Newspaper Summary 160626

 

Markets surge on W. Asia ceasefire hope, oil slide

ADDING WEALTH. Investors richer by ₹18-lakh cr in 2 days; FPIs turn net buyers in 11 sessions Akshata Gorde Amiti Sen Mumbai/New Delhi

Markets gained sharply on Monday after early signs of easing geopolitical tensions in West Asia lifted investor sentiment, though analysts cautioned that the upside may remain measured. A preliminary understanding between the US and Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and extend a fragile ceasefire triggered a broad-based rally. Benchmark indices surged nearly 1 per cent, with the BSE Sensex rising 736 points to close at 76,264.33 and the Nifty 50 advancing 231 points to 23,853, though resistance near the 24,000-mark limited gains.

The market rally translated into a sharp increase in investor wealth, as the total market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms jumped by ₹8.5 lakh crore to ₹470.5 lakh crore. Investor wealth has jumped over ₹18 lakh crore in the last two sessions. “Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” US President Donald Trump wrote on ‘X’.

Oil prices fell on the US-Iran deal news. Brent crude futures fell over 5 per cent to around $83 per barrel, its lowest in nearly two months.

RUPEE UP

For India, a major oil importer, this decline is particularly beneficial as it reduces inflationary pressures, supports the rupee and improves fiscal stability. Reflecting this, the rupee appreciated 40 paise to 94.71 against the US dollar. Global safe-haven assets gained ground, with gold rising over 3 per cent and silver climbing over 5 per cent.

India VIX, the market’s volatility gauge, came back close to pre-conflict levels of around 14, reflecting easing investor anxiety as the geopolitical risk premium receded. Trump made the announcement on Sunday evening, with the peace agreement to be signed on June 19 in Switzerland.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed the development, posting on social media platform ‘X’: “I welcome the understanding reached between the US and Iran on ending the conflict in West Asia, which has caused serious economic disruption across the world and led to loss of life in many countries”.

Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal, however, added a note of caution: “Many of our problems will be alleviated, in case it is a sustainable deal... If peace lasts and there is free movement in Strait of Hormuz, it will have a positive impact on trade. But let us wait and see”.

For India, the Gulf conflict is predominantly an “energy crisis,” said Trideep Bhattacharya, President and CIO – Equities, Edelweiss Mutual Fund. “We’re optimistic that a US-Iran deal could remove a fiscal drag of 0.5-0.8 per cent of India’s GDP by lowering oil prices”.

FII INFLOWS

This could also bring in a sustained revival in foreign institutional investor inflows, which could act as the next catalyst for the market, said Rajesh Palviya, Head of Research at Axis Direct. On Monday, FPIs, for the first time in 11 sessions, were net buyers for ₹200 crore.

How urban slums have become new talent pipeline

Recruiters tap local communities to man retail, healthcare, gig economy in India, abroad Amit Vijay Mohile Mumbai

For Rajesh Chettiar and seven of his friends from Mumbai’s Kandarpada slum in Dahisar, who left for Japan recently, it’s a dramatic change in fortunes. Selected by a visiting delegation from Japan’s Ehime Prefecture — seven for maintenance roles and one for welding — the young men underwent four-six months of Japanese language and vocational training at the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee Kaushal Vikas Kendra in Kandivali.

EARNINGS JUMP

The skilling could result in their monthly earnings jumping from the ₹12,000-₹25,000 typically earned by high-school graduates or ITI-certified workers in India to between ₹80,000 and ₹1.6 lakh. Their journey reflects a broader shift, as recruiters from both India and abroad are increasingly tapping young men and women from urban slums, up-skilling them to power sectors like retail, logistics, hospitality, healthcare, and the gig economy.

“For decades, our cities have fed the slums; today, the slums are feeding the city’s economy,” points out a senior official at the Vajpayee Kaushal Vikas Kendra. Organisations such as the CII and Nihon Edutech increasingly function as labour-market intermediaries, preparing candidates for diverse roles. For example, some are prepared for agricultural roles involving seeding, irrigation, harvesting, packaging, and farm machinery operations under programmes such as Japan’s Technical Intern Training Programme and Specified Skilled Worker scheme.

SOCIAL IMPACT

The transformation is being driven as much by employer necessity as social impact. Retailers, restaurant chains, logistics companies, hospitals, and gig platforms are grappling with labour shortages and high attrition, turning to urban communities for a reliable talent pipeline.

CII’s Mumbai-based Vajpayee Kaushal Vikas Kendra has mapped 50 slum clusters across north Mumbai for direct recruitment drives and plans more than 100 job fairs under its Mission 2026 programme. The Kaushal Kendra initiative has already facilitated more than 65,000 training and placement outcomes.

A similar trend is playing out in Bengaluru, where the NGO Hasiru Dala is formalising waste pickers into contractors and micro-entrepreneurs. By providing identity cards, insurance, and direct contracts with apartment complexes and technology parks, they help workers move from dependence on middlemen to becoming recognised service providers within the city’s recycling economy. In Pune, the Lighthouse Communities Foundation embeds skilling centres directly inside low-income communities to further this mission.

‘Funding is a good start but more needs to be done for India to own its AI stack’

Predominantly everything will continue to be in India. We will also get... people who want to help... but are in the US VIVEK RAGHAVAN, Sarvam Co-founder Sindhu Hariharan Chennai

As India’s sovereign Artificial Intelligence (AI) model maker Sarvam turns unicorn with a funding round led by HCL Tech, the start-up believes that along with much-needed capital, the partnership will also help them hone their go-to-market skills for Enterprise AI use cases.

“AI has changed the way software is going to be written; so there is no doubt about the synergies between an IT services company and an AI company. HCL’s investment in Sarvam helps to create a new generation company out of India,” Sarvam Co-founder Vivek Raghavan told businessline. He clarified that there is no exclusivity agreement with HCL Tech regarding the use of Sarvam’s models.

With HCL Tech’s $150 million investment in return for a 10.46 per cent stake, Sarvam will use the money for training models, for inference at large scale, for agentic use cases, and more.

Raghavan noted that monetisation is important, but Sarvam will also continue to innovate in building larger models and deeper use cases. Sarvam is also ramping up hiring and the focus will be to get more exceptional people in, he said.

“Predominantly everything will continue to be in India, but we will also get exceptional people who want to help India in this mission but are in the US,” he added, speaking about the recent outreach in the US.

MORE CAPITAL NEEDED

“This is a good start, but as we look to build bigger models, the capital we have raised now is not sufficient, and we have to look at more avenues of capital surely,” Raghavan said. “We have the opportunity to move faster towards the goals; we have lots of more work to do there,” he said. Market traction has seen a boost after the momentum created by the India AI Summit.

“Since the Summit, both our voice AI capabilities and API uses have gone up by three-fold in 3 months. That’s a significant increase in adoption, and we see that will continue,” he added.

As for the impact of the Anthropic-US government fallout on India’s sovereign AI ambitions, Raghavan said it is a sign of “what might happen” if we do not have a sovereign AI stack. Given the rate at which models are increasing in capability every few weeks and months, more models will start falling into the advanced nature sooner, he noted.

“From a long-term perspective, we need to have the strength to do this [build our own models] ourselves. As a country, we need to have our own capability in the entire AI stack sovereign — from compute to models to agentic infrastructure and more”.

As for the team’s expectations from the policymakers, Sarvam flags the benefits that AI can bring to governance. One way the government can help is by being a large procurer of the sovereign AI models, and it will also lead to efficiency of services, Raghavan said.

Sarvam is confident of closing the remaining portion of the investment round within the next few weeks, but did not disclose the names of the investors.

‘Global hiring has normalised, but India remains a bright spot’

Real estate, infrastructure and renewables remain very high-growth engines for us NILAY KHANDELWAL, Michael Page India MD Janaki Krishnan Mumbai

US recruitment firm Michael Page CEO Nick Kirk says the global hiring market has moved beyond the post-pandemic frenzy, but demand for skilled talent remains strong. Kirk and PageGroup India Managing Director, Nilay Khandelwal, discuss hiring trends, AI-driven workforce shifts, GCC expansion and why India remains one of the firm’s brightest growth markets.

Edited excerpts:

How would you describe the recruitment market now? Kirk: Trying to talk about today needs context. The last normal year we had was 2019, and we haven’t had a normal year since. Everyone knows what happened in 2020. If you’d said to me in the summer of 2020, ‘don’t worry, Nick, in 2021 and 2022 you are going to see the greatest recruitment market of your entire career, which for me spans 31 years at Michael Page, I would not have believed you. Nobody would have believed you.

There was no indication we were about to head into the greatest recruitment market of all time, but we did. Based on the results of not only our organisation but a number of our competitors as well, there was, through that two-year period, the greatest volume of movement of white-collar workers ever.

