War: Pakistan's Dangerous Gambit
UPDATED: May 10, 2025 16:38 IST
India's bold response to the Pahalgam terror attack with Operation Sindoor marks a new threshold in Indo-Pak military confrontation, risking full-scale war.
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Economic Times
7 minutes ago
- Economic Times
From Balakot to Sindoor: Inside the operations that made terror camps fair game
Synopsis In just over a decade, India has rewritten its security playbook. The Modi government has doubled defence spending, pushed homegrown production, and turned India into a global exporter. Operations from Balakot to Sindoor have shown that terror will be met with force. At home, extremism is fading, and self-reliance has spread across food, finance, and technology. The picture that emerges is of a country less reactive, more assertive, and determined to protect its sovereignty on every front. TIL Creatives Representative AI Image The strikes on Balakot in 2019 marked a clear shift. They followed the Pulwama attack, where forty CRPF personnel were killed. For the first time, Indian jets crossed deep into Pakistani territory to destroy a terrorist training camp. That operation set the stage for a bolder security doctrine. Six years later came Operation Sindoor. In May 2025, after civilians were murdered in Pahalgam, India's armed forces launched precision strikes. Drone and missile attacks destroyed nine terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, killing over a hundred terrorists. Among them were figures tied to the Pulwama bombing and the 1999 IC-814 hijacking. Pakistan's retaliation faltered, its drones and missiles shot down by Indian counter-systems. From the Red Fort that August, Prime Minister Modi called it 'a new normal,' signalling to the world that India would not hesitate again. PM Modi has since laid out five unambiguous lines: Every terror attack will be answered decisively. Nuclear blackmail has no sway. Terrorists and their sponsors are treated as one. Talks, if ever, will only be about terrorism or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. 'Terror and talks cannot go together, terror and trade cannot go together, and blood and water cannot flow together.'These words, repeated at rallies and addresses, frame a doctrine that mixes clarity with deterrence. Behind these actions stands a broader transformation. Defence spending rose from Rs 2.53 lakh crore in 2013–14 to Rs 6.81 lakh crore in 2025–26. Domestic production, once negligible, reached Rs 1.50 lakh crore in 2024–25, three times higher than a decade earlier. Today, fighter aircraft, artillery, missile systems, warships, and even aircraft carriers are designed and built in India. Defence exports touched Rs 23,622 crore in 2024–25, reaching over a hundred nations, including the United States, France, and slogan of Atmanirbharta 'self-reliance' has been backed by policy. The Defence Acquisition Procedure of 2020 placed Indian design and manufacturing at the top of the order. The Make categories offered state support for prototypes and opened the field to start-ups and MSMEs. One hundred and forty-six projects have been cleared across the services. Foreign investment rules were relaxed, allowing 74 percent automatic investment and up to full ownership with approval in advanced and joint ventures were encouraged too. The Offset Portal tracks commitments by foreign firms. The Strategic Partnership Model has paired Indian companies with global manufacturers. In 2019, an agreement with Russia allowed local production of spares, cutting delays and ahead will not be fought the way they once were. Anticipating this, the government created the Defence AI Council and the Defence AI Project Agency. Each public-sector defence unit now has its own AI roadmap. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has identified nine thrust areas, including cyber security, robotics, soldier support, and space Sudarshan Chakra Mission, launched in 2025, aims to deliver a full-spectrum national security shield by 2035. Its focus: predictive technologies, precision responses, and indigenous systems that defend both the battlefield and civilian security tells another part of the story. Left-Wing Extremism once scarred large swathes of central India. Now, fewer than twenty districts remain affected. Over 8,000 Naxalites gave up arms in the past decade. The toll of violence shrank from 1,936 incidents in 2010 to just 374 in 2024, with civilian and security force deaths falling by 85 percent. New roads, schools, communication links, and welfare schemes helped weaken the insurgency's grip alongside security is not limited to the armed forces. Food production rose from 246 million tonnes in 2013–14 to nearly 354 million tonnes in 2024–25. Farmers have received more than Rs 3.9 lakh crore under PM-KISAN. India now produces a quarter of the world's milk and has doubled its fish output since inclusion has expanded dramatically. By March 2025, the RBI's Financial Inclusion Index stood at 67.0, up almost a quarter since 2021. Through the Jan Dhan Yojana, 56 crore people opened accounts worth Rs 2.64 lakh crore. Women make up more than half of these account holders. The World Bank estimates that 89 percent of Indians now have a bank too, has been pulled into the fold. The Rs 76,000 crore semiconductor mission announced in 2021 bore fruit with the launch of 3-nanometre chip design centres in Noida and Bengaluru. By 2025, India's first indigenous chip was ready for together, these strands form a coherent picture. India today is less willing to wait and more ready to act. Its security is rooted in homegrown capacity, decisive leadership, and a refusal to bow to threats. From Balakot to Sindoor, from food fields to chip foundries, the story is of a nation seeking control over its future rather than reliance on others. A decade on, the change is not just in numbers or hardware but in confidence.
