Grand Strategy: Time to reset the rules of the game in South Asia
6 months, 1 week ago

Grand Strategy: Time to reset the rules of the game in South Asia

Hindustan Times  

By inviting the leaders of key neighbouring countries to the swearing-in ceremony of the new council of ministers, New Delhi has made its intentions clear: It plans to double down on efforts to engage the neighbourhood and regain its influence. South Asian government leaders at PM Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in Delhi The fact is that China has changed the rules of the game in South Asia. In the face of this new reality, India’s strategic response has been to course-correct its South Asia policy, and play catch-up with China. Moreover, the old rules incentivise South Asian States to use China to balance India and bargain for more — as States caught between two powers often do. The structure of the balance of power in South Asia today is shaped by India, China and the other South Asian States; and all things considered, it is disadvantageous to India.

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History of this topic

India focuses on ‘Act East’ policy in first 100 days of Modi 3.0
3 months, 2 weeks ago

India focuses on ‘Act East’ policy in first 100 days of Modi 3.0

Hindustan Times  

India’s ‘Act East’ policy has been put on the front burner in the first hundred days of Modi 3.0 with the President, Prime Minister and External Affairs Minister all travelling to South-East Asia to cement bilateral cooperation with ASEAN countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Singapore counterpart Lawrence Wong visited AEM Holdings Ltd, a lead player in semiconductors. In …

A new footing in South Asia for India-Russia friendship
4 months ago

A new footing in South Asia for India-Russia friendship

Hindustan Times  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s July visit to Moscow and this week’s trip to Ukraine revived the debate on what role Russia plays in India’s evolving strategic balance. But a closer look shows that — except for Pakistan — Russia is also playing a rising role in South Asia, aligned with India’s Neighbourhood First policy from Afghanistan to Myanmar and from …

Opportune moment to reset relations: China Daily editorial
6 months, 2 weeks ago

Opportune moment to reset relations: China Daily editorial

China Daily  

Indian and Chinese national flags flutter side by side at the Raisina hills in New Delhi, India, in this file photo. With India's parliamentary election result hopefully reducing the jingoism in India, there is no need for the territorial dispute in the border region between the two neighbors to be hyped up and allowed to define the overall bilateral ties. …

India’s growing neighbourhood dilemmas
1 year ago

India’s growing neighbourhood dilemmas

The Hindu  

The proverbial Achilles heel of Indian foreign policy continues to be its neighbourhood. But South Asia is not only not keen to jump on the bandwagon of the India story, but it is New Delhi’s dilemmas, the causes In general, there are three types of dilemmas that India faces in the neighbourhood. The second type of dilemma India faces in …

DC Edit | Asian Games: India puts sport above politics
1 year, 2 months ago

DC Edit | Asian Games: India puts sport above politics

Deccan Chronicle  

There was every evidence that China is the superpower dominating the Asian continent as it unfurled its capabilities in hosting another spectacular sports event with dazzling lights, cutting-edge technology and breathtaking synchronisation. Remarkably, its President and supremo Xi Jinping did not add word power to the dazzling lights of the Asian Games Opening Ceremony, being content simply to formally declare …

Asian Games 2023: China hands India humiliating 5-1 defeat in tournament opener
1 year, 3 months ago

Asian Games 2023: China hands India humiliating 5-1 defeat in tournament opener

India TV News  

Team India got off to an abysmal start in their 19th Asian Games campaign as the men's football team was subjected to a 1-5 surrender against a strong China side in their opening encounter. Rahul KP was the lone goal-scorer for India when he helped the Men in Blue equalise in the stoppage time after the first half, however, China …

DC Edit | Ignore China's pinpricks, make G-20 big success
1 year, 3 months ago

DC Edit | Ignore China's pinpricks, make G-20 big success

Deccan Chronicle  

China is at its old games again but its cartographic “expansionism” encompassing Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, Taiwan and the South China Sea region has a message that may be bigger than the one to India for rejecting its overtures of normalising ties before resolving the LAC situation. As China’s economy tanks, with its over-reliance on real estate representing about 30 …