Candidates came to market having reassessed their lives during the pandemic and decided that now was a good time to move. They felt they wouldn’t put up with their boss any more or that they could do better. At the same time, a whole lot of organisations were transforming as a result of the pandemic. So, there was mass transformation across multiple companies and a whole load of talent coming to market. It was a perfect feeding ground for recruitment consultancies.

We had our all-time record year in 2021 and then beat that in 2022. It was never better.

What has changed after the hiring boom? Kirk: What we then started to hear was this phrase called internal equity. Organisations suddenly recognised that they had hired somebody on a salary 20 per cent higher than everybody else. Existing employees would come into their appraisal and say, ‘he’s not 20 per cent better than me, so why are you paying him 20 per cent more? I want a pay rise, otherwise I’m going to leave’.

In order to make it fair and equitable across the team, companies had to increase salaries for everyone else. It was costing companies so much money. Companies started coming to us and saying, ‘we just can’t afford the impact of hiring one individual on so much more money than everybody else’.

So, offers suddenly started to go back to what I would call normal — somewhere between 5 per cent and 8 per cent on a global scale — although it varied by market. Nobody told the candidates that. We went into 2023 and candidates were coming to market expecting the kind of increases they had seen colleagues receive a year earlier. When we told them they could probably expect a 5 per cent to 8 per cent increase, they didn’t believe us.

They would go through the entire interview process, get to the end, receive a 7 per cent or 8 per cent offer and turn it down. They would think, ‘it’s a one-off. The next process will get me 15 per cent or 20 per cent’. It was only after doing that two or three times that they started to realise those increases had gone. Then we started seeing more candidates accepting those offers.

The problem with those types of offers is that if I’ve only got a 5 per cent salary increase and I come to resign to my boss, and my boss values me, he’ll probably put my salary up enough to keep me. So, buybacks became a very big issue.

Is geopolitical uncertainty affecting the job market? Kirk: Naturally, whenever you have any kind of macro event, it creates uncertainty. Our target area is white-collar professionals. They are educated, typically risk-averse, they’ve had good careers, and they don’t want a blemish on their CV. If there is some kind of macro event that makes them feel uncertain, often their reaction is just to sit on their hands and stay put.

Without doubt, unhelpful headlines around anything that might lead to higher oil prices, inflation, interest rates and so on do not help. But all I can do as CEO, and all I ask my employees to do, is control the controllables. You cannot control those elements.

Which sectors are driving hiring in India? Khandelwal: Real estate, infrastructure and renewables remain very high-growth engines for us. Data centres are another area with very high demand. GCCs have always been a flavour, so we haven’t seen a shift in that. However, what we are seeing is more European companies viewing India as a real option, rather than just playing with the idea of setting up a GCC.

Europe has been tough overall, especially France. In the past there was hesitation from line managers about having technology teams based in India. Today, they don’t really have a choice because financial performance is under pressure. Either you grow the top line or improve the bottom line. GCCs form part of that story.

To build confidence, we’re often introducing companies that are considering a GCC to another company from the same country that already has one operating successfully in India. That is also giving rise to growth in Tier-II cities because some companies don’t want to be in Tier-I locations where the cost arbitrage starts becoming a question mark.

‘Enterprises need to figure out their sovereignty strategy and roadmap’

Focus on the basics of leading with the right architecture for hybrid cloud, and then apply it to a domain specific use case to get the acceleration of AI ROHIT BADLANEY, General Manager, IBM Cloud Product, Design and Industry Platforms Vallari Sanzgiri Mumbai

Sovereignty has become a buzzword in the AI era with discussions around data localisation entering boardroom discussions globally. Everyone wants to go sovereign; however, the roadmap to this as well as the definition around the term are not well chalked-out. Rohit Badlaney, General Manager, IBM Cloud Product, Design and Industry Platforms, spoke about how enterprises need to define sovereignty before planning their architecture design around sovereignty. Breaking down the Indian CXO-level conversations around this, Badlaney also discusses India’s progress compared to other global markets.

Edited excerpts:

How have client priorities evolved when it comes to technology and AI? Badlaney: They are more thoughtful of their landing zones, what stays on-premise, what goes to one cloud, considering what’s happening around concentration risk of big hyperscalers, sovereignty and protection of assets within a market and what’s fuelled by AI. I find clients to be more thoughtful now versus just saying the answer is public cloud. Clients that think through their app estate and landing zones, and design them correctly, get faster acceleration on both their hybrid cloud journeys and their AI journeys. So, I find that’s changed since the 2018-19 timeframe.

Everyone wants to go sovereign. How does it impact the idea of putting your data on cloud? Are there valid concerns of data being geopolitically gated? Badlaney: I find sovereignty to be a highly overloaded domain. I want to break it up a little bit. I think of sovereignty as a design choice. Everything around data governance — data privacy, data sovereignty — is it within region? The biggest question clients ask is: can you not access the client data? So, enable clients to load their key encryptions so that IBM can never access that data.

There’s also operational sovereignty — do you have local citizens managing the data? The third is technological sovereignty: are you building on open technologies? Are you building on things that are portable and doesn’t lock you down against concentration risk?

If I pick a particular hyperscaler, can I get out? With hybrid cloud platform, if a client chooses our cloud today and another tomorrow, the day after they have the portability choice. What I advise clients is to make sure you have control over data, operational aspects. Can you pinpoint who is accessing your services and where?

Then build on an open portable platform. If you want a kill switch and not use our cloud, move it on-prem to your data centre. That’s why we’re so obsessed with open.

Do you see that understanding among clients? Badlaney: It’s improving. It is not as pervasively known, but some markets are more mature. India is getting there.

In all the CIO conversations I have had, it’s definitely a boardroom topic of sovereignty. What is your point of view? What is your sovereignty point of view? Badlaney: I encourage the industry to really break down the problem versus use the buzzword of sovereignty.

Indian companies are still lagging in the proof-of-concept to execution shift. What is the hurdle in that jump? Badlaney: I definitely see AI taking off in certain clients. The differentiation factor of those clients who’ve made progress is a well-thought-out hybrid cloud strategy. Our CIO has a well-defined hybrid cloud platform. It is on-premise in their data centres. Thinking through infrastructure, data strategy, automation strategy, once you’ve done that, AI becomes easier.

Then you apply AI to a specific problem or a domain. Focus on the basics of leading with the right architecture for hybrid cloud, and then apply it to a domain specific use case to get the acceleration of AI.

12 ships carrying urea, DAP may head to India once Hormuz opens

Prabhudatta Mishra New Delhi

The government on Monday said that with 196.65 lakh tonnes (lt) of fertilizer in stock as of June 14, the availability of crop nutrients is sufficient to meet demand.

It said that with the conflict in West Asia resolved, as many as 12 ships carrying 3.3 lt of urea and 2.57 lt of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) may transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which will further boost domestic availability.

At the inter-ministerial briefing on the West Asia crisis, which began with the Iran war, Fertilizer Ministry’s Joint Secretary Bandana Preyashi said since March 1, Indian companies had entered into contracts to import 50 lt of fertilizers, of which 21.95 lt of urea and 4.18 lt of DAP, had arrived in the country.

She said against a total fertilizer demand of 383.9 lt during (April-September) for kharif sowing, the country had 196.65 lt of stock of various fertilizers available as of June 14. The stock was 155.19 lt on April 1. Official data show that sales of urea, DAP, MoP, complex and SSP were 70.57 lt during April-May. After factoring sales in the first fortnight of June, total sales in the current kharif season had reached 102.78 lt, she said, adding that it means the requirement may be 281.12 lt by September 30.

7-10 DAYS WAIT

The official said that as many as 16 ships carrying different fertilizers — 8 with 3.3 lt urea, 4 with 2.6 lt DAP, 3 with 1.1 lt sulphur and 1 ship with ammonia — were awaiting passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Sources said that once the Strait is reopened after the agreement between the US and Iran, these may take 7-10 days to reach India.

The government said India had imported a total of 39.36 lt of fertilizers and domestically produced 123.65 lt between March 1 and June 14, which helped in bolstering availability.

India has secured urea supplies from Oman, Malaysia, Vietnam, Georgia, Nigeria, Russia, Finland, Egypt, Algeria, Turkiye and the Netherlands, while DAP and complex (a combination of N, P, K, S nutrients) fertilizers were imported from Russia, Morocco, Egypt, the US, Jordan, South Korea, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

Quickly: Crude oil hits 3-month low on US, Iran peace deal

London: Crude oil prices slipped to a three-month low on Monday after US President Donald Trump and Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister said they had reached an initial deal to end the war and to resume traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude futures fell $4.16 to $83.17 a barrel by 1315 GMT and US WTI was at $80.49, down $4.39.

REUTERS

Unemployment rises as labour force participation dips to 54.4%

DISPARITY. Overall, male participation is twice that of females, shows Govt data Our Bureau New Delhi

Overall Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) dipped to 54.4 per cent in May, down from 55 per cent the previous month of this year, according to the latest government data. This marginal downward trend was mirrored on a year-on-year basis, with the national LFPR slipping by 0.4 percentage points compared to May 2025, as shown by the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on Monday.

