LAST week, some rather bizarre events took place that point to a dire and dangerous direction India is heading to. Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State (their foreign minister), landed in Mumbai, held a flurry of meetings and headed off to Jamnagar, “to meet the folks at Reliance”, as Sergio Gor, US Ambassador to India put it. Rubio skipped New Delhi altogether, explaining the trip as being ‘business-oriented’. In Mumbai, Rubio had a formal meeting with his Indian counterpart, S.Jaishankar, where they reportedly discussed “trade, defence, technology and energy security”. In other words, it was a formality, signifying nothing substantive. Rubio also met Gautam Adani, and N.Chandrasekaran, chairman of the Tata Group.

Coinciding with this trip, a photo of Indian petroleum minister Hardeep Puri chatting with the late Jeffery Epstein, convicted child rapist, sex trafficker and power broker went viral on social media. The picture is not new – it was released in January 2026 by the US Department of Justice, as part of the ‘Epstein Files’. It showed the duo sitting in what looks like a boudoir with nobody else present – in direct contradiction to Puri’s laboured explanation given earlier this year that he had only met Epstein with a delegation. What was strange was that it surfaced again in a big way just as Rubio was visiting the Ambanis, owners of the world’s largest refinery located at Jamnagar, ostensibly to discuss diesel supplies to the US and processing Venezuelan crude in Jamnagar. These are matters which the petroleum minister would normally be concerned with. But of late, Puri appears to be in hiding. Clearly, somebody was trying to blackmail the Indian government by recirculating the shameful meeting’s photo.

Before unpacking the real meaning of these events, and their backstories, what needs to be noted is that Modi appears to be getting sidelined in his own country as global oligarchs and US officials are directly dealing with local big business. Rubio, in fact, declared that the US-India free trade deal is almost finalised – something that concerns the Indian Government – but the External Affairs ministry only noted ‘progress’.Either Modi doesn’t care, or more likely, these power brokers don’t care. Whatever be the case, it is a dangerous drift which is ceding the country’s policy making and interests to corporate monopolists. This is evident in the fact that there was no comment about all these comings and goings from the top echelons of power. Tech billionaire Musk’s sarcastic post on X sarcastically addressing Mukesh Ambani as Prime Minister and calling him the “real boss of India” has a whiff of truth.

What was really going on in the Rubio visit? Let’s try to figure it out.

US-INDIA TRADE DEAL

Readers will recall that the India-U.S. Bilateral Trade Agreement is apparently paused, although claims of progress in talks are made intermittently. In an interview, Rubio said both countries were “incredibly close” to an agreement, adding that, “….we are weeks, not months away from I think, finalizing it.  I think 99 percent of the work is done… I feel very positive about the trajectory that it’s on.” Back in June, Sergio Gor had said almost the same thing while explaining that India wants duties on its exports to US reduced below competitors’. In February this year, a Framework Agreement had been announced by both sides to much celebration. It was to lay the basis of further talks and finalising the deal. Major concessions were given by India including commitment to import $500 million worth of goods over five years from the US apart from taking steps to “eliminate or reduce tariffs on all U.S. industrial goods and a wide range of U.S. food and agricultural products.” Details of this surrender were explained in earlier issues of People’s Democracy. Apart from the negotiating issues, Modi government has faced mounting and angry protests by farmers, trade unions and Left parties at this deal because it will cause devastation in the agriculture sector, as also in industries, especially MSME sector.

Rubio was trying to break this deadlock by mobilising big businesses in India to pitch in and help get the deal done. That is why the belittling of obstacles to the deal, and the promises of investment opportunities in US. He realises that Modi’s weak position in the country and his government’s complete subservience to big business can be manipulated to get a profitable deal for the US. Note that he took the opportunity to press for imports of “US technologies and systems” which is a euphemism for weapons. Rubio was casting the net far and wide to catch as many fish as possible.

On their part, the tycoons couldn’t care less for farmers and workers. They had stood in support of the three farm laws that would have corporatised agriculture, but the Modi government was forced to retreat due to heroic resistance by farmers. The tycoons have also been flag bearers for labour “reform” welcoming the four Codes that reduce workers to slave like status. So, it is more than likely that the Ambanis and others will do their best to put across the US viewpoint to the government.

OIL DEALS

Rubio’s visit to Jamnagar had multiple objectives as far as oil and its products are concerned. One immediate and urgent purpose was to persuade Ambani to increase export of diesel to US, where retail diesel prices have risen by up to 77 per cent in the past one year. This is a key factor driving up cost of living, which is the single biggest issue in the upcoming mid-term elections for the US Congress. Trump led Republicans are trailing heavily according to opinion polls, with the Reuters/IPSOS poll putting Trump’s approval rating at just 31 per cent. So, an injection of diesel supplies in the markets might soothe the discontent a bit.

Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery is one of the biggest producers of diesel in the world. According to media reports it exported 21.66 million tonnes of refined petroleum products in the first half of 2025. Of this, diesel made up the largest share of 9.81 million tonnes, followed by petrol at 6.14 million tonnes and jet fuel at 2.06 million tonnes. According to data cited by the Finnish think tank CREA, Reliance exported $143 million worth of oil products to the US in September 2026. To facilitate Reliance oil products’ exports to US, Trump recently eased the 100 per cent tariff on those suppliers using Russian crude oil that was made into law only last month by US Congress. Russian crude had reached almost 50 per cent of imports by Reliance in 2025 but had declined after tough US sanctions. In fact, Trump has now signed a deal with Russia itself to allow diesel imports. All this because of the looming mid-term elections.

But the oil story doesn’t end here. Conglomerates led by the likes of Ambani and Adani are searching for profits overseas even as they refuse to invest more in India because the returns here are much less. So, Rubio was also affirming the earlier deal of Reliance investing up to $300 billion in an oil refinery in Texas, and buying arrangement of its products. Remember that Adani recently promised $10 billion investment in US after bribery charges against him were dropped.

EPSTEIN FALLOUT

While the re-circulation of Puri-Epstein image smacks of vested interests trying to damage Puri’s (and Indian government’s) reputation at a time when he could have been involved in the Rubio-Ambani negotiations, the more important dimension is how and why has the Modi government allowed a minister clearly involved with a sex criminal to continue for so many months. But allowing him to continue during a crucial period when the whole world was rocked by the oil shock after US-Israel attack on Iran in February, was not only an impropriety but created a danger of precisely the kind of blackmail that is attempted now. After all, at least 16 public personalities across 10 countries have had to remove themselves (or be removed) from public office or face criminal investigation for association with Epstein, while hundreds of others face uncertainty because they have been mentioned somewhere in those 3 million documents.

CAN MODI HANDLE ALL THIS?

Prime Minister Modi has been claiming that he and his party keep ‘India First’; that they are true nationalists; that they can be ‘Vishva Guru’ (Teacher of the World); that they are most efficient, most people-oriented – in short, the best. However, handing over vital economic decisions to billionaires, prostrating themselves to bullies like Trump and corrupt maniacs like Netanyahu, becoming supplicants of big business and the global elite, are signs that – sadly – our government is not serving the people. Its economic policy will lead to recolonisation of the country while its social-cultural ideology is pushing India back into medieval darkness. Modi can’t handle the modern world, and India needs to be saved from him, and the BJP/RSS.