Beyond the Indus

Akhilesh Pillalamarri, an attorney and columnist on Asian affairs for The Diplomat, joins host Tushar Shetty to explore the rise of anti-Indian sentiment in the United States. They discuss the spillover of online anti-Indian hate into the real world, the cultural anxieties driving right-wing attacks on Indian Americans and the H-1B debate, the erosion of America’s consensus against open racism and the left’s muted response, the case for second-generation Indian Americans to speak up rather than keep their heads down, the backlash’s implications for India-U.S. ties and India’s ability to retain talent, and the parallels between anti-Indian bigotry and antisemitism.

Dr. Anas Alhajji, managing partner at Energy Outlook Advisors and former chief economist of NGP Energy Capital Management, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine how the Hormuz crisis is reshaping global energy markets. We discuss why Brent and WTI understated the price shock in Asian markets, the role of insurers in halting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the crisis’s toll on traded helium, sulfur, and fertilizers, the overlooked loss of Russian and Kazakh supply in the Black Sea, why India’s cuts to Russian oil imports ended up benefiting China, and the spread of China’s national security approach to energy as countries turn to domestic sources.

Rahul Bajoria, head of India and ASEAN Economic Research at Bank of America, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine why India's manufacturing sector has remained stuck at around 15 percent of GDP despite decades of rapid growth. They discuss the colonial and planning-era roots of India’s weak industrial base, the regulatory and compliance burdens that keep Indian firms small and push them into informality, why regulatory progress has been driven by a handful of competitive states rather than by the center, India’s limited gains from China Plus One and its growing exports to China, the mixed record of production-linked incentives and the scaling up of the Apple ecosystem, and the electricity, labor and land reforms needed to lift manufacturing to 25 percent of GDP by 2047.

In this episode of Beyond the Indus, Siddhant Kishore, a New Delhi and Washington D.C.-based national security and foreign policy analyst, and former analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine the BRICS summit in New Delhi and the strategic realignment underway across Asia. They discuss the consensus preserved in the New Delhi Declaration and India’s diplomatic win on Pahalgam, the tactical stabilization between New Delhi and Beijing and why it falls short of realignment, the costly Iran-U.S. stalemate and Washington's undefined war aim, the Houthi advance on the Bab al-Mandeb and the reconstitution of Iran’s proxy network, the operational hollowness of the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, and the hedging by U.S. allies as Washington’s security commitments turn conditional.

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, senior fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and author of “Military Inc.,” joins host Tushar Shetty to examine the Pakistan Army's role in the country's governance. They discuss the origins of the military's dominance in the years after 1947, its influence over domestic politics and the economy, its conduct of foreign policy from Ayub Khan to Asim Munir, and its handling of the insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Siddiqa argues that Pakistan is not a hybrid regime but a case of constitutional militarism, sanctioned by a parliament that has legislated away its own relevance. 

Dr. Smruti S. Pattanaik, a research fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine Bangladesh six months after its first election since the 2024 uprising. They discuss the BNP’s record on converting the July Charter mandate into actual reform, the legalization of the ban on the Awami League, the National Citizens Party’s collapse, Sheikh Hasina’s plan to return to Bangladesh in December, and whether culpability attaches to the party or to the person. They also cover India’s reset with Dhaka, and Bangladesh’s positioning between Beijing, New Delhi, and Washington D.C.

Independent journalist and author Snigdhendu Bhattacharya joins host Tushar Shetty to examine what the Cockroach Janata Party protests reveal about the erosion of India's democratic institutions. They discuss the satirical origins of the movement and the exam-leak grievances that fueled it, Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger strike and the government’s effort to brand the protesters as foreign funded, and the forcible removal of Wangchuk and the police crackdown of July 20. They also cover the sidelining of Parliament and the collapse of the opposition as a channel for dissent, the Election Commission’s loss of credibility after the disputed electoral roll revision in West Bengal, and the retreat of the judiciary and the mainstream press as independent checks on power. Bhattacharya argues that the movement grew as fast as it did precisely because every institutional avenue for grievance had already been hollowed out, leaving a frustrated generation with nowhere left to turn. This conversation was recorded on July 24, 2026, the day before Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.

Masoud Andarabi, former interior minister of Afghanistan and former acting director of the National Directorate of Security, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine the international re-engagement of the Taliban regime and what it means for the regional order. They discuss the distinction between the Taliban’s consolidated control and its absent legitimacy, the geopolitical logic behind Russia’s recognition, China’s Digital Silk Road and the surveillance infrastructure embedded in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s transformation from the movement’s patron into its adversary and the TTP question at the center of it, and his assessment of India’s intelligence-led engagement with individual Taliban factions. The views expressed here are personal. 

In this episode of Beyond the Indus, Carlos Frederico Pereira da Silva Gama, founder of Brazil's BRICS Policy Center and an international relations scholar at the Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine the future of BRICS as the postwar order fractures in the wake of the Iran war. They discuss the priorities and divergences of India’s BRICS presidency ahead of the September leaders’ summit in Delhi, the expansion to BRICS Plus and its toll on the group’s cohesion, why BRICS functions as one club in a wider Global South portfolio rather than a unified bloc, the New Development Bank and BRICS Pay as a challenge to the Bretton Woods system, the effect of Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric on close US partners like Brazil and India, and the best- and worst-case scenarios for the group in a fracturing world order.

Dr. Pramod Varma, chief architect of Aadhaar, UPI, and the India Stack, and co-founder of Networks for Humanity, joins host Tushar Shetty to discuss the design philosophy and the next stages of India's Digital Public Infrastructure.We discuss the core principles that distinguish the India Stack from platform models like Alipay and PayPal, the Account Aggregator framework's consent architecture and its relationship to data protection regimes like the GDPR, the extension of DPI logic to business identity and flow-based lending through the Unified Lending Interface, the role of AI as both a driver of demand for DPI foundations and an opportunity for, the case for DPI as a replicable global model for the democratization of technology.For more in-depth analysis on South Asia, subscribe to the Beyond the Indus podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or follow us on YouTube for video episodes.