A World in Transition: 2020–Present
In September 2022 at Samarkand, the prime minister’s assertion that this is not an era of war resonated far beyond its immediate setting. It captured, in a single phrase, the hard reality that dense interdependence renders conflict costly for all, even for those not directly engaged. It functioned as a caution to others contemplating their options and as a reminder of the fragility of a global order long recognized as being in transition but rarely anticipated in its current manifestations. The years since 2020 have been marked by the trauma of the Covid pandemic, the cascading effects of the Ukraine conflict, a new level of violence in West Asia, recurrent climate events, and serious economic stress. Each has aggravated an East–West polarization and a deepening North–South divide, complicating the operating environment for statecraft and intensifying the challenges of globalization for nation states.
This turbulence does not invalidate earlier assessments so much as sharpen them. Written amid uncertainty and unpredictability, the argument that India must navigate a fluid international system now confronts a world where geopolitical shocks are persistent, supply chains politicized, technology geo-strategized, and climate impacts normalized. The signal insight remains: interdependence is inescapable and risk-laden; the incentives to avoid large-scale war are strong but not self-enforcing. In such circumstances, statecraft is not only about deterring conflict but also about managing the continuous frictions of a crowded, connected, and unequal world.
Continuities and Questions for India
The continuity with earlier analysis lies in the recognition that the nation state endures as the central actor in international relations even as it strains under globalization’s pressures. The central takeaway is that the world matters for each person more than ever: vulnerabilities and opportunities alike reach deeper into daily life. This raises, for every Indian, a set of linked questions about India’s value, weight, and prospects—how these are perceived, how they can be augmented, and how they will be tested—in an era where technological, economic, and social change has accelerated to the point of entering uncharted territory. The pace of disruption shortens policy cycles and increases the premium on adaptation.
Given the uncertainty of even the immediate future, a pragmatic way forward is to reflect on how forebears managed uncertainty, using analogies from the past to orient choices in the present. The intent is not to collapse myth into policy, but to extract enduring heuristics of conduct from narratives that have shaped Indian civilizational sensibilities. Two figures most associated with diplomacy in classical traditions—Hanuman in the Ramayana and Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata—offer complementary virtues. Hanuman embodies tireless service undaunted by obstacles; Sri Krishna exemplifies strategic counsel and the art of choice under duress. Together they map qualities essential to a nation’s rise.
A Grammar of Statecraft: Hanuman and Sri Krishna
National ascent is not an event but a sequence of arduous campaigns—material, institutional, and ideational—embedded in civilizational memory. It is an endless exercise of expanding prospects that, like Hanuman’s labors, demands true believers and problem solvers working continuously to overcome uncertainty and long odds. It also requires, in the spirit of Sri Krishna, a capacity for strategic guidance in difficult moments: choosing aims proportionate to means, reconciling principle with prudence, and calibrating action to context.
Sri Krishna’s persona as counsellor underscores that wisdom in policy is not abstract; it is situational. The ability to discern thresholds, time negotiations, finesse red lines, and steady partners when resolve wavers is as relevant to coalition-building and crisis handling today as it was to the narrative arc of the epic. Hanuman’s persona complements this by emphasizing the operational virtues of intelligence, resolve, and improvisation—virtues that translate into the day-to-day craft of diplomacy.
Hanuman: Intelligence, Resolve, and Scaling Solutions
As Lord Rama’s emissary to Lanka, Hanuman demonstrated diplomatic acumen in conditions of deep uncertainty. He secured critical intelligence on the adversary’s dispositions, gaining access to the confined queen Sita and assessing both her situation and morale. Mistreatment by the rakshasas—his tail set on fire—was turned into an opportunity to burn the city, a classic illustration of leveraging setbacks to impose costs and alter the adversary’s calculus. He discerned Ravana’s temperament and advisers, identifying the structural weaknesses of a court divided between sycophancy and sober counsel. Crucially, he recognized the integrity of Ravana’s brother, Vibheeshana, who alone defended him in court, thereby creating the basis for a later defection that Rama could credibly welcome.
