Someone Else Owns India's Off Switch: Around 70 per cent of our cloud runs on three American hyperscalers, every byte reachable under the US CLOUD Act.
We do not operate a single DNS root server, so every query from Indian soil is resolved on infrastructure we neither own nor can audit.
And since a breach in 2014, we have had no trusted sovereign Root Certificate Authority, which means foreign corporations decide what the Indian internet is allowed to trust.
Nayara Energy, July 2025. Microsoft suspended services to an Indian refinery that handles 8 per cent of the country's refining capacity, to comply with European Union sanctions over its Russian shareholding. It was a kill switch, and we had no override.
The cloud, the certificates, the DNS, the navigation, the silicon. We rent all of it.
Dear Indian Corporates, dump Microsoft 365, embrace Zoho One to support and preserve tech Sovereignity.
MBA era is over: India has historically placed greater value on academic credentials while overlooking vocational professions and skilled trades. Countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and China have traditionally shown greater respect for occupations involving practical skills.
"The globalising world gave a certain advantage to software, computer science and MBA education, but that era is over". Young people should focus on developing skills that remain valuable even as technology transforms industries.
India's Biggest Economic Challenge is not inflation, oil, or war - It is an unskilled population addicted to distraction.
It is a generation that spends more time consuming content than creating value.
The biggest theft today is not of money. It is of attention. Every notification fragments concentration. Every endless scroll delays mastery.
Modern economies reward deep work, specialized knowledge, creativity, and disciplined execution. Algorithms reward emotional reactions. Unfortunately, millions choose the algorithm.
Own goal - Rupee's Pain Is Self-Inflicted: Indian firms investing abroad contributed roughly $30 billion to the capital outflow. Why would a country that requires close to $90B in net foreign capital annually to sustain rapid growth permit $30B of capital to flow abroad, thereby contributing to pressure on the rupee?
End to Rafale mess? Only 40-50 Rafales will be bought, if at all; rest MRFA Su-57E. This is because two other offers are on the table — Russia’s complete with tech-transfer, including source codes, for its 5th generation fighter — Su-57E, and Sweden’s for its Saab 4.5 gen Gripen E.
‘The future isn’t manned vs unmanned’: If Pakistan does induct the J-35, it would change the regional air power equation. The Su-57 is one platform that comes into the conversation, given its operational status and India’s familiarity with Russian-origin systems.
It is worth remembering that fifth-generation capability goes well beyond the airframe. Sensors, mission systems, weapons integration and networking define it as much as stealth does. An aircraft without that ecosystem solves only half the problem. Importantly, AMCA is and must remain India’s long-term answer.
Ashtavakra Gita: One small shift in understanding can dissolve a lifetime of inner struggle.
Mohammed's Own Country: Deaths outpace births among Kerala’s Hindus and Christians as population growth turns negative
BikAss: Over 2.8 million trees on forest land were approved for felling or recorded as felled in less than three years. . . .India's worst air pollution crisis isn't in its megacities.
Over 2.8 million trees on forest land were approved for felling or recorded as felled in less than three years, a Down To Earth analysis of official records has found.
Between July 2023 and May 2026, the environment ministry’s Advisory Committee considered 288 unique forest… pic.twitter.com/37jHJqaJt7
Iran deal - back to square one:
“Over the three-month trajectory, what Iran showed is that, yes, they were the underdog, attacked by two nuclear powers with military supremacy. But they also had their own cards to play.
The defining point in this war is the strategic geographic advantage that Iran has over the Strait of Hormuz. And it seems like President Trump and the US just couldn't get them to reopen the strait with force. This brought [the US] to the negotiating table and, essentially, back to square one, because the Strait of Hormuz wasn't even a problem before the war.”
"We're back to the original sin of Trump: out of obsession or jealousy of Barack Obama, tearing down an agreement that was much better negotiated.”
Advantage China: CEO of Chinese Anthropic rival tells Elon Musk that China will have a Fable 5-class AI model before next year
Cheaper AI: Microsoft abandoning costly OpenAI, Anthropic models for China-based DeepSeek’s V4 Model for enterprise workloads. Soaring token costs are driving enterprise customers away from OpenAI and Anthropic and right into the lap of China's DeepSeek
Nation run by engineers: China drafts $295 billion plan to build national AI data center grid running on 80% homemade silicon.
