National Publications

On 26 January 2026, India commemorated its 77th Republic Day, the day when New Delhi officially became a republic through adoption of the constitution. The Republic Day parade was projected as the celebration of India’s progress and national pride. Yet, beyond the spectacle, the parade intended to convey a calibrated strategic and political signal by manufacturing an image of self-reliant and confident India amid regional uncertainty.

The crisis of February 2019 was far more than a transient border skirmish; it was a fundamental clash of two divergent conceptions of strategic thought under a nuclear overhang. Indian objectives were clear: to win the election and try to create space for punitive actions for bigger aims under the nuclear threshold with the pretext of labelling Pakistan as a terrorist-harbouring state. 

‘What all could have happened if we had Rafale?’ This statement by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi surfaced after the 2019 India-Pakistan aerial showdown. The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) failed airstrikes near Balakot met a swift broad daylight response by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) under Operation Swift Retort.

Operation Swift Retort was the first time in decades since 1971 that the air forces of India and Pakistan were pitched against one another. It’s been seven years since the incident, but the memory of a captured Indian fighter pilot sipping tea on national television remains vivid to this day.

In 2025, according to governmental data, around 32,000 highly-skilled and highly-qualified Pakistanis registered for employment abroad, equivalent to roughly six per cent of the country’s half a million annual graduates. This number, too, represents only a part of the exodus of Pakistan’s advanced human capital nurtured in the country and now being absorbed into foreign economies.