分类： politics

For decades, Nirmala Bawaskar, a widowed housemaid in Maharashtra’s Sambhajinagar district, lived without a personal bank account. She signed official documents with a thumbprint and had little say over how household money was spent. That all shifted when she joined the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, one of India’s largest state-run targeted cash transfer programs for women. Today, the 1,500 rupee ($17) monthly stipend she receives through the scheme has not only given her financial autonomy she never experienced before, it has also transformed her life: motivated by the program, she even taught herself to write. As Bawaskar puts it, the small sum has been a lifeline, particularly covering unexpected medical costs for her family.

Bawaskar is one of more than 26 million women who originally enrolled in the scheme, launched in June 2024, just five months ahead of Maharashtra’s hotly contested state assembly election. The initiative was framed by the ruling Mahayuti alliance – led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its regional partners – as a groundbreaking effort to recognize women’s unpaid household labor and expand their financial independence. Eligibility was restricted to women aged 21 to 65 from low-income households, excluding income tax payers, government employees, and households already receiving similar welfare benefits.

The timing of the launch was no accident. It came on the heels of disappointing results for the Mahayuti alliance in the 2024 national general election, and quickly became the defining political issue of the state campaign. While the ruling coalition positioned the scheme as a long-overdue investment in women’s well-being, opposition parties decried it as blatant vote-buying – even as they pledged to roll out similar cash transfer programs if elected. When the Mahayuti secured a landslide majority far larger than pre-election polls predicted, alliance leaders openly credited Ladki Bahin for their victory.

Post-election analysis from the Lokniti-Center for the Study of Developing Societies (Lokniti-CSDS) appears to back that claim. Survey data showed 50% of all women respondents voted for the ruling alliance, compared to just 33% for the opposition. Among registered beneficiaries of the scheme, support for Mahayuti jumped to 54%. Still, CSDS researcher Rajeshwari Deshpande cautioned against overstating the scheme’s electoral impact, noting that women were only three percentage points more likely to back the ruling bloc than men, making it premature to declare a new distinct bloc of welfare-focused women voters.

Less than two years after its launch, however, the initiative has landed in serious scrutiny following a damning report from India’s national auditor. Last month, auditors revealed that Maharashtra’s Women and Child Development Department overspent its authorized budget for the scheme by 35.41 billion rupees in its first full financial year, with total spending hitting 332.37 billion rupees. Beyond the unauthorized overspend, auditors also criticized the department for shifting 155.86 billion rupees into special reserve accounts in the final quarter of the financial year, despite no immediate need for the funds. The report argued this practice erodes financial discipline and undermines legislative oversight of public spending.

A parallel government beneficiary verification drive has also exposed major implementation gaps. After mandatory electronic identity verification (e-KYC) was introduced, more than nine million enrollees were removed from the beneficiary rolls. Roughly two-thirds of those removed – around 6.2 million people – were dropped solely for failing to complete the e-KYC process, not for being ineligible, according to records obtained by *The Indian Express* under India’s Right to Information Act. The remaining excluded beneficiaries were removed for violating eligibility rules: exceeding income or age caps, being from households with a government employee, already receiving benefits from another welfare program, or having multiple claimants in one household. Government records also show nearly 29,000 ineligible men and roughly 8,000 government employees incorrectly received payments, and while state officials say they are working to recover misallocated funds, they have not disclosed how much has been repaid to date.

The Maharashtra government has not issued a formal public response to the national auditor’s findings. A spokesperson for Women and Child Development Minister Aditi Tatkare told the BBC that verification efforts and mispayment recovery are ongoing, but declined to address the specific budget irregularities cited in the audit. Tatkare has also pushed back against framing the e-KYC removals as evidence of systemic fraud, noting that administrative barriers may have prevented many eligible women from completing the requirement.

Maharashtra’s Ladki Bahin scheme is not an outlier in Indian politics. Across the country, state governments led by parties of all ideological stripes have rolled out targeted cash transfer programs for women, who now make up nearly half of India’s total electorate. The political appeal of these programs is clear: unlike infrastructure projects or public service investments, monthly cash deposits directly to a woman’s personal bank account are immediate, visible, and deeply personal, creating clear accountability for the government that delivers them. But the popularity of these schemes also creates pressure to roll them out quickly and enroll as many beneficiaries as possible, which can lead to the kind of administrative and fiscal gaps exposed in Maharashtra’s audit.

