic, China in Indo-Pacific, Russia near its borders, if there is a rapprochement with the EU). I have long predicted spheres of influence in the wake of what I see as a G2 condominium between the US and China. * No-rules world (worst case). Rising impunity, more unilateral interventions, eroded deterrence, potential for cascading crises. We are already beginning to see this with China’s unilateral land- and sea-grabs (e.g. the “nine-dash” line). 2025 was an annus horribilis. 2026 is shaping up to be worse. None of the above scenarios is good for India, especially as it is beginning to get its manufacturing in order, at what appears to be exactly the wrong time, as tariff wars abound. By the looks of it, 2026 will be worse for all concerned. Centrifugal forces are going to tear up globalism, and a narrow nationalism may not bode well for anybody. The AI-generated podcast from notebookLM.google.com is at: 1650 words, 19th Jan 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

Part 1 of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-trumps-huge-venezuela-gamble/20260114.htm Part 2 of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-was-maduros-capture-a-warning-shot-to-china/20260124.htm It is hard to judge whether the US regime-change operation in Venezuela is a stroke of genius or an act of pure recklessness. This is completely orthogonal to the questions of morality and legality involved in such, well, coups, to put it bluntly. The real issue at hand is twofold: why did they do it? And what is the long-term fallout from it? I consider several perspectives below: the moral/legal angle, the alleged oil bonanza, the alleged drug trafficking, geo-politics and geo-economics. In sum, I am inclined to believe that the Venezuela adventure may not be an indication of American strength, alas, but rather of American weakness. To someone like me who is deeply supportive of the US (especially in opposition to China, the G2 condominium notwithstanding), this is a disheartening conclusion. The morality and legality angle Let us summarily dispose of the entire morality-legality question. At the end of the day, international relations, despite flowery marketing language, is essentially Chanakyan matsya-nyaya, i.e. the big fish eat the little fish, the law of the jungle. Might is right, and that’s just the way realpolitik is, let us accept that and move on. The United Nations and the so-called ‘liberal rules-based international order’ are syntactic sugar hiding this bitter fact of life. There are a few implications for the little or medium-sized fish: deter the big fish. 1. Bulk up, build up your military and economic strength, including your ability to produce lots of military hardware, 2. Build your economic leverage, so that you are an indispensable trading partner nobody can afford to alienate, 3. Build a nuclear arsenal. This last is significant. Let us consider all the recent (and near-future) invasions by big fish. Iraq. Libya. Iran. Panama. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Ukraine. And soon, alas, Taiwan. Ok, I may have missed some here, but none of them have nukes. If you have working nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them (such as nuclear-capable missiles, submarines lurking in the ocean depths with nuclear warheads), then it is risky for the invading big fish. No big fish likes body bags, and they certainly don’t like mushroom clouds over their cities. In addition, there was the stunning silence from the European Union and Britain, which have been moralizing to everybody about how wicked it was for Russia to invade Ukraine. No clutching pearls this time, eh, Eurocrats in Brussels? In fact, EU leaders were positively ecstatic about Trump’s intervention in Venezuela. It is indeed the end of the European century. Ditto with the United Nations, which, by the way, is pretty much on its last legs so far as I can tell: on 7th January President Trump exited 31 UN agencies and a grand total of 66 multilateral entities.This of course hurts the UN’s budget, not to mention its relevance. In January the US will formally exit the Paris Climate Agreement and the WHO, and it has already exited the UNHRC, UNESCO, and UNRWA. The newly announced exits include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Women’s Fund, the UN Population Fund, the International Solar Alliance, the International Renewable Energy Alliance, and so on. All this fits in with the ‘Fortress America’ part of the National Security Strategy, which I wrote about at some length recently. In my opinion, it is not in the US’ long-term interests. The post-WW II “liberal, rules-based international order” with America as its center was good for the US, and its precipitous end will erode pre-eminence, Manifest Destiny notwithstanding. The problem is that the dollar, sanctions, SWIFT and US Treasury debt are losing their clout. Pax Americana too. Summary: Nobody is bothered about morality or legality. The oil colony: is it for real? It could be argued that the unabashed Trump statements about Venezuela’s oil are exactly like the British and other European colonization of many lands in the 19th century. It can be summarized as: “we have the guns, we’re going to take your butter”. That may well be true, although it is not discussed in genteel circles, where they pretend the Euros were on an, um… civilizing mission. Trump, to his credit, makes no bones about it: he says in so many words that he will henceforth consider Venezuela’s oil to be his, and that it will be used for