View Articles

Nearly 48 hours after Donald Trump’s announcement about the India-US trade deal and Narendra Modi’s confirmation in his telephonic conversation, much has been written in the media by the experts, mostly following the lead given by the commerce minister Piyush Goyal in his press meet on Tuesday as to what positive impacts are taking place in different sectors of the economy. On the other hand, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi came out with a scathing statement saying that Modi was under pressure and he surrendered.

The sequence of events following Donald Trump’s unilateral declaration of a trade deal with India offers a revealing study in how political narrative can race ahead of economic substance. What stands out is not the content of the supposed agreement, which remains undefined, but the manner in which it was introduced and subsequently managed by the two sides. The announcement originated in Washington, framed as a personal and political triumph, while New Delhi’s response unfolded more slowly, wrapped in generalities and cautious reassurance. This asymmetry is the core of the episode. It shows how, in contemporary politics, the act of announcing can itself become a substitute for agreement.

Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday created a sort of history by appearing in the Supreme Court of India as the first sitting CM to defend the people of her state from being “bulldozed” through Special Intensive Revision (SIR) by Election Commission of India (ECI). “Please Protect the people,” she requested the bench. The Apex Court decided to hear the case further in February 9, and in the meanwhile gave several directions to the ECI including to send notices over SIR carefully.

While presenting the budget for FY 2026-27, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman earmarked a record Rs. 7.85 lakh crore allocation for the county’s defence sector, post-Operation Sindoor. The increase in the defence outlay in the recent budget, was in the backdrop of "historic success of Operation Sindoor" which has further strengthened our resolve to make India's defence system even more robust, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said.

KOLKATA: Barring any development that acts as a spoiler, the efforts of the Union government and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s top leadership to install a ministry in strife-scarred Manipur should succeed in a couple of days. The usual drill of terminating President’s rule and reactivating the Legislative Assembly, now under suspended animation, will be gone through between today and tomorrow. But, already there are indications of a split in the Kuki-Zo MLA group, although numerically that won’t stand in the way of ministry formation.

In present day’s interconnected world, cyber security has emerged a critical issue in India as also globally. In continuing with rapid digitalization, India is witnessing fast technology advancement. This prompts us to understand the current state of cyber security in India. There are threats, trends and challenges that India faces in protecting its digital infrastructure. There is a wide range of cyber security threats with a potential to disrupt public administration, businesses, compromise sensitive data and pose risks to national security. Threats include malware attacks, phishing attempts, ransom ware, data breaches, and insider threats. In the recent past, high profile cyber attacks in the form of breach of major Indian bank and the targeting of government agencies, serve as vulnerability of digital systems.

The announcement on India-US trade deal was expected, but the manner in which both President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi did the same in social media has led to big confusion. After a phone call with Narendra Modi, Trump claimed on Monday that the US had reached a trade arrangement with India to roll back the punishing tariffs he had imposed on Indian products from 25 percent to 18 percent, in return for India’s dropping its tariffs on some American goods, buying more US products, and ceasing its purchases of Russian oil.

If a trade deal between two large countries could be announced immediately after a phone call from a president to a prime minister, then such a deal could at best be described as phoney.

Just within hours of the announcement of India-US trade deal, there arose a political storm in the Parliament of India on Tuesday that disrupted its proceedings. Opposition MPs raised strong objections in both Houses – Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha – demanding a full debate and clarity on the deal. They said Parliament must be taken into confidence and the full text or details of the agreement should be tabled.

The Sixteenth Finance Commission’s horizontal devolution outcomes have been widely read as a technocratic recalibration—one that finally rewards economic performance by explicitly recognising states’ contribution to national output—but beneath the arithmetic lies a more consequential political-economic shift, in which India’s federal fiscal contract is being re-engineered away from equalisation and towards conditional reward, even as the Centre continues to consolidate control over the tax base through instruments that remain outside the divisible pool.