Research
Notes from the desk.
Analysis of India's rivers, borders, coasts and low airspace, for the people who work there and the public who pay for them. Every claim links to its source. Where we compute something ourselves, we publish the data and the method.
Latest brief, 21 Oct 2026
The frontier in October 2026
Smart Border pilots, unfenced river stretches, drones over Punjab, coastal seizures, the Ganges treaty near the end of its term, and the monsoon's toll. What changed this year and what to watch before it ends.
Read the briefNine notes, October 2026.
21 Oct 2026
Lakes, slopes and faults: the mountain frontier
A lake outburst that breached a dam in Sikkim, landslide bulletins that reach three districts, and 155 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more along the Himalaya and the northeast since 2016.
21 Oct 2026
The Ganges treaty at thirty
What the 1996 text says, where renewal stands before its term ends on 12 December, and what thirty dry seasons of modelled flow at Farakka suggest.
21 Oct 2026
What the official record says is missing
Parliament's committees, the CAG and ministry releases on warnings that stop at the district, gauges that go dark, and landslide bulletins that miss the border.
21 Oct 2026
Drones over Punjab: what the numbers say
Nine published counts for 2025, from 237 to 791. A fast rise to 2024, a plateau, and three times the heroin per day in early 2026 with fewer drones recovered.
21 Oct 2026
Heat is a frontier hazard
Ten years of ERA5 data: Bikaner above 40 °C on 74 days a year. Why humid heat in the east is worse than its thermometer reading, and what the heat categories mean for a patrol.
21 Oct 2026
Fishers and the line in the sea
682 apprehensions in 2024, 183 fishermen held in Pakistan after finishing their sentences, and sea boundaries only as exact as a 1974 chart.
21 Oct 2026
Rivers move: char-lands and the riverine border
1,087 km² of land became water along eleven border reaches since 1984. Chars come and go; the legal line stays where it was drawn.
21 Oct 2026
Oversight by design: why we do not score people
What the courts and data protection law require, and how purpose binding, two-person approval and a hash-chained ledger work in our software.
21 Oct 2026
The frontier in October 2026
The year on the land border, the rivers, the coasts and in the low sky, with 21 sources.
The data behind the notes.Free to reuse with attribution to the original sources.
- Heat days
- heat_days.json with its manifest: ERA5 daily maxima at eight western border towns, 2016 to 2025.
- Drones
- Shyena aggregates: the published drone, heroin and weapons figures for Punjab's border that we compiled, each with its scope, period and source.
- Fishers
- Matsya incidents: fishermen apprehended by year and country, from MEA answers to Parliament. Counts only.
- Rivers
- Nadi segments and Varuna board: river change since 1984 and today's discharge against climatology.
- Ganges treaty
- Sandhi seasons: thirty dry seasons of modelled flow at Farakka against the treaty schedule. Model flows, not measurements.
- Oversight
- Sakshi policy: purposes, data classes, retention, and the rules that enforce the doctrine.
- Everything else
- The Setu developer portal lists every dataset we publish, with its licence, attribution and a stable API path.
How we write
- Every factual claim links to its source, with a date. Second-hand summaries are named as such.
- We give the scope of every number: who counted, where, and over what period.
- If figures disagree, we show both and say so rather than pick one.
- Simulated data never appears in a research note without a Simulated label.
- We name no private individuals.
Found an error? Write to press@trinetra.in. We correct notes in place and record the change at the foot of the note.