Policy experts are divided on the long-term value of the scheme. Neeraj Hatekar, a Mumbai-based welfare economist, argues that the 1,500 rupee monthly payment makes a tangible difference for low-income women. Pointing to labor force data showing that the average daily wage for women in Maharashtra is roughly 300 rupees, Hatekar notes that even women working 20 days a month only earn 6,000 to 7,000 rupees total – making the stipend a meaningful 20 to 25 percent increase in monthly income. For women living on irregular, low incomes, that extra money can cover critical costs that would otherwise be out of reach.

Other economists warn that the long-term fiscal costs of the scheme outweigh its short-term benefits. Ajit Ranade, a prominent Indian political economist, argues that governments face a strong incentive to prioritize popular cash transfer schemes ahead of elections to win votes, but rarely account for the long-term damage to state fiscal health that comes with large sustained spending commitments. Critics like Ranade also point out that the same resources dedicated to universal cash transfers could be invested in permanent public goods – including affordable healthcare, universal education, free childcare, and improved public transport – that would reduce the cost of living for women long-term and enable greater economic participation, rather than providing a temporary monthly stipend.

Despite the scrutiny and fiscal controversy, for beneficiaries like Bawaskar, the scheme has already delivered a change that cannot be measured in rupees. While the monthly payment has not lifted her family out of poverty, it has given her something no government program had before: a bank account in her own name, and money that she controls entirely. “It’s money of my own,” she says. “That’s what matters to me.”

A joint investigation by leading Israeli outlet Ynet and veteran New York Times journalist Ronen Bergman has exposed how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deployed a fabricated quote attributed to a top Iranian military commander to advance his hardline narrative on Iran’s nuclear program — a false claim that originated from a fringe pro-Israel, Hindu-nationalist social media account in India before spreading across global right-wing media and political circles.

The fake quote, falsely credited to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Ahmad Vahidi, was first posted to X on August 5 by Ritika, an Indian account aligned with Hindu nationalist politics that openly supports Israel. The fabricated statement claimed Vahidi said: “There will be no discussion over enriched uranium or nuclear weapons. As long as the United States and Israel possess nuclear weapons, we will continue working on them for our national security. If they disarm, we will disarm.”

Within hours of the original post, the false claim went viral. Just four and a half hours after its initial publication, an unofficial X account falsely branding itself “Mossad Commentary” — which has no actual connection to Israel’s official intelligence service and boasts more than 1 million followers — amplified the quote, adding additional commentary claiming Iran’s regime “is not preparing to abandon its nuclear ambitions. It is buying time. There will be no deal.”

The false attribution was then picked up by Israel’s Channel 14, a media outlet widely recognized as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu and his far-right governing coalition. A 2024 report confirmed the Israeli government has purchased millions of shekels in commercial airtime from the channel in recent years. Channel 14 presented the fake quote as “the first direct admission by an Iranian official that Tehran was developing a nuclear bomb,” and failed to disclose any verifiable primary source for the remarks.

Shortly after Channel 14 ran the story, Yair Netanyahu — the prime minister’s eldest son and an influential far-right voice within his inner circle, with nearly 300,000 X followers — reposted the content from both the unofficial Mossad account and Channel 14. Multiple independent reports have confirmed Yair Netanyahu, alongside his mother Sara, wields significant influence over the prime minister’s policy decisions, and he has a well-documented history of spreading misinformation and extreme right-wing messaging via his social media platforms. Even senior figures within Netanyahu’s own Likud party regularly seek his approval for political messaging.

It was at this point that Benjamin Netanyahu himself deployed the fake quote in an official public address to Israeli citizens. According to the investigation’s transcript, Netanyahu told attendees: “Today, we heard the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Vahidi, explicitly declare Iran’s intention to continue developing nuclear weapons – ‘continue’, as he put it.”

From there, the disinformation spread beyond Israel’s borders, reaching top political and media figures in the United States. Mike Waltz, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, reposted Channel 14’s report on his own X account before deleting the post hours later after the fabrications were exposed. Prominent conservative U.S. commentator Mark Levin also shared the false claim with his large audience.