India coach Igor Stimac urges PM Modi for Asian Games green signal
1 year, 5 months ago

India coach Igor Stimac urges PM Modi for Asian Games green signal

The Hindu  

India men’s football team head coach, on Monday, requested the intervention of prime minister Narendra Modi and sports minister Anurag Thakur to allow the Under-23 side to take part in the upcoming Asian Games 2022 in China. “Honourable Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi ji, I am not sure if someone would have briefed you or updated you about the Indian …

India’s China strategy needs to be debated
1 year, 7 months ago

India’s China strategy needs to be debated

The Hindu  

The Chinese have a knack for making headlines on India’s borders. Zhang Yongpan, of the Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, claims that China’s move to “standardise” names in Zangnan “completely falls within China’s sovereignty and it is also in accordance with the regulation on the administration of geographical names”. Happymon Jacob has identified …

The horizon for India beyond the G-20, SCO summits
1 year, 7 months ago

The horizon for India beyond the G-20, SCO summits

The Hindu  

India’s year-long presidency of the G-20, and leadership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, should not blind us to the persisting challenges the nation faces, due to a concatenation of circumstances. This is only likely to reduce room for manoeuvre on India’s part, at a time when China is launching several other regional initiatives to checkmate India in the Indian Ocean …

India’s dilemmas in an Asian century
1 year, 11 months ago

India’s dilemmas in an Asian century

The Hindu  

If 2022 was a momentous year for India and the rest of the world, 2023 is likely to further sharpen the geopolitical fault lines set in motion by the previous year. The geopolitical and economic rise of Asia coincides with several regional and global developments which have the potential to undermine the stability and prosperity India had hoped an Asian …

Big Picture: Lessons from PLA Tawang incursions and China’s global ambitions
2 years ago

Big Picture: Lessons from PLA Tawang incursions and China’s global ambitions

Hindustan Times  

Nine days after China sanctimoniously asked India to adhere to 1993-1996 bilateral border agreements and uphold peace and tranquillity on the LAC while opposing India-US military exercises in Auli, the aggressive PLA changed the goal post yet again and transgressed across the border in Tawang sector on December 9. This intellectual section, of which a large number belong to the …

The role of the ‘China Test’ in India’s grand strategy
2 years ago

The role of the ‘China Test’ in India’s grand strategy

The Hindu  

If principal contradictions must determine strategic priorities, New Delhi should decide what its principal contradiction is. If so, I would argue that major decisions in New Delhi’s strategic decision matrix should pass the China test, which amounts to asking and answering a rather straightforward question: “does x or y decision/development/relationship help deal with the China challenge, or not?” Decision-makers must …

Modi and Jaishankar have become to foreign policy what Rao and Manmohan were once to economy
2 years, 2 months ago

Modi and Jaishankar have become to foreign policy what Rao and Manmohan were once to economy

Firstpost  

The Gulf War had left India in a precarious situation. When one revisits the year 1991 in India’s history and gathers thoughts on its significance for India’s destiny three decades later, there is an uncanny resemblance that is found between Rao-Manmohan combination and Modi-Jaishankar partnership — but the latter is in the domain of foreign policy. Since then a new …

Aakar Patel | Can the whole of South Asia work as one to develop itself?
2 years, 3 months ago

Aakar Patel | Can the whole of South Asia work as one to develop itself?

Deccan Chronicle  

We like to think India is in some way different from the rest of South Asia, but we’re really not. In 1990, just 32 years ago, Bangladesh’s life expectancy at birth was 56 years and mean years of schooling 3.3 years. The world average was 72 years of life expectancy at birth and 8.6 years of schooling, meaning that with …

How to end the China dispute
2 years, 3 months ago

How to end the China dispute

Hindustan Times  

China’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it is now clear that relations between Beijing and New Delhi are at their lowest point in many decades. It is disingenuous for Chinese leaders to talk of a positive momentum in bilateral relations when China has ramped up the construction of dual-use infrastructure not just in the Ladakh sector but also along stretches …