NEET 2026 is a case study in institutional failure. Almost farcical
NEET 2026 is no longer an examination. It’s such a case study in institutional failure. Almost farcical
First the paper leak. Then cancellation. Then a nationwide re-exam for 22+ lakh students. Then portal. glitches. Now reports of portal itself is being exploited, admit cards… pic.twitter.com/qs1KwMhlBV
— Prasanna Viswanathan (@prasannavishy) June 16, 2026
G2 resets India’s calculus: The emerging US-China cooperation means the marginalisation of New Delhi and other powers in Asia and Europe. First proposed by Brzezinski and implemented by Obama in 2009, G2 suggests that the US and China rule the rest of the world. The Obama-Hu Jintao joint statement of 2009 even mentioned both countries looking after South Asian security issues.
China will leverage G2 to scale up its “all-weather” friendship with Pakistan. India needs to brace for further aggression.
The Chinese use not just their navy, air force, or coast guard but even massive fishing fleets to threaten neighbours. These "maritime militia" obstruct shipping routes, forcing international shipping as well to zigzag around them.
Honeymoon: From mutual suspicion to political embrace: How the U.S. learned to stop worrying and love Pakistan.
Was Rafale a bad choice? Why IAF needs Russian Su-57 stealth fighter. Pakistan is pursuing Chinese J-35 stealth fighters while China already operates hundreds of J-20 stealth aircraft.
High cost of import dependence: Tighten belts says PM, then $43 Bn thrown at Rafale, another $10 Billion for a diesel submarine
India will pay $68 billion to US to become a nuclear dependency: Trump has moved on from India and Modi. In the region, he has found Asim Munir and the Pakistani state he runs far more congenial to augment his personal/family holdings and US interests. Because however much Modi wishes to cuddle up to Trump and accommodate the US, there is a limit beyond which he cannot. Munir faces no such systemic constraint.
As per the 2008 civilian nuclear cooperation act, the fuel for the imported American reactors will have to be periodically imported from the US, and which supply can be stopped/disrupted at will, at any time for any reason, that Washington can think up. If these reactors are owned by US power companies, however, the US govt will be more considerate in imposing sanctions, say. And with a regular supply of US fuel assured, these firms can be permitted profitably to run a chain of nuclear power plants in India in a closed loop.
India’s fertility rate falls below replacement level: India’s Total Fertility Rate has fallen below the replacement level for the first time, revealing a widening demographic divide between ageing southern states and younger northern states.
Rice bags for atrocity drama: Andhra Pradesh pastor booked for staging attack on self to trigger communal unrest
Big Subsidies for Google, Limited Water for Locals: The Dilemma of AI in India. When Google arrived last year in this sleepy coastal Indian city, the govt rolled out the welcome mat, offering billions of dollars’ worth of incentives for the U.S. company to build data centers for AI.
Lahore Is Changing Names Of Its Streets: Now, the official signboards of Islampura read Krishan Nagar, Babri Masjid Chowk has reverted to Jain Mandir Chowk, and Rehman Gali is back to being called Ram Gali.
R&D: Chinese university builds 3D chip design tool tailored to Huawei's ‘LogicFolding’ architecture — 3D design delivers increased performance and better thermal management
Impressive specs: Russian-Chinese Irtysh 32-core CPU runs The Witcher 3 at 30+ FPS
India’s energy storage crisis: The Advanced Chemistry Cell PLI scheme, launched in 2021 with an outlay of Rs 18,100 crore, targeted 50 GWh of domestic cell manufacturing by 2025. As of December, 40 GWh had been awarded across four firms, of which only 1 GWh had been commissioned, and no incentive has yet been disbursed.
Policy still treats storage as a single category. It is not. An electric vehicle battery is built around energy density — weight matters, lithium wins. A grid battery or data-centre backup has no such constraint. It needs cycle life of over 10 to 15 years, thermal safety in occupied environments.
The chemistries worth backing are the ones where India already has the upstream. Zinc is the cleanest case. India is among the world’s top five zinc producers, with an integrated mining and smelting base in Rajasthan operating at global scale. The upstream does not need to be invented; what does not yet exist is the bridge from refined zinc to battery-grade material to an Indian-manufactured cell, and that bridge is a policy choice, not a technology gap.
Sodium offers a parallel opportunity, side-stepping cobalt, nickel, and graphite — the three minerals Beijing holds most tightly. Indian institutions are already moving.
The choice is between accepting whatever the current supply chain delivers at whatever price Beijing decides, and deliberately building a storage industry where the cell is Indian, the electrolyte is Indian and the input minerals are Indian.
Trump's comment that he would revisit arms sales to Taiwan has stirred anxiety across Asia and prompted questions about U.S. security commitments. Indian leaders are among those with concerns.
