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Torrential Rains Trigger Catastrophic Floods and Landslides Across Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh

Sept. 18, 2025 | Environment

Torrential rains on September 15–16 unleashed severe floods and landslides across Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

**Overnight cloudbursts and heavy rainfall triggered flash floods in Dehradun, Uttarakhand’s capital.**
The Tamsa River overflowed, inundating the courtyard of the Tapkeshwar Mahadev temple while the main sanctum remained intact. The India Meteorological Department issued a Red Alert as residents described this as the most terrifying monsoon Dehradun has seen in years. Viral videos captured collapsing roads and widespread inundation throughout the city.

**Rainfall totals reached 192 mm in Sahastradhara and 141 mm at Mal Devta within five to six hours, while Jolly Grant Airport, Mussoorie and Hathibarkala each recorded over 90 mm.**
Flash floods and landslides swept through Sahastradhara, Mal Devta, Santla Devi, Dalanwala and surrounding hills, destroying roads, markets and small hotels. In Uttarkashi district’s Dharali village, flooding over the past 50 days has claimed one life and left 68 people missing.

**Floodwaters and debris have washed away 13 bridges and ten culverts across Dehradun district, and landslides have blocked more than 23 arterial and local roads.**
The Chakrata Road bridge collapsed, severing a critical transport link, and blocked routes to Mussoorie via Kimadi, Dhanaulti and Nainbagh stranded an estimated 3,000–4,000 tourists. After a landslide destroyed homes and left several residents missing, villagers in Majhara staged protests demanding assistance.

**Authorities have confirmed at least 13 deaths: eight people drowned when a tractor trolley was swept off by the Tons River near Vikas Nagar, two others died in landslides at Jajret and Bhagat Singh Colony, and three remain critically injured.**
Rescue teams from the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, police and local agencies have evacuated over 500 people, including around 200 children trapped by waterlogging at the Dev Bhoomi Institute campus in Paundha, and evacuated guests from hotels in Mussoorie. Teams reported that five individuals were swept away and 584 people remained stranded.

**Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited Sahastradhara, Mal Devta and other severely affected areas, ordering officials to clear blocked roads immediately, restore safe drinking water and electricity, and monitor rising river levels.**
From the State Emergency Operations Centre, he has maintained constant communication with district authorities to coordinate rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts.

**Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke with Chief Minister Dhami to review the situation and pledged full Central Government support for relief operations.**
Modi announced ₹1,200 crore in immediate financial assistance for Uttarakhand. State officials estimate monsoon-related flooding has caused approximately ₹7,500 crore in damages, with the Garhwal region bearing the largest share of losses.

**The heavy rains also affected neighboring states.**
In Himachal Pradesh, landslides and flash floods claimed three lives. The Jammu and Kashmir Congress described the damage in Jammu and Kashmir as “colossal” and urged Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and local authorities to strengthen their crisis response.

India and United States Advance Bilateral Trade Negotiations Amid Tariff Disputes

Sept. 18, 2025 | Geopolitics & Defense

India and the United States have resumed high-level talks to advance their bilateral trade agreement under a positive and forward-looking tone.

**US chief negotiator Brendan Lynch and India’s Special Secretary Rajesh Agrawal opened a seven-hour session in New Delhi, during which they agreed to continue virtual discussions before scheduling the next formal round.**
Negotiators addressed tariff parity, market access for pharmaceuticals and seafood, and US concerns over India’s Quality Control Orders, setting the stage for a more structured follow-up meeting.

India insists that the talks cover its key agricultural exports—soybeans and corn—and all components of the 50 percent penalty tariffs the United States imposed in August 2025, including a 25 percent levy tied to India’s purchase of Russian oil, which Washington views as support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

**When negotiations stalled in July 2025, the United States had pressed India to open its sensitive agricultural and dairy sectors, cut steep automobile duties, and accept genetically modified crops.**
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly criticized India’s reluctance to broaden market access, highlighting the divergent priorities that have slowed progress.

