India at a Crossroads As Global Moment Faces Tariffs Turmoil and Strategic Contradictions

From Trump’s trade shocks and Russia’s oil trap to volatile neighbours and opaque welfare schemes, India’s rise now depends on resilience accountability and hard economic choices—not summit-stage optimism.

By P. SESH KUMAR

New Delhi, December 2, 2025 — The 2025 Republic Business India Economic Summit was staged like a coronation, with Amitabh Kant and S. Gurumurthy delivering booming sermons of triumph about India’s economic rise, civilizational resurgence, and global leadership. But behind the klieg lights and applause lay a far more complicated India—one grappling with Trump’s punitive tariffs, geopolitical squeezes over Russian crude, political meltdowns in Bangladesh and Nepal, a hair-trigger four-day conflict with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, and a trillion-rupee welfare state whose grandiose claims rest on little more than government-authored success stories.

The Republic Summit and the Comfortable Illusion of Arrival

The Republic Business India Economic Summit 2025 had the atmosphere of a political rock concert. Amitabh Kant—ever the evangelist of reform and India’s indefatigable global salesman—spoke as if India had already broken through every constraint that ever held it back. With practised conviction, he thundered about the hypocrisy of Western nations that preached globalism while erecting non-tariff barriers to block Indian goods.

Gurumurthy, the ideological counterweight, added a philosophical flourish: globalization had collapsed, nationalism had returned, and India’s moment-rooted in civilizational self-belief—had finally arrived. Together, they presented a seamless story of ascent, momentum, inevitability.

But what was most striking was what their story left unsaid. The Summit created an India of bright lights and straight lines-an India surging past rivals, unfazed by global headwinds, marching toward its $30–40 trillion destiny. In reality, India’s path in 2024–2025 was anything but linear.

Trade tremors, oil geopolitics, neighbourhood implosions, military brinkmanship, and welfare opacity had all begun to tug at the foundations of the grand narrative. The Republic Summit captured India’s ambition; this narrative attempts to examine the friction that ambition encounters when it meets the real world.

Trump’s 50% Tariffs: The Pain Behind the Posturing

Barely weeks before the Summit’s drumbeat of triumph, India was hit by the most severe trade shock in its recent history. Donald Trump-returning to the White House armed with grievances and a penchant for tariff theatrics-slapped a devastating 50% duty on Indian exports.

The first 25% was justified under the fiction of “reciprocal tariffs”; the second was naked retaliation for India’s refusal to stop buying Russian crude. Overnight, Indian shipments worth $86 billion became uncompetitive in their largest market.

By October 2025, India’s exports fell 11.8% year-on-year, driven largely by the U.S. blockade, prompting the IMF to downwardly revise India’s growth projections.

None of this made it to the Republic Summit stage. Kant thundered about Western hypocrisy—and he was right—but not about the mounting pressure on India’s exporters, the layoffs beginning to ripple through labour-intensive sectors, or the scramble within the Finance Ministry to design export relief packages.

The triumphant narrative skipped the uncomfortable truth: India’s autonomy in geopolitics-especially its refusal to join the Western oil boycott-came with an economic price tag, and Washington had chosen to collect with interest.

Russian Crude: Strategic Autonomy Meets Sanctions Reality

India’s energy strategy since 2022 had been simple, brilliant, and unapologetic: buy Russian oil cheap, refine it, keep domestic inflation under control, and let Europe moralize from a distance. And it worked spectacularly-until Western sanctions tightened in late 2025.

Indian refiners, which once purchased nearly 2 million barrels of Russian oil per day, suddenly found global banks refusing to process payments, European regulators shutting the door on refined products made from Russian crude, and the United States signalling that “partners of partners of adversaries” would not get a free pass.

By December 2025, Indian imports of Russian oil collapsed to a three-year low, and U.S. crude unexpectedly surged to the top of India’s import basket. Even Reliance, the refining behemoth, halted new purchases from Russia. This reversal did not appear in Summit speeches either-because the narrative of unbending autonomy could not comfortably coexist with the reality of sanctions-induced constraint.

Bangladesh and Nepal: The Neighbourhood in Flames

While India celebrated its global ascent on television, its neighbourhood was sliding into chaos. In Bangladesh, the long reign of Sheikh Hasina collapsed in August 2024 after a youth-led revolt against corruption and authoritarianism.

