India is seeking a ninth two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for 2028-29, with voting in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in June 2027. Unlike most of its past bids, this one is contested — by Tajikistan, a first-time aspirant that was the Asia-Pacific Group’s earlier informal choice.

Seats are shared among the UN’s five regional groups. Within a group, diplomats often agree years in advance on a rotation, producing a “clean slate” — as many candidates as seats. When the slate breaks down, the contest moves to the whole Assembly, where the threshold is high.

• Secret ballot in the UNGA, with no formal nominations.
• A winner needs two-thirds of members present and voting (Article 18(2)) — 129 if all 193 vote; the threshold was 127 in the June 2026 election.
• If no one crosses the bar, balloting continues in rounds; deadlocks can be long — in 1979, Cuba and Colombia went through over 150 rounds before both withdrew in favour of Mexico.
• Split terms are a rare compromise — e.g. Italy and the Netherlands divided 2017-18 after a tie in 2016.

• Unfinished agenda: the 2021-22 term overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic; India wants to carry forward work on counter-terrorism — including its long-pending Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT), proposed in 1996 — and UN reform.
• Frequency as a substitute: with permanent membership stalled in the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN), more frequent elected terms keep India at the table.
• The complication: by the Asia-Pacific Group’s informal rotation, Tajikistan was already the expected candidate when India declared. The Central Asian states and much of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) are seen as backing Tajikistan.

The author argues that size, economic weight and past record do not decide UNSC elections on their own. The June 2026 results suggest a mood in the Assembly that favours first-timers and penalises perceived alignment with the major powers.

• Kyrgyzstan beat the western-backed Philippines 142–49 after four rounds, winning its first-ever seat.
• Germany (104 votes) lost to Portugal (134) and Austria (131) — a defeat widely linked to its stance on Israel.
• For the 81st UNGA Presidency, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister defeated the candidate from Cyprus.
• Roughly 60 UN members have never sat on the Council — a constituency that responds to a “small states deserve a turn” pitch.
• India counts on the Global North, ASEAN, CARICOM and the Pacific Island Countries; the swing votes lie in Africa, Latin America and South Asia.

• Geography: Tajikistan borders Afghanistan and China, and lies a short distance from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir across the narrow Wakhan Corridor.
• Strategic footprint: India helped refurbish the Ayni airbase and ran a medical facility at Farkhor — assets that mattered during the Afghan conflict of the early 2000s.
• Partnership: relations were raised to a Strategic Partnership in 2012; both are SCO members (Tajikistan a founder in 2001, India a full member since 2017).

• Option 1 — Contest the vote: India has the stronger profile but must build a two-thirds coalition in an Assembly that is sceptical of repeat members; both previous contested elections were lost.
• Option 2 — Persuade Tajikistan to withdraw: this has worked before — Kazakhstan stepped aside for 2011-12 and Afghanistan (in 2013) for 2021-22. Leader- and minister-level meetings in September 2026 have not yet produced such a move.
• Option 3 — Step aside itself: India could yield to Tajikistan and return a year or two later as the group’s consensus candidate, banking goodwill with a partner and with the Global South.
• Option 4 — Split the term: possible in principle, but historically used only between evenly matched candidates.

• Reputational trade-off: winning by pushing out a first-timer could look at odds with India’s claim to speak for the Global South — the “Pyrrhic victory versus tactical defeat” dilemma the author highlights.
• Norm of rotation: the regional rotation chart is informal but widely respected; overriding it may invite similar challenges to India’s future bids.
• Counter-argument: India is among the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping and represents about a sixth of humanity; supporters argue that its presence strengthens the Council’s legitimacy.
• The bigger prize: the elected seat is secondary to permanent membership, which depends on Charter reform and coalitions such as the G4 (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan) and the L.69, in the face of the Uniting for Consensus bloc.

Marking World Food Day (16 October), the India heads of the three Rome-based UN food agencies argue that innovation — in technology, data and finance — must now carry India and the wider Global South from food sufficiency to nutrition security.

• Climate: heat, erratic rainfall and shifting seasons reduce yields.
• Economic shocks: persistent food-price inflation erodes purchasing power, hitting access even where supply is adequate.
• Conflict: war destroys harvests, displaces farmers, breaks supply chains and weakens the institutions that protect people from hunger.

India relied on food aid in the 1960s, notably under the US PL-480 programme. The Green Revolution from the mid-1960s — high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, expanded irrigation, fertiliser and assured prices — turned a deficit into a cereal surplus.

• Institutional pillars created in 1965: the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for procurement and storage, and the Agricultural Prices Commission (now CACP) to recommend Minimum Support Prices.
• Foodgrain output rose from about 51 million tonnes (1950-51) to 357.73 million tonnes (2024-25), with 376.56 million tonnes projected for 2025-26 (Third Advance Estimates).
• India is also the world’s largest producer of milk and of pulses, and among the largest of fruits and vegetables.

• National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013: a legal entitlement to subsidised grain for up to 75% of the rural and 50% of the urban population — about 81 crore people.
• Entitlements: 5 kg per person per month for Priority Households; 35 kg per household for Antyodaya Anna Yojana families; maternity benefit of at least ₹6,000; meals for children through ICDS and PM POSHAN.
• Women’s empowerment clause: the eldest woman (18+) is the head of household for ration cards (Section 13).
• Free grain: since 1 January 2024, entitlements have been provided free under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), extended until 2028.
• Delivery reforms: digitised ration cards, Aadhaar seeding, ePoS authentication and One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) portability for migrant workers.

• FAO builds the capacity of frontline extension workers, gives dairy farmers a digital check on hygiene and herd management, and measures food loss with routes to composting, bioenergy and recycling.
• IFAD targets the first mile, where risk is highest and private capital thinnest; across its portfolio, projects with strong private participation show income gains of about 64% — four times those without.
• WFP improves the efficiency of the PDS and its nutritional effectiveness, especially for children and pregnant women, including through millets (“Shree Anna”; 2023 was the International Year of Millets at India’s initiative).

• The nutrition paradox: despite grain surpluses, NFHS-5 (2019-21) recorded 35.5% stunting, 19.3% wasting and 32.1% underweight among children under five, and anaemia in 57% of women aged 15–49.
• Cereal bias: procurement and PDS remain built around rice and wheat; pulses, oils, millets and animal protein are thinly covered.
• Ecological cost: the Green Revolution belt faces groundwater depletion, soil degradation and stubble burning — the model needs climate-resilient and diversified cropping.
• Coverage and cost: NFSA coverage is still computed on Census 2011 population, risking exclusion errors; free grain adds to a food subsidy of around ₹2 lakh crore a year.
• Losses: FAO estimates about 13% of food is lost between harvest and retail globally, and UNEP’s Food Waste Index puts waste at retail and household level at about 19%.
• Transferability: India’s model grew from specific conditions — fragmented holdings, monsoon dependence, a strong state procurement apparatus. Other countries can borrow its principles (digital targeting, portability, legal entitlement) rather than its full template.

• Shift from calorie sufficiency to nutrition security: biofortified crops, diverse PDS baskets, millets and pulses.
• Keep innovation pro-smallholder and pro-woman, combining traditional knowledge with science.
• Use digital public infrastructure for targeting and portability, and blended finance to crowd in private investment at the first mile.
• Cut post-harvest loss through storage, cold chains and processing.