**Broader geopolitical dynamics shape these discussions.**
The Trump administration has threatened tariffs as high as 100 percent on China and India to penalize discounted Russian energy purchases. Meanwhile, the European Union remains divided over secondary sanctions—Hungary is likely to oppose punitive measures, and partners such as Japan and the United Kingdom hesitate to adopt trade policies that could damage their Asian economic ties. Some European policymakers consider tariff protectionism against China, despite concerns about China’s dominance in rare earth materials, while viewing India more as a partner. India continues negotiating free-trade agreements with the UK and the EU and attracts significant Japanese investment in automotive and financial services.

**Many analysts argue that the case against India’s trade practices carries greater domestic risks than the approach toward China.**
Targeted tariffs could undercut the livelihoods of roughly 700 million rural farmers and laborers, intensifying political pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protect agricultural interests and maintain export competitiveness. Aggressive US measures also risk nudging India toward closer relations with China and Russia, a development that would clash with Western strategic goals—though Modi appears unlikely to join a Eurasian alliance dominated by Chinese technology and Russian commodities.

**India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry described the recent talks as constructive, with both sides committing to intensify efforts for an early, mutually beneficial deal.**
Brendan Lynch’s visit, originally scheduled for late August and postponed after the US imposed additional tariffs on August 27, marked the first high-level engagement since that increase.

**After the United States doubled its duties in August 2025, India’s exports to the US fell from $8.01 billion in July to $6.86 billion in August, hitting textiles, engineering goods, gems and jewelry, and agricultural sectors particularly hard.**
To break the stalemate, India has offered to cut duties on over 95 percent of US industrial goods unrelated to its core sectors, while US negotiators press for reforms in agriculture, dairy, e-commerce, and patent regulations. India maintains that any concessions must safeguard its regulatory autonomy and the livelihoods of its rural population.

**Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal projects that the first tranche of an India-US trade deal will materialize by November 2025, following directives from Prime Minister Modi and President Trump.**
Since March 2025, both sides have held five negotiation rounds and weekly virtual meetings to bridge differences ahead of the fall 2025 deadline. Officials on both sides have expressed optimism about meeting that timeline, and future in-person rounds are slated for the coming weeks, with recent progress expected to shape the next formal session.

### IMPACT ANALYSIS
**From this Development, various impacts could cascade through the system, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the severity and criticality of the shocks.**

Domain	Causal Chain	Possible Outcome
Competitiveness	(US imposes 50% tariffs ↓ → Trade-openness & preferential access ↓ → Export-basket diversification (HHI) ↑ → High-value-added export share ↓)	Wider export concentration under US penalties narrows India’s product scope and reduces its high-value-added export share.
Macroeconomics & Growth	(Terms-of-trade index ↓ → Current-account balance (% GDP) ↓ → Sovereign spread over risk-free rate ↑)	Deteriorating terms of trade weaken the current-account balance and elevate sovereign bond spreads, hiking external borrowing costs.
Firms	(Supply-chain restructuring cadence ↑ → Supplier-delivery-times index ↑ → Working-capital cycle length ↑ → Corporate default rate ↑)	Supply-chain disruptions lengthen working-capital cycles and intensify liquidity strains, heightening corporate default risk.
Macroeconomics & Growth	(Global value-chain reconfiguration velocity ↑ → Inventory-cycle amplitude ↑ → Output gap (% GDP) ↓ → Recession probability (12-month ahead) ↑)	Faster global value-chain shifts amplify inventory swings and output gaps, boosting near-term recession probability.
Firms	(Trade-openness of firm supply chain ↓ → Export order book ↓ → Average days sales outstanding (DSO) ↑ → Corporate bond spread blowout ↑)	Shrinking export orders and rising DSO trigger a corporate bond spread blowout, driving up firms' financing costs.
Competitiveness	(Trade-openness regime ↓ → FDI net inflow (% GDP) ↓ → Labour productivity growth (non-farm) ↓)	Reduced trade openness deters FDI inflows and slows technology transfer, leading to weaker non-farm labour productivity growth.