The Hanuman example clarifies that diplomacy is not mere mediation. It encompasses accurate reading of competitors, allies, and terrain; the integration of intelligence with character assessment; and the conversion of situational awareness into strategic advantage. Hanuman’s persistence sustained the search for Sita when others wished to abandon it, demonstrating the premium on morale and continuity of effort. His problem-solving improvisation—lifting an entire mountain to retrieve a single life-saving plant—captures the necessity, at times, to scale solutions beyond the initial scope of the problem when speed and reliability are paramount. At war’s end, his delicate mission to inform Bharata of the outcome and to gauge whether Rama would be welcomed back to Ayodhya shows the importance of verification and sensitivity in post-conflict transitions; even just victories require careful reintegration to prevent new fissures.
For contemporary policy, these motifs translate into several operational norms: fusing intelligence with empathy to judge intentions and incentives; converting adverse events into leverage through preparedness and agility; scaling responses to match the tempo of crises rather than their nominal size; and validating end-states before declaring success to avoid strategic overreach.
Angada: Signaling, Parity, and Moral Authority
The monkey-prince Angada offers another diplomatic illustration. Sent by Rama to Ravana’s court, he exploited a unique strength—his leg immovable once planted—to embarrass those who sought to dislodge him, exposing the performative bluster of the court. When Ravana himself reached for the leg and dropped his crown, Angada picked up the crown and returned it to Lord Rama. The gesture asserted parity and moral authority: power is not only material but also reputational and ethical, and legitimacy can invert hierarchies in subtle yet consequential ways.
As an envoy, Angada resisted Ravana’s blandishments and improvised effectively. When denied the seat due to him, he elongated his tail to fashion a chair and placed himself on par with the demon-king, a calculated act of controlled signaling. These mind games were not theatrical excess; they were instruments to set terms, establish thresholds, and protect dignity under pressure.
Modern analogues lie in the choreography of summits, the sequencing of concessions, and the calibration of public messaging. Signaling parity without gratuitous provocation, refusing inducements that corrode strategic clarity, and staging interactions to avoid optical subordination are all part of safeguarding negotiating space. The Angada episode reminds that diplomatic theatre, when disciplined, can serve strategic substance.
Tara: De-escalation and Narrative Management
Tara, wife of the monkey-king Vali, deployed a different diplomatic skill set when confronted with Lakshmana’s anger after Sugriva failed to honor his promise to initiate the search for Sita. As Lakshmana approached Kishkinda twanging his bowstring to signal aggressive intent, Tara was dispatched to parley. She first appeased him—admitting Sugriva’s fickleness—thus acknowledging grievance and lowering the emotional temperature. She then underlined Sugriva’s devotion to Rama and embroidered reality by highlighting that the search had just been set into motion, even if this required taking some liberty with details. The effect was to prevent conflict between the brothers and the vanaras, preserving the coalition and restoring momentum to the common cause.
Tara’s intervention illustrates de-escalation under compressed timelines. Candor used judiciously can disarm; empathic acknowledgment can create space for recalibration; and narrative management—aligning facts, intentions, and immediate measures—can bridge short-term lapses without undermining long-term trust. In contemporary practice, such techniques are central to alliance maintenance, crisis communications, and domestic-political management of international commitments.
Shared Understandings and the Craft of Alignment
Across Hanuman, Angada, and Tara, a shared understanding emerges: effective diplomacy starts with grasping the enormity of the threat, proceeds by actively contributing to solutions, and succeeds when actions are tuned to the broader environment and to one’s own predicament. Intelligence, character assessment, signaling, and narrative management are not silos; they are mutually reinforcing elements of strategy advanced through tactically astute means.
The chapter’s core counsel follows: honoring commitments and upholding principles are essential, yet they must be optimized to context. The Samarkand injunction that this is not an era of war is a principled statement adapted to a world of high interdependence and cascading risk; its practical force lies in how well it is operationalized across theatres and issues. Success depends on aligning the landscape with the game plan—shaping the environment through partnerships, incentives, and norms while calibrating objectives to resources and time. Getting both right, the alignment of context and design, is the prerequisite for effective statecraft in a volatile, interdependent world where the margin for error is thin and the premium on judgment is high.
