India is seeking the release of its nationals who have been “duped” into serving in the Russian army, a spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said Friday, in a rare rift from Moscow.

“Several Indian nationals have been duped to work with the Russian army. We have strongly taken up the matter with the Russian government for early discharge of such internationals,” said spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal. “A case of human trafficking has been registered against several agents.”

He appealed to Indian nationals to “not be swayed by offers made by agents for support jobs with the Russian army. This is fraught with danger and risk to life,” stressing that New Delhi remains “committed to early release of our nationals serving as support staff with the Russian army and the eventual return home.”

Late on Thursday, the Central Bureau of Investigation of India said it had raided several “major human trafficking networks” that were “targeting gullible youths” with offers of lucrative jobs abroad. The CBI identified at least “35 instances” of Indian citizens being sent abroad as a result of these operations.

“These traffickers have been operating as an organized network and were luring Indian nationals through social media channels like Youtube etc and also through their local contacts/agents for highly paid jobs in Russia,” the CBI said in a statement.

Following their recruitment, Indian nationals were “trained in combat roles and deployed at front bases in Russia-Ukraine War Zoen against their wishes, thus, putting their lives in grave dangers.”

“It has been ascertained that some of these victims also got grievously injured in the war zone,” the agency said.

It comes amid a domestic labour crisis that has incentivized Indian nationals to seek jobs abroad.

India’s unemployment rate climbed to 8% in February from 6.8% in January, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent think tank, as the country’s economic expansion sharply outpaces job creation.

Moscow and Kyiv have been locked in a more than two-year war of attrition on Ukrainian territory, with Russia introducing strict drafting laws and increasing its maximum age of conscription. Volunteer foreign fighters have joined both sides of the conflict.

Indian and international news outlets have carried reports of Indian citizens being stranded fighting for the Russian army. Reuters on Thursday said Mohammed Asfan from India’s Hyderabad city died while fighting in the Ukraine war, after travelling to Russia to work as an army “helper.”

“We have learnt about the tragic death of an Indian national Shri Mohammed Asfan. We are in touch with the family and Russian authorities. Mission will make efforts to send his mortal remains to India,” the Indian embassy to Russia said on March 6 on social media. It did not state whether Asfan had died while fighting for Russia or on Ukrainian territory.

CNBC has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.

The request for the release of India nationals fighting for Russia pits New Delhi at rare odds against Moscow.

Defying the U.S., India has adopted a staunchly neutral position following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abstaining from voting on successive resolutions put to the U.N. Security Council, U.N. General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Council that denounced Moscow.

India has also offered a rare outlet for Russian seaborne crude volumes, bereft of EU and G7 buyers since sanctions prohibiting its purchase were enforced in late 2022.

The two countries also share close ties as partners in the BRICS economic coalition of emerging markets.

Thailand, the world’s second largest exporter of rice, is encouraging its farmers to plant less of the crop in a bid to save water — a move that could roil rice markets further following India’s export ban.

Thailand is facing a spate of low rainfall. In an effort to conserve water for consumption, the Office of the National Water Resources (ONWR) has called on the country’s farmers to turn to “planting crops that use less water [which] can be harvested quickly.”

“The cumulative rainfall is about 40% less than normal, which is at high risk of water shortage,” secretary-general of the ONWR, Surasri Kidtimonton, said in a statement released by Thailand’s National Water Administration.

Kidtimonton said the country’s water management needs to “focus on water for consumption,” as well as “water for cultivation mainly for perennial crops.”

Perennial crops are crops that grow back after harvest and need not be replanted every year, unlike annual crops. Rice is categorized as an annual crop.

For every kilogram of rough rice grown, an average of 2,500 liters of water is needed. In comparison, alternative crops like millets require between 650 to 1,200 liters of water for the same amount harvested.

Just last month, India banned exports of non-basmati white rice, a move aimed at ensuring “adequate availability” in domestic markets, the government said.

India is the world’s leading rice exporter and accounts for 40% of global rice trade, and the ban is expected to affect millions.

“Global rice price will have the potential to increase further in the event that rice production in Thailand decreases significantly year on year,” Rabobank’s senior analyst Oscar Tjakra told CNBC.

However, it still remains to be seen whether Thai farmers will follow the directive, said Tjakra.

“Thai farmers might still choose to plant rice on the back of the current high global rice export prices environment,” he said.

Rice prices are already hovering at decade highs, in part due to tighter supplies when the staple became an attractive alternative as prices of other major grains surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“Thailand often pushes for water conservation, but it has little effect on the use of water as the water rights system has yet to be developed,” said Jeremy Zwinger, CEO of The Rice Trader told CNBC in an e-mail.

India is poised to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, leapfrogging not just Japan and Germany, but the U.S. too, says Goldman Sachs.

Currently, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany, Japan, China and the U.S.

