Table of Contents
Today’s brief reads three articles. Kartik Bommakanti at the Observer Research Foundation argues that India already answers Pakistan with a mix of tools, and should keep every one of them. Raja Karthikeya in The Hindu asks India to build a naval task force with France and Japan to keep the Bab el-Mandeb open. An EPW Engage piece traces the fight over the office of the Governor and asks what would settle it.
India already answers Pakistan with more than air strikes.
Some voices in the Indian strategic community say that India has been pushed into a choice between two things. It either strikes Pakistan with conventional force or it does nothing. They add that Balakot did not stop the Pahalgam attack, so open military action should be dropped. Kartik Bommakanti answers that this reading gets the record wrong. Covert action has been used far more often than open strikes. Water, money and diplomacy have been used as well. His case is that restraint on its own was tried for years and did not work.
The record
- The open military replies came after Uri, then at Balakot, then in Operation Sindoor. Three years separated the first from the second and six years separated the second from the third. Open action has been used more sparingly than the critics say.
- India held back after the Mumbai bomb attacks of 1993, the Chittisinghpura massacre of 2000, the attack on Parliament in 2001 and the Mumbai attacks of 2008. Pakistan did not hold back in return.
- The terrorism comes mainly from Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. They sit mostly in the Punjab province of Pakistan. They are also present on a smaller scale in Sindh, in Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- Covert action is the more frequent part of the policy. Pakistani forces have been attacked in Balochistan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Indian Army raids have crossed the Line of Control into Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
- Bommakanti separates two kinds of attack. A mass casualty attack traced to Pakistan calls for an open reply, as at Balakot in February 2019 and in Operation Sindoor in May 2025. An attack in the interior, where the Pakistani hand is less clear, does not.
- Six construction workers were killed at Ganderbal in Jammu and Kashmir in October 2024. The Red Fort bomb attack of November 2025 killed 15 people and injured several more. Air power was not used in either case.
- India has placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. Bommakanti reads the step as a strategy of exhaustion and attrition. Pakistan has answered strongly, which suggests that it is already under pressure.
- Two tasks are left. The first is to get Pakistan back on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force, where other members will resist. The second is to ready Indian forces for a sharper round of escalation after the next mass casualty attack.
- S. Jaishankar said, shortly before he became External Affairs Minister, that India should keep strategic flexibility in its replies to Pakistan.
The argument
This is the article to use on deterrence below the level of war. Open strikes buy credibility and impose costs that everyone can see. Covert work, diplomatic pressure and economic steps keep the pressure on without a full war. Both belong in the same answer.
It also speaks to the question of 2025 on India taking a harder realist posture after Pahalgam. The line to take is that a mix of tools is not the same thing as a fixed posture. The step on the Indus Waters Treaty shows how a treaty can be turned into an instrument of pressure.
“Ultimately, the choice is not between overt action and restraint, but between strategic rigidity and strategic flexibility.”
Kartik Bommakanti
India should lead a task force with France and Japan to keep the Bab el-Mandeb open.
On 16 July Reuters reported that Iran had told the Houthis to close the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb if the United States attacked Iranian power plants. Raja Karthikeya writes that the threat counts whatever the Houthis can really do. One third of India’s entire trade is at risk. He looks back at the Red Sea crisis of 2023 and 2024 and finds this time less certain. American forces are held by Iran. The Security Council is divided. His answer is a task force for this stretch of sea alone, built by India with France and Japan.
The record
- The strait lies between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. A threat to it is a threat to one third of India’s entire trade.
- From November 2023 to March 2024 the Houthis attacked at least 40 vessels in the Red Sea. They said the ships were tied to Israel or bound for it.
- The United States began Operation Prosperity Guardian in December 2023 with partners that included Singapore and Sri Lanka. The Security Council adopted Resolution 2722 in January 2024. The United States declared a ceasefire in May 2025.
- The Indian Navy rescued the crew of a British tanker after it was set on fire on 26 and 27 January 2024.
- Over 90 percent of the shipping of the world is insured by just twelve protection and indemnity clubs. Owners are left with little room to bargain.
- At least 2,000 ships kept away from the Suez Canal between November 2023 and March 2024 and sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. Egypt lost a quarter of the revenue of the canal. The Israeli port of Eilat on the Red Sea had filed for bankruptcy by July 2024.
- India has ordered that no Indian mariner be placed on a ship bound to or from the Strait of Hormuz. The same order for the Bab el-Mandeb would be harder, and it would tell on thousands of Indian seafarers.