Interdependence as Duality: Intimate Shocks, Everyday Flows
Globalization has collapsed distance in ways that make crises immediate and intimate. A pathogen emerging in a distant Chinese city reordered daily life for more than two years across continents; an ongoing conflict in Europe transmits inflationary pressures into Indian kitchens; climate events now routinely disrupt supply, mobility and utilities; and terrorism—whether directly struck at home or mimicked by distant inspiration—remains a chronic stressor. The Indian experience of the last decade has, in fact, been punctuated by stressors arising both abroad—travellers stranded during Covid-19, students trapped in Ukraine—and at home, through pandemics, natural disasters and episodic violence.
Yet interdependence is not merely a vector of risk; it is also a platform of opportunity. The Vande Bharat Mission, which evacuated more than seven million people during the pandemic, underscored how deeply embedded Indians are in a global workplace and how central that mobility is to livelihoods and social aspirations. When cross-border flows function, they sustain employment, stabilize prices and underpin services; when they falter, they reveal how essential they have become to contemporary life. The same aviation networks that spread contagion also enabled repatriation and the movement of critical supplies; the same supply chains that fracture under stress are boons when they deliver.
This duality defined India’s Covid-19 role. India was simultaneously a contributor and a beneficiary: dispatching vaccines to nearly a hundred nations while receiving essential ingredients and components from others. The Gulf’s daily consumption depended critically on Indian exports; that reliance continued through lockdowns due to mutual understanding and, in turn, enabled reciprocal support during India’s medical oxygen crisis in 2021. Such episodes illuminate both the risks of concentration and the strategic value of reciprocal interdependence when managed with foresight.
Mobility-Centric Diplomacy and the Indian Global Workplace
Indian diplomacy has responded by elevating the facilitation of mobility and economic participation to a core function. As Indian citizens study, work and invest abroad at historic scale, the state’s external agenda increasingly encompasses:
- Negotiating frameworks that widen access for skilled talent and services.
- Securing stronger protection for workers, including portability of benefits and dispute redress.
- Expanding opportunities for students through recognitions, visas and research pathways.
- Pursuing fairer market access for Indian firms across manufacturing, services and innovation.
These priorities are not discrete; they shape how India configures partnerships, aligns regulatory regimes and sets negotiating red lines. They also anchor a wider developmental strategy: participation in global value chains, access to capital and technology, and the internationalization of Indian platforms collectively determine employment, incomes and social mobility at home.
De-risking the Economy: From Just-in-Time to Just-in-Case
The most salient economic lesson of recent shocks is the fragility of over-optimized, geographically concentrated production. The ‘just-in-time’ model minimized buffers, tolerating single points of failure in pursuit of marginal efficiency. Under stress, this approach proved brittle. A ‘just-in-case’ mindset—building redundancy, diversifying sourcing and distributing manufacturing capacity—is now integral to national security.
For India, this is not a retreat but an opportunity to board, decisively, the proverbial bus of manufacturing. Reforms in ease-of-doing-business and targeted production-linked incentives have begun to reduce entry barriers and tilt decisions toward India in boardrooms recalibrating their risk maps. The objective is diversification, not autarky: de-risk supply chains by widening the set of suppliers and locations, deepen trusted trade corridors, and maintain flexibility across markets to absorb shocks without severing mutually beneficial flows. In practice, this calls for sector-specific strategies, infrastructure investment, coordinated standards and trade facilitation, and an unblinking assessment of where India must build indigenous capacity to avoid strategic chokeholds.
The Digital Domain: Sovereignty, Trust and CET
Digitalization has accelerated dramatically, and India stands out for the scale, inclusion and efficiency of its public digital infrastructure—from payments and identity to direct benefit transfers across food, finance, health, pensions and social protection. Efficiency, however, compounds new risks. Data privacy and security, the locus of data storage and processing, and asymmetries in platform power have become questions of political sociology as much as of regulation. Where data resides and who harvests it are now determinants of sovereignty.
