Corrosion as the New Mode of Competition

The contemporary strategic environment is characterized less by the exclusive use of open force and more by a slow, diffuse process best described as “corrosion.” Under this rubric, states and non-state actors leverage interdependence, information flows, economic linkages and social vectors to infiltrate, influence and degrade rivals over time. Corrosion does not look like traditional attrition on a battlefield; rather it accumulates in the everyday—through supply chains, technological dependencies, targeted propaganda, covert influence, litigation, regulatory capture, and incremental erosion of institutional resilience. In a world marked by constraints, cross-cutting vulnerabilities and cascading risks, the dominant modality of competition is therefore often clandestine, indirect and cumulative.

This shift demands rethinking both threat perception and defence architecture. Defensive frameworks premised solely on policing, law-and-order, intelligence-based arrest-and-investigate models, counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency doctrines, hardened borders, or the classic use of military force are inadequate when the adversary seeks to corrode a polity’s capacities from within. The policy implication is explicit: states must cultivate adaptive, multi-dimensional defences that recognise and immunise against low-salience, high-impact processes that operate through everyday channels of globalization.

Reappraising Security in an Interdependent Age

Interdependence and interpenetration alter the calculus of power. Where power once correlated primarily with territorial control and kinetic capacity, modernity elevates relational variables: who controls crucial information flows, who shapes technological standards, who sets the narratives that others accept as legitimate. These variables interact with traditional instruments of statecraft and can amplify or blunt their effect.

Two consequences follow. First, conventional “hard” power retains relevance but is insufficient by itself: warfare is increasingly a hybrid of kinetic and non-kinetic instruments, and successful strategic policy must knit together military, economic, informational and institutional levers. Second, the process of globalization can create systemic vulnerabilities—if unrecognised, these vulnerabilities may be exploited to such effect that even powerful states find themselves compromised. India, like other nations, must therefore wake to the reality that the daily rhythms of global exchange can be vectors of strategic harm as well as benefit; failure to adapt practices and institutions to that reality risks cumulative compromise “beyond redemption.”

Knowledge, Intelligence and the New Metrics of Power

The rise of the knowledge economy reconfigures the currency of strategic advantage. Cognitive capabilities—expertise, data analytics, predictive modelling, the ability to maintain informational superiority—are now central metrics of power. In many competitive contexts, the “smartest” actor gains disproportionate leverage: timely, accurate analysis can impose choices on an adversary, pre-empt danger, and convert tactical opportunities into strategic successes.

Consequently the premium on intelligence and assessment increases. Intelligence ceases to be merely a tactical adjunct to operations; it becomes a strategic trump card. In critical moments—whether in diplomacy, crisis bargaining, cyber-conflict or contested information environments—superior understanding often decides outcomes. This entails not only investment in collection capabilities (technical, human and open-source) but also in institutional processes for assessment, decision-making under uncertainty, and mechanisms that ensure analytical findings translate into policy action.

Lessons from the Ramayana: Informationized Warfare

The epics of India offer conceptual analogues for contemporary informational competition. The Ramayana, read as a repository of strategic wisdom, supplies multiple vignettes in which knowledge, counsel and inside information reshape the battlefield. These classical episodes demonstrate three enduring propositions: first, that informationised warfare is not a modern novelty; second, that actionable intelligence can be decisive; and third, that narrative and reputation are themselves instruments of power.

Indrajit’s psy‑ops and the manufacture of uncertainty
The episode in which Indrajit conjures a virtual Sita and stages her death before the monkey army exemplifies deliberate psychological operations. By creating a simulacrum designed to induce despair and confusion, Indrajit sought to manipulate the enemy’s will to fight and thereby complete an asuric sacrifice that would render him invincible. The tactic is recognisably modern: a carefully crafted falsehood, amplified in the appropriate context, can produce strategic paralysis disproportionate to its material means.
The counter to this operation was not merely brute force but understanding the intent and taking targeted, timely measures to prevent its fruition. Vibheeshana’s comprehension of Indrajit’s plan and his counsel to Rama to send Lakshmana to Nikumbhila was the pivotal corrective. The consequence—Lakshmana’s extended engagement with Indrajit and the latter’s ultimate defeat by the Indrastra—underscores that intelligence-led, preventive action neutralised a seemingly existential threat.
Vibheeshana: the strategic utility and risks of defectors
Vibheeshana’s defection is a sustained case study in the rewards and perils of assimilating individuals from adversarial ranks. His divergence from Ravana’s polity, his provision of inside information, and his network of informants (Anal, Sampati, Pramati, Panas) made him invaluable to Rama’s campaign. Rama’s willingness to accept Vibheeshana—despite advisers’ suspicion and the political risk that Vibheeshana might seek personal advantage—was an exercise in strategic judgement.
This episode captures two lessons. First, the cultivation and protection of defectors or insider sources can provide decisive operational intelligence that no external collection effort could replicate. Second, accepting such individuals requires institutional confidence: mechanisms for vetting, for constraining opportunism, for integrating intelligence flows, and for managing the political and moral complications that accompany such decisions. Rama’s pragmatic choice to welcome and even crown Vibheeshana prior to the decisive battle illustrates deliberate regime-change planning integrated into wartime strategy—recognition that political reconfiguration can be both an objective and a tool of conflict termination.
Atikaya and the Brahmashakti: the force-multiplier of specialised knowledge
In the contest with Atikaya, Vayu advised that only the Brahmashakti could overcome the demon. The specific knowledge of a unique vulnerability and the means to exploit it—divinely revealed counsel—validates how inside or specialised information can convert an otherwise intractable military problem into a solvable one. This parallels modern instances where a technical or domain-specific insight (e.g., a software vulnerability, a supply-chain choke point, or linguistic intelligence) becomes the decisive lever.
Matali, tactical counsel and the timing of expert advice
Rama’s receipt of tactical counsel from his charioteer Matali—advice to employ the Brahmastra against Ravana at a critical juncture—reinforces the role of expert advisers in shaping high-stakes decisions. Expertise matters not only in the content it provides but in its timing and integration into command decisions. The episode demonstrates that informational superiority, when institutionalised into the decision loop, can tilt outcomes even against materially formidable opponents.

