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  • The Cockroach and the Firewall

    The Cockroach and the Firewall

    India banned a joke on national security grounds. The joke went to court, found a cause, and began to splinter — all in a single week. None of it is a revolution yet. All of it is worth watching.

    When the Chief Justice of India reportedly likened unemployed young people to cockroaches and parasites, he was not making policy. He was making a mistake. The clarification came within a day — he meant only holders of fake degrees; the youth are “the pillars of a developed India.” But the insult had escaped. Within a week, a satirical “Cockroach Janta Party,” its name a mocking echo of the ruling party, had drawn more than twenty-two million Instagram followers — more than double the BJP’s, well past the Congress’s — along with a million sign-ups and a petition. Then the government did the most revealing thing it could have done. It treated the joke as a threat to India’s sovereignty.

    On the twenty-first of May, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordered the party’s account to be blocked under Section 69A of the IT Act, acting on Intelligence Bureau inputs alleging it endangered national security. No public order was published; the directive remains secret under the blocking rules. The website went dark, the founder’s personal pages were hacked, and — by his account — the death threats arrived, one reportedly promising he could be “murdered even in America.” Sit with the official rationale, because it collapses under its own weight. A state cannot, in one breath, tell its citizens that something is a frivolous meme and that it imperils the nation. By reaching for the sovereignty of India against an Instagram page, the government made a public confession about which of the two it believes. A confident order ignores satire. It does not invoke the Intelligence Bureau against it.

    That is the first thing worth noticing, and it is not the follower count. It is the asymmetry. A throwaway courtroom remark, instantly retracted, produced a movement; a movement of memes produced a national-security order. When effects keep dwarfing their causes like this, the cause is never really the cause. The Chief Justice did not create the anger he released, and the censor did not create the defiance he provoked. Both struck matches beside a fuse that has lain there, dry, for more than a decade.

    The fuse is not mysterious. India’s inequality is the highest in its recorded history — the top one per cent holds about forty per cent of the nation’s wealth, a concentration the economists who measured it called hard to sustain “without major social and political upheaval.” The country graduates more than eight million young people a year into a graduate unemployment rate near thirty per cent. A quarter of Indians belong to a generation promised development and handed a culture war. For ten years, the noise of majoritarian politics kept that fuse damp. The cockroach remark landed because it told an entire generation, in one word, what the system thought of them. The ban landed because it proved the system was afraid of what they might do about it.

    And yet — to say this plainly, because the temptation to romance the moment is strong — this is not a revolution, and a ban will not make it one. Not because Indians are docile; that old slander is simply false. This is the country of the JP Movement, of the 2011 anti-corruption surge, of the farmers who made a government blink. It is because the things that actually topple regimes are absent here, and the thing that is present is the thing that stops them.

    Revolutions do not run on anger. If they did, half the world would be in flames. They run on state collapse. France in 1789 was bankrupt; Russia in 1917 was losing a war; the regimes that fell in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal these past three years were small, centralised, and hollow, where seizing one square in the capital was the same as seizing the country. None of that describes India. Its treasury is solvent, its army intact, its agencies obedient. There is also an exit the burning countries lacked: a ballot that still works — in 2024 the ruling party lost its majority and now governs on sufferance, its worst losses where the jobs ran out. And there is the deepest barrier of all: India is too many things at once. The countries that fell had a single national crowd. India has a hundred separate angers that flare in the same season without ever becoming the same fire. A movement can own the internet in Delhi and remain a rumour in Chennai. India’s diversity, so often praised as its glory, is also its great circuit-breaker. It does not extinguish anger. It prevents anger from adding up.

    Watch, then, what the past week has actually done to the joke — because the most interesting news is not the ban but everything that has happened since, and almost all of it cuts both ways. The movement went to the Delhi High Court, challenging the block as unconstitutional. That is the system working as designed: anger flowing into an institutional channel rather than onto the street, the very pressure valve a revolution requires to be sealed shut. At the same moment, the energy found something a meme had lacked — a concrete cause. The party has fused itself to the NEET examination scandal, the leaked medical entrance test that was cancelled in May, that upended the futures of twenty-two lakh students, and that has been linked to at least fourteen student suicides. Its demand is now specific and nameable: the resignation of the education minister. A grievance with a face and a number is a different creature from a grievance with only a punchline.

    And then, almost on cue, the splintering began. A lawyer in Haryana, declaring himself the movement’s “national convener,” filed to register the party with the Election Commission in his own name — with a softened, sanded-down list of aims — against the wishes of its founder. Opposition figures rushed to amplify the memes; Congress and Left accounts adopted the cockroach as their own. This is the oldest story in Indian protest, and it is happening in fast-forward: the instant a movement matters, the formal players move to capture, fork or absorb it. India did this to the 2011 anti-corruption wave, which it turned into a party and then ground down — and the cockroach’s own founder comes from precisely that lineage. The system’s reflex is not to crush such energy. It is to digest it. A week in, the digestion has already started.

    So why does a confident state still swat so frantically at a cartoon insect? Because it has read the same history I have, and read it badly. It remembers that Nepal’s collapse last year was triggered not by hunger but by a clumsy social-media ban — and it has just repeated the act it should most have feared. Suppression does not delete a grievance; it dramatises it. The party was back within hours under a new handle, Cockroach is Back — “You thought you can get rid of us? Lol” — and a resurrection travels further than a meme. Every citizen who watches the government panic over a joke quietly revises upward the number of people who must, like them, be unhappy. That is the real engine here: not the followers, but what the followers learn about one another when the state overreacts. Denying a permit for a human chain in Bengaluru, or floating a criminal probe, only widens the audience for the next post.

    Here is the part the censors have not thought through. The one grievance that could cross India’s linguistic borders — the borders that have always kept its angers apart — is an attack on the internet itself, because the net is the country’s only truly national commons. A Tamil student and a graduate in the Hindi belt do not share a language, a politics, or a hero. They share a feed, and now they share a banned one, and a ruined exam that was sat in five hundred cities at once. In choosing to censor the single medium that ignores the firewalls — over a scandal that respects no region — the government may have picked the rare battlefield where India’s diversity does not protect it. That is why this is a blunder, not merely a heavy hand.

    India now carries nearly every structural precondition for upheaval — the inequality, the idle graduates, the curdled consent, a dead exam with a body count, and a state frightened enough to show its hand — and is held back by exactly one thing. Its anger has not yet become a single anger.

    Even so, resist both the fantasy and the complacency. The fantasy is that twenty-two million followers, a viral ban, or a court date are a barricade. They are not; the Indian state has blocked 1,400 accounts in a single protest before and absorbed the consequences, and a movement already fighting over its own name before the Election Commission is not yet a threat to anyone’s power. The complacency is the old lie that Indians never revolt. The truth is more demanding than either: India now carries nearly every structural precondition for upheaval — the inequality, the idle graduates, the curdled consent, a dead exam with a body count, and a state frightened enough to show its hand — and is held back by exactly one thing. Its anger has not yet become a single anger.

    Watch for the day it does. Not the follower counts, not the unemployment graphs — those are already maxed out. Watch whether the High Court lets the block stand or strikes it down; watch whether the NEET families in one state find the banned feed in another and recognise their grief in it; watch whether the movement survives its own capture. The government has handed that convergence its best possible candidate — not a judge’s insult, not joblessness in the abstract, but a censored network and a wrecked examination, two things that look identical in every language. The cockroach did not break the firewall. The question this week left open is whether the people swinging at it have just found the one crack that runs all the way through.

    Feature Image Credit: dw.com

    Text Image Credit: pratidintime.com

    This article has used AI assistance.

  • Was Colonialism a Crime? Algerian Parliament Criminalizes 130 Years of French Rule

    Was Colonialism a Crime? Algerian Parliament Criminalizes 130 Years of French Rule

    The history of the modern period, particularly for the Global South, is still a version written by the dominant powers – the West or colonial powers. Colonial history is now being researched more thoroughly and reveals the horrendous impact of colonialism. The Algerian parliament takes the lead in calling out colonialism for what it truly was – crimes against humanity, racism, religious intolerance, and war crimes. More countries are sure to follow the Algerian example.

     

    The Algerian newspaper al-Masa’ reports that on December 24, the Algerian parliament passed a law recognising French colonialism in that country, 1830-1962, as having been a crime that involved mass killing, rape, displacement of populations, usurpation of land, and marginalisation of people. The law also makes claims on France for reparations.

    The great Algerian historian Mahfoud Bennoune had made the case for the economic benefits to France of the exploitation of Algerian natural resources (metals, oil), the expansion of French vineyards on expropriated Algerian land, trade monopolies, and the creation of Algeria as a captive market for French goods.

    He wrote not only of countless massacres by French commanders of local populations but also of a vast transfer of landed wealth: “Using innumerable arbitrary measures — sequestration, confiscation, expropriation, cantonment . . . an increasing number of hectares were accumulated for the purposes of colonisation. . . The subsequent booty was distributed among the colonists [French colonisers]. By 1954, these 3,028,000 expropriated hectares [~116,000 sq. mi.] comprised 2,828,000 hectares of ploughland and 210,000 hectares of forest, all privately owned by the French colonials. The colonial state still possessed 7,200,000 hectares, including forest, unproductive land, and pastureland.” As for the land the Algerians were crowded onto, ” two-thirds of the land assigned to the peasants was minimal pasture and unproductive plots.”

    Ibrahim Boughali, the speaker of the Algerian parliament, underlined that the objective of this law is not to deploy history for the purposes of revenge, but to restate historical truth and preserve national memory from all efforts to erase or falsify it. At the same time, the law emphasised the necessity for the Occupying state to accept responsibility for the “systematic crimes committed against persons, land and Algerian identity.

    The Algerian and French governments have had increasingly strained relations in recent years. Algeria is furious that France recognised Morocco’s claim to the Spanish Sahara; Algeria supports the Polisario Liberation Front and its claim that Western Sahara should be independent. It was a territory ruled by medieval Moroccan governments that had been detached and made a colony by Spain, which relinquished it in the 1970s. Morocco immediately claimed it, insisting it was only reclaiming it.

    France recognised Morocco’s claim, as did the US, as a quid pro quo under the Biden administration for Morocco’s recognition of Israel and signing on to the so-called “Abraham Accords.”

    Algeria is also not happy about the increase in French racism toward the large expatriate Algerian community in France. Further, Algerians have been annoyed by the rise online of French atrocity-denialism, in which commentators dispute that France committed massacres in that country or at least excuse them. In the early 21st century, some French parliamentarians strove to outlaw any depreciation of what they termed the glories of the French empire, but then President Jacques Chirac refused to go along.

    European colonialism, a historically distinct amalgam of barracuda capitalism, racism, settler expansionism, and economic exploitation, killed millions of people in the global south and directed profits to the metropole, even from desperately poor countries in places like Africa. That it was a set of crimes is hard to dispute.

    One of the things I was surprised to discover during the Iraq War was that when I called it a colonial war, some people in Washington couldn’t get that it was a bad thing. The critique of colonialism had not reached the halls of Congress! Or, indeed, many people in middle America. Historians in the past 50 years have excavated masses of documents proving the massacres and exploitation engaged in by colonial authorities. There was actually a cover-up in the archives of the British atrocities committed in Kenya in the 1950s, which only hard historical digging managed ultimately to thwart. I’m told by colleagues who work on Libya in the Italian archives that documents on massacres committed by Italian troops in that country appear sometimes to be hidden by the staff.

    That is, there is a lot of denialism out there.

    But even though it is easy to demonstrate colonialism’s evils, few post-colonial countries have done what Algeria just did. In part, this is because they often still have vital economic or security relationships with the former coloniser and so cannot afford to alienate them.

    While, in the twentieth century, the Algerian elite depended on France (and sometimes even seemed to think they were French), in 2025, things have changed. In the past two decades, Algeria has greatly diversified its import and export markets. It imports more goods from China than from France. It mainly imports wheat from Russia, not France. It is doing more trade with Turkey and Qatar. Few Algerian firms operate in France, and the number of French firms in Algeria has fallen dramatically.

    Having thrown off economic neo-imperialism, Algerian politicians are free to say what they think.

    They are even introducing English in Algerian schools this year, with an eye toward gradually making it the country’s second language, after Arabic, rather than French, which educated Algerians have mainly used since the mid-nineteenth century.

    Photo of Algiers by Sid Ahmed SAOUD on Unsplash

    Le Monde notes that Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has never actually presented a formal, specific request to France for reparations. It reports that the French Foreign Ministry — “the Quay d’Orsay” — denounced the new law as “manifestly hostile” and as an impediment to the ongoing dialogue between the two countries.

    Algeria, a country of some 47 million, is about as populous as Spain. It has an annual nominal GDP of roughly $190 billion, placing it in the company of Greece, New Zealand, and Iraq; it is the world’s 52nd-largest economy.

    The United States could be presented with a similar bill by the Philippines, where US troops killed or unleashed the conditions that killed some 400,000 people in the early 20th century. But that is unlikely at the moment, since the Philippines remains deeply intertwined with the US and increasingly needs the US Navy as China seeks hegemony in the region and makes claims on maritime territory that the Philippines also claims. The US is the country’s largest trading partner with $12 billion in bilateral trade, though Japan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea are also major trading partners.

    The kind of trade diversification undertaken by Algeria with regard to France is unusual among post-colonial countries, which may help explain why its criminalisation of colonialism is so unprecedented. But as China rises as a major trading partner for postcolonial countries, and as South-South global trade more generally burgeons, we could see more such claims.

    The Congo, where Belgium is estimated to have killed 8 million of 16 million residents, is a likely plaintiff. These disputes will likely go to the International Court of Justice at the UN, the judges of which, however, have traditionally been drawn more from the Colonial North than the colonised South.

