New Delhi: As India heads into the latest assembly election cycle, global media says Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a challenging moment, with the West Asia war triggering an energy supply crunch and putting pressure on rupee.
“India’s Narendra Modi faces tough regional elections this month as the global energy shock from the US-Israeli war on Iran weighs on an economy that had been one of the prime minister’s strongest political assets,” Michael Stott and Andres Schipani report for Financial Times.
“Two of his major prongs since he became prime minister were ‘I’m this foreign policy star who’s made India a great power and everybody in the world listens to me’ . . . and the second prong was that India’s economy is stronger,” Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, told FT.
“Now, there’s a bit of a stress test and things have not really gone that well,” he added.
The US war in West Asia has affected oil and gas supplies for the worse, which are crucial for the economy, hurting businesses ranging from large manufacturers to small restaurants.
It has also exposed, the report says, the “limits of India’s international influence”, with New Delhi on the sidelines, while Pakistan taking a leading role in diplomacy to end the conflict.
“India’s traditional foreign policy establishment has also criticised Modi for aligning New Delhi too closely with Washington and Israel while neglecting traditional allies such as Iran,” the report adds.
The Economist talks about how the “tumbling” rupee has become a “big problem” for Modi.
“The India rupee has not had a good war. It was worth 90.95 to the dollar when America and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28th. By the end of March it had fallen by 4%, to 94.65; the euro and the pound, by contrast, were down only 1% or so,” the column notes.
This follows the 5 percent decline in the rupee last year after Trump’s tariff war against India.
Indians are “unusually attentive” to the value of their currency, partly because Modi has “trained Indians to think that way,” the column says.
When the rupee lost nearly a fifth of its value in 2013, following the “country’s high inflation and wide current-account deficit”, Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, “delivered fiery speeches denouncing the Congress Party-led government of the day for the collapse”.
“The current bout of depreciation will have real-world effects, affecting the prices of everything from energy to consumer goods to the government’s subsidy bills.”
The column adds, “High oil prices and a weak rupee are a double whammy, bad news economically but manageable politically.”
Nikita Yadav of the BBC reports on how India’s domestic labour landscape is shifting as quick-service apps like Pronto and Urban Company onboard more women to work as instant househelp.
“In India, domestic help has long been arranged through word of mouth, with workers hired informally and paid in cash. Now, startups are bringing these services online, offering on-demand bookings in cities for short tasks. They are entering a vast, largely unregulated market – with an estimated 30 million domestic workers, including many women with few formal job options.”
Pronto, launched last year, told the BBC its operations have scaled to 15,000 bookings a day in just 10 months, with demand highest in Delhi-NCR, followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru. However, problems abound.
“In India, domestic work is low-paid, insecure and largely unregulated, as it takes place inside private homes.” After each job, ratings matter. Yadav reports that workers’ ratings affect their visibility and further bookings.
“Unlike traditional arrangements, platform work is governed by algorithms that assign jobs, track performance and impose penalties,” Yadav notes.
Activists have called the services “inhuman,” highlighting the 15 minute window to reach from one job to another. “The pressure is not just about speed – it affects pay too. Platforms vary from fixed incomes to per-task models with incentives, making earnings unpredictable and shaped by ratings and algorithms.”
But women are still choosing to work with platforms as they offer better pay than what they were used to earning, helping them support their children’s education.
Anupreeta Das of The New York Times reports on the alleged link between Jeffrey Epstein and Anil Ambani.
“Anil Ambani, one of India’s most prominent businessmen, was eager in the early days of the first Trump administration to figure out where India might fit into the new president’s national security strategy,” the report says.
The report adds that Ambani did not respond to requests for comment. He has not faced any accusations of criminal or improper behavior toward women.
According to exchanges released this year by the US Justice Department, Yadav reports, Epstein promised to get Ambani some “inside baseball”.
“While the line between braggadocio and influence was blurred, Mr. Epstein shared with Mr. Ambani nuggets of information on foreign policy and Trump appointments before they became widely known.”
in 2017, Epstein also offered to introduce Ambani to those close to US President Donald Trump. Ambani, for his part, presented himself as “politically connected and a conduit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.”
In the trail of messages that goes up to two years, Ambani seemed to be looking for ways “to bolster his global reputation”.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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