Mainstream U.S. outlet Fox News initially ran a story repeating the claim that Vahidi had admitted Iran would pursue nuclear weapons as long as Israel and the U.S. maintained their own arsenals, linking the remarks to growing concerns that Iran was using Strait of Hormuz negotiations to delay nuclear concessions. Only two days later did Fox News issue a clarification, acknowledging the remarks had been “previously taken out of context and amplified as comments made this week.” Major Indian wire service Asian News International also repeated the false claim, citing unvetted Israeli media reports.

Even after the source of the fabrication was exposed, the quote continued to circulate in pro-Netanyahu Israeli media. Multiple pro-government journalists, including Yaakov Bardugo and Avishay Ben Haim, repeated Netanyahu’s warning on national television, and Israel’s foreign ministry even amplified Netanyahu’s remarks featuring the fake quote on its official Persian-language X account.

Investigators say the entire episode fits a clear pattern of deliberate disinformation that serves Netanyahu’s longstanding political goal of blocking any nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran. Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his opposition to any new agreement, telling Channel 14 in June 2024: “As long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have nuclear weapons,” adding that he had already saved Israel from “annihilation” twice by pushing back against Iranian nuclear progress.

While Ynet’s investigation could not definitively prove that Netanyahu or his inner circle coordinated the initial spread of the fake quote, it noted the campaign matches “a series of familiar markers of disinformation distribution” that have been tied to Netanyahu in the past. Just months earlier, in September 2024, Netanyahu’s office was accused of supplying false information to UK outlet *The Jewish Chronicle* and German newspaper *Bild* falsely claiming Hamas planned to smuggle Israeli hostages out of Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Iran. Two senior Netanyahu aides are currently under criminal investigation for leaking classified documents to shape public opinion in favor of the controversial Israeli military offensive in Rafah.

The investigation also noted that Israeli state-backed influence operations have increasingly targeted audiences outside of Israel — particularly in the U.S. — as the Netanyahu government faces growing bipartisan criticism over its military campaign in Gaza and its hardline stance on Iran. This is not the first time Indian media has been used to spread anti-Iran disinformation either: Last month, Iran’s embassy in New Delhi issued a formal statement accusing Indian outlets of spreading false information about the country, urging media outlets “not to compromise the public trust and its professional credibility by disseminating fake and fabricated news” and asking them to “avoid participating in external propaganda efforts.”

In a stark rejection of a US-brokered initiative aimed at ending months of conflict in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that his government will not accept former President Donald Trump’s 15-point peace framework, and ruled out any Israeli military withdrawal from the enclave until the complete disarmament of the Hamas militant group.

The plan, spearheaded by Trump’s Board of Peace, was billed as a major breakthrough to de-escalate the Gaza war when it was unveiled last month. The original ceasefire architecture, agreed to by both Israel and Hamas in October 2023, was meant to pave the way for a gradual end to hostilities. But despite the formal ceasefire agreement, Israel has continued to launch near-daily airstrikes across Gaza in the months since.

When the 15-point plan was announced, Trump stated that Hamas had already committed to laying down its weapons under the terms of the deal. However, Netanyahu made clear his government’s opposition during a weekly cabinet meeting Sunday. “Israel rejects the 15-point document,” he said, adding that the Israel Defense Forces “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens.”

Independent regional news outlet Middle East Eye obtained a full copy of the draft agreement last month, revealing key details that explain the core disagreement between the two sides. Unlike Israel’s demands for Hamas to surrender weapons directly to Israeli authorities, the framework outlines that Hamas and other Palestinian factions would not transfer Gaza’s weapons to Israeli control. Instead, all weapons would be managed by a newly created domestic Palestinian body called the National Committee, with all arms remaining under exclusive Palestinian ownership.

The draft text explicitly states: “No weapons will be transferred or surrendered to Israel or any non-Palestinian parties,” and specifies that by the conclusion of the disarmament process, “the National Committee alone shall retain, store, or control weapons in Gaza.” The agreement frames the weapons collection process as an exclusively domestic Palestinian affair, noting that the National Committee — set to act as Gaza’s transitional authority — would hold sole power to register weapons, issue and revoke licenses, and enforce weapons regulations, with all Palestinian factions required to cooperate with the body.