    This article was published earlier in ‘Informed Comment‘  and in Scheerpost.com

     

  • Flattery’s Limits: How Pandering to Trump Undermines Pakistan’s Mediation

    Flattery’s Limits: How Pandering to Trump Undermines Pakistan’s Mediation

    Flattery may open doors, but it cannot sustain trust in high-stakes diplomacy. Pakistan’s Trump-centric approach reveals the limits of personality-driven foreign policy.

    Pakistan’s recent foreign policy under a hybrid regime led by its Field Marshal Asif Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is heavily influenced by a personality-driven dynamic, particularly in its engagement with Donald Trump. As pointed out by Mehdi Hasan, a British-American journalist and political commentator, in an interview with NDTV, Pakistanis have “done a good job of sucking up to Trump,” underscoring a growing reliance on flattery and ego-boosting tactics to remain in Trump’s good books.

    When Flattery Becomes a Diplomatic Constraint

    From the early phase of Donald Trump’s second term, especially after developments like Operation Sindoor, Pakistan openly credited Trump for ceasefire efforts—something India refrained from doing. Islamabad went further by nominating Trump multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize. At many international platforms, particularly during the Gaza Board of Peace meeting in Washington and earlier at the Gaza peace summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, Pakistan’s leadership left no stone unturned in praising Trump, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif describing him as a “man of peace” and even a “saviour of South Asia.” Even during recent ceasefire extensions by Trump, Pakistan continued this pattern of excessive praise.

    This reflected a calculated strategy: to appeal to Trump’s personality, which is widely perceived as ego-driven and narcissistic. By consistently affirming his self-image and constantly putting messages into his psychological zone of acceptance. Pakistan managed to secure his attention and, to some extent, his favour. Of course, the United States has its own strategic calculations—particularly regarding Iran—but the personal dimension of Trump’s leadership style makes such flattery tactically useful in the short term.

    However, this approach is now showing clear limitations, especially in the context of reaching any peace deal with Iran. The very strategy that helped Pakistan gain proximity is now constraining its ability to act as a credible intermediary. Because Islamabad has focused primarily on sending positive, non-confrontational messages to Trump, it appears reluctant—or unable—to convey messages that might irritate or challenge him.

    This concern has been explicitly raised by Iranian voices. Iranian analysts and officials have questioned whether Pakistan is genuinely transmitting Tehran’s positions to Washington. One such voice, Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei, pointed out that Pakistan is no longer seen as a neutral mediator. According to him, Islamabad selectively communicates, prioritising Trump’s preferences over balanced diplomacy. He stated that Pakistan “lacks the necessary credibility” and “always takes Trump’s ego into account and does not say a word against his wishes,” underscoring a growing perception that its role as an intermediary is increasingly compromised.

    Importantly, the United States now appears to be echoing similar concerns. A CNN report published on May 12, 2026, titled “Trump increasingly considers resuming large-scale military action against Iran,” stated that many Trump administration officials believed Pakistan had been sharing “a more positive version of the Iranian position with the US than what reflects reality,” while also questioning whether Islamabad was “aggressively conveying Trump’s displeasure” to Tehran. Significantly, an earlier CNN report published on May 6, 2026, titled “US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says,” had already hinted at scepticism inside the White House, noting that Pakistani mediators were presenting an optimistic assessment of Iranian flexibility that some US officials did not fully share.

    This is the core psychological flaw in a personality-centric foreign policy. When diplomacy is personalised to accommodate one man’s ego, it is bound to hinder strategic flexibility. Mediators must be in a position to deliver awkward truths and dissenting opinions. But when a state is afraid to upset a leader like Trump, it starts filtering messages, putting them into what can be called the ‘zone of psychological acceptance.’ Anything outside that zone is open to suppression.

    Erosion of Trust and Mediation Credibility

    As a result, trust erodes. Iran’s scepticism about Pakistan’s neutrality is not incidental—it is a direct consequence of this ego-management strategy. Even technical issues, such as disagreements over the scope of ceasefire agreements—for example, whether regions like Lebanon were included when the initial ceasefire between the United States and Iran was reached—became points of contention because communication was filtered, biased, and incomplete. This then became a major point of contention, with Iran maintaining that Lebanon formed part of the ceasefire framework, while the United States rejected this interpretation, deepening mistrust and reinforcing perceptions of inconsistency in how the agreement was conveyed. As Ebrahim Rezaei further said, “They are unwilling to tell the world that America first accepted Pakistan’s proposal but then went back on its word. They do not say that the Americans had commitments regarding Lebanon or the blocked assets, but that they failed to fulfil them. A mediator must be impartial, not always leaning to one side.”

    In the long run, such a policy is unsustainable. Personality-driven diplomacy may yield short-term visibility and tactical gains, but it weakens institutional credibility. Relationships built around individuals rather than enduring interests and institutions tend to fade with political transitions. When leadership changes in Washington, Pakistan may once again find itself marginalised, having invested too heavily in a single personality rather than in a broader strategic framework.

    As Pakistani security analyst and president of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Muhammad Amir Rana, warned in his February 1, 2026, article “Pakistan’s Trump Test” published in Dawn, “The post-Trump phase will test Pakistan’s diplomacy and political leadership,” while also questioning “how far the country can maintain its relevance” once Trump exits the political stage. Rana further argued that Pakistan’s current diplomatic positioning is too closely tied to a “Trump-endorsed defence equation” and cautioned that, without developing “alternative strategic options,” Islamabad could face increasing diplomatic marginalisation in the future. These concerns reinforce the broader perception that Pakistan’s recent diplomatic gains are heavily dependent on Trump-era political dynamics rather than on durable institutional and bipartisan foundations in Washington.

    Playing to a leader’s ego can open doors, but it also shrinks the space for honest diplomacy. Pakistan’s experience suggests that an over-reliance on psychological appeasement in foreign policy can compromise both credibility and effectiveness in complex negotiations. As also noted by American psychologist Michael Maccoby in his book, “The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership,” leaders with strong narcissistic traits may initially respond positively to admiration and validation. However, their effectiveness tends to decline over time as underlying behavioural patterns become more visible. In such contexts, strategies based on flattery and ego management may generate short-term gains but ultimately constrain credibility and weaken long-term influence.

  • Part 2 – Air India 171’s Final Transmissions point to FADEC cutting Fuel, Leading to Crash

    Part 2 – Air India 171’s Final Transmissions point to FADEC cutting Fuel, Leading to Crash

    This article (part 2 and final) and part 1, published earlier, are part of the investigative analysis by journalist Rachel Chitra on the Air India-171 crash in Ahmedabad last June.  The analysis is tentative, based on information the journalist accessed. The tentative analysis and likely conclusions are entirely those of the author and do not reflect in any way the position or views of the TPF  –  TPF Editorial Team.

     

    In the previous part 1, we discussed how core network degradation likely caused the failure of multiple components. Like “the one ring to rule them all” in The Lord of the Rings, the core network is the one system that connects some 22 flight-critical and 28 flight-non-critical systems, and yet it was flagged only “medium risk” thanks to Boeing certification for the 787.

    Now we piece together the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle — the ACARS fault codes, core network failure, and the FADEC misinterpretation that likely triggered TCMA fuel cutoff mid-air. The moment the airplane’s digital system killed itself.

    By Rachel Chitra

    The morning, everything went dark

    On June 12, when Air India flight AI-171 started rolling at 1:37:37 PM IST and lifted off from Ahmedabad, no one had any reason to suspect anything was wrong. Mothers were settling children into their seats, flight attendants Lamnunthem Singson and Nganthoi Kongbrailatpam had secured the galley latches, and two experienced pilots, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunders, guided the Boeing 787 to the runway for what should have been a routine afternoon flight to London.

    But disaster struck shortly after liftoff at 1:38:39 PM IST.

    Three seconds into takeoff at 1:38:42 IST, AI 171’s systems were screaming… “247450002 597…252490002 597…252390002 597…,” as per data from two independent sources.

    Strings of fault codes. Indicating that major systems, including flight control computers, were going down, taking dozens of subsystems and a bunch of sensors in their wake.

    Systems failing faster than pilots could run a checklist

    Three seconds into takeoff, when the pilots were trying to make sense of what was happening, the “Master caution” light would’ve flashed in their faces; directly in front of them on the glareshield panel.

    On the flight, warning display or EICAS (engine indicating and crew alerting system) amber messages should’ve started queuing faster than any human eye could read.

    Messages like “ELEC SYS,” “BUS ISLN,” “GEN OFF BUS”, “RAT DEPLOYED”, “SPOILERS”, “STAB TRIM,”…and then the loss of flight critical data….“AIR DATA SYS”  “ALT DISAGREE,” “MACH DISAGREE,” “CAS DISAGREE,” “CABIN ALT AUTO,” “PACK,” “ZONE TEMP” “DATA COM” “BAT DISCH.”

    But they likely didn’t. Because the plane’s fault reporting system itself had faulted.

    A stroke mid-sky: the cockpit blackout

    Then whole sections of the cockpit display would have frozen on their last readings as the computing and power backbone feeding EICAS collapsed — a sudden, system-wide blackout, like a stroke cutting off blood flow in the brain.

    Cockpit lights would’ve flickered.

    And EICAS’s prophecy would’ve turned true in two seconds when the pilots heard a sickening sound…. the sound of the left engine spooling down; and before the plane could yaw with the asymmetric thrust…the right engine winding down as well. And in the eerie silence filling the cockpit, they wouldn’t have been able to hear the loud, rackety sound of the Ram Air Turbine (RAM) spinning in the air.

    Computers Rebooted, Went to Ground Mode in the Sky

    But the RAM, the only working generator at that point on the plane, housed roughly 23 metres away from the cockpit in the 56.7 metre long body of the 787-8, would need a few more seconds to start generating hydraulic power and even more time to supply electrical power to feed critical flight instruments.

    Capt Sumeet and First Officer Clive wouldn’t have known, but the Flight Control Computers (FCC) likely had gone into reboot.

    And while rebooting, the logic deep inside the computers would have silently flipped to its fail-safe “ground mode,” before it started up, analysed and flipped back to “air mode.”

    Yet in the face of the most bizarre and unprecedented of circumstances.

    Two men still did their duty.

    Captain Sumeet. The man who took over the aircraft. Started APU. Attempted relight.

    And First Officer Clive, who ably assisted him, who ran checklists. Called ATC, who declared “Mayday.”

    Engines Dead at 625 Feet — Pilots Still Fought to Bring the Jet Back

    At that point, dual engine failure at a height of only 625 feet above sea level (minus Ahmedabad airport elevation of 190 feet) leaves a very narrow margin for relit attempts to have worked, even if they could have.

    But both pilots did try, even as the brutal reality of their situation must have hit them like a speeding truck.

    The AAIB report says the auxiliary power unit (APU) inlet door had started opening 17 seconds (1:38:54 IST) before the crash. And if it was opening, it could’ve only been the action of the pilots; only they would’ve switched on the auxiliary power, said flight engineers across airlines. Reason being the plane’s auto start logic would’ve been inhibited given the electric arc and the nature of some of the faults underway, which we discussed in part 1 of the investigation.

    If the hand on APU start was pilot’s — Suicide theory falls flat on its face

    And it’s not just flight engineers, even pilots say the same. “If they were faced with blank screens….at that point more than a memory item from a checklist, the immediate concern of the pilots would’ve been to get the plane’s power back on, and they’d have certainly turned on the APU,” says Sam Thomas, president, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).

    Even though AAIB in its preliminary report seems to hint it was the system that triggered the APU with this line: “The APU Inlet Door began opening at about 1:38:54 IST, consistent with the APU Auto Start logic.”

    “But then if it turns out it was manual action; that the pilots were doing their best to save the plane, it doesn’t fit the whole pilot suicide theory, does it?” asks an Air India pilot.

    And here lies the crux of AI 171, where billions are at stake. If you could blame the pilots and not the plane; then more than 1,100 Dreamliners could continue to fly across the globe.

    When AI 171 spent more time on the runway than in air

    At 1:19:12 PM IST, AAIB reports that Air Traffic Control (ATC) queried if AI 171 required the full length of the runway. Pilot monitoring Captain Sumeet likely told ATC they needed the full length of Runway 23. Standard for a heavy, long-haul Dreamliner on a hot day.

    Sometime in that crucial minute between runway roll, takeoff and flight, at 1.38 PM IST, an ACARS code (163600003) shows that there seems to have been a problem with the left and right thrust reversers and their locking sensors, which are the devices that tell the jet’s engine computer FADEC whether the engine’s rear doors are properly sealed for forward thrust.

    AI 171’s 62-second roll: when the engine chose safety over speed

    If the thrust reverser doors aren’t fully sealed, hot exhaust air could leak forward into the engine’s intake, disrupting smooth airflow and causing the engine to lose power or stall. So, to ward against that, FADEC will limit thrust.

    Possibly a reason why AI 171 spent more time on the runway than in air. “It took 62 seconds on the runway. A clean takeoff roll should take only 40-42 seconds,” says Capt Amit Singh, the petitioner in the Air India case in the Supreme Court, and a commercial airline pilot.

    The difference isn’t trivial: it points to an airplane struggling to reach take-off speed.

    Acceleration on ground vs in air

    And this becomes clearer when one looks at the acceleration data. Aviation Herald editor and electronics engineer Simon Hradecky said, “The AAIB report states that between 08:08:35-42 UTC (1:38:35-42 PM IST) the aircraft accelerated from 155 to 180 knots IAS. That’s an acceleration of almost 4 knots a second in air versus acceleration of 2.6 knots a second on the ground.”