Trump-Xi Bonhomie: Should India Be Uneasy?: A former Indian foreign secretary, a leading China hawk until recently, has advised the Modi govt that a reassessment of Quad is overdue. But it is easier said than done, given the mindset of the Indian elite.
Xi Is Truly Done Falling For The Great American Bluff: China kept the upper hand during Trump's visit by, amongst other things, Xi Jinping retaining his poise and distance while Trump tried to ingratiate himself with flattery and body language.
At the opening of the formal delegation-level talks, the lining up of the top-most American corporate leaders behind Trump suggested a homage being paid to Xi's China, reminiscent of the kowtowing to the Chinese emperor in the past. Trump was messaging a willingness to explore possibilities of renewed economic interdependence with China.
Addressing Trump at the formal talks, Xi was sententious and demanding. He called on the US to be "partners, not rivals" with China. . . . amusing to see Trump kissing Xi's ass.
Christian nationalist push: Trump administration pushes narrative of Christian founding at Rally. . One Nation under Yeshu.
China Boosts Indian Ocean Ambitions: China despatches thousands of fishing boats to the region for illegal fishing, thus depleting the fish stock of the region.
During Operation Sindoor, hundreds of such boats appeared, possibly to harass the Indian Navy.
Such 'grey zone' activities are conducted to indicate China's intention to enter the region, gather intelligence, create civil-military confusion, exploit lack of preparedness by adversaries or treated as a stop-gap arrangement before full-fledged naval deployments.
Even though China had commissioned the Djibouti naval base in 2017, initially as a logistical support facility at the chokepoint of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, it is now being expanded to include submarine docking facilities.
China also initiated a number of dual-use ports or maritime facilities -- estimated to be more than a hundred across 46 countries in the region. These are considered to be a counter to the US-led maritime world order as well as to marginalise India in the region.
What Chinese Distant Water Fishing Vessels are doing inside the Exclusive Economic Zones of Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Panama and other South American nations, is surely not industrial fishing. This is a well organised plunder of marine resources, funded and facilitated by… pic.twitter.com/TZR5IRUzzc
India’s compliance, China’s defiance: As New Delhi petitions Washington to renew the sanctions waiver expiring today so it can keep importing Russian oil, Trump says he is considering lifting U.S. sanctions on Chinese refiners buying Iranian crude. China defies American sanctions…
Supreme Court of India: 'If Parents Are IAS Officers, Why Reservation For Their Children?'
Beyond just assembling phones: Lava's ₹1,100 Cr bet is to build what's inside. Aims to shift from mere assembly to producing key components domestically. . . a lot can be done even before domestic fabs go live.
Three Charts:
India Oil Consumption: 2013 to 2024: 5.621M bbl/d for 2024
USD to Indian Rupee - 2013 to 2026
Brent Crude Price - 2010 to 2026
Uber-ize gold: For national necessity & personal prosperity. How a National Gold Library could transform household jewellery into productive capital, strengthen the rupee, and cut imports.
Put the screens away: The U.S. spent $30 Billion to replace textbooks with screens. The Result: A first generation mentally weaker than its parents.. For the first time in modern history, a generation scores lower than the one that raised it. The reason sits on every school desk in America. Nearly two-thirds of laptop time goes off task
Biogas could be LPG hedge in India's dairy belt: If all the 40 million cattle-rearing households were to shift to biogas, the displacement potential is up to ~4 million tonnes of LPG every year. Even if 10 million of them make this transition, it could save up to Rs 2,000 crore annually
Burden of BikAss: India’s legendary hill towns are sinking. Overdevelopment threatens many Himalayan states
India has 100/100 hottest cities in the world: "Too bad the mangroves on the west coast, trees on the Aravali hills on the western front of India, the sparse protections it has from the warm winds from the direction of Africa, are going away in the name of "progress" and "infrastructure". Capitalism will absolutely be the death of the human race". . . Cutting trees, filling lakes, and building heat traps in the name of BikAss.
"The central government is selling all the geological important forest land to corporate. Then they are planting irrelevant trees in irrelevant areas to keep the statistics levelled. Not only that but the factories here run completely without regulations".
Who runs India?: China is run by engineers.. US run by lawyers.. Who runs India?
Highly recommended book. Along similar lines is my analysis: China is run by engineers US run by lawyers Europe by ideologue Pak run by terrorists Who runs India?
