{"id":662,"date":"2026-07-11T17:38:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T12:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/?p=662"},"modified":"2026-08-19T04:19:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:49:54","slug":"download-psir-gs2-daily-brief-11-july-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/download-psir-gs2-daily-brief-11-july-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"A war that cost America its word in the Gulf, an older map of the Indo-Pacific, and AI placed on top of Aadhaar \u2014 PSIR &#038; GS2 Brief, 11 July 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"bf\">\n<div class=\"bf-shell\">\n<header class=\"bf-head\">\n<p class=\"bf-stand\">Today&#8217;s brief reads three articles. Anil Trigunayat writes for the Vivekananda International Foundation that the war has cost the United States its standing as the security provider of West Asia. Anirban Ganguly writes in Firstpost that the <span class=\"bf-term\">Indo-Pacific<\/span> is an old Indian sphere before it is a new strategic term. Manish Sabharwal and Ravi Bapna write in the Indian Express that India&#8217;s next gain in governance will come from placing AI on its <span class=\"bf-term\">digital public infrastructure<\/span>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-meta\"><b>PSIR &amp; GS2 Daily Brief \u00b7 Issue 97<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>11 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Paper I-B, Paper II-B<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Amit Pratap Singh<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"bf-get\"><b>Issue 97 as a PDF<\/b><span>The full brief, ready to print for your folder.<\/span><a href=\"\/psir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Daily-brief-Issue-97.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Download PDF<\/a><\/div>\n<section class=\"bf-item\">\n<div class=\"bf-eyebrow\">Paper II-B \u00b7 India and the World<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"bf-h2\">The war has cost the United States its standing as the security provider of West Asia.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"bf-src\"><b>Vivekananda International Foundation<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Amb Anil Trigunayat<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>10 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vifindia.org\/article\/2026\/july\/10\/The-New-Security-Dynamic-in-West-Asia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Read the article<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Anil Trigunayat writes after a month of American and Israeli strikes on Iran. Iran took heavy damage. It did not give way. It kept its hold on the <span class=\"bf-term\">Strait of Hormuz<\/span> and its partners kept theirs on the Bab-el-Mandeb. The Gulf states that host American bases were struck all the same. His argument turns on credibility rather than damage. Washington could not protect its friends, and every capital in the region has drawn the lesson. Saudi Arabia has signed a defence agreement with Pakistan. Others are looking for cover of their own.<\/p>\n<h4>The record<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Iran fixed 4 July for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That was the day the United States marked its 250th birthday.<\/li>\n<li>Since the twelve day war of June 2025 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said that a fresh attack will bring strikes on American bases and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The strait carries a quarter of global energy supplies.<\/li>\n<li>India depends on that strait for nearly half of its energy supplies. Over eighty per cent of its trade passes through it.<\/li>\n<li>The Houthis in Yemen hold a second narrow passage at the Bab-el-Mandeb in the Red Sea. The two together give Iran an asymmetric advantage against a far stronger military power.<\/li>\n<li>Saudi Arabia has signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Pakistan. Riyadh paid off Pakistani debt of billions of dollars owed to the United Arab Emirates. Pakistan has deployed some 13,000 more soldiers in Saudi Arabia.<\/li>\n<li>Pakistani shuttle diplomacy produced the Islamabad MoU for a sixty day ceasefire. Qatar has since taken it over, with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.<\/li>\n<li>Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkiye and Egypt have held four meetings of their foreign ministers.<\/li>\n<li>Trigunayat had earlier named a possible grouping of China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkiye, Afghanistan and Qatar. He now expects Saudi Arabia and Egypt to join or be associated with it.<\/li>\n<li>India has followed what he calls a 5D policy. The five are dialogue, diplomacy, de-escalation, de-hyphenation and diversification.<\/li>\n<li>He asks for three steps. Turn the mild Link West policy into an active Act West policy. Appoint special envoys for the region again. Set up a West Asia Security Advisory Board under the Ministry of External Affairs or the National Security Council Secretariat, on the lines of the National Security Advisory Board.