The Information War Against India — And Why It Is Being Lost PART 3

 

The Slow Burn: Sovereign Ratings and the Cost of Narrative

Beyond the kinetic and political battlegrounds, the slowest-burning front of all is the sovereign-ratings saga. For nearly two decades, India languished at BBB-, the lowest rung of investment grade, until S&P upgraded its rating to BBB in August 2025. During this period, the nation's economy rose from thirteenth to fifth in the world, its GDP surged from $1.2 trillion to $3.7 trillion, and its record of zero sovereign defaults remained unblemished.

The 2020–21 Economic Survey, led by Chief Economic Advisor K.V. Subramanian, criticized this rating system as "noisy, opaque and biased." It highlighted that, with the exception of India and briefly China, no fifth-largest global economy had ever been held at such a low investment-grade level.

Similarly, Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, has argued that India is underrated by at least one to two notches. He has advocated for the creation of an indigenous ratings infrastructure. CareEdge Global’s 2024 debut, which rated India at BBB+ (a notch higher than Western agencies), serves as a strong template for this alternative infrastructure.

Between 2007 and 2025, India's GDP nearly tripled, yet its S&P sovereign rating remained stagnant. The period of unchanged ratings represented a "narrative tax"—additional borrowing costs paid due to subjective sentiment rather than economic fundamentals.

The same firms that shape investor sentiment can also disrupt capital flows. Earlier in 2026, Bloomberg Index Services delayed India's inclusion in its Global Aggregate Bond Index, despite India’s inclusion in the equivalent indices of JPMorgan and FTSE Russell. Consequently, markets missed out on an estimated $25 billion in passive inflows. No single news article caused this much capital shift; rather, it was driven by the mechanical decision of an index committee within a firm that also operates one of the most influential financial media platforms.

The underlying thread in these scenarios is clear: doubt is deliberately seeded, commercially amplified, and never fully countered by India's delayed and partial responses. These symptoms manifest across terminal screens, sovereign rating reports, Congressional lobbying, index downgrades by organizations like V-Dem, Freedom House, and RSF, and even in the reception of major Indian policies (such as CAA, Agniveer, and Operation Sindoor) by an audience already primed with skepticism.

Sometimes, this hostility arrives with a friendly face. The 2026 edition of Bloomberg's New Economy Forum is scheduled for New Delhi this October, with the Prime Minister as the keynote speaker. The same publication responsible for numerous critical articles will convene global leaders in the Indian capital to celebrate the country's economic promise. This contradiction persists largely because India lacks the doctrinal framework to recognize and address it.

The Absence of a Doctrine: India's Vulnerability

When India's political leadership addresses the information domain, it does so obliquely, using a vocabulary that alludes to the problem without directly confronting it. For example, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s The India Way (2020) and Why Bharat Matters (2024) touch upon the need for "stronger cultural identities and more nationalist narratives." He emphasizes resisting "political interference and economic pressures" to keep narratives "free of prejudice" against "self-appointed custodians of the world" who "invent their rules, their parameters, pass the judgments and make out as though it is some kind of global exercise."

However, these are merely ripostes rather than a structured doctrine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2025 Independence Day address warned generally of deepfakes and foreign interference, and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has discussed cognitive warfare at various forums. Yet, these statements have not yielded a published paper from the National Security Council translating this rhetoric into funded, staffed capabilities.

Jaishankar’s argument that "the absence of a document does not mean the absence of a framework" may hold true internally, but it would not pass scrutiny before any parliamentary committee in Washington, London, Berlin, or Tokyo. At present, thirty-six countries publish a National Security Strategy—India is not among them.

Unlike six serious nations that have formally defined information warfare, the limits of engagement, and the responsible actors, India lacks a clear doctrine. The military framework is equally deficient:

• The Joint Doctrine of the Indian Armed Forces 2017 contains only a passing reference to information warfare.
• The classified Joint Information Warfare Doctrine of 2010 is outdated, having been drafted before the modern era of social media.
• While the Army's 2024 Multi-Domain Operations doctrine acknowledges "cognitive warfare through propaganda and disinformation," it arrived a decade late and remains an Army-specific document rather than a whole-of-government policy.

