John Reed

Former state-run airline now owned by Tata is spending billions to win back customers who had lost faith in its service

Muhammad Yunus says will not seek exiled leader’s extradition from India before domestic tribunal’s verdict

Conglomerate rejects claim it co-operated to siphon money out of the country during rule of ousted Sheikh Hasina

Agreement paves way for easing of tensions between New Delhi and Beijing

Relations between New Delhi and Ottawa hit new low in wake of RCMP allegations of ‘clandestine activities’ by envoys

Chief Niranjan Gupta says launch into developed markets planned for mid-2025

Narendra Modi government’s climbdown points to weakened parliamentary mandate, analysts say

The Indian political landscape has undergone a “tectonic shift” after this month’s unexpected election result and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will “struggle” to survive, Rahul Gandhi, the country’s most prominent opposition politician, has claimed. “The space in the Indian political system has been blown open,” Gandhi told the Financial Times in his first interview since the election in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata party lost its majority for the first time since Modi took po…

Business loves a strong leader, and big business tends to like Narendra Modi. “Modi has done an unbelievable job in India,” JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon declared in a talk in New York back in April. His praise echoed the adulation India’s billionaires routinely lavish on the prime minister at official events. But Dimon spoke before this month’s election upset in India, in which voters aggrieved with some Modi policies, including his government’s record on creating jobs, re-electe…

India’s prime minister is likely to win a third term, but critics say his pro-business and authoritarian style may have peaked

India, a rising military power that proudly shuns alliances, last month deployed a frigate to the Arabian Sea and demonstrated just how much its view of the world is changing. With little fanfare, and after decades of touting India’s “strategic autonomy”, New Delhi sent the INS Talwar on a mission to provide direct support to a US-led maritime coalition. The frigate’s main role was helping to intercept a drug-running dhow trafficking 940kg of methamphetamines, hashish and heroin in the Arabian…

Ahead of India’s ongoing general election, selfie points appeared at railway stations and airports across the country — cardboard cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other icons of national pride. They featured the Indian tricolour; the Vikrant, the country’s first fully domestically built aircraft carrier, commissioned in 2022; and the Chandrayaan-3 rocket, which last year undertook a successful mission to the Moon. Modi is seeking a third term in office, campaigning on his role as a…

Guha’s magisterial work is the book to read about India’s history since independence. In exhaustive detail, the Bangalore-based historian identifies the people, events and lucky twists of fate that allowed India to hold together — by no means a foregone conclusion in 1947 — and still shape it into the present day. An updated edition incorporates Narendra Modi’s rise to national office in 2014. Data journalist and campaigner Rukmini S’s book is subtitled “What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About M…

The BBC has restructured its biggest overseas news bureau after coming under regulatory scrutiny from Indian authorities after it aired a controversial documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The British public broadcaster is splitting off its news operations and creating a separate production company, which will operate independently from the BBC but have the corporation as its main client. The move, which will formally take effect on Wednesday, will allow the network to continue repo…

India’s close ties with Russia are based on a “Soviet legacy” that is “evaporating”, Ukraine’s foreign minister warned as he urged New Delhi to stand by Kyiv. On a visit to the India, Dmytro Kuleba also said it should be concerned about Russia’s deepening ties with China, which is locked in a tense border conflict with its southern neighbour India. Speaking to the Financial Times, Kuleba said “the co-operation between India and Russia is largely based on the Soviet legacy. But this is not the…

In less than a month India will embark on the world’s biggest democratic election. There will be a record 968mn eligible voters. And, for reasons almost unique to India, they won’t be in a hurry. The vote, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking re-election to a third term, will be held in seven phases over more than six weeks, starting on April 19 and ending on June 1. It is so long that by the time results are out on June 4, India will be deep in its pre-monsoon hot season, when tem…

In a more mercantilist world, a clear pattern is emerging in India’s trade policy strategy: if companies or countries want freer access to the big and growing markets of the world’s fifth-biggest economy, they must offer a quid pro quo. Switzerland and Tesla Motors last week each managed to get India to lower its high, jealously guarded tariff walls and offer improved access to its market of 1bn-plus people. On March 10, Switzerland, along with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, finally manage…

India’s biggest steel producer JSW and Chinese carmaker SAIC Motor on Wednesday launched a $1.5bn joint venture to build and sell MG-brand electric vehicles in the world’s most populous country. The partners plan to invest $5bn by 2030 and cut costs by increasing local sourcing, including of batteries from a plant to be built in India’s eastern Odisha state by JSW, the Indian group’s chair Sajjan Jindal told the Financial Times. “As JSW we had been looking to get into the automobile industry,…

The starting gun for campaigning in the world’s largest democracy was fired on Saturday after the Election Commission of India announced an April 19 date for the first phase of voting. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the strong favourite to win the lower house vote and be re-elected to a third five-year term at the head of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party. Voting is to take place in staggered fashion over more than six weeks in seven phases across states and territories in the worl…

Rahul Gandhi — scion of the Indian National Congress, perpetual political underdog and opposition hope for reclaiming national leadership — is taking his political message straight to the public with a dramatic ploy: a 6,700km trek through 15 states. Gandhi embarked in January on his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Unite India for Justice March), starting in the conflict-torn eastern state of Manipur and due to finish in mid-March in western Mumbai. The journey, undertaken just months before an expecte…