© VIJAY PANDEY/EPA
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reacted strongly to the US announcement to suspend the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program used by major IT companies for getting green cards for their foreign employees.
Reacting to the announcement made by the US Labor Secretary in the presence of Vice President J D Vance, India’s MEA, on Friday, October 9, called it a move harmful for the “shared ambitions of both countries.”
US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said on Thursday that his department will not accept any fresh application for PERM or process the pending applications from eight major IT companies.
The companies named were Microsoft, HCL, Cognizant, Adobe, Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosysis, and Wipro.
Among these firms are some of India’s biggest IT companies with the majority of them employing a large number of IT professionals from outside the US. The move is seen as a part of the Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Almost 70% of H-1B visa holders are Indians which means the halt in PERM will affect the Indian IT professionals the most.
PERM is the first step for an employer in the US to sponsor a green card for its foreign employee. According to the US laws, the employer must prove it tried and failed to get a local for the job before it can sponsor a foreign person.
According to Sonderling, these eight companies have sought almost three million foreign workers and received over 230,000 H-1B visas and over 100,000 PERMs since 2009, claiming all these were “jobs that were taken from American workers.”
Vance said the Donald Trump administration wants the companies to prioritize local recruitment instead of getting “foreign indentured labor.”
He accused companies of abusing the H-1B visa program, claiming there have been multiple cases pending in the federal investigation about fraud in recruitment and the violation of its “best of the best” clause.
In a brief statement, India’s MEA on Friday called Vance’s comments about “foreign indentured labor” “unwarranted” and deeply offensive, claiming it “ignores the fact that Indian professionals in the US are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovative ecosystem.”
“The history of the US itself has been shaped by generations of immigrants whose labor, enterprise and innovation have contributed to its growth and prosperity” it underlined, further noting that “resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive.”
Millions of Indians were taken out of the country to different parts of the world for indentured labor during the British colonial period in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The US decision has already led to widespread reactions from the opposition groups asking the Indian government to take measures to protect the interest of the country’s IT professionals.
In a post on X, Jairam Ramesh, leader of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), asked the government to retaliate to the US move, claiming failure to do so would be tantamount to surrendering the country’s interests to a bully.
Ramesh accused the Narendra Modi-led ultra-right-wing government in the country of adopting a policy of “appeasement” toward the US, citing its recent decision to impose user charges on payments through mobile phones in the country as one crucial example of how it is going out of the way to do so.
Ramesh claimed Washington’s decision to suspend the visas yet again proves that such a policy never pays off.
It’s not often that events in Mumbai reverberate through global markets. But the Reserve Bank of India’s first interest rate hike in almost four years speaks volumes about the chaotic state of play. The inflation slamming Asia’s third-biggest economy and the rupee’s drop to record lows left RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra with no choice but […]
The post India’s rate hike a loud warning shot for Modinomics appeared first on Asia Times.
Scores of the elected opposition members of India’s Parliament were detained by security forces in the capital, New Delhi, on Tuesday, October 6, after they protested against the alleged rigging in the elections and demanded removal of the country’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
The Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and several other MPs also claimed they were manhandled by the police during the detention and forcefully removed from the protests site. All of the detainees were released later.
The protests by the MPs was a part of the ongoing nationwide mobilizations which broke out on Saturday over alleged rigging and irregularities in various elections under the incumbent CEC. The protesters are demanding his immediate removal claiming he manipulated the elections in various states to benefit the ruling party.
Despite the heavyhandedness of the security forces who have refused to allow any protest gathering in the capital and repeatedly detained opposition leaders, students, and youth group protesters, people turned up on the streets of Delhi and other parts of the country for the consecutive fifth day on Wednesday.
Several protesters have claimed they were beaten up during detention while some women reporters have claimed they were molested by police personnel on duty during those protests.
Also on Tuesday, security forces allegedly attacked a cultural gathering organized around the issue by the left-wing Student Federation of India (SFI) in central Delhi.
On Wednesday, major left and progressive student organizations such as SFI, the All India Students Association (AISA), and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a movement which emerged in protests demanding reforms in the country’s education system earlier this year, announced a new joint protest beginning from October 10.