Reputation, Narratives and the Limits of Invincibility

Narratives and reputations are themselves strategic assets. A carefully constructed reputation—of technological supremacy, military invincibility, moral authority, or economic indispensability—can deter adversaries, weaken defenders’ will, and shape third-party behaviour. Ravana’s projected invincibility, built on his many victories and his son Meghanada’s triumph over Indra, performed such a function; it augmented Ravana’s deterrent aura and constrained the options of rivals.

Yet reputations are malleable and often overstated. The Ramayana contains specific counterexamples that puncture the myth of Ravana’s absolute invincibility: Vali’s defeat of Ravana when Ravana sought to capture him during meditation; Ravana’s humiliation at the hands of King Kartavirya Arjuna, who captured him and transported him to Mahishmati; occasions when Ravana was forced to compromise or be ransomed despite his formidable persona. These episodes teach two contemporary lessons. First, even apparently dominant actors are subject to constraints and occasional defeats; second, great powers frequently choose accommodation over permanent war when strategic calculation reveals diminishing returns or the costs of continued conflict exceed benefits.

For policy-makers, that double lesson is critical. Reputation can be a force multiplier, but reliance on it without continuous corroboration invites miscalculation. Equally, recognising an adversary’s limitations can create opportunities for negotiated accommodation and reorientation of effort toward smarter calculations rather than forever wars.

Policy Implications: Adjusting Habits to Informational and Interdependent Realities

The foregoing conceptual and historical lessons point to concrete shifts in strategic habit and institutional practice for a contemporary Indian foreign policy and national security posture:

Reframe security conception: Move beyond a narrow focus on policing, counter-insurgency and conventional deterrence to an integrated model that internalises informational, economic and cognitive vectors of vulnerability. Defence planning must explicitly model corrosion processes and include resilience metrics for societal, technological and institutional systems.
Prioritise intelligence as strategic capital: Invest in diversity of collection (human, signals, economic, social-media, open-source), in analytical independence and in mechanisms that rapidly translate analysis into policy. Create institutional pathways that allow intelligence to modulate diplomatic, economic and military levers in real time.
Institutionalise expert advice and domain knowledge: Build durable channels that connect domain specialists—technologists, economists, social scientists, cultural experts—to decision-makers at the operational and strategic levels. Encourage institutional cultures that privilege timely counsel and evidence-based risk assessment.
Manage defectors and cultivated insiders prudently: Develop protocols for vetting, integrating and protecting sources that defect from adversarial structures. Balance the intelligence value they offer against political and ethical risks, and design contingencies to prevent exploitation by opportunistic individuals.
Exploit narrative as an instrument of policy: Treat reputational strategy as a component of statecraft. Invest in strategic communication, credibility-building, and the choreography of reputation across multiple domains (diplomacy, economic governance, technology standards). Concurrently, target adversary narratives by exposing inconsistencies and counterexamples to projected narratives of invincibility.
Pursue smarter competition, not endless conflict: Recognise that correction and accommodation are often rational options for great powers. Institutionalise mechanisms for calibrated de-escalation, negotiated settlements and strategic recalibration when the costs of confrontation exceed potential gains.

These adjustments require a change of habit—reorienting curricula in defence and diplomacy, altering institutional incentives, and inculcating an appreciation for the cognitive and informational dimensions of power. The lessons from classical narratives like the Ramayana are not antiquarian curiosities; they provide enduring insights into how information, counsel and reputation have always been central to strategic outcomes. A modern Indian strategic culture that internalises these lessons will be better positioned to navigate an age in which the smartest, not just the strongest, dictate the contours of advantage.

UNDERSTANDING THE SECURITY CONUNDRUM

Corrosive Threats and the Broadening of Security

Security no longer remains the exclusive preserve of uniformed troops and kinetic engagements. Many of the threats that damage a polity are corrosive, incremental and difficult to perceive in real time: erosion of social cohesion, creation of alternative loyalties, the steady provision of material, moral or rhetorical succour to separatist or extremist causes from beyond the border. These phenomena are often dressed in the language of democratic freedoms, humanitarian assistance or diasporic solidarity. Yet when such acts systematically undermine national unity or legitimate state authority, they are as injurious to national security as overt violence.

Equally serious are impediments to national development—especially deliberate disruptions to critical infrastructure and efforts that induce de‑industrialization or dependence on external suppliers. Economic disarticulation, whether unintentional or engineered, narrows policy space and degrades long‑term resilience. In the Indian context, where developmental imperatives are central to national legitimacy, the undermining of infrastructure, industry and technological capability translates directly into a security deficit. Hence the aphorism: strategic autonomy can only come from strategic security. Security is not simply the absence of invasion; it is the condition that allows independent policy choices over decades.

