India Played It Safe with Trump, Skipped the Joint Presser over His Unpredictable Style: Sources
There’s a reason India decided against a full joint press conference after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met US President Donald Trump in France this past June. According to government sources who spoke to PTI on Monday, New Delhi simply didn’t want to take chances with Trump’s well-known unpredictable behaviour in front of the cameras. The two leaders sat down on June 17 in Evian-les-Bains, on the sidelines of the G7 summit. The meeting itself was meant to steady a relationship that had grown strained over the previous year — trade friction, energy differences, the usual list of irritants. But when it came to the media part, India made a quiet request in advance: cameras could come in, the leaders could make their opening remarks, but no open question-and-answer session. US Ambassador Sergio Gor later described what happened next. He said the Indian side had one clear ask. Trump was told the Indians preferred no questions, and he agreed — “sure, no problem.” Then, once the formal statements were done and the room was full of reporters and about fifty cameras, Trump turned and invited questions anyway. What was supposed to stay limited stretched into roughly forty-five minutes, with Modi sitting there while most of the questions went to the American president. Indian sources aren’t pretending this was some dramatic stand-off. They describe it as standard caution. Foreign teams meeting Trump, they say, often stay careful because of how freely he can swing in public settings. They pointed to his past exchanges with the presidents of South Africa and Ukraine as the kind of moments that make people think twice. “Thus, the cautious approach by India,” one source put it. Another official stressed that talking through media arrangements before any big visit is completely normal. India was simply following its usual practice for these situations and shared that preference with the American side ahead of time. No one is claiming the request was extraordinary. It was practical. The clarification only came after Gor spoke about the episode over the weekend. Once his account was out, New Delhi felt the need to explain the thinking behind it. The sources made clear they weren’t trying to snub anyone or hide from the press. They were managing risk in a meeting that already carried weight. Looking back, the June encounter was one of those carefully staged moments aimed at calming things down. Modi reportedly spoke about the importance of keeping shipping lanes open and commerce flowing through places like the Strait of Hormuz, and he acknowledged Trump’s efforts related to the situation in West Asia. The substance of the talks mattered. The format of the media appearance, though, was handled with extra care on the Indian side. Anyone who has watched Trump in joint appearances knows he doesn’t always stick to the script. Questions can go anywhere, answers can land anywhere, and the person sitting next to him has limited control once the microphones are live. For a government that prefers tightly managed public moments with its own leader, that unpredictability was reason enough to keep the arrangement limited from the start. None of this means the relationship is frozen. Both sides have continued talking about trade and other practical issues. But the episode does show how India approaches these high-stakes encounters — with an eye on control and an awareness of the other leader’s style. The sources weren’t dramatic about it. They simply said foreign delegations tend to be wary, and India chose the cautious path. In the end, Trump still held a long media interaction. Modi stayed mostly quiet after his opening remarks. The Indian side later explained why they had preferred it that way. It was never about avoiding the cameras entirely. It was about not handing over an open microphone in a setting where the other person is known for saying whatever comes to mind. That’s the version government sources are putting out now — calm, practical, and rooted in past experience with how these things can unfold. Whether the caution was fully needed is for others to debate. What is clear is that India preferred not to leave it to chance. Sources: PTI reports carried by Times of India, India Today, Hindustan Times, The Wire, Rediff, The Statesman and Deccan Chronicle, 24 August 2026.Public remarks by US Ambassador Sergio Gor at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum, as reported across Indian media, 22–24 August 2026. @Rohit Manral
Eyes on Xi’s possible visit, and that ‘early harvest’ talk, as Doval flies to Beijing
Ajit Doval is heading to Beijing this week. India’s National Security Advisor will sit down with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for the 25th round of those Special Representatives talks on the border. The formal gatherings are lined up for Monday and Tuesday. The timing feels deliberate. India is hosting the BRICS summit in the middle of September, and a lot of people are watching to see whether Chinese President Xi Jinping finally comes. It would be his first trip to India in seven years. If Doval’s talks go reasonably well, it could help clear the path for that visit and maybe even another meeting between Modi and Xi on the sidelines. This isn’t just about the boundary, though the boundary is the main item. Both sides also want to take a appropriate look at where the overall relationship stands. Things have been inching forward since late 2024, after the long freeze that followed the 2020 clashes in eastern Ladakh. The Modi-Xi meeting in Kazan that year opened a small window. They encountered again in Tianjin last August and both said they saw each other as development partners, not rivals, and that differences shouldn’t turn into open fights. Since then the steps have been careful—flights restarted, some visas eased, the Kailash-Mansarovar yatra back on, border trade through Nathu La and Lipulekh picking up