the benefit of both Venezuelans and Americans. To be honest, there is some rationale behind this: the infamous Resource Curse, where resource-rich countries end up with the riches being grabbed by both foreigners and kleptocratic local elites, and miserable citizens get virtually nothing. I am not quite sure how Arab OPEC countries managed to keep their money, and spend it on their own nationals: possibly because their populations were low, and they were used to authoritarian rulers anyway. The same with Norway. But the Resource Curse is a fairly universal phenomenon. I bet the global money managers are laughing all the way to the bank. When I first went to the US in the late 1970s, I had a graduate student friend, a woman from Venezuela. She was there on a generous scholarship funded by oil revenues, just like the Iranians who had studied with me in India. At least some of the money was going to actual citizens, and wasn’t disappearing into tax havens. I guess socialism did Venezuela in over decades, as we have seen in West Bengal and Kerala. The country’s finances are an absolute mess, through years of economic collapse, US sanctions, and a sovereign default in 2017. There are enormous debts owed by Venezuela to foreign investors, add up to more than $150 billion, or twice GDP; this includes interest, penalties for default, and arbitration awards for the expropriation (nationalization) of oil infrastructure. Venezuelan assets abroad (e.g. the CITGO oil retailer) are at risk. So far as I can tell, the country owes the following: * Bond default in 2017 (sovereign and state oil company PDVSA bonds): face value $60 billion, now up to $100 billion with accrued interest and penalties. Owed mostly to international asset managers such as Fidelity, Greylock, T Rowe Price (often US based) * Oil-backed loans of about $15 billion, to be paid off in oil shipments (China and Russia) * Arbitration awards often based on nationalization/expropriation of (especially oil-related) assets: around $30 billion (US and Canada based creditors such as ConocoPhillips and Crystallex owed around $8-10 billion) This means there’s a lot of issues that needs to be settled before Venezuela becomes a normal and substantial player in the world oil market. Besides, despite the exertions of Chevron, an American oil major that still has operations in Venezuela, I don’t think it will be easy to ramp up production there, which has collapsed due to a variety of factors, including the non-availability of naphtha to make the very viscous, heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt more easily transportable. It is said, however, that a number of US refineries can indeed handle this heavy crude (incidentally Indian refineries such as Reliance’s Jamnagar can as well) and so, over time, the oil will begin to flow, although it is going to cost quite a bit to get there. Their production was of the order of 3.5 million barrels per day in the 2010s, but it has fallen to about 1.1 million barrels now, as the result of infrastructure decay, mismanagement, corruption, and US sanctions. I have read estimates that it might take as much as $180 billion in investments over the next 10-15 years to bring Venezuela back online at scale. This means that any dreams of the US tapping Venezuela’s vast oil reserves any time soon are unrealistic. Besides, that could lead to an oil glut, depressing global prices even below the current $50-60 levels, which has the side effect of making America’s own shale-based oil production unviable. There is one good outcome, though: for neighboring Guyana. Venezuela had been threatening to go to war over Guyana’s oil fields. Given that Guyana has a large Indian origin population, I am glad that at least some diaspora people are becoming oil rich. But then again, Trump may feel free to claim their oil too, who knows? All this suggests that, despite all the talk of seizing the largest oil reserves in the world, this is not the real reason behind the regime change. Summary: The oil issue is overblown, and nothing dramatic will happen short-term. What about the drug-running? There was a lot of noise about how Venezuelan gangs pushing drugs in the US was a major threat, and how that needs to be taken care of. However, on closer scrutiny, Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine (production is almost entirely in Colombia, with smaller amounts from Peru and Bolivia). It serves as a minor transit country for some cocaine, mostly headed to Europe or the Caribbean rather than directly to the streets of America. Data from the UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) and the US DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) show no significant direct sea routes from Venezuela to the US; the only known direct route is limited air trafficking. DEA reports (including the 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment) and UNODC (World Drug Report 2025) consistently show Colombia as the overwhelming source of cocaine entering the US (around 84%+ of samples). Venezuela ranks low in direct contributions, with most US-bound cocaine transiting through Mexico/Central America via Pacific routes. Fentanyl trafficking into the United States follows a distinct supply chain, very different from plant-based drugs like cocaine. The overwhelming consensus from US aut

