India’s Multi-Alignment: How New Delhi Tries to Have Friends Without Choosing a Camp In international politics, friendship is complicated. It becomes even more complicated when your friends do not particularly like one another. India has spent much of the 21st century learning to operate precisely in that uncomfortable space. New Delhi buys defence equipment and energy from Russia, deepens technology and strategic cooperation with the United States, maintains an unusually close defence relationship with France, works extensively with Israel, negotiates with Europe, and participates in the Quad alongside the US, Japan and Australia. There is an obvious question. How does India manage all of this without becoming dependent on one major power? The answer increasingly lies in what analysts call multi-alignment, underpinned by the older Indian foreign-policy concept of strategic autonomy. It is not neutrality. It is not isolation. And it certainly isn’t having five best friends who all promise not to talk about each other at dinner. It is the attempt to preserve freedom of choice. Strategic autonomy is the principle India’s strategic autonomy has historical roots in the Non-Aligned Movement, but today’s environment is very different. During the Cold War, non-alignment was largely associated with refusing to formally

The Ocean Beside India Is Also the Highway Beneath Its Economy Why the Indian Ocean is central to India’s security, energy and global ambitions Look at a map of India. The country’s geography appears almost to point southwards into the sea. The Arabian Sea lies to the west. The Bay of Bengal stretches to the east. The Indian Ocean opens directly below the peninsula. That shape is not merely a geographical curiosity. It is a strategic advantage. And increasingly, it is also a strategic responsibility. India sits beside one of the world’s most important maritime theatres, connecting the energy-producing Middle East and Africa with the manufacturing and consuming economies of Asia. The Indian Ocean region is estimated to carry around two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments and more than one-third of global bulk cargo traffic. For India, therefore, the ocean is not “somewhere outside the coastline.” It is part of the country’s economic infrastructure. India’s coastline is an economic asset India has more than 7,500 kilometres of coastline, and its dependence on maritime routes extends across energy, trade, fishing, tourism and commercial shipping. Carnegie’s analysis describes India as the resident naval power in the Indian Ocean and notes that the

Argentina Will Stop at the 10th Minute for Messi: A Football Farewell Beyond the Scoreboard Football normally rewards movement. Goals change matches, referees keep the clock running and supporters expect the game to continue until the final whistle. But this weekend, Argentine football will deliberately stop. Across Argentina, matches are scheduled to pause in the 10th minute for a minute of applause in honour of Lionel Messi, following his retirement from international football. The choice of the 10th minute is unmistakable: it represents the number Messi made synonymous with his career for Argentina. The Argentine Football Association has also asked stadiums with screens to show a commemorative video before matches. It is an unusually simple tribute to an unusually complicated football story. From disappointment to redemption Messi’s international career did not begin as the perfect story that hindsight sometimes creates. He made his Argentina senior debut in 2005 and, for years, carried enormous expectations. There were painful defeats, including major-final disappointments, and his relationship with sections of Argentine football supporters was far more complicated than his extraordinary club career might suggest. He even announced an international retirement in 2016 before returning to the national team. The second half of his

The Technology Battle Behind the Aircraft India can build satellites. It can launch spacecraft. It can design and manufacture sophisticated missiles, warships, helicopters and increasingly capable fighter aircraft. So why does one particular machine continue to cause so much trouble? The fighter-jet engine. It is one of the most demanding engineering challenges in the world—and India’s long-running Kaveri engine programme provides an unusually revealing case study of just how difficult it is to move from designing an aircraft to mastering the machine that makes it fly. The easy version of the story is: India tried, the Kaveri failed, and foreign engines had to be imported. The real story is considerably more complicated—and much more interesting. An engine is not simply a powerful motor A modern fighter engine has to operate under extraordinary conditions. It must compress enormous quantities of air, burn fuel at extremely high temperatures, withstand intense mechanical stresses, deliver enormous thrust, remain reliable through repeated acceleration and deceleration, and fit within very tight limits of weight and dimensions. And it has to do all of this repeatedly, safely and predictably. The difficult part is not merely designing the broad architecture. It is mastering the hot section—the compressor, combustor

India Online: When AI, Viral Videos and Real Behavior Begin to Shape a Nation’s Image A country can now be judged by a video lasting less than a minute. It may show a street, a tourist, a food vendor, a public celebration—or something that never happened at all. For India, this creates a complicated new challenge. The country’s image abroad is no longer shaped only by newspapers, television, films, diplomacy and tourism campaigns. It is increasingly shaped by algorithms, influencers, viral clips and artificial intelligence. A recent controversy illustrates the problem. An AI-generated video showing a supposed Indian street-food vendor rolling rotis on his bare stomach while sitting among garbage circulated widely online. American content creator Kristen Fischer, who lives in India, publicly challenged the clip and said it was fabricated. Reports said the original video had accumulated around 28 million views. The incident was subsequently recorded by the OECD.AI incident monitor as an example of AI-generated content that can contribute to harmful stereotypes and reputational damage. The disturbing part is not simply that artificial intelligence can manufacture an absurd scene. It is that the absurd can look real enough to become somebody’s first impression of an entire country. When

India’s 5G Equipment Makers Want to Go Global. Can They Compete with the World’s Telecom Giants? Tejas Networks, HFCL and Dixon Technologies…