This broadened conception does not equate to advocacy for closure or reflexive suspicion; rather, it is a call to wakefulness. Openness and connectivity are indispensable for growth. But they must be reconciled with the recognition that ordinary activities—trade, investment, cultural exchange—can be repurposed by malign actors. Preparing for and augmenting defences against corrosive risks is therefore a matter of prudent statecraft, not of retreat.

Exposure, Penetration and the Vulnerabilities of Openness

Contemporary security debates center on exposure, penetration and vulnerability. The modern state is not simply threatened at its borders; it is porous across a multiplicity of vectors. Everyday engagements—technology adoption, foreign direct investment, academic partnerships, travel and media consumption—create channels that, if left unguarded, can be exploited to influence domestic discourse, distort markets or disable infrastructure.

India faces a particularly complex calculus. Its size, pluralism and internal diversity make it more exposed to heterodox ideological appeals and identity‑based mobilisation. Multiple, unresolved external boundary disputes and a generational memory of conflicts shape strategic expectations and raise the political premium on preparedness. At the same time, domestic complexity multiplies the number of actors and loci that adversaries can target: local political grievances can be amplified by transnational narratives; social fractures can be instrumented by external resources.

The implication is twofold. First, incremental tinkering at policy margins is insufficient. While cyber‑defences can be hardened and intelligence capacities expanded, the scale and nature of contemporary exposure demand a fundamental re‑imagining of security thinking—one that integrates economic policy, technological strategy and societal resilience into a single analytic frame. Second, anticipating and out‑thinking likely problems requires a constantly updated understanding of global trends. External phenomena—shifts in supply chains, advances in artificial intelligence, the rise of platform economies—have direct and immediate domestic consequences; their foreign provenance does not mitigate their internal effects.

The Weaponization of Economic and Technological Domains

A central feature of the present conundrum is the seamless fusion of economic interdependence and technological interpenetration. These forces have turbo‑charged flows of information, people and capital, enabling unparalleled growth. Paradoxically, the same forces also provide new vectors for coercion and strategic manipulation.

Weaponization takes many forms. Trade and investment can be leveraged to create sectoral dependence; control over logistics and standards can produce effective lock‑ins; sanctions, export controls and investment screening have been normalised as instruments of statecraft. Market competition itself has been subordinated, at times, to geopolitical aims—leading to the deliberate cultivation of market shares or technological dominance as strategic objectives. As this mindset spreads, nearly nothing—tourism flows, components in a supply chain, the market share of a national champion—remains immune from geopolitically motivated manipulation.

The policy response has two corollaries. One, states will increasingly demand resilient, reliable and redundant supply chains. The Covid‑19 pandemic illustrated the consequences of overdependence: shortages of medical supplies, shortages in critical industrial inputs, and fragility in logistics produced clear strategic liabilities. Two, in the digital sphere, trust and transparency become strategic objectives. Data harvesting, platform dominance and the race to develop artificial intelligence are not merely economic competitions; they are contests over capabilities that can be repurposed for influence, disruption or intelligence advantage.

This weaponization has eroded the old twilight-zone in which rules were selectively interpreted in favor of growth. Even proponents of free markets now accept strategic interventions when state security is implicated. Consequently, security assessments must now include granular analysis of how dependencies are created—through contractual terms, standard‑setting, subsidies or corporate acquisitions—and how such dependencies might be exploited.

Borderless Politics, Influence Operations and the Domestic Sphere

Politics today is increasingly borderless. The capacity to project narratives, mobilise constituencies, and shape public opinion across jurisdictions has grown dramatically. Social media, diasporic networks, transnational civil society organisations and state‑sponsored broadcasting create an ecology in which domestic affairs are regularly subject to external influence.

This is not merely theoretical. Influence operations tailor messages to exploit pre‑existing fissures; they de‑legitimise institutions, amplify mistrust and can convert grievances into into action. Resources—funding, technical assistance, media amplification—often back these operations, making them both persuasive and actionable. At their worst, such interventions can catalyse radicalisation or violence; at their most mundane, they can distort policy choices by privileging narrow, externally favoured constituencies.

Given this reality, it is naïve for a polity to forgo monitoring or, where necessary, regulation of external transactions that bear upon public opinion and civic processes. Monitoring need not amount to censorship; it can be designed as transparency and accountability frameworks that expose funding flows, require disclosures, and protect democratic institutions from covert manipulation. It is noteworthy, and sometimes discomfiting, that several Western democracies exercise extensive legislative, intelligence and administrative instruments to monitor and influence external actors. Criticism of India’s vigilance thus occasionally comes from actors who themselves operate with tighter external oversight.

The Rise of Non‑State Strategic Actors and the Limits of Control

Security is no longer monopolised by states. Large private enterprises—particularly those in the technology sector—now possess capabilities traditionally associated with governments: detailed data on populations, content‑moderation capacity, platform architectures that shape public discourse, and computing power that underpins artificial intelligence. Several firms command market capitalisations that rival or exceed the GDP of medium‑sized nations; their economic and social influence cannot be ignored as a strategic variable.