### BOTTOM LINE

- India and the United States have reopened high-level trade talks with a forward-looking tone, which reduces the immediate risk of further tariff escalation and creates a viable window to negotiate a phased agreement by the November 2025 target if both sides make pragmatic concessions.

- The US decision to impose 50 percent penalty tariffs (including a 25 percent levy tied to Indian purchases of discounted Russian oil) directly eroded US market access for Indian exporters and caused shipments to the US to fall by roughly $1.15 billion from July to August 2025, with textiles, engineering goods, gems and jewelry, and agricultural products hardest hit.

- The immediate trade-friction causal chain runs: higher US tariffs → US buyers divert orders or demand price concessions → Indian exporters lose volumes and revenue → inventory builds and days sales outstanding (DSO) rise → small and medium exporters face acute working-capital stress and elevated default risk unless temporary credit support is provided.

- A sustained tariff regime will concentrate India’s export basket (higher HHI) and reduce the share of high-value-added goods, because firms will pivot to a narrower set of competitively defensible, lower-margin products rather than invest in upgrading—this in turn reduces the attractiveness of India to technology-seeking foreign investors.

- Worsening export earnings and more expensive imported inputs generate a negative terms-of-trade effect that can weaken the current-account balance and lift sovereign spreads, producing higher external borrowing costs for the government and corporates and narrowing policy room for fiscal or monetary support.

- Accelerated value-chain reconfiguration by multinational buyers—prompted by tariff uncertainty—will lengthen supplier delivery times and amplify inventory cycles, increasing the volatility of industrial output and modestly raising recession risk over the next 6–12 months if reconfiguration is disorderly rather than staged.

- Domestic political constraints in India—chiefly the economic dependence of roughly 700 million rural workers and farmers on agricultural protection—are a core driver of New Delhi’s refusal to open agriculture, dairy, and accept genetically modified crops, meaning any US demand in those areas is likely to meet sustained resistance without compensating domestic measures or phased liberalization.

- Because the US tariff measures are explicitly linked to India’s Russian energy purchases, trade policy is functioning as a tool of geopolitics; this creates a two-way causal edge where US pressure aims to alter Indian strategic behavior, while heavy-handed punitive measures risk nudging India toward closer commercial ties with Russia and China, even if a full geopolitical realignment is unlikely.

- The current negotiation dynamic favors a phased or tranche-based deal: India’s offer to cut duties on over 95 percent of US industrial goods provides the US with a credible partial win while allowing India to protect core agricultural and social-sensitive sectors—if Washington reciprocates with limited carve-outs or time-bound liberalization, a first tranche by November is feasible.

- Practical, near-term actions to limit economic damage include: negotiating sector-specific carve-outs for labor-intensive exports; creating emergency liquidity facilities and export credit lines targeted at SMEs in textiles and engineering; agreeing on a phased timeline for agricultural market access with compensatory safety nets; and decoupling energy policy disputes from trade penalties through diplomatic channels to reduce the risk of secondary commercial alignments.

- If talks fail or drag into 2026, the most probable consequences are: sustained lower export revenues to the US, higher corporate DSO and default rates among exposed exporters, slower non-farm productivity growth from reduced FDI, higher sovereign and corporate borrowing costs, and increased diplomatic friction that complicates broader Western strategic objectives in Asia.

- Key indicators to monitor for early confirmation of escalation or de-escalation are monthly exports to the US by sector, corporate DSO trends and non-performing asset flows in export-oriented industries, sovereign and corporate bond spreads, new announced FDI projects (especially Japanese and EU commitments), diplomatic statements on Russian energy purchases, and the content/timeline of agreed negotiation tranches.

