A controversial interview and Imran Khan’s battle beyond prison!

Raju Korti
Michael Atherton probably knew he was opening a sensitive door when he sat down with Imran Khan’s sons, Sulaiman and Kasim, at Lord’s. What he may not have anticipated was the political storm that the 18-minute Sky Sports interview would unleash. The sons alleged that their father was being kept in extreme isolation, that his health was deteriorating and, most alarmingly, that the authorities were "blatantly trying to kill him". The Pakistan Cricket Board reacted with such intensity that it reportedly considered preventing its team from returning to the field after lunch and subsequently lodged a formal complaint with Sky. The players eventually resumed the Test.

The disproportionate reaction says something important. The interview was not merely about a jailed former prime minister. It was about a man who remains one of Pakistan's most recognisable sporting and political figures, and whose name continues to carry enormous emotional resonance. By trying to contain the interview, Pakistan's establishment arguably gave it an international reach that it might otherwise never have achieved. PTV Sports reportedly did not carry the segment, but millions outside Pakistan heard the allegations.

(Imran Khan (inset his sons): Facebook grab)

What makes the episode more significant is that Atherton is not an outsider commenting casually on Pakistani politics. He is a former England captain who has known the cricketing world in which Imran was once an undisputed giant. He has now joined a growing chorus of former international captains asking Pakistan's authorities to ensure that Imran receives proper medical treatment. Twenty-two former captains, including India's Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, Australia's Greg and Ian Chappell and other international cricketing figures, have appealed to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Greg Chappell's intervention has been particularly poignant. Having met Imran in Pakistan six years ago, Chappell said the man he sees today is no longer the "strong, robust" personality he remembers. He expressed concern over Imran's reported eye disability, isolation and declining physical condition. Javed Miandad, another man who shared the dressing room with Imran during Pakistan's golden cricketing years, has also spoken emotionally about his former captain. Australian batsman Usman Khawaja, himself born in Islamabad, openly mocked the PCB's reaction to the Atherton interview. These are not political activists. They are cricketing voices invoking a humanitarian obligation.

The question, however, is whether such moral pressure will actually change anything. Pakistan's government insists that Imran is being properly treated and says he has received hundreds of visits from relatives, lawyers and doctors. The authorities have also rejected allegations of mistreatment. Yet the controversy surrounding his recent medical examination has deepened rather than settled doubts. A Supreme Court order concerning his medical assessment was followed by his brief examination at a government hospital before he was returned to prison, prompting renewed questions from his family and supporters.

The uncomfortable reality is that the phrase "Pakistan government" often conceals a more powerful institutional equation. Imran's imprisonment is inseparable from the struggle between his political movement and the country's military establishment. Consequently, the issue is unlikely to be decided merely by the Prime Minister's office or the prison authorities. The military establishment has regarded Imran not simply as a political opponent but as a potential challenge to the power structure that has shaped Pakistan for decades.

That explains why the cricketing fraternity's appeal may have limited immediate effect. International cricketing prestige can create embarrassment, but it cannot easily override a security establishment that regards Imran's political resurgence as a threat. Yet the appeals are not entirely futile. They internationalise the issue, create a record of concern and raise the political cost of any deterioration in his condition.

There is also a darker dimension. Speculation about Imran's wellbeing has periodically produced questions about whether the public is being given a complete picture of his condition. Such speculation should not be presented as fact without evidence. But when a 73-year-old former prime minister remains largely inaccessible, when his family complains about medical care and when independent verification is difficult, an information vacuum inevitably develops. The best antidote to such speculation would be transparency: regular independent medical examinations, access to family and lawyers, and credible disclosure of his actual condition.

For Imran, therefore, the future remains deeply uncertain. Release appears politically improbable in the immediate term unless there is a significant recalibration within Pakistan's power structure. Continued imprisonment, however, carries its own risks. Keeping him alive but politically silenced may preserve a problem; allowing his health to deteriorate could transform him into an even more potent symbol of resistance.

That may ultimately be the paradox confronting Pakistan's establishment. Imran Khan can be imprisoned, isolated and excluded from political life. What it cannot easily imprison is his legacy. The man who once led Pakistan to its only World Cup triumph has now become the subject of an international cricketing appeal for humane treatment. The more the authorities try to keep his story behind prison walls, the more the cricketing world appears determined to take it beyond them.i 

The Himalayas are sending a warning, beyond borders!

Raju Korti
What happened along the Nepal-China border on August 26 is difficult to comprehend because it began with something that appears almost immovable: a glacier. A vast mass of ice and underlying rock near Langtang Lirung suddenly collapsed, producing a seismic shock initially mistaken for an earthquake. Satellite observations subsequently confirmed that the tremour was generated by an enormous ice and rock avalanche. A huge section of ice and bedrock plunged from an altitude of around 5,200 metres, setting off a chain reaction that sent ice, boulders, mud and water into the Lhende Khola and subsequently the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems.

The consequences were devastating. Water levels reportedly surged by eight to nine metres within about 30 minutes, while a fast-moving mixture of ice, rock, mud and water swept through valleys, destroying settlements, roads, bridges and hydropower infrastructure. The damage extended across the border into Tibet, including the important Gyirong trade and border area. What began as a high-altitude geological event thus became a transboundary catastrophe, demonstrating that a disaster born thousands of metres above sea level can quickly become a crisis far downstream.

A glacier is essentially a gigantic, slowly moving river of ice, formed when snow accumulates over many years, compresses under its own weight and turns into dense ice. Normally, its movement is gradual and predictable. A glacial collapse occurs when that equilibrium breaks dramatically and a section of ice, often accompanied by the rock supporting it, suddenly gives way.

Several factors can contribute. Rising temperatures melt and weaken ice, while warming can also thaw permafrost, the permanently frozen ground and rock that acts like natural cement in high mountains. Meltwater can enter cracks, increase pressure and lubricate surfaces. Heavy snowfall, intense rainfall, avalanches, erosion or earthquakes can then provide the final trigger. In a landscape as steep and unstable as the Himalayas, these forces can combine with devastating speed.

(Pic courtesy Instagram grab)

The Himalayas have always been geologically restless. They are among the world's youngest major mountain systems, created by the continuing collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. The same geological forces that created the mountains continue to deform and destabilise them. Climate change adds another layer of risk. Scientists are therefore cautious about attributing any single avalanche or collapse exclusively to global warming. But there is increasing evidence that a warmer high-altitude environment is altering glaciers, snowfields and frozen ground, making some slopes and ice masses less stable.

This distinction matters. The Langtang disaster was not simply a "man-made" event. No human activity can be identified as having directly caused that particular mass of ice and rock to fall on August 26. Yet humanity cannot entirely wash its hands of responsibility. Climate change is overwhelmingly driven by human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels. The Hindu Kush Himalaya is warming rapidly, and glacier loss in the region has accelerated sharply. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya are losing ice at an increasingly alarming rate, threatening water security for almost two billion people who depend directly or indirectly on rivers originating in the region.

The most frightening lesson is that people do not have to live beside a glacier to be endangered by it. A collapsing glacier can block a river, creating a temporary natural dam. Water accumulates behind it and, when the blockage fails, an enormous volume can be released almost instantaneously. Add boulders, ice, mud, trees and debris to the torrent and an ordinary flood becomes something resembling liquid concrete. It can demolish almost everything in its path.