These megainstitutions pursue agendas that reflect corporate incentives, user bases and geopolitical positioning. They may cooperate with states, resist them, or pursue autonomous courses that create friction with national priorities. Even well‑resourced governments may find it difficult to fully predict or control the behaviour of these entities, especially in cross‑jurisdictional contexts where corporate norms and legal regimes differ.

The implication for policy is twofold. First, states must expand the tools of governance—regulatory frameworks for data, competition policy attuned to geo‑strategic effects, and mechanisms to ensure platform accountability. Second, there must be recognition that governance alone is insufficient: strategic partnerships with industry, international cooperation on norms and standards, and investments in indigenous technological capability are necessary to retain policy space.

Structural and Behavioural Transformations in the International System

The transformations reshaping security are both structural and behavioural. Structurally, globalization and rapid technological diffusion have redrawn the map of interdependence. Behaviourally, rising nationalism, unilateralism and a greater willingness among states to accept risk have altered incentives. Together they increase the propensity for risk‑taking and the frequency with which norms are jettisoned for perceived advantage.

The blurring of previously discrete domains is a direct consequence: business, energy and finance are now intrinsic elements of strategy; sports, tourism, education and cultural exchange are instruments of influence. These shifts erode old assumptions about what is fair or acceptable in interstate competition and complicate the task of forming defensive buffers without abandoning beneficial engagement.

For India, which is actively expanding its global footprint, the objective is to find optimal solutions that maximise benefits while minimising exposures. The era when physical controls and geographic depth could adequately address strategic vulnerability is over. Policy must instead blend economic diplomacy, technological policy, societal resilience and military preparedness into a coherent posture that preserves openness while hardening critical seams.

Implications for Policy: Anticipation, Adaptation and Agency

Faced with the weaponization of routine domains and the rise of non‑state strategic actors, India’s task is not isolation but intelligent engagement. This requires:

A comprehensive risk taxonomy that treats economic dependencies, technological imports, critical infrastructure partnerships and transnational influence operations as security variables of equal weight.
Dynamic regulatory and institutional mechanisms to increase transparency in foreign funding, foreign acquisition of sensitive assets, and data governance, calibrated to avoid unnecessary constraints on legitimate exchanges.
Investment in indigenous capabilities—manufacturing, digital infrastructure, AI research and diversified supply‑chain relationships—to reduce strategic bottlenecks and expand options.
A societal resilience strategy that strengthens civic education, media literacy and community institutions to inoculate public discourse against malign narratives.
International diplomacy that builds coalitions for norms governing digital platforms, cross‑border data flows and the non‑weaponization of commercial instruments.

Recognition of these evolving dynamics—the fusion of economic, technological and political drivers; the weaponization of routine domains; the geopolitics of private enterprises—should shape strategic culture. India must be neither blind nor parochial; it must re‑imagine security as an integrative project that secures the conditions for autonomy in policy and prosperity in practice. This is not an argument for paranoia, but for prudence: to comprehend, anticipate and prepare is to retain agency in an increasingly contested international environment.

Security and the Compression of Distance

Every society’s conception of security evolves with changes in mobility, technology and the organization of everyday life. Historically, improvements in movement—by horse, ship, rail and later by air and cable—recast distant phenomena as immediate threats or opportunities. Groups and polities that mastered projection could impose their will far beyond their hinterlands; those that did not became victims of that capacity. Indian political memory records this dynamic in the “Panipat syndrome” and, subsequently, in the experience of colonial subjugation: defeats effected through better mobility, logistics and projection re-ordered political space and prefigured modern domination.

The modern era accelerates this logic. Globalization and digital technologies have compressed space and time to unprecedented degrees: supply chains, capital flows, data streams and ideas traverse borders instantly. Threats once conceived as remote—economic coercion, information operations, algorithmic manipulation, contagion, rapid capital withdrawal—now arrive at the doorstep as intimate, persistent phenomena. Distance can no longer be counted on as a protective buffer; rather, it is a variable that adversaries and competitors actively exploit.

Instruments of Influence beyond the Military

The classical lexicon of statecraft emphasised hard power—armies, fleets and coercive diplomacy—to shape balances and compel outcomes. Yet imperial histories also demonstrate that quotidian relationships and recurring economic transactions were decisive in sustaining influence: trade networks, financial dependencies, cultural patronage and settler communities expanded imperial reach incidentally and intentionally. Today the non-military channels have acquired greater potency. Economic engagement, technological dependence, cultural exchange and everyday connectivity penetrate societies in ways that rival and sometimes eclipse the effectiveness of conventional force.

Routine activities of daily life are therefore among the most underestimated security vectors. Globalization produces deep interpenetration and layered interdependence: finance links incomes and states; technology embeds foreign software and hardware into critical infrastructures; people-to-people movement transmits ideas and grievances. Self-radicalization can occur without physical movement; vulnerabilities manifest in household consumption patterns, educational exchanges, and the omnipresence of foreign platforms and services. As technology-centric life expands, opportunities—and anxieties—are delivered to the thresholds of states and communities.

This transformation has implications for how states conceive defence. The old assumption—that threats are distant, well-defined and addressable by military means—has been eroded. Dependences in technology, finance, food and fuel are now vectors of pressure in themselves, renewing debates about the merits and feasibility of strategic autonomy.

