Pooja Shah reports on Indian political parties as institutions — their funding, their networks, their enforcement mechanisms. Her work has set the agenda on digital political warfare and the quiet infrastructures that drive election campaigns.
Recent work
El Niño's Return Puts India's Ethanol Blending Programme on Notice
A 'Godzilla' El Niño event forecast to suppress monsoon rainfall across Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka — India's three largest sugarcane belts — directly threatens feedstock supply for the Ethanol Blended Petrol programme. With the government targeting 20% blending by 2025-26, a crop shortfall creates simultaneous pressure on energy transition goals, sugar output, and rural farm incomes. The episode forces a reckoning with a structural fault-line: a national energy-security target built almost entirely on a single rain-fed crop.
India Emerges as Major Captagon Transit Route in First Synthetic Drug Bust
The Narcotics Control Bureau's first Captagon seizure under Operation RAGEPILL exposed how international drug cartels exploit India as a transit route to Gulf nations. The bust recovered 227.7 kg of the synthetic stimulant worth ₹182 crore and arrested a Syrian national operating illegally in the country.