This means downstream communities face a recurring risk. The danger is not necessarily that the same glacier will collapse again, but that another unstable glacier, slope or glacial lake could produce a similar chain reaction. The answer cannot simply be to abandon every mountain settlement. Millions depend upon these valleys for homes, agriculture, tourism, transport and hydropower. But neither can governments continue building as though the climate and mountains remain unchanged from the twentieth century.

Nor is this uniquely a Himalayan problem. Glacier-related avalanches and floods have occurred in the Andes, Alaska, western Canada, the European Alps and New Zealand. Peru has experienced some of the world's most devastating glacier disasters, including the 1970 Huascarán avalanche that killed thousands. What makes the Himalayas particularly vulnerable is the combination of rapidly changing glaciers, steep and fractured terrain, monsoon rainfall, dense downstream populations and the concentration of roads, dams, hydropower projects and settlements in narrow valleys.

The Langtang tragedy therefore demands a new approach to disaster management. There is no technology capable of stopping a glacier from collapsing. The realistic objective is to identify danger early and reduce human exposure. That means continuously mapping unstable glaciers, slopes and glacial lakes, using satellites, seismic sensors, drones, river gauges and increasingly sophisticated computer models. Early-warning systems must be linked directly to communities, with mobile alerts, sirens, evacuation routes and designated shelters.

The greatest investment may not be another concrete structure but information. A warning received ten minutes before a flash flood can save hundreds of lives. A warning received an hour earlier can save many more. Disaster management must therefore move from responding to catastrophe to anticipating it.

There is also a larger geopolitical lesson. Nature does not recognise international boundaries. The collapse occurred in the Himalayan border region, the resulting debris affected both Nepal and Tibet, and the river systems carry water further downstream into the wider Ganga basin. A glacier may belong geographically to one country, but the consequences of its collapse can belong to several.

This makes Nepal's position particularly delicate. Sandwiched between India and China, Kathmandu has traditionally sought to balance its relationships with both. The Langtang disaster demonstrates why environmental security cannot be separated from regional diplomacy. Nepal needs China for connectivity, infrastructure and trade, while its geography, markets and downstream river systems make India indispensable. China, Nepal and India therefore have a shared interest in reliable information about glaciers, weather, rivers and potential floods.

The temptation would be to view every such issue through the India-China geopolitical prism. That would be counterproductive. Climate and geology are becoming too powerful to be subordinated to strategic rivalry. What is needed is a regional mechanism for sharing satellite observations, hydrological information and early warnings without political hesitation. When a mountain collapses, sovereignty does not stop the water.

This is also where the allegations surrounding infrastructure and information sharing in the border region deserve scrutiny, but not speculation. Claims that construction or development around Gyirong directly caused this particular collapse require scientific evidence. Similarly, allegations of deliberate withholding of information should be established through facts rather than conjecture. The larger principle, however, is beyond dispute: where rivers, glaciers and hazards cross borders, timely sharing of environmental information is a matter of public safety, not diplomatic courtesy.

The catastrophe inevitably raises another question for those undertaking the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage: is the spiritual journey worth the physical risk? There can be no universal answer. For a devotee, Kailash is not simply a tourist destination but a profound spiritual undertaking. Yet faith cannot repeal geology. The tragic death of dancer Protima Bedi in a landslide in 1998, while on the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, remains a poignant reminder that the route has always demanded respect. In a warming Himalaya, that respect must now include modern scientific risk assessment, real-time weather monitoring, evacuation plans and a willingness to postpone journeys when nature issues a warning.

The Langtang catastrophe is ultimately much bigger than a glacier collapsing in Nepal. It is a warning about the relationship between a changing planet and an increasingly exposed civilisation. For centuries, humanity treated mountains as permanent, rivers as predictable and glaciers as eternal. None of those assumptions remains entirely safe.

The glacier that collapses tomorrow may be in Nepal, Peru, Alaska or the Alps. The people affected may live hundreds of kilometres away, possibly in another country. That is why this is not merely a problem of Himalayan geography. It is a problem of global environmental security.

We cannot prevent every natural disaster. We can, however, decide how vulnerable we are when nature strikes. The Himalayas are not collapsing because humanity exists, but humanity is creating a warmer world in which the Himalayas are becoming less predictable. The real question is no longer whether climate change will alter the mountains. It already is. The question is whether governments and societies will change fast enough to survive what the mountains may do next.

From cutting chai to cabinet power: The Gadkari I knew then, and now I don't!

Raju Korti
I and Nitin Gadkari were born in the same year, 1957, in the same city, Nagpur, now famously acknowledged, other than for oranges, as the bastion of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Our chosen professions were different, but our paths crossed quite early. I came to know him on first-name terms after he began emerging as a student leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Those were simpler days. I would drop my wife at a nearby bus stop at Shankar Nagar Square, where we would occasionally catch up perchance. There was nothing remotely grand about those encounters. We would share a cutting chai at a ramshackle tea stall, a tapri, exchanging small talk and pleasantries. There was no entourage, no security cordon and certainly no political theatre. He was simply Nitin, an energetic young man making his way in politics.

Extreme left me with Gadkari, book in hand 

Later, after I joined The Indian Express, he invited me to the thread ceremony of his sons at his residence in the Mahal area of East Nagpur. He was as portly then as he became later, given his well-known penchant for gluttony. Yet what struck me was not his girth but his temperament. Gadkari came across as sincere, open to reason, energetic and willing to engage. He was also active and dashing, two essential traits for any politician wanting to make a mark.

He made that mark decisively. True to his grit and political acumen, Gadkari rose from student politics to become an MLA, then an MP and eventually a Union minister. I have watched that journey from close quarters, from the days of the humble student leader to his current stature as the Union Minister for Transport and Highways. Somewhere along that journey of four and a half decades, however, I began to discern a perceptible change in his demeanour and approach.

Gadkari was never, in my assessment, a politician who stood out as an overwhelmingly popular electoral phenomenon. His rise was driven by something else: a reputation for organisational ability, administrative competence, political networking and an image of being committed to exemplary leadership. That combination took him a long way. So did his robust backing from the RSS, which remains an important factor in understanding his political standing even today.

Me speaking at the book release

That backing assumes particular significance against the persistent speculation about a supposed cold war between the Nagpur lobby and the Ahmedabad lobby, shorthand for the respective power centres associated with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah on one side and Nagpur on the other. Whether one accepts every dimension of that speculation or not, Gadkari's continuing relationship with the RSS is a political fact that cannot simply be wished away.

Yet the man I knew seemed to be changing. The once sincere-sounding and sincere-looking Gadkari increasingly appeared, to me, to be full of himself, high-handed and, at times, even arrogant. The transformation was gradual enough to be missed by those who knew him only from public appearances, but visible enough to someone who had encountered him before the trappings of power became so overwhelming.

I saw another glimpse of that transformation last year when Gadkari arrived habitually late, as chief guest at the release of Companion, or Sobati in Marathi, written by my journalist friend Chandrashekhar Velankar and subsequently translated into English by me. We were on the same dais. I am not sure whether, given his current stature, he failed to recognise me or chose not to. I am inclined to believe the latter, because politicians generally know their connections very well and conveniently remember or ignore them according to circumstance, convenience and occasion.

I did not, for my part, make any attempt to display the familiarity of our earlier days. As an accredited journalist, I would occasionally bumped into him at Mantralaya, where we would share tea with other media friends. But at the book release I remained where I was, without attempting to revive an old association merely because the man on the dais had risen spectacularly in stature. Perhaps that was just as well. The lines between us had long been clearly drawn. He was the politician. I was the journalist.