Economic Security, Strategic Autonomy and the Changing Salience of Livelihoods

Economic security has ascended to the core of national security not as an abstract imperative but as a material response to concrete developments: the rise of China as an economic and technological challenger; a shifting American posture in economic statecraft; the supply-chain breakdowns and vulnerabilities revealed by the Covid pandemic; the global ramifications of the Ukraine war; and persistent instability in the Middle East. These events shifted policy attention from pure profitability to livelihood resilience—jobs, supply stability, critical minerals, and sovereign control over essential technologies.

As the spectrum of vulnerabilities expands, so too does the definition of security. Disruption itself—whether to trade, finance, or information flows—has become a central driver of contemporary security thought. Consequently, cooperative arrangements and partnerships that provide predictability and mutual reassurance have increased in value. Structural changes (for example, reconfigured supply chains) and behavioural changes (for example, more transactional great-power behaviour) are both critical to understanding the evolving environment. The last two decades have contained several inflection points—the 2008 global financial crisis, shifts in leadership styles at major capitals, the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine conflict—that collectively heighten great-power competition and lower inhibitions about instrumentalising every domain at a state’s disposal.

The contemporary toolkit of statecraft has therefore widened. Where once instruments ranged from direct force to the moral power of example, intermediate levers were constrained by shared norms and common interests. Now, with higher stakes and fewer inhibitions, major powers increasingly practise a form of “war by other means”: economic coercion, regulatory pressure, technological embargoes and information operations are deployed more readily to achieve strategic aims.

Trade, Finance, Connectivity and the New Vectors of Pressure

Several non-military levers merit close attention:

Trade and market leverage. Trade has always been political; today market share, access to strategic inputs and control of chokepoints are used openly for political messaging and coercion. Monopolies—real or de facto—in critical goods or technologies are exploited to secure policy outcomes.
Financial instruments. Currency influence, sanctions, access to credit and commercial lending are powerful levers. Debt dynamics can create dependencies that constrain sovereign choices; conversely, financial exclusion can be deployed as punishment or deterrence.
Connectivity and infrastructure. Physical and digital connectivity implies linkage and dependency. Telecommunication networks, submarine cables, port investments and transport corridors create tangible strategic exposures. Lack of transparency in project terms and limited market viability can exacerbate these dependencies.
Technology and data. Technology magnifies intrusiveness. Data analytics reveal societal fault lines and behavioural tendencies, enabling actors to shape preferences and actions. Control over platforms, algorithms and standards can translate into asymmetric influence. Directed flows—tourism, academic exchanges, cultural production—can be instrumentally managed to cultivate favourable constituencies abroad.

Competitive politics today combines coercion with inducement. Educational and research partnerships, business ventures, media content and entertainment industries are all chosen instruments of influence. These are not incidental but intentional—projects crafted to nudge attitudes, form elites’ loyalties and open strategic sectors to influence. Inducement and engineered acquiescence are ancient techniques, but they now operate primarily within nation-state structures and global markets, focused less on annexation than on influence over policy, institutions and preferences.

Dominant powers tend to play offensively in this landscape; most others concentrate on defence. One outcome is the incremental creation of global order—standards, regulations and mechanisms that embed the preferences of the powerful and shape behaviour in ways that legitimate their demands. Capabilities of a few thus become the aspirations of many.

Civil–Commercial–Military Convergence and the Blurring of Boundaries

Technological innovations originating in laboratories or businesses are often repurposed for military ends; conversely, security inventions are commodified. Globalization accelerates this interchange, and in some states civil–military fusion is deliberate policy. The boundary between commercial activity and national security interests has therefore narrowed. Economic activities can be both the enhancement of national security and the outcome of security-driven priorities. Identifying where commerce ends and security begins becomes more difficult and demands heightened vigilance in interpreting intent.

Norms and etiquette—how rules are made and observed—shape behaviour. But contemporary international rule regimes are frequently incomplete, contested or disregarded. In many domains (digital governance, cross-border data flows, platform accountability) rules are still being written, while in others norms are weaponised to entrench incumbents’ advantages. For polities lacking resilience, the absence or breakdown of effective norms increases the pressure to acquiesce to powerful actors’ preferences.

Rules, Weaponisation of Norms, and the Imperative to Build Capabilities

For India, capability-building is essential. Despite robust macroeconomic growth, India’s industrial and manufacturing capacities have not historically kept pace with its strategic requirements; shortcomings remain in critical sectors and sovereign supply chains. While corrective efforts—industrial policy, supply-chain diversification, investment in semiconductor and defence manufacturing—are underway, they will take sustained time and resource commitment.

Meanwhile, the logic for advocating robust rules and norms remains compelling. In the foreseeable order, the absence of rules is likelier to injure India (and similar rising states) than to advantage it. Smaller, less resilient nations will be compelled, if norms weaken, to acquiesce to a few dominant power centres—an outcome that reinforces instability and privilege rather than mutual security. Yet rule-making itself can be a tool of advantage: established players may crystallise standards to freeze their lead (for example, in data governance, standards for artificial intelligence, or financial messaging). Consequently, capability enhancement must be paired with bolder policymaking and narrative-building aimed at shaping rules rather than passively accepting them.

The Information Domain and the Industrialisation of Influence

The information domain has risen to a central place in the calculus of power not merely because of its salience but because technology and data have created industrial-scale tools for influence. The old model of ad hoc propaganda—pamphlets, radio broadcasts, occasional press releases—has been superseded by sophisticated, technology-driven industries that can micro-target populations, manufacture consent and disrupt social cohesion. This industrialisation professionalises influence operations, amplifying their reach and complicating the task of discerning intent.