    Normally, as the plane’s nose begins rising at about 3° per second, lift increases, drag rises sharply, and the aircraft naturally stops accelerating the way it did on the runway. But AI 171 did the opposite. It shot up. Hradecky adds, “the aircraft will still accelerate at takeoff…however, at a much slower pace…in about the range of acceleration on the ground. Certainly not at nearly 4 knots a second.”

    Explaining further, he says, once the aircraft begins rotating at about 3° per second, induced drag should rise quickly, even while the aircraft is still on the ground. As the nose comes up and the lift vector tilts further backwards, that induced drag begins to grow and can exceed the drag the tyres were producing. At the same time, as the wings generate more lift, weight is progressively removed from the tyres, so tyre drag falls away until it becomes zero at unstick. But this reduction in tyre drag is replaced by increasing induced drag as lift builds.

    He adds that there is another reason acceleration should slow after liftoff. As the aircraft accelerates vertically into the climb, it needs more lift than just enough to balance its weight. A G-load of +1G would merely hold vertical speed constant; to increase climb rate, the aircraft needs more than that. But as lift increases, induced drag rises too, further limiting acceleration until the aircraft settles into a stable climb.

    So while an aircraft does continue to accelerate after becoming airborne, Hradecky says that under normal conditions, this is usually only at around one knot per second, so long as the pitch remains reasonably below the climb angle and the aircraft is still rotating at about 3 degrees per second. Only once the aircraft reaches that climb angle does airspeed stop increasing, with thrust and drag coming into balance.

    That is why, Hradecky says, an acceleration of 4 knots per second once airborne, especially sustained over seven seconds from 155 to 180 knots IAS, is unrealistic in normal operations. In his view, it indicates that almost immediately after liftoff, the crew were already dealing with an abnormal situation, and the pitch did not increase as per SOP; instead, the pitch angle was unusually low. This, he says, is also supported by the CCTV video, which appears to show a small pitch-down within a second after becoming airborne, after which the pitch does not increase again. Without being able to measure the pitch angle precisely from the CCTV footage, and with no such data published in the preliminary report, Hradecky estimates the aircraft may have been at around 9 degrees of pitch rather than the roughly 15 degrees that would be more normal.

    The aircraft accelerating faster after getting airborne than it did across the length of the runway is a telltale fingerprint of something holding the jet back; something like maybe the reversers (ACARS code 163600003), say, pilots and engineers. The AAIB report mentions the physical position of the reverser levers, “that they were bent but in the stowed position.” But AAIB doesn’t mention its digital position recorded in the black box or enhanced airborne flight recorders (EAFR).

    Seconds after liftoff, AI 171’s power grid collapse

    The aircraft lifted off at 1:38:39 PM IST, as per AAIB. With multiple electrical faults already unfolding, power transients were almost inevitable.

    Reverse-engineering the fault sequence, engineers say it’s likely the trigger for RAT deployment happened one second after liftoff at 1:38:40 PM IST. And RAT deployed two seconds later at 1:38:42 PM IST.

    In part 1, we discussed how a high-voltage inverter could’ve arced and struck the forward and aft avionics bays (ACARS codes 247450002, 252490002, 252390002, 247460002). Now, this would likely have resulted in a power loss and a reboot of all three flight control computers (FCCs) by 1:38:43 PM IST, four seconds into takeoff. And the possibility of all three flight control computers rebooting mid-air, the FAA warned about as early as 2016, as per a Seattle Times report. To ward off against the eventuality, the FAA recommends a 21-day power cycle. Air India did not respond to whether such a 21-day power cycle was performed by the airline’s maintenance staff or the maintenance arm, Air India Engineering Services Ltd (AIESL).

    A jet in the sky — with systems flipped to “on ground”

    So that second 1:38:43 PM IST, when all three flight control computers rebooted, nearly every flight parameter on the plane — Weight-on-Wheels, thrust reversers, flaps, spoilers, landing gear, stabiliser trim — would’ve gone to their fail-safe mode, which would be “on ground.” And a second or two later, the rebooted flight computers would’ve analysed data, realised the true position and gone back to “in air” mode.

    “Air-ground logic is based on several parameters, so not only WoW.  For example, thrust reversers and ground spoilers may only work when WoW is TRUE “on ground”, radio altitude is below a certain altitude, and wheel speed is not zero,” says Joe Jacobsen, a former aerospace engineer with Boeing and deputy director with Foundation for Aviation Safety. He adds, “The details differ for different aircraft models.”

    And now let’s see how that power loss and subsequent flight computer reboot would’ve affected each component on board. Let’s start with the landing gears.

    FO Cliver raised gear, power cut likely stopped it halfway

    If First Officer Clive had commanded gear “UP” at 1:38:42 PM IST, the gear would’ve started retracting, and then milliseconds into the command, it would’ve stopped had the plane faced a major power disruption. Given that the plane was already reporting operational errors in the hydraulic right pump (HYDIF Right) 15 minutes before takeoff at 1:23 IST. And the left hydraulic pump’s primary electrical path was R2, which would put it directly in the line of fire when the high-voltage inverter of the CMSC R2 line arced, as we discussed in part 1.

    Possible sequence of events:

    • The AAIB report notes that the landing gear lever was found in the “DOWN” position, but this refers to its physical state post-crash and post-fire. Not the blackbox or EAFR recording.
    • If three seconds into takeoff, First Officer Clive commanded the gear “UP,” EAFR will record the command.
    • And if three seconds into takeoff, there was a power disruption, EAFR will also record its after-effects. And the gear retraction stopping halfway.

    With logic flipped to ground: spoilers can deploy, reversers can arm

     At the fourth second into takeoff at 1:38:43 PM IST, if the flight control computers had rebooted its logic would’ve flipped to fail-safe mode, which is “on ground.”

    Now, if the systems think the plane is landing (“on ground”), the flat panels on the top surface of an aircraft’s wings, called the spoilers, will auto deploy. The intention is to create drag and disrupt the airflow so that the aircraft slows down safely and stays on the runway.

    In the air, spoilers are inhibited from deploying, as doing so would break the smooth airflow around the wings and cause the plane to stall. But on AI 171, spoilers likely auto-deployed because the flight computers rebooted and, for a second, went into “ground” mode.

    The Reverser–Spoiler Double Blow

    Remember the thrust reverser faults (1636000030) we discussed earlier that could have resulted in FADEC limiting thrust on the runway? Well, if the flight computers go from “in air” to “on ground,” then thrust reversers would go from “stowed” to “idle reverse.” At takeoff, engines direct airflow backwards to propel the aircraft forward. But if the thrust reversers were in “idle reverse”, they would redirect airflow in the opposite direction, providing a gentle braking effect, like when the plane needs to land and slow down on the runway.

    If both the spoilers and thrust reversers were deployed mid-air, even briefly, the aircraft would have faced an immediate loss of lift and forward thrust — a double blow that could stall the jet within seconds of take-off.

    The AAIB report says, “The reverser levers were bent but were in the ‘stowed’ position.” Engineers say this must be taken as proof of pilot integrity as their intentions, at least — going by AAIB’s photographs and words — were clearly for the reversers to stay “stowed.” They also note that the AAIB reports refer to the physical position of the reverser levers, not their digital position, as captured by the black box or EAFR.

     AAIB quotes EAFR—just not for the “on ground”-logic-systems

    Engineers say it must be noted that when the data supports a neutral interpretation, like with flap angle, airspeed, AAIB quotes the black box or EAFR. When the data would clarify whether the aircraft entered ground-mode before impact—nose pitch, landing gear, reverser levers, TO/GA, autothrottle—the report relies on describing their physical positions post-crash. “The digital capture for the very systems that determine ‘air’ versus ‘ground,’ for whether there was a stall, for whether the fly-by-wire automated jet went into manual mode — are all conspicuously absent,” says an engineer.

    The AAIB report also omits many crucial timestamps, such as when the first fuel cut-off occurred, when the relight attempts began, and when the engine fan speed reached idle. Timings that crucially can shed light on the behaviour of the engine computers or FADECs, more than AAIB’s words, which are vague.

    AAIB report on FADEC behaviour on AI 171

    “When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is in flight, each engine’s full authority dual engine control (FADEC) automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction,” says the AAIB.

    FADEC is the plane’s full authority digital engine control. But AAIB refers to it as “full authority dual engine control” on page 15 of its report. Lawyers say this mistake — saying “dual” for “digital” and other wordings — in a sentence talking about how FADEC managed a “relight and thrust recovery sequence” could give AAIB “plausible deniability” if tomorrow it came to light that FADEC’s behaviour was different on AI 171.

    In that paragraph, the report describes events such as fuel switches moving back to “RUN” and the APU inlet door opening, with precise timestamps from EAFR. And then…” it does sound as if the AAIB report is referencing how the FADEC procedure should work rather than explaining exactly what did happen on 171…underscoring the need for an independent evaluation of the actual FDR and any ACARS data to understand what was actually occurring with the automated systems,” says US attorney Michael Andrews, who is representing the families of the victims from the AI 171 crash.

    When automation can pull the plug

    So what did the engine computer FADEC really do on that plane? According to Boeing training manuals, if the plane switches to “on ground” logic in the air, the engine computers’ FADEC can initiate a fuel cutoff. If the conditions for something obtuse, called TCMA or thrust control malfunction accommodation, were met.

    What is this TCMA? And why did Boeing design it?

    Few phases of flight are as critical as takeoff, when both engines are at full power, and the aircraft is still on the ground. In this phase, there’s almost no time or room to correct an error before the plane hits the aircraft perimeter wall, nearby buildings, or other planes.

    TCMA: FADEC’s Watchdog

    To prevent accidents on the ground, Boeing and its subcontractors GE Aerospace and Safran designed TCMA — a protection circuit and software logic — for FADEC to prevent dangerous thrust.

    When it comes to the question of how much engine power to command, passengers would be surprised to learn it isn’t the pilots but FADEC that calls the shots. Engine computer FADEC continuously compares the pilot’s commanded thrust with the engine’s actual output and calculates whether the thrust is accelerating or decelerating as expected. If the system detects that the thrust is inconsistent with the commands, the FADEC interprets this as a thrust control malfunction. In that case, it automatically shuts off fuel to the engine.

    1:38:44 PM IST: Second AI 171 Likely Entered TCMA Kill Zone

    As per TCMA patent documents and Boeing literature, for a TCMA event, all of the following conditions must be true:

    • Airplane is on the ground
    • Airspeed is less than 200 knots
    • Altitude is less than 17,500 feet
    • Selected N1 (engine fan speed) is more than the TCMA threshold

    And in AI 171’s case, at 1:38:44 PM IST, four of these conditions were likely met.

    • Airplane is on the ground = Flight computers rebooted, logic went to “on ground”
    • Airspeed is less than 200 knots
    • Altitude is less than 17,500 feet = maximum altitude reached was around 435 feet, going by ADS-B transponder data minus Ahmedabad airport elevation
    • Selected engine fan speed (N1) is more than the threshold = possible given the takeoff thrust

    So how did FADEC see TCMA engine’s actual fan speed (N1) as incompatible with the commanded takeoff thrust? Why did it sense danger?

    On data recorded in the black box, AAIB says, “EAFR data revealed that the thrust levers remained forward (takeoff thrust) until the impact.”

    AAIB’s statement is actually proof of pilots’ integrity, say engineers, “as it shows pilots’ intention – that they kept the thrust in forward from takeoff to crash.” Engineers also say AAIB’s statement that throttles were in “forward”, along with GE documents, can point to a different story.

    Inside the Boolean Gating Trap: FADEC’s Blind Spot

    Older GE engines had a logic condition (Boolean gating) of “AND.” Meaning throttles “AND” thrust reversers have to be in “idle” for TCMA activation. But pilots found that inconvenient, as for certain ground manoeuvres during taxiing and initial rollouts, they keep the thrust levers in forward and the reverser levers in idle.

    So, for newer GEnx engines developed by GE Aerospace in partnership with Safran, the logic condition was changed from “AND” to “OR,” according to sources at GE and Air India. Meaning either throttle “OR” thrust reversers can be in “idle” for TCMA to activate if FADEC feels thrust is not proportional to airspeed.

    And on AI 171, we do know that there was both a thrust reverser fault (163600003) and flight control computers likely rebooted; and thrust reverser status could’ve gone to fail-safe mode of “idle reverse.”

    So then AI 171 had throttles in forward and thrust reversers, likely in “idle reverse”, so some TCMA conditions were met. But TCMA would also require engine speed (N1) to be disproportionate to airspeed data. So what was happening on AI 171 that caused FADEC to believe the engine thrust was dangerously high?

    Airspeed data failure on AI 171

    The whole series of ACARS codes accessed and sent to Boeing was topped off with “EM12R0.” EM12R0 indicates a disagreement in airspeed data. Now, on an average day with 1,100 Dreamliners in the sky, nearly 80-100 Dreamliners can fly with this code with no harm, as it just indicates one of the channels for air speed calculation disagreed with another. But on AI 171, it could’ve proved disastrous given some of the other failures underway.

    EM12R0 indicates engine monitoring (EM) on channel 12; i.e., the total air temperature (TAT) probe fell to zero (R=0), meaning its inputs were no longer considered valid. This brings us then to the question of whether FADEC got calibrated airspeed (CAS) on AI 171? Was a failure to get CAS the reason for the whole series of failures, topped off by “EM12R0”?

    True airspeed: Lion Air 610 crash investigation vs AAIB report

    In crash investigations such as Air France 447 and Lion Air 610, authorities published the IAS (indicated airspeed), CAS (calibrated airspeed), and TAS (true airspeed). In contrast, the AAIB report in every reference to airspeed only mentions IAS: “take-off decision speed V1 153 kts IAS…maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS.”