A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/is-india-standing-alone-in-2025/20251222.htm 2025 has been a disastrous year for the US, surely in foreign affairs and economics. The trade war, far from strengthening the economy, has shown the limits of American power: the capitulation to Chinese supplier power on rare earths, and a strategic retreat in the face of Chinese buyer power on soybeans, for example. The dramatic rise of Chinese generativeAI, which will undercut US Big Tech, is another problem. The US cannot afford to be the globocop any more, and the new National Security Strategy seeks a US withdrawal into ‘Fortress America’. It may mark the end of the vaunted ‘American exceptionalism’ as well as the ‘liberal rules-based international order’. In an earlier time, this would have led to the famous Thucydides Trap, but in effect the US has gone into an ‘anti-Thucydides Trap’ because it unthinkingly paved the way for China’s rise, seduced by the short-term benefit of low-cost Chinese goods while ignoring the long-term strategic disaster. In the 20th century, Britain collapsed suddenly, but it is merely a tiny island off Eurasia. I never expected continent-sized America to follow suit in the 21st century. Meanwhile, in a fine example of “manufacturing consent”, the discourse in the US is not focusing on the global problems facing the country, but on MAGA bullying of H1-B Indians and on the Epstein files, which, on the face of it, is a silly exercise in moralization. I believe it was Hermann Hesse who said something to the effect that Americans are not interested in morals, being content with moralization. But the entire kowtowing to China has serious implications for India. One of the pillars of Indian foreign policy for decades has been the idea that it is a strategic counterweight to China in the US’s calculations. But if the US has really ceded Asia to China (I recall President Obama saying as long ago as 2009 that the US and China would “work together to promote peace, stability, and development in South Asia”) then the famous ‘pivot to Asia’ is null and void. A couple of years ago, I wrote that the most obvious thing for the US’s Deep State to do would be to form a G2 condominium with China, divide up the world amongst themselves, and set up respective spheres of influence. This was predicated on America’s relative decline, and China’s economic and military rise to be, for all intents and purposes, a peer. I thought this would take a decade or more, but, lo and behold, the US is caving in furiously to China right now. In addition, I wrote about the surprisingly large and malign influence exerted by Britain, whereby it plays a ‘master-blaster’ role, leading the US by the nose, usually to America’s detriment. Britain’s ‘imperial fortress’ Pakistan seems to be involved in every terror incident, yet President Trump’s new-found camaraderie with them (“here, some more F-16 goodies for you”) is yet another indictment of their twisted priorities. And Britain seems to be “winning”, too: on the one hand, they have finally defeated Germany, which they couldn’t do via two World Wars: the latter’s economy, its electricity grid, and its vaunted mittelstand and its automobile industry are in shambles. On the other hand, Britain is the one major European power that has not been defeated by Russia, so they think they can, conversely, defeat them. France (Napoleon) and Germany (Hitler) learnt otherwise. The pointless Ukraine War is bankrupting Europe; I wrote about how this is hastening the end of the European century and how ‘Europe’ is reverting to what it was through most of history: unimportant ‘Northwest Asia’. This could well also be Britain’s revenge against Europe, which it exited in a huff via Brexit: British elites have looked down upon Europeans all along. I mention all these not to show that I was somehow prescient, but that things we have been observing for some time are coming to a head: the US National Security Strategy is the capstone of the New World Order. And it seems to codify these trends: hegemony to China with Asia as its sphere of influence, the abandonment of Europe to its own devices, a focus on the Americas in a new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ (so to speak). In the background are continuing terror attacks such as the one in Sydney, murderous attacks on Alawites in Syria, the car bomb in Delhi, and the lynching and burning alive of a minority Hindu youth, Dipu Chandra Das, in Bangladesh by a frenzied mob. The world is not a safe place. There was also a defining moment: the US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker. Far from being a show of strength, this may well be an admission of weakness: Venezuela is no competitor, and this is like the US invasion of defenseless Panama some years ago. It is, however, a declaration that the Americas belong to the US sphere of influence (the ‘Donroe’ Doctrine). Sadly, China may demur: it views the Americas are adjacent to them (just across the Pacific) and have made inroads into many countries, including Panama, and ironically are funding a proposed alternative to the Panama Canal through Nicaragua, as well as a major Brazil-Peru railroad project (all the better to ship in raw materials from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and to ship out “rubber dogshit from HongKong” back to them). Their $3 billion Chancay deepwater port in Peru has already been inaugurated. China is now a $500 billion trading partner for South America, overtaking the US, yes, overtaking the US. To top it all, the ports on both sides of the Panama Canal, i.e Cristobal (Atlantic side) and Balboa (Pacific side) are run by Hong Kong companies, which of course means the