India’s Spice Power: How Masala Became a Global Export Business From chilli and cumin to turmeric, cardamom, curry powders and spice oils, India remains the world’s leading spice-exporting nation. But the next chapter is not simply about shipping more spices—it is about proving that Indian spices can consistently meet the increasingly demanding standards of global consumers. There are few Indian products that need no introduction anywhere in the world. Spices are one of them. You can travel thousands of kilometres from India and still find turmeric in a supermarket, cumin in a restaurant kitchen, chilli on a food label and curry powder on a shelf. India’s relationship with spices is ancient. Its modern spice-export business, however, is increasingly sophisticated. According to the Spices Board of India, the country exported 17.34 lakh tonnes—about 1.734 million tonnes—of spices and spice products in FY2025–26, worth approximately $4.43 billion. That was lower than the previous year’s 1.799 million tonnes and $4.72 billion, but India retained its position as a leading global exporter. So the story in 2026 is not simply India exports lots of spices. It is: India has built a global spice industry—and now quality, traceability and value addition are becoming just as

India’s New Battlefield: When Drones, Satellites and AI Start Working as One For centuries, military power was largely measured in familiar things. How many soldiers? How many tanks? How many fighter aircraft? How many ships? Those numbers still matter. But another question is becoming increasingly important: How quickly can a military see, understand and respond to what is happening around it? That is where India’s defence transformation is becoming particularly interesting. India is building an increasingly networked military architecture involving drones, satellites, sensors, artificial intelligence, electronic systems and increasingly autonomous platforms. The objective is not simply to replace soldiers with machines. It is to make the machines, sensors and people work together faster and more intelligently. That is a very different proposition. The drone is becoming a military sensor—and sometimes a weapon The most visible change is in unmanned systems. India’s armed forces are acquiring and developing drones for surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting and increasingly for precision strike. The 2024 contract for 31 MQ-9B Sky/Sea Guardian HALE remotely piloted aircraft represented a major step in this direction. The fleet includes 16 Sky Guardians and 15 Sea Guardians for the tri-services. And India’s maritime requirements are becoming even more apparent. In August

From Buyer to Supplier: How India Is Building a Global Defence Export Industry India’s defence story is changing — and the interesting part is no longer only what the country buys, but what the world is beginning to buy from India. For decades, India was better known as one of the world’s major defence importers. Today, a different picture is emerging. In financial year 2025–26, India’s defence exports reached a record ₹38,424 crore, up from ₹23,622 crore a year earlier — a rise of 62.66%. At the same time, domestic defence production reached an all-time high of ₹1.78 lakh crore. Indian defence products are now being exported to more than 80 countries, according to the Ministry of Defence. That does not mean India has suddenly become a global military superpower in manufacturing. But it does mean something important has changed: India is increasingly becoming part of the international defence supply chain — as a manufacturer, supplier, technology partner and exporter. And that may ultimately be more significant than a single missile sale. What is India actually exporting? The popular image of defence exports is a missile leaving a launcher and heading towards some distant horizon. The reality is much larger

When Watching a Movie Is No Longer Enough For more than a century, going to the cinema meant sitting quietly in a dark room while a story unfolded on a screen. Then somebody apparently decided that sitting quietly was overrated. Today, moviegoers can watch a car chase while their seats move, feel wind during an action sequence, experience water effects during rain scenes and even encounter scents synchronized with what is happening on screen. Welcome to 4DX—one of the most unusual developments in India’s modern cinema experience. And in September 2026, the format received another push in India. PVR INOX opened three new auditoriums at its Soul Space Spirit property in Bellandur, Bengaluru, including a new 4DX screen. The addition took the property to seven screens and 1,143 seats. ScanX reported that this was the company’s eighth 4DX experience in Bengaluru. But the bigger story isn’t simply that Bengaluru has another premium cinema screen. It is about how India’s multiplex industry is trying to answer a difficult question: If audiences can watch almost everything at home, why should they still pay to go to a cinema? From watching the film to feeling it 4DX attempts to provide an answer by

How Open-Source Analysts Separate Battlefield Facts from Digital Fiction In modern warfare, the battlefield is no longer limited to deserts, mountains, oceans and airspace. There is another battlefield that can be just as consequential: the smartphone screen. A missile strike can take place thousands of kilometres away. Within minutes, a video can appear on social media claiming that an airbase has been destroyed, a fighter has been shot down or a senior military officer has admitted defeat. Sometimes the video is genuine. Sometimes it is old footage. Sometimes it shows a completely different country. And increasingly, sometimes the person speaking in the video never said those words at all. This is where open-source intelligence, or OSINT, has become an important tool for journalists, researchers, investigators and ordinary internet users trying to establish what actually happened. The first rule: don’t believe the picture simply because it looks convincing A photograph or video is evidence. It is not automatically proof. Professional OSINT analysts therefore ask a deceptively simple question: What independent evidence supports this claim? A dramatic explosion may show an actual explosion. It does not necessarily prove when it happened, where it happened or what caused it. That distinction is fundamental.

How Indian Shipyards Are Changing the Navy’s Future There was a time when an Indian Navy warship usually came with an interesting footnote: “Built with foreign assistance.” Today, an increasingly common description is rather different: Designed in India. Built in India. Armed increasingly with Indian systems. That change is one of the most consequential developments in India’s defence-industrial story. India’s naval modernisation is no longer just about buying more ships. It is increasingly about creating the industrial capacity to design, build, maintain and eventually export sophisticated warships. And the shipyards are getting very busy. Project 17A: the frigate programme becoming a manufacturing lesson The clearest example is Project 17A, India’s Nilgiri-class stealth frigate programme. The programme comprises seven advanced multi-mission frigates, being built by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) in Mumbai and Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) in Kolkata. By 2026, the programme had moved substantially from construction into induction. INS Nilgiri, INS Himgiri, INS Udaygiri and INS Taragiri had already entered service, followed by INS Dunagiri in June 2026 and INS Mahendragiri in July 2026. INS Vindhyagiri remains the final ship of the seven and is still under construction. These are not merely larger floating pieces of steel.