US Audacity, Not Reciprocity
In his weekly column for The Indian Express, P Chidamabaram dissects the India–US joint statement released on 6 February 2026. He argues that the agreement falls far short of true “reciprocity,” grants far greater concessions to the US than to India, and leaves India with few economic gains.
It is a kite.., it is a bird.., it is an airplane. ‘What is it?’ is the apt question for the joint statement issued by the governments of the United States and India on February 6, 2026. The joint statement has triggered endless speculation, and the Indian government’s contumacious evasion of the details has not helped to remove the cloud of doubt. Since Mr Trump is dealing the cards, the joint statement may not be of concern for US, but it is for India. The joint statement issued was based on deception. Indian negotiators claimed repeatedly in 2025 that they were negotiating a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA)...As it turned out, the joint statement is not a BTA; it is not even an Interim Agreement; it is a framework for an Interim Agreement. We moved a mountain and we got a mouse.P Chidambaram, The Indian Express
ChatGPT and the Republic of Noddies
In a wry column for The New Indian Express, Santwana Bhattacharya suggests that the India AI Impact Summit 2026, starting in Delhi on Monday, 16 February, will mostly consist of polite agreement and sweeping optimism about artificial intelligence, even though few truly understand how it works or engage with its deeper consequences.
They will be discussing machines that learn and humans who nod. Everyone will be nodding. We need at least the odd head that shakes. Why will everyone be nodding? Because no one knows any better about AI. Even the top frontier researchers in artificial intelligence haven’t the foggiest about how the darn machine thinks. But they know how to make them, and make them bigger and bigger, even if we need to blow up the earth to produce enough energy to run them. Maybe that’s what they mean by ‘technology solution’. Just look at the future plans of Elon Musk or Peter Thiel. They’re not planning on hanging around for too long.Santwana Bhattacharya, The New Indian Express
"It’s still not clear who owns the copyright to something written by an AI model. The end-stage author? The platform? The LLM? Or a mashed-up collective of dead authors? That’s why policymakers will promise ‘guardrails’, the fashionable new word. Entrepreneurs will promise ‘disruption’, another word that went from negative to a positive in management jargon but is again looking menacing," Bhattacharya writes.
Don’t Let America Decide From Where To Source Oil
In the Deccan Chronicle, Pavan K Varma writes that India must not allow the United States to dictate where it sources its oil, warning that a US-mandated “monitoring committee” on Indian purchases from Russia could potentially undermine India’s sovereignty and set a dangerous precedent.
"Such an arrangement is tantamount to a direct challenge to India’s sovereignty. Monitoring, in this context, is a euphemism for outside supervision," he writes.
The minister of external affairs, in a statement after the US Monitoring Committee was announced, has not categorically asserted that India will exercise its sovereign right to decide where it sources its imports from. It has merely said that “national interest will be the guiding factor in our choices”, which would depend on “adequate availability, fair pricing, and reliability of supply”. One would have thought that our response should have been far less ambivalent. In the past, India has always defined national interest in terms of the notion of strategic autonomy. It was never isolationism, nor was it naïve moralism. It was the recognition that a civilisational state, emerging from colonial subjugation, must preserve the right to decide for itself — who it trades with, whom it befriends and how it safeguards the welfare of its people. That principle has never been abandoned, but this is precisely what seems to have happened now.Pavan K Varma, Deccan Chronicle
Trust Will Define Dhaka’s New Era
In The New Indian Express, Prabhu Chawla writes that Bangladesh’s recent election and Tarique Rahman’s victory is a pivotal moment that could reshape the country’s future and its relationship with India.
"The result forged an improbable coalition: minorities seeking safety, youth demanding dignity and jobs, and conservative Muslims rejecting both hereditary rule and Western tutelage," he says.
Last week, Bangladesh delivered a verdict that reverberated like a seismic shift. Tarique Rahman’s BNP seized an overwhelming mandate, capturing 212 of the 299 declared seats and a two-thirds majority. The Mohammed Yunus-led interim administration, born of the 2024 Gen Z uprising that toppled Sheikh Hasina, has been consigned to history. After more than three decades of female dominance, a male PM assumes office. Jamaat-e-Islami, once a reluctant ally, now leads the opposition benches with almost 70 seats. Yet, the true measure of the verdict lies in its crushing rejection of fundamentalist forces, who managed a mere six seats.Prabhu Chawla, The New Indian Express
Performance First: A Real Measure of Public Monopoly
In the Deccan Herald, Ashwin Mahesh writes that public monopolies must prove their worth through actual performance rather than simply relying on exclusivity. He goes on to argue that protected entities often lack competition-driven efficiency.