CCP does. In fact, it is blocking US firm Blackrock’s acquisition of these ports. China therefore has serious assets in the Americas, and large commercial interests. The US can pretend it is supreme in the Americas, but the reality may be a little different. Meanwhile, the US has more or less abandoned its Quad partners in Asia and acknowledged Chinese hegemony there: in other words, that half of the condominium is done. When the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said something that was obvious and perfectly within her rights to worry about Japan’s security, the Chinese came down on her like a ton of bricks, wolf-warrior style. The normally voluble Trump said nothing at all in support of Japan. Regarding India, there has been a persistent tilt towards Pakistan during and after Operation Sindoor; and the imposition of harsh tariffs. The increasingly volatile situation in Bangladesh which is the result of a likely US-backed ‘regime-change’ operation is a significant security threat to India because of the collusion of jihadi, Pakistani and Chinese-proxy elements there and the very real concern about the cutoff of India’s Northeast from the mainland, apart from the ongoing murders and ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Buddhists there. Now comes the New York Times, which I generally despise as a propaganda arm of the Deep State. But they show some self-awareness in their editorial “America cannot win alone”. No man is an island, as John Donne wrote some years ago. And America is not a singular colossus any more either, and it needs alliances. It hurts me (as an Americophile) how rapidly the US is declining in relative terms, and perhaps even absolute terms. The best indicator of this decline is in the crown jewels of the US: its technology sector. On the one hand, the entire US stock market has been propped up by the Magnificent Seven and the alleged promise of the generativeAI boom. On the other hand, China’s patented “over-invest, scale up, get to be lowest-cost producer, drive competitors out of business” is repeating in industry after industry: the latest is automobiles, where the famous German marques are history. Trump’s surrender on Nvidia’s H200 chips is an indication that China is playing the trade-war game much better than the U.S. China has amassed a $1 trillion trade surplus in the first 11 months of 2025, an unprecedented feat that shows its trade power. Not only is this because of supply-chain dominance, but an analyst suggests it’s also because China is now on the verge of delivering a knockout blow to US/Western tech. There are news reports that China has almost managed to replicate EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) lithography from ASML, one of the key areas in chipmaking that was beyond China’s reach. They used former ASML employees of Chinese descent, as well as less advanced technologies from ASML itself, Canon and Nikon. This is the context in which one has to critique Trump’s 2025 US National Security Strategy. In summary, it shows a narrowing of America’s expansive self-image, the beginnings of a ‘Fortress America’ mindset and an ‘America First’ doctrine. The ‘promotion of democracy’ is downplayed (aka ‘regime change’, as we have seen in Bangladesh. Thank goodness!) and fighting other people’s wars (think Ukraine) has been de-emphasized. It fits in very well with the G2 condominium idea, as it focuses on national interests and explicitly rejects globalism, elevates economic matters while suggesting the use of military might as an element of dealmaking, and asks ‘allies’ to shoulder more responsibility. Europe is downgraded, China is the prime focus with an emphasis on deterrence (e.g., Taiwan), supply-chain resilience and balanced trade, the Indo-Pacific gets short shrift, and the emphasis is on the Americas as, so to speak, the US’s private playpen, harking back to the 19th century. India gets almost no attention: it is mentioned four times as compared to 21 times for China, with the tone shifting from ‘strategic partner’ or ‘leading global power’ to a more transactional expectation of burden-sharing and reciprocity. T

A version of this essay was published by news18.com at https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-what-the-bjp-win-in-thiruvananthapuram-may-mean-or-may-not-9774658.html As a native son, I believe the BJP’s 50/101 seats in the Trivandrum Corporation in the recently concluded local body elections is an interesting outcome. But it must not be taken in isolation, and one must accept that this is neither a breakthrough for the BJP in the deep south, nor a mere footnote in the CPI(M)-Congress duopoly that has been the hallmark of Kerala politics. There are a lot of local factors, but yes, perhaps there is an underlying, nascent realignment. There is anti-incumbency: there used to be, like clockwork, one term for the UDF, one term for the LDF. But now, the CPI-M has been ruling for ten years in a row, and the voters may be fed up with them. In Trivandrum, for instance, the outgoing mayor, Arya Rajendran, who is in her 20s, has a well-deserved reputation for arrogance. Tellingly, she did not campaign in 2025. But there is more. There are at least four extraordinary factors at play here: One is the vanity that Kerala politics is somehow superior to politics elsewhere in (southern) India, because, you know, it is the 100% literate state. This is far from the truth. Mere literacy, that is, knowing the syntax of written language, does not guarantee you understand the