Hamas has already publicly pushed back on any unilateral implementation of the plan, stating it will not enact any part of the framework unless Israel fulfills its own agreed obligations, chief among them a full, phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from all areas of Gaza they currently occupy. The 15-point document itself codifies this condition, requiring that each phase of the process can only move forward after an independent international commission verifies that all parties have completed their obligations from the previous stage.

Shortly after the plan was made public, Trump praised the initiative on his social platform Truth Social, calling it “a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY.” He outlined at the time that Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza incrementally as disarmament progressed, and that a UN-mandated International Stabilization Force would partner with a new Palestinian police force to maintain security in the enclave.

Hamas official Ghazi Hamad reaffirmed the group’s position to Reuters when the plan was released, noting that Hamas would keep its weapons until Israel halts all military attacks, allows a massive expansion of humanitarian aid and commercial goods into blockaded Gaza, and completes its force withdrawal in line with the original October 2023 ceasefire agreement.

Early on Sunday, a blaze erupted at a facility operated by Saudi Arabian state energy giant Aramco in the Red Sea coastal city of Jizan, located near Saudi Arabia’s southern border with Yemen. Saudi emergency services quickly responded to the incident, and authorities confirmed the fire was fully extinguished with no injuries or fatalities reported in the attack.

In an official statement posted to the social platform X, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy confirmed the fire struck an Aramco refinery site in Jizan, adding that competent agencies had finalized initial response protocols. The ministry declined to comment on the potential origin or cause of the blaze when releasing the statement.

Shortly after the fire was reported, however, Yahya Saree, military spokesperson for Yemen’s Houthi movement, claimed responsibility for the incident via X. Saree said the Houthi group had launched a precision drone strike against the Jizan Aramco refinery, noting the attack was launched in retaliation for what he described as Saudi Arabia’s violation of Yemeni airspace over the northern provinces of Saada and Hajjah.

Jizan has been a repeated target of Houthi attacks targeting Saudi energy infrastructure for years, as the border region has remained a flashpoint in the long-running Yemen conflict. Just one month prior, the Houthi movement claimed credit for separate strikes against Aramco facilities in Jizan, as well as attacks on oil infrastructure in Yanbu, another key Saudi Red Sea export terminal. Just last week, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser acknowledged that previous strikes on company assets had caused minor temporary production disruptions, but emphasized that operations were restored rapidly and that the attacks had not resulted in any material operational or financial damage to the firm.

In addition to the Jizan refinery strike, the Houthis also announced they had launched a large-scale attack using dozens of ballistic missiles and drones against Saudi-backed Yemeni government troops and military equipment positioned in the Yemeni Red Sea port city of Mokha.

This latest wave of attacks comes as armed conflict has reignited between the Houthi movement and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which receives extensive military backing from Saudi Arabia. The resumption of fighting ends a two-year period of relative calm that followed a widely observed 2022 ceasefire. Since 2014, the Houthis have controlled Yemen’s capital Sanaa and most of northern Yemen, while the Saudi-backed government holds sway over much of the country’s southern territory. Last month, the Houthi movement also announced a naval blockade targeting Saudi shipping in the Red Sea and issued threats to commercial vessels transiting the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a critical global chokepoint for maritime energy trade.

The Jizan fire is being investigated separately from a separate incident reported in the eastern Saudi industrial city of Jubail. Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency reported hearing a massive explosion in the Jubail region, with local Saudi media claiming the blast targeted gas processing facilities at Jubail Industrial City and sparked subsequent fires, though no official confirmation of that attack has been released as of yet.

These concurrent security incidents coincide with a major diplomatic shift in the region, as Saudi Arabia moves to deepen collective security cooperation with regional partners amid rising cross-border threat risks. Just two days before the Jizan attack, on Friday, Saudi Arabia signed a landmark trilateral defense agreement with Turkey and Pakistan in the holy city of Mecca. The pact includes a mutual defense clause, stating that an armed attack against any one of the three signatories will be considered an attack against all three parties.

On Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan clarified the terms of the new agreement, stressing that the pact was not targeted at Iran and that the three partners had not formally named any shared adversary. “There is no common threat that we have put in writing,” Fidan told Anadolu Agency. He noted that the agreement’s mutual defense clause is technically comparable to NATO’s Article 5 collective defense framework, but added that any collective response to an attack would be tailored to the specific circumstances of the incident.

Beyond the mutual defense commitment, the pact is set to cover a wide range of security cooperation, including joint military training exercises, cross-border intelligence sharing, coordinated logistics support, joint threat assessment, and expanded collaboration between the three countries’ defense industries. Fidan also added that Ankara hopes to expand the bloc beyond its three founding members, suggesting that Egypt could be invited to join the partnership in the future.

This flurry of diplomatic and security activity comes as broader regional uncertainty has spiked sharply in recent months, following escalating tensions across the Middle East tied to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, with renewed clashes involving armed factions across Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen disrupting years of relative de-escalation.

In a significant step toward deepening trilateral security collaboration amid rising U.S.-Iran tensions, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have formalized a landmark mutual defense pact, with senior leaders from all three countries repeatedly emphasizing that the agreement is not targeted at any regional or global power and remains open to new participating nations.

The historic Mecca Joint Defense Agreement was signed on Friday during a high-level meeting, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif putting their signatures to the document. Just one day after Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan publicly clarified that the pact was not aimed at Iran or any other state, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar echoed that stance in an official post on the social platform X on Sunday.

Dar underscored that the newly signed agreement is purely defensive in its core purpose. He noted that any other country across the region is welcome to join the pact provided it upholds the accord’s core principles and commits to resolving disputes through peaceful diplomatic channels. The agreement’s key collective defense clause states that any armed aggression against one of the three signatories will be treated as an attack on all three members. Dar explained that this stipulation aligns fully with the right to individual and collective self-defense enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and added that the deal formalizes the three nations’ shared commitment to strengthening strategic security cooperation.

Importantly, Dar also clarified that the new Mecca Accord does not override or replace any existing bilateral or multilateral defense agreements that the three countries have already signed with other nations or international blocs. Reaffirming Pakistan’s regional stance, he added that Islamabad will continue pursuing diplomatic and security engagement with all regional countries to advance the goal of long-lasting peace and stability across the Middle East and South Asia.

The announcement of the agreement was met with public celebration across the three signatory states overnight after the signing. Major landmarks in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, as well as multiple cities across Saudi Arabia, were lit up with projections matching the colors of the three countries’ national flags to mark the occasion.

Each of the three member states brings unique and complementary capabilities to the new defense arrangement. As the only nuclear-armed state in the Muslim world, Pakistan boasts decades of extensive military operational experience. Saudi Arabia contributes massive economic resources and far-reaching regional political influence, while Turkey — a longstanding NATO member — brings a large standing military and a fast-growing, advanced domestic defense manufacturing sector.

Despite the agreement’s collective defense clause that echoes NATO’s Article 5, defense analysts based in Islamabad have urged against framing the new pact as a direct equivalent to the transatlantic security alliance. Abdullah Khan, a prominent independent defense analyst based in Islamabad, noted that while the agreement was finalized during a period of elevated regional tensions, it should not be interpreted as a hostile move targeted at Iran or any other nation.

The trilateral pact builds on preexisting close defense ties between the signatory countries. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have maintained robust military partnerships for decades, and signed a separate bilateral mutual defense agreement as recently as September 2025. Pakistan and Turkey have also rapidly expanded their bilateral military cooperation and joint defense industrial development projects over the past several years.

Eighty-one years after a U.S. atomic bomb turned the southwestern Japanese city of Nagasaki into a landscape of unspeakable destruction, city leaders, global delegates, and aging atomic bomb survivors gathered Sunday at Nagasaki’s Peace Park to honor the tens of thousands killed and reaffirm a urgent call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. The solemn commemoration unfolded against a charged political backdrop: the newly formed Japanese government under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has implemented sweeping revisions to national defense policy that expand the military’s offensive capabilities, stoking widespread anxiety that the government may abandon the decades-old non-nuclear framework that has defined Japan’s post-WWII identity.