India, Critical Mineral Strategy: Auctions, Reforms and the Quest to gain Resource Sovereignty.

The rapidly increasing trend of India towards securing the critically important mineral resources is a turning point in the economic and strategic thinking of this country. The government has indicated its long-term investment in enhancing domestic resource capacity as successful bidding of 46 mineral blocks and the initiation of a seventh tranche with 19 more blocks. It is not an administrative move only; it indicates a greater understanding that access to vital minerals will determine the course of industrial development, energy transition, and national security in the next many years.

Greenland, Thule and the Logic of Power: When Strategy Overrides Sovereignty

On January 21, 1968, a United States Air Force B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear weapons crashed onto the frozen ice near Thule Air Base in Greenland. Officially, it was an accident—one of the many hazards of Cold War nuclear brinkmanship. In reality, the episode revealed a deeper and more troubling pattern: the subordination of sovereignty, transparency and Indigenous rights to strategic imperatives. More than half a century later, as Donald Trump speaks openly about acquiring Greenland, the Thule crash appears less an anomaly and more an early chapter in a continuing story of geopolitical entitlement.

Reform Express and the Farm Economy: The Hardest Test Yet

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s description of his government as being in “Reform Express” mode reflects a renewed policy momentum. Recent initiatives—ranging from income-tax rationalisation and GST reforms to labour law changes, employment scheme adjustments and new trade agreements—signal an attempt to push growth-enhancing reforms at speed. Encouraging macroeconomic indicators reinforce this narrative: GDP growth is estimated at 7.4% in 2025–26, while consumer inflation fell sharply to 1.3% in December 2025.

Yet, sustaining this momentum into FY27 will depend less on headline reforms and more on tackling India’s most politically sensitive structural bottleneck—agriculture and food policy. Without reforming the incentive structure in agriculture, India risks high aggregate growth coexisting with rural distress.

Child Trafficking, Article 21 and the Search for Real Justice

Child trafficking remains one of the gravest contradictions to India’s constitutional promise of dignity, equality and protection for every child. Despite a robust legal framework and frequent rescue operations, trafficking networks continue to thrive, shielded by weak investigations and low conviction rates. In this context, the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in K. P. Kiran Kumar vs State marks an important constitutional moment. By holding that child trafficking amounts to a gross violation of the right to life under Article 21, the Court has reframed the issue—not merely as a criminal offence, but as a direct assault on fundamental rights.

Section 17A and the Constitutional Crossroads of Anti-Corruption Law

On January 13, the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict on the constitutional validity of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, in Centre for Public Interest Litigation vs Union of India. The two-judge Bench—comprising Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice K.V. Viswanathan—agreed on the seriousness of the issue but differed on the constitutional remedy. The disagreement exposes a deeper tension in Indian constitutional law: how to protect honest decision-making in government without erecting barriers that blunt the fight against corruption.