Head-on | How a rising India can counter China’s geopolitical challenge
2 years, 4 months ago

Head-on | How a rising India can counter China’s geopolitical challenge

Firstpost  

China’s pre-occupation with Taiwan over the next few years along with its continuing economic slowdown presents India with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebalance the geopolitical odds in its favour Indian policymakers have several economic, geopolitical and military levers to counter the challenge China poses to India’s orderly rise as a regional power today and as a global power in the …

Instability in South Asia Spells Trouble for China
2 years, 7 months ago

Instability in South Asia Spells Trouble for China

The Diplomat  

It’s been one hell of a month in South Asia. As discussed in separate articles later in this issue, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have both seen major protests, with a full-on change of government in Islamabad and Sri Lanka’s rulers teetering on the edge. The new developments in South Asia are reshaping the diplomatic landscape and China’s interests will inevitably …

Can India re-imagine South Asia
2 years, 7 months ago

Can India re-imagine South Asia

The Hindu  

After weeks of protests, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down this month, but that is not the only big political non-electoral change in the neighbourhood in 2021-22. Then we had a similar kind of global economic shock triggered by the oil embargoes which hurt practically every South Asian country, including India. On the other hand, China has started …

India’s New Game Plan to Tackle China Challenge is a Mix of Bluntness & Studied Reticence
3 years, 1 month ago

India’s New Game Plan to Tackle China Challenge is a Mix of Bluntness & Studied Reticence

News 18  

India’s rising China challenge is now being more openly acknowledged by our armed forces in public. CDS Rawat’s Plain Talk on China Threat General Rawat, the Chief of Defence Staff, has been particularly outspoken on the national security challenges facing India. In a recent public lecture he called China’s ambitions and aspirations to global power an “omnipresent danger” to regional …

Look Central: How India Can Safeguard Her Interests in Taliban-run Afghanistan
3 years, 3 months ago

Look Central: How India Can Safeguard Her Interests in Taliban-run Afghanistan

News 18  

In the last few years, India has conducted bilateral dialogues with Central Asia, the most recent one being the 2nd India-Central Asia Dialogue in October 2020. Contrastingly, India’s trade with Central Asia is at a meagre US $2 billion, despite the CARs being rich in energy and mineral resources such as oil, natural gas, uranium, gold, silver, etc. The 2012 …

On China, Modi returns to the Indira era
3 years, 6 months ago

On China, Modi returns to the Indira era

Hindustan Times  

China is a greater power than India. India has typically taken two routes to manage the power gap — the Jawaharlal Nehru approach and the Indira Gandhi approach. Though India’s China policy has always been a blend of these two, negotiation has dominated in two eras and balancing in another two eras. India’s China policy shifted back towards a Nehruvian …

The surge of geopolitics in South Asia’s power trade
3 years, 9 months ago

The surge of geopolitics in South Asia’s power trade

The Hindu  

India has released new rules governing the trade of electricity across its borders. They define the contours of the South Asian electricity market, placing clear limits on who can buy from and sell into India. In masterful legalese, the rules strongly discourage the participation of plants owned by a company situated in “a third country with whom India shares a …

Stanly Johny reviews The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World, by S. Jaishankar
4 years, 2 months ago

Stanly Johny reviews The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World, by S. Jaishankar

The Hindu  

The global order is undergoing changes. S. Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, seeks to address this question in his book, The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World. “This is a time to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play,” writes Jaishankar, who was India’s Ambassador in both Washington and Beijing before becoming the Foreign …

India must take the lead in South Asia | Analysis
4 years, 3 months ago

India must take the lead in South Asia | Analysis

Hindustan Times  

With the privilege of being the region’s largest economy by far comes the power to make a difference. In a just-released report from the Centre for Policy Research, India as the Engine of Recovery for South Asia: A Multi-Sectoral Plan for India’s COVID-19 Diplomacy in the Region that we have co-authored with our colleagues, Shyam Saran and Sandeep Bhardwaj, we …

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