again. The Special Representatives mechanism itself is old. It started in 2003 under the idea of finding a full settlement for the nearly 3,500-kilometre border. Progress has always been slow. After Galwan the talks stopped for almost five years. They only restarted properly in December 2024. Last year’s round in Delhi produced one practical agreement: an expert group under the existing border coordination mechanism to look at what they call an “early harvest”—small, limited agreements in places where the differences aren’t huge, while the bigger framework is still being worked out. That early-harvest idea is expected to come up again this week. Officials from both sides met under the Working Mechanism on 6 August and talked about delimitation, border management, new mechanisms, and cross-border cooperation. Some people point to the middle sector in Uttarakhand and Himachal, and the Sikkim area, as possible spots where something modest might be possible. They’ve also talked about setting up general-level military mechanisms in the eastern and middle sectors to match the one that already exists in the west. Nobody is expecting a big breakthrough. The western and eastern sectors remain complicated, and there have been fresh reports of friction in Arunachal Pradesh this month, with sharp words exchanged publicly. China says the border is “generally stable.” India keeps repeating that peace and quiet along the Line of Actual Control is the basic condition for anything else to improve. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said as much again just the other day. Still, Doval going to Beijing keeps the highest-level channel open. It is his first visit there for these formal talks since the process restarted. He and Wang met more casually in June during the BRICS National Security Advisers meeting in Delhi and both noted that things were moving toward gradual normalisation. Tuesday’s meeting is the first proper boundary round since last August. What comes out of the talks will probably be measured. Quiet, workmanlike language would suggest the stabilisation is holding. Any mention of the expert group making progress, or new confidence-building steps, would be read as small but real movement. The larger questions—the full boundary settlement, the trade imbalance, how the two countries handle their differences in a shifting region—will stay for later. For now the focus is practical. Keep talking, keep the temperature down, and see whether the careful steps taken since 2024 can continue. If the meetings go smoothly, the possibility of Xi coming to Delhi next month stays alive. In a relationship that has swung between deep freeze and cautious thaw, even steady, unspectacular work counts. Sources: Drawn from reporting in The Hindu by Ananth Krishnan, PTI dispatches, Ministry of External Affairs briefings, Chinese Foreign Ministry statements, and coverage in NDTV, India Today, The Statesman and Hindustan Times reports. @Rohit Manral
‘Not expecting neighbours to do only what’s in my interest’: Jaishankar on Bangladesh amid Hasina row
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was saying on Saturday when he spoke about India and Bangladesh.He was at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum in Delhi, and someone asked him about the current awkwardness between the two countries—especially Bangladesh’s demand that India hand over Sheikh Hasina, and the question mark hanging over a possible visit by Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister Tarique Rahman. Jaishankar didn’t get into the details of any private talks. He rarely does. Instead he kept it simple and practical. He said, “What I can tell you is for any relationship to work, it has to meet the test of mutual interest. It has to work for them, it has to work for us.” Then he added the line that really stays with you: “I am also realistic, I’m not expecting neighbours to do only what’s in my interest. There has to be a fair degree, a reasonable degree, of my recognising and respecting what is their interest, just as I expect them also to do so.” He went on to say that once both sides find that common ground—that “landing point”—things start moving more smoothly. At the end of the day, he said, mutuality is what holds these relationships together. It’s a calm, grown-up way of putting it at a time when things have been a bit tense. Sheikh Hasina has been in India since August 2024, when she left Bangladesh during the big political upheaval. Bangladesh has been asking for her return so she can face the cases against her there. Some reports say Dhaka has even linked that demand to Rahman’s possible trip to India. New Delhi has invited him—both for a regular bilateral visit and in connection with the BRICS summit, since Bangladesh chairs BIMSTEC right now. But the timing has been uncertain, and the Hasina issue keeps sitting in the background. After 2024 the relationship took a real knock. There was coolness, some trade friction, sharper public comments. When Tarique Rahman took charge earlier this year, it looked like both sides were trying to steady the boat a bit. Then Hasina did a virtual media interaction from India on the second anniversary of her departure, and that seemed to irritate Dhaka all over again. India has said it didn’t organise or endorse that interaction, but the episode still added to the strain. Jaishankar’s answer didn’t pick a fight and it didn’t give anything away either. He just stated the obvious truth: lasting ties can’t be one-sided. India has its own interests—border security, connectivity for the Northeast, trade, regional stability. Bangladesh has its own priorities, shaped by what its people and its politics want right now. Pretending those don’t exist doesn’t help anyone. He’s talked about neighbourhood diplomacy this way before. What feels refreshing is that he isn’t treating this as a zero-sum game. He’s not saying India holds all the cards, and he’s not saying Bangladesh has to simply fall in line. The message is quieter