The more troubling transformation, however, was not whether Gadkari recognised me. It was the manner in which political success appeared to have altered his relationship with power, wealth and influence. Alongside his political career, Gadkari also grew as an entrepreneur, most notably through Poorti, the departmental-store venture that later found itself caught in a public storm over alleged financial irregularities. His fluency with seven and eight-digit figures became almost legendary, earning even rival politicians a measure of secret admiration. There was something undeniably impressive about his command of numbers, business and administration.

But somewhere along that progression, I believe he crossed the fine line between confidence and overconfidence. He became brusque. At times he seemed like someone who could not care less. The body language became more assertive, the speech more emphatic, the demeanour less accessible. Confidence, which had once been one of his strengths, increasingly seemed to harden into self-assurance of a different kind.

I have often suspected that both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were uncomfortable with the manner in which the ambitious Gadkari conducted himself after the BJP came to power with a massive mandate in 2014. Publicly, Gadkari always acknowledged that he functioned under the leadership of Modi. Yet he often came across as a self-styled minister who operated substantially on his own writ. I suspect Modi and Shah did not want to ruffle those feathers unnecessarily, partly because of the RSS rider that hung between them. Gadkari marched on regardless, fortified by his firm backing in Nagpur. The discomfort, at least to my reading of the political atmosphere, was palpable.

And then came the latest episode. Gadkari's recent remarks suggesting that he cannot do much work anymore and should make way for someone from the new generation have inevitably set tongues wagging. As happens with almost every politician whose words acquire an inconvenient interpretation, clarifications followed. He made it clear that he had no plans to quit active politics. Technically, that may settle the matter. Politically, it does not.

There is already a perception that Gadkari may have an inkling that an impending Cabinet reshuffle could leave him without a berth and that he may therefore be contemplating a face-saving, dignified exit before the decision is made for him. I do not claim that this is necessarily what is happening. But the perception exists, and politicians of Gadkari's experience know better than most that perceptions themselves can become political facts. For someone who became BJP president, emerged as a virtually confirmed name for the Union Cabinet and occupied one of its most important portfolios, the possibility is both sad and surprising.

As someone who knew him on first-name terms, once I found the episode personally disappointing. As an independent-minded media person, I found it perplexing and, frankly, annoying. This was not the Gadkari I thought he would become. Not that I claim any proprietary interest in his political career. I do not. Our lines were clearly drawn long ago. He was the politician. I was the journalist.

But I remain astonished at the extent to which he has courted unpopularity, including among people in his own party and some of his personal well-wishers. The most striking example is his insistence on ethanol-blended fuel. After creating immense difficulties and confusion for vehicle owners across the country, the manner in which the ethanol issue has been pursued has, in my view, damaged much of the goodwill Gadkari painstakingly accumulated over three decades of political life.

The criticism is not merely about ethanol as an idea. Ethanol blending has legitimate arguments in its favour, including energy security, reduced dependence on imported crude and support for domestic agriculture. The problem is the manner, pace and perceived conflict of interest surrounding its advocacy. What was the need to force such a transition so abruptly, particularly when domestic manufacturing of ethanol-compatible vehicles was not even slated to begin until 2023? A little patience could have prevented much of the chaos.

The allegation made by his critics is that the decision was pushed through with extraordinary haste, with a unilateral decision being taken late in the evening in the expectation of nationwide applause. When the backlash followed, responsibility appeared to move elsewhere, with Hardeep Singh Puri becoming a convenient name in the subsequent political explanation. Whether that characterisation is entirely fair is open to debate, but it illustrates the degree to which Gadkari's image has become vulnerable to suspicion.

That is precisely why the present perception troubles me more than it might trouble someone who had never known the earlier Gadkari. His critics have gone further, drawing an unflattering parallel with Dhritarashtra, whose blind devotion to his son clouded his judgement and brought the situation to what it is today. I would hesitate to make such a sweeping moral equivalence. But there is an uncomfortable political question that Gadkari cannot simply dismiss: when a powerful minister vigorously promotes an industry in which his own sons have business interests, can he reasonably expect the public to remain indifferent to the appearance of a conflict?

His two sons' involvement in the ethanol business has been openly criticised, and many have expressed anguish over what they perceive as a troubling intersection between public policy and private family interests. Whether every allegation made against the family stands scrutiny is another matter. But perception, again, matters enormously in public life.

I do not pretend to live in a political world innocent of vested interests. Show me one politician who has never had a vested interest, who has remained entirely unselfish, pliant when the need arises, or untouched by the moral compromises that accompany the exercise of power. Politics, by its very nature, is rarely an antiseptic profession. My anguish, therefore, is not about Gadkari being a politician who has acquired wealth, influence or ambition. It is about the distance he seems to have travelled from the down-to-earth man I once knew.

There was a time when a cutting chai at a roadside tapri was enough. A young Gadkari could sit down, laugh, exchange pleasantries and talk without the burden of office weighing upon the conversation. He appeared sincere and accessible. He listened. He could disagree without necessarily becoming disagreeable. At the book release last year, I saw something quite different. His speech, his body language and his overall bearing seemed to me to reflect a metamorphosed Gadkari. It was not the man with whom I had once shared laughter and pleasantries over a roadside cup of tea.

Perhaps power does that to people. Perhaps prolonged proximity to authority creates a protective wall around those who wield it. Perhaps success slowly convinces a politician that disagreement is opposition and criticism is envy. Or perhaps I am simply reading too much into a few encounters separated by decades. But the change is difficult for me to ignore.

Gadkari has undoubtedly achieved much. His tenure in the highways and transport ministry has given him an opportunity to leave a substantial infrastructural imprint, and his political journey from Nagpur's student politics to the national stage is, by any measure, remarkable. He has demonstrated administrative energy, political resilience and an entrepreneurial instinct rare in Indian politics. That is precisely why his present predicament is so intriguing.

A politician does not become diminished merely because he leaves office. Nor does retirement necessarily amount to defeat. If Gadkari genuinely believes that the next generation should take over, there would be dignity in saying so plainly and leaving on his own terms. But if retirement is merely a pre-emptive manoeuvre to avoid being dropped in a Cabinet reshuffle, then the grandeur of the gesture begins to look rather different. There is a subtle distinction between choosing one's exit and dressing up an enforced exit as a sacrifice.

I do not know which of the two applies to Gadkari. He alone does. What I do know is the Gadkari I once knew. I remember a young student leader from Nagpur, ambitious but approachable, active and dashing, sitting across a ramshackle tapri and sharing a cutting chai with me. I remember the invitation to his sons' thread ceremony. I remember the occasional tea at Mantralaya with fellow journalists. I remember a man who seemed secure enough in himself to listen.

I also remember the Gadkari I saw last year. Between those two men lie roughly four and a half decades of politics, power, business, success, controversy and changing equations. Somewhere in that long journey, the man who once seemed confident without being overbearing appears, at least to me, to have become increasingly overconfident, high-handed and brusque. That is not an indictment of his entire political career. It is a personal observation born of having seen him before and after power acquired its full weight.

And perhaps that is the hardest truth about politics. The public rarely knows the person behind the politician. Those of us who encountered them before the barricades, security details, official cars and towering offices sometimes get a glimpse of the distance travelled. In Gadkari's case, I have travelled that distance with him, albeit from the other side of the political fence.

I began by sharing a cutting chai with Nitin Gadkari. Today, I watch Union Minister Nitin Gadkari from a distance and wonder what happened to the man who sat beside me at that tapri. The politician may have become bigger. The question is whether, somewhere along the way, the man became smaller.

Pakistan's battle with itself, from its own in power!

Raju Korti
Pakistan's present predicament is becoming increasingly difficult to conceal. Inflation remains painful, economic growth modest and the government heavily dependent on external support. At the same time, Balochistan remains troubled by separatist violence, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa faces persistent militancy, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has recently witnessed serious public unrest. Against this backdrop, unusually frank remarks from senior political figures have exposed an uncomfortable debate about where the country is headed.

(Sharif and Naqvi: At cross purposes (Insta grab)

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif's comparison with India is perhaps the most revealing. He pointed out that India and Pakistan became independent at virtually the same time, yet have travelled very different distances. “Look at how far apart the two countries have come,” he said, before referring to the difficulties in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The significance of the statement lies not merely in acknowledging India's progress, but in recognising Pakistan's own failure to convert its considerable human and strategic potential into sustained national development.

India's rise in technology, infrastructure, manufacturing, services and global influence has become an uncomfortable benchmark for Pakistan. This does not imply that India has solved all its problems. It has not. But the comparison is legitimate because both countries began their independent journeys in broadly comparable circumstances. Pakistan's difficulty is that the gap has widened considerably, particularly in economic scale, technological capacity and international influence.

Asif had also spoken more starkly some weeks ago about Pakistan's deteriorating position. Such remarks suggest that the country's leadership is becoming conscious that its traditional narrative of security and confrontation cannot indefinitely compensate for weaknesses in governance and economic performance. The India comparison, therefore, is best understood as an admission of relative decline rather than a sudden endorsement of India.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has gone even further in diagnosing the problem. Speaking at the Pakistan Economic Summit in July, he declared: “Whether you agree or not, the system we have been living under has collapsed.” He argued that Pakistan needed fundamental administrative reform, including consideration of new provinces or administrative units. He also said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif could work 12 or even 18 hours a day, but that the government was essentially “firefighting”.

That is a remarkable admission from a serving interior minister. Naqvi was not necessarily indicting Shehbaz Sharif personally. His argument was that the inherited administrative structure itself had failed to deliver justice, jobs, public services and economic opportunity. But the political implication is unavoidable. If the system has collapsed, those running the system must inevitably face questions about their responsibility for its condition.

The proposal for new provinces is therefore more consequential than it may initially appear. Decentralisation could potentially bring government closer to citizens, but redrawing administrative boundaries cannot by itself cure corruption, fiscal weakness, political patronage or poor institutional capacity. Significantly, the military spokesman has subsequently supported the idea of new administrative units and called for a broader “reset”. That makes Naqvi's intervention particularly interesting because of his well-known proximity to the establishment.

The Army will inevitably view the Asif and Naqvi remarks through a different lens. For decades, India's perceived threat has been central to Pakistan's security doctrine and to the military's dominant role in national affairs. A senior defence minister publicly acknowledging India's superior trajectory inevitably raises an uncomfortable question: if Pakistan has devoted such enormous political and financial resources to security, why has it fallen so far behind its principal rival in economic and technological terms?

The likely military response is not necessarily to retreat from politics. It may instead conclude that Pakistan requires stronger administrative control and structural reform. That is precisely where the civilian and military interpretations could diverge. Civilian politicians may see the crisis as a reason for greater democratic accountability and institutional autonomy, while the establishment may see it as evidence that the existing political system requires firmer management.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman has challenged that proposition more directly. He has urged the military to stay out of politics and challenged Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir to remove his uniform and contest elections if he wishes to participate in politics. More recently, he invoked the traumatic memory of 1971, reminding the military establishment that power has limits and that history can punish institutions that overestimate their strength.

Fazlur Rehman's intervention is important because he is an experienced political operator rather than an outsider to Pakistan's power structure. His message is essentially that the Army may remain the most powerful institution in the country, but political legitimacy cannot be acquired through military authority alone.

The regional situation reinforces his argument. Balochistan remains afflicted by a separatist insurgency, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues to face attacks from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and other militant groups. The security challenge is therefore not confined to the conventional India-Pakistan frontier. The state is simultaneously confronting internal insurgencies and political discontent.

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir presents a different warning. Recent unrest there has demonstrated that dissatisfaction is no longer confined to traditionally volatile provinces. Complaints about economic hardship, governance and political interference have acquired sufficient intensity to produce serious confrontation. When discontent spreads into a territory that Islamabad has traditionally portrayed as central to its national narrative, the problem becomes political as much as administrative.

Economically, the picture remains fragile despite efforts at stabilisation. The central problem is that macroeconomic rescue does not immediately translate into prosperity for ordinary Pakistanis. Inflation, unemployment, debt and limited development spending continue to weigh heavily on households. Recent economic assessments have also highlighted Pakistan's low growth and continuing poverty, while development allocations have come under pressure from fiscal and security requirements.

Does all this mean that the Shehbaz Sharif government is about to fall? Not necessarily. Indeed, Naqvi himself subsequently said that Sharif would complete his five-year term, clarifying that his criticism of the “collapsed” system was not a chargesheet against the Prime Minister or his government.

The more realistic assessment is that the Sharif government is vulnerable but not immediately endangered. In Pakistan, the survival of a civilian government depends not merely on parliamentary arithmetic but also on its relationship with the military establishment. Unless the Army decides that the present arrangement has become a liability, there is little reason to assume that it will be abruptly removed.

The greater danger is therefore gradual erosion rather than sudden collapse. Inflation can undermine public confidence, regional unrest can weaken state legitimacy, militancy can expose administrative weakness and political rivalry can prevent the consensus required for difficult economic reform.

The common thread running through the remarks of Asif, Naqvi and Fazlur Rehman is that Pakistan's problem is no longer simply who governs it. It is how it is governed. Asif's comparison with India highlights the widening developmental gap. Naqvi's declaration that the system has “collapsed” highlights institutional failure. Fazlur Rehman's challenge to the military highlights the unresolved question of civilian authority.

Pakistan is not necessarily a country in irreversible decline. It retains substantial human resources, strategic importance, natural wealth and institutional capabilities. But its present crisis cannot be solved by changing governments alone, creating new provinces alone or relying indefinitely on the military establishment.

The uncomfortable truth emerging from Pakistan itself is that national security cannot substitute for economic development, military power cannot substitute for political legitimacy, and political rhetoric cannot substitute for governance. The real test for Pakistan is whether its powerful institutions are prepared to recognise that distinction before today's crisis becomes tomorrow's structural decline. 

When bureaucrats break silence with praise!

Raju Korti
It is uncommon for one serving bureaucrat to openly praise another, given the service conduct rules that discourage commentary on colleagues, the professional distance maintained to avoid perceptions of bias, and the competitive nature of postings.

Yet Ms Ashwini Bhide, IAS, has chosen to speak with conviction about the work of Mr Tukaram Mundhe, IAS, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. She has lauded his crackdown on violations of food safety and hygiene norms, describing it as not only necessary but transformative. In her words, Mundhe is a mature officer who understands that visible, aggressive enforcement is sometimes required to make society take notice of issues that otherwise remain neglected. She stressed that such “initial noise” is essential to trigger public discussion, and expressed confidence that he will establish systems strong enough to endure beyond his tenure.

(Pic from a net thread)

With a robust reputation in her preceding stint as “Metro Woman”, Ms Bhide’s own record in municipal administration reflects a similar proactive spirit. As the first woman Commissioner of Mumbai’s civic body, she has consistently demonstrated a citizen-centric approach. Her “pedestrians first” initiative to reclaim the city’s footpaths for public use is emblematic of her belief in systemic change and the prioritisation of everyday urban needs.

In interviews, she has emphasised that the FDA’s drive is appreciable not merely for its enforcement but for its capacity to instil discipline and awareness, thereby creating a window where citizens themselves become demanding of higher standards. She has also cautioned that the sustainability of such initiatives depends on embedding systemic reforms, a view that resonates with her own efforts to strengthen municipal governance.

The Marathi articulation of her support captures the essence of her endorsement: “समाजात जागरूकता निर्माण करण्यासाठी आणि चांगल्या स्वच्छतेची सवय लावण्यासाठी सुरुवातीला अशा तीव्र पावलांची, गाजावाजाची गरजच असते,” which translates to her belief that strong initial measures and visible action are indispensable to awaken public consciousness and instil habits of hygiene. By calling Mundhe a “mature officer”, she has underscored his ability to balance immediate enforcement with long-term institution-building.

The significance of this exchange lies in the broader ethos of the Indian Administrative Service. Officers swear allegiance to the Constitution and are entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring good governance. When two senior bureaucrats demonstrate mutual respect and a shared vision for reform, it signals the possibility of collaborative change that transcends individual postings.

Ms Bhide’s praise of Mundhe is not merely an endorsement of his style of functioning but also a reminder that governance thrives when administrators are willing to acknowledge and support each other’s efforts.

In a society often sceptical of officialdom, such gestures of solidarity can reinforce public faith in institutions. They show that principled, fearless, and conscientious administration remains the cornerstone of positive transformation. The rare public commendation by Bhide is therefore more than a passing remark; it is a statement of confidence in the power of like-minded officers to create lasting systems, to embed reform into the civic and regulatory fabric, and to demonstrate that bureaucracy, when guided by integrity and vision, can indeed be versatile, responsive, and transformative.

This instance also finds resonance in the history of Indian bureaucracy where figures such as T. N. Seshan, the legendary Chief Election Commissioner, were openly praised for their institutional overhaul of electoral processes, albeit often by retired colleagues who could speak without restraint. Similarly, officers like Mr Ashok Khemka and Mr Tukaram Mundhe himself have been commended in memoirs and public forums for standing firm against political pressures despite frequent transfers. Retired civil servants such as E. A. S. Sarma and J. Satyanarayana have written extensively in support of upright peers, while associations of former officers have passed resolutions lauding extraordinary courage during crises.

Ms Bhide’s words therefore stand out as a rare but powerful example of serving officers breaking the mould of silence, affirming that mutual respect and shared conviction can indeed strengthen the foundations of governance. 

A disclaimer: I have nothing to gain from this piece. I am also aware that it is generally believed that if bureaucrats do exemplary work, there is nothing to rave about it. It is very much expected of them.  The thrust is about how rare it is for one bureaucrat to say something laudatory about a peer/contemporary.    

When Trump looks to India for an electoral lesson!

Raju Korti
President Donald Trump’s latest reference to India’s electoral system is noteworthy not merely because an American President has held up the world’s largest democracy as an example, but because of what he is trying to achieve with that comparison. In invoking Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and asking, rhetorically, how the United States can conduct elections without universally mandatory photo identification, Trump has once again placed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, at the centre of his electoral agenda. His message is straightforward: if India, with its enormous electorate and extraordinary logistical complexity, can insist upon voter identification, why cannot the United States?

(Visual an Instagram grab) 

Trump’s account of a conversation between his administration and Kumar has not been independently corroborated by any confirmed public exchange between the Election Commission of India and the Trump administration. That caveat is important. Yet the larger comparison he has drawn is substantially grounded in reality. India does require identification at polling stations, and the Election Commission says that a voter’s name must be present on the electoral roll before a vote can be cast. The Electors Photo Identity Card, or EPIC, is the principal identification document, although a voter whose name is on the roll can use a range of alternative government-approved photo documents. Thus, the Indian system is not simply a matter of producing one particular card at the polling station. It is an integrated architecture involving electoral rolls, identification, polling-station verification, physical safeguards, election officials, party-appointed agents, postal-ballot categories and a constitutional election authority.

Trump is therefore not really proposing to import the Indian electoral system into America. He is selecting one particularly visible feature of it, mandatory identity verification at the polling station, and using it as an argument for a much broader restructuring of American federal election law. That distinction is important because the Indian and American systems operate within radically different constitutional and administrative frameworks. India has a single constitutional Election Commission entrusted with the superintendence, direction and control of elections to Parliament and state legislatures. The United States, by contrast, has no exact institutional equivalent. American elections are administered through a highly decentralised structure in which states and local jurisdictions play the principal operational role.

India’s electoral system begins from a relatively straightforward proposition: the person standing before the polling official must be identifiable as the person whose name appears on the electoral roll. The polling official checks the elector’s name against the roll and verifies the prescribed identification before the voting process proceeds. The voter’s finger is marked with indelible ink and the vote is recorded through the prescribed voting mechanism. The safeguards are designed to establish a chain of identity and eligibility rather than relying upon a single document as the sole determinant of the right to vote.

That distinction becomes particularly significant when the Indian system is compared with the SAVE America Act. India does not insist that the EPIC card be the only acceptable identity document. A range of alternative government-issued photo documents can be used where prescribed by the Election Commission. This flexibility is important because it makes the Indian model less dependent upon possession of one particular identity document. The underlying principle is that the elector must be identifiable, but the system provides several routes through which that identity can be established.

India’s electoral machinery also places enormous emphasis upon the integrity of the electoral roll itself. This is where the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, becomes relevant to the American debate. SIR is not a voter-ID law. It is fundamentally an exercise in electoral-roll revision and verification, intended to establish that the people appearing on the electoral roll are eligible electors while providing a mechanism for claims, objections and corrections. Booth Level Officers undertake enumeration and verification, after which draft rolls are published and citizens are given opportunities to raise objections or seek inclusion and correction. The larger principle is that electoral integrity begins before a voter reaches the polling station.

That principle has an obvious resonance in the American debate, although the institutional mechanisms are very different. The United States has been grappling increasingly with questions concerning the accuracy of voter rolls, including concerns over deceased voters, duplicate registrations, people who have moved and, most controversially, the registration of non-citizens. The SAVE Act attempts to address one component of this problem by requiring documentary proof of United States citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. In conceptual terms, therefore, there is a point of contact between SIR and the SAVE Act. Both are concerned with establishing the integrity of the electoral roll. But they are not equivalent exercises. SIR is principally an administrative verification and revision process, whereas the SAVE Act seeks to establish a statutory federal requirement for documentary citizenship verification.

The distinction becomes even more important because America's constitutional structure makes electoral regulation considerably more complicated than it appears from Trump's comparison. The United States Constitution gives states substantial responsibility for conducting elections, while Congress possesses authority under the Elections Clause to regulate the times, places and manner of congressional elections. The resulting division of responsibility has produced a highly decentralised electoral system in which procedures can differ substantially from one state to another. What can be implemented through a single national electoral authority in India can therefore become a constitutional and political contest in the United States.

This is the context in which Trump’s invocation of India becomes politically significant. His argument is that the American electoral system has permitted too much variation in voter identification, registration and voting procedures among the states and that a national minimum standard is necessary to restore confidence in elections. The argument resonates strongly with a substantial section of the American electorate, particularly Republicans, who have long maintained that voter identification should be a basic requirement rather than a matter left entirely to individual states.

The SAVE America Act seeks to address two separate but connected questions. The first concerns citizenship. The legislation would require documentary proof of United States citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. The second concerns identity. It would require photo identification when voting in a federal election and would also impose identification requirements on absentee voting. The proposed documentary requirements go considerably beyond simply producing a driver's licence. Depending upon the circumstances, acceptable documentation could include a United States passport, specified government or military documentation, a qualifying identification indicating citizenship, or a government-issued photo identification accompanied by other documents such as a certified birth certificate.

That makes the SAVE Act considerably more complicated than an American version of the Indian EPIC system. The Indian system is primarily concerned at the polling station with establishing that the individual seeking to vote corresponds with the elector named on the electoral roll. The SAVE Act reaches further upstream by requiring documentary evidence of citizenship at the registration stage and then requiring photo identification at the voting stage. It is consequently both a citizenship-verification regime and a voter-identification regime.

Trump’s reference to India gives the SAVE Act a political narrative that it otherwise might not possess. Instead of presenting voter identification merely as a Republican demand, he can now portray it as a question of international democratic practice. His implied argument is that if India can administer elections involving hundreds of millions of voters while requiring identification, the United States, with a considerably smaller electorate, should certainly be capable of doing the same. The comparison has rhetorical force, particularly because India’s 2024 general election involved an electorate approaching one billion and more than 600 million votes were cast.

Yet the comparison becomes less convincing if taken literally. India and the United States have different constitutional structures, different electoral histories, different administrative traditions and very different political cultures. Most importantly, the American debate over voter identification cannot be separated from the country’s history of racial discrimination and the historical use of literacy tests, poll taxes and other devices that were employed to restrict voting rights. Consequently, the American argument is not simply about whether identification is sensible. It is also about who bears the burden of proving eligibility and whether that burden could disproportionately affect citizens who are otherwise legally entitled to vote.

The issue of citizenship makes the distinction still sharper. Voter identification and proof of citizenship address different risks. Photo identification is principally intended to establish that the individual appearing to vote is the person represented on the electoral roll. Proof of citizenship, on the other hand, establishes whether that individual possesses the legal qualification to register for a federal election in the first place. A citizen may lack an acceptable photo ID, while a non-citizen may possess a perfectly valid photo ID. The two requirements therefore address different parts of the electoral chain.

India has effectively separated these questions through its electoral registration system and polling procedures. Citizenship and eligibility are dealt with through the electoral roll, while identity is verified at the polling station. The SAVE Act attempts to make documentary citizenship verification a much more explicit and consequential part of federal voter registration. That makes the American proposal more administratively demanding and explains why the documentation question has become such a contentious part of the debate.

Critics of the legislation argue that documentation requirements could create practical barriers for otherwise eligible voters. Birth certificates are not universally available in convenient form. Names can change, particularly after marriage. A naturalised citizen may possess citizenship documentation that differs from that held by someone born in the United States. People who have moved between states, military families and Americans born abroad may encounter their own documentary complications. Supporters, however, argue that such administrative difficulties can be addressed through alternative verification mechanisms and that citizenship, being an explicit constitutional qualification for federal voting, should not be treated as something that cannot be documented.

India again provides an interesting contrast. Its electoral system does not make one document an absolute barrier to voting. A voter whose name is on the electoral roll can generally establish identity through one of several prescribed documents. That flexibility is significant. It suggests that the objective of electoral integrity does not necessarily require a system in which the absence of one particular document automatically prevents an otherwise eligible citizen from exercising the franchise.

The Indian experience therefore offers Trump both an argument and a caution. It provides an argument that a gigantic democracy can operate a system in which identification at the polling station is routine. But it also demonstrates that identification is only one component of electoral integrity and that the system must contain sufficient flexibility to accommodate genuine voters who do not possess a particular form of documentation. The Indian model is consequently more nuanced than the political shorthand of “everyone needs photo ID” might suggest.

This is also where the American discussion of SIR becomes particularly interesting. India's SIR is not simply a mechanism for removing questionable names from electoral rolls. Its legitimacy depends equally upon ensuring that eligible voters are not wrongly excluded. That is why enumeration, publication of draft rolls, claims, objections, hearings and opportunities for correction are important. An electoral roll is not made more credible merely by reducing its size. It becomes credible when the people who are legally entitled to vote are accurately represented on it.

The same principle will ultimately confront the American system if citizenship verification becomes more widespread. Removing an ineligible name may appear to strengthen electoral integrity, but wrongly removing an eligible citizen undermines it. The central challenge is therefore not merely verification. It is verification with due process.

The question of whether other American states can pass their own citizenship and identification laws in 2026 must consequently be answered with some qualification. Several Republican-led states have already moved in this direction, although the precise nature of their laws differs considerably. Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia have enacted citizenship-related voting legislation during 2026, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some laws establish documentary proof of citizenship requirements, others rely on database verification or create procedures for voters whose citizenship cannot immediately be confirmed, while some contemplate separate treatment for federal and state ballots.

This demonstrates that the political movement toward tighter citizenship verification does not depend entirely upon the SAVE Act becoming federal law. States possess substantial authority over the administration of elections within their jurisdictions and can enact their own requirements, subject to constitutional restrictions and federal statutes. Republican-controlled legislatures are therefore likely to continue experimenting with different approaches during the current election cycle.

The major qualification is that passing a law and successfully implementing it before an election are two different matters. Election legislation requires administrative preparation. Registration systems may have to be modified, databases integrated, election officials trained, voters informed and procedures established for individuals whose documentation cannot immediately be verified. If legislation is enacted close to an election, courts may also have to determine whether it can be implemented without causing confusion or disenfranchisement.

Litigation is therefore likely to accompany legislative action. A state can pass a citizenship verification law, but opponents can challenge it on constitutional, statutory or administrative grounds. Courts can suspend its operation, modify its application or permit only parts of it to take effect. The result can be an extraordinarily complicated legal environment in which different states operate under different rules during the same national election.

That fragmentation is perhaps the greatest difference between India and America. India has a constitutional Election Commission with nationwide jurisdiction over the electoral process. The United States has fifty state-level election systems, supplemented by thousands of local jurisdictions. There is no American equivalent of a single Election Commission that can issue a uniform national instruction applicable across the country. That institutional difference explains why Trump's comparison with India is politically attractive but administratively incomplete.

It also creates a formidable challenge for the Trump administration. Even if the President succeeds in persuading Congress to enact the SAVE America Act, the federal government would still have to negotiate the complex relationship between federal standards and state election administration. The legislation would have to withstand constitutional challenges and survive disputes over its interaction with existing federal election laws. Its practical implementation could be almost as difficult as securing its passage.

The Senate remains the immediate legislative obstacle. Even where Republicans hold a majority, the chamber's procedural requirement for 60 votes to overcome a filibuster means that a bill of this political sensitivity cannot necessarily be enacted simply because the President's party controls the Senate. Trump can exert enormous political pressure on Republican senators, but presidential influence cannot eliminate Senate procedure. The House and Senate therefore remain distinct political battlegrounds.

The possibility of using executive authority as an alternative is equally problematic. The President can direct executive agencies within the limits of existing law, but an executive order cannot simply rewrite the constitutional allocation of election powers between the federal government and the states. Attempts by the administration to impose nationwide voting requirements through executive action are likely to face immediate judicial challenges. The courts will ultimately determine whether the executive branch has the statutory authority to take such steps without congressional legislation.

There is also a broader political paradox in Trump's reference to India. India has frequently been criticised in American political discourse by sections of the American establishment over aspects of its democratic institutions. Yet the Indian electoral system is now being held up by the American President as a practical example of electoral identification. The irony is unmistakable. The world's largest democracy is being invoked as a lesson for the world's oldest continuously operating modern constitutional democracy.

The more meaningful lesson, however, lies not in the voter card but in the architecture surrounding it. India's electoral integrity rests upon an interconnected chain involving electoral registration, revision of rolls, voter identification, polling-station safeguards, election personnel, political-party agents, counting procedures and mechanisms for resolving disputes. Identification is one link in that chain, not the chain itself.

America's emerging approach is developing along a different route. Instead of creating a central electoral authority comparable to India's Election Commission, it is relying upon federal legislation, state-level experimentation, database verification, documentary evidence and judicial review. The objective may be similar, but the machinery is fundamentally different.

This makes the comparison with SIR particularly instructive. SIR and the SAVE Act should not be treated as equivalents. SIR is an administrative exercise designed to revise and verify electoral rolls. The SAVE Act is proposed federal legislation intended to impose documentary citizenship and identification requirements for federal elections. Yet both respond to the same underlying democratic anxiety: how does a country ensure that the electoral roll contains those who are entitled to vote and excludes those who are not?

The answer in India is increasingly built around enumeration, verification, claims, objections and central institutional supervision. The answer emerging in America is being constructed through federal legislation, state laws, documentary proof, database checks and litigation. The difference reflects the two countries' constitutional philosophies as much as their electoral practices.

There is also a subtle lesson for both democracies. Electoral integrity and electoral accessibility are not necessarily opposing principles. A strong electoral system must accomplish both. It must make fraudulent or ineligible voting difficult while ensuring that a legitimate citizen does not lose the right to vote merely because of an avoidable administrative obstacle. The real test of any voter-identification or citizenship-verification system is therefore not how many people it prevents from voting, but how accurately it distinguishes between an ineligible voter and an eligible citizen facing a documentary difficulty.

For Trump, the Indian comparison provides a powerful political argument. It allows him to ask why a country with hundreds of millions of voters can operate a highly structured identification system while the United States continues to permit substantial variation from state to state. It also allows him to frame the SAVE Act as an issue of electoral confidence rather than simply partisan politics.

But India cannot provide America with a shortcut. The United States cannot reproduce the Indian system without confronting its own constitutional structure, its federal division of electoral powers, its history of voting-rights disputes and its deeply entrenched state-level administrative machinery. Any attempt to do so through executive action alone would invite precisely the kind of constitutional confrontation that the administration is seeking to avoid.

The larger significance of Trump's remarks, therefore, lies less in his praise of India's electoral system than in the American debate they illuminate. He is effectively asking whether electoral integrity should be treated as a national standard or remain primarily a matter for individual states. The SAVE Act is his legislative answer. State-level citizenship and identification laws are the decentralised answer already emerging in parts of the country. The courts will have an important say in determining how far either approach can go.

India's experience demonstrates that a vast democracy can combine a comprehensive electoral roll with routine voter identification and extensive administrative verification. America's challenge is to determine whether it can achieve comparable confidence without sacrificing the flexibility, federalism and voting rights protections embedded in its own constitutional system.

Trump's comparison with India is therefore both flattering and revealing. It recognises the extraordinary administrative achievement involved in conducting an election on India's scale, but it also exposes the fundamental difference between the two democracies. India has an Election Commission capable of establishing nationwide electoral procedures. America has a federal system in which the President cannot simply command uniformity.

That is ultimately why the SAVE America Act is about much more than voter ID. It is about who controls the American ballot, who determines eligibility, who bears the burden of proof and how far Washington can go in prescribing rules for elections conducted by the states. The immediate political battle may be over citizenship documents and photo identification, but the constitutional battle beneath it is about the balance of power in American democracy.

India can offer America an example of what is administratively possible. It cannot offer America a constitutional shortcut.

Mecca Agreement: Merely a symbolic alliance or deterrent?

Raju Korti
The signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan has all the ingredients of a geopolitical event larger than the document itself. Signed in Mecca and built around the assertion that an armed attack against any one of the three countries would be regarded as an attack against all three, the agreement inevitably carries a powerful symbolic resonance. It appears, at first glance, to be the outline of a collective Muslim security arrangement at a time when the strategic landscape of West Asia and South Asia is undergoing considerable turbulence. Yet its real significance lies not so much in the grandeur of the language as in what the three countries are actually prepared to do when their interests diverge.

For India, that distinction is particularly important. The immediate question being asked is whether a future Operation Sindoor-style action against Pakistan could result in Saudi Arabia and Turkey coming to Islamabad's military aid. The answer, at least on the basis of what has been made public so far, is far from automatic. The agreement undoubtedly strengthens Pakistan's diplomatic and strategic position and could raise the costs of any future Indian military action. But it does not appear to create an unconditional obligation under which Saudi Arabia or Turkey would necessarily send troops, aircraft or naval assets into a war against India.

(Picture a Facebook grab)

The public formulation is strikingly broad, while the operational details remain strikingly limited. The central principle is that an armed attack against one member will be regarded as an attack against all three, with the agreement intended to strengthen defence cooperation and collective deterrence. Beyond that broad formulation, however, the precise military obligations have not been publicly disclosed in the kind of detail that would allow it to be assessed as a fully-fledged military alliance. There is, as yet, no publicly available evidence of a common military command, an integrated force structure, automatic deployment arrangements, predetermined rules of engagement or a compulsory mechanism requiring one member to enter a war initiated by another.

That distinction is not semantic. It is the difference between a political security guarantee and an operational military alliance. Even NATO's famous Article 5 does not literally mean that every member must automatically send troops into battle when another member is attacked. The response is ultimately determined by each member according to its constitutional and political processes. The Mecca arrangement appears to leave at least as much room for national discretion, and perhaps considerably more.

The precise contours of the agreement therefore remain the most important unanswered question. Who determines that an armed attack has taken place? Is a limited punitive strike covered? Would an operation against terrorist infrastructure qualify in the same way as an invasion? Would all three countries have to agree that the threshold had been crossed? Is military assistance compulsory, or can a member fulfil its obligation through diplomatic support, intelligence, logistics, weapons or financial assistance? What happens if one member believes that another has provoked the conflict? These are not peripheral technicalities. They will determine whether the pact has genuine military teeth or primarily functions as a deterrent declaration.

There is also a historical irony in the arrangement because Saudi Arabia and Pakistan already had a mutual defence agreement. Their Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement, signed in September 2025, had already established the principle that aggression against one would be treated as aggression against both and sought to strengthen their strategic and military cooperation. The Saudi-Pakistani relationship itself is much older. Pakistan has trained Saudi military personnel, maintained defence cooperation with the Kingdom and, at different points, deployed troops and military assets there. The Mecca pact therefore does not create the Saudi-Pakistani security relationship. What it does is add Turkey to it and potentially transform a bilateral understanding into a broader three-cornered security arrangement.

That Turkish addition is the genuinely new element and probably the most consequential one for India. Ankara has developed a close defence relationship with Islamabad and has been considerably more forthright than Riyadh in supporting Pakistan on matters concerning India. During Operation Sindoor, Turkey's political positioning was unmistakably sympathetic to Pakistan, while its defence relationship with Islamabad attracted considerable attention. The new agreement could consequently institutionalise a relationship that had already demonstrated itself during a crisis.

Yet even here, there is a considerable distance between support and war. Turkey can provide diplomatic backing, intelligence, military equipment, drones, technology or other forms of assistance without sending Turkish forces into direct combat with India. A decision to deploy Turkish aircraft or troops against India would represent a dramatically higher threshold. Turkey is a NATO member with extensive economic interests and a foreign policy that extends across Europe, West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Mediterranean. A direct war with India would therefore carry consequences vastly greater than those involved in politically supporting Pakistan.