The post-2020 policy turn reflects an awareness of accumulated exposure. A ‘clean app’ approach, the privileging of ‘trusted providers’ and ‘trusted geographies,’ and stronger data governance frameworks signal a new compact between openness and resilience. As artificial intelligence and critical and emerging technologies (CET) move to the heart of competitiveness and security—and as greener, cleaner energy and mobility create fresh dependencies around minerals, batteries, semiconductors and rare earths—the concentration risks of the old economy are being reproduced in the new. Indian strategy thus pivots on two axes: build domestic capacity where it is core or sensitive, and collaborate selectively to co-develop and co-produce where scale, speed and standards-setting require partners. The point is not isolation but insulation: preserve room for maneuver while shaping rules and architectures that will govern the next technological order.
Weaponization of Interdependence and Great-Power Competition
Domains once considered benign—trade, connectivity, debt, resources, tourism, even education—have been routinely leveraged for political pressure. The Ukraine conflict intensified and normalized these tendencies, bringing financial sanctions, technology controls, service restrictions and asset seizures to a breathtaking scale. The result is a world where comparative advantage is frequently outmatched by what might be termed ‘unrestricted economics’: the gaming of global rules and regimes to prolong advantages or impose costs.
This sharpening of great-power competition amplifies stresses across supply chains, finance, information and infrastructure. It also renders complacency untenable. States now stress-test their exposures to chokepoints, rehearse contingency plans for payment and logistics disruptions, and seek buffers and alternatives before crises hit. India, given its size and developmental imperatives, must convert these risks into opportunities: attracting relocated manufacturing, partnering in trusted technology ecosystems, and leveraging its market to shape fairer terms. But it must do so while navigating resistance from vested interests, the frictions of political correctness in international discourse, and pressures to align with external models that may not serve its societal compact.
Strategic Autonomy Recast: Atmanirbhar Bharat and Trusted Networks
Strategic autonomy has returned to the center of statecraft, redefined for an era where interdependence is both structural and contested. The contemporary meaning is not aloofness but capability: ensuring national competence in core and sensitive areas so that choices remain sovereign under stress. India’s domestic articulation is atmanirbhar Bharat—self-reliance as a strategy of empowerment rather than isolation. In the digital domain, this is mirrored by trusted providers and geographies, alongside standards and procurement choices that reduce coercive leverage by others.
‘Back to the future’ is an apt description of world politics: interdependence remains real, but over-optimistic expectations from globalization, widening intra- and inter-societal inequalities, and new geopolitical equations have activated counter-forces. When challenges to the distributional skew of benefits were voiced, defenders of the old model found their case harder to sustain. Meanwhile, the political expression of globalization has provoked a backlash: self-appointed custodians of correctness—often with visible stakes in preferred outcomes—have policed debates in ways that sit uneasily with democratic mandates. Some states have exported aspects of their own model, generating a resurgence of political and social identities that cut across the logic of economic flows. Reconciling these is difficult because the moving parts span values, interests and technology.
Nations are recalibrating for diverse reasons: regime security, protection of technology leads or ways of life, and the desire to limit exposure while building domestic capabilities. The globalized system that emerges will likely be fractured and selectively disengaged in contentious domains, even as it remains interlinked in others. For India, intelligent planning means anticipating these fractures, building cushions and options, and ensuring that autonomy and alignment are complementary rather than contradictory.
Policy Implications for Indian Foreign Policy and Diplomacy
- Build resilient economic linkages: De-risk supply chains through ‘just-in-case’ diversification; use ease-of-doing-business and production-linked incentives to expand manufacturing; harden logistics and standards; and cultivate multiple, trusted trade corridors while retaining market flexibility.
- Institutionalize mobility-focused diplomacy: Negotiate talent mobility compacts, worker protection protocols, social security portability and student pathways; embed consular readiness for large-scale evacuations, as with the Vande Bharat Mission; and align visa and qualification regimes to the Indian skills ladder.
