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Donald Trump was not in the room at Bharat Mandapam but he was the reason the room was full.  When the American President threatened 100 percent tariffs on BRICS members who try to replace the dollar, when he increased tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent and added an extra 25 percent as punishment for buying Russian oil, when he threatened an additional 10 percent on countries backing what he called BRICS's anti-American policy, he was deliberately doing something that no amount of Indian diplomacy could have managed on its own. He gave the world's largest alternative multilateral forum the urgency it had been struggling to find. Eleven nations representing nearly half the world's population came to New Delhi partly because the alternative, standing alone before a tariff-wielding, sanction-wielding, dollar-wielding Washington, had become considerably more frightening than sitting in the same room as each other. Image Source: @VikramMisri on X Indian Prime Minister Modi un...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the bilateral meeting ahead of the BRICS Summit and handed him a gift. It was a very thoughtful Russian-language translation of the Thirukkural, the 1,330 couplet Tamil classical text attributed to one of our greatest philosophers Thiruvalluvar, composed somewhere between the 4th century BCE and the 6th century CE, translated into more than 107 languages, claimed by Jains, Hindus, and Christians alike. Image Source: MEA India Putin accepted it.  The following evening, at the official gala dinner hosted by Modi at Bharat Mandapam, Putin and all other visiting dignitaries were served Khumb Galouti — tender pan-grilled mushroom kebabs with mint pearls on sheermal bread. Paneer Lababdar. Gucchi Marmik, Himalayan morel mushrooms with saffron and mamra almonds. Beetroot Raita. Shahtoot Phirni — slow-cooked pudding topped with sweet mulberr...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New Delhi a  day before the 18th BRICS Summit had formally opened.  The readout mentioned something almost nobody noticed, that the two leaders had discussed the conflicts in West Asia and the Black Sea region and their impact on "the safety and security of Indian seafarers." A few hours later, Modi met Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran. The readout said the same thing in different words, that freedom of navigation, freedom of commerce, the safety and well-being of seafarers. The following morning, Modi walked into Bharat Mandapam and proposed a BRICS Seafarers Emergency Support Network. Two consecutive bilaterals. The same Indian workers named in both. Then a specific institutional proposal in the summit speech the next morning. No body connected these three things because everyone was watching Chinese President Xi Jinping's plane land. Image Source: MEA India India has over thre...

The Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi will host the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit on September 12 and 13. This will be the culmination of India's fourth chairship of a grouping that has, in twenty years, gone from an economist's acronym to an eleven-nation bloc representing nearly half the world's population. Vladimir Putin is confirmed. Xi Jinping is expected, though Beijing has not formally said so — his preparations are underway and if he arrives it will be his first visit to India since the informal summit with Modi at Mamallapuram in October 2019. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and several other leaders from member and partner nations are on the list. Central government offices in Delhi are closed tomorrow for logistics. The capital has been building toward this for months. File Photo/Representational; Via: @AmitShah on X The G20 presidency in 2023...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Wars often appear at first as regional confrontations defined by the geography of the battlefield but the Iran war that is now unfolding across West Asia is revealing something far more consequential that has served a systemic shock to the global order. What began as a military escalation between Iran, the United States and Israel has rapidly expanded into a crisis that touches the most critical systems underpinning modern globalization, namely energy supply, maritime trade, aviation networks, financial markets and the millions of workers who sustain them. The war is not only being fought in the skies over the Middle East or the waters of the Persian Gulf but it is also unfolding across the infrastructure that powers the global economy itself. Representational Image Via: @RedPrecariat on X At the center of this crisis lies the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime corridor through which roughly one-fifth of the world...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Within a span of just over two weeks, the United States has issued three separate sanctions waivers, first for Indian-bound Russian crude, then for Russian oil globally, and now for Iranian crude itself. This has revealed a pattern that suggests Washington’s sanctions regime is no longer a static enforcement mechanism but a dynamic tool being repositioned in real time to balance war objectives with global energy stability. Representational Image Via:  U.S. Central Command As IndianRepublic.in had earlier reported on March 6 , the U.S. Treasury issued General License 133 permitting Indian refiners to receive Russian crude already at sea, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stating the aim was to “ensure oil continues flowing into global markets,” even while maintaining pressure on Russia. That India-specific measure was expanded on March 13 through General License 134 , which allowed the delivery of Russian crude glo...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman More than two weeks into the Iran war and the clearest record of what this conflict has become is found in Donald Trump’s own words . Read chronologically, his public statements and social media posts do not reveal a coherent war aim so much as they point to a pattern of escalation without restraint, triumphalism without closure, and threats so sweeping that they dissolve the distinction between military coercion and open-ended devastation. What emerges is a head of state normalising the language of civilisational punishment while the global economy convulses, shipping slows in Hormuz, migrants and seafarers die in the Gulf, and ordinary households from South Asia to Europe brace for the price of a conflict they did not choose. File Photo of POTUS Trump; Via: White House The argument for this war was never stable. Even as the administration invoked Iran’s nuclear programme, Trump’s own rhetoric kept widening the battlefi...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Wars are often measured in missile strikes, territorial advances and diplomatic confrontations but beneath those visible markers lies a quieter human story. The Iran war has begun to expose the vulnerability of the millions of migrant workers, seafarers and civilian employees who sustain the infrastructure of the global economy. Photo of Thai crew from cargo ship Mayuree Naree; Via: Ounka Across the Gulf and wider West Asia, these workers form the backbone of ports, shipping fleets, construction sites, energy facilities and service industries. They power the logistics networks that keep energy flowing and goods moving across continents. When conflict erupts, they are often the first to feel the consequences even though they have no role in the political decisions that lead to war. In recent days, the widening conflict has produced a growing list of casualties and disruptions affecting this largely invisible workforce. As...