India’s increasing neighbourhood problems
Problems India faces in the neighbourhood:
- the emergence of politically anti-Indian governments across South Asia, like the Maldives, where the new administration is essentially telling Indians to leave.
- When Dhaka has elections early in the next year, a government led by Khaleda Zia may prove to be ideologically hostile to India.
- structural conundrum brought on by China’s expanding sway over South Asia.
- the smaller states in the region become more and more involved in Chinese programmes such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
- China’s outreach to the states of South Asia when the international community shuns or stays away from them due to norms or other reasons.
For instance:
- Afghanistan under the Taliban
- Myanmar was dominated by the military
- Sri Lanka is in a crisis.
- China’s outreach has a significantly greater total influence than India’s, mostly due to its larger financial resources.
- As seen in the instance of Bhutan, China’s aim to resolve border issues with its neighbors—aside from India—is also a tactic to gain favour in the area.
What effect will it have?
- Possibility of being politically imprisoned in an antagonistic South Asia.
Reasons for the problems India is facing in the neighbourhood:
- A regional geopolitical architecture with five elements that overlap.
- The United States has become less of a geopolitical force in South Asia, a shift from the long-standing US involvement in the region.
- The US’s involvement in South Asia was not always beneficial for India.
- Its withdrawal is undoubtedly detrimental, especially in light of the way China has stepped in to fill the power vacuum left by Washington’s departure.
- The smaller powers in the region, who have become skilled at playing the “China card” in their foreign policy declarations, have benefited from China’s aggressive and phenomenal rise as a “geopolitical buffer.”
- While there is less desire to exercise strategic autonomy towards China, India’s neighbours are eager to do so.
- Being the poorest and least connected locations in the world, it makes sense that the people living there would lean towards a power that can provide their basic necessities.
- India has a limited capacity to address those needs.
- That power is China.
- Generally speaking, India has taken a normative and political stance towards the region, and because there are no other options, the states in the region either comply or resist or fall in line.
- China, positioning itself as the no-frills non-normative option, has altered that India-centric calculation.
- India held unparalleled dominance in the region for a significant portion of its independent existence.
- The drawbacks of being South Asia’s resident power
- Its effects on culture, ethnicity, refugees, and other factors are felt more keenly than if it were the main power.
- Conversely, China is the non-resident power in the region and enjoys the advantages that come with not being a resident state, such as the lack of ethnic, linguistic, and religious problems.
- India’s policy stance: When it comes to handling the domestic politics of the area and the variety of players and power centres within it, it has a pervasive status quo bias.
- One-track policies create path dependencies that frequently cause other power centres or opposition leaders to become hostile.
Bangladesh, for instance:
- India’s strong conviction that South Asia without Pakistan will yield to Indian geopolitical logic led to an effort to address South Asia without Pakistan in a proactive manner.
- The implementation of this strategy has not precisely gone as India had hoped.
- India entered the neighbourhood with the belief that its unique relationship with the area was based on ethnicity, history, soft power, and culture.
- thinking that the country would be better able to handle its neighbors—China in particular—than those who did not have a thorough understanding of the area.
The Way Ahead:
- Southern Asia, which has essentially supplanted South Asia, is the former South Asia where India once had primacy.
- China is now a strong competitor for dominance in the region.
- Instead of operating from the long-gone conceptual framework of Indian primacy, India might benefit from adopting a realistic and pragmatic framework to deal with reality as it exists.
- India needs to actively seek out friendly foreign actors to get involved in the area.
- It’s the only approach to counter the growing risk of Sinocentricity in the region.
- Indian diplomacy needs to be adaptable enough to work with a variety of players in each of the surrounding nations.
- Similarly, it is good policy to deal with those in power, but it is bad policy to engage exclusively those in power.
- India requires greater assistance in its diplomatic endeavours; going forward, the most significant obstacle facing the nation of 4 billion people would be the stark lack of diplomats needed to carry out its foreign policy.