- Reinforce digital sovereignty and trust: Enact robust data residency, privacy and cybersecurity norms; operationalize ‘clean app’ policies and ‘trusted providers’/‘trusted geographies’; and shape AI and CET standards through selective, co-development partnerships that safeguard core capabilities.
- Leverage and reciprocate strategic interdependence: Consolidate critical ties with regions like the Gulf that are vital for daily consumption baskets and crisis logistics; use India’s contributions—from vaccines to food security—to cement goodwill that translates into support during emergencies, as in the 2021 oxygen crisis.
- Prepare for the weaponization of interdependence: Stress-test exposure to financial sanctions, technology restrictions, connectivity chokepoints and asset seizures; develop alternative payment rails, diversified logistics routes, and legal defensibility of assets; and cultivate redundancy in critical imports.
- Operationalize strategic autonomy: Advance atmanirbhar Bharat in core and sensitive sectors, combining domestic capacity-building with targeted international cooperation and technology co-production; use procurement and standards to deepen trusted ecosystems without foreclosing openness where risks are manageable.
- Engage in norm-shaping and narrative defense: Assert democratic legitimacy and sovereign choices against external custodians of correctness; build coalitions to contest ‘unrestricted economics’ and to defend open, fair, development-friendly rules; and deploy India’s digital public goods as a persuasive template.
- Anticipate a fractured order: Plan for selective disengagement in contentious domains; diversify partnerships to avoid binary dependencies; and convert competitive pressures into opportunities by offering scale, stability and trust to firms and states reallocating risk post-Ukraine.
In sum, globalization today is both inescapable and malleable. India’s task is to manage exposure without shrinking possibility—to design a portfolio of risks and rewards that serves its developmental needs, preserves strategic autonomy, and equips its diplomacy to navigate, and shape, an interdependent world under stress.
Systemic Rebalancing and Great-Power Dynamics
The post-2008 environment has accelerated a redistribution of power that is more than cyclical; it is structural and cumulative. The most visible expression of this shift has been the recalibration of United States engagement. The decision to terminate the “forever war” in Afghanistan was intended to reconfigure how American interests are pursued—by privileging over-the-horizon capabilities, economic statecraft, and alliance networking over large expeditionary commitments. Yet, the manner and optics of withdrawal also generated an unintended perception of weakness. Subsequent policy signals—renewed alliance consultations, sharper deterrence messaging in the Indo-Pacific and Europe, and the integration of economic and technological controls into grand strategy—constitute an ongoing correction of that perception.
The rise of China is the defining system-shaping variable of our time, largely proceeding outside the normative and institutional constructs that framed earlier ascents. It challenges analytical frameworks that presume linear integration into status quo regimes. However, this is not producing a simple zero-sum outcome: the diffusion of power has created space for other actors to accrue agency—some primarily regional, others with broader potential. India is increasingly perceived as belonging to the latter category, with the capacity and legitimacy to contribute to the rebalancing in multiple theatres.
The war in Ukraine has reinforced Russia’s strategic salience by underlining its enduring military-industrial and energy weight, veto power, and capacity to disrupt regional equilibria. Simultaneously, it has catalysed Europe’s strategic mobilisation: rising defence outlays, institutional expansion of NATO, and debate over strategic autonomy. These movements add layers to an already complex matrix in which alignments are issue-specific, coalitions are fluid, and the boundaries between economic and security domains are porous.
Developmental Headwinds and India’s Dual Imperative
Global volatility is magnified by the economic stresses of the developing world: debt overhangs, pandemic scarring, climate shocks, food and energy price spikes, and fragmented supply chains. Old problems—public health capacity, educational gaps, and infrastructure deficits—are colliding with new ones such as data governance, technology bifurcation, and climate finance shortfalls. The net effect is a future that appears more uncertain and insecure for states and societies alike.