What could possibly go wrong: The Pentagon announces AI deals with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and more — LLMs to be deployed on classified Department of War networks ‘for lawful operational use’
For Korean companies, India is a lucrative cash cow: LG India reported revenue of Rs 24,366 crore and a net profit of Rs 2,203 crore last year. Royalty payments to its Korean parent reached Rs 454.61 crore. But the real headline came with its 2025 IPO: In one stroke, LG India’s market capitalisation surpassed that of its global headquarters’. And it was purely due to generous policy environment.
Hyundai Motor India and its sibling Kia tell a similar tale of extraction masked as investment. Royalty payments stand at 3.5% of sales revenue, translating into thousands of crores annually repatriated to Seoul. Such an anomaly has left Tata Motors and Mahindra to fight an uphill battle against what many term subsidized Korean pricing power.
Samsung India completes the triumvirate of value extractors. Its revenue for the first time crossed Rs 1.11 lakh crore during 2025, making it the only consumer-electronics firm in India to cross the trillion-rupee mark. During 2024, royalty remittances to the Korean parent hit Rs 3,322 crore, roughly 40% of that year’s net profit. Retained earnings have ballooned and been diverted to Vietnam.
Profits earned from Indian consumers through high royalties, IPO cash-outs and dividend flows are effectively subsidizing Vietnamese factories that then export finished goods back into India. Why? Should Korean conglomerates plough cash extracted from India into manufacturing facilities in a smaller neighbor that then undercuts Indian industry? The optics is toxic: India as a lucrative cash cow, Vietnam as the preferred factory floor.
Decades of liberalization were sold on the promise that FDI would catalyze domestic industry, transfer technology and create balanced growth. Instead, the policy has tilted towards foreign giants who repatriate profits, royalties, special dividends and IPO proceeds liberally.
On the other hand, Indian firms struggle with higher compliance costs, delayed approvals, and a royalty burden that starves local innovation.
Part of what pushed this into the open is what Korean firms did here in the last year.
Hyundai and LG listed their Indian arms and between them sent about $4.7 billion back to Seoul through IPOs and special dividends. Samsung's royalty payments to its parent tripled. All within… pic.twitter.com/e2Nbsuxew6
Korean loot: The proof is in the math: In just the last 12 months, Hyundai and LG repatriated $4.7 billion in royalties and profits. That is nearly ₹40,000 crore leaving our economy.
Localization of parts is not the same as localization of value. You can source 85% of a car’s weight (steel, rubber, glass) in India, but if the Intellectual Property (IP), engine architecture, and software ownership sit in Seoul, the wealth generated by Indian labor and…
Funding the Adversary: India cannot counter an expansionist rival, which lays claim to vast Indian territories including an entire state, while simultaneously bankrolling its rise.
Trump kissing Xi Jinping's ass: A quiet U.S. favor for Xi Jinping.. A U.S. quota increase at the IMF would rescue China’s bad loans.
President Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing in May for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and he will come bearing at least one surprising gift: A budget request to Congress to hand more money to Mr. Xi’s friends at the IMF.
Chinese satellites over Mideast battlefield put US on edge: Chinese AI company MizarVision claimed on social media to have tracked the movements of American aircraft carriers, F-22 stealth fighters and B-52 bombers by using AI to analyze satellite data.
Microwave weapon: 20-gigawatt Chinese microwave weapon touted as ‘Starlink’s worst nightmare’ by country's media — portable 5-ton device can deliver full-minute destructive bursts
Lesson for India, the GREAT consumer of imported tech: Iran claims US exploited networking equipment backdoors during strikes — says devices from Cisco and others failed despite blackout in attack that 'indicates deep sabotage'
Privacy risk: Google Chrome lacks protection against one of the most basic and common ways to track users online
Watching India pitch itself as a “rule-setter” in AI is a reminder that geopolitics now includes a new category: Countries whose technological progress occurs primarily in keynote presentations.
India doesn’t have an AI industry, but they have an AI narrative: “If we can’t build… pic.twitter.com/XnhLmwu2yk
R&D poor nation: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) proposed Rs 28,169 crore but received Rs 21,632 crore at the budget estimates stage — a reduction of nearly Rs 6,500 crore. The ministry proposed Rs 13,000 crore for the semiconductor programme but received Rs 8,000 crore at the budget estimates stage.
A giant leap for our energy sector: India is now only the second country after Russia to operate a commercial-scale FBR. Parallel development of the third stage to leverage India’s vast thorium resources, a vision conceived by Dr Homi Bhabha.
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China has been trying to build a Fast Breeder Reactor for 20 years.
Meta must face youth addiction lawsuit: "...designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children or by affirmatively misleading consumers about the safety of the Instagram platform"