    Now, one mystery in AAIB’s discussion of indicated airspeed (IAS) is: what was the engine computer FADEC getting? Because FADEC does not accept a raw value like IAS. It only accepts calculated values like CAS and Mach, which represent the aircraft’s speed relative to sound. While IAS requires only pitot tubes to be operational, calculated values like CAS and Mach require additional components, such as the total air temperature probe (TAT), to be operational as well.

    Now, before roll, the engine computer FADEC needs valid feeds, including calibrated airspeed (CAS), to set thrust. So at 1:37:35 PM IST — two seconds before roll — FADEC has to have a valid CAS from the flight computers via the core network for it to set thrust.

    At this point, the system is not dependent on the TAT probes, but on an inlet cabin temperature probe. This is because the external TAT probe is an aspirated probe, meaning it needs airflow – the plane doesn’t start using it till it crosses 50 knots.

    Frozen Airspeed: FADEC voting logic, the pathway to TCMA Activation

    At about 1:37:56 UTC, the aircraft crossed 50 knots. And that’s when AI 171 must have switched to using its external TAT probe.

    FADEC in normal mode will not accept a single feed for airspeed data, in case it’s false or invalid. FADEC will use voting logic for airspeed data. It will vote on multiple feeds and accept only if two or more readings are consistent.

    FADEC takes calibrated airspeed (CAS) data from multiple feeds (internal T12 TAT probe + FCM L + FCM R + FCM C). Only if two or more feeds are consistent will it accept their value. If not, then FADEC will latch onto “last known good value.”

    So, for calibrated airspeed (CAS), FADEC might have latched on to “last known good value” of around 176 knots at 1:38:41 PM IST, or 50 knots at 1:37:56 PM IST. With the first timestamp being, if we assume flight computers lost TAT readings only after a power disruption caused by an electric arc. And the second timestamp, if we assume flight computers lost TAT readings at the handover point on roll, when the system stopped using the cabin probe and switched to external TAT once the plane crossed 50 knots.

    Triple Redundancy on Paper—TAT A Single-Point Failure in Reality

    Now the normal assumption would be that each flight computer has its own TAT probe, so that each of the three flight computers has its own data source, i.e., three TAT probes. The 787 has three pitot tubes and two angle-of-attack sensors.

    But in reality, the 787 has mapped all its three flight computers to the same single external TAT probe. So even though the 787 looks like it has triple redundancy for airspeed data on paper. In reality, each FADEC obtains its airspeed data from its own internal TAT and the three flight computers (FCM L, FCM R, and FCM C).

    But if all three flight computers reboot at the same time or the TAT probe failed earlier, FADEC will latch onto the last known good calibrated airspeed (CAS) value, which could have been 176 knots or 50 knots. When FADEC’s own internal TAT probe (T12) showed the correct reading of the plane as it accelerated to 187–191 knots IAS at 1:38:43 PM IST, four seconds after liftoff, FADEC will assume its own probe is wrong, generating the ACARS error code “EM12R0.”

    A likely catastrophic logic error by FADEC, leading to the death of 260 people.

    The last few seconds on AI 171

    No altitude. No thrust. No starter power. Capt Sumeet would’ve sensed this reality as early as the 15-16th second into liftoff.

    As he was toggling the fuel switches back to RUN for a relight attempt, he’d have known the truth. The plane couldn’t be saved.

    But he and First Officer Kunders still did their best.

    Capt Sumeet attempted a relight. Started the APU.

    First Officer Clive communicated with ATC. Called out “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY” at 1:39:05 PM IST.

    The pilots likely never even received the “Pull up, Pull up” terrain warnings.

    Against the deafening silence of blacked-out systems, the only sounds Capt Sumeet and First Officer Clive would’ve heard were passenger screams and ATC’s responses — as the ground closed in on them.

    (Disclaimer: The AAIB has not yet released its final report on the AI-171 crash. All the technical scenarios presented here are based on preliminary information and evidence submitted to India’s Parliament and Supreme Court, and remain hypotheses. Also, the ACARS codes mentioned in the story are not a direct map to maintenance faults listed in Boeing’s Fault Isolation Manual, since maintenance faults are 7-8-digit strings. The 9-digit ACARS string is only partially recognisable to engineers as it is Boeing’s proprietary code. For this story on conditions of anonymity, we have spoken to pilots plus flight and design engineers for airlines and Boeing in India, Europe and the US; and for details on actuators, sensors, structural engineering, logic paths to IT, mechanical, electrical and electronics engineers from India who are Boeing subcontractors)

     

    Feature Image: www.livelaw.in

     

  • Book Review: ‘Democracy and its Critics – Robert A Dahl

    Book Review: ‘Democracy and its Critics – Robert A Dahl

     

    Robert A. Dahl’s Democracy and Its Critics (1989) is one of the most important works in modern political theory, examining the strengths and weaknesses of democracy. In this book, Dahl seeks to answer a fundamental question: Is democracy really the best form of government, despite its many criticisms? To answer this, he examines the arguments made by different thinkers who support and oppose democracy. By doing this, Dahl not only defends democracy but also explains its limitations and how it can work better in modern societies.

    One of the key ideas in the book is that democracy should not be understood solely as an ideal system in which everyone directly participates in decision-making. In reality, modern societies are large and complex; therefore, the direct participation of all citizens in every decision is not possible. Because of this, Dahl introduces the concept of “polyarchy.” Polyarchy is a practical form of democracy that exists in most modern nations. In such systems, citizens participate mainly through representatives elected by popular vote. According to Dahl, polyarchy includes features such as free and fair elections, freedom of expression, access to diverse sources of information, and the ability of people to organise and form political groups.

    Another important idea discussed in the book is political equality. Dahl argues that democracy is grounded in the principle that all citizens should be treated as politically equal. This means that every person should have an equal opportunity to express their views and influence political decisions. In democratic systems, this is usually achieved through voting, political participation, and open public debate. Dahl believes that democracy is morally justified because it respects equality among citizens.

    However, Dahl also recognises that democracy has long faced criticism. One of the earliest criticisms comes from classical philosophers such as Plato, who believed that democracy could lead to poor decision-making because ordinary people may lack the knowledge or expertise to govern. According to this argument, decisions in a democracy may be based more on emotion or popular opinion than on rational thought. Critics worry that this could lead to instability and ineffective governance.

    Dahl responds to this criticism by explaining that although citizens may not always have perfect knowledge, no other political system has proved better at protecting people’s rights and interests than democracy. In authoritarian or elite-controlled systems, decisions may be made by a small group that may not represent the interests of the majority. Democracy, despite its flaws, allows citizens to participate and hold leaders accountable.

    The book also examines Marxist criticisms of democracy. Marxist thinkers argue that democracy in capitalist societies is not truly equal, because economic inequality leads to political inequality. In other words, wealthy individuals and corporations often have more political influence than ordinary citizens. They can fund political campaigns, influence the media, and lobby governments to advance their interests. This means that, even though everyone has the right to vote, some groups still have more political power than others.

    Dahl agrees that economic inequality can pose problems for democracies. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, those individuals may gain greater influence over political decisions. However, he argues that democracy still provides citizens with tools to challenge such inequalities. Through elections, political parties, public debate, and civil society organisations, people can push for reforms and hold governments to account.

    Another issue Dahl discusses is the role of elites in democratic systems. In large societies, it is unrealistic for every citizen to participate in every policy decision-making process. Consequently, many decisions are made by political leaders, bureaucrats, and experts. Some critics argue that this means democracies are actually controlled by elites rather than ordinary citizens. Dahl accepts that elites play an important role in modern governance but emphasises that democratic systems include mechanisms to keep them accountable. Regular elections, competition among political parties, and freedom of speech help ensure that leaders remain responsive to public opinion.

    The book also highlights some of the challenges that democracy faces in the contemporary world. One of the biggest concerns is growing economic inequality, which can undermine political equality. If some individuals or groups have far more resources than others, they may dominate political discussions and decision-making. This can erode trust in democratic institutions and leave citizens feeling that their voices do not matter in the political process.

    Despite these challenges, Dahl remains optimistic about the future of democracy. He believes that democracy has a unique ability to adapt and correct its mistakes. Because democratic societies allow open discussion and criticism, they can identify problems and work towards solutions. For example, citizens can demand policy changes, support new political movements, or replace leaders through elections.

    One of the strengths of Democracy and Its Critics is that Dahl does not blindly praise democracy. Instead, he carefully examines its weaknesses while explaining why it remains the most acceptable form of government. His discussion of criticisms, from classical philosophers to modern political theories, makes the book intellectually rich and thought-provoking. At the same time, his concept of polyarchy helps readers understand how democracy actually functions in real-world political systems.

    However, the book has some limitations. Some scholars argue that Dahl does not fully address the extent to which economic power shapes politics. While he acknowledges the problem, critics contend that in many societies economic inequality is so pronounced that it significantly weakens democratic participation. Additionally, the book mainly focuses on democracy within individual countries and does not fully explore how democratic principles apply to global institutions and international decision-making.

    Overall, Democracy and Its Critics remains an important contribution to the study of democracy. It helps readers understand both the strengths and weaknesses of democratic systems. Dahl shows that democracy is imperfect, yet it remains the most legitimate and flexible system of government available. By enabling citizens to participate in politics and hold leaders accountable, democracies create opportunities for continuous improvement and reform.

    In conclusion, Robert A. Dahl’s Democracy and Its Critics offers a thoughtful, balanced analysis of democracy and the arguments against it. The book encourages readers to think critically about democratic institutions and the challenges they face in the contemporary world. Although democracy has many flaws, Dahl convincingly argues that it remains the best available system for securing political equality, protecting citizens’ rights, and enabling societies to evolve over time. For students of political science and anyone interested in governance, this book offers valuable insights into how democracy works and why it continues to matter today.

     

    The book ‘Democracy and Its Critics’, authored by Robert A. Dahl, was first published in 1989 by Yale University Press.

    Robert A. Dahl was an American political theorist and Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He established the pluralist theory of democracy—in which political outcomes are enacted through competitive, if unequal, interest groups—and introduced “polyarchy” as a descriptor of actual democratic governance.

  • Part 1 – Air India 171 Crash: NO-GO Fault & Electric Arc

    Part 1 – Air India 171 Crash: NO-GO Fault & Electric Arc

    Air India crash: How AI 171 had NO-GO faults and still flew; leading to electrical cascade, systems failure

    There is exclusive evidence that Air India 171 reported multiple NO-GO faults 15 minutes before takeoff and was still allowed to fly. Faults that likely resulted in an electric arc on the plane; as a high voltage inverter reached its thermal and dielectric limit, frying the emergency beacon, tail blackbox and knocking out the flight computers and avionics rack – a situation that ultimately could’ve led to engine computer FADEC getting corrupted data and cutting off fuel mid-air.

     

    AI 171 was one of the shortest flights in aviation history. 32 seconds in total. From takeoff to crash.

    A deadly tragedy that claimed the lives of 260. While everyone is familiar with the names of the pilots – Capt Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Cliver Kunders. On duty that afternoon of June 12, 2025, were also Air India 171 crew members like Shradha Dhavan, Aparna Mahadik, Saineeta Chakravarty, Nganthoi Sharma Kongbrailatpam, Deepak Pathak, Maithili Patil, Irfan Shaikh, Lamnunthem Singson, Roshni Rajendra Songhare and Manisha Thapa. Their names — representative of the ethnic diversity and cultural richness of India; just as much as the passenger list represented the broader global connect on that fateful day.

    All of them boarded the flight, unaware that AI 171’s systems had likely begun unraveling. Months, days earlier. Deep beneath their feet; inside the aircraft’s labyrinth of wires and power buses.

    The first domino: a failing core network

    On June 9, 2025, maintenance staff logged that the plane’s core network was degrading, as per the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) preliminary report. But because Boeing in its operations notes to airlines minimised the damage an inoperative core network could do; maintenance marked the core network as medium-risk (can be fixed in 10 days). And this core network connected about 22 flight critical systems, including FADEC; apart from 28 other more mundane functionalities like the plane’s air conditioning. And later in this article, we’ll show how this was the more important fault and how it connects to all the other failures that followed.

    But prior to core network degradation, the plane was already reporting cabin and cargo related faults in the weeks prior to the crash, as per the AAIB report. Engineers say this points to an intermittent electrical integrity fault affecting the common core cabinets and network interfaces — i.e., the shared platform that hosts cabin and cargo functions and flight critical systems. Now this could be because of electrical fault in the power conditioning module (PCM) — essentially the core cabinet’s internal power supply — which provides regulated electrical power to the aircraft’s network hardware, including the the data traffic router or ARINC 664 Cabinet Switch (ACS) and the the copper-to-fibre signal converter Fibre Optic Translator (FOX).

    And it’s first victim was the common data network (CDN) or core network on June 9 (marked “medium-risk” or CAT C MEL), followed by a fire inerter, a stabilizer motor trim unit and then all three of the plane’s flight control modules by crash day.

    Now let’s take a closer look at the second domino in the chain of failures. On June 10, the plane’s fire inerter or nitrogen generation system (NGS) — which prevents fires in the fuel tanks by depleting oxygen and replacing it with nitrogen — faulted. It was marked as “high risk” (CAT A MEL) and was likely physically inhibited by maintenance.

    (Credit: Federal published content)

    In technical terms, the AAIB report notes that the core network got marked a CAT C MEL or “medium-risk,” while the fire inerter got a CAT A MEL or “high-risk.” MELs or minimum equipment lists are the faults with which a plane is allowed to fly, provided it fixes these issues within a specified number of days. And on the day of the crash, Air India had 7 more days to fix the core network issue (till June 19, 2025) and 8 more days to fix the fire inerter issue, as per the AAIB report.

