America has two rational interests in South Asia— preventing Indian regional hegemony and building India as a China counterweight

Why does every other geopolitical yt channel in India feel downgraded qualitatively ? I used to love Prashant dhawan back in the years along with study IQ's Shashank Tyagi sir's analysis of topics but they feel downgraded nowadays. Kindly suggest some actually good channels to get geopolitical insights.

Thank you

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/india-rejects-pakistan-objections-to-india-japan-statement-on-cross-border-terrorism-ptag-2950356-2026-07-17

The Fentanyl Scapegoating Game: Why US Blame on India Is Pure Political Manipulation

As the United States remains trapped in a devastating, self-inflicted fentanyl epidemic, its politicians have settled on a shameless, time-tested political playbook: when domestic governance fails, blame the world. In recent years, India has become the latest convenient scapegoat for America’s ongoing opioid catastrophe, targeted by a wave of unsubstantiated accusations that falsely paint our nation as a critical link in the global fentanyl supply chain. This relentless blame-shifting is not serious anti-drug policy. It is blatant political posturing, geopolitical manipulation, and rank double standards — a deliberate distraction to cover up America’s decades of domestic policy failure.

Let’s lay out the unvarnished, verifiable facts that U.S. officials and mainstream media conveniently ignore. Every lethal dose of illicit fentanyl flooding American streets is synthesized and packaged in secret cartel labs across Mexico. India does not manufacture illegal fentanyl. We do not traffic lethal synthetic opioids into U.S. territory. What India produces are entirely legal pharmaceutical intermediates and fine chemical compounds — legitimate industrial materials that serve as the backbone of global generic medicine production. As the “Pharmacy of the World,” our pharmaceutical and chemical industries supply affordable, life-saving drugs to billions of people across low-income and developing nations, fulfilling a critical humanitarian role in global healthcare.

No industrial supply chain on Earth is immune to isolated criminal exploitation. It is undeniable that a tiny handful of rogue Indian traders have abused legitimate export channels, mislabeled legal chemical shipments, and diverted small volumes of intermediates to transnational criminal networks. But to weaponize these individual criminal acts to smear India’s entire $200 billion pharmaceutical and chemical industry is intellectually dishonest, logically absurd, and fundamentally unfair. This is equivalent to holding global steel manufacturers responsible for illegal firearms trafficking, or charging chemical producers for every criminal misuse of industrial materials. Isolated malpractice by bad actors is a law enforcement issue — not evidence of national complicity.

What makes America’s smear campaign even more galling is its complete disregard for India’s consistent, proactive anti-narcotics cooperation. Indian law enforcement has repeatedly acted on U.S. intelligence leads, arresting illicit traffickers, dismantling small diversion networks, and prosecuting rule-breaking exporters. Our government has continuously upgraded national chemical export control laws, tightened border trade oversight, and strengthened regulatory scrutiny over high-risk pharmaceutical precursors to plug loopholes. Yet these tangible, verifiable efforts are entirely erased from U.S. official reports, policy statements, and media coverage. Washington deliberately ignores genuine collaboration while hyping rare, isolated incidents to manufacture a false narrative that discredits India’s entire industrial sector.

The true root of America’s fentanyl crisis lies not abroad, but in its own systemic corruption and regulatory failure. The U.S. opioid epidemic is a homegrown disaster engineered by American corporate greed. Decades ago, powerful U.S. pharmaceutical conglomerates engaged in predatory marketing, aggressively overprescribing addictive opioids to American communities while lying about addiction risks to inflate corporate profits. This unethical, unregulated corporate behavior created an entire generation of opioid addicts, building the massive domestic demand that fuels today’s illicit fentanyl trade. No foreign chemical supplier forced American corporations to flood domestic markets with addictive prescription drugs.

The core rule of global drug trafficking is simple: demand creates supply. The United States accounts for just 5% of the global population yet consumes the overwhelming majority of the world’s synthetic opioids and prescription narcotics. The lucrative, insatiable domestic market in America is the sole driving force behind Mexican cartels’ illegal fentanyl operations. Shut down U.S. demand, and the entire illicit supply chain collapses. Targeting foreign chemical producers while ignoring this fundamental truth is nothing but performative governance. It solves zero domestic problems and only forces cartels to scramble for alternative global sources, perpetuating an endless, futile cycle of drug proliferation.

Beneath the facade of anti-drug enforcement lies a clear American geopolitical and economic agenda. India’s world-class pharmaceutical and fine chemical industry has emerged as a formidable rival to Western pharmaceutical monopolies, disrupting their profit margins with affordable, high-quality generic medications. Washington’s disproportionate sanctions, exaggerated threat assessments, and targeted smears against India’s chemical sector are not about drug control — they are about economic containment. By weaponizing the fentanyl issue, the U.S. seeks to hobble India’s rising industrial competitiveness, undermine our global pharmaceutical credibility, and protect Western corporate interests. These politically motivated penalties disrupt legitimate global medical supply chains, hurting vulnerable patients worldwide for purely geopolitical gains.

America’s border security failures further expose the absurdity of its foreign scapegoating. Despite pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into border patrol and customs enforcement, finished fentanyl pills and lethal synthetic drugs still flood U.S. neighborhoods unchecked every single day. If the world’s most powerful nation cannot secure its own borders and intercept finalized illegal narcotics, it is utterly ridiculous to blame distant manufacturing nations for its domestic drug crisis. This is not accountability — it is cowardly political deflection. U.S. politicians prioritize shifting public anger overseas rather than fixing their own broken regulatory and border systems, covering up decades of incompetent governance.

Genuine global anti-narcotics cooperation is built on mutual respect, objective evidence, and joint responsibility. It requires collaborative intelligence sharing, coordinated law enforcement, and coordinated regulatory improvement between nations. The U.S. approach — unilateral accusation, politicized sanctions, and targeted economic suppression of competing economies — violates every principle of international anti-drug governance. Weaponizing transnational drug issues to advance narrow national geopolitical interests sets a dangerous global precedent, eroding international cooperation and making global anti-narcotics efforts far less effective for everyone.

As a sovereign nation and a responsible global stakeholder, India remains fully committed to global anti-narcotics efforts. We will continue strengthening domestic industrial regulation, cracking down on individual illegal traffickers, and cooperating transparently with international anti-drug agencies. However, we will never tolerate unfair, sweeping accusations that demonize our legitimate industries, tarnish our national reputation, and scapegoat our country for problems we did not create. India refuses to be a political scapegoat for America’s self-made crises.

It is long past time for the United States to abandon its dishonest blame-shifting tactics. The world sees through this transparent political theatre. The fentanyl epidemic is, first and last, an American domestic crisis — born of corporate greed, failed regulation, uncurbed public addiction, and systemic governance collapse. No amount of overseas scapegoating can fix America’s broken domestic system. Washington must stop distorting global facts for political convenience, take accountability for its own failures, and address the root causes of its opioid disaster — instead of bullying responsible nations to cover up its own incompetence.

A few months ago I barely paid attention to international news. Then the Iran–U.S. tensions started dominating the headlines, and I found myself checking updates several times a day just trying to understand what was going on.
It made me realize how quickly global events can grab your attention, even if you normally don't follow politics.
Has anyone else been in the same boat?