While rural participation stood at 56.6 per cent, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points year-on-year, urban areas recorded a notably lower participation rate of 49.8 per cent, marking a sharper annual contraction of 0.6 percentage points, as per the PLFS data listed out in a statement of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

LFPR ANALYSIS

“The LFPR for persons aged 15 years and above was re-reported as 54.4 per cent in May 2026, compared to 55 per cent in April 2026,” the primary source of data on activity participation, employment and unemployment conditions of the population. There remains a significant gap between male and female labour force participation.

NATIONAL LEVEL

At the national level, male participation is more than double that of female participation. However, females are notably more active in the labour force in rural areas than in urban areas, possibly due to agricultural and seasonal manual labour opportunities.

Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) for individuals aged 15 years and above stood at 32.8 per cent in May 2026. In rural areas, FLFPR was recorded at 36.7 per cent, whereas it remained almost at the same level at 24.8 per cent in urban areas compared to the previous month. Compared to May 2025, the overall female LFPR declined marginally by 0.4 percentage points, from 33.2 per cent to 32.8 per cent in May 2026.

Rural FLFPR remained broadly unchanged, whereas LFPR for urban females recorded a decline of 0.5 percentage points over the year, according to the Ministry. It slipped to 51.4 per cent, a slight comedown from the 52.2 per cent recorded in April and marginally below the 51.7 per cent figure from the same period last year.

Army picks Israel’s MEPRO X6 telescopic sights for NEGEV light machine guns

The Army has contracted 57,479 NEGEVs, with 16,479 of them directly coming from the original manufacturer IWI Dalip Singh New Delhi

The Army has selected the Israeli defence company Meprolight’s MEPRO X6 telescopic sight as the dedicated daytime optic for its in-service NEGEV light machine guns, which will be manufactured locally under a partnership with India’s RRP Defense. The MEPRO X6 delivers enhanced target identification and engagement capabilities at extended ranges for one of the world’s largest military forces, the Israeli company said in a statement.

State-owned Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), which secured the tender with a solution based on the MEPRO X6, will supply products sourced from RRP Defense.

LOCAL MAKE

The Army’s overall evaluation process was focused on reliability, durability, accuracy and ease of operation under demanding conditions. To support local manufacturing and the Make in India initiative, Meprolight has signed a comprehensive transfer of technology (ToT) agreement with RRP Defense, under which the company will transfer the knowledge, processes and manufacturing capabilities required for full production of the MEPRO X6 in India, the company said.

RRP Defense is awaiting the signing of a contract from BEL to begin manufacturing telescopic sights for NEGEV 7.62x51 mm light machine guns. Since 2020, the Army has contracted 57,479 NEGEVs, with 16,479 of them directly coming from the original manufacturer, Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), while the remaining 41,000 units for the infantry will be sourced through PLR Systems, a joint venture between the Adani Group and IWI.

NIGHT VISION

RRP Defense has a partnership with Meprolight and has established assembly lines for the production of conventional electro-optic series of weapon sights, including ‘Red Dot’ for the Army and ‘Mepro Mor’ for the Coast Guard. It will roll out the manufacturing of the MEPRO X6 at its Navi Mumbai facility.

Newspaper Summary 150626

 SEBI board may restore open market buybacks

Akshata Gorde, Mumbai

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is expected to clear a fresh set of ease-of-doing-business measures at its June 19 board meeting, including the reintroduction of open-market buybacks through stock exchanges, a faster rollout mechanism for alternative investment fund (AIF) schemes, and simplified transmission norms for legal heirs. Among the key agenda items is the proposed revival of the stock exchange route for open-market buybacks, which was phased out in 2023 amid tax-related concerns.

Through consultation papers issued in April and May, SEBI proposed reintroducing the stock exchange route with tighter safeguards, including shortening the buyback window to 66 working days from six months and mandating the utilisation of at least 40 per cent of the buyback size in the first half of the offer period. The regulator also suggested restricting purchases from promoters and promoter-group entities during the buyback, enhancing disclosures, and aligning the framework with the T+1 settlement cycle.

Another major proposal is Garuda (Green-Channel: AIF Rollout Upon Document Acknowledgement), aimed at cutting the time required to launch AIF schemes from the current 30 days to around 10 working days. In certain cases, such as accredited-investor-only or angel funds, the mechanism could allow near-immediate launches upon acknowledgement.

The board is also expected to consider doubling the monetary thresholds for simplified transmission of securities to ₹10 lakh for physical holdings and ₹30 lakh for demat holdings, while easing documentation requirements for legal heirs and nominees. Separately, SEBI has proposed revising the base-price and price-band framework for ETFs by allowing exchanges to use a dynamic reference price linked to the indicative net asset value (iNAV) to improve price discovery.

Other proposals likely to come before the board include:

• Permitting online bond platform providers to distribute products regulated by the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) and 54EC capital gains tax-saving bonds.
• Changes to the pre-open call auction mechanism for IPOs and re-listed companies to improve opening price discovery.
• Streamlining buyback regulations by removing redundant provisions and reducing compliance timelines for listed companies.

The time to deploy thorium is now

Anil Kakodkar

India’s vast thorium resources offer a means for the country to become a global clean energy provider rather than remaining a major energy importer with the attendant vulnerabilities. The founder of the atomic energy programme in India, Dr Homi Bhabha, recognised this in the early 1950s and chalked out a three-stage strategy.

The first stage, comprising uranium reactors—specifically pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs)—has matured well and is about to exceed the 10 GWe capacity originally envisaged. Today, there is an unprecedented global urgency for nuclear energy driven by the need for clean energy and economic growth. However, global nuclear development is currently based on uranium, and known resources can support only around 500 GWe of capacity for a 60-year reactor life under the "once-through" mode.

With the World Nuclear Association projecting a need for 1,400 Gwe by 2050, resource depletion and supply-chain shocks are imminent within the next two decades. A shift to closed nuclear fuel cycles and fast-breeder reactors is inevitable, but this shift is hindered by proliferation concerns regarding plutonium.

Thorium is the clear solution to this conundrum. India cannot afford to miss this opportunity, given its lead in thorium and fast-breeder technology. The successful PHWR technology can serve as the workhorse for this mission, offering an ideal platform to irradiate thorium to produce uranium-233, which directly connects to third-stage thorium reactors. This is necessary because the capacity to irradiate thorium through fast-breeders is still decades away.

Thorium-HALEU fuel bundles, compatible with existing PHWR designs, can quickly enable large-scale thorium irradiation. Meanwhile, the development of the second stage (fast-breeder reactors) should continue as planned to augment resources until fusion reactors become a reality.

Key Challenges and the Way Forward The proposed strategy advances the third stage to immediately follow the first, allowing India to leverage uranium-233 before uranium supply challenges begin. However, the thorium fuel cycle has challenges, notably the hard gamma-emitting daughter products of uranium-232 that accompany uranium-233. While this provides proliferation resistance, it makes manufacturing solid fuel difficult.

Liquid fuel appears more manageable. India can leverage its expertise in reprocessing and radioactive waste immobilisation to develop thorium molten salt reactors (TMSR). Unlike traditional physics-heavy nuclear engineering, TMSR engineering is chemistry-heavy, requiring significant work in materials development and operational chemistry control.

A TMSR operating in the near-thermal spectrum could maximise sustained thorium-based power generation. Instead of following the general small modular reactor (SMR) trend, SMRs based on TMSRs offer a safer, more sustainable solution.

An intense R&D mission to deploy TMSRs within 10-15 years is a critical national necessity. In the near term, India must accelerate capacity build-up using mature technologies for diverse needs, including:

• Captive clean electricity.
• Leveraging brownfield opportunities at retiring coal plant sites.
• Clean hydrogen production through thermochemical water splitting or electrolysis.
• Micro-nuclear reactors for remote areas.

Launching the third stage of thorium reactors in time is essential to making India's energy security import-independent. Creating a conducive ecosystem to unleash Indian ingenuity through the SHANTI Act is now the need of the hour.

Wheels turn for $10 billion US tariff refunds to India

Amiti Sen, New Delhi

MONEY TRAIL. RBI eases banking hurdles; digital payment providers offer alternative channels. TARIFF FALLOUT. The refunds arise from tariffs levied under a US enforcement initiative launched in April 2025, targeting countries with large trade surpluses with that country.

The process of repatriating more than $10 billion in US reciprocal tariff refunds to Indian exporters has begun, following detailed administrative guidelines issued by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and a key clarification from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) aimed at facilitating the inflows. Cross-border digital payment providers have also entered the fray, offering exporters mechanisms to receive refunds without opening foreign bank accounts and at significantly lower costs than traditional commercial banking channels.