    But the issues kept piling up and then there was a third domino. On June 12, the day of the crash, the stabilizer motor unit and sensors faulted and had to be replaced on the previous morning flight (AI 423 Delhi to Ahmedabad), as per reports.

    D-Day: A jet in fault mode, a cockpit left blind

    The plane’s condition kept deteriorating.

    On June 12, 2025, the day of the crash, 15 minutes before takeoff; at 1.23 PM IST, the aircraft’s ACARS logs started streaming… “BPCU OPS…FCM OPS…CMCF OPS…GPM OPS….HYDIF OPS….”

    “OPS” in Boeing maintenance parlance is “Operations” — shorthand for a detected operational fault. And AI 171 didn’t have one, but multiple operational faults, according to data shared by two independent sources. Malfunctions serious enough to disrupt electrical power stability and data flow across the length and breadth of the 120-tonne carbon-fiber leviathan.

    (Graphic by Capt Amit Singh)

    A NO-GO plane that still flew

    And not just operational faults, but NO-GO items as well. Regulations don’t permit planes to fly with faults as severe as these. So how did AI 171 still fly with no one being the wiser?

    Rewind to three days earlier, on June 9, when the jet’s core network was marked an active fault. This core network once it starts degrading can also impact the function of the systems that report faults — the Aircraft Condition Monitoring Function (ACMF), the Central Maintenance Computing Function (CMCF), and even the pilots’ Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs).

    Boeing’s internal note itself mentions this possibility, saying, “an inoperative core network could impair the ACARS transmission of faults to the cockpit tablets or EFBs.”

    By June 12, the day of the crash, the timing of the failures had turned vicious. The NO-GO faults were occurring at the exact moment the systems responsible for reporting NO-GO faults were themselves failing. The fault-reporting chain went dark.

    So when maintenance signed off on the jet at 12:10 PM IST and when the pilots performed their checks at 1:23 PM IST — the critical faults or NO-GO items simply never appeared.

    So maintenance didn’t know. Pilots didn’t know. But Boeing would’ve known. And so would Air India.

    The ACARS ring that bound them all: Boeing, Air India, SITA, Inmarsat

    As the plane kept sending out warnings — upstream, Boeing and Air India were seeing everything. Like Sauron’s unblinking eye, they were receiving a ring of real-time data from the aircraft’s digital datalink, ACARS.

    That ring formed a tight closed loop: carried by Air India’s sub-contractor SITA, relayed over satellite provider Inmarsat, and delivered to Air India’s operations centre in Gurugram and Boeing’s data monitoring hub in Belleville, Illinois, US.

    At 1:23 PM IST, that ring flashed three sets of NO-GO warnings. ACARS told everyone in the loop that AI 171’s left and right bus power control units (BPCUs), the computers that act as traffic controllers for electrical power, had entered fault mode, unable to keep the left and right 115-volt AC buses in sync. Meaning the airplane’s two main power highways were falling out of phase, a condition that can cause surges, flickers, or even short-circuits across systems.

    The domino effect: Flight computers, processors fall one by one

    Next, all three flight control modules (FCMs) left, right and centre began reporting operational errors. These are the units at the heart of the 787’s fly-by-wire system. They take instructions from the flight computers and translate pilot inputs into precise movements of the stabilizer, ailerons, and spoilers.

    And it doesn’t stop there. Two general processor modules (GPMs) also faulted. These were the 787’s backstage processors; running key software, performing calculations that feed flight management and crew alerting and the nerve-centre for fault detection and reporting.

    Taken together — the out-of-phase power buses, failing flight control modules, and glitching GPMs — AI 171 wasn’t dealing with a single fault but a system-wide degradation. As pilot Rajneesh S puts it, “Aviation outcomes emerge from complex, tightly coupled systems… failures rarely stem from a single decision or individual lapse.”

    And yet, the plane was cleared for takeoff at 1:25:15 PM IST.

    The plane’s pilots — Capt Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunders, unaware of what was happening inside, guided the plane to the runway. Started roll and lifted-off at 1:38:39 PM IST.

    A surge, an arc, a cascade of collapse

    Now, takeoff is always the most electrically demanding phase of flight — all four power channels, bus control units, and hydraulic pumps draw maximum load as the plane transitions from ground to airborne mode.

    For AI 171, that surge became catastrophic. And core network degradation could’ve caused an electric arc. Now we’ll show you how AI 171’s systems could’ve arced by tracing the failure chain back to what happened on the previous flight of VT-ANB.

    “Gremlins” in VT-ANB; blank screens to blackout

     

    A few hours before the crash, passenger Akash Vatsa — seated aboard the same aircraft VT-ANB on its previous flight (AI 423) from Delhi to Ahmedabad— recorded a short video complaining that the air-conditioning and in-flight entertainment weren’t working, and that even the crew call buttons were dead. Post-crash when he posted the video, viewers mocked him —  calling him a fussy traveller who didn’t understand aircraft systems. But Akash was perhaps unknowingly documenting the first public evidence of a deep electrical failure spreading through VT-ANB’s core.

    Trolled for it; but 787’s Architecture vindicated Akash

    “I was badly trolled, people said I was just doing it to gain publicity; linking the inflight entertainment with air conditioning makes no sense and neither it has anything to do with the crash…I was told a non-working AC and inflight entertainment is very common in Air India,” Akash Vatsa told this reporter.

    But turns out Akash was right. On the 787, the in-flight entertainment, cabin climate control, and crew communication panels are not isolated luxuries; they share both power and data on the aircraft’s core network. The same core network that connects 22 flight critical systems including the pathways to engine computer FADEC.

    So in a scenario that resembles Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, engineers say Boeing has created its own electrical hard-to-believe architecture, where the air conditioning, a non-flight critical system, sits ensconced on a network with other flight critical systems.

    And one of the cabin air conditioning’s compressors was sharing the same power source — a high voltage inverter, managed by a common motor system controller (CMSC R2) on the R2 line — as the fire inerter (NGS), marked “high-risk” two days earlier. The same R2 line which on the same flight also saw its right horizontal stabilizer electric motor control unit (EMCU) and stabilizer sensors fail during the descent phase, before landing.

    R2: The Rogue Power Lane

    So when the cabin air conditioning’s cabin air compressor (CAC) is in a bad power domain experiencing power surges and voltage spikes  — it can result in fluctuating air conditioning as Akash and other passengers on Flight 423 (VT-ANB) experienced.

    Below is the power path mapping from the right engine’s variable frequency starter generator (VFSG) to the high-voltage drive used by the fire inerter (NGS) and the right compressor (CAC); and to the power conversion system (PCS) to the right stabilizer motor (EMCU) and sensors.

    Power paths:

    R2 235 V AC main bus → ATRU R2 → ±270 V HVDC → CMSC R2  → NGS/ CAC-R2 / Hyd L EMP

    L2/R2 235 V AC main bus  → PCS (115 V/±130 V/28 V) → right stabilizer EMCU (115 V/±130 V) → right stabilizer sensors (28 V)

    This shows the cluster of failing components — be it the fire inerter (NGS), stabilizer motor (EMCU) or the air-conditioning compressor (CAC) — were all on the R2 line.

    Line 26: Legacy of the “Terrible Teens”

    The problems faced by Air India’s Dreamliner AT-VNB have their origin in the ‘Terrible Teens,’ say experts. In aviation parlance, the “Terrible Teens” refers to a cluster of early-build 787s that came off the assembly line with serious manufacturing defects, requiring heavy rework; becoming notorious inside the industry for persistent quality problems.

    “You see VT ANB (AI 171) was only the twenty sixth 787 built (line #26) , and back then the 787 factory in Everett, Washington was known to be having a lot of manufacturing quality issues,” Ed Pierson told the reporter.

    He said one area of particular concern was the aircraft’s electrical wiring interconnect system (EWIS). “Over the years, we’ve seen some very dangerous EWIS practices across multiple Boeing programs — not just the 737, but the 787 as well. Fatigued employees, skipped installation plans, poor electrical bonding and grounding, improperly installed wire bundles, unqualified staff performing electrical work, rushed functional systems testing, and the removal of long-standing quality inspections— all of this can create latent defects in a variety of aircraft systems that can be extremely difficult to troubleshoot,” said Pierson. He adds, “These flaws often produce those frustrating ‘No Fault Found’ or ‘Could Not Duplicate’ maintenance reports. In the military, we used to call them gremlins.”

    Was Fire inerter a victim to power transients?

    And if we rewind a little here, we can see how the first gremlin may have been the fire inerter. Remember how two days before the crash on June 10, maintenance engineers had marked the fire inerter (NGS) a high-risk fault?

    Well this fire inerter (NGS) is designed to prevent explosions by flooding the 787’s fuel tanks with nitrogen-enriched air and depleting its flammable vapour i.e. “live” oxygen. To feed that flow, the NGS uses a compressor and a high-voltage inverter, controlled by a common motor system controller (CMSC R2). And this high-voltage power line (CMSC R2 ±270 V) also feeds a cabin air compressor (CAC) and hydraulic electric motor pump (L) in the aft power distribution bay. The same compressor (CAC) whose faults were visible to the passengers above when the air-conditioning fluctuated on the previous flight (AI 423).

    Where cooling failure becomes combustion risk

    Now comes the most inconspicuous but dark horse fault of all on the crash flight. In the tail section there is an aft zonal dryer, a small unit that removes moisture from the ventilation air around the fire inerter (NGS), compressor and its cooling ducts.

    On AI 171, this started showing abnormal readings at 1.23 PM IST, 15 minutes before takeoff, as per data from two independent sources.

    This would lead to moisture building in the aft bay; a sharp rise in humidity as the dryer isn’t removing water vapor. Condensation risk increases as droplets can form on wiring, high voltage inverters, raising the risk of short circuits or even an arc. And the cooling efficiency also drops as the moisture load would make the environmental control system (ECS) work harder and reduce heat removal margin from electronics.

    Water turns fire: How aft-bay moisture caused electrical failure

    Given what Ed Pierson and other whistleblowers have said about Boeing’s practises and improper bonding of the electric wiring interconnected system (EWIS) — a latent EWIS defect could also play in.

    So 15 minutes before takeoff and 2 minutes before taxi clearance, it’s possible the AI 171’s aft high voltage system was in an unstable state. With cooling faltering, heat building up, moisture settling in and the twin power buses (BPCUs) slipping out of phase, the airplane’s systems were likely reaching their tipping point.

    Zonal dryer turns tail into heat zone: The first ripple in AI 171’s core

    And then they seemed to have tipped over. As per data from the sources the “aft zonal dryer” anomaly seen at 1:23 PM IST likely escalated into a full-blown failure after takeoff at 13:38:39 IST.

    Flight logs accessed show an ACARS message (167280002) shows that there was a failure on the aft zonal dryer’s control feedback path in the integrated cooling system (ICS) that connects to the aircraft’s core data network. Or in other words the moisture-removal or dehumidification loop in the tail section likely failed.

    High voltage inverter drives turns metal-melting arc source

    When the aft zonal dryer fails, humidity rises and the insulation margin inside the high-voltage inverter, controlled by CMSC R2, drops sharply. If the BPCUs are also faulting, power quality can swing violently and protection may not isolate the inverter when it should. At the same time, a degraded core network can delay or corrupt trip commands, keeping the inverter energised even as its insulation environment is collapsing. And loads such as cabin air compressors for the air conditioning would likely put more stress on the inverter precisely as the insulation environment was most vulnerable.

    Under these stacked conditions, the high voltage inverter would possibly become increasingly vulnerable. As the heat builds up it is likely the inverter reached its thermal and dielectric threshold limits — meaning its cooling and insulation could no longer contain the voltage.

    “When that happens the inverter will discharge through nearby wiring harnesses a sustained electrical arc, a plasma-level short that can melt metal and vaporize insulation,” said a flight engineer, who did not want to be named.

    The surge that reached the Dreamliner’s nerve center

    So if a high voltage inverter arced; then this burst of energy would’ve sent transients —  sharp voltage spikes — surging back through the airplane’s 28-volt and 115-volt power buses, rippling through the core network, the data-power spine that links almost every system on the 787.

    And it looks like it did — because ACARS fault codes (252490002, 167280002) indicate that this arc likely hit the forward electronics and electrical bay. And they were probably hit harder than they normally would have because of the existing faults before takeoff.

    When two power lines fail, two others carry the plane — until they don’t

    At 1.23 PM IST, 15 minutes before takeoff, when the system began throwing up processor (GPM), fault monitoring system (CMCF), power controller (BPCU faults) this would have impacted the power routing of flight critical systems.

    The plane has two engine generators (left and right VFSGs) supplying power to four lines — L1, L2, R1 and R2. Given the nature of the faults, the system would have first decided to route flight critical components away from L1 as this line had multiple faults (GPM Left 1 + CMCF Left + BPCU Left) and would have been identified as an unclean source of energy. The next line that would’ve been marked as suspect would have been R1 as this too had faults (GPM Right 4 + BPCU Right). Leaving L2 and R2 as the lines that were probably being used most by the flight critical components on the plane. If L2 or R2 were the components’ secondary electrical path.

    The arc that hit the heart: the R2 power-line arc

    But these two lines L2 and R2 were also seeing components faulting. At 1.23 PM, 15 minutes before takeoff, the right hydraulic electric motor‑driven pump on the L2 line was faulting (HYDIF RIGHT OPS). And as we discussed earlier the R2 line had already seen the fire-inerter (NGS), stabilizer motor (EMCU) and air conditioning compressor (CAC) failing.

    So given more than normal components might be mapped on to the L2 and R2 lines – an arc on the R2 line could’ve had far more impact than normal as it hit the forward and aft avionics bay.

    Once forward and tail avionics are hit they can begin spitting corrupted data and degraded voltage states. And those kinds of faults can bleed directly into FADEC logic. If FADEC sees invalid or contradictory control signals — it can try to “protect the engine” by limiting thrust during takeoff roll. And more dangerously — if this happens once airborne — FADEC could decide to shut the engines.