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The argument<\/h4>\n<p>A protector is worth what its friends believe about it. American bases in the Gulf did not stop the strikes on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Those bases now read as a liability, and calls to remove them are heard from Iraq to Qatar. This is the working example of power that does not buy trust, and it belongs in any answer on <span class=\"bf-term\">national interest, security and power<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Iran shows what a weaker state can do with geography. It cannot match American forces at sea or in the air. It can still close the water through which the Gulf sells its oil. Its partners can close a second passage at the other end of the Red Sea.<\/p>\n<p>The cost to India is direct. Nearly half of its energy comes through one strait. Pakistan has gained standing in the Gulf through the Saudi agreement, and the money that came with it. Dialogue and diversification answer part of this. A standing body to watch the region, and stronger defence ties of India&#8217;s own, answer the rest.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;West Asia is too important to be ignored or treated like any other relationship.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Anil Trigunayat<\/cite><\/div>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;USA&#8217;s limitations to protect its allies in the middle east have been clearly exposed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Anil Trigunayat<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-item\">\n<div class=\"bf-eyebrow\">Paper II-B \u00b7 India and the World<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"bf-h2\">The Indo-Pacific was an Indian sphere long before it became a strategic term.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"bf-src\"><b>Firstpost<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Anirban Ganguly<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>10 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span><em>Firstpost \u2014 the paper refuses every automated check available here, so no link is printed<\/em><\/div>\n<p>Anirban Ganguly writes during the Prime Minister&#8217;s tour of the Pacific. His claim is that the <span class=\"bf-term\">Indo-Pacific<\/span> is an Indian civilisational construct. For over a thousand years, he writes, Indian trade, settlement and thought crossed these waters and shaped the societies on the far shore. His evidence is a body of Indian scholarship on that link, chiefly the work of Kalidas Nag and the travels of Rabindranath Tagore. The purpose is to read the region as an old Indian space rather than a recent answer to great power competition.<\/p>\n<h4>The record<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Prabowo Subianto opened the restoration and conservation project at the Prambanan temple compound in Indonesia.<\/li>\n<li>Kalidas Nag was perhaps the first Indian to use the term Indo-Pacific Domain in the modern sense. He had studied India&#8217;s civilisational footprints in Southeast Asia and the Pacific since the 1920s. He went with Tagore to the Far East in 1924.<\/li>\n<li>Tagore visited Southeast Asia in 1927. In Indonesia he went to Java, Sumatra and Bali.<\/li>\n<li>Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay travelled with Tagore in 1927 and wrote an account of the tour in Bengali. It is called Dwipamay Bharat, or Island-India.<\/li>\n<li>Santidev Ghosh, who spent his life at Santiniketan, wrote Java O Balir Nrityageet. Tagore arranged his visit to Indonesia in 1939, where he went to Java, Bali and Denpasar.<\/li>\n<li>An Indonesian teacher named Devantar sent students to Santiniketan.<\/li>\n<li>Nag records that Tagore met Soekarno on that visit, before Soekarno led Indonesia out of three hundred years of Dutch rule.<\/li>\n<li>The painters Surendranath Kar and Dhirendra Krishna Dev Burman travelled with Tagore and brought Batik and mask designs into Indian art.<\/li>\n<li>Nag&#8217;s book India and the Pacific World came out in 1941. In it he complains of the indifference and ignorance of writers about the history of the Pacific countries and their cultures.<\/li>\n<li>K M Pannikar wrote that the Hindu settlements and colonies of the Pacific islands show how far this sea had been explored and navigated at least 2,000 years ago.<\/li>\n<li>Nag pointed to the oldest words taken into the Malayo-Polynesian languages from outside. They are words for religious, moral and intellectual ideas, and they came from India. From Siau to Borneo to the Philippine Islands the word Devata appears as Dvata, Jebata, Jata, Divata, Davata and Diwata.<\/li>\n<li>The Prime Minister noted that India&#8217;s Great Nicobar Island lies 150 kilometres from Aceh in Indonesia.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The argument<\/h4>\n<p>This is the material for the cultural strand of Indian foreign policy. A claim about civilisational ties needs names, books and dates, and here they are. Nag&#8217;s book of 1941, Chattopadhyay&#8217;s Bengali account of 1927 and the students who came from Java and Bali to Santiniketan carry more weight than a general line about shared heritage.<\/p>\n<p>The limit of the argument should be stated with it. Old cultural contact does not keep a sea line open or protect shipping. It gives India standing to speak in the region as a resident power rather than an outside one. Ships, ports and working agreements have to do the rest.