India needlessly hurried into a trade deal: Unlike Canadia which decided to wait out Trump and the mid-term elections to get a better trade deal, the Modi dispensation was herded by the US govt into drafting an agreement that, in hindsight was unnecessarily hurried, and may not be all that benign as Piyush Goyal hinted, it is. The fact that Delhi could have secured better terms if only Delhi had bided its time, is not in doubt.
Now Modi and India find themselves in a pincer of US politics. The Democrat controlled US Congress will home in on India, nitpick its many weaknesses in its democratic functioning. And there is Stephen Miller now installed as the White House Chief of Staff, who wears his dislikes on his sleeve and drips contempt for countries like India. That means Delhi will hereafter get no hearing in the White House (unless Trump’s sons are promised more “Trump Towers” to make money off).
Turning into booze capital: 'India is go-to destination for alcobev MNCs'. Booze culture attracting MNCs.
Why Did Indians Send $20 Billion Abroad In Just 8 Months? Indians sent nearly ₹1.91 lakh crore abroad in the first eight months of 2026. From overseas holidays and university fees to buying foreign stocks and property, individual residents are transferring increasing amounts of money overseas.
'America hates data centers': New database reveals more than 90% of 10,000 public comments are negative. Water is the number one concern
'We cannot drink DATA': Google's $15 billion India data centre is being fought in court. The city is already water deficient, and a wildlife sanctuary sits 860 metres from the site. Broken promises, confiscated land: the hyperscale AI datacentre being built in a tiny Indian village
Google hit with criminal probe over unapproved AI data center deforestation — 816 acres of forest destroyed in Finland as wolves flee into local villages, facility threatens 40% power bill hikes
BikAss: Building boom puts 300,000 people in the path of potential Himalayan disasters
For India's IT giants TCS and Infosys, AI both dents and supports growth
Overall revenues under pressure but AI-related quarterly income up as much as 29%
https://t.co/4KHyTIjpXx https://t.co/lk1BeLLWDa
The American view: The US will do everything in its capacity to stop India's growth
US🇺🇸 Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau:
'India🇮🇳 should understand that we're not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China🇨🇳 20 years ago, in terms of saying, 'Oh, we're going to let you develop all these markets.'
And then the next thing we know, you're beating us in a lot of commercial areas.
We're going to make sure that whatever we do is fair to our people because, ultimately, we have to be accountable to our own people, just as the Government of India has to be accountable to its people.'
As the multipolar world deepens, expect the US to throttle India’s development more openly and forcefully.
India seeks a partner, not bully: India spent 25 years believing it had moved from America’s waiting room to its drawing room. Trump’s second term is showing New Delhi the door.
The US Wants India To 'Obey', Not Negotiate: Washington had renewed diplomatic engagement with Pakistan. The largest importer of Russian oil and gas, China, was left untouched while India was punished.
World's richest hypocrite: A Pentagon contractor building Trump's Golden Dome wants to run internet over Indian soil, and he throws a tantrum every time someone asks who holds the off switch.
Starlink is banned in China. Have you ever called Xi Jinping a monopolist? Called Chinese critics shills? Written a sarcastic letter to Prime Minister Xi? No!
Because Beijing would shut your factory by Monday. India can't.
Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans: Musk has already given more money, about $366 million, than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly $290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power.
Indian stocks: 'The 'great bull-market' that began in India in 2003 is over'.
India's national debt rose from 50 lakh crores in 2014 to 200 lakh crores today: Shan Shanmuganathan challenges India's official GDP growth figures.
Price of Rupee stability: RBI has spent half of $140 billion FX capital haul in rupee defence, bankers estimate. . . $143-bn boat fails to shield ₹ from shark
Linux in 2026: Why Millions Are Switching Away from Windows for Good. . . . Desktop Linux is now inevitable. Here's why.
Lesson for India: US sanctions force The Netherlands off Microsoft and toward alternative NixOS-based software ecosystem — trial programs running now, first release expected at end of 2027
BikAss: Kedarnath generates 50.30 tonnes of waste in 5 months
India's Rocket Launches Costliest Among Major Space Powers
The Indian Investor Has A New Problem: An SIP That Does Nothing. Current high valuations are unforgiving. Corporate earnings could grow in high single digits or low double digits, while valuation multiples decline simultaneously. An investor may thus invest for several years without seeing similar growth in the value of their portfolio.
Has Trump Chosen Pakistan Over India? It is time Indians realise 'Everybody loves Pakistan'! The origin of Pakistan lies in the Western need to have an imperial outpost in this part of the world.
India discovered that in the aftermath of the 1965 War when even Cold War enemies the US and then USSR coordinated their approach to India. Our close friend the Soviet Union forced our hand then to sue for peace with Pakistan.
Destruction of Chabahar port torpedoes India's long-standing effort to bypass Pakistan in its effort to access energy-rich Central Asia, Afghanistan and Russia.
Anti-India stance.: First Pak, Now Bangladesh: Why Turkey Is Becoming India's New Security Headache. . . . Bangladesh ready to join Saudi-Pak-Turkiye defence alliance
Why 90% Jobs are Stuck in These Cities? 3 cities ended up capturing 89% of all Indian startup funding since 2014. IT boom landed exactly where the talent already was.
Private sector investment has languished: Indian govt lost roughly $100 billion in revenues over five years due to the corporate tax cuts. Put in other words, the $100 billion was an ‘unconditional cash transfer scheme’ to the private sector. The corporates simply pocketed this money without investing much back in the economy. Corporate savings (retained profits) rose from 10.5 percent of GDP before the tax cuts to 11.2 percent, while the investment rate stayed flat.