Civilian infrastructure is similarly unequipped. India's information-handling machinery—the MEA's External Publicity Division, the Press Information Bureau, and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting—is tailored for traditional public diplomacy rather than modern information warfare. While the Defence Cyber Agency handles electronic and offensive cyber threats, no equivalent exists for the information-warfare layer.

The capability gap is further highlighted by institutional data:

• Budgetary Constraints: The Ministry of External Affairs' budget is approximately ₹22,000 crore (0.41% of the Union Budget), ranking twenty-third among ministries. Although Parliament’s Standing Committee recommended doubling it in 2022, no action has been taken.
• Diplomatic Personnel: The IFS cadre comprises roughly 1,000 core officers for 1.4 billion people. In comparison, China employs 5,000, Japan 7,300, France 6,000, and the US over 15,000.
• Global Presence: India ranks 11th globally with 194 diplomatic posts, compared to China's 274. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) operates 38 cultural centers abroad, a stark contrast to the hundreds of Confucius Institutes established globally at their peak.

On every metric of state information capacity, India trails. Domestically, even the defensive structures that have been established face legal challenges. For instance, the Press Information Bureau's Fact Check Unit—which successfully flagged deepfakes and misinformation during Operation Sindoor—was stripped of its statutory authority in September 2024 when the Bombay High Court struck down the IT Rules amendment.

In contrast, Singapore—a city-state of six million—has successfully held global media accountable by deploying its Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act against defamatory articles and following up with defamation suits in its own courts. India, with vastly more at stake, has not developed comparable institutional muscle.

Strategic Reforms: Four Necessary Shifts

Closing these critical gaps requires four essential changes:

• Conceptual Shift: The political class must stop viewing the information domain simply as an extension of public relations. Adversaries treat it as a branch of warfare. Until this reframing occurs at the highest levels, reforms will merely be tactical patches on a strategic misdiagnosis. Events like Hindenburg, the DOJ indictments, the Groyper campaign, and Operation Sindoor are not aberrations; they are the new reality of great-power competition.
• Institutional Shift: India should publish a National Security Strategy and a distinct Information Warfare Doctrine. This doctrine would outline the nation's stance on cognitive operations, legal warfare, and AI-enabled influence. Furthermore, a tri-services Information Warfare Command—modeled on the UK's 77th Brigade or China's Strategic Support Force—would provide the institutional framework necessary for effective defense.
• Fiscal and Administrative Shift: The MEA's budget should be raised to 1% of the Union Budget, as recommended in 2022, and annual IFS recruitment must be increased. Additionally, a standing financial-narrative rapid-response team—staffed by data scientists, lawyers, and financial analysts—should be established to respond to attacks within hours rather than weeks.
• Methodological Shift: India must continue building institutional independence from Western rating and ranking regimes. Just as CareEdge Global has demonstrated, developing domestic platforms with transparent methodologies for evaluating press freedom, governance, and democracy will foster methodological plurality and international credibility.

Reclaiming Sovereignty: The Right to Define the Narrative

Consider the events surrounding the Iranian consulates in April 2026. While the jokes on social media were a minor distraction, the broader reality is that information warfare is now the primary lens through which global actions are judged.

When international fund managers allocate emerging-market portfolios, when rating agencies reassess sovereign ratings, or when foreign editorial boards and legislative committees evaluate Indian democracy and policy, they do so based on narratives seeded long in advance.

India can implement the best fiscal policies, build premier digital infrastructure, and execute precise national security strategies, but it will continue to lose the public argument if it cannot defend its own story. A state that cannot shape its own global narrative surrenders a portion of its sovereignty.

In the twenty-first century, sovereignty is not just the monopoly on legitimate violence within borders; it is also the right to be understood and described on the global stage on one's own terms. India has been generous with that right for too long—it is time to take it back.