This landscape demands greater diplomatic energy and political creativity. Beyond classical interest maximisation, states with scale and legitimacy face a dual imperative: to harmonise the pursuit of national interests with responsibility for the collective good. For India, this responsibility is not abstract. A sizeable vulnerable population segment makes external shocks immediately consequential for welfare and growth. Mitigating the impact of negative global trends is therefore a first-order national priority, and it intersects with a second: articulating and advancing the concerns of the Global South on food and energy security, debt relief, resilient supply chains, and equitable access to technology and climate finance.
India’s domestic commitment to inclusive growth naturally shapes an inclusive external posture. The logic is straightforward: policies that reduce domestic vulnerability—through public digital infrastructure, targeted welfare delivery, and health resilience—are complemented by international initiatives that seek to cool overheated geopolitics, stabilise markets, and socialise responsibility. De-escalation, however, is not instantaneous; it relies on perseverance, coalition-building, and the patient aggregation of small gains across issue areas.
Institutions, Norms, and the 1945 Order
Many structural challenges flow from the outcomes of the Second World War and the institutions fashioned in 1945. The normative underpinnings of that order were reinforced by centuries of Western domination, whose intellectual and cultural influence persists in agenda-setting, epistemic authority, and the design of international mechanisms. A recurrent feature of international politics is the effort to “freeze the moment” to one’s advantage: to cherry-pick particular arrangements as the normal, to present contingent mechanisms as immutable, and to universalise specific historical experiences as general rules.
This path dependence has benefited some actors for eight decades, but it increasingly misaligns global decision-making with contemporary democratic and demographic realities. Reform in the multilateral domain is therefore not a rhetorical posture but a systemic necessity. For India, advocacy of change centers on representative and effective institutions—expanding decision-making in the United Nations system, updating Bretton Woods governance to reflect current economic weights, revisiting standard-setting processes in trade and technology, and building voice for developing countries in norm entrepreneurship. The goal is not disruption for its own sake, but the renovation of legitimacy and performance in a system that must accommodate new power distributions.
Strategic Culture and Historical Baggage
Strategic culture is shaped by memory as much as by interest, and memory can become both a guide and a prison. The 1962 war with China still resonates in public consciousness, sustaining a residue of suspicion that can cloud judgement even when circumstances evolve. Hesitations concerning the West also carry the imprint of subcontinental crises—1947, 1965, and 1971—when perceived partiality or sanctioning behaviour by Western powers influenced Indian assessments of reliability and autonomy. Such legacies explain caution but should not ossify policy.
On the positive ledger, the 1991 economic reforms reoriented India’s trajectory so decisively that their very success dulled the urgency to build further. Until roughly a decade ago, there was insufficient momentum behind strengthening manufacturing ecosystems, accelerating technological capability, and improving social indicators at scale. The present stage of India’s rise requires the courage to revisit past assumptions, to conduct an objective audit of successes and shortcomings—at home and abroad—and to draw the right lessons without slipping into romanticism about earlier choices or reflexive repudiation. This disciplined reassessment is not political distancing; it is the methodological rigour required for strategic adaptation.
Tools and Postures for Influence
India today has greater capacity to shape the strategic landscape and should employ it with greater frequency and sophistication. Conceptually, the Indo-Pacific has reframed maritime geography in ways that align with India’s interests, connecting theatres from the eastern coast of Africa to the Pacific littoral. Mechanistically, platforms such as the Quad and the I2U2, alongside minilaterals and functional coalitions, add flexibility and redundancy to statecraft. Normatively and developmentally, initiatives like the International Solar Alliance demonstrate how public goods provision can translate into influence and partnerships, particularly with the Global South.
Addressing the China challenge will remain a central test. It requires reversing past neglect of border infrastructure, ensuring credible deployments where necessary, integrating theatre awareness with logistics depth, and using diplomacy to manage competition while preventing inadvertent escalation. Strategic balance will also be shaped beyond the Himalayas: by leveraging shifts in global supply chains, participating in trusted technology ecosystems, securing critical minerals and maritime chokepoints, and aligning—with due caution—on standards for emerging technologies where open, secure, and interoperable architectures are at stake.