Rahul Gandhi, who is also the leader of India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), claimed around 300 opposition MPs were marching from the country’s Parliament building to the office of the Election Commission of India (ECI), seeking a meeting with the CEC when the security forces stopped them and detained them.
He reiterated that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in collaboration with the CEC, has been responsible for destroying democracy in the country by rigging elections. He called the act “treason” and warned that none of the people responsible for “murdering democracy” in the country will be spared whether it is the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, or Gyanesh Kumar.
The ultra-right-wing and Hindu-supremacist BJP has been in power since 2014, winning three national elections, including the last one in 2024. It is also ruling a majority of states in India.
Speaking in a press conference in Delhi on Wednesday, Neha Bora, president of AISA and one of the leaders of the movement, claimed that the movement against the manipulations in the national elections by the CEC and the BJP will continue until the removal of Gyanesh Kumar.
Over 130 million Indians have been removed from electoral rolls in the country since the ECI, the highest body responsible for conducting elections in the country, started the so-called Special Intensive Revision (SIR) last year under Gyanesh Kumar’s leadership.
Opposition parties and legal experts have claimed that the SIR is illegal, as it is not mentioned in the ECI rule books and the process was started to manipulate election results to favor the ruling BJP.
A recent report in one of the main English daily paper’s in the country also claimed that most of the decisions taken by Gyanesh Kumar as CEC were illegal.
In the last few weeks, opposition has also alleged that the ECI and BJP collaborated to remove thousands of names, mostly Muslim voters, from the electoral rolls in various constituencies across the country.
Talking to the media on Tuesday, John Britas MP from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) claimed that protests against Gyanesh Kumar are a “historical movement to save democracy” in the country. He accused Kumar, in collaboration with the BJP, of destroying the reputation of India’s electoral process and of being the “real enemy of the nation.”
Britas called for his immediate removal as CEC and demanded he must be tried for his criminal activities.
Ukrainian drugmakers could lose the certificates that let them sell in Uzbekistan, their most important export market, Ukrainian business outlet Ekonomichna Pravda reported on 7 October. Uzbekistan is ending remote factory inspections next year, and industry sources say its inspectors are wary of traveling to a country at war.
Russia's war keeps reshaping Central Asia's trade with both warring countries: Ukrainian refinery strikes pushed Russian fuel shortages into the region, and Kazakhstan gained leverage over a Russian retail giant.
Uzbekistan brings in about 30% of the Ukrainian drug industry's foreign-currency earnings, and one in 10 medicine packs sold there is Ukrainian, Ekonomichna Pravda wrote. By the outlet's count, at least three of Ukraine's five biggest drugmakers by revenue rank it as their top foreign market.
The currency from Uzbekistan lets manufacturers keep prices low in Ukraine and absorb losses from Russian strikes, three industry sources told Ekonomichna Pravda. Losing the market would force producers to raise domestic prices or pull low-margin medicines, which "will hit the Ukrainian patient," said Hennadii Vovk, former deputy head of Ukraine's State Service on Medicines and Drug Control.
Exports reached $114 million in January–June 2026, more than in all of 2021, said Yevheniia Piddubna, government relations head at Farmak, Ukraine's largest drugmaker. She said Uzbekistan takes 35% of Farmak's exports.
Data from the YouControl business registry, cited by the outlet, complicates that picture. In 2022, 30–35% of Farmak's products went to Uzbekistan. In 2025, Uzbekistan was not among its direct buyers. Farmak explained that wartime currency rules cap payment terms at 180 days, while foreign buyers often demand longer. So part of its trade runs through the group's Polish company.
Uzbekistan grants three-year certificates of good manufacturing practice (GMP) after inspecting the factory. Since the pandemic, it has allowed remote checks. That suited Ukraine, where Uzbek experts avoided traveling because of Russia's invasion, industry sources told the outlet. Remote inspections end on 1 January 2027.
