ICYMI#TheTribuneOpinion: How does India and the world interpret Putin’s Delhi visit

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi provided an opportunity for the leadership of India and Russia to review progress in bilateral relations, set the vision for strengthening the partnership and exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest. India-Russia defence relations moved beyond the traditional buyer-seller dynamic towards deeper collaboration. Delhi needs to reorient partnership with Moscow to make the most of co-production in the defence sector, says C Uday Bhaskar in his Edit piece Russia key to India’s quest for self-reliance. The emphasis was not on defence deals, but on joint manufacturing and preparing for subsequent exports to mutually friendly third countries. He gives the example of China which used reverse-engineering successfully — acquired Su-27SK fighters from Russia disassembled them, analysed and replicated key components — to produce the fully indigenous J-11B variant without Russian help.

Also, Putin's visit triggered the familiar chorus of western anxiety, writes our London correspondent Shyam Bhatia in his Op-Ed article Can India trust the West? UK must answer. Their anxiety arises because India refuses to be absorbed into the old western security architecture, he writes. India will not abandon Russia simply to please the West. The more meaningful question now is whether western governments — and the British press in particular — are prepared to treat India as an equal interlocutor.

Coming to domestic issues staring us in the eye, fire safety still remains a matter of concern. From the 1997 Uphaar Cinema fire in Delhi to the Romeo Lane blaze in Goa recently, it’s the same story of negligence, corruption and weak enforcement, says DGP Sharad Chauhan in his Op-Ed piece Trapped in flames: Public fire safety ratings are needed. He recommends a National Public Safety Rating System, a digital and government-verified platform that publicly displays the fire safety status of every public venue, like cinemas, malls, hospitals and clubs. Those responsible are often wealthy businesspersons or people in positions of authority, whose failure is an act of omission, often shielded by privilege, he says.

In a fresh move, the Centre has prepared the Draft Seeds Bill, 2025, and released it for public feedback.  The implementation of the Seeds Bill is marked by two strands — one, the centralisation of regulatory powers and two, a bias towards big seed companies and MNCs, write Navtej Singh Bains & Baldev Singh Dhillon, members, Sustainable Agriculture Development Academy, Punjab, in their Op-Ed article Greater centralisation in Draft Seeds Bill a cause for concern. It is evident from the cutting down of state representation in the Central Seed Committee from one member per state to five total members, they argue.

SS Chahal, ex-VC, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, flagged some concerns like a possible increase in seed costs by big companies, risk to seed sovereignty, dilution of biodiversity protection, conflict with global treaties and risk of weakening farmer protection which need to be addressed before the draft Bill becomes law, in his article Make the Bill more farmer friendly.

The new labour codes have been brought into force by the government, but will they really help in stopping exploitation and improving the working conditions in the private sector? The emphasis of the new labour codes is on anti-strike mechanisms. Both lockouts, which labour fears, and strikes, which capital fears, are getting rarer by the day. Why then all this fuss? writes sociologist Dipankar Gupta in his article The old in the new labour codes. Much of the newness of the new labour codes is notional and cannot be tested. The good parts of the codes are not actionable as most workers are in the unorganised sector. The laws won’t really count as long as informal workers dominate the Indian industry, he writes.

Cybercrime continues to keep us on tenterhooks, especially the elderly. Taking cognisance of the issue, the Supreme Court recently handed over the investigation of digital arrest scams to the CBI. But without specific laws defining digital arrest as a distinct offence with enhanced penalties, enforcement will continue to be reactive rather than preventive, says Subimal Bhattacharjee, former Country Head, General Dynamics, in his article Tackling the digital arrest phenomenon. For the scam victims, this intervention may represent their last hope for justice.

Talking about AI-driven technology, India has developed BharatGen as a direct response to China’s LLM startup Deepsake. BharatGen will be India-specific and is not a commercial venture, unlike DeepSeek models which are meant for global consumption. BharatGen is an interesting example of what can be called ‘government entrepreneurship’, writes science commentator Dinesh C Sharma in his Edit piece DeepSeek saga holds lessons for India. However, BharatGen will have to walk a tightrope by balancing government support and public good. Its models must avoid algorithmic bias seen in Western models and also steer clear of misinformation as well as possible political influence as seen in the Chinese models, he writes.

As Delhi continues to breathe in the smog bubble, there is a lot it can learn from Beijing on combating air pollution, writes Asst Professor Abhishek Pratap Singh in his article How Beijing won the pollution battle.  How did China do it? By measuring pollution levels, building sustainable public transport system and starting vehicle lottery system, which curbed car ownership. Beijing started taking action against the rising pollution levels in 1998. Today, over 25 years later, Beijing is winning the battle against pollution, he writes. Giving another perspective on Delhi’s pollution is Chintan founder & Director Bharati Chaturvedi who writes in her article Why Delhi is among world’s most polluted that India’s most polluted cities are in Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh — right at the heart of the specific airshed that the capital shares. So for measures to be effective, they must be implemented across Delhi's airshed area which covers cities like Ghaziabad, Noida, Bahadurgarh,  Sonepat, Meerut and Rohtak.

After stress-related deaths of several BLOs were reported, the ECI extended the deadline for completion of the SIR exercise in a few states. Shouldn't the ECI take the blame for making the ER revision, a perfect peacetime activity, into a war on phantom ineligibility? asks former Election Commissioner of India Ashok Lavasa in his Op-Ed article Electoral roll row: Why ECI is facing trust crisis. The ECI must forsake the obsession with the identification parade of all the existing electors in its search for the 'ineligible' elector it couldn't find through the SIR in Bihar.

The dismissal of a Christian officer for not participating in a sarv dharm sthal in an army unit's premises triggered a debate. One incident, however visible, cannot be used to reopen or reinterpret an institutional architecture, writes former Western Army Commander Lt Gen SS Mehta (Retd) in his Edit piece The Army’s ethic.  This judgment is not about who the officer was, it is about what the institution must remain, he argues.