    When power source for cooling systems starts the fire

    The irony could not be more brutal. If the above interpretation is true the power sources for systems designed for cooling and to prevent fires — appears to have ignited the airplane’s electrical core instead. The high voltage inverter of the fire inerter and airconditioning likely arced to structure, burning through the aft equipment frame, cooking the wiring of the emergency distress beacon (ACARS code 252490002), crippling the auxiliary power unit (APU), charring the tail blackbox (aft EAFR), cutting the anti-collision strobe lights and starting a blackout that killed half the aircraft’s avionics and its lines to the engines.

    The scenario of the plane’s ELT and EAFR getting knocked out by an electric arc is consistent with the AAIB report, which says, “the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) was not activated during this event…..the (aft) EAFR had impact and thermal damages to the housing. The wires were protruding from the housing and the connectors were burnt.”

    Boeing Papers Admit: Single Fault Can Trigger 787 Cascade

    This possibility of an arc on the R2 line cascading across multiple systems is admitted by Boeing in an internal document, where it states, “The loss of a single component within the common core system (CCS) can affect multiple systems.” And on AI 171, the component failing  – if it can be called that – was the core network. The host of the central computers, CCS, flight control computers and the command arm of the power controllers or BPCUs.

    Boeing itself states that the 787’s architecture “differs from the traditional aircraft system, where each individual system requires its own dedicated communications route…the 787 architecture reduces the amount of wiring, hardware and overall weight of the airplane…and in this architecture, individual component failures can impact multiple systems.

    Neither Boeing, Air India, DGCA India, AAIB, or other regulatory agencies like EASA have responded to request for comment.

    What Boeing didn’t design for: emergency power failing before engines

    And then comes an event that could star in Ripley’s “Believe it or Not” as this plane seems to have had its emergency power fail before the engines did. An ACARS fault code (163840003) could indicate the APU’s control unit was also hit in the power transient.

    But even if one didn’t go by the fault code but just by logic and Boeing literature, then again the emergency power or auxiliary power unit (APU) will not function until it can clearly determine a stable high-voltage source. And on AI 171, the APU likely didn’t have that.

    The power gatekeeping BPCUs had started faulting and the core network was degraded —  meaning commands to isolate a failing unit would get delayed or corrupted. So in this deck of cards, when one of the high voltage inverters arcs, with no clean high-voltage source, the 787 can auto-inhibit APU start. Because Boeing’s design philosophy was that loading a heavy consumer like the APU starter motor onto an unverified rail risks accelerating the collapse. What it wasn’t budgeting for was an electric failure that possibly first crippled the emergency power, before it triggered dual engine failure, say engineers.

    The APU That ‘Looked Fine’

    But going by the AAIB report, you wouldn’t think anything was amiss with the APU. As AAIB report states, “ÄPU was recovered intact…APU inlet door began opening at 08:08:54 UTC.”

    Engineers say APU inlet door opening was probably a result of manual action by Captain Sumeet; and not system-driven as the 787 is unlikely to auto-start in the middle of a surge on the high-voltage drive line.

    Faults treated in isolation hid electrical failure behind 787 crash

    So going back in time, the fire inerter (NGS) being identified as an active fault on June 10 seems to have been the alarm siren for a deeper electrical problem on the plane. In hindsight the engineers say the crash itself may have never had happened had the NGS and stabilizer motor problem not been seen in isolation as Boeing’s fault isolation manual (FIM) asked engineers to do.

    If Boeing and the airline had given engineers more authority, leeway and time when it came to dealing with faults, engineers say they are certain that the root cause would have been identified. That it was likely a bad power domain that had impacted the fire inerter, stabilizer motor unit and finally the high voltage inverter — triggering an arc that likely hit the forward avionics rack and inputs to engine computer FADEC — possibly resulting in engine shutdown and ultimately the plane crash.

     

    And the end of the hopes and dreams of scores of people; people like Shradha Dhavan, Aparna Mahadik, Saineeta Chakravarty, Nganthoi Sharma Kongbrailatpam, Deepak Pathak, Maithili Patil, Irfan Shaikh, Lamnunthem Singson, Roshni Rajendra Songhare and Manisha Thapa — Air India’s crew who’d probably participated in safety demonstrations a minute or two earlier.

    (Disclaimer: The AAIB has not yet released its final report on the AI-171 crash. All the technical scenarios presented here are based on preliminary information, evidence submitted in India’s Parliament and Supreme Court and remain hypotheses. Also the ACARS codes mentioned in the story are not a direct map to maintenance faults as listed in Boeing’s Fault Isolation Manual; as maintenance faults are 7-8 digit strings. The 9-digit ACARS string is only partially recognisable to engineers as its proprietary code of Boeing.  For this story on conditions of anonymity we have spoken to pilots and flight engineers in India, Europe and US; and for details on actuators, sensors, structural engineering and logic paths to IT, mechanical, electrical and electronic engineers from India, working for firms that are Boeing sub contractors.)

     

     

     

  • Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela

    Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela

    Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela
    January 5, 2026

     

    Mr. President,
    Distinguished Members of the Security Council,

    The issue before the Council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela.

    The issue is whether any Member State—by force, coercion, or economic strangulation—has the right to determine Venezuela’s political future or to exercise control over its affairs.

    This question goes directly to Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

    The Council must decide whether that prohibition is to be upheld or abandoned.

    Abandoning it would carry consequences of the gravest kind.

    Background and context

    Since 1947,United States foreign policy has repeatedly employed force, covert action, and political manipulation to bring about regime change in other countries. This is a matter of carefully documented historical record. In her book Covert Regime Change (2018), political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke documents 70 attempted US regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989 alone.

    These practices did not end with the Cold War. Since 1989, major United States regime-change operations undertaken without authorization by the Security Council have included, among the most consequential: Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (from 2011), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014), and Venezuela (from 2002 onward).

    The methods employed are well established and well documented. They include open warfare; covert intelligence operations; instigation of unrest; support for armed groups; manipulation of mass and social media; bribery of military and civilian officials; targeted assassinations; false-flag operations; and economic warfare aimed at collapsing civilian life.

    These measures are illegal under the UN Charter, and they typically result is ongoing violence, lethal conflict, political instability, and deep suffering of the civilian population.

    The case of Venezuela

    The recent United States record with respect to Venezuela is clear.

    In April 2002, the United States knew of and approved an attempted coup against the Venezuelan government.

    In the 2010s, the United States funded civil society groups actively engaged in anti-government protests, notably in 2014. When the government cracked down on the protests, the US followed with a series of sanctions. In 2015, President Barrack Obama declared Venezuela to be “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

    In 2017, at a dinner with Latin American leaders on the margins of the UN General Assembly, President Trump openly discussed the option of the US invading Venezuela to overthrow the government.

    During 2017 to 2020, the US imposed sweeping sanctions on the state oil company. Oil production fell by 75 percent from 2016 to 2020, and real GDP per capita (PPP) declined by 62 percent.

    The UN General Assembly has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly against such unilateral coercive measures. Under international law, only the Security Council has the authority to impose such sanctions.

    On 23 January 2019, the United States unilaterally recognized Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela and on 28 January 2019 froze approximately $7 billion of Venezuelan sovereign assets held abroad and gave Guaidó authority over certain assets.

    These actions form part of a continuous United States regime-change effort spanning more than two decades.

    Recent United States global escalation

    In the past year, the United States has carried out bombing operations in seven countries, none of which were authorized by the Security Council and none of which were undertaken in lawful self-defense under the Charter. The targeted countries include Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and now Venezuela.

    In the past month, President Trump has issued direct threats against at least six UN member states, including Colombia, Denmark, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and of course Venezuela. These threats are summarized in Annex I to this statement.

    What is at stake today

    Members of the Council are not called upon to judge Nicolás Maduro.

    They are not called upon to assess whether the recent United States attack and ongoing naval quarantine of Venezuela result in freedom or in subjugation.

    Members of the Council are called upon to defend international law, and specifically the United Nations Charter.

    The realist school of international relations, articulated most brilliantly by John Mearsheimer, accurately describes the condition of international anarchy as “the tragedy of great power politics.” Realism is therefore a description of geopolitics, not a solution for peace. Its own conclusion is that international anarchy leads to tragedy.

    In the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations was created to end the tragedy through the application of international law. Yet the world’s leading nations failed to defend international law in the 1930s, leading to renewed global war.

    The United Nations emerged from that catastrophe as humanity’s second great effort to place international law above anarchy. In the words of the Charter, the UN was created “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

    Given that we are in the nuclear age, failure cannot be repeated. Humanity would perish. There would be no third chance.

    Measures required of the Security Council

    To fulfill its responsibilities under the Charter, the Security Council should immediately affirm the following actions:

    1. The United States shall immediately cease and desist from all explicit and implicit threats or use of force against Venezuela.
    2. The United States shall terminate its naval quarantine and all related coercive military measures undertaken in the absence of authorization by the Security Council.
    3. The United States shall immediately withdraw its military forces from within and along the perimeter of Venezuela, including intelligence, naval, air, and other forward-deployed assets positioned for coercive purposes.
    4. Venezuela shall adhere to the UN Charter and to the human rights protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    5. The Secretary-General shall immediately appoint a Special Envoy, mandated to engage relevant Venezuelan and international stakeholders and to report back to the Security Council within fourteen days with recommendations consistent with the Charter of the United Nations, and the Security Council shall remain urgently seized of this matter.
    6. All Member States shall refrain from unilateral threats, coercive measures, or armed actions undertaken outside the authority of the Security Council, in strict conformity with the Charter.

    In Closing

    Mr. President, Distinguished Members,

    Peace and the survival of humanity depend on whether the United Nations Charter remains a living instrument of international law or is allowed to wither into irrelevance.

    That is the choice before this Council today.

    Thank you.

     

    Courtesy: commondreams.org

  • India-EU Free Trade Agreement

    India-EU Free Trade Agreement

    Introduction

    After almost two decades of negotiations, the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA), an important milestone in strategic and economic partnership, was concluded. The FTA is crucial for navigating contemporary global challenges by enabling deeper market integration between the world’s 4th– and 2nd-largest economies.

    Dubbed as the “mother of all deals”, the agreement links India’s tightly guarded market to the 27 nations of the EU bloc. The focus will be on the manufacturing and services sectors and on easing market access for key European products such as cars and wine, in return for easier exports of textiles, gems, and pharmaceuticals. The formal signing of the agreement would take place later this year, after the legal scrubbing is complete and ratification by EU member states.

    The evolution of bilateral ties and the FTA

    Post-Cold War, shared democratic values increased political and economic engagement, leading to the establishment of a Strategic Partnership in 2004. The Eurozone crisis stalled the progress made under the Joint Action Plan (2005) and Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) talks (2007). Ties remained under-leveraged as Europe turned inward and India diversified its partnerships, turning the relationship economically transactional and geopolitically underdeveloped.

    The talks for the FTA started in 2007, but differences over market access for automobiles in 2013 led to a jettison. The EU had stringent legal mandates for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), investment protection, massive import duty cuts and sustainable development goals (SDGs). India, on the other hand, needed a more liberal framework for skilled professionals, addressing non-tariff barriers and excluding government procurement.

    The 2019 COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in supply chain shocks. China’s assertiveness triggered convergence on resilience and technology, leading to the revival of trade talks and the establishment of the trade and technology council (2022).The resumption of negotiations aimed at three separate agreements- two on investment protection and geographical indication, to try for an early harvest on trade. Issues like data privacy and security-related legislation, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and IPR were not of primary concern and opening up government procurement was to follow the deals as concluded with the UAE and UK in 2025.

    The FTA has now been finalised during the 16th India-EU summit, held in New Delhi on 27 January 2026. The summit has also led to the creation of a comprehensive strategic agenda towards 2030, which will replace the EU-India Strategic Partnership: A Roadmap to 2025. The past six months of accelerated talks leading up to the agreement are a by-product of incessant increases in tariff rates on the US side, China’s economic heft, and the economic impact on the EU from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The deal aims to advance the security alignment between the EU and Indiaami with growing concerns about India’s ties with Russia.

    The EU-India Agenda 2025 strategy is to reinforce prosperity and security with India. The key pillars of this engagement are foreign policy and security cooperation, trade and investment, sustainable modernisation, transport and urban development, clean energy, focus on outer space, artificial intelligence, issues such as global economic governance, migration and mobility, education and culture and human rights.

    Sectors of engagement

    Currently, the major focus of bilateral ties is the trade and services sector, which is showing steady growth. The EU is India’s largest trading partner; total merchandise trade with the bloc was 136.54 billion USD in 2024-25. Indian exports have increased from EUR 19 billion in 2019 to EUR 37 billion in 2024, and imports from the EU have also reached EUR 29 billion in 2024. India-EU trade in services reached INR 7.2 Lakh Crore (USD 83.10 billion) in 2024.

    Security and defence ties have deepened since the College of Commissioners’ visit to India in February 2025. The statement from this visit agreed to explore a security and defence partnership between the EU Commissioner for Defence and Space and India’s Minister of State for Defence. Simultaneous visits from the EU delegation in September and December 2025 led to advances in strategic dialogue.

    The talks have been complemented by joint naval exercises and escort operations for humanitarian assistance near Somalia in 2018 and 2019, the Gulf of Aden in June 2021, the Gulf of Guinea in October 2023 and the Indian Ocean in June 2025. On the sidelines of the EU-India summit, a security and defence partnership has also been signed. This will expand cooperation in maritime security, counter terrorism and cyber defence.