Most Ukrainian certificates expire within a year. Farmak's runs out in November 2026, and the company may not manage to renew it in time. Three producers renewed under the old rules until 2029: Darnytsia, the Borshchahivskyi Chemical and Pharmaceutical Plant, and Farmex Group. According to Piddubna, Uzbekistan's regulator has drafted rules for remote inspections in force-majeure cases, but nothing has been put into practice. Industry sources said the Uzbek Presidential Administration must sign off.
Producers have asked the Office of the President, the Foreign Ministry, and the Health Ministry to raise the issue with Uzbekistan's government, but no Ukrainian experts have been sent there yet, the outlet reported. Russia, whose share of the Uzbek drug market is almost the same as Ukraine's, is ready to take Ukraine's place, its sources said.
As one advocate warned India’s Supreme Court on Monday that “this country will burn” unless action is taken to stop what thousands of protesters have denounced as an illegal purge of voters by the head of the Election Commission of India, the court demanded accountability from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Chief Justice Surya Kant […]
The post Indian Supreme Court demands government answers on voter purge appeared first on Asia Times.
I have watched Pakistan-Afghanistan relations long enough to distrust easy headlines, and last week’s news produced a few of them. At the Center-2026 (Tsentr-2026) war games in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, Taliban officers stood among the foreign observers. Reports say it was the first time Moscow had invited a Taliban military delegation since the movement returned […]
The post Russia courts the Taliban without dropping Pakistan appeared first on Asia Times.
There are few sporting rivalries capable of transporting an entire stadium thousands of miles away from home. On Saturday, India and Pakistan managed precisely that — turning a modest Japanese baseball facility into an arena charged with all the anticipation, colour and emotion normally associated with the great cricket grounds of South Asia.
The setting could hardly have been more incongruous. The Asian Games final was being staged at Korogi Athletic Park in Nisshin, near Nagoya, a purpose-built cricket venue with capacity for only about 2,500 spectators. Beyond the boundary stood the unmistakable features of a Japanese baseball ground, including a pitcher’s mound.
Yet for those inside, this was no novelty fixture.
Hours before the first ball, Indian and Pakistani supporters were queuing to enter. Flags were draped over shoulders, shirts provided the national colours and tickets had become sufficiently scarce to generate reports of inflated resale prices. For many members of the South Asian communities living in Japan, the occasion represented a rare chance to see the two countries meet in person.
That matters because India-Pakistan cricket is not simply another international sporting contest. Political tensions mean that the teams generally encounter each other only in major tournaments, making every meeting an event in its own right. Their February T20 World Cup encounter in Sri Lanka was played before a sell-out crowd of 35,000; television audiences in the two countries routinely run into the hundreds of millions.
Japan therefore found itself hosting one of cricket’s most valuable commodities: scarcity.
For Japanese spectators, meanwhile, the spectacle offered an introduction to a sport that remains distinctly niche in the country. Some had attended earlier matches simply out of curiosity. Teachers from nearby Gifu admitted that they knew virtually nothing about cricket, but found themselves enjoying the experience after reading explanatory material and watching the action.
The comparison with baseball is inevitable. Japan possesses one of the world’s great baseball cultures, while cricket remains a relative outsider. But the recent arrival of India has provided an intriguing bridge between the two.
Last week, Japan played India in its first-ever T20 international against a full-member cricket nation. The hosts came within two runs of a remarkable victory in a rain-shortened five-over contest, giving Japanese cricket precisely the sort of exposure its administrators could scarcely have manufactured themselves.
The significance extends beyond the scoreboard.
India’s appearance in Japan was linked to the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the countries, while the Asian Games have provided an unusually prominent platform for cricket. The sport is already established among expatriate communities, but encounters involving India’s global stars can introduce it to an entirely new audience.
That is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Saturday’s extraordinary scene. Cricket did not need to conquer Japan overnight. It merely needed to persuade a few thousand people to come and watch.
And India versus Pakistan is perhaps the ultimate sales pitch.
The match was always going to generate passion. What nobody could have guaranteed was that the passion would survive the journey from the packed stadiums of Colombo and Mumbai to a small baseball field outside Nagoya.
It did.
The geography changed. The rivalry did not.
Login