Scroll.in
37 minutes ago
- Scroll.in
Gujarat school play allegedly depicting women wearing burqas as terrorists triggers row
A play during an Independence Day programme at a school in Gujarat's Bhavnagar has triggered a row about the alleged depiction of women wearing burqas as terrorists, The Indian Express reported. Videos of the cultural programme were widely shared on social media. On Tuesday, District Education Officer Hitendrasinh D Padheriya issued a notice to the Municipal School Board Administrative Officer Munjal Badmaliya seeking a report within a week about the programme held at the government school, the newspaper reported. The notice was issued based on a representation made by Bandharan Bachav Samiti Bhavnagar, a social organisation, which alleged that the play had portrayed the Muslim community as terrorists. The organisation demanded action against those behind the play, according to The Indian Express. Rajendrakumar Dave, the school principal, said: 'We only wanted to depict what happened in Operation Sindoor.' 'We did not intend to hurt anyone's sentiments,' he told ANI. 'We conducted this event only to invoke patriotism. If any community is hurt, I apologise.' The district education officer sought details of the programme and asked whether the depiction as has been alleged was intentional, and details of the event held at the school. The Bandharan Bachav Samiti Bhavnagar had alleged that the play was 'an attempt by the school staff to hurt religious sentiments and spread unrest in the public'. 'In the play, girls dressed in Muslim attire (burqa) were shown as terrorists, clearly depicting the Muslim community as terrorists,' the organisation alleged, according to The Indian Express. It added that the Muslim community was angry with the teachers, the organisation said. Badmaliya said that the event is held every year on Independence Day and Republic Day. 'This year it was themed on Operation Sindoor and the bravery of our defence forces, and programmes were held in every school,' the newspaper quoted him as saying. 'Nothing was intentional or deliberate.'
India Today
39 minutes ago
- India Today
Indira's Emergency: The sterlisation tragedy
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated July 28, April 15, 1978)Demography is the science of population, not of people. That is why it has become a dismal science all over the world. A demographer can calculate the birth rate and death rate with ruthless efficiency but he has no perception of the heartbeat of lovers and the agony of the dying. He deals with aggregate numbers, with the macro picture. But he fails to say anything meaningful about individuals, about families, about real life situations. In short, the demographer gets stuck in the decimal points and his figures betray the human have failed on the human front," declared Sharda Mukerjee, the Governor of Andhra Pradesh, while inaugurating an All-India Conference on 'Population and Development', sponsored by the Indian Association for the Study of Population (IASP) at Hyderabad (16-18 March). The charming Governor, popularly known as Governor-Amma (mother governor) pleaded for a humane approach to problems of population and needs: Professor P. B. Desai, the President of IASP, in his address exhorted demographers to move away from population to people and study population problems in a more realistic manner. The discussions centred round the minimum needs programme, employment and unemployment, area planning, population policy and population studies. It was clear that it was high time demographers got out of the narrow groove of calculations on births averted by the family planning programme, the number of sterilisations necessary to achieve the target of birth rate, all manner of population projections even up to 2,050, and concerned themselves with problems of rural population to people: Yes, I decided to take a day off and go to the villages to talk to the common people on the new Rural Health Programme and the Family Planning Programme. First, I met people in Hyderabad. I met Madan Mohan, the new minister in charge of health and medical services. There is no mention of family welfare in his portfolio. And yet, according to the latest official statistics, Andhra Pradesh has the best record of family planning work in India since the I talked to the health secretary and other high officials in the health ministry. Was there any use of force in the sterilisation programme during the Emergency in Andhra Pradesh? Quick came the answer: "None whatsoever. No Sanjay [Gandhi] effect."I decided to move onto the villages, especially the interior villages and also pay surprise visits to Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and Sub-Centres. Dr Hassan, the suave, sophisticated, medical doctor cum demographer and the director of the regional Family Welfare Training Centre, comes to my rescue. The first village we visited is a backward interior village in Medak district with a lot of Harijans. The ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife) who received us reminded me of Satyajit Ray The first Harijan house (one room) I visited looked well-built and modern except for a dark corner which was supposed to be the kitchen. This house was built with LIC loan under the Government's Housing Scheme for Harijans. The architect had obviously no imagination when he planned the kitchen. The housewife had very widely put up a kitchen outside the house under a thatched roof. I went to see the improvised kitchen. Much to my surprise, there were two terrified children (brother and sister) clinging to each ANM explained: "They think you will give them injections." I tried in vain to pacify the children. "How many adults are there in this house?" I asked. The answer surprised me. "The Harijan and his two wives." I met the younger wife. She looked happy. I met the older wife. She too looked happy. Explanation: These were two sisters. The elder sister bore no children and so the younger sister was married to her husband, and she had two children. I asked myself: What would have the status of Women Committee recommended in such a case? Divorce the first wife if you want to marry again? But this would have generated more We moved onto a fairly big village with a full-fledged Primary Health Centre. There was a special family welfare wing for women. It was the surgical wing and every single bed was occupied by tubectomy cases. The women looked happy. "At least in this PHC no force could have been used," I commented. Dr Hassan gets provoked. He says: "You can pay a surprise visit to any PHC in Andhra Pradesh and the story will be the same."At this PHC a batch of Community Health Workers (CHWs) under Raj Narain's new Rural Health Scheme, was being trained. Having finished the first round of field work on this subject in Punjab and Haryana, I was eager to talk to the CHW trainees in Andhra Pradesh. There were two young women among the trainees. One had a little baby in her arms. I asked her through my Telugu interpreter: "How do you manage to walk up to the PHC with your little baby and attend all the classes throughout the day?" With a Mona Lisa smile on her face she replied, "No problem."Panchayat: The Block Extension Educator (BEE) explained to me that she belonged to the nomadic Lambadi tribe but had decided to settle down in a village and the Panchayat was so happy with her that they nominated her for CHW training. The other young woman (in fact, a teenager) came up for questioning was very shy. The BEE explained: "You see, her parents have decided to marry her to a person who would stay with them (in other words, they want a Ghar Jamai) and so the Panchayat was sure that this girl will not go out of the village and leave her work after marriage."These two cases were enough to set me thinking about the American style, highly structured, coded for computerization questionnaire being canvassed all over the country to study 'selection dynamics' of CHW-trainees, by the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, in New Delhi. I was convinced of what Prime Minister Desai said at the IASP conference: Move away from population to to India Today Magazine- Ends