    Benefits for EU countries

    Tariffs on 96.6% of EU goods will be eliminated or reduced, saving up to 4 billion euros per year in duties on European products. The FTA grants a competitive advantage for EU exporters, granting the biggest trade opening India has given to any trade partner. The deal ensures privileged access to the Indian services market in key sectors like financial services and maritime transport, but also ensures protection of the EU intellectual property, like trademarks. This makes the customs procedures in exports quicker and easier.

    Breaking down the available data on exports for 2024 and considering the current and finalised tariff rates for the upcoming year, the bilateral relations look promising. The exports of machinery and electrical equipment amounted to 16.3 billion euros in 2024, with prevailing tariff rates of 44%. Aircraft and spacecraft, optical, medical, and surgical equipment exports amount to up to 6.4 and 3.4 billion euros, with tariff rates of 11% and 27.5%, respectively. Exports of plastics and pearls, precious stones and metals amounted to 2.2 and 2.1 billion euros, with tariff rates of up to 16.6% and 22.5%, respectively, in 2024.

    Similarly, trade in other products is depicted as product (amount of exports, tariff rates) as of 2024: In chemicals (€3.2 billion, 22%), motor vehicles (€1.6 billion, 110%), Iron and steel (€1.5 billion, 22%) and pharmaceuticals (€1.1 billion, 11%) are also remarkable. The future tariffs on these products, as part of the deal, will be 0% except for motor vehicles, which will be 10% with a quota of 250,000 EU vehicles annually; this is still beneficial for European car makers.

    Benefits for Indian sectors

    With the FTA, over 99% of Indian exports gain preferential entry into the EU, apart from bolstering the ‘Make in India’ initiative, granting new opportunities for MSMEs and creating jobs for women, artisans, youth and professionals. Indian products worth 75 billion USD are set to be exported, and commodities from sectors like textiles, leather, marine products, gems, and jewellery amounting to 33 billion USD will gain immensely from the preferential access from the FTA.

    India is powered by a young and dynamic workforce that can be leveraged to unlock opportunities across sectors and to enhance competitiveness on the global stage. The FTA also helps in integrating Indian businesses more deeply into global value chains, ensuring the country maintains its role as a key player and supplier in global trade. The labour mobility agreement opens opportunities for young professionals and seasonal workers and brings India into the EU’s Horizon research programme. The EU’s commitment to opening 144 subsectors in IT, professional services and education, and to facilitating easier labour mobility has also brought in a positive outlook.

    In exchange for the tariff cuts, the EU has granted India immediate zero-duty access for labour-intensive exports such as textiles, apparel, leather, footwear, gems and jewellery. The deal is also expected to boost India’s agricultural and food sector through preferential market access for its agricultural exports and increased competitiveness for processed foods.

    Geopolitical side of the agreement

    In the past two decades, EU-India relations have matured in a stable geopolitical environment. The India-US relationship and Europe’s transatlantic bond were held as a matter of long-term potential rather than immediate necessity. But the scenario has changed, with rampant changes in the political leadership and incessant wars. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Europe to commit to long-term defence rearmament and deterrence planning. The return of President Donald Trump to the White House has reduced trust and introduced uncertainty into Washington’s role for both Brussels and New Delhi, albeit in different ways.

    The FTA was the result of a growing common concern: aggressive tariff rates by the US and its one-sided, unilateral approach with absolute disregard for the principle of reciprocity. Some EU countries recently faced fresh tariff threatsfrom Trump, who was put out by their refusal to accept his proposed takeover of Greenland. The deal was secured amid a flurry of countries striking deals and patching things up to navigate global uncertainty. During negotiations for the FTA, the potential repercussions of US interference were a concern, particularly the kinds of reactions to the agreement.

    India-US Trade Deal

    Fortunately for India, the US and India reached a trade deal on 1 February 2026, less than a week after the India-EU FTA was announced. The current tariff rates will be cut down from 50% to 18% on Indian goods in the US. The trade relationship between the US and India has been strained since the US imposed 50% tariffs, including a 25% penalty linked to India’s purchases of Russian oil. US stocks inched higher after Trump announced the deal with Delhi on Truth Social. On the other hand, this reduction will affect small businesses in the US, which will have to pay an average tariff of 2.5% on goods from India.

    India, EU, Russia and China Relations

    The EU-India relationship is often framed as a natural strategic alignment rooted in shared values and converging interests, but it is better understood as a parallel response to a shared pressure environment. India’s decision to preserve ties with Moscow, refrain from political condemnation, and expand economic engagement through a sharp rise in energy imports remains a persistent source of friction in the EU-India relationship. Meanwhile, recalibrated threat perceptions regarding economic and security policy are a serious point of friction with India. On the sidelines of the announcement of the trade deal, the EU has pressed for a change in India’s stance toward Moscow.

    In their dealings with China, neither side can afford to fully decouple from Beijing. Deeper EU-India economic integration can help mitigate vulnerabilities linked to trade imbalances, technological dependence, and critical digital infrastructure. But India’s concerns about China’s territorial proximity and its defence engagement with Pakistan are significant. The FTA functions less as a mechanism for strategic risk reduction than as a political catalyst for strengthening resilience and autonomy.

    Challenges

    The lack of a resolution in some of the issues that jeopardised the finalisation of the deal in 2013 persists and is not addressed in the current agreement. Agricultural trade negotiations, which  historically have been a sticking point, are kept outside the tariff reductions on both sides. Under the agreement, India will not be granted exemptions under the CBAM, which came into effect on 1 January 2026. CBAM can negatively impact Indian Iron and Steel exports. This was a contentious issue even in the India-UK FTA, with a fear of exporters from India having to pay ‘Green tax’. The duty-free access of EU goods into India can disrupt the trade balance and negatively affect domestic products.

    On issues like easing of regulatory complexity, non-tariff barriers, high compliance standards, climate-related commitments, and rules of origin, both parties have differing interests. All of these issues carry adjustment costs that may be felt most acutely by exporters and suppliers operating with limited capacity. It would be critical to see whether, after the current geopolitical uncertainty settles, the intention to smooth these issues still remains.

    The FTA’s ratification in the European Parliament is pending, but the commitment to early operationalisation means the deal is set to enter into force within a year. However, the EU-Mercosur agreement, concluded after 25 years of negotiations, is now facing opposition from the European Parliament. Although approval from each country is not necessary for the India-EU FTA to be operationalised, it would still need parliamentary approval.

    Apart from the trade deal, the agreement also considers a broad array of topics. Maintaining balance amid shifting positions and competing geopolitical interests is essential for the deal to meet its preconditions.

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    Infograph Credit: Al Jazeera

  • India’s Shadow Wars: Challenges of Chronic Disputes and Insurgencies

    India’s Shadow Wars: Challenges of Chronic Disputes and Insurgencies

    Abstract

    This article contends that insurgencies in India tend to be protracted and are often hard to resolve definitively. They are characterised as “shadow wars” involving asymmetrical tactics, blurred distinctions between combatants and civilians, and an ongoing struggle for legitimacy and control. In this article, the adaptability of insurgent organisations, deep-rooted socio-political and economic disputes, and the limitations of traditional counterinsurgency methods in the Indian context are identified as key factors contributing to the persistence of these conflicts. To effectively address these issues and foster sustainable conflict resolution, it is essential to tackle their root causes and long-term impacts on India’s internal security, governance, and development.

    It is crucial to analyse the nature of India’s ongoing and persistent insurgencies, paying attention to the interplay between asymmetric warfare, socioeconomic grievances, and the effectiveness of counterinsurgency strategies.

    Key words:

    Shadow war, chronic, strategic, insurgency,

    India’s Shadow Wars: The Chronic Challenge of Internal Disputes

    Many highlight a fundamental and complex issue. India’s internal security landscape is marked by ongoing “shadow wars,” driven by several interconnected factors. In these asymmetric conflicts, the distinction between civilians and combatants blurs, creating a challenge that non-state actors often exploit by blending into local populations. At the same time, long-standing economic inequality, social injustice, and political marginalisation serve as breeding grounds for unrest, providing a continuous influx of recruits and supporters for insurgent groups. Developing effective counterinsurgency tactics demands a deep understanding of the complex interactions among these factors.

     The Connection between the Blurring of Civilian-Combatant Lines and Asymmetric Warfare

    Ongoing domestic insurgencies are characterised by the interaction of asymmetric warfare and the blurring of civilian-combatant boundaries. When confronted with the Indian state’s overwhelming conventional military strength, insurgent organisations deliberately adopt asymmetric tactics. These include targeted killings to instil terror and undermine the state’s authority, the deployment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack security personnel, and guerrilla ambushes in challenging terrain, such as the mountains of Kashmir and the Northeast or the forests of Chhattisgarh. These strategies aim to minimise direct engagement where they would be at a disadvantage while maximising their impact. An important aspect of this asymmetric approach is the extensive infiltration of rebels into civilian communities, which is often driven by various factors. It arises from genuine local support rooted in a sense of marginalisation and historical grievances. Strong tribal ties, for example, sometimes provide rebels with local sympathy and logistical assistance in the Northeast. In other cases, where villages are compelled to provide food, shelter, or intelligence, coercion and intimidation become essential.

     

    Furthermore, security forces find it challenging to conduct successful operations without risking civilian casualties, as operating within residential areas provides strategic cover. By operating in plain clothes and reintegrating into society following operations, insurgents often intentionally blur boundaries. This ambiguity hampers counterinsurgency efforts (Winter, 2011). The main challenge lies in accurately distinguishing between fighters and non-combatants. Indirect damage poses a significant threat to security operations, making intelligence gathering extremely difficult. Even unforeseen civilian casualties can deepen local discontent and alienation, potentially prompting more people to support the rebels. This leads to an endless cycle where harsh security measures aimed at ending the insurgency unintentionally exacerbate the problem by eroding trust and increasing local grievances. Traditional military tactics, emphasising direct conflict and large-scale operations, may fall short against foes that are deeply rooted and adaptable. A more sophisticated approach is needed—one that goes beyond military strength—requiring accurate intelligence, efforts to secure local cooperation, and tactics designed to minimise civilian harm. The persistent nature of India’s internal insurgencies mainly stems from the inability to effectively manage this complex interaction, which hampers long-term peace and stability by perpetuating cycles of violence and mistrust.

    Enduring economic, social, and political grievances as catalysts

    Long-standing sociopolitical and economic grievances significantly fuel internal insurgencies. A sense of isolation and alienation has been brought about by historical marginalisation, primarily affecting ethnic and tribal groups. Mining for resources and development projects have forced many tribal communities to flee their homelands, sometimes without appropriate compensation. This has led to hostility and the loss of traditional livelihoods. Insurgent groups exploit the narrative of the oppressed, driven by this historical injustice, to recruit new members. The inadequate political representation of certain communities further deepens these grievances. When groups believe their voices are not heard within the democratic system and that the state ignores their specific demands and concerns, feelings of helplessness may grow, and they may resort to more extreme methods for redress. For instance, a perceived lack of political agency and responsiveness by the central government often sparks calls for increased autonomy or even independence in various regions. Inequalities in development and economic status across India’s many regions are also significant. Areas affected by insurgency tend to have poor development outcomes and lag in employment, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. This uneven development fosters a sense of injustice, giving people a tangible reason to complain about ineffective or poor governance. Disadvantaged young people seeking purpose or financial stability may find insurgent groups appealing due to limited viable economic options. Security measures alone cannot resolve these complex, longstanding issues. Despite continuous counterinsurgency efforts, insurgencies may endure for decades because of the deeply rooted nature of these grievances. Addressing these underlying causes requires equitable development policies targeting underserved regions, inclusive governance that guarantees representation and participation for all communities, and a commitment to social justice that redresses historical wrongs and counters ongoing bias. Since the core causes of conflict persist, enduring peace cannot be achieved without these comprehensive, multifaceted strategies (Staniland, 2013).

    The Efficacy and Obstacles of Counterinsurgency Strategies:

    India has effectively contained violence in certain areas through its counterinsurgency methods, which often depend heavily on military and paramilitary forces. However, a solely kinetic approach has struggled to achieve lasting peace. Traditional military superiority is often insufficient due to the challenges of operating in complex terrains and among civilian populations, as well as the rebels’ asymmetric tactics. The “hearts and minds’ strategy, aimed at gaining local support through good governance and development initiatives, has yielded mixed results. These programmes are often impeded by corruption, flawed implementation, and a disconnect between policy and reality on the ground.

    Furthermore, any benefits of development efforts may be undermined by strict security measures that alienate the population. Given its importance, political discourse is often irregular and uneven. Meaningful discussions are impeded by internal divisions within insurgent organisations and by a lack of trust between the state and rebel factions. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a legal and administrative framework designed to grant security forces operational freedom, has also faced criticism for suspected human rights abuses, further alienating local people and possibly escalating hostility. India’s ongoing insurgencies highlight the drawbacks of relying solely on fragmented or military-focused counterinsurgency tactics. A comprehensive strategy that combines security measures with genuine political participation, equitable and long-term development, and a commitment to addressing the underlying socio-political and economic grievances that sustain these conflicts is essential to achieve lasting peace (Rajagopalan, 2007).

    Conclusion:

    Addressing India’s ongoing internal conflicts requires an integrated approach that goes beyond mere security interventions. While managing existing conflicts involves effective counterinsurgency strategies, long-term stability relies on proactively addressing the root causes of unrest. This includes ensuring fair political participation, promoting social justice, and fostering inclusive economic growth. To truly heal divisions and achieve lasting peace, ending these “shadow wars” ultimately demands a comprehensive strategy that combines security efforts with broad socioeconomic and political reforms.

    References:

    Rajagopalan, R. (2007). Force and Compromise: India’s Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 75-91. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00856400701264035

    Staniland, P. (2013). Insurgencies In India. In Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics (p. 11). Routledge.

