Shashi Tharoor has pointed his social media followers to his newest column in The Hindu, which digs into the shifting balance of power across the Gulf and the wider West Asia region and asks whether New Delhi needs to rethink how it engages with that neighbourhood.
What Tharoor's column says
In the post shared from his account @ShashiTharoor, he explained that the column examines the evolving geopolitical situation in the Gulf and the broader West Asia region. According to him, new security arrangements are taking shape there, and these arrangements could affect India's interests in different ways depending on how they develop. He closed the post with a direct question aimed at policymakers, asking whether it is time for a new approach from New Delhi towards the region.
Why the Gulf matters to India
The Gulf and West Asia have long been central to India's foreign policy calculations because of energy supplies, trade routes and the large Indian community living and working across the region. Tharoor's column arrives at a time when several countries are recalibrating their security partnerships in the region, a trend also visible in other theatres such as NATO and the India-US relationship. His column frames these Gulf-specific shifts as part of that larger pattern of realignment that India cannot afford to ignore.
Public reaction
Reactions to the post were mixed. Several users used the occasion, which fell on Teachers' Day, to thank Tharoor for what they described as years of learning from his books, speeches and command of language. Others were more critical, complaining that the column's images were hard to read and that the paywall on the newspaper's website made it difficult for ordinary readers to access what he had written.
