Beyond the Indus

In this episode of Beyond the Indus, Carlos Frederico Pereira da Silva Gama, founder of Brazil's BRICS Policy Center and an international relations scholar at the Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine the future of BRICS as the postwar order fractures in the wake of the Iran war. 
They discuss the priorities and divergences of India’s BRICS presidency ahead of the September leaders’ summit in Delhi, the expansion to BRICS Plus and its toll on the group’s cohesion, why BRICS functions as one club in a wider Global South portfolio rather than a unified bloc, the New Development Bank and BRICS Pay as a challenge to the Bretton Woods system, the effect of Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric on close US partners like Brazil and India, and the best- and worst-case scenarios for the group in a fracturing world order.

Dr. Pramod Varma, chief architect of Aadhaar, UPI, and the India Stack, and co-founder of Networks for Humanity, joins host Tushar Shetty to discuss the design philosophy and the next stages of India's Digital Public Infrastructure.
We discuss the core principles that distinguish the India Stack from platform models like Alipay and PayPal, the Account Aggregator framework's consent architecture and its relationship to data protection regimes like the GDPR, the extension of DPI logic to business identity and flow-based lending through the Unified Lending Interface, the role of AI as both a driver of demand for DPI foundations and an opportunity for, the case for DPI as a replicable global model for the democratization of technology.
For more in-depth analysis on South Asia, subscribe to the Beyond the Indus podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or follow us on YouTube for video episodes.

Khurram Husain, one of Pakistan’s most widely read business and economy journalists and a columnist at Dawn, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine whether Pakistan’s recent diplomatic gains are translating into meaningful economic progress. 
They discuss the tangible but limited economic benefits of Pakistan's geopolitical revival, the impact of the Iran conflict and Hormuz blockade on Pakistan's fuel supply chain and inflation, the emergence of a new regional grouping around Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan and the trade complementarities unlocked by Iran's reintegration, the mixed legacy of CPEC and China's retreat from large-scale economic engagement with Pakistan, the structural roots of Pakistan's IMF dependency in successive cycles of military rule, the prospects for India-Pakistan stabilization and a peace dividend, the drivers behind Pakistan’s rapid solar adoption, and the limits of geoeconomics as a substitute for domestic fiscal and structural reform.

In this episode of Beyond the Indus, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission and one of the principal architects of India’s civilian nuclear program, joins us to discuss the history and future of India’s three-stage nuclear program in the wake of this year’s landmark breakthrough at Kalpakkam. 
We discuss the strategic logic behind Homi Bhabha’s 1950s vision for a thorium-based path to energy independence, the science and engineering challenges of fast breeder reactor technology, India’s decades of nuclear isolation, the safety record of nuclear power and how public perceptions have been shaped by Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the role of nuclear energy as a complement to renewables in the global push for net zero. Dr. Kakodkar also makes the case that India’s thorium fuel cycle represents a proliferation-resistant model for meeting the world's long-term energy needs.

In this episode of Beyond the Indus, host Tushar Shetty sits down with Colonel Ajai Shukla – a former Indian Army officer, war correspondent, and strategic affairs editor at Business Standard – to examine the structural challenges facing India's military and what it will take to prepare for the wars ahead.
Drawing on decades of experience in both uniform and journalism, Col. Shukla assesses Operation Sindoor and the lessons India should be drawing from Ukraine on the evolving role of armor, drones, and counter-drone technology on the modern battlefield. They discuss the manpower-versus-modernization dilemma at the heart of India’s defense budget, the Agnipath scheme’s merits and limits as a response to it, and why India remains one of the few major powers without a published national security strategy or integrated joint theater commands.
Shukla also examines India’s dependency on Russian arms in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, the credibility of the Atmanirbhar Bharat indigenization agenda, and how India must rebalance its force posture along the Line of Actual Control to meet the growing challenge from China’s rapidly modernizing military.