Control over narratives is a continuous contest. Information can simultaneously inform, distort, alarm, confuse and motivate. Routine media consumption—what societies read, see and hear every day—shapes acceptance or rejection of policies and events often beyond the direct control of states. Non-state and transnational actors can catalyse narratives that either defend the status quo or justify radical departures. Domestic issues quickly acquire transnational valences; external financiers, diasporas, international NGOs and platform companies can align with local constituencies to magnify particular frames.

The chapter’s outline gives concrete illustrations: external and internal forces coalesced in the intense international reaction to India’s constitutional amendment regarding Article 370—an episode that demonstrates how domestic legal change can become the subject of transnational narrative campaigns. Similarly, informational framing can relativize cross-border terrorism by reframing it as a legacy political dispute, or it can normalise violent phenomena by treating them as expressions of democratic fervour.

Specific narrative devices now commonly used include:
– “Data protectionism”—invoked to trivialise public-interest regulation of platforms and justify monetisation of personal data;
– “Big emitter” framings—used by established industrial powers to shift responsibility for historic emissions onto developing societies and evade redistribution of mitigation burdens.

These devices serve entrenched elites resisting rebalancing and seek to delegitimise policy reforms that might empower emerging societies.

Rising powers face persistent narrative challenges from early movers who attempt to set global standards of “political correctness.” External interests frequently align with local elites to preserve mutual advantages—depicting good governance reforms as “excessive state control” or social unrest as democratic expression are predictable framings.

Perception, Multipolarity and the Necessity of Narrative Agency

Perception is a resource and a vulnerability. As a rising power, India must recognise that ascent in the global hierarchy will invite contested narratives. Decisions about which norms to prioritise, which facts to foreground, which journalistic adjectives to contest and which selective judgements to highlight will be instruments in the diplomatic and political contest. Multipolarity complicates matters: it restores natural diversity of views and increases the scope for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and competing legitimacy claims.

The remedy is not to retreat but to engage. India cannot afford passive acceptance of externally generated storylines. Active narrative agency—crafting coherent, evidence-based, value-driven accounts of policy choices and strategic intent—is necessary. This involves not only deploying better public diplomacy but also strengthening domestic resilience: media literacy, transparent institutions, robust regulatory frameworks for platforms, and targeted investments in capabilities that make narratives credible.

In sum, for India the imperative is clear: build capabilities rapidly across industry, technology and governance; shape rules and standards through proactive engagement; and enter the narrative contest with energy and conviction. “Swimming upstream”—asserting an independent interpretive stance in the face of dominant external framings—is the requisite karma of a rising power that seeks to preserve strategic autonomy and shape a stable, rules-based environment conducive to its interests.

State Capacity, Informationized Security, and the Tools of Governance

Large, plural societies confronting rapid change encounter a foundational problem: building state capacities adequate to match their aspirations. Capacity here is not a narrow bureaucratic construct; it is the aggregate of institutions, processes, human capital, infrastructure and technological systems that enable public goods to reach citizens reliably and equitably. The paradox is that the very instruments which improve service delivery — integrated information systems, real-time networks, digitised transactions, and automated logistics — also transform the security landscape. An “informationized environment” amplifies both the reach of governance and the consequences of its failure. Preparedness hence requires not just hardware and software, but doctrine, legislative clarity, and public legitimacy; it will create its own policy contests over privacy, surveillance, commercial use of data and the trade-offs between ease of access and resilience.

To treat these tools only as administrative conveniences is to underestimate their strategic import. Effective use of digital platforms can improve situational awareness, speed mobilisation in crises, and reduce corruption; conversely, insecure networks, porous supply chains or incoherent regulatory regimes can create vulnerabilities that adversaries—state or non-state—can exploit. Building capacity therefore entails an integrated approach: technological adoption harmonised with legal safeguards, human skills, and redundancy in critical systems so that governance remains robust under stress.

Terrorism, World Opinion and the Danger of Normalization

Terrorism remains an incessant challenge for India and for the international community. While global recognition of terrorism as a transnational menace is welcome, the efficacy of international cooperation depends on political clarity and consistency. Compromises made for narrow political gains or ephemeral regional strategies undermine counterterrorism efforts. India, as a primary victim of several cross-border and cross-ideological terrorist campaigns, cannot externalise the burden of defending its interests; it must both defend itself robustly and persuasively mobilise global opinion.

There is a parallel contestation in the realm of ideas: whether violent extremism will be treated as an aberration requiring universal condemnation or as a normalised instrument of policy. The rhetorical contrast is stark — like two neighbours producing different “products”: one exports information technology graduates, the other exports international terrorism. Allowing terrorism to be rationalised, normalised, or rationally traded as a policy tool corrodes the norms that sustain international order and weakens the basis for cooperative action. India’s response must therefore be two-fold: domestic resilience and international mobilization to delegitimise terrorism ideationally and operationally.

Development as Security; Obstacles and Tactical Obstruction

Security is multi-dimensional; it cannot be reduced to military strength or diplomatic manoeuvre alone. Socio-economic development is itself a security measure: as livelihoods improve, grievances that feed insurgency and criminality decline. This is why India’s recent policy emphasis on achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is strategic, not merely humanitarian. The deeper and more inclusive development becomes, the more attenuated are many security challenges.