"Monopolies, by nature, are obliged to do well precisely because they have been protected from competition," he writes, citing China's one-party rule as an example.
A few weeks ago, there was a flurry of exchanges online – later reported in the press – about whether BMTC’s monopoly should be ended and private bus services should also be allowed to operate. The state government is against it, pointing out that a private operator may not consider the service a public good and may only operate buses on profitable routes, whereas the government accepts that it must serve all people, regardless of their ability to pay. But does it do that now? The BMTC bus service outside the Outer Ring Road is limited. By global benchmarks, we have a deficit of 10,000 buses in the public fleet. India has chosen to set lower benchmarks for itself, and while I don’t agree with that, even by that benchmark, we are at least 5,000 vehicles short. And this gap has only been widening.Ashwin Mahesh, Deccan Herald
Digital Feudals, State Role, Rewiring Society: Framing India AI Map
In The Indian Express, C Raja Mohan offers his take on the upcoming AI Impact Summit that India will host in Delhi next week.
Drawing on books by Yanis Varoufakis, Alex Karp, and Henry Kissinger, he compares their sharply different visions of the AI age to outline possible paths for India.
In Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Varoufakis challenges the assumption that AI is ushering in a more advanced form of capitalism. He argues instead that the rise of digital platforms marks a regression away from capitalism. These platforms, he says, have replaced competitive markets with privately governed digital estates. Humanity is being reduced to digital serfdom while platform owners extract “rent” from online activity much like feudal lords extracted rent from land. For emerging powers such as India, Varoufakis’s thesis raises uncomfortable questions.C Raja Mohan, The Indian Express
Renascent Nation
Writing from The Telegraph, Sunanda K Datta-Ray argues that India should remain neutral as Bangladesh decides its path after the elections.
"Many might point out that formal diplomacy is probably the least of the problems that bedevil a complex relationship that operates at many levels, seen and unseen, on both sides of the border. It encompasses land and water, trade and tariffs, rebels and patriots, China and Pakistan, life itself," writes Datta-Ray.
Much depends on how Bangladeshis handle the election outcome. One is loath to abandon anything that might set a healthy precedent but unpleasant portents cannot also be ignored. First families are doomed. The possibility of a total population exchange, as between Greece and Turkey in 1923, cannot be summarily dismissed. Meanwhile, India’s best course would be strict neutrality as a renascent Bangladesh navigates the waters to seek out its most rewarding course.Sunanda K Datta-Ray, The Telegraph
Climate That Doesn’t Change in Budgets
In his piece in The Tribune, Avay Shukla argues that much like previous budgets, India’s 2026-27 Budget repeatedly sidelines environmental and climate concerns, treating the environment as merely a resource rather than a priority while focusing on infrastructure and growth.
He warns that by ignoring funding for climate adaptation, the Budget forces fragile regions like the Himalayas into unsustainable exploitation of ecosystems to meet development needs.
In July 2014, I had written a blog about precisely this: ‘Budget 2014 — Shortchanging the Environment’. Eleven years down the line, this deficiency in planning persists, even though a new, and compelling, dimension has been added with the acceleration of climate change (CC). The need now is not only to provide public funding for measures to counter CC (adaptation, mitigation), but also for rehabilitation of those directly affected by it — poor farmers, landless labourers, fishermen, nomadic tribes.Avay Shukla, The Tribune
Linear News in the Age of Reels
In Deccan Herald, Rahul Jayaram opines that in an era where reels and short‑form media dominate, traditional linear news risks losing the depth and critical thinking that serious journalism fosters.
He warn that if smartphones and AI‑driven, bite‑sized content become the primary knowledge sources, people’s ability to engage with complexity and think critically will suffer.
As a one-time hack and now teacher, battling the hyper-technology-bombarded 21st-century classroom, I find the newspaper as a form of communication and instruction more significant than ever. It’s truly so due to the digitalised information overflows and cell-phone ordering of lives that afflict people of almost all ages. As a person who never overly genuflected to traditionalism, the surge of Artificial Intelligence, vanishing attention spans, and glut of ‘information’ have pushed me into a kind of guarded orthodoxy. In media literacy, we say older forms of information that were more ‘linear’ have gradually given way to the ‘disruption’ of news and information flows, such that its consumption for the last decade and more has been perennial and ‘circular’.Rahul Jayaram, Deccan Herald