Moods of Modi: The Indian Future

January 17, 2025

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India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term in office is expected to have a deep impact on the future of South Asia. His 2024 victory in India's general election, though by a narrow margin, is a pivotal event in geopolitics. Assuming Modi completes his five-year term, he will hold the record as India's longest-serving elected prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru. However, unlike Nehru, Modi's vision is driven by creating a perception of greatness for India instead of building real national power.

The Modi government conceptualized a framework to project India as a developed nation - Viksit Bharat - with a Hindu identity by 2047, the centenary of India's Independence. Hence, 2025 will likely see instability, volatility, and uncertainty within India and South Asia, potentially reshaping the region's identity.

To understand what lies ahead for South Asia, it is essential to consider the impact of shifting global geopolitics. The center of global power has increasingly transited from the trans-Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region, driven by the emergence of new markets.

As the Asia-Pacific region witnesses intense competition among major powers, India, given its geography, huge market, and other attributes, is sought after as a partner by Western interests. Meanwhile, China and Russia, with their aligned visions of development and prosperity through connectivity, indivisible security, and respect for all nations and for UN-based international law, are as partners sought by the entirety of the aspirational Global South nations, which comprise eighty percent of the world population.

As a Global South nation, India is being encouraged by China and Russia to play a stronger role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Russia-India-China grouping, a foundation of BRICS aiming to bring stability to global geopolitics. This requires India to further strengthen ties with Russia, normalize relations with China, and make peace with Pakistan. Such moves could bring stability to India's two military lines with China and Pakistan, creating opportunities for India to develop and lift its 800 million people out of poverty and build ironclad non-military deterrence mechanisms.

The most important consequence if India was to align itself with Chinese and Russian visions would be the undermining of the US grand strategy to position India as a military bulwark against China in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). 

However, India has decided not to do this, as creating the perception of Viksit Bharat under Modi is far more attractive to the populace than accepting China as a great power. This divergence necessitates India's strategic synchronization with the US grand strategy for the Asia-Pacific region, which is primarily focused on countering China. This will continue with the upcoming Trump administration, since it was President Trump, in his first term in office, who re-named the US Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command, in an attempt to assign centrality to India and revive and elevate the moribund Quad.

Moreover, to India's annoyance, China's strategic footprints in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) straddle South Asia, where except for India and Bhutan, the rest of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations, namely Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal, and Bangladesh have joined BRI, while Afghanistan is in talks with Beijing to join.

In this context, the perception of Viksit Bharat requires a new global narrative for India's rise. This narrative is underpinned by India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar's repeated calls for a multipolar world (which exists today) to be complemented by a multipolar Asia, suggesting that India and China are in competition with one another. Since competition often implies a zero-sum game, the prospect of normalizing ties with China based on win-win cooperation - which would ideally be reflected in the revival of informal summits that started in 2018 in Wuhan, China - is, for now, ruled out.

However, since it is not possible to delink trade from China, Jaishankar has cautioned the business community not to be excessively dependent on Chinese supply chains, skills, and investments. The government, he said, will keep a close eye on the broader implications of such reliance on national security and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Interestingly, India's cumulative trade deficit with China over the past five years is 334 billion USD, underscoring the interdependence between both nations.

Normalizing ties with Pakistan is also ruled out since it runs contrary to the government's Hindutva ideology, which sees Muslims as "others" in India. Thus, the possibility for a triangular peace between India, China, and Pakistan for regional development - promoted by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his discussions with Modi at the second informal summit in Chennai, India in October 2019 - has been rejected by India.

To handle the difficult task of maintaining active military lines with Pakistan and China, India has created a two-pronged narrative. The first is Modi's comment made to President Putin at the Samarkand SCO summit in 2022 that the "era of war" is over. The Indian military took these remarks seriously, interpreting them to mean that a hot war with China and Pakistan would not happen. The only need was to prepare for gray zone operations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China, and pretentious surgical strikes against Pakistan. This would give respite to focus on "Make in India" (Atmanirbharta or self-reliance) in defense, which is being done with technological, technical, and skill support mainly from Russia, the US, Israel and France.

The other prong is the regular bravado, fully supported by India's mainstream media and military veterans. Senior military have repeatedly asserted that they are prepared for a two-front war with China and Pakistan.

Setting this military dilemma aside, the Modi government concluded in 2014 that SAARC had kept India boxed in South Asia, preventing it from pursuing a more prominent global role. Since its establishment in 1985, SAARC has failed to achieve regional integration, primarily because of acrimonious relations between India and Pakistan. While the South Asian Free Trade Area agreement was signed in 2006, intra-regional trade within South Asia represented a measly 5% of the region's total trade.

Moreover, at the 2014 Kathmandu SAARC summit, four members - Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Pakistan - proposed raising China's status from observer to full member. This was unacceptable to India. As the biggest nation in South Asia where all smaller nations except for Afghanistan have borders with India and none with each other, India has traditionally seen itself as the regional hegemon, and the IOR as its own backyard. Since China's active participation in South Asia would have altered the regional balance of power in its favor, cooperation with China was ruled out by India. Further evidence of this stance was India's silence on Xi's cooperation formula of "China-India Plus," which he proposed to Modi at the 2018 Wuhan informal summit.