But the benefits of development are visible enough to invite obstruction. Opposition to infrastructure that connects marginalised areas — be it on ideological grounds, through tactical litigation, or via violent disruption — imposes a strategic cost. Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected areas exemplify the problem: deliberate attacks or organised resistance to road-building or other connectivity projects deny political and economic integration and have cascading strategic effects, including vulnerability in bordering regions and paralysis of essential logistics. Obstacles to development are not always overtly hostile; some are framed as public interest, environmental protection or procedural correctness. The state must therefore discriminate between legitimate scrutiny and strategic subversion, protecting uninterrupted delivery of core development projects while preserving necessary safeguards.

Uninterrupted progress in basic services and connectivity must be a priority of national strategy. A failure to do so creates regions of ungoverned or under-governed space that invite exploitation, whether by insurgents, criminal networks, or foreign actors seeking leverage.

The Digital Domain, Health Security, and Strategic Autonomy

The digital revolution has special resonance for development and security, a fact underscored by the Covid-19 pandemic. India’s early forays into digitisation — from passport processes to the Aadhaar-enabled delivery of benefits — have matured into governance transformation. Yet the digital market is now a site of intense competition: multiple domestic and international players seek to harvest and monetise the enormous troves of data generated by citizens. Smart networks and digital services thus become arenas of contention where questions of data protection, market access, technological sovereignty and national security intersect.

Policymakers are engaged in an active search for an “optimal landing ground” that balances four imperatives: protecting citizen data and privacy; preserving ease of doing business to attract investment and innovation; enabling efficient, transparent governance in the public interest; and safeguarding national security. This balancing act animates debates over data localisation, regulatory frameworks for telecoms and internet platforms, and investment screening in critical digital infrastructure. Telecoms sensitivity — the recognition that control over networks is a core security issue — represents a welcome shift in the India policy mindset. Similarly, the pandemic crystallised the centrality of health security: India’s role as a major vaccine manufacturer demonstrated strengths, but the crisis also revealed vulnerabilities in critical inputs and the dangers of over-dependence on external suppliers for essentials.

When India builds resilient capacities in health, telecommunications, and associated manufacturing, these can create virtuous cycles: domestic production reduces strategic exposure, strengthens public health response and supports economic recovery. Conversely, dependence on foreign suppliers for essential drugs, intermediates, network equipment or cloud infrastructure is a strategic vulnerability that must be addressed through a combination of domestic capacity-building and diversified, reliable external partnerships.

Economic Engagement, Trade Rules and the Security Imperative

India’s engagement with the global economy is not in doubt; the question has always been the terms under which it engages. Globalisation without strategy is a risky proposition — akin to driving without a destination. Liberalising trade and opening markets are not ends in themselves; the crucial metric is whether the terms negotiated protect domestic competitiveness, safeguard critical industrial capabilities, and contribute to comprehensive national power.

Historic patterns have demonstrated the costs of neglecting strategic terms. Subsidised production in other jurisdictions, artificial denial of market access, and predatory trade practices have at times hollowed out India’s competitiveness in key sectors. When global openings are used by others to displace domestic production rather than to integrate mutually beneficially, the result is not merely an economic problem but a strategic one: loss of critical production capacity in pharmaceuticals, electronics, defense equipment or advanced materials can limit policy options in crises. The state must therefore ensure that foreign trade liberalisation proceeds on a level playing field; trade policy must be wielded as an instrument of national strategy, not merely a narrow economic tool.

This leads to the normative conclusion that India’s international presence will be consequential only if supported by strong domestic capacities. India should not be reduced to a passive market for external goods or a reservoir of data for foreign platforms. The aspiration of an atmanirbhar Bharat — a self-reliant India — is not autarky but a strategic posture: build domestic capabilities, integrate with global supply chains on advantageous terms, and retain freedom of manoeuvre in crises.

Historical Burdens, Openness and the Need for Eternal Vigilance

India’s emergence on the global stage has been eventful and often painful. The trauma of Partition left deep political, demographic and security effects, some of which continue to shape policy decades later. Actors opposed to India’s re‑emergence — whether through terrorism, radicalism or separatist agendas — have intermittently exploited fault lines to complicate the nation’s progress. Yet India has also grown stronger through the sacrifices of its people and the resilience of its institutions.

A key lesson is the need to deter projection of diversity as a source of national fault. India’s pluralism is an asset; treating it as a liability hands strategic advantage to internal and external adversaries. But openness also creates vulnerabilities. Liberal media environments, porous borders of ideas, and global communication technologies make it easier for malign actors to foment unrest or spread disinformation. The remedy is not closing society but cultivating robustness: civic education, institutional transparency, rapid corrective mechanisms and, as the chapter insists, “eternal vigilance” — not as a slogan for repression but as a commitment to defend both liberty and unity.

Reform, Complacency, and the Limits of Crisis-Driven Change

A self-critical assessment of the last quarter century shows that India’s reform trajectory has too often been reactive. The country has a tendency to implement “the changes we must” in response to acute crises, but to defer deeper, pre-emptive transformations — “the changes we should” — once the immediate shock recedes. This pattern, visible since the economic liberalization of the early 1990s, undermines long-term competitiveness and resilience.