<\/p>\n<p>The geography in the article is the sharp point. Great Nicobar sits 150 kilometres from Aceh. India and Indonesia are neighbours by sea, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are the physical link between the two.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;What India brought as her real and abiding contribution to the nations of the Pacific were not the conquering armies or the ruling dynasties long forgotten, but a veritable fertilising influence in the domain of spiritual, intellectual and artistic creations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Kalidas Nag, quoted by Anirban Ganguly<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-item\">\n<div class=\"bf-eyebrow\">Paper I-B \u00b7 Indian Government and Politics<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"bf-h2\">India&#x27;s next gain in governance lies in placing AI on the digital public infrastructure it already runs.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"bf-src\"><b>The Indian Express<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Manish Sabharwal and Ravi Bapna<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>11 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/next-governance-leap-will-come-from-bringing-ai-and-digital-public-infrastructure-together-10781196\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Read the article<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Manish Sabharwal and Ravi Bapna begin with a pension fraud in Japan and end with state capacity. India is not in the race to build frontier AI models, they write, and does not need to be. What India has is <span class=\"bf-term\">digital public infrastructure<\/span> at the scale of the whole population, and the data it throws off every day. Putting AI on that base would be the largest change in the working of the Indian state since 1947. What it buys is better targeting of welfare, earlier detection of fraud, quicker service and interfaces in many languages.<\/p>\n<h4>The record<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Japanese officials called at the house of Sogen Kato to honour him at the age of 111. He had been dead for thirty years while his family drew his pension. The inquiry that followed found three lakh people who were assumed to be living and were dead.<\/li>\n<li>Aadhaar has reduced such pension scandals in India. Government spending has become more efficient, and it has risen 117 times since 1991.<\/li>\n<li>India accounts for 42 per cent of the world&#8217;s digital transactions.<\/li>\n<li>UPI carries 23 billion transactions a month, one of the largest records of behaviour anywhere.<\/li>\n<li>GST carries 20 crore payments, which show supply chains, invoicing, production and consumption as they happen.<\/li>\n<li>FASTag has 4.5 billion payment transactions, and they map movement and logistics.<\/li>\n<li>More than 27 billion Aadhaar authentications a year went with a 16 fold rise in the number of people receiving direct benefit transfers.<\/li>\n<li>Government spending has grown 53,000 times since the budget of 1947, which was Rs 198 crore.<\/li>\n<li>The authors date the change from data poor to data rich to three acts of enterprise in 2016: Jio, UPI and GST.<\/li>\n<li>Work at the National Council of Applied Economic Research finds that 66 per cent of connected Indians use the internet for entertainment and 11 per cent for government services online.<\/li>\n<li>India&#8217;s enterprise digital public infrastructure is being built now. It includes a universal enterprise number, an entity digilocker, API Setu and a single source of truth for regulation. The authors would add a lifetime social security account for every citizen.<\/li>\n<li>The United States built AI on private data and China built it on platforms. India would be the first large country to place AI on public infrastructure that covers the whole population.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The argument<\/h4>\n<p>State capacity is the idea to carry away. Governments have raised it by adding offices and staff, and Indian spending has grown 53,000 times since 1947 without solving the problem. The authors point to another route. Better allocation, quicker response and interfaces that work in many languages raise what the same administration can do.<\/p>\n<p>The obstacle they name is inside the government. Digital silos are stronger than physical ones. The technical capacity of departments is thin. A habit of PDFs survives where the work needs open interfaces. AI can read unstructured records, and so it can carry the state past the problem of joining old systems together.<\/p>\n<p>The counter argument is about power. A state that reads more of its citizens can also watch them more closely. The authors place their proposal inside a consent architecture and the stated principles of Jan Vishwas. Privacy, accountability and the limits of administrative discretion belong in the same answer as efficiency.