Economic statecraft must be equally discerning. The choice of Free Trade Agreements and associated frameworks should be guided by concrete national interest: clear market access gains, defensible rules of origin, realistic adjustment timelines for domestic industry, and safeguards for regulatory autonomy in areas like data, subsidies, and public procurement. Selective interdependence—deep where it strengthens resilience and competitiveness, shallow where it risks asymmetric vulnerability—should inform engagements in goods, services, capital, and technology. Minilateral and sectoral arrangements can provide incrementality without locking India into unfavourable path dependencies.
Refreshing Analysis and Policy for a Turbulent World
In a turbulent environment, the premium on adaptive strategy and institutional reform will only rise. This entails periodically refreshing threat and opportunity assessments; aligning resources with priorities through medium-term planning; upgrading diplomatic, military, and economic institutions for speed and coordination; and embedding feedback loops that connect domestic development goals with external commitments. Above all, policy must continually calibrate the balance between national imperatives—security, growth, technological capability—and contributions to the collective good, which enhance India’s legitimacy, broaden its coalition space, and ultimately reinforce its strategic autonomy.
National Security as the Primary Test of Governance
In any polity, national security constitutes the most fundamental obligation of the state. In India, historical experience has made this primacy especially salient. Repeated wars, persistent cross-border terrorism, episodic border standoffs, and systemic shocks over the last seventy-five years have imprinted a mass awareness that leadership is ultimately judged by its capacity to anticipate, manage, and resolve crises while ensuring delivery on the ground. This expectation shapes the incentives of Indian decision-makers and the operating logic of institutions: foreign policy is not an abstraction but a protective function that must reduce risk exposure, enhance resilience, and maintain the credibility of the state’s will and capability.
A substantial share of India’s external engagement is therefore oriented to preparing for, obviating, mitigating, and responding to threats. This includes building deterrence, diversifying partnerships, hardening infrastructure, and reforming procedures so that long-standing vulnerabilities are not cyclically exploited in a competitive international environment. Strategic culture, in this view, is less about declaratory posture and more about institutionalized readiness, adaptive learning, and measurable outcomes that reduce the nation’s security deficit over time.
Securing the Union: Borders, Jammu & Kashmir, and Frontier Development
The consolidation of internal sovereignty and the integrity of borders have been recurrent themes in India’s security policy. August 2019 represented a political surprise in this continuum when the constitutional question surrounding Article 370 was decisively settled. The mainstreaming of Jammu & Kashmir—long argued to be overdue—removed an anomaly that many believed had been sustained by entrenched vested interests. The policy intent was to align governance, rights, and development with the national norm, on the premise that socio-economic integration, legal clarity, and the reduction of special dispensations would contribute to stability, investment, and improved security outcomes.
The borderlands demand equally sustained attention. Effective border security is a hard, long-duration task that must combine military posture with developmental statecraft. The Vibrant Villages Programme exemplifies this logic. By investing in physical connectivity, digital access, basic services, and livelihoods in frontier habitations, the programme seeks to anchor populations, deter depopulation, and create local ecosystems that support surveillance, rapid response, and economic opportunity. This approach treats border communities not as buffers but as stakeholders in national strategy, thereby aligning human security with territorial security.
The Normalization of Risk: Economics, Technology, and the New Security Agenda
Interdependence has intensified the penetration of the “world” into daily life, producing threats that emanate from the apparently normal. Digital systems can be exploited for cyber intrusions, disinformation, and data exfiltration; financial networks can be misused for illicit flows, sanctions evasion, and strategic coercion; ideological currents can radicalize or polarize; mobility can enable transnational crime and accelerate the spread of disruption. National security must adapt to these modalities by fusing external and internal intelligence, regulating critical infrastructure, strengthening legal toolkits, and building public–private trust in domains where the state is not the sole operator.