    Winter, Y. (2011, September). The asymmetric war discourse and its moral economies: a critique. International Theory, 3(3). doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971911000145

     

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  • India’s Refugee Policy: Implications of an Ambiguous Approach

    India’s Refugee Policy: Implications of an Ambiguous Approach

    Abstract

    This article analyses India’s approaches to refugee issues, their limitations, and the challenges faced by refugee communities due to the absence of a comprehensive, standardised refugee policy framework. With over 200,000 refugees from neighbouring countries and others, India has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, leading to ad hoc, inconsistent and indirect policy applications through complementary legislation. Due to this, refugee communities face significant barriers in terms of accessing education, employment opportunities, healthcare and welfare facilities, government financial aid schemes and legal provisions and protections, including government identification, leading to deportation and exclusion from Indian society. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, complicated these conditions and exposed the dire living conditions of refugees. To address these gaps, the paper offers actionable recommendations, including developing a generalised, human-rights-oriented refugee policy that adheres to international humanitarian standards, establishing an institution for refugee protection, conducting comprehensive data collection, and creating collaborative committees that involve diverse stakeholders to address marginalised refugee groups.

    Background of the Policy Issue

    According to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, refugees are defined as person/s residing outside of their national territory/boundary and is unable/unwilling to return to the country of their nationality, owing to conflict, fear and possibility of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a group and/or political opinion (UNHCR, n.d.). The convention initially applied to European refugees but was expanded through the 1967 Protocol to cover refugees globally and remove any temporal/geographical limitations. The legality of refugee protection is governed by the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1967 Protocol, and regional- and host-country-level instruments. The 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol are not legally binding, leaving states with the authority and legitimacy to grant refugee status, with UNHCR support through the facilitation of international standards and the maintenance of refugee camps and asylum seeker facilities (UNHCR, n.d.).

    As of 2024, India has a refugee and asylum seeker population of more than 240,000 refugees originating from multiple neighbouring countries, including Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, Tibet and Afghanistan (Rajan and Sreekumar, 2024). The country has been regarded as a “haven” for refugees throughout history. Yet it lacks a comprehensive domestic refugee policy for the assistance, regulation, and protection of refugees. India has also chosen not to sign the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol (Khosla, 2022).

    Current Policies and Their Effectiveness

    The Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Indian Passport Act also indirectly influence India’s refugee policy, deeming those entering India without a visa to be illegal immigrants. They do not include specific approaches to refugees.

    The Indian government currently manages refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons through ad hoc, arbitrary and ambiguous legal pathways. By employing a unique dual system which divides the asylum caseload between UNHCR and the government based on regions, India leaves a significant number of people in vulnerable and precarious situations (Vijayaraghavan, 2020). While the UNHCR employs the Refugee Determination System (RSD) for asylum seekers arriving from non-neighbouring countries and Myanmar, those from neighbouring South Asian countries must approach the Ministry of Home Affairs directly, resulting in inconsistent protection (Shankar and Vijayaraghavan, n.d.). The Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Indian Passport Act also indirectly influence India’s refugee policy, deeming those entering India without a visa to be illegal immigrants. They do not include specific approaches to refugees (Borah and Das, 2024).

    Several refugees and asylum seekers lack legal status despite being recognised by UNHCR, with exceedingly limited access to government schemes, health care facilities, education, identity documentation, social integration, and economic development (Vijayaraghavan, 2020). Upon recognition by UNHCR, they are issued identity cards, but these cards are rarely recognised by State governments, leaving them with insufficient protection. They also face difficulties obtaining Aadhaar identification, further restricting access to health and welfare benefits and to public services such as bank accounts (Vijayaraghavan, 2020).

    India has endorsed the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), which requires the implementation of RSD mechanisms for the registration and identification of refugees and the just determination of asylum applications (Shankar and Vijayaraghavan, n.d.). However, India has not implemented these processes, leaving the UNHCR to handle applications under its Memorandum of Understanding with the international organisation (Shankar and Vijayaraghavan, n.d.).

    The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), introduced in 2019 by the ruling government, sparked widespread agitation due to its religious criteria for Indian citizenship and state protection. By specifically catering to religious minority groups from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the country’s first direct legislation for the protection of refugees further marginalises specific refugee groups. It restricts access to protection (Shankar and Vijayaraghavan, n.d.).

    The Immigration and Foreigners Act, passed in April 2025, replaces the Foreigners Act, 1946; the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920; the Immigration (Carriers’ Liability) Act, 2000; and the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939. While the Act does not specifically address refugees, it aims to curb illegal immigration into India and prioritise national security. The Act introduces stricter penalties for entry and stay violations by foreigners in the country and authorises Immigration Officers to examine passports and other documents as and when required, to seize them if deemed necessary, and to arrest foreigners without a warrant (Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025). The Act also allows the Central Government to prohibit, regulate and restrict the entry of foreigners into India if they are deemed a security threat, with no mechanism for appeal. Heavy penalties for violations of the law are introduced, with entry into India without a valid visa or passport resulting in a fine of approximately Rs 5 lakh and up to 5 years’ imprisonment (Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025).

    In September 2025, however, the Ministry of Home Affairs stated that Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who entered India before 9th January 2015 would be exempt from penal provisions if they did not hold valid travel documents (The Wire, 2025). Therefore, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who are registered with the government will not be treated as undocumented immigrants. In another order issued in September, the Union home ministry declared that members of minority communities from neighbouring countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who fled to India before 31st December 2024 to escape religious persecution, will be allowed to stay despite a lack of travel documents (The Wire, 2025).

    Limitations/Gaps

    A significant limitation to adequate protection of refugee communities in India is the severe lack of awareness of existing refugee policies and the UNHCR’s role in recognition and protection. Due to the lack of a generalised refugee policy applicable throughout the country, refugees often hesitate to approach Indian authorities for fear of persecution and deportation, even when undergoing financial discrimination and mistreatment (Shankar and Vijayaraghavan, n.d.). The continued ambiguity in India’s definition of refugees also further complicates the problem.

    The COVID-19 Pandemic and India’s sudden lockdown implementation affected refugees to an extreme degree. The lack of savings and inability to earn income left refugees stranded, a situation further exacerbated by the temporary suspension of UNHCR’s refugee status determination activities (Shankar and Raghavan, 2021). Most refugees live, and continue to live, in unsafe and vulnerable conditions, which enhances the risk of infection and spread of the pandemic among refugee communities. Vaccination drives that provided free testing and vaccination were few and far between, and limited access to public health care facilities and financial aid created significant challenges, leaving refugees dependent on the generosity of their employers and landlords (Shankar and Raghavan, 2021).

    While refining outdated laws and regulations that do not meet contemporary migration requirements is necessary and welcome, significant gaps remain in the Immigration and Foreigners Act 2025. The criteria for deeming a person a security threat have not been established, which could result in unlawful deportation, prohibition, or imprisonment. The Act also does not distinguish between foreigners and refugees, who are often forced to partake in irregular methods of travel and stay in search of safety and security. Many lack the means to obtain visas and passports and may lose their proof of identity during dangerous travel.

    The ambiguity of refugee policy leads to variations in the treatment of different refugee communities, usually determined by contextual and geopolitical factors. For example, while Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the South can seek employment and government financial aid, the same cannot be said for Rohingya refugees, who are often put in refugee detention camps or deported (Sandhu and Sebastian, 2022). The lack of a policy is addressed through ad hoc measures, often implemented by the police administration, that prioritise surveillance and security over protection and welfare. The recent orders that provide certain exemptions to Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and refugees from neighbouring countries are definitely a step in the right direction, but ultimately bring further complications, especially considering the exclusion of certain communities based on religion. This also allows the ruling government to adapt its governance framework to align with ideological principles. By assigning a religious criterion for Indian citizenship and state protection, the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 ensures the marginalisation of select groups of refugees and asylum seekers, bringing into question the secular characteristics of India’s governance (Rajan and Sreekumar, 2024).

    The lack of privacy, haphazard sanitary conditions, poor menstrual management and double surveillance by state authorities and refugee communities sheds light on an intersectionality of issues women refugees face in protracted refugee situations and camp sites

    A significant aspect of refugee discourse is its gendered nature, but it is rarely addressed in policy debates and discussions. Women refugees who make up almost half of the refugee population in India are often solely held accountable for caregiving responsibilities and sustenance of the family, further limiting their access to education, employment and individual development (Malik, 2024). The lack of privacy, haphazard sanitary conditions, poor menstrual management and double surveillance by state authorities and refugee communities sheds light on an intersectionality of issues women refugees face in protracted refugee situations and camp sites (Malik, 2024). While women refugees are beginning to achieve representation in the refugee discourse, refugees from LGBTQIA+ communities and second-generation refugees remain mostly out of the picture. Second-generation refugees who are completely isolated from urban society are further restricted from access to quality education and employment opportunities. More often, they are left stateless and lack access to government recognition and welfare facilities because their parents have not been provided with refugee status (Shankar, 2024).

    Actionable Recommendations

    To address these gaps in refugee regulation, a comprehensive, human-rights-oriented refugee policy that adheres to international standards of refugee protection and implements an RSD process should be introduced to ensure consistent and justified treatment of all refugee groups. Considering past policies and measures implemented for Tibetan refugees, it is evident that policies focused on their integration and protection can have a significant positive impact on their community. Indirect legislation has been invoked to ensure basic constitutional protection for certain groups of refugees, but this is typically done by lower courts that lack the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction (Shankar and Vijayaraghavan, n.d.). Additionally, complementary legislation, while helpful to a certain extent, simply does not address most issues and concerns of refugee communities. The Immigration and Foreigners Act advocates a more hands-on approach to migration management. Still, it does not strike a balance between upholding national security and implementing humanitarian measures and lacks a specified approach to refugees and asylum seekers within the country.

    Collecting accurate data on the statistics of refugees and asylum seekers in India plays a significant role in the development of a domestic refugee policy. Currently, the 2011 Census remains the only eligible data for policy analysis. Adequate data, along with policy directives to protect the humanitarian rights of refugees, need to be prioritised to develop comprehensive policies (Vijayaraghavan, 2020). A leading institution can be responsible for collaboration and coordination across relevant departments to develop an overarching legal framework for refugees, with a specific focus on their social and economic integration, education, employment opportunities, and access to welfare and health care facilities. A specialised committee to address gendered concerns can be formed within the institution, thereby drawing attention to issues affecting women in refugee communities.

    Through overarching approaches across various legal and political channels, a generalised refugee policy aligned with international standards can be implemented, providing refugees with adequate legal protection, security, and opportunities for integration.

    A crucial precursor to the formation of this leading institution and refugee policy is the need for productive discourse among the ruling government, policymakers, experts in the field, and refugees themselves, to prioritise the safety of these vulnerable communities. Through overarching approaches across various legal and political channels, a generalised refugee policy aligned with international standards can be implemented, providing refugees with adequate legal protection, security, and opportunities for integration. Without a well-articulated policy specific to refugees, they will continue to be vulnerable, with limitations to their rights and protection. Therefore, it is imperative to strike a balance between upholding national security and ensuring the dignity and protection of refugees and displaced persons. Recognising international human rights norms in formulating refugee policies in India can help build a comprehensive migration policy framework that addresses the country’s unique refugee challenges.

    Works Cited

    Abbas, R. (2015). Internal migration and citizenship in India. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(1), 150–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2015.1100067

    Borah, D., & Das, B. (2024). India’s Refugee Policy: A Critical Analysis. Library Progress International, 44(3), 9877–9885.

    Immigration and Foreigners Act (2025).

    India Migration Now. (2019). Comments to the draft EMIGRATION BILL, 2019, dated 20 January 2019, released for public consultation by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) .https://www.indiamigrationnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/DraftBill2019_Final_Comments_IMN_19012019.pdf

    Khosla, M. (2022, September 22). The Geopolitics of India’s Refugee Policy • Stimson Center. Stimson Center. https://www.stimson.org/2022/the-geopolitics-of-indias-refugee-policy/

    Malik, A. (2024, August 9). Refugee rights, the gendered nature of displacement. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/refugee-rights-the-gendered-nature-of-displacement/article68506611.ece

    Rajan, S. I., & Sreekumar, A. (2024). An Overview of India’s Migration Governance Over thePast Decade. https://core.ac.uk/reader/611833180

    Sandhu, K., & Sebastian, M. (2022, August 19). Rohingya and CAA: What is India’s refugee policy? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62573446

    Shankar, P. (2024, January 5). India’s stateless babies: How lawless asylum rules leave refugees in limbo. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/1/5/stateless-babies-in-northeast-india-refugee-mothers-pray-for-nationhood

    Shankar, R., & Vijayaraghavan, H. (n.d.). Refugee recognition challenges in India – Forced Migration Review. Forced Migration Review. https://www.fmreview.org/recognising-refugees/shanker-vijayaraghavan/

    Shanker, R., & Raghavan, P. (2020). The Invisible Crisis: Refugees and COVID-19 in India. International Journal of Refugee Law, 32(4), 680–684. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eeab011

    The Wire. (2025, September 4). MHA Exempts Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees Who Came to India Before Jan 9, 2015, From Penal Provisions – The Wire. The Wire. https://thewire.in/rights/mha-exempts-sri-lankan-tamil-refugees-who-came-to-india-before-jan-9-2015-from-penal-provisions

    UNHCR. (n.d.). The 1951 Refugee Convention | UNHCR. UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/overview/1951-refugee-convention

    Vijayaraghavan, H. (2020, September 8). Gaps in India’s Treatment of Refugees and Vulnerable Internal Migrants Are Exposed by the Pandemic. Migrationpolicy.org. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/gaps-india-refugees-vulnerable-internal-migrants-pandemic

     

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