semantics, that is, the ability to think critically rather than be gaslighted. The average Kerala voter is as easily manipulated as any other. Second, regional tensions. Kerala consists of three distinct regions: northern Malabar, which was under British rule, which meant it was plundered and underdeveloped. It also is Muslim-dominated. Central Kochi, which was a moderately dynamic dynasty, and is Christian-dominated. Southern Travancore, which was under a strong dynasty (but came under the sway of the British), and is Hindu majority. Third, the erstwhile consensus around ‘secularism’ is fraying: it is now increasingly seen as merely a shibboleth meant to hypnotize the Hindu community into caste-based internecine conflict and keep it a permanent underclass, with fewer rights than those of other religions. Hindus are still fighting 19th century battles in the 21st century. The shocking neglect, occasional desecration of, and outright large-scale theft from, major temples such as Sabarimala may now be turning into a bit of an issue for the lay Hindu. Fourth, after half a century of left-wing politics, it is becoming increasingly clear to the average Keralite that it is being left behind in development and prosperity. At independence, Travancore in particular was far ahead of the rest of India in key metrics like infant mortality, female literacy, and infrastructure. But anti-business socialism has led to de-industrialization, forced migration of Keralites in search of jobs, and high inflation, while other states are passing Kerala by. On top of all this, there is the rampant politicization of everything (for example, government jobs do not go to those who have high ranks in the State Public Service Commission selection exams, but to party cadres). There is a truly bizarre situation where two parties, both in the INDI Alliance all over the country (CPI-M and Congress), pretend to be rivals in Kerala, and do charades and shadow-boxing, although they do tactical voting to prevent the BJP from winning. It startles me to hear that there is a Left (CPI-M) and a Right (Congress) in Kerala, according to pundits. In reality, they are an Extreme-Left party and a Far-Left party, respectively. Indeed, even the BJP, which is spoken of as Far-Right is a Center-Left party, so severely distorted is the discourse – the median is Far-Left. To an impartial observer, the only way the Congress in Kerala can be termed a Right-wing party is that it appeases its vote-bank, the Christians, although the FC Nairs also traditionally vote for them. The Communists, whose rank and file are mostly made up of the OBC Ezhavas, increasingly are dominated by the needs of their Malabar Muslim vote-bank. So in a twisted sort of way, both these Left parties pander to the Conservative sentiments of these religious groups. This has real-life consequences, which Travancore voters are seeing increasingly clearly. The last major investment in Trivandrum was the ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Center, which was required to be on the magnetic equator. After that, the National Institute of Technology went to Kozhikode (in Malabar). The Indian Institute of Management went to Kozhikode (in Malabar). The Indian Institute of Technology went to Palakkad (in Malabar). The AIIMS is also likely to go to Malabar or Kochi. A metro system was given to Kochi, even though Trivandrum has an equal or better claim in terms of population size and other metrics. Successive UDF and LDF governments have sat on the proposal for Trivandrum’s metro (incidentally Kozhikode is also in the same boat). Trivandrum airport saw zero development for 40 years from 1960. Staggeringly, the Trivandrum port (Vizhinjam) was also delayed for 40 years, even though the deepwater container transhipment port there is now on track to handle a lot of India’s container cargo, which now goes to Colombo. Instead, 4400 crores were spent on a container port at Kochi, which has only 8 meters draft and cannot compete with Colombo. Trivandrum/Vizhinjam has 24 meters in depth, which means literally the largest container ship in the world, MSC Irina, with 24,000 containers on board, can and in fact has called at this port. The LDF government twisted Adani Ports’ arm and moved their logistics park for Vizhinjam, which Adani runs on contract, 200 km away to Kochi! In addition, the road and rail approaches to the port, which are necessary for ‘gateway’ or upcountry containers from/to say Bangalore or Hyderabad, have been delayed for a long time over trivial land acquisition issues. These lapses are glaring, and add up to step-motherly treatment for Trivandrum. There must be a lot of resentment among the voters here about this, because their real estate values would go up quite a lot if Vizhinjam’s business improves, and there will be jobs related to logistics, bunkering, cruise lines, and so on. Under the Sagarmala initiative, this is something that Trivandrum voters hope the Union Government will push forward, along with a proposed Tri-Services Maritime Command: thus both military and civil infrastructure may bring benefits. Finally, the excesses against Hindu temples, which are ruled by the Devaswom Board, packed with party cadres who may well be hostile atheists, are getting exposed broadly. There is a tradition prohibiting the entry of women between 10 and 60 years of age (ie. of childbearing age) into the shrine, which the women devotees in Kerala are broadly okay with, and don’t feel particularly discriminated against. The Kerala government made