Tear gas, internet blackouts, defections within the ruling party, and Army neutrality forced Hasina to flee overnight, eventually seeking temporary passage through India. A Nobel laureate-led interim government assumed charge, but the political vacuum persisted—and with it the possibility of radicalization, Chinese opportunism, or refugee flows that would land squarely on India’s doorstep.

Nepal followed a year later. When Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli abruptly banned 26 social media platforms, the country exploded in rage. Protests swelled across the Kathmandu Valley, police opened fire, more than 70 people died, public buildings were torched, and the once-stable capital descended into chaos. Oli resigned, but the damage was done: Nepal became the third South Asian country in three years to see its government fall to mass protests.

Neither of these regional crises featured in the Republic Summit’s celebration of Indian leadership. Yet India cannot claim a “global moment” while its backyard is engulfed in political flames.

A rising power must first stabilize its immediate environment; otherwise, the higher it climbs, the more brittle the foundation beneath it becomes.

Operation Sindoor: The Near-War Everyone Pretended Didn’t Happen

Six months before the Summit, India and Pakistan came perilously close to a full-scale war. The Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 Hindu pilgrims triggered an Indian response unprecedented in scope and kind. Operation Sindoor unleashed precise salvos of BrahMos missiles into Pakistan-administered territory, targeting terror infrastructure while Indian officials publicly insisted that no civilians or Pakistani military installations were harmed.

Pakistan retaliated with artillery barrages, drone strikes, and eventually its own missile volleys. For the first time in decades, both sides struck each other’s forward bases.

The world watched nervously as Washington, Riyadh, and Brussels scrambled to pull both sides back from the brink. Phone lines crackled late into the night. A DGMO-level ceasefire eventually took hold.

The confrontation ended—but not without exposing how swiftly South Asia’s strategic balance can slide toward catastrophe in the age of drones, standoff weapons, and lightning-fast escalation.

At the Republic Summit, none of this drama was acknowledged. As Kant and Gurumurthy theorized about India’s unstoppable rise, the reality of a crisis that came within hours of spiralling out of control was brushed aside—perhaps because it punctured the myth of absolute control and stability that the Summit sought to project.

The Welfare Mirage: Trillions Spent, but Who’s Counting?

If the Summit offered a glowing endorsement of India’s governance model, its blindest spot was the vast, unverified universe of centrally sponsored schemes. MGNREGS allocations were quietly throttled even as rural demand surged. Ayushman Bharat, India’s flagship health insurance program, was shaken by a CAG audit revealing shocking anomalies: 7.5 lakh beneficiaries tied to a single phone number, thousands of simultaneous multi-hospital admissions, and hundreds of claims filed in the names of the deceased.

Jal Jeevan Mission celebrated tap-water coverage, but on-the-ground reportage exposed dry taps, pipeline failures, and questionable water quality in multiple states. PMAY, the housing scheme, reported millions of completions, even as independent surveys found missing houses, ghost beneficiaries, and shoddy construction in several districts.

Across the board, India’s welfare ecosystem shared one structural flaw: no independent evaluation. By 2025, nine flagship schemes were moved out of rigorous external appraisal and into the orbit of NITI Aayog-turning a policy think-tank into both the designer and evaluator of government programs.

The fox, critics noted, had officially taken charge of the henhouse. The Republic Summit, of course, spoke only of success, never of verification. But without independent audits, the line between governance and propaganda blurs-and eventually collapses.

Way Forward: From Applause to Accountability

India stands at a hinge moment. Its economic fundamentals remain strong, its digital infrastructure unmatched, and its geopolitical relevance undeniable. But a nation does not rise on optimism alone.

Trump’s tariffs, Russia’s oil trap, neighbourhood upheavals, dangerous escalations with Pakistan, and the opacity of welfare schemes point to a future where resilience, not rhetoric, will determine India’s long-term success.

Moving forward, India must pair self-belief with self-scrutiny. That means negotiating hard to unwind U.S. tariffs, diversifying energy sources before sanctions dictate choices, stabilizing the subcontinent through patient diplomacy, and institutionalizing independent evaluation of every rupee spent on welfare.

It also means accepting that strategic autonomy requires economic ballast, not just political will. And above all, it means embracing the uncomfortable truth that India’s global moment will be credible only when it does not shy away from confronting its own contradictions.

Confidence builds nations. But only accountability sustains them. India must now choose whether its future will be built on applause-or on the deeper strength that comes from facing reality, reforming fearlessly, and growing wisely.

(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)

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