September 14, 2026

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WHY INDIA IS AT RISK

THE DELUGE BEGAN WITHOUT WARNING. No rain, no bursting of a known glacial lake, not even an earthquake. High above the NepalChina frontier on August 26, a slab of the mountain itself gave way. Satellite images indicate that the bedrock, and the glacier ice resting on it, detached at about 17,000 feet near the Langtang Himal and crashed to a valley floor roughly 4,000 feet below. The rupture scar stretched about 1.4 kilometres, measuring nearly 10 cricket stadia end to end. As that colossus hit the gorge, the impact shook the earth strongly enough to register as a magnitude-5.2 seismic event. Initially thought to be an earthquake, scientists later established that the impact of the fallen mass had generated the tremor.Then came the black monster. Rock, shattered ice, water and mud fused into a fast-moving slurry that tore down the Lhende Khola river along the Nepal-Tibet border and into the Bhote Koshi-Trishuli river corridors at the Rasuwa border post. Chinese geologists estimated the debris flow at 180 kmph, or 50 metres a second. It scoured the narrow valleys, swallowed border posts, bridges, roads, power installations and settlements, and altered the river channel more than 100 km downstream. At Galchhi, 50 km north of Kathmandu, the river reportedly rose nine metres in half an hour. Survivors do not recount an ordinary flood; their memory is of a rising wall of liquid

THE BITTER TRUTH

In the second week of August, Union minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution Pralhad Joshi sat with officials of the food department to assess India's sugar stocks. The news was not good. Production in the 2025-26 sugar season (OctoberSeptember) was expected to be 30.6 million tonnes (MT), 11 per cent below the government's estimate of 34.3 MT, while retail prices hit Rs 50 a kg.Under limits imposed effective from August 1, dealers could hold only 400 tonnes. On August 19, the ministry imposed bulk-consumer limits effective from September 1, under which confectioners, soft-drink makers, food processors and sweetmeat sellers were restricted to 15 days' consumption. The Centre opened a duty-free window for 1 MT of raw sugar, the first import concession in nearly a decade. Indian buyers began looking for cargoes abroad.By now, sugar had a wild two months. In Mumbai, the retail price rose from Rs 50 on July 21 to a peak of Rs 68 on August 22, before easing to Rs 61 on September 1. In Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest cane-growing state, wholesale prices were rising two weeks before Ganesh Chaturthi. On September 1, sugar in Kanpur mandis was quoted at Rs 5,850 a quintal, nearly 35 per cent higher than three months earlier.India had moved, in less than a season, from planning exports to arranging imports. How did this happen? The explanation lies in a sugar economy in which every price or quantity is influenced by the government, but no single authority controls the entire chain.A CONTROLLED INDUSTRY Maharashtra, UP and Karnataka together account for more than four-fifths of the country's cane. The industry forms dense regional clusters: western UP and the Terai; western and southern Maharashtra; and northern Karnataka. The clustering is dictated by the crop. Once cut, cane loses sucrose and cannot wait for a distant buyer. A mill must therefore be close to its growers, and farmers are commonly linked to a mill through a reservation or command area, cane