a huge fuss over it, and attempted to smuggle in both non-believing women and non-Hindu women into the temple. This has troubled some of the CPI-M’s traditional voters, for example the hitherto blase Ezhavas. As the attacks on Hindus continue, there is a bit of a counter-consolidation as well. There is no end: there is the huge current scandal of the theft of gold from the temple doors and dwarapalaka statues in Sabarimala (along with similar desecration in Guruvayur). There is an ongoing investigation, which ought to, if pursued properly, implicate highly connected political players. But recently, there have been instances of prosecutorial misconduct that mean likely criminals get away with, er, murder. Sowmya’s alleged murderer Charlie Thomas aka Govindachamy was let off death row, because the prosecutor did not make a good enough case. An actor, Dileep, who allegedly took out a contract for a thug to rape an actress in a moving car, was let off. You guessed it, the prosecution did not make a good enough case. Incidentally, Christian churches with vast landholdings (a good bit of which was 99-year leases given during British days which has now, magically, turned into freehold), or Muslim mosques and other Waqf claimants rarely face the wrath of the State. Yes, there is a case wending its way through the courts about the peninsula of Munambam which is home to 600 families, mostly Christian fisherman, but is claimed in its entirety as a Waqf property. A net reflection of all this is that urban Hindus have begun to rethink their political views. There is a strong urban-rural divide as seen in the just-conducted local body polls. The urban, so to speak, constituencies have seen the vice-like grip of the LDF diminish a bit, but they remain strong in the rural areas. This is borne out by conversations with the rural poor, who talk about kshema pensions, NREGA, and so on as benefits they get from the State government. What this suggests is that anti-incumbency is playing its part; but the likely outcome is a return to the Tweedledum-Tweedledee “throw the rascals out every five years” syndrome of years past. The BJP is unlikely to make any quick inroads into this; they may not get many Assembly seats in 2026, and they are unlikely to get more than a couple of Lok Sabha seats in 2029. Yet, as for obvious reasons there is a Right-ward lurch in Europe, with the rise of AfD in Germany, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and Nigel Farrage’s Reform UK, and these parties are no longer easily put behind a cordon sanitaire, the BJP in Kerala is not any longer completely unelectable. The voters are beginning to see that it is not completely er… untouchable. It will be a long, painful journey, but maybe in a decade or two, the BJP can become a realistic opposition party in Kerala. To do this in the extreme South, in the very bastion of the Communists, as well as in a State with very large non-Hindu populations, would be quite an achievement for them. We shall have to wait and see if they ha

Let me admit up front that I like Rishab Shetty. A lot. I’d probably go see anything he makes, and I wish him well, because he is an actor with terrific presence. To be honest, I was blown away by his performance in Kantara, both as protagonist and director/writer. I had no idea about the bhoota-kola of Tulunadu, although I have seen the similar theyyam of nearby Malabar, and was suitably impressed. Therefore I was disappointed and underwhelmed by the prequel Kantara Chapter 1, for a variety of reasons. I understand this is not the universal reaction to the prequel: in particular, young people I spoke with liked the esthetics, the special effects, the big budget production, and the expansive canvas of the spice trade, a large kingdom, and good cast including veteran Jayaram as the weary king, and Rukmini Vasanth as a suitably gorgeous but sinister princess. But to me it came across as an untidy mishmash of various genres, with the principal purpose of creating a franchise: surely we can expect Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and so on. I don’t begrudge Rishab Shetty and his producer their success, especially as the original Kantara was a sleeper success on a tiny budget. Warning: spoilers ahead. My problems were manifold. The first was that the original Kantara hit me with the force of a hurricane, when the coming-of-age tale of the wild-boar-hunting-and-carousing Shiva takes a sudden and unexpected turn and he becomes, reluctantly, the bhoota-kola oracle, taking on the role of his father who disappeared, and his cousin who was murdered. It was a revelation: a moment when a man turns into the Divine, in a wholly believable and entirely autochthonous, Dharmic tradition, a celebration of the presence of benign powers all around, a manifestation of a pantheistic world-view. It was one of the few recent films that powerfully put across a wholly Hindu perspective, which unfortunately is unusual in India. As a child, I remember devotional and patriotic films in Malayalam, which engendered a certain affection for the traditions of one’s forefathers. And often the story-lines, from well-known literary works, were rooted in the local milieu. Over time, this has been dissipated, and replaced by unremarkable films that are technically quite good, but for lack of a better word, lack ‘soul’. In general, this has been true of the dominant Hindi/Urdu language films as well: the narrative is some kind of a global, ‘liberal’, westernized, ‘modernized’ and deracinated tale, where