No denying the generous support of the govt but what Beijing got right was this: link support with tech capability demonstrated.
It's driving results and pushing Chinese companies to be ever-increasingly competitive. https://t.co/RSGSHrAcTh
Why Are Foreigners Not Visiting India? Foreign tourist arrivals in India are still below 2019 levels. Meanwhile Vietnam (the size of Maharashtra), Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Dubai have all recovered and grown past pre-pandemic numbers.
Unethical: A 2024 Report Showed Meta Earned $7 Billion A Year From Scam Ads. The US-based company earns revenue by hosting illegal content on its social media platforms
'Gujarat-centric model': From Chips to Commonwealth Games, Annamalai asks why so much is going to Gujarat.
The Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor project was announced for Gujarat after Maharashtra had been in talks with the companies.
Since then, Gujarat's position in India's semiconductor push has only grown. Tata Electronics, Micron and CG Power are among the companies setting up major semiconductor projects in the state.The Tata-Airbus C-295 aircraft manufacturing project announced for Vadodara soon after also drew criticism from Maharashtra's Opposition.
The Coast Pays, Delhi Collects: What The Centre's Mineral Bill Takes From States. India's mineral wealth may lie with the states, but the power to tax it is increasingly travelling north.
India's Jobless Rate Climbs as Labour Participation Declines: India's urban and rural unemployment rise, coinciding with a significant decline in the overall labour force participation rate to a five-quarter low
The Great IIT Dream Is Cracking: Why even top degree-holders are unable to find jobs. . . .Age Of The Pink Slip Only facts matter: E20 fuel affects BS-III vehicles, parts may need replacement, admits Nitin Gadkari
The Great Korean Loot of Bharat:
Four charts to explain this story briefly.
-trade deficit has tripled -money goes out in BOTH royalty and capital forms -in a 18m period nearly 4.7bn was taken out -korean FDI in vietnam is 13-15x India's. https://t.co/ZukAISkt5Bpic.twitter.com/9431sXe2Ek
‘They hid the truth’: Meta faces pivotal kids’ safety trial. "Meta's business model can be summed up in four simple words: 'hook' the users, 'hold' them for as long as they can, 'harvest' their data, and then 'hide' the truth from the public when making public statements". . . Major implications for company's future.
Cuba Is Low on Oil: Now, It’s counting on solar, with China’s help.. . . As the U.S. starves it of oil, Cuba is pulling off one of the fastest solar revolutions on the planet — with China’s help
After Pak, It's Bangladesh, Myanmar: China plans new corridor that runs roughly 1,700 km from Kunming to Myanmar's coast. This is China building Indian Ocean access on India's eastern flank, mirroring what CPEC and Gwadar do on the western flank via Pakistan. Beijing intends to extend the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor to Bangladesh as part of its larger Maritime Belt and Road Initiative to boost its Indian Ocean presence.
China's Teesta Move: Why India should be very, very alarmed about China's Teesta move in Bangladesh. The firm involved in the project is PowerChina is also part of the strategic works with the People's Liberation Army. Pakistan, in the meanwhile, reportedly proposed a 'Joint Military Command' that comes alongside offers of 16-48 JF-17 Block III fighters - together with a simulator already delivered two months ago. That's the first piece of Pakistani military equipment to enter the country since 1971
Hundreds vs Zero: If war were to break out between India and China tomorrow, one side could send hundreds of stealth fighter jets into battle, while the other may not be able to send even one. China may already have around 500 operational J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighters, its most advanced jet. Delhi's operational stealth fighter inventory today stands at exactly zero.
Kaveri To J-20: How China Overtook India In A 40-Year-Old Race To Build Fighter Jets. China's early efforts were disastrous. Many countries would have cancelled the programme. But China doubled down.
Between 2010 and 2020, Beijing invested approximately USD 42 billion under its "Two Engines" initiative, pouring unprecedented resources into superalloy metallurgy, manufacturing technologies, testing infrastructure, and specialised research institutes. Failures were treated not as embarrassments but as engineering data.
Security nightmare: Anthropic’s powerful Mythos AI reportedly breached ‘almost all’ NSA classified systems within a few hours during red-team test — report sheds more light on the U.S. government's sudden ban on the flagship models
China Has Matched Anthropic in Cybersecurity, Resetting AI Race: Chinese cybersecurity company 360 Security Technology released a new bug-finding tool called Tulongfeng. The company said it was comparable to Mythos in finding bugs. Those capabilities have alarmed many national-security officials and CEOs.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated in a Bloomberg interview that the India AI Summit was "extremely disorganised".
About the chaos on stage: "There was Narendra Modi up there suddenly telling everyone to hold hands..." (collapses with laughter). pic.twitter.com/24lnmtCw17
Putin in trouble? Over 40% of refining capacity hit: Expert warns Russia could ‘disintegrate’ over fuel shortage. . . China's Great Betrayal? Has Russia's biggest energy gamble just collapsed?
Low cost killing machines: “The average life expectancy of a Russian recruit right now arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes”
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.
CBSE has made vocational education mandatory for Class IX and Class X. It was one of the most sensible reform recommendations under NEP.
The rollout may still need work (report below), but the idea is unquestionably the right one. pic.twitter.com/ubsdiw9C2w
— Prasanna Viswanathan (@prasannavishy) June 26, 2026
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