Monitored Intelligence for India - Sept. 18, 2025

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Watch Video: Masood Azhar's family 'torn into pieces' in Op Sindoor, admits top JeM commander

Livemint | English | News | Sept. 18, 2025 | Terrorism

A top Jaish-e-Mohamad (JeM) commander, Masood Ilyas Kashmiri, admitted in a viral video that the family of JeM chief Masood Azhar was "torn into pieces" during Operation Sindoor. The operation involved precision strikes by Indian forces on terror establishments in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), specifically targeting JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) facilities.

The strikes were conducted in response to a terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, which killed 26 civilians. Indian forces targeted nine terrorist locations in Pakistan and PoK, including Bahawalpur, the nerve center of JeM and location of its operational headquarters at the Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah.

Masood Azhar confirmed that on May 7, 14 people—including 10 family members and four close associates—were killed in the strike. The casualties included his elder sister and her husband, a nephew and his wife, another niece, five children from his extended family, one close associate and his mother, and two other companions. Azhar expressed a wish to have been among those killed and lamented the death of four children aged 3 to 7.

JeM, founded in the early 2000s by Masood Azhar, has been responsible for numerous attacks in India over the past two decades. Azhar is a globally designated terrorist, and Operation Sindoor is considered a significant blow to JeM’s infrastructure.

India resilient to navigate global turbulences, more crude coming from Western Hemisphere: Petroleum Minister Hardeep Puri

The Hindu | English | News | Sept. 18, 2025 | UndeterminedEnergy Prices

India has developed significant resilience to manage global energy market turbulences, supported by an increase in crude oil supplies from the Western Hemisphere and anticipated rises in gas availability from 2026-27. Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri highlighted that despite ongoing geopolitical challenges, India’s approach focuses on controlling immediate issues while leveraging sufficient global oil availability.

The geopolitical landscape involves tensions with the U.S., particularly due to President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs on Indian products and penalties linked to India’s procurement of Russian crude oil. Although trade negotiations between U.S. and Indian officials are underway, Russian oil imports remain a contentious issue. India’s refining capacity, currently the fourth largest globally at about 260-270 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA), is expected to expand soon to 320 MMTPA.

Prasad Panicker, executive chairman of Nayara Energy, emphasized that Indian refineries possess flexibility to handle various crude types amid supply chain and technology disruptions. However, he noted the critical need to develop strategic reserves, not only for crude oil but also for essential chemicals and catalysts. Building an indigenous supply ecosystem for these materials is vital for maintaining operational resilience in the long term.

Chhewang to front Ladakh talks as Wangchuk’s fast deepens divide

Times of India | English | News | Sept. 18, 2025 | Geopolitical Conflict and Disputes

Former MP Thupstan Chhewang will lead a Buddhist delegation in talks with the Union government regarding Ladakh's demand for Sixth Schedule status and statehood. This development follows climate activist Sonam Wangchuk’s ongoing hunger strike, which began on September 9, protesting delays in dialogue on restoring Ladakh’s democratic rights. The Leh Apex Body (LAB) announced that all political parties would step aside for religious representatives, led by Chhewang, to head the talks. Chhewang had resigned as LAB chairman in July, succeeded by Wangchuk.

The Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution provides special protections over land, culture, and resources for tribal areas, and Ladakhis are seeking similar safeguards after the 2019 bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories. The Union Home Ministry established a high-powered panel in January 2023 following extended protests, but since its last meeting with LAB and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA) on May 27, no significant progress has been made aside from a domicile policy.

Kargil Autonomous Hill Development Council chairman M Jaffar Akhoon urged Wangchuk to end his hunger strike, emphasizing that issues like statehood and Sixth Schedule status must be resolved through dialogue with the government. BJP leaders also called for an end to the fast, accusing outside activists of fueling radical views and attributing stalled talks to internal LAB divisions, particularly sidelining Chhewang. Wangchuk has linked his protest to the upcoming Leh Autonomous Hill Development Council elections in October, criticizing the BJP for not fulfilling its previous manifesto promise of securing Sixth Schedule status for Ladakh after winning the 2020 polls.

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