in particular Hindus get short shrift. For example, a recent, highly-rated Malayalam film mined Kottarathil Sankunny’s Aithihya-mala, but turned the protagonists into people of other religions. There was another named 19th Century in which the recently-invented (in the 2010s) fiction of a ‘breast-tax’ on lower-caste women was turned into ‘fact’. This sort of digestion of, and worse, denigration of, native tradition has been true of Hindi/Urdu films for a long time as has been amply and devastatingly recorded by the efforts of ‘Gems of Bollywood’ on twitter. Therefore it is refreshing when a few films offer a Hindu point of view, eg. Kantara, Bahubali, or the shatteringly powerful Baramulla. This is one reason I am loath to criticize Rishab Shetty too much, but I do have my own complaints. One is that the Kantara Chapter 1 seems like a mish-mash of various ideas, borrowed from various sources. The origin myth of the hero Berme, where he appears as an abandoned child on a bed of leaves (and the presence of the computer-generated white tiger) may be a nod to the Sabarimala legend: Lord Ayyappa is a foundling, and he is sent on an errand to fetch tiger’s milk by the evil queen who hopes that he will die in that quest. Then there is the battle of the good vs bad, which reminded me of the battle scenes from Bahubali, and indeed the dark-skinned barbarians from that film got a reprise here with the black-cowled evil sorcerer Kadapa tribe. And I wondered in passing if the very name ‘Kadapa’ was a reference to the Telugu stronghold of the proselytizing Christian Reddys. Then there is the untidy story of the port city that the Kantara folks want access to, so they can sell spices to white people with no middleman. They also dragged in a superfluous white trader. Yes, the West Coast has been trading with the Middle East and points west for millennia via the Spice Route, but that seems irrelevant to the deep-forest-dwelling Kantara villagers. In addition, there were cliched memes about slavery (of tribals) and exploitation by the rich and powerful. These came across as nods to the prevailing dogma of woke victim narratives. The remarkable thing is that slavery was virtually unknown among Hindus: the first textual and/or epigraphic examples of slavery in India were by a Christian church in Kerala (the Tarisapalli copperplate, 849CE) and during the Muslim invasions. The characters were also hit and miss. There were the picaresque companions from the original film, including a vidushaka type who was silly in the original, but annoying here; so was the prince’s kinkara. Neither of them added much to the film, and could easily have been written out. The prince was so typecast from the moment you laid eyes on him – clearly a dissolute, useless fellow – that you knew he was going to be dispatched summarily. I did like the princess. She was apparently born with paralysis in her hands and legs, and she was handed over to the sorcerer Kadapas, who cured her, but also (it is implied) turned her into a wily seductress, whose efforts to distract the hero (Berme) from his quest were, fortunately, futile. The old king was rather good, too. Rishab Shetty impresses as always with his physical presence, as well as his signature primal roar. I missed the glowing varaha and the superb Varaha-roopam song which was so electric in the original Kantara. (I hear there were some copyright claims from a band in Kerala, but it baffles me that an old traditional song or tune could be copyrighted by some upstart.) There was a little piglet in one scene, but that was not enough. The VFX of the Brahma-rakshas was unsatisfying, and should have been left to the viewer’s imagination. All in all, the prequel was a disappointment after the original Kantara, which was refreshingly unpretentious: it did not preach, nor did it explain – it just was, and it forced you to accept the reality of the demigods Panjurli and Guliga. In effect, you went into an alternate reality, along with the bhoota-kola dancer. There was no such staggering insight in the prequel Kantara Chapter 1. If you were expecting a spiritual high, as I was, you’d be disappointed. If on the other hand, you were looking for light entertainment on a big canvas, you’d be just fine. Thus my dilemma about the prequel: yes, it does tell a Hindu tale, and I once again wish Rishabh Shetty the best, but I wish it had left me feeling spiritually moved as the original did. 1200 words, 16 Nov 2025 The AI-based Malayalam podcast on this by notebookLM from Google. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/adani-s-under-fire-we-ve-seen-this-before-3783432 The repeated, withering attacks on the Adani group are getting to be tiresome, partly because they usually have no merit per se; and partly because the Western habit of weaponizing the narrative is now so evident. It is basically propaganda, with the pliant media manufacturing consent to support foreign policy. In a recent column in the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh wrote: “Politics, not tech, makes the world go around”. He may have a point, but at the moment, it is the opposite: the breakneck generativeAI race, and China’s near-monopoly in rare earths, are fueling both trade wars and capitulation: for example, Trump said before meeting Xi that “the G2 will be convening shortly”. TACO, anyone? I said during Biden’s days in “A US-China condominium dividing up the world between themselves”, that for the Deep State, a G2 would be a convenient (short-term) thing to do. Trump apparently