Reform debates have rightly prioritised the economy, industry and commerce — areas that required urgent attention after the balance-of-payments crisis. But vital domains such as agriculture, labour, education and public administration have often been left relatively untouched because of entrenched vested interests. The result has been stagnation in aspects of human development, uneven urbanisation, and insufficient rural growth. Comprehensive reform must therefore extend beyond macroeconomic stabilisation to social infrastructure and institutional capacity. The yardstick for reform must be its contribution to comprehensive national power — including human capital, technological capacity and governance effectiveness — rather than narrow, short-term economic metrics.

Pandemic Lessons: Recovery, Expectations and Renewed Social Compact

The Covid-19 pandemic reframed priorities across policymaking worlds. Recovery is not simply an economic exercise but a social one: balancing lives and livelihoods, treating health as a strategic sector, and restoring public confidence. Rapid creation of pandemic response infrastructure, large-scale welfare provisioning and the management of logistics during the crisis elevated public expectations of state competence. Indian public fortitude and discipline drew on leadership and societal motivation; to maintain that compact, policymakers must accelerate healing and address pandemic scars through durable reforms in health systems, pharmaceutical capacity, and supply chains.

A promising foundation for recovery has been the suite of initiatives launched since 2014 that address previously marginalised areas of reform. These include programmes advancing financial inclusion (e.g., Jan Dhan), digital delivery at scale (Aadhaar, DBT), universal electrification (Saubhagya), potable water initiatives (Jal Jeevan Mission), affordable housing (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana), sanitation (Swachh Bharat), urban renewal frameworks (AMRUT, Smart Cities), direct income support measures (PM-KISAN), infrastructure acceleration, the push for digitisation and formalisation (GST, e-invoicing), skills development (Skill India), and measures to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation (Startup India). These initiatives have pursued human-development gains, enabled leapfrogging through digital tools, empowered aspirational groups, and expanded opportunities.

Crucially, this wave of transformation has also involved societal mobilisation. The erosion of a colonial-era mindset that saw people and government as separate entities — and its replacement with a model of engaged governance — has been an important political achievement appreciated by broad segments of the populace.

Technology, Manufacturing and the Strategic Cost of De-industrialisation

Technology and manufacturing are central to future security and prosperity. Digitisation can enable credible social welfare delivery even in resource-constrained settings, but it cannot substitute for a robust manufacturing base that produces critical inputs, generates employment, and sustains supply chain resilience. With prospective trade wars and technology competitions on the horizon, extensive de-industrialisation would amount to a form of unilateral disarmament. India must therefore pursue policies that make it easier to do business, attract investment in manufacturing, incentivise research and value-added production, and maintain regulatory predictability.

Easing business processes is not merely an economic reform; it is a social and strategic imperative. Lower transaction costs expand employment, expand the tax base, and increase the state’s fiscal room to invest in human development. True reform is therefore endless: institutional upgrades and capability building must persist across government functions and sectors.

Governance Deficits, Implementation Gaps and Capability Limits

Non-socioeconomic hurdles — outdated policy frameworks, casual implementation, or outright neglect — persist as formidable obstacles. These are not merely technical problems; they are capability constraints. Administrative systems designed for different eras struggle to manage the scale and complexity of contemporary governance challenges. Implementation deficits manifest as delayed projects, inconsistent enforcement, and fragmentation across ministries and agencies.

Border infrastructure problems are symptomatic of these capability limits. Neglected hinterlands, poorly coordinated land acquisition processes, and weak interagency collaboration produce gaps that impact border readiness. If parts of the nation remain underdeveloped or under-governed, security risks escalate. Border safeguarding must be a continuous operational posture — “24×7” — not a reactive response to episodic crises.

Policy debates should therefore prioritise establishing requisite structures and systems before proposing sweeping solutions. Dramatic political prescriptions that lack institutional backing are unserious; durable national security requires the boring work of building processes, training cadres, standardising procedures and ensuring accountability.

Integration, Gati Shakti and the Architecture of National Projects

Recent initiatives demonstrate the gains from breaking down silos and integrating governance processes. The Gati Shakti programme, an integrated master plan for infrastructure, provides an example of how cross-sectoral coordination can accelerate delivery and reduce duplication. Such integration matters for national security: logistics corridors, inter-modal connectivity, and synchronised planning are essential for rapid mobilisation of resources in contingencies and for economic competitiveness in peacetime.

Integrated governance also means honest acknowledgement of strategic realities. Cross-border terrorism, competitive geopolitics and the erosion of benign assumptions about the international environment require policymakers to make hard choices. An integrated approach helps clarify trade-offs and align investments — in infrastructure, technology, human capital and defence — with long-term strategic objectives.

Reimagining “Building Bharat”: A Strategic Synthesis

Building Bharat is not an exercise in returning to bygone paradigms but an invitation to re-imagine the future. This task combines several mutually reinforcing strands: strengthening state capacities; ensuring inclusive socio-economic development that shrinks security vulnerabilities; emphasising technology and manufacturing to secure supply chains and create jobs; institutionalising integrated governance to deliver public goods efficiently; and pursuing calibrated strategic self-reliance that preserves engagement with the world on advantageous terms.

Viewed together, these priorities form the architecture of a resilient strategic culture: one that appreciates the interplay between domestic capability and external influence, that treats development as a form of security, and that refuses to separate ideals of liberty from the practical necessities of safeguarding a diverse, aspirational polity.