- France and Japan keep bases in Djibouti on the Red Sea. Their navies have held joint drills with the Indian Navy. France stayed out of the American operation in 2024, but the reason for that has gone.
- The Houthis announced an embargo on Saudi ships on 20 July. Egypt and Saudi Arabia had refused to join the alliance against the Houthis in 2024. With their own economies at stake they may not stand aside this time.
- Karthikeya calls his plan a Trade Protection Task Force of navies for this stretch of sea, and not an alliance. The Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region, which India hosts, would supply the picture of what moves at sea. France and Japan would add support on land. The navies would agree on common rules of engagement. They would give cover to ships that ask for it.
- He places the task force under Security and Growth for All in the Region, which is SAGAR.
The argument
Use this for answers on the Indian Ocean and on India as a security provider. The argument runs from trade to security. One third of Indian trade, the price of marine insurance and the wages of Indian seafarers all rest on a strait that India does not control.
Keep the distinction he draws. A task force built for one issue and one stretch of sea is not a military alliance. That is how India can work with France and Japan and still hold to strategic autonomy.
“India has both the responsibility and the capability to prevent the Bab el-Mandeb from becoming a literal “Gate of Tears” this time.”
Raja Karthikeya
The Governor was meant to join the Union and the states, and has become the place where they fight.
This EPW Engage piece gathers the long debate on the office of the Governor. The Governor was meant to be a neutral office and a thread joining the Union with the states. State governments now say that Governors act for the party in power at the centre. Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Punjab have gone to the Supreme Court about their own Governors. The quarrels are over assent to bills, over the ending of a session of the house and over the call for President’s rule.
The record
- Article 163(1) says there shall be a council of Ministers with the Chief Minister at the head to aid and advise the Governor. The one exception is where the Constitution asks him to act in his discretion. M V Pylee wrote in 1967 that the Constitution names discretionary powers nowhere else, except in the case of the Governor of Assam.
- Article 200 gives the Governor three choices once a bill reaches him. He may assent to it, withhold assent, or reserve it for the President. No timeline is set. The proviso says only as soon as possible.
- Article 167 lets the Governor ask the Chief Minister for information. Ambedkar said the power was to advise the ministry, to warn it, to suggest another course and to ask it to think again. It was not a power to overrule the ministry.
- In State of Tamil Nadu v the Governor of Tamil Nadu (2025) the Supreme Court set out what a Governor must do with a bill. He has to decide within a month. The Court also gave the President three months to decide after a bill is passed a second time.
- The President then made a reference to the Supreme Court under Article 143. She asked whether the Court may enter the powers that Article 200 gives the President and the Governor. A reference does not bind the Court, and the opinion of the Court does not bind the President.
- The brief adds the step that followed. In the reference on Assent, Withholding or Reservation of Bills (2025) the Supreme Court held that courts cannot fix mandatory timelines. Long inaction stays open to limited judicial review. The EPW piece was written before that opinion.
- The Punchi Commission was set up to review centre state relations. It asked that the words during the pleasure of the President be dropped from the Constitution. A Governor should be removed only by a resolution of the state legislature.
- The framers made the office answerable to the council of ministers. The judgment in Shamsher Singh and Anr v State of Punjab (1974) said so again.
- Granville Austin wrote that the Assembly first thought of electing Governors. It gave up the idea because elected Governors would quarrel with popular ministries.
- A study team of the Administrative Reforms Commission said the office had come to be treated as a sinecure for mediocracies, or a consolation prize for burnt out politicians.
- The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Ordinance of 2023 set aside a Supreme Court judgment. That judgment had given the Delhi government control over the service conditions, transfers and postings of officers working under it.
The argument
This is the file for changing nature of centre-state relations. The trouble is not one Governor here or there. Article 163 and Article 200 leave room, and party politics fills it.
Keep the shape of the reform argument. Alok Prasanna Kumar says the defect is that the Governor answers to the Union and not to the people of the state. Two roads are open, the reading of the courts and amendment of the Constitution. The Punchi Commission takes the second road.
“He is a detached spectator, watching from a position of vantage and authority what is going on in the State. Placed in that position, he maintains the dignity, the stability and the collective responsibility of the State Government.”
M V Pylee, quoted in the article
Where this belongs in your syllabus
Open the note and read the full topic.
The questions this feeds
Questions from earlier years that today’s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the PYQ Vault.
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