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;DPI without AI is infrastructure, and AI without DPI is intelligence. AI plus DPI is enhanced state capacity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Manish Sabharwal and Ravi Bapna<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-syl\">\n<h3>Where this belongs in your syllabus<\/h3>\n<p class=\"s\">Open the note and read the full topic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-chips\"><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/afghanistan-iraq-and-west-asia\/\">Afghanistan, Iraq and West Asia<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/national-interest-security-and-power\/\">National interest, security and power<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/balance-of-power-and-deterrence\/\">Balance of power and deterrence<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/determinants-of-foreign-policy\/\">Determinants of foreign policy<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/continuity-and-change-in-indian-foreign-policy\/\">Continuity and change in Indian foreign policy<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/institutions-of-policy-making\/\">Institutions of policy-making<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/india-and-the-usa\/\">India and the USA<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/india-and-china\/\">India and China<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/india-s-look-east-policy\/\">India\u2019s \u201cLook East\u201d policy<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/asean\/\">ASEAN<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/collapse-of-the-soviet-union-unipolarity-and-american-hegemony\/\">Collapse of the Soviet Union, unipolarity and American hegemony<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/the-state-in-advanced-industrial-and-developing-societies\/\">The State in advanced industrial and developing societies<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/liberalization-and-economic-reforms\/\">Liberalization and economic reforms<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/role-of-planning-and-public-sector\/\">Role of planning and public sector<\/a><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-q\">\n<h3>The questions this feeds<\/h3>\n<p class=\"s\">Questions from earlier years that today&#8217;s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the <a href=\"\/psir\/pyq-vault\/\">PYQ Vault<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>GS-2 \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 15m<\/b>\u201cEnergy security constitutes the dominant kingpin of India&#x27;s foreign policy, and is linked with India&#x27;s overarching influence in Middle Eastern countries.\u201d How would you integrate energy security with India&#x27;s foreign policy trajectories in the coming years?<\/li>\n<li><b>PSIR Paper II \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 10m<\/b>For India, a multipolar world order would also mean a multipolar Asia. Comment.<a class=\"ans\" href=\"\/psir\/psir-pyq\/for-india-a-multipolar-world-order-would-also-mean-a-multipolar-upsc-psir-2025-4910\/\">Answer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><b>PSIR Paper II \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 15m<\/b>India maintains strong ties with countries that will assure a free and open Indo-Pacific and guarantee greater connectivity with rest of the world. Analyze.<a class=\"ans\" href=\"\/psir\/psir-pyq\/india-maintains-strong-ties-with-countries-that-will-assure-a-upsc-psir-2025-4909\/\">Answer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><b>GS-2 \u00b7 2024 \u00b7 15m<\/b>Discuss the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of Maldives for India, with a focus on global trade and energy flows. Further, also discuss how this relationship affects India&#x27;s maritime security and regional stability amidst international competition?<\/li>\n<li><b>GS-2 \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 10m<\/b>E-governance projects have a built-in bias towards technology and back-end integration than user-centric designs. Examine.<\/li>\n<li><b>GS-2 \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 10m<\/b>India-Africa digital partnership is achieving mutual respect, co-development and long-term institutional partnerships. Elaborate.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"bf-foot\">A new brief on every working day. Facts and quotes are taken from the articles named above.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A month of strikes on Iran left the Strait of Hormuz in Iranian hands and the American promise to protect its friends in doubt, and Saudi Arabia has signed a defence agreement with Pakistan. A second article reads the Indo-Pacific as a space Indian trade and thought shaped over a thousand years, with the scholarship of Kalidas Nag and the 1927 tour of Rabindranath Tagore as the evidence. A third argues that India should stop chasing frontier AI models and put AI on the digital public infrastructure it already runs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"fx_brief_v2":"1","fx_brief_issue":"97","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psir-gs-2-daily-brief"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-11-at-2.56.06-PM.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5109,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions\/5109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}