PAYOUT PROCESS However, exporters that paid the duties through freight forwarders face an additional complication. Since the forwarders acted as the legal importer on record, they will receive the refunds directly from the US Treasury and will subsequently have to transfer the funds to the exporters in compliance with applicable regulations. In cases where duties were paid directly by US importers, the refunds will be credited to the importing entities. Given that many Indian exporters had initially offered substantial discounts to share the tariff burden, industry expectations are that the refunds will also be shared.

“The systems are now falling into place,” a source noted, adding that while some smaller remittances have been processed, larger payouts are expected to be released gradually.

COURT REPRIEVE The refunds arise from a broad trade enforcement action launched by Washington in April 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), targeting countries running trade surpluses with the US. India faced a 50 per cent tariff on key exports after Washington imposed a 25 per cent reciprocal duty on August 7, 2025, and a further 25 per cent levy on August 27 over Russian oil imports. The US Supreme Court struck down the tariffs as unconstitutional on February 20, 2026.

According to various estimates, more than $10 billion in refunds are due on Indian exports shipped between August 2025 and February 2026. To address banking bottlenecks, the RBI has clarified that Indian banks without direct US correspondent banking relationships can establish specialised collection accounts through banks that maintain operational branches in the US. This clarification resolves uncertainty for domestic banks and detailed procedures are now being communicated to exporters.

A widening crisis for women

NFHS-6. With 43% urban women now obese, data reveals a crisis with a distinctly female face

J Mangaiyarkarasi

Women in Indian cities seem to be carrying more than their share of the weight — quite literally. The latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6) data shows that nearly 43 per cent of urban women are overweight or obese — a steep climb from 33 per cent in the last survey. In short, the country is on the brink of a worrying demographic where half of all urban women aged 15–49 will have a body mass index (BMI) above 25. Men are adding the pounds, too (rising from 28.6 per cent to 36 per cent), but the divide is widening, with women bearing the brunt of this expanding crisis.

Obesity was once seen as a disease of affluence, but the numbers now tell a more complicated story, driven by changing food environments, rising chronic stress levels, metabolic diseases and the lingering effects of malnutrition. And as waistlines expand, so does the market for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which are flooding India after the expiry of semaglutide’s patent in March 2026, promising quick fixes to those desperate for relief. But experts caution that medication cannot outrun the structural drivers of obesity nor can it stand in for the deeper shifts needed in food systems and social norms.

“Obesity is often associated with overeating, but it can emerge from poor, non-diversified diets too,” said Dr Rama Narayanan, Senior Fellow, Nutrition and Health, at MS Swaminathan Research Foundation. The trend, she said, is being driven by lifestyle changes linked to urbanisation and a shift from traditional millet-based diets to refined cereals and ultra-processed foods. In the case of women, Dr Narayanan said, the vulnerability factors are compounded by what time-use surveys call the ‘poverty of time’. Women spend long hours on care work in addition to paid employment. Chronic stress, lower physical activity, poor sleep and reduced access to nutritious food all combine to increase obesity risk. Rural India is not far behind either, as ultra-processed foods seep into villages. And that becomes a cause for concern, say experts, as obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and several cancers.

LINGERING COVID EFFECTS The first National Family Health Survey after the Covid-19 pandemic, the NFHS-6 captures the aftermath of lifestyle changes from the lockdown era — reduced mobility, unhealthy routines and higher stress leading to more weight gain, said Dr Yashendra Sethi, cardiovascular researcher and editor, BMC Public Health. The rise of health fads driven by social media influencers (often not medically qualified) has added another layer of worry. Sethi noted that “women, with a higher baseline body fat percentage, are particularly affected because the structured leisure-time exercises remain logistically and socially harder”. Vishnu N Ramani, Health Economist at PHFI Institute of Public Health Sciences, agrees. In a country where many work in the informal sector, most women don’t have the privilege of going to a gym or for a walk or exercise in an outdoor park, he said, pointing to the cultural and social dynamics of gender shaping the obesity crisis. “A woman won’t get much time to go for exercise because she has to look after her domestic home,” he explained.

Then there are the commercial determinants of health. Ramani observed that high-calorie foods have become cheaper over the years, and more accessible compared to healthy foods. The rise of the platform economy has also reshaped food choices across income groups, accelerating the penetration of ultra-processed foods in urban and rural India. India’s obesity story differs from that of many fast-developing countries, as it faces “an overweight and obesity pandemic before undernutrition has settled”, added Sethi.

‘TRIPLE BURDEN’ Public health expert Dr Nirupama AY, who is with Hyderabad’s Indian Institute of Public Health, pointed to the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) theory to explain that babies exposed to undernutrition during the mother’s pregnancy or in their infancy can develop metabolic adaptations that favour energy storage. When they later encounter improved diets and greater calorie availability, they may be more prone to storing fat and developing obesity, even without excessive food intake. “The population that was undernourished 20 years ago is now becoming obese... that’s where the numbers come from,” Nirupama noted.

Experts said India’s “triple burden” of malnutrition, obesity and undernutrition reflects a complex development trajectory, where old nutrition challenges have not disappeared even as newer ones emerge. Dr Narayanan called for the inclusion of more pulses, millets and healthier oil alternatives like groundnut oil in public distribution systems — providing the micronutrients and proteins needed in one’s diet, rather than carbohydrate-heavy options that feed the very crisis policymakers are trying to fight.

Blooming paradox: Flower industry soars even as North-East withers

Prabhudatta Mishra, New Delhi

India’s floriculture sector is in full bloom. The area under flower cultivation has touched a record 4 lakh hectares in 2025-26, recovering sharply from a low of 2.82 lakh hectares in 2021-22. Gross value added from the sector has surged from ₹39,287 crore in 2019-20 to ₹51,643 crore in 2023-24. Yet, one just has to travel to the mist-covered hills of Arunachal Pradesh, and a very different story unfolds. In 2009-10, the State was a leading producer, trailing behind only Mizoram; today, that bloom has all but vanished.

Farmers have drifted to other crops, and the anthurium, once the pride of Arunachal Pradesh’s hills, has migrated south and east, finding new enthusiasts in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Bihar, West Bengal, and Kerala. The national boom is being driven not by new frontiers opening up but by old ones holding firm; farmers in established growing States are maintaining the momentum. Sikkim, a leading grower of orchids, reported the total area under flower cultivation at 242 hectares and production of 16,509 tonnes in 2025-26, which has remained at the same level as a decade ago.

AREA & OUTPUT In 2015-16, Sikkim's area and output were also the same. On the other hand, the area under flowers in Mizoram has shrunk significantly to 50 hectares in 2025-26 from 240 hectares in 2017-18. Conversely, Nagaland has done exceptionally well, seeing an increase in its area under flower cultivation.

The government only began collecting data on flower area and production in 1993-94. Since then, the share of floriculture in overall horticulture production—which reached a record 377.78 million tonnes, exceeding foodgrain output—has jumped from 0.76 per cent in 2014-15 to 1.2 per cent in 2025-26. Among the top States in flower production during 2023-24, Tamil Nadu recorded the highest share at 19 per cent.

Flower production in 2025-26*

(2nd Advance Estimate)

Flower Variety	Area ('000 hectare)	Loose Production ('000 tonnes)	Cut Production ('000 tonnes)
Marigold	106.19	1,277.35	13.71
Rose	48.20	218.23	620.45
Chrysanthemum	41.19	962.78	42.80
Jasmine	31.61	322.10	0
Tube Rose	27.19	239.67	111.88
Gladiolus	11.78	10.74	177.19
Gerbera	5.66	9.742	6.76
Anthurium	3.09	0	8.97
Orchids	2.42	22.09	7.28
Carnation	2.24	0.13	15.49
Other Flowers	119.93	318.05	178.68
Total	399.52	3,380.87	1,203.22

Source: Agriculture Ministry

Indian Army drops colonial-era dress customs

The changes are elaborated in the newly issued Army Uniforms-2026 Pamphlet

Asian News International, New Delhi

The Indian Army has removed several colonial-era vestiges from its dress regulations, including the mandatory carriage of swords by reviewing officers and the use of pouch belts with certain mess dresses. It has also dropped the use of archaic terminology such as “Royal”.

These changes, detailed in the newly issued Army Uniforms-2026 manual, are part of a broader effort to align military traditions with India’s sovereign identity and national sentiments.

Indianisation Push

A key addition is the introduction of the indigenous Bandi jacket as part of formal civil attire for officers. This closed-neck coat is to be worn over a full-sleeved shirt with matching formal trousers and closed footwear.

Other significant revisions include:

• Pouch Belts: Removed from Mess Dress Nos ‘5’ and ‘6’.
• Swords: Carriage by Reviewing Officers is now optional. Furthermore, the manual narrows the occasions for carrying swords; they are now restricted to parade commanders, contingent commanders, and designated personnel during major ceremonial events like Republic Day, Independence Day, Army Day parades, and Guards of Honour.
• Terminology: The use of the term “Royal,” inherited from colonial military traditions, has been discontinued.