The linkages between international economics and national security have consequently deepened. Supply-chain concentration, export controls, standards-setting, and payments architecture now function as instruments of statecraft. Geo-economic strategy—de-risking without decoupling, securing critical minerals, protecting emerging technologies, and safeguarding digital public goods—must be integrated into foreign policy. The challenge is to operate effectively in an interdependent system where new practices—data localization, trusted vendor frameworks, cross-border insolvency regimes, or investment-screening mechanisms—redefine both opportunity and exposure.
Continuity and Change: Power, Influence, and the Contest of Ideas
India’s external outlook reflects a layered relationship between continuity and change. Enduring threads—strategic autonomy, plural partnerships, and a preference for multilateral legitimacy—coexist with the compulsions of a transformed environment: great-power competition, technological bifurcation, and the securitization of the commons. Across these shifts, a constant objective remains: to build material power and convert it into influence, not only for national advancement but also to contribute to collective goods—regional stability, climate action, health security, and resilient connectivity.
The international arena is also a competition of ideas, values, and culture that together articulate visions of the future. Civilizational confidence, democratic practice, and cultural assets inform India’s soft power, while technological norms and regulatory preferences shape the operating system of globalization. Old and new facets coexist more dynamically than before: national sovereignty interacts with transnational networks; traditional diplomacy overlaps with multi-stakeholder governance in cyber, space, and health. Because these dynamics now permeate the lives of citizens—affecting jobs, privacy, prices, and mobility—there is a civic obligation to understand the “games that nations play.” Public literacy in international affairs is not a luxury in a democracy; it is a prerequisite for resilient policy.
Foreign policy in this setting bears direct, personal implications. It protects citizens abroad, secures evacuation and relief in crises, widens educational and professional pathways, and opens markets for entrepreneurs. It also entails transactional instruments—negotiated access, technology co-development, or reciprocal mobility—alongside collaborative undertakings such as joint research, standards-setting, and development partnerships. Economic and technological diplomacy thus straddle both deal-making and institution-building.
India in a Higher Orbit: Perceptions, Responsibilities, and the G20 Moment
A growing international perception holds that India is moving into a higher orbit. This is attributed to shifts in political standing, expanding economic weight, advancing technological capabilities, widening cultural influence, and the successes of a globally networked diaspora. The aggregate effect is reputational credit: recent crisis management, developmental delivery, and measured assertiveness have enhanced external confidence in India’s capacity to act. Some observers contend that the current leadership has shaken up India in ways that were not widely foreseen, unlocking administrative bandwidth and public ambition. Yet the journey is incomplete: infrastructure gaps, institutional inertia, capacity constraints, and uneven human development remain tasks for sustained effort.
As global turbulence increases, major issues—climate mitigation and adaptation, pandemic preparedness, secure digital commons, Indo-Pacific stability, and sustainable development finance—cannot be effectively addressed without India’s contribution or participation. This is a moment to reset terms of engagement with the world: to assume greater responsibilities, articulate norms, and shape regimes commensurate with national capabilities and the expectations of partners, especially in the Global South.
India’s G20 presidency illustrated how opportunity can be translated into influence. By tabling new ideas, shaping the agenda, and negotiating consensus amid geopolitical fractures, India helped fashion action plans on digital public infrastructure, disaster resilience, development finance, and sustainable lifestyles. The promotion of G20 enlargement—bringing an additional Southern voice into the tent—signaled a willingness to recalibrate global governance in more representative directions. The presidency thus demonstrated that agenda-setting, coalition-building, and delivery can be combined to make the most of the moment.
Generational Stakes and the Confidence of Bharat
Overcoming constraints requires more than policy design; it demands shedding habits that no longer serve national purpose, anticipating black swans, and building institutions for agility. For young Indians at the threshold of careers, the outlook warrants confidence: a state with determination, vision, and perseverance is increasingly capable of creating platforms on which individual talent can compete globally. For those who have witnessed the arc of the last seventy-five years, the current transformation—and its tangible outcomes—merit recognition. Amid a new era of turbulence, India matters more, both as a stabilizer and as a source of solutions.
With the right leadership, storms can be weathered and opportunities seized. That conviction—rooted in experience and projected into strategy—has become a defining characteristic of Bharat.