Author: Rakesh K. Chitkara
With nearly nine million Indians across the region, strategic ambiguity is not a luxury India can afford Every time tensions rise in the Middle East, India’s domestic response follows a familiar and troubling pattern. Television studios produce dramatic forecasts of regional conflagration. Social media amplifies unverified claims. Families across India begin calling relatives in Gulf cities, asking whether they should pack up and return home. Ironically, the very governments at the centre of these tensions, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha and Muscat, are typically the calmest voices in the room. Their official communications are measured, factual and reassuring. Their message to…
Recent events in the Gulf, leading to the 28 February 2026 US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on Gulf targets, including the UAE, have understandably sharpened concerns among residents, investors and businesses in the United Arab Emirates. Headlines often present these developments as a straightforward confrontation between Iran and the Gulf states. A closer look at history, economics and regional dynamics reveals a more complex reality. Despite political differences, Iran and the UAE remain deeply connected through geography, trade, finance and longstanding cultural ties. These structural links have historically encouraged managed coexistence rather than prolonged confrontation. Whether…
The defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century is not ideological but material. It is a resource race between the United States and China to maintain or gain global supremacy through control over energy, minerals, supply chains and strategic inputs. China has pursued this race largely through diplomacy, long-term contracts, infrastructure financing and system-level embedding across regions. The United States, by contrast, has historically relied on power, though for decades it did so behind institutional language and alliance frameworks. Under Donald Trump, that strategic discretion ended. What had long been managed quietly was rendered explicit, transactional, bilateral and unapologetic. This…
India sits at the centre of global healthcare. From HIV antiretrovirals that save lives across Africa to cancer drugs that make treatment affordable in Latin America and vaccines that protect millions in Southeast Asia, the country’s pharmaceutical industry has become indispensable. Today, India supplies around 20 per cent of global generic medicines by volume and nearly 60 per cent of the world’s vaccine demand, making it the backbone of treatment and prevention for much of the developing world. With pharmaceutical exports valued at nearly USD 28 billion during FY 2023–24, India is not merely a participant in global healthcare; it…