New Attire

Apart from these symbolic shifts, the Army has introduced a new winter working dress featuring a battle jacket. This new attire is scheduled to gradually replace the existing jersey-based winter uniform (Dress 3A) by June 2029. Additionally, the new regulations bar radical hairstyles.

Will employment rise in age of AI?

LINE & LENGTH TCA SRINIVASA RAGHAVAN

Everyone thinks there is only one gorilla in the room, namely, AI. Actually there are two. The second is the absence of policy instruments to tackle the massive unemployment that awaits societies because of AI. But while everyone is hyperventilating over AI, there is pin drop silence over the absence of options before governments.

Meanwhile, the companies that stand to benefit from a widespread use of AI are peddling all sorts of justifications. The most intellectually grounded of these is the Jevons Paradox. William Stanley Jevons was a 19th-century British economist who said that the invention of the steam engine, which used coal more efficiently, would result in higher coal production and consumption, not less. That is, less coal per steam engine would lead to more engines being bought.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella might not have heard of Jevons until recently, but he used the paradox to say that AI would have a similar impact and that unemployment would not increase. Instead, it would increase. Others are recalling Joseph Schumpeter who said this sort of thing was inherent to capitalism and that it was good.

This may well happen, eventually, even though the IT boom of the 2000s didn’t lead to any great and permanent increases in productivity that later led to greater employment. There are several studies that show this. However, even though the past need not always be an infallible guide to the future, we do need to ask: even if AI increases the efficiency of capital-use and that gives better returns to shareholders, what will it do to, and for, labour, especially in the medium term?. If 10 programmers are replaced by one AI application, the cost saving will increase the dividends to shareholders by some amount but what of the 10 people who are now wondering how to pay their bills?.

BYE BYE, MAYNARD John Maynard Keynes, the most influential macroeconomist to have lived after Kautilya, said governments must spend money even if they didn’t have it to create demand that would, in turn, create employment. But country after country gradually has forgotten that Keynes had a very specific situation in mind, namely, that of reviving deficient aggregate demand to utilise installed capacity.

As a result of this amnesia, led by the Left which has co-opted the religious Right, the Keynesian solution for reviving demand has gradually turned into massive welfare spending. This is not something that Keynes ever intended, although he is believed to have said that money should be put in people’s pockets even if it was just for digging holes in the ground.

To cut a long story short, because of this self-serving use of Keynes by politicians, we now have unsustainable levels of government debt in far too many countries. Debt now looms menacingly over the world. Before 1968, government debt and unemployment were not linked; now they are. For a while higher government debt did bring down unemployment, but not anymore. The goose that laid the golden egg for politicians has died.

The IMF has therefore been getting horror nightmares. It is mumbling away that there is no paddle to row out of this creek, but no government is paying a blind bit of attention to its grumbling. Finance ministers may occasionally warn the heads of their governments that their goose will be cooked, but it’s not having much effect. Deficit financing to win some political advantage over rivals remains very much the go-to solution.

NO MONEY LEFT The most devastating example of this came after the Atlantic financial crises of 2008. Globally, governments have spent a few trillion dollars that they didn’t have in the name of social security and welfare. Now even that option has vanished because it’s not going to help. It has become like firing blanks in the air: there’s a lot of noise and smoke but the problem doesn’t go away.

The world has over eight billion people now. Around half of them are of working age, but barely over a quarter of those four billion are employed on a full-time basis. The rest are self-employed earning basically subsistence wages. Even without AI, we are talking of at least two billion people who need income and other forms of support. This is Karl Marx’s "reserve army of the unemployed". They constitute not only an economic challenge but a social and political one as well.

In India, this situation will worsen quickly as we have already fallen below the population replacement rate. That is, India will almost certainly grow old before it gets rich. To meet these challenges a lot of money is needed—money that’s no longer available to governments. If 10 programmers are replaced by one AI application, the cost saving will increase the dividends to shareholders, but what of the 10 people who are now wondering how to pay their bills?.

The cockroach brief: Why virality is not a marketing strategy

SHUBHO SENGUPTA DIGITAL GADFLY

For roughly two decades — ever since “viral” migrated from epidemiology into digital marketing around 2007 — I have been the most unpopular person in the room whenever the word comes up.

Clients demand it. Agency teams promise it. Award juries celebrate it with trophies that look increasingly like Toblerone chocolates. The best campaigns prove my point quietly. Ariel’s ‘Share the Load’ went viral and moved market share — because the virality served a precise commercial and cultural goal. Zomato trends regularly — because every piece of content points toward one measurable outcome: App opens.

When virality serves a goal, it is a powerful amplifier. When virality is the goal, it is — as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) demonstrated so elegantly — an expensive and exhausting way to go nowhere. Though, to be fair to the cockroach, it did get to CNN.

In May, a senior judicial figure allegedly compared sections of unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites of society” in open court. By the following morning, Abhijeet Dipke — a 30-year-old political communications strategist and Boston University PR graduate — had founded, named and distributed the Cockroach Janta Party across Instagram.

Twenty million followers in 72 hours. Coverage on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera. Street protests at Jantar Mantar, complete with cockroach costumes and mock manifesto slogans. Marketing academics will be studying this particular case for years — not entirely for the right reasons, but enthusiastically nonetheless. As a piece of communications craft, viewed purely as a marketing exercise, it was breathtaking.

Jonah Berger’s STEPPS framework — the most rigorous model of content spread available — identifies six conditions for virality: Social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories. The CJP hit five of these with a precision most agency creative teams spend careers chasing and award show entries try reverse-engineering.

Let’s deep-dive:

• Social currency: Sharing a cockroach meme signalled political awareness, irreverence and humour simultaneously, at zero personal risk. It made the sharer look sharp without requiring commitment to anything.
• Triggers: The original remarks recirculated through news cycles for days, each repetition refreshing the outrage and re-exposing new audiences to the CJP brand without a single rupee of media spend. The movement did not need to sustain its own attention — the news ecosystem did it for free. This is what the industry calls earned media.
• Emotion: Anger and humour activated simultaneously in the same container — high-arousal emotions. Anger alone exhausts an audience. Humour alone trivialises a cause. Together, they are nearly unstoppable — as every successful political cartoonist from RK Laxman onwards understood.
• Public: Cockroach masks/costumes at Jantar Mantar gave the movement a visual identity that cameras could shoot and audiences could decode instantly — absurd enough to be funny, specific enough to be unmistakable.
• Stories: The underdog reclaiming an insult is one of the oldest narrative structures in human communication. The movement did not merely respond to being called cockroaches. It adopted the name, built a brand around it and turned the act of reclamation into the content itself.

The one missing condition was ‘practical value’ — there was nothing useful to do with CJP membership beyond feeling agreeably righteous while scrolling. No conversion path. No next step. No answer to the question every successful campaign must eventually face: And then what?

The only number that ultimately matters: 20 million Instagram followers produced a few hundred people on the street at Jantar Mantar. A conversion rate of approximately 0.001 per cent. No electoral registration, no policy platform, no formal political standing. The founder, it bears mentioning, was leading this revolution for unemployed Indian youth from Boston, Massachusetts, which is either deeply ironic or the most honest thing about the whole enterprise, depending on your appetite for contradiction.

The cockroach, as any entomologist will confirm, survives everything. Nuclear winters. Geological epochs. Even bad marketing strategy. Whether this particular movement survives its own virality is, at this point, an open question. Virality without a goal is not strategy. It is noise with excellent metrics, a very good costume and absolutely nowhere to go.

How logistics will package and deliver demand growth

Balfour Manuel

India’s demand story is typically narrated through income variables such as wages, remittances, and rural credit, yet a more revealing divide is emerging across the country’s demand map: “reachable versus hard-to-serve”. While private final consumption expenditure grew 7 per cent in Q1 FY27, led by resilient rural demand, the constraint on that growth has shifted from production capacity to distribution certainty. Distance, more than income, is now quietly determining where consumption can actually occur, and the story of the next demand cycle begins there.

This shift is part of a longer, deliberate policy arc where tax harmonisation has reduced internal trade friction and economic corridors have improved line-haul predictability. India’s ranking on the World Bank’s logistics performance index improved from 44th in 2018 to 38th in 2023. Additionally, two dedicated freight corridors are now operational across 2,843 km through states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Gujarat—regions where distance had long constrained market access.

Global supply chain disruptions have raised the stakes for domestic logistics, as lead-time predictability has shifted from a procurement preference to a strategic necessity. To succeed, companies require network depth, freight route diversity, and end-to-end logistics dependability, even under pressure. The gap between India’s manufacturing reputation and its logistics reliability directly determines whether the supply chains that have already shifted to the country stay shifted.

Inside India, these pressures are redrawing the domestic demand map by easing the “invisible tariff” of distance that once forced companies to carry excess safety stock due to replenishment uncertainty. Dedicated freight capacity and expressways are now supporting predictable overnight movement between manufacturing clusters. For small manufacturers and farm-gate producers with thin margins, predictable delivery changes the fundamental unit economics of expansion.

