ICYMI#TheTribuneOpinion: India resolute against Trump’s fury — A global reset in the offing

US President Donald Trump gave a shocker by first announcing 25 per cent tariffs and then doubling them to 50 per cent as a penalty owing to India’s continuation of the import of Russian oil. He has warned of “more secondary sanctions” in the coming days. How does India navigate the global meltdown, especially when Trump seems hell-bent on gaslighting the international trading order, and countries are at each other’s throats, both figuratively and literally, writes Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari in his Edit piece India has a template to weather the global storm. His suggestion is that India must re-energise the strategic continuums of non-alignment and self-reliance, which was done by our leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. India is better placed than ever to provide a leadership role because of its $4-trillion economy and its organic place in the Global South, he argues. Oxymoronically, the US is providing an opportunity to China, India and a host of other countries by the inconsistent behaviour of its current dispensation, he writes.

Nations are lining up to cut deals with America, but India is reacting differently, says Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra in her Edit piece Trump ko gussa kyon aata hai. A Russia-India-China trilateral, which Delhi has been holding off for some time because it didn’t want to unduly antagonise the Americans, may be held soon. The next few months promise to be interesting. Modi – and all the PMs, from Nehru to Vajpayee – have known that India needs to be a strong and independent pole if it wants to be taken seriously, she writes.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir is set to visit the US again this week, which has India in wonder. The US proximity to Pakistan has its roots in the oil reserves that Trump wants to exploit, writes the Government of India’s former special secretary Rana Banerji in his Op-ed piece Donald Trump courts Pakistan with oil pact and crypto push. Interestingly, crude oil produced in Pakistan is refined at five oil refineries there. The US’ newfound interest in Pakistan’s mineral reserves is connected to an agreement between a company in which Trump’s relatives hold shares and Pakistan’s crypto council set up in March.

On an encouraging note, RBI ex-Executive Director Janak Raj in his Op-ed piece Trump’s jibe fails to dent India’s growth story writes that the Indian economy is on a sound footing and the criticism by Trump should not worry us. India should continue to pursue free trade agreements. He advocates faster growth in per capita income and reduced income inequalities in the long run.

Floods wreaked havoc in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh last week. In cities like Gurugram, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai too life went our of gear. Brushing aside rain-related impacts as ‘nature’s fury’ would be fallacious. The situation is only going to worsen as India is urbanising at a rapid pace, writes science commentator Dinesh C Sharma in his Edit piece Firm up action plan to tame flood fury. The solution lies in preparing our cities to be climate-resilient. For this, we need city-specific climate action plans, which can’t work without related governance reforms. So, government agencies will have to work with scientists, civil society and businesses to draw and implement climate action plans.

In the parliamentary debate last week held to discuss Operation Sindoor among other issues, PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah stated in Parliament that Jawaharlal Nehru's three blunders that gave India a festering wound in perpetuity — the ceasefire in Kashmir in 1947 without securing J&K, its referral to the UN and ignoring Sardar Patel's advice. Throwing more light on the issue, political scientist Ajay K Mehra in his Op-ed article Kashmir & the blame game: What history tells us writes that initially, Nehru rejected the idea of going to the UN. Any reference to the UN, Nehru said, could only be on whether or not Pakistan had supported the aggression against Kashmir and not on its accession to India. Mountbatten kept trying to persuade Nehru, and eventually, he agreed. Patel and Gandhi were also temporarily persuaded by Mountbatten. We must realise the immense pressure imposed by the big powers, the UK and the US, who were wary of another war after World War II, writes Mehra.

With assembly elections coming up in 2027, the political pot in Punjab is boiling. AAP is in a tight spot with party workers carrying the impression that the party and the government are being controlled by the Delhi durbar, leaving limited space for local leadership. This has created uneasiness in the lower rungs of the party. It is brewing discontentment among young legislators, party leaders and common folk, says ex-GNDU prof Jagrup Singh Sekhon in his Op-ed article AAP’s development agenda falters in Punjab. The government is still far from finding structural solutions to the socio-economic challenges faced by the state. Good governance and development, along with assured economic opportunities, are the top demands of the people of Punjab, he writes.

Continuing with Punjab, in the ‘Two Views’ segment on the Op-ed page, the holding of GM maize trials was the topic of discussion. In his article PAU will only test GM tech, not greenlight it, former PAU Vice-Chancellor Baldev Singh Dhillon puts forward the point that PAU has decided to conduct scientific trials on GM maize. The premier agriculture university in Ludhiana will be testing the veracity of the claims made by developers, but the trials themselves will not lead to the permission of sale of GM maize seeds, he writes.

However, in his Op-ed article Don’t test maize, learn from Bt cotton fiasco, food and agriculture specialist Devinder Sharma argues that despite the GM cotton debacle, Punjab is still demanding the Bt-3 cotton variety. The government and the PAU seem to have closed their ears to the plethora of court cases in America against multi-national giant Bayer. The PAU has got a go-ahead from the government to carry out field trials of genetically modified (GM) herbicide-tolerant maize and insect-resistant maize on Bayer’s insistence, which clearly tells us that nothing has been learnt from the collapse of Bt cotton.