and more realistic: both sides need to feel they’re getting something out of it. That applies whether you’re talking about high-level visits, legal requests, border management or the everyday economic links that ordinary people actually feel. And ordinary people do feel it. Cross-border trade, medical travel, family visits, the movement of goods—those things matter more than diplomatic language. When the temperature stays high for too long, those practical connections start to suffer first. Finding common ground, as Jaishankar put it, is less about grand speeches and more about the patient work of spotting where interests overlap and managing the differences that will always be there. Right now the two governments are still talking about the visit. Whether it happens soon or takes a little longer, the larger point he made still holds. Neighbours don’t have to agree on everything. They just have to accept that each has legitimate interests of its own. Expecting only one side to adjust is a sure way to keep the friction going. Looking for the place where interests meet is the more practical path—and the one he said India is ready to take. In the end it’s the kind of plain-spoken view that doesn’t make for dramatic headlines, but it might actually help keep the relationship from drifting further off course. Mutual interest isn’t a fancy slogan. It’s just the basic condition for any lasting neighbourhood arrangement. And right now, that’s exactly what both sides need to remember. Sources: Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, India Today, Zee News, News18, India TV, WION, The Daily Star, Firstpost, Times of India (coverage of Jaishankar’s remarks at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum, 22–23 August 2026). @Rohit Manral
‘World looking at India as bright spot of growth & hope’: PM Modi at Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2026
It was one of those evenings in the capital when the air itself seemed to carry a quiet confidence. At the Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2026, held at the Taj Palace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before a hall packed with business leaders, investors and policymakers and said something that felt both simple and significant. The world, he told them, is looking at India as a bright spot of growth and hope. He did not rush into the line. He first spoke about the last few years — the ups and downs, the disruptions, the sense that nothing stays isolated anymore. “Whether one likes it or not,” he said, “the futures of all nations are interconnected. Nothing is possible in isolation.” India’s G20 presidency, he reminded the room, had carried the idea of One Earth, One Family, One Future. That same spirit, he felt, still had answers for the problems of this century. But the present is not easy. Resources are being turned into weapons. Mistrust is spreading. Global growth looks uncertain. And still, Modi said, the world keeps turning its gaze toward India. “Even in such times, the world views India as a bright spot of growth and hope.” He backed the claim with numbers that have become familiar yet still land with weight. In the last 10 to 12 years, about 25 crore people have moved out of poverty. The IMF continues to say India will remain the fastest-growing major economy. On Independence Day, speaking from the Red Fort, he had talked about seven streams of strength — manufacturing, agriculture and food processing, technology, the green economy, the blue economy and more. These, he said, are where the country is putting its energy. Then he turned to the idea of reform itself, and here his tone sharpened. He spoke of the old licence-raj days when companies that produced more than the allowed limit were actually punished. He called it the PLP model — Production Linked Punishment. Today the approach is the opposite. Higher production brings incentives. The government, he said, is not merely changing a few rules. It is changing the entire way regulations are thought about. The old mindset was “prohibited unless permitted.” The new one is “permitted unless prohibited.” If something is not clearly banned by law, there should be no need to keep asking for permission at every step. The relationship between government and people, he insisted, must rest on trust, not suspicion. Policies now are being shaped to be pro-people, pro-growth and pro-development. He pointed to things people actually notice in their daily lives — cheaper data, the quick spread of 5G, changes in the railways, the Delhi Metro, the Namo Rapid Rail. Small reforms on paper, he suggested, but they show a country adjusting itself to the times. Political stability and continuity of policy, he added, give the outside world the confidence that India’s direction will not suddenly reverse. The forum itself was full of people who matter in boardrooms and policy circles. More than 40 global speakers and over 300 Indian CEOs were expected across the two days. Earlier in the day, Times Internet chairman Satyan Gajwani had described Modi as a source of stability in a world that seems to lurch from one crisis to the next. The Prime Minister’s words seemed to answer that description directly. He did not pretend India is untouched by global pressures. He simply argued that the country has chosen a path of continuous reform and that the results are visible. Growth is being protected. The sectors that will matter in the years ahead are receiving focused attention. And the governing idea has shifted from control to enablement. The Economic Times World Leaders Forum continues through Saturday with conversations on technology, geopolitics and the next phase of growth. But Friday evening belonged to that single, clear assertion — that amid everything else, India stands out as a place of growth and hope. Sources: Times of India, Economic Times, ANI, ETV Bharat, New Kerala, The News Mill, Awaz The Voice, Akashvani News, and the official text of the Prime Minister’s address (August 21, 2026). @Rohit Manral