Firms are entering emerging consumption centres not because those markets have suddenly become [richer] but because they have become reachable, as better logistics is not merely about cost discipline. When replenishment cycles stabilise, production planning firms up, and capital released from buffers can move into deeper distribution. However, infrastructure efficiency on paper does not automatically translate into service on the ground, as urban congestion, land constraints, and driver availability remain daily operational realities. While logistics alone cannot substitute for income growth, it can accelerate the expression of income by declining friction between purchase intent and product availability.

The next consumption cycle may not announce itself through a sharp rise in income but rather as a quieter shift in markets that have become serviceable. It will appear in categories where purchase intent no longer waits on proximity. The decisive question, it turns out, was never just about income; it was also always about reach. Reliable supply is what births new consumption centres in every nook of the country.

Iran Update Special Report, June 12, 2026

 The sources provide a detailed account of the ongoing US-Iran negotiations as of June 12, 2026, revealing a process defined by deep internal Iranian divisions, conflicting accounts of a potential Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), and fundamental disagreements over core issues such as the Strait of Hormuz and nuclear commitments.

Internal Iranian Fractures and Leadership Transition

A central theme in the negotiations is the persistent disagreement within the Iranian regime regarding what concessions to accept. This friction is exacerbated by the fact that Iran is in a transition period from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to his son, Mojtaba.

• The IRGC Faction: Major General Ahmad Vahidi and his inner circle are currently driving regime decision-making due to their closeness to Mojtaba Khamenei. This faction maintains maximalist demands that the sources describe as tantamount to a US surrender.
• The Formal Negotiating Team: Led by Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi, this team appears to be at odds with the IRGC. While Araghchi has stated that an agreement has "never been closer," mediators are reportedly forced to engage with the diplomatic channel and the IRGC separately because the two camps cannot reach an internal consensus.
• The Paydari Front: This hardline faction, represented by Parliamentarian Mahmoud Nabavian, has criticized the circulating draft deal, suggesting it would end IRGC control over the Strait of Hormuz immediately and fails to explicitly address US sanctions.

Conflicting Accounts of the Draft MoU

Public reports of the draft MoU are highly contradictory, suggesting either that multiple versions are circulating or that both sides are using public statements to influence the final outcome.

• Iranian Claims: IRGC-linked and state media have circulated a version of the MoU that includes:
  • Iran’s retention of the "management" of the Strait of Hormuz.
  • The release of frozen Iranian assets.
  • A US-funded reconstruction plan for Iran.
  • Lifting sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
  • No new nuclear commitments and no discussion of Iran’s missile program or support for the Axis of Resistance.
• US Claims: Conversely, US officials have stated the agreement includes provisions requiring Iran to dismantle its nuclear program and end its support for the Axis of Resistance.

Disagreements on Sequencing and the Strait of Hormuz

Even if the substance of a deal were agreed upon, the sources highlight major disputes over the sequencing of concessions. Iranian media indicates that Iran wants half of its frozen assets and the lifting of sanctions before final negotiations begin. In contrast, US Vice President JD Vance has stated that economic relief will only follow the fulfillment of Iranian obligations and that assets will not be released immediately upon signing.

The Strait of Hormuz remains a critical flashpoint. While mediators suggest a deal would see Iran "reopen" the strait and eliminate tolls within 30 days, Iranian state media insists that Iran will retain management of the waterway. Furthermore, the Iranian regime continues to use force and coercion—such as firing drones at commercial vessels as recently as June 11—to enforce its "protection racket" and illegal traffic separation scheme in the strait.

The sources conclude that any viable agreement must require Iran to abandon its efforts to establish long-term authority over this vital global waterway.

The status of the Strait of Hormuz is a critical point of contention in the ongoing US-Iran negotiations as of June 12, 2026, with the sources detailing a situation defined by conflicting draft agreements, internal Iranian political disputes, and continued military coercion in the waterway.

Conflicting Terms in the Draft MoU

Various reports of a potential Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) offer widely different accounts of how the strait would be managed:

• Iranian Maximalist Demands: IRGC-linked and state media outlets have circulated a draft where Iran retains "management" of the Strait of Hormuz. Under this version, future administration of the waterway would be determined jointly by Iran and Oman.
• Mediator Accounts: In contrast, an unspecified diplomat from a mediating country reported that the MoU would require Iran to "reopen" the strait within 30 days, eliminate tolls, and restore shipping to pre-war volumes.
• Hardline Criticisms: Internal Iranian critics, such as Parliamentarian Mahmoud Nabavian, have attacked the deal, claiming it would end IRGC control over the strait immediately upon signing.

Continued Coercion and "Protection Rackets"

Despite the ongoing negotiations, the Iranian regime continues to use force to assert its authority over the waterway. The sources report that:

• Drone Strikes: On June 11, Iranian forces fired drones at commercial vessels in the strait. US forces reportedly intercepted two of these one-way attack drones.
• Illegal Traffic Schemes: Iranian forces continue to use coercive measures to force ships to transit through an illegal traffic separation scheme and comply with what the sources describe as a "protection racket".
• Strategic Intent: The sources suggest these actions indicate the regime is currently unwilling to relinquish its claims to control the waterway.

Long-Term Strategic Implications

The sources emphasize that the terms currently being discussed for "reopening" the strait may not actually constrain Iran's long-term efforts to institutionalize its control.

• Authority and Risk: ISW-CTP assesses that any agreement allowing Iran to retain any form of authority over the strait would permit the regime to reimpose restrictions at will, posing a persistent threat to global commerce and US interests.
• Tolls and Control: Even if Iran agrees to stop charging tolls, the sources argue this does not necessarily mean they have abandoned their broader scheme to dominate the strait.

Ultimately, the sources conclude that for any US-Iran agreement to be effective, it must explicitly require Iran to abandon its efforts to establish long-term authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

The source identifies a significant shift in Hezbollah’s military strategy, moving away from a conventional, hierarchical command structure toward a decentralized insurgent model. This reorganization, reportedly initiated by the IRGC in late 2024, was a response to devastating Israeli decapitation strikes that killed senior leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah.

Decentralization and Unit Independence

The hallmark of this new strategy is the prioritization of independent decision-making and tactical mobility at the unit level.

• Insurgent Roots: This shift reverts Hezbollah to a structure similar to the one it employed during the Israeli presence in Lebanon in the 1990s and the 2006 war.
• Operational Autonomy: By decentralizing command and control (C2), individual units can execute defenses against Israeli advances without requiring direct orders or coordination from senior military officials.
• Resilience Against Decapitation: This structure is designed to mitigate the impact of Israeli strikes on high-level commanders. While the IDF reported killing ten field commanders since March 2026, the decentralization makes it unclear if these losses meaningfully disrupt Hezbollah's organized defenses.

Defensive Effectiveness in Southern Lebanon

The sources indicate that these structural changes have enabled Hezbollah to conduct more effective defenses of specific areas in southern Lebanon than it could in Fall 2024.

• Active Defense: On June 11 and 12, 2026, Hezbollah defended against Israeli advances near Majdal Zoun in the Tyre District using a diverse arsenal, including anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), improvised explosive devices (IED), mortars, rockets, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG).
• Preparation of Key Sectors: Hezbollah is also reportedly preparing defenses around logistically and symbolically significant cities like Nabatieh.
• Drone Warfare: The decentralization has specifically hindered IDF efforts to stop first-person view (FPV) drone attacks, as drone operators are now dispersed across various combat units rather than being concentrated in a single command chain.

In the broader context of the June 12 update, while Iran navigates complex negotiations with the U.S., its primary Lebanese proxy appears to be successfully adapting its military posture to sustain a prolonged defensive campaign against the IDF.

The sources describe a complex and often contradictory situation regarding the disarmament of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias following the formation of a new government under Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al Zaydi in May 2026. While the Iraqi state is making formal moves toward disarmament, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is actively pressuring militia leaders to retain their weapons.

Iranian Opposition and "Ownership" of Weapons

The IRGC has reportedly taken a hardline stance against disarmament, viewing it as a broader strategic issue for the Axis of Resistance rather than a domestic Iraqi concern.

• Weapon Ownership: IRGC-linked figures have explicitly warned militia leaders that their weapons belong to Iran, not to the militias themselves, and therefore the groups have no right to surrender them to the Iraqi state.
• Active Resistance: The IRGC has vowed to do "everything in its power" to keep these groups armed and is applying "significant" pressure on leaders to prevent them from transitioning fully from military activities into politics.

Divergent Militia Responses

The sources highlight a rift among various Iraqi militias regarding the prospect of disarming and integrating into the state security apparatus:

• The Pragmatists: Groups like Asaib Ahl al Haq (AAH) and Kataib al Imam Ali have shown interest in disarming. Their motivation appears twofold: to reduce U.S. opposition to their participation in the Iraqi government and to secure a portion of the 35,000 security jobs proposed by Prime Minister Zaydi for disarmed members.
• The Hardliners: Conversely, the most kinetically active groups—Kataib Hezbollah (KH), Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba (HHN), and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada (KSS)—continue to publicly reject disarmament. These groups are more subordinate to Iran and have been the primary actors in attacks against U.S. and foreign targets.

Conflicting Iranian Signaling

The report notes significant contradictions in Iran's reported instructions to its proxies:

• The Resistance Directive: As of June 2026, IRGC-linked figures are telling militias to resist surrendering weapons.
• The "Alternative Plan": However, other reports suggest IRGC Quds Force Commander Esmail Ghaani proposed a phased approach. In this plan, the most active militias (KH, HHN, and KSS) would end kinetic operations to preserve the Popular Mobilization Forces' (PMF) role within the state, with a potential second phase involving full integration into the Iraqi Security Forces to reduce tensions with the United States.

Strategic Risk of Integration

ISW-CTP assesses that the Iraqi federal government's current efforts may carry significant long-term risks. If the disarmament and integration process fails to address the militias’ underlying networks and primary allegiance to Tehran, it will likely result in further embedding Iranian influence directly within the official Iraqi state security institutions. This issue is particularly critical given the ongoing war and the history of militia attacks against international interests in the region.

Regional activity as of June 12, 2026, is characterized by continued military coercion in vital waterways, the tactical adaptation of Lebanese Hezbollah, and a fractured response to disarmament efforts among Iraqi proxies.

Maritime Coercion in the Strait of Hormuz

Despite ongoing negotiations with the United States, Iran continues to use force to assert authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

• Drone Attacks: On June 11, Iranian forces fired several drones at commercial vessels in the strait. U.S. forces intercepted two of these one-way attack drones.
• Illegal Traffic Control: The IRGC continues to force vessels to transit through an illegal traffic separation scheme, which the sources describe as part of a "protection racket".
• Strategic Stance: These actions indicate the regime is currently unwilling to relinquish its claims of control over the waterway, even as potential agreements discuss "reopening" it to pre-war shipping volumes.

Hezbollah’s Defensive Shift in Lebanon

Hezbollah is successfully transitioning from a hierarchical military to a decentralized insurgent structure, improving its ability to resist Israeli advances.

• Majdal Zoun Defense: On June 11 and 12, Hezbollah forces defended against Israeli advances near Majdal Zoun using a mix of ATGMs, IEDs, mortars, and rockets.
• Decentralized Command: Reorganized by the IRGC following the death of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah now prioritizes unit independence and tactical mobility. This makes it harder for IDF decapitation strikes—which have killed ten field commanders since March 2026—to disrupt overall operations.
• Targeting Strategic Hubs: Hezbollah is reportedly preparing defenses around logistically significant cities like Nabatieh in southeastern Lebanon.

Iraqi Militia Disarmament Disputes

The formation of a new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Ali al Zaydi has sparked a conflict over the disarmament of Iranian-backed militias.

• IRGC Interference: "IRGC-linked" figures have explicitly warned militia leaders to resist surrendering weapons, claiming the arms belong to Iran and not the Iraqi state.
• Militia Rifts: Groups like Asaib Ahl al Haq and Kataib al Imam Ali have shown interest in disarming to secure political positions and government jobs. However, hardline groups like Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba continue to reject the proposal.
• Ghaani’s Alternative Plan: IRGC Quds Force Commander Esmail Ghaani has proposed a phased approach where militias would end kinetic activities to maintain their role within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) while potentially integrating into the Iraqi Security Forces later to reduce tensions with the U.S..

Regional Energy and Intelligence Reports

Reports have surfaced regarding a potential secret arrangement involving Qatar early in the war.

• Ras Laffan Gas Complex: Intelligence suggests Qatar may have offered to shut down gas production—thereby raising global energy prices and pressuring the U.S. and Israel—in exchange for Iran sparing the Ras Laffan gas complex from its target list.
• Qatari Denial: Qatar has denied these reports, stating that production was only halted due to security risks to infrastructure. Iran ultimately struck the facility at least twice in March 2026.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 13, 2026

 The provided assessment from June 13, 2026, details a significant expansion in Russian military production and technological modernization, particularly regarding long-range strike capabilities. These advancements are supported by a massive increase in military spending, which reached approximately 5.9 trillion rubles (about $81.4 billion) in the first quarter of 2026 alone, accounting for 46 percent of total budget spending.

Missile Production and Foreign Integration

Russia has successfully increased its production rates for various missile systems, reportedly surpassing the monthly production of U.S. PAC-3 Patriot interceptors. As of Spring 2026, Russian monthly production figures include:

• 40 to 50 Kh-101 cruise missiles.
• 60 to 70 Iskander-M ballistic missiles.
• Around 10 Iskander-K cruise missiles.

To facilitate this increased output, Russian forces are integrating technical solutions from the North Korean KN-23 ballistic missile into the Iskander-M production process.

Technological Modernization and Innovations

Beyond production volume, Russia is modernizing its arsenal to increase lethality and bypass air defenses:

• Warhead Enhancements: The Kh-101 cruise missile now features warheads with doubled payload weight and designs that are harder to detect and intercept.
• Advanced Countermeasures: Kh-101 missiles have been observed using automatically activating thermal decoys and chaff to disrupt radar systems during strikes on Kyiv. Similarly, Iskander-M missiles utilize updated countermeasures that imitate the missile's signature to overload Ukrainian radars.
• Navigation and Range: Modernized Kh-101s utilize terrain navigation systems to increase strike accuracy. Additionally, Russia is developing the Iskander-1000, a new version of the ballistic missile with an estimated range of up to 1,000 kilometers.
• Drone Deployment: Russia is working on launching drones from tactical aviation to strike targets up to 1,000 kilometers deep, making detection significantly more difficult for Ukrainian air defenses.
• Infantry Stealth: On the frontline, small Russian infantry assault groups are using thermal cloaks at night to infiltrate positions while evading detection.

Impact on the Conflict and Ukrainian Response

The increasingly diverse and technologically advanced Russian strike packages have led to record-high civilian casualties, particularly in May 2026. The UN reported that the use of powerful missiles and glide bombs against urban areas, along with short-range drone strikes near the front, caused the highest number of civilian deaths and injuries since April 2022.

In response, Ukraine is pursuing several technological and industrial initiatives:

• Domestic Interceptors: Ukraine recently tested its first anti-missile interceptor and is collaborating with European partners on a joint anti-ballistic system.
• Production Licensing: Ukraine is seeking production licenses for Patriot interceptor missiles from the United States to establish domestic manufacturing.
• Targeting Production Infrastructure: Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian industrial sites critical to the war effort, such as the Crimean Titan factory, which produces raw components for gunpowder, rocket fuel, and explosives.

The Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment for June 13, 2026, highlights a period of rapidly increasing military expenditure characterized by a shift toward a war economy, even as the state's overall revenues show signs of decrease.

Surge in Military Spending

Russia’s financial commitment to its offensive has reached unprecedented levels in the early months of 2026:

• Budgetary Dominance: In the first quarter of 2026, military spending reached 5.9 trillion rubles (approximately $81.4 billion), representing 46 percent of total federal budget expenditures.
• Year-over-Year Growth: This spending level is 30 percent higher than that of the first quarter of 2025.
• GDP and Revenue Impact: Military spending in Q1 2026 alone accounted for 2.5 percent of Russia’s expected annual GDP. Furthermore, for the first four months of the year, military outlays were equivalent to roughly two-thirds of Russia's total budget revenue (8.3 trillion rubles).
• Overall Government Growth: Total government spending for the first four months of 2026 was 15.7 percent higher than the same period in 2025, with increasing shares directed toward the military, social programs, and unspecified economic sectors.

Rise of Classified Expenditures

A significant portion of this financial surge is hidden within non-public budget lines:

• Growth of the "Secret" Budget: Classified spending grew by 43 percent compared to the first quarter of 2025.
• Share of Expenditures: These "secret" lines reached 38.2 percent of all federal budget expenditures in Q1 2026.
• Military Allocation: Economists estimate that roughly 85 percent of these classified expenditures are directed specifically to the Russian military.

Economic Management and Discrepancies

The sources suggest that the Russian government may be using accounting maneuvers to manage its fiscal appearance:

• Frontloading: There is evidence that the Finance Ministry may have "frontloaded" spending in early 2026 or moved expenses from late 2025 to avoid violating previous budget constraints.
• Political Rhetoric: Despite these massive outlays and four years of continuous war, President Vladimir Putin continues to publicly portray the Russian economy as "strong and stable," largely ignoring the mounting fiscal pressures.

Domestic Economic Disruptions

While the central budget focuses on production, the broader economy is feeling the direct physical impact of the conflict:

• Fuel Shortages: Following successful Ukrainian long-range strikes on energy infrastructure, Russian energy companies have been forced to restrict fuel sales.
• Sales Restrictions: Major companies like Tatneft, Rosneft, and Lukoil have implemented limits at gas stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan, sometimes restricting customers to as little as 20 liters of gasoline at a time.
• Targeting Industrial Infrastructure: Ukraine is also targeting critical industrial sites like the Crimean Titan factory, which is essential for producing raw components for gunpowder and rocket fuels, potentially further straining Russian military-industrial supply chains.

The Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment for June 13, 2026, describes a period of high-intensity activity across the frontline, characterized by Russian infiltration attempts, stagnant territorial gains, and significant Ukrainian counter-operations targeting Russian logistics and energy infrastructure.

General Frontline Status

Despite active combat along multiple axes, neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces made confirmed territorial advances on June 13. Russian forces continue offensive operations across most sectors, but these are largely characterized by limited ground activity and efforts to bypass established Ukrainian defensive positions.

Sector-Specific Operations

The frontline is divided into several active directions with varying tactical focuses:

• Zaporizhia (Hulyaipole) Direction: This is currently the most active sector of the frontline, with 40 to 45 daily combat engagements. Russian forces are attempting to bypass Hulyaipole from the west to complicate Ukrainian logistics, with orders to get as close as possible to Zaporizhzhia City by the end of Summer 2026.
• Donetsk Oblast (Slovyansk and Pokrovsk): In the Slovyansk direction, Russian forces are infiltrating through windbreaks to establish ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and attempt to bypass Kramatorsk. In the Pokrovsk direction, Ukrainian forces successfully destroyed six Russian drone launch points that were being operated out of civilian infrastructure like cafes and libraries to strike Ukrainian supply routes.
• Kharkiv and Oskil River Axis: Russian forces conducted an infiltration mission north of Kupyansk in Kindrashivka. Meanwhile, Ukrainian counterattacks south and southeast of Borova have created a "critical situation" for Russian forces, forcing the Russian command to withdraw troops from the Lyman direction to respond.
• Northern Axis (Sumy Oblast): Russian offensive operations continue along the border but have failed to advance; geolocated footage indicates Ukrainian forces still maintain positions in areas where Russia previously claimed control.

Combat Tactics and Infiltration

A notable trend in recent operations is the Russian shift toward stealth and infiltration due to the difficulty of using mechanized equipment under Ukrainian fire:

• Thermal Cloaks: In the Hulyaipole direction, small Russian infantry groups are using thermal cloaks during nighttime infiltration missions to evade detection by Ukrainian thermal imaging.
• Remote Mining: Russian forces are using remote mining and drone strikes to exert fire control over Ukrainian GLOCs, particularly around Slovyansk.
• Information Warfare: The Russian Ministry of Defense is reportedly exaggerating successes in Kostyantynivka, claiming the seizure of 172 buildings in two days to aggrandize tactical progress while Ukrainian defenses there continue to deteriorate.

Ukrainian Counter-Strike Campaign

Ukraine is actively striking Russian rear-area assets to degrade frontline capabilities:

• Logistics and Energy: Ukrainian forces struck five oil tanks and air defense systems at a gas terminal in Krasnodar Krai and an oil pumping station in Volgograd Oblast.
• Crimean Infrastructure: Following strikes on permanent bridges, Ukrainian drones have begun targeting Russian pontoon bridges near Chonhar. Additionally, Ukraine struck the Crimean Titan factory, a major producer of raw components for gunpowder and rocket fuel.
• Command and Control: Recent strikes targeted a Russian drone unit deployment point in occupied Luhansk and command posts near Soledar.

Ukrainian forces have executed a multi-layered strategic strike campaign targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure, logistics, and military command centers to degrade Russian capabilities and disrupt domestic stability.

Strikes on Energy Infrastructure and Economic Impact

Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign against Russian energy assets has significantly disrupted fuel supplies deep within the Russian Federation:

• Targeting Refineries and Terminals: On the night of June 12–13, Ukrainian forces struck five oil product tanks, two tankers, and air defense systems at the Tamanneftegaz oil and gas terminal in Krasnodar Krai. Additionally, a strike hit an oil pumping station near Kotovo, Volgograd Oblast, roughly 500 kilometers from the frontline, which is critical for transporting oil to refineries and export hubs.
• Domestic Fuel Shortages: These strikes have forced major Russian energy companies—including Tatneft, Rosneft, and Lukoil—to restrict gasoline and diesel sales in major cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan. In some regions, customers are restricted to as little as 20 liters of gasoline per visit.

Disrupting Logistics and Production in Occupied Territories

Ukraine is systematically targeting the infrastructure required to sustain the Russian offensive, particularly in Crimea and the Donbas:

• Bridge Campaign: Following successful strikes on permanent roadway bridges, Ukrainian drones are now targeting Russian pontoon bridges near Chonhar and railway bridges leading into occupied Crimea to isolate the peninsula.
• Industrial Sabotage: Ukrainian forces struck the Crimean Titan factory in Armyansk. As one of Eastern Europe's largest chemical plants, it is a critical producer of raw components for gunpowder, rocket fuel, and explosives.
• Logistics Interdiction: Intermediate-range strikes have successfully targeted military cargo shipments on the Donetska Railway and military vehicles on the M-30 highway near Donetsk City.

Operations Against Military Command and Control

A major focus of the current Ukrainian strike campaign is the systematic destruction of Russian drone capabilities and personnel concentrations:

• Drone Infrastructure: Ukrainian forces identified and destroyed a network of six drone launch points in Pokrovsk that were being operated out of civilian buildings like libraries and cafes. Other strikes hit drone unit deployment points in occupied Dovzhansk (150km from the frontline) and various control points in Bryansk Oblast and Kherson.
• Training and Personnel: On June 12, a strike on the Vostochny training ground in occupied Novopetrivka targeted several motorized rifle and naval infantry units that had already been depleted by prior heavy fighting.
• Command Posts: High-value targets, including command posts near Soledar and Verkhnya Krynytsya, were also hit during the overnight operations.

Strategic Context

These strikes occur while Russia is attempting to surge its own production of long-range missiles and drones. By targeting the production of explosives at the Crimean Titan factory and disrupting the logistics needed to deliver newly produced weapons to the front, Ukraine is attempting to offset Russia’s industrial advantages. Furthermore, the strike campaign serves as a direct response to Russia's intensified air campaign, which caused record-high civilian casualties in May 2026.

The June 13, 2026, assessment reveals significant institutional changes within the Russian military structure and a deteriorating humanitarian situation characterized by record-high civilian casualties and targeted assassinations.

Institutional Military Reforms and Personnel

President Vladimir Putin continues to adjust the institutional framework of the Russian Armed Forces through formal decrees to support long-term force structure expansion:

• Authorized Strength Increase: On June 12, 2026, Putin signed a decree setting the authorized strength of the Russian military at 2,399,130 total personnel, which includes 1,510,000 military personnel.
• Incremental Growth: This represents a modest increase of 7,360 military personnel since the previous decree in March 2026. While Russia has expanded its authorized strength nearly every year since 2022, the 2026 expansions are noted as the smallest to date.
• Purpose of Expansion: These institutional increases are intended to staff new military districts, formations, and subordinate units established under reforms initiated in early 2023.
• Budgetary Shifts: Institutionally, the Russian government is dedicating an increasing share of its budget not only to the military but also to social programs and unspecified economic support, despite decreasing overall revenues.

Record Humanitarian Impact and Civilian Casualties

The assessment highlights a surge in civilian suffering, largely driven by Russia’s intensified long-range strike campaign:

• Highest Casualties Since 2022: The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) reported that May 2026 saw at least 274 civilians killed and 1,763 injured. This is the highest monthly casualty count since April 2022.
• Causes of Death: The UN attributes these high numbers to the use of powerful missiles and glide bombs against urban areas far from the frontline, as well as an unprecedented rise in short-range drone strikes near the front.
• Targeting Civilian Infrastructure: Recent Russian strikes have focused on major cities like Kyiv, as well as residential and commercial infrastructure in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Sumy oblasts. A remotely-controlled Geran drone was specifically geolocated striking the Kryvyi Rih Thermal Power Plant.

Targeted Assassinations

The conflict's humanitarian and security reach extended deep into Russian territory with an attack on a former high-ranking occupation official:

• IED Attack: On June 12, an assassination attempt was made against Andrei Pinchuk in Shchapovo, south of Moscow.
• Background of the Target: Pinchuk is a retired FSB colonel and former "Minister of State Security" for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). He survived the explosion of an IED delivered via a courier package.

Information Warfare and Institutional Reporting

There is an institutional effort by the Russian Ministry of Defense to manipulate the narrative regarding tactical successes:

• Exaggerated Claims: The Russian MoD claimed that its forces seized 172 buildings in Kostyantynivka in just two days.
• Information Curation: Sources suggest these detailed claims are part of a curated effort to aggrandize progress and create a perception of widespread control that does not match the actual situation on the ground, even as Ukrainian defenses in the area are acknowledged to be deteriorating.