On top of a burgeoning population, driving the forecast is the country’s progress in innovation and technology, higher capital investment and rising worker productivity, the investment bank wrote in a recent report.

“Over the next two decades, the dependency ratio of India will be one of the lowest among regional economies,” said Goldman Sachs Research’s India economist, Santanu Sengupta.

A country’s dependency ratio is measured by the number of dependents against the total working-age population. A low dependency ratio indicates that there are proportionally more working age adults who are able to support the youth and elderly.

Sengupta added that the key to drawing out the potential of India’s rapidly growing population is to boost the participation of its labor force. And Sengupta forecasts that India will have one of the lowest dependency ratios among large economies for the next 20 years.

“So that really is the window for India to get it right in terms of setting up manufacturing capacity, continuing to grow services, continuing the growth of infrastructure,” he said.

India’s government has placed a priority on infrastructure creation, especially in the setting up of roads and railways. The country’s recent budget aims to continue the 50-year interest free loan programs to state governments in order to spur investments in infrastructure.

Goldman Sachs believes that this is an appropriate time for the private sector to scale up on creating capacity in manufacturing and services in order to generate more jobs and absorb the large labor force.

Spearheading India’s economic trajectory is also its progress in technology and innovation, the investment bank said.

India’s technology industry revenue is expected to increase by $245 billion by the end of 2023, according to Nasscom, India’s non-governmental trade association. That growth will come from across the IT, business process management and software product streams, Nasscom’s report indicated.

Additionally, Goldman predicted capital investment will be another significant driver of India’s growth.

“India’s savings rate is likely to increase with falling dependency ratios, rising incomes, and deeper financial sector development, which is likely to make the pool of capital available to drive further investment,” Goldman’s report stated.

The Achilles heel to the bank’s projection is the labor force participation rate — and whether it increases at the rate which Goldman projects.

“The labor force participation rate in India has declined over the last 15 years,” the report noted, underlining that women’s participation rate in the labor force is “significantly lower” than men’s.

“A mere 20% of all working-age women in India are in employment,” the investment bank wrote in a separate report in June, citing that the low figure could be due to women being primarily engaged in piecework, which is not accounted for by the economic measures of formal employment.

Net exports have also been a drag on India’s growth, because India runs a current account deficit, Goldman said. The bank highlighted, however, that services exports have been cushioning current account balances.

India’s economy is driven by domestic demand, unlike many more export-dependent economies in the region, with up to 60% of its growth mainly attributed to domestic consumption and investments, according to Goldman’s report.

S&P Global and Morgan Stanley have also predicted that India is on course to become the third-largest economy by 2030.

India’s first-quarter GDP expanded 6.1% year-on-year, handily beating Reuters’ expectations of 5% growth. The country’s full-year growth is estimated to come in at 7.2%, compared with 9.1% growth in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Shares of most of the Adani Group companies continued to see sharp losses for a third consecutive trading session as the company attempted to rebut short seller firm Hindenburg’s report, which accused the conglomerate of stock manipulation and an “accounting fraud scheme.”

Adani Enterprises pared some of its earlier gains and closed 4.76% higher in Monday’s session. That surge, amid a sell-off for most other Adani affiliates, came after the group published a lengthy response of more than 400 pages to Hindenburg’s report over the weekend. It said that it will exercise its rights to “pursue remedies” to protect its investors “before all appropriate authorities.”

Adani Enterprises’ stock price remains more than 25% lower in the month-to-date, Refinitiv data showed. It proceeded with a secondary share sale worth $2.5 billion, which was overshadowed by a rout that wiped out a total of $48 billion as of last week’s close.

Founder Gautam Adani, the richest man in Asia and once second only to Elon Musk, fell out of the world’s top five richest to seventh place on the Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

His net worth fell $27.9 billion year-to-date, the index showed. It peaked at $150 billion on Sept. 20, 2022, before falling to to $92.7 billion as of last week’s close, according to the index.

Despite small gains seen in Adani Enterprises, other affiliates of the Adani Group continued to plunge.

Adani Group said Hindenburg’s allegations were a “calculated attack on India, independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and growth story and ambition of India,” in the response it released over the weekend.

The group’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh said in an interview with CNBC-TV18, an affiliate of CNBC, that the value of Adani Enterprises has not changed “simply because” of share price volatility, adding it instead lies in its “ability to incubate new businesses.”

He added that he is confident Adani Enterprises‘ follow-on public offering will be fully subscribed, calling Hindenburg’s report “simply a lie” and the timing of the report “malicious.”

Hindenburg on Monday morning described the group’s response “bloated” and claimed it “ignores every key allegation” against the conglomerate that it raised.

“Fraud cannot be obfuscated by nationalism of a bloated response that ignores every key allegation we raised,” the short seller titled its response to Adani Group.