September 28, 2026

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THE NEW EQUATION

WHEN PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI WELCOMED CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING WITH A FIRM HANDSHAKE at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi on September 12, his greeting carried more weight than just diplomatic courtesy. On the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit, the two leaders were testing whether India and China could build what officials on both sides have cautiously started calling `a new equation'. It was Xi's first visit to India in nearly seven years. Also, the first since the deadliest India-China border confrontation in over four decades erupted on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in 2020, dealing a severe blow to bilateral ties.The process of military disengagement and political reopening had in fact begun in October 2024, days before another Modi-Xi meeting at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia. That normalisation broadened further when the two leaders met on the sidelines of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) summit in Tianjin, China, in August 2025 and declared that India and China were "development partners and not rivals". Their recent Delhi bilateral meet, then, is to be viewed as a significant effort to define the terms of how the thaw can endure through more ambitious border arrangements, deeper economic engagement and restoring connectivity.The Delhi detente was the result of quiet, deliberate statecraft in Beijing a fortnight before the BRICS summit, led by National Security Advisor Ajit

ON HIS OWN TRACK

On August 22, the AISSMS College Ground in Pune was packed with thousands of young women for the fourth edition of Rahul Gandhi's `Chhatron ki Goonj', the Congress's nationwide student outreach campaign. Dressed unusually in a neon yellow linen shirt, Rahul turned the women-only gathering into a spirited attack on patriarchy. He invoked the Manusmriti, attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his "cultural shock" at women protesters using abusive language and told the cheering audience, "Together, we need to finish this patriarchy. Smash the patriarchy." The BJP hit back immediately. It did not have to look far for a counter. Rahul's own party provided it. When the Congress government in Karnataka was reconstituted in June with D.K. Shivakumar replacing Siddaramaiah as chief minister, not one woman made it to his new 33-member cabinet. Earlier this month, the Karnataka Congress named 35 district presidents. Every one of them was a man.That disconnect extends far beyond women's representation. Rahul Gandhi and the Congress increasingly appear to inhabit two different political universes. Over the past two years, Rahul has repeatedly picked up issues with a seemingly direct resonance among ordinary voters and pursued an increasingly combative line against BJP-led governments. He has moved from Agniveer and paper leaks to the Manipur violence, MSP for farmers, unemployment, the caste census, crony capitalism, the Chinese threat, and his latest, accusing the Modi government of yielding to pressure from US tech giants to introduce a usage fee for UPI (united payment interface) transactions above Rs 2,000.Yet Rahul's ability to set the political conversation has repeatedly failed to translate into comparable electoral gains for the Congress. Across the state assembly polls held since the 2024 general election, the Congress contested 924 of the 1,686 seats available and won just 171, giving it a strike rate of about 18.5 per cent. It was part of winning coalitions in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand and won Kerala. But it lost Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar and Assam, secured just two seats in West Bengal and only one in Puducherry.HIT AND MISS At times, Rahul and the Congress have managed to score a few points even after the issue got away from them. After the Delhi student protests in July, Congress leaders felt that the anger had been directed overwhelmingly at PM Modi, while home minister Amit Shah had escaped much of the political heat. But around mid-August, Rahul's team learnt that a young man, Sahil Lochav, was still undergoing treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for pellet injuries sustained during police action on July 20. Rahul immediately asked his aides to bring the boy to him. Lochav was whisked out despite the police presence at the hospital and