has accepted that a) Chinese leverage is insurmountable, b) a division into spheres of influence would work best. Sadly, it would be disastrous for the US (and the Quad) in the medium term to make China Asia’s hegemon. But it is happening. As BNP Paribas puts it in a research note quoted by the Financial Times, “[Washington]... is now dealing with a peer rival capable of imposing material economic harm on it — a relatively new position for the US and a development which, at least to us, confirms China’s ascendancy to global economic superpower status.” It would be entirely rational for a G2 to prevent a third great power from rising, and India is the only candidate: Brazil, Russia, South Africa, the EU are handicapped in one way or the other, e.g. geography, resources, demographics, politics. Therefore the G2 are imposing a Thucydides Trap on India: wage economic (if not kinetic) war, and balkanize it. Everybody has learned lessons from the recent past (“Confessions of an economic hit-man”, anyone?): how Japan was ruined via the Plaza Accord, how Britain lost its pre-eminence by debasing its currency, and how the US allowed itself to be systematically de-industrialized by China over the last 30 years. They are not going to let India grow, certainly not easily. Thus Adani is a proxy for India. Mark Mobius, a legendary investor, said, “Investing in Adani is like investing in India”. That is not an exaggeration, because Adani has demonstrated the capability to deliver in more than one domain, especially in ports and airports (Disclaimer: I have a small position in Adani Ports). They have operations in Colombo, Haifa (Israel) and Abbot Point (Australia), which makes them a potentially major player in global shipping, not to mention their container ports at Mundhra and Vizhinjam (Trivandrum). There have been several waves of attacks on the Adani group, the first in June 2021 alleging improprieties in investments by Mauritius-based funds; the second in January 2023 with the ‘bombshell’ Hindenburg (a short-seller) report alleging stock manipulation and accounting fraud; the third in November 2024, a US Dept of Justice allegation about bribery; the fourth in October 2025 by the Washington Post alleging the Indian government induced LIC to invest $3.9 billion in Adani firms. When the Hindenburg report was publicized as the “largest con in corporate history” by pliant media like Reuters, FT and WSJ, I wrote that “The Adani Group may not be derailed by Hindenburg”. I also did a video conversation with Professor Narayanan Komerath on the topic. In fact, in a “dog it was that died” outcome, it was Hindenburg that closed shop; Adani has recovered even after a second Hindenburg report accusing the SEBI chief as well. Adani has been successful in their ports and energy businesses; they are doing well in airports; their efforts in green energy and in data centers (the new Google AI data center in Vishakhapatnam) may yet prove to be winners. Thus Adani has shown it can compete well in difficult infrastructure sectors. It is true that these need to align with government policies. Which brings whispers of ‘crony capitalism’, which is rich coming from the US, where ‘robber barons’ like John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J P Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt created enormous fortunes primarily through cronyism. Have you heard the dictum “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”? Boeing, the Koch Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Big Tech are current beneficiaries of State munificence. India has had its share of crony capitalists who provided citizens with shoddy goods at high prices. I don’t dare name them, but you know who they are. Every country supports its national champions: Japan’s zaibatsu, Korea’s chaebol, China’s State Owned Companies. And recently J P Morgan Chase announced it is investing $1.5 trillion in US industries such as critical minerals, pharma, semiconductors, energy, drones, cybersecurity, AI and so on. Surely this is after consultations with and a go-ahead from the US Government. Similarly, it is neither sinful nor unusual for the Indian State to support dominant, effective players. More power to Adani! 800 words, 31 October 2025 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

The third episode in the IITM Alumni Association Trivandrum’s live monthly Fireside Chats. Host Rajeev Srinivasan speaks with senior executive and academic Dr. Rajasree, the CEO of Trest Research Park, earlier VC of APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University and an IIT Madras alumna speaks on India’s semiconductor and electronics ecosystem, particularly addressing the India Semiconductor Mission and its goal of achieving self-reliance in the sector, spanning everything from design to manufacturing. Key topics explored include the nation’s strategy to focus on mature nodes (like 28nm chips) rather than cutting-edge technology, the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) program to support startups, and the potential for the growing electronics industry to offset job losses in the IT services sector due to factors like H1B visa fees and generative AI. Dr. Rajasree also shares insights into major investments by groups like the Tatas and projected timelines for the initial domestic chip production and packaging in India, expected around late 2025 to 2026. AI-generated podcast on this fireside chat from notebookLM.google.com: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe