Can Mr Modi stand up to a bully?

On 5 February, a United States C-17 military cargo plane landed at Amritsar airport, with 104 handcuffed Indians on board, deported by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

At a press conference in Washington on 22 January, Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said (of illegal Indian migrants about to be expelled from the US): “A number [of such people] is operative when we can actually validate the fact that the individual concerned is of Indian origin… we have to verify that they are indeed Indians.”

The Americans allowed no such prior checks. After the US aircraft touched down, Indian officials said 33 each were from Gujarat and Haryana, 30 from Punjab, three each from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh and two from Chandigarh. Another 750,000 odd, according to the Pew Research Center, await their fate.

Notwithstanding the contemptuous treatment of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to pay obeisance to Trump, with a two-day trip reportedly on the cards this week. Trump may be flattered by Modi’s eagerness, but he is unlikely to abandon his penchant for the outlandish.

Petrified that Trump may slap heavy tariffs on India, the Union Budget features some propitiatory tweaks: the Voice of America headlined, ‘Facing tariff threats, India lowers import duties’. It reported, ‘New Delhi has signalled that it is moving to allay concerns of US President Donald Trump,’ adding the duty cuts ‘could help increase American imports to India’. It was astonishingly weak-kneed diplomacy.

In 2023, India enjoyed a trade surplus of $30 billion with the US. Trump is expected to demand that India redress this imbalance by buying more defence equipment ‘Made in the US’. Enterprising countries and trading blocs, having encountered Trump’s methods before, have diversified their exports, thereby reducing their dependence on the US. But Modi’s India has been caught flat-footed. Higher tariffs on Indian petroleum products, automotive components, textiles and medicines will no doubt hurt the Indian economy.

Trump’s tariff threats forced Colombia to take back its nationals who had illegally entered the US. But similar tactics against Canada and Mexico elicited retaliation, so the measures were put on hold. Increased tariffs on China fetched a tit-for-tat. So, Modi ought to have stood up to the bully, instead of panicking.

In 1971, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi politely but firmly conveyed to Richard Nixon, then President of the US: ‘India regards America as a friend, not a boss.’ US secretary of state at the time, Henry Kissinger, said to her, “Madam prime minister, don’t you feel you could have been a little more patient with the President?” Indira responded: “Thank you, Mr Secretary, for your valuable suggestion. Being a developing country, we have our backbone straight…”

When will Narendra Modi demonstrate he has a spine?

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Gaza, the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’?

Trump envisions Gaza not as a geo-political challenge but a real estate opportunity. He eyes the strip of land nestling on the blue waters of the east Mediterranean as a developers’ dream. The US ‘will take over’, he brazenly told a media conference at his White House office-cum-residence, not ruling out sending American troops to enforce the land grab.

Earlier, he described Gaza as a ‘demolition site’ (Israeli bombardment having reduced it to a rubble), where nobody would want to live. His plan to “clean out Gaza” entailed Egypt and Jordan absorbing Gaza’s two million population, while he engages in converting Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

Veteran administrators in the US were aghast. One former senior national intelligence official bluntly said to media: “There is no mechanism for this.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first foreign head of government to be received at the White House in Trump’s second presidency, stood by obsequiously as the latter spouted his fanciful formula. But Netanyahu’s mission in Washington was not to applaud Trump’s blueprint for Gaza but to explore the wiggle room he had to call off the second ceasefire. Israel, heavily dependent on the US for its security, has little choice but to obey America.

Trump’s wider perspective is to expand the Abraham Accords he’d brokered in 2020 during his previous tenure as President, to incorporate diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states. The Accords reflected such rapprochement with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco; Sudan declared it would follow suit but has held back.

Trump dearly wants Saudi Arabia to sign the deal, but the Saudis have long stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian state as pre-requisite to normalising ties with Israel. The Abraham Accords make no mention of Israel’s consent to a full-fledged Palestinian state..

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America goes bananas

Employees of the CIA, the US’s external espionage organisation, have been offered eight months’ pay and benefits to quit their jobs. A spokesperson said the move was part of efforts to “ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the administration’s national security priorities” and “to infuse the Agency with renewed energy”.

The move came close on the heels of a US Senate committee interrogation of Kash Patel, an East African-Indian advocate of Hindutva and Trump’s nominee for the post of director of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation).

Patel dodged answering or denied his record of promoting right-wing conspiracies and his threats to exact revenge on Trump’s opponents in the US justice department and the FBI. A vote on whether he is suitable for the high position could take place in the Senate this week.

Elon Musk, owner of carmaker Tesla and the social media platform X, who pumped $250 million into Trump’s re-election bid, has been duly rewarded with control of a new department of government efficiency (DOGE). Its legal status still dodgy, Musk’s DOGE has regardless demanded unfettered access to the computer systems of major US administration agencies.

Officials who resisted have been removed, and Musk has control. He is working on shutting down USAID (the US Agency for International Development), posting on X that USAID was a ‘criminal organisation’, a ‘radical-left political psy-op’, and it was ‘time for it to die’. USAID provides $40 billion in humanitarian assistance outside the US — including health, water, sanitation and hygiene projects in India.

Senior opposition Democratic party senator Chuck Schumer hit back, “An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government. DOGE is not a real government agency. DOGE has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law.” Looks like the Trump administration is courting more litigation.

Views are personal.

Ashis Ray can be found on X @ashiscray. More of his writing can be read here