The Saudi question is even more complicated. Riyadh has a close and longstanding relationship with Islamabad, but it also has a rapidly expanding strategic relationship with New Delhi. India and Saudi Arabia are no longer connected merely through oil and the presence of a large Indian expatriate community in the Kingdom. Trade, investment, energy security, technology, defence dialogue and political engagement have all acquired greater strategic importance. Saudi Arabia has little reason to jeopardise those interests lightly.

That becomes particularly relevant when the agreement is examined against Saudi Arabia's actual behaviour during previous crises. During Operation Sindoor, when India and Pakistan engaged in direct military confrontation, Saudi Arabia did not intervene militarily on Pakistan's behalf. This is significant because the Saudi-Pakistani defence relationship already existed at the time. The creation of a new trilateral framework does not automatically erase that precedent. It may strengthen the political pressure on Riyadh to support Islamabad, but it does not demonstrate that Saudi Arabia would be willing to fight India for Pakistan.

The Iran episode provides another revealing test of how such defence understandings operate in reality. When Iran attacked Saudi targets during the ongoing regional conflict, including critical infrastructure, Pakistan did not respond by entering a military confrontation with Iran. Islamabad condemned the attacks, expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia and reiterated its support for the Kingdom's sovereignty and security. That response was politically significant but militarily restrained. It demonstrated something fundamental about defence agreements: national interests continue to determine the extent to which treaty language is translated into military action.

Pakistan has compelling reasons to avoid a direct war with Iran. It shares a long border with Iran, has its own security concerns along that frontier and has no desire to become another battlefield in a larger regional conflict. A treaty therefore does not abolish geography, national interests or political calculations. The same principle will apply to Saudi Arabia and Turkey if Pakistan and India enter another confrontation.

This is why the phrase "an attack on one is an attack on all" should not be read as an automatic declaration of war. It is better understood as a declaration of collective political intent designed to create uncertainty in the mind of a potential adversary. Its purpose is deterrence. The three governments want a potential aggressor to believe that an attack which appears limited and bilateral could acquire a wider strategic dimension.

That possibility could matter considerably to India. If New Delhi were contemplating another Operation Sindoor-style action, it would have to calculate not only Pakistan's immediate military response but also the possibility of Turkish diplomatic and military assistance and Saudi political, logistical or intelligence support. Even if there were only a modest probability of such assistance, it could complicate Indian strategic planning. Deterrence does not require an ally actually to enter a war. It requires the adversary to believe that the possibility exists.

At the same time, Pakistan's interpretation of the agreement could become a source of considerable ambiguity. Islamabad could attempt to characterise a future Indian punitive operation as an armed attack against Pakistan and seek to invoke the collective-defence provisions. India, conversely, could argue that a limited operation against terrorist infrastructure following a major terrorist attack constitutes an act of self-defence rather than an attempt to wage war against the Pakistani state. The treaty does not appear to settle such questions in advance.

That ambiguity could actually make the pact more useful as a deterrent than as a war-fighting instrument. Its very uncertainty could force India to consider a broader range of consequences before undertaking military action. At the same time, it would be dangerous for Pakistan to assume that the mere existence of the agreement gives it an unconditional shield. If a future crisis produces an unmistakable attack on Indian territory, the three capitals could still interpret their obligations very differently.

The much-publicised comparison with NATO therefore needs considerable qualification. Calling the Mecca arrangement a "Muslim NATO" makes for an attractive headline, but it is strategically premature. NATO is not simply a group of countries promising to support one another. It is a highly institutionalised military alliance with decades of common planning, integrated command structures, permanent military headquarters, interoperability, standardised procedures, intelligence mechanisms, joint exercises and established consultation processes. The Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan arrangement has none of that scale or institutional maturity, at least on the basis of what has been publicly disclosed.

There is also no single strategic worldview that unites the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have different geographical priorities, different threat perceptions and different ambitions. Pakistan's overriding strategic concern remains India. Saudi Arabia's principal security calculations are centred on Iran, the Gulf, energy infrastructure, maritime routes and the wider instability of West Asia. Turkey's strategic interests extend across a much wider geographical arc. Their interests overlap, but they are hardly identical.

Indeed, the presence of Iran in the regional equation makes the idea of a pan-Islamic military alliance even more complicated. Iran is itself a major Muslim country, yet its strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia has historically been marked by rivalry. Turkey's relationship with Tehran is competitive in some areas and cooperative in others. Pakistan, meanwhile, has its own geographic and security compulsions in dealing with Iran. A genuinely Muslim NATO would therefore have to overcome deep strategic contradictions that this agreement does not attempt to resolve.

The religious symbolism of the pact should nevertheless not be underestimated. Signing it in Mecca gives the arrangement an emotional and civilisational resonance that a conventional defence agreement signed in a foreign ministry or military headquarters would not possess. For Pakistan, it reinforces its claim to occupy an important place in the emerging security architecture of the Muslim world. For Saudi Arabia, it offers another instrument of strategic diversification. For Turkey, it supports Ankara's continuing ambition to establish itself as an influential security power across the wider Muslim world.

But symbolism cannot substitute for military capability or political will. The true test of any alliance is not the ceremony surrounding its creation but the behaviour of its members when the cost of honouring it becomes substantial.

That is why the Mecca pact should neither be dismissed as empty symbolism nor exaggerated into a military alliance that it is not. It is best understood as a security framework with genuine deterrent potential but uncertain operational obligations. It institutionalises cooperation among three strategically important countries, brings Turkey into a security relationship that had previously been dominated by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and gives Islamabad an additional layer of diplomatic and strategic reassurance.

For India, the implications are therefore real but manageable. The agreement does not mean that the next Indian military response against Pakistan would automatically trigger a Saudi or Turkish war against India. Nor does it mean that New Delhi can ignore the possibility of external support for Pakistan. What has changed is the strategic environment in which any future India-Pakistan crisis would unfold.

The most consequential aspect of the agreement may ultimately be psychological rather than military. Pakistan now has greater reason to believe that a future confrontation with India would not remain entirely bilateral. India, in turn, has greater reason to factor Turkey and Saudi Arabia into its calculations. That alone can have a deterrent effect.

Yet deterrence works only when the threat behind it is credible. The credibility of this pact will ultimately depend on what happens when one of the three countries actually faces a serious military challenge. Until then, its language remains deliberately broad, its military obligations remain insufficiently transparent and its members retain substantial room for political manoeuvre.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement is therefore neither a new Muslim NATO nor merely a ceremonial expression of Islamic solidarity. It is something more subtle and potentially more consequential: an attempt to create a collective security umbrella without surrendering national strategic autonomy. Its strength will lie not necessarily in the number of troops that Saudi Arabia or Turkey might send to Pakistan, but in the uncertainty over whether they might send them at all.

That uncertainty is precisely what deterrence is supposed to create.

For India, the correct response is consequently neither alarm nor complacency. New Delhi would need to continue strengthening its strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, manage its increasingly complicated relationship with Turkey and maintain sufficient diplomatic space with both countries to ensure that their bilateral interests with India are not overwhelmed by their commitments to Pakistan.

The ultimate verdict on the Mecca pact will not be delivered by its rhetoric. It will be delivered by the first serious crisis in which one of its members asks the others to translate solidarity into action. Until that happens, it remains an alliance in formation, a deterrent in conception and a powerful symbol of a Muslim security architecture that is still searching for its final shape.