Good morning, After a massive blow in the first Test against New Zealand, Team India is gearing up, this time, with hopes of bouncing back, and what’s more reasonable than predicting the pitch at this hour? Ahead of the 2nd Test between the two teams, as the pitch bakes in the Pune sun, Sandip G looks at what can possibly go right for Team India. All eyes are on the three uninhibited destructors of spin bowling in Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan and Rishabh Pant, each with their methods in chastening the turning ball. Will these three counter-attackers align the stars for India? (Of course, Risks and Conditions Applied!) With that, let’s move on to today’s edition: Why does Kazan, the host city of BRICS, matter in Putin’s Russia? RSS, 100 years later and its way forward Bracing for Cyclone Dana 🚨 Big Story All eyes on BRICS: For the first time in five years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold a bilateral meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan. The announcement for the meet came hours after China, without mentioning the agreement on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control, confirmed it had “reached a solution” and would “work with India” to “effectively implement” the plan. A day after agreement between India and China came in, in his first remarks, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi underlined the need for the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA to first “restore trust” in each other by “not creeping” into buffer zones, “go back to the status quo of April 2020” and then look at “disengagement, de-escalation, normal management” of the LAC. Russia's city of the future: The host city, Kazan, in Russia, where world leaders including PM Modi are currently visiting to attend the BRICS Summit, is among the country’s largest and wealthiest cities. It appears as a “symbol of the kind of nation Russia is gradually evolving into: a blend of Europe and Asia, a melting pot of diverse ethnicities and religions.” Why does Kazan matter in Putin’s Russia? PM Modi talks to Iranian Prez: As tensions continue to rise in West Asia, especially between Israel and Iran, PM Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sat down discussing the role India could play in de-escalating the conflict given its good relations with all the parties involved in the conflict, emphasising the need for peace in the region. ⚡Only in Express As RSS completes its hundred years of existence, Suhas Palshikar highlights the key achievements of the organisation that may impact India’s public life in the decades to come. He writes: “For the RSS, the awkward relationship with Narendra Modi notwithstanding, the Modi period has offered a golden moment precisely at a time when Hindutva has already penetrated the social sphere. This is because, now, under state tutelage, Hindutva can declare its version of Hindu religion as the official version and can preside over the social sphere where competing views will have no elbow room.” 📰 From the Front Page Ruckus in the Parliament: Not everyday does one hear bottles being smashed in Parliament meetings, but Tuesday was one such day. Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, while attending the meeting of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, smashed a glass bottle during a heated discussion with Bharatiya Janata Party MP and former Calcutta High Court Judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay. Banerjee was suspended for a day from the committee after the incident and an ugly spat with Gangopadhyay during a discussion on the registration of Waqf properties. Crackdown on terror: Two days after seven persons were killed in a terror attack at a key tunnel construction site in Gagangir, a unit of the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s Criminal Investigation Department busted a militant recruitment module in the Valley. The youths, police said, were part of a newly floated militant outfit called the Tehreek Labaik Ya Muslim, which officials claim is an offshoot of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba. Raids at different locations were also conducted in the Valley after inputs about the recruitment module, said to be run by a Pakistan-based Lashkar commander named Baba Hamas. CWG Lite: Four venues in an eight mile radius, athletes put up in hotels, and a hugely restricted number of participants — that’s what the severely pared down version of the 2026 Commonwealth Games will look like. And to add to the bad news for fans of the Indian contingent, six of the 12 disciplines in which India won a medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games — contributing 37 out of the total 61 medals — have been dropped from the 2026 edition. For India, the mandate is clear – get started on sports such as Athletics, swimming, gymnastics and cycling in earnest, and use the opportunity to scale up these programmes. 📌 Must Read Back to being the land of gang wars? From gang members firing warning shots outside actor Salman Khan’s residence in April to the October 12 killing of former MLA Baba Siddique — both allegedly carried out at the behest of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi — the shadow of organised gangs that once terrorised Mumbai seems to be looming on the horizon after over two decades. Lawrence Bishnoi, in jail since the past decade, has been gaining notoriety since his gang allegedly killed Punjabi singer Siddhu Moosewala. The police believe that the Lawrence Bishnoi gang is now attempting to fill the vacuum left behind since the Mumbai underworld gangs, led by Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan and Ravi Pujari, among others, were neutralised over the past 15 years. Ahead of the annual climate change meeting, scheduled in Baku, Azerbaijan, this year from November 11, countries are currently assembled in the Colombian city of Cali for the UN Biodiversity Conference that takes place every two years. What is this meeting about and why is it significant? Well, this year’s meeting — the 16th Conference of Parties to CBD, or COP16 — is the first after a landmark agreement on biodiversity was finalised two years ago. This agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that was concluded at COP15 in Montreal in 2022, lay down four goals and 23 targets to be achieved collectively by 2030. In today’s Opinion section, Jabin T Jacob writes on the recent agreement reached between India and China on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control. “With the benefit of some distance from the events of 2020, Indians should also now be asking more questions. Why did China do what it did? What might it do next? What were the lapses on the Indian side that caused intelligence on the Chinese build-up to be ignored? Without answers to these questions and more, India will remain unprepared for the next border crisis with China,” he writes. ⏳ And Finally. Bracing for the storm: Six senior IAS officers who have previous experiences of managing cyclones, shutting down of monuments and tourist spots, cancelling trains — bracing for cyclone Dana, which is expected to have the maximum impact in the state’s northern parts, Odisha is relying on its past experiences to try and sail through. The Cyclone will cross north Odisha and the West Bengal coasts between Puri and Sagar Island during the night of October 24 and the morning of October 25 as a severe cyclonic storm with a wind speed of 100-110 kmph. In today’s edition of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, The Indian Express’s Health Editor Kaunain Sheriff explains the international kidney transplant racket with links to two major hospitals in the National Capital Region. We discuss how an investigation by The Indian Express laid bare the racket, leading to the arrest of 10 individuals. Until next time, Ariba and Rounak Bagchi
