India needs a new foreign policy beyond diplomat Modi

Good morning. We have some exciting news we have been waiting to share with you. Last week, India Business Briefing won best launch at the Publisher Newsletter awards in London, with the jury calling us “audience centric and a standout example of localisation with global standards”. This newsletter was started with the intent of writing about India for India, and the judges’ comments are thrilling because it shows us that we have stayed the course on our original intentions.

Thank you so much for reading, and writing in with your comments and suggestions. Keep them coming! They help us become better everyday. 

Friendly fire

This has been a week of intense diplomatic action amid geopolitical tensions, not all of which went well for India. So let’s take stock, starting with the G7 meeting in Kananaskis, Canada.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his newly elected Canadian counterpart Mark Carney, and began the process of repairing a bilateral relationship that had frayed after the Sikh-separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was killed in 2023. Both countries have decided to reappoint high commissioners and restore regular services for citizens and businesses in their consulates. After the meeting, Modi also said areas such as trade, clean energy and critical minerals, among others, offered immense potential. Carney evaded the question about Nijjar’s case when asked by Canadian media. So far, he has taken a different approach from his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. But the real test for this welcome reset in ties will come when the next Khalistan-related issue rears its head.

Modi was also scheduled to meet Donald Trump on the sidelines of the conference, before Trump abruptly returned to America. Instead, he got a 35-minute phone call with the US president, during which he said that India would not accept third-party mediation on the issue of Kashmir. He also denied Trump’s blockertions that a trade deal with the US had influenced India’s decisions during the military stand-off last month. If this was Modi’s attempt to set the record straight, he failed; after their call, Trump repeated his claim that he “stopped the war”.

It gets worse. On Wednesday, Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, for lunch, and declared that he loved the country. This is a marked U-turn from his first term, when he called the country a safe haven for terrorists and accused it of being “deceitful”. The thrust of India’s foreign policy, when it comes to the Kashmir issue, has been to make sure that Pakistan is not granted equal legitimacy by global leaders. This has been difficult with Trump’s brand of whimsical diplomacy, however.

Modi made the mistake of counting on his warm personal connection with Trump, a diplomatic strategy India has relied on — with the US president and other leaders — for the past decade. But in the new global reality of multi-polar chaos, personal friendships do not count for much. India urgently needs friends and supporters, in the region and the west, both for reasons of national security and economic growth. The cross-border skirmishes with China had barely ended before the Pahalgam terror attack hit. 

But now, even the prime minister is perhaps realising that relationships are transactional and no one can be counted on to have your corner. India’s shift to multi-alignment has worked in some areas such as trade, but it has failed to make meaningful partnerships in other areas. In light of all this, New Delhi should have a serious rethink about its approach in this new world order. The old rules no longer work.

What do you think about India’s diplomatic strategy? Hit reply or email me at indiabrief@ft.com

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Bad apples

India’s stock market regulator Sebi has barred Sanjiv Bhasin, the former director of broking house IIFL, from the capital markets for fraudulent trading practices. Sebi claimed that Bhasin, who frequently appeared on TV and has over 750,000 followers across YouTube, LinkedIn and X, had been front-running. According to the regulator, Bhasin would first buy shares, then recommend them on his channels, and finally sell them at a profit once his followers had bought into the stocks. Sebi also impounded some Rs110mn ($1.2mn) of what it alleged were ill-gotten gains from Bhasin and 11 other entities and individuals, which it said were involved in market manipulation.

For a couple of years now, Sebi has been trying to weed out the problem of investment gurus and finance influencers who are deceiving their audience in the guise of stock tips. It has made registration mandatory for these influencers and earlier this year banned their use of live stock market data. The authorities have also barred some of these people from trading, including the very popular Asmita Patel, who used to call herself the “she-wolf of the stock market”. But none of this has been really effective. 

On social media and messaging platforms, especially Telegram, influencers have access to thousands of trusting followers, who buy the stocks that are being recommended without doing any due diligence of their own. Dubious influencers follow two strategies. One, they engage in front-running like Sanjiv Bhasin has been accused of. Or two, they collude. A smaller ring of people who are in on it buy and sell a stock between themselves, raising its price before tipping off their followers. These followers then see the past momentum in price growth of the stock and blockume it is legitimate and will continue.

This is the dark side of the increase in retail participation in the Indian stock market. Sebi is responsible for ensuring that investors are safe, and in stemming this malpractice, its efforts are commendable but inadequate. It has to come up with a comprehensive strategy. For experts who appear on television, Sebi should consider holding the platform responsible for properly vetting these so-called experts. And it should work with social media companies to come up with an authentication strategy for these “finfluencers”. Occasional orders that bar some bad apples from the market barely scratch the surface of this issue.

Go figure

The Buss family, which owns the Los Angeles Lakers, is closing in on a deal to sell its majority stake in the team to Guggenheim Partners chief executive Mark Walter. When complete, this would be the largest-ever sale of a sports team.

Read, hear, watch

With the weather in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) being either too hot or too wet this week, I have done little else apart from flopping in front of the television. My daughter is home from college for summer and we are working our way through the Netflix series, You. It is a psychological drama about a young woman, an aspiring writer, and the man who has an obsessive interest in her — told from the point of view of the stalker. It is creepy and chilling. I would switch to something lighter, if only I had the energy for it!

Australian writer Helen Garner is one of my favourite authors. (She is having a moment now in the international press, with the New Yorker and the Guardian writing long profiles about her. This upsets me a little, it’s like suddenly finding a horde of Instagram influencers outside your favourite dive bar). I recently managed to find a copy of her old book, Joe Cinque’s Consolation. It’s a fantastic account of the murder of a young man in Australia in 1997, and the trial of the two Indian-origin women who were accused of it. It’s a perfect Garner book. No one else is capable of looking at a crime and seeing the entirety of the human experience in it.  

Tomorrow is world yoga day. Will you be rolling out your mat? Let me know.

Buzzer round

Which iconic movie, released 50 years ago, was a real threat to the beach hotel business and the scuba-diving industry the summer it launched?

Send your answer to indiabrief@ft.com and check Tuesday’s newsletter to see if you were the first one to get it right.

Quick answer

On Tuesday, we asked: Where will Israel-Iran tensions take oil prices? Here are the results. Nearly 60 per cent of you estimate it to go to about $90. It’s at $77 currently.

Thank you for reading. India Business Briefing is edited by Tee Zhuo. Please send feedback, suggestions (and gossip) to indiabrief@ft.com.