IAS PCS preparation prelims and mains India’s decline in South Asia
One of the deeply perplexing paradoxes of contemporary Indian foreign policy is that a globally rising India is also a regionally declining power. ▪ Its waning regional influence is caused by diminishing relative power (vis-à-vis China), loss of primacy in South Asia, and fundamental changes in South Asian geopolitics. ▪ India’s aggregate power has grown over the past two decades — evident in robust economic growth, military capabilities, and a largely young demography. ▪ Its inclusion in key global institutions such as the G-20, as an invitee at G-7 meetings, and active participation in multilateral groups such as the Quad, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation further highlight its geopolitical significance and its powerful presence globally, even if it is not a member of the United Nations Security Council. ▪ India’s global rise is also aided by growing international attention on the Indo-Pacific, a theatre that is pivotal to global strategic stability, where India has a central position, geographically and otherwise. ▪ Despite this global rise, paradoxically and worryingly, India’s influence is declining in South Asia. ▪ The American withdrawal from the region and China filling that power vacuum have been disadvantageous to India. ▪ In the case of the Indo-Pacific, while interest in the Indo-Pacific has increased, India’s global prominence as an indispensable Indo-Pacific power, New Delhi’s focus on the great power balance in the Indo-Pacific may have stretched New Delhi a bit too thin in the continental neighbourhood. ▪ But the rise of China explains India’s regional decline more than anything else. Today, India is more powerful than it has ever been in nearly two centuries. ▪ India is facing stiff geopolitical competition for influence in South Asia. China’s rise will, therefore, mean that India may no longer be the most consequential power in the region. ▪ The arrival of China in South Asia, the withdrawal of the U.S. from the region, and India’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific have shifted the regional balance of power in Beijing’s favour. ▪ India’s smaller neighbours seem to find China as a useful hedge against India, for the moment at least. ▪ we must accept the reality that the region, the neighbours and the region’s geopolitics have fundamentally changed over the decade-and-a-half at the least. ▪ New Delhi must focus on its strengths rather than trying to match the might of the People’s Republic of China in every respect. ▪ Fashioning a new engagement with the region that reflects India’s traditional strengths and the region’s changed realities is essential. Reclaiming the Buddhist heritage is one such example. ▪ India’s continental strategy is replete with challenges whereas its maritime space has an abundance of opportunities for enhancing trade, joining minilaterals, and creating new issue based coalitions, among others. ▪ New Delhi must, therefore, use its maritime (Indo-Pacific) advantages to cater to its many continental handicaps. ▪ India and its partners (the U.S., Japan, Australia, the European Union, and others) must find ways of engaging and partnering with Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bangladesh as part of their larger Indo-Pacific strategy. ▪ New Delhi should make creative uses of its soft power to retain its influence in the region. One way to do that is to actively encourage informal contacts between political and civil society actors in India and those in other South Asian countries. ▪ Need to encourage informal and unofficial conflict management processes in the region especially when and where the Indian state is hesitant about being involved directly in a conflict.