Thus, by not attending the 2016 SAARC summit in Islamabad, Pakistan, citing the terrorist attack in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016, India ended its association with SAARC. In any case, in 2014, Modi converted India's Look East Policy to Act East Policy, with a focus on inclusivity, enhanced connectivity, and maritime security to demonstrate interest in South Asian maritime regionalism. Given this, India's focus shifted to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral, Technical, and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), where two SAARC members, namely Pakistan and the Maldives, were replaced by two ASEAN nations, Myanmar and Thailand.

The Modi government has identified the entire Indian Ocean - from the east coast of Africa to the Andaman Sea - as its priority, and launched the Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) initiative in 2015 and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) in 2019. These initiatives were designed to work in tandem with ASEAN, Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), BIMSTEC, and Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) under the umbrella of Quad and the US Indo-Pacific strategy. The purpose of these groupings includes enhancing Maritime Domain Awareness, addressing supply chain and infrastructure concerns, advancing cyber and space technologies, promoting clean energy supply chains, setting standards for critical and emerging technologies, and ensuring digital security.

Bilaterally with the US, India has signed numerous defense and military agreements, especially after the June 2020 Galwan Valley incident, in an attempt to integrate more closely into the US Indo-Pacific Command's networks. Notable items include the four US military foundational agreements: General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), Communication and Information on Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA). India has also signed the Security of Supply Arrangement (SOSA), Master Ship Repair Agreement (MSRA), initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), and India-US Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X). These agreements aim to facilitate joint combat patrols with the US Indo-Pacific Command and to integrate the Indian military into the INDOPACOM Mission Network (IMN) in the future. The IMN is a tactical mission partner environment network that connects the US military with allies and strategic partners. India believes that close military ties with the US not only deter China but also help raise India's global standing, as well as Prime Minister Modi's global profile through regular interactions with the leadership of the US and other Global North nations.

What India calls its "multi-aligned" foreign policy represents a complex and unintuitive approach. While India professes emphasis on "neighborhood first," the true priority is the extended neighborhood. This includes presence in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Through its "Link West" approach, India focuses on West Asia via the I2U2 (India, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates) initiative, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), and Chabahar port in Iran. To the north, India has its "Connect Central Asia" policy, the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), and the Chennai-Vladivostok maritime corridor with Russia.

India plays a key role in the IOR, where, besides traditional players like the US, France, Australia, the UK, and Japan, new players like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have also emerged. Undoubtedly, China's investments, engagements, and trade transit are the most significant of all international players in the region. Approximately 80% of China's imported crude oil supply passes through the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca. China has the highest trade volume (some 900 billion USD) with countries in the region, and the BRI now includes 44 African nations and six South Asian countries.

Compared to the geographical scope of IOR, the US Indo-Pacific theater excludes the Western Indian Ocean Region (WIOR) and the African continent, which fall under the responsibility of US Central Command and US Africa Command. Since India aims to enhance Maritime Domain Awareness in the region, the Indian Navy's Information Fusion Centre in Gurugram, Haryana hosts representatives from partner nations, and the Indian military has observers in three US military command structures: Indo-Pacific, Central, and Africa.

South Asia has a pivotal role in the South Asian maritime region and the WIOR for three reasons. First, the Gaza war has demonstrated the strategic importance of choke points, namely, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and even the Mozambique Channel, since trade backlog can happen along these routes. Second, with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the resultant indefinite turbulence in West Asia demands a bigger role for South Asia maritime nations to keep stability in WIOR. Third, while China has a logistics support base in Djibouti and a soft foothold in Gwadar and Karachi, Pakistan, China and the BRICS bloc may seek to expand their collective presence in the region.

Most of all, South Asia needs a new identity, like the 10-nation ASEAN, which is now China's top trading partner. During British rule in India, this region was called the "Indian subcontinent," excluding Afghanistan, but including the British Indian Ocean region. In the 1950s, this region received a new identity as South Asia (including Afghanistan), which was more acceptable to Pakistan. Today, smaller nations have the advantage of playing India and China against each other for better deals. However, given China's vast financial resources, robust connectivity (physical and digital), and growing international status, it is in a stronger position to contribute to regional development. For this reason, the new governments in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives have sought closer relations with China.

Three nations - Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh - are seeking a revival of the SAARC, unmindful of the fact that it is a relic of the unipolar world when events in South Asia were seen as primarily regional issues. In a changed world where events in South Asia have global implications, the region needs to explore and reestablish its own identity. 

 

 

This article is from the November issue of TI Observer (TIO), which re-examines some of the key developments in 2024, analyzing the characteristics of this transitional period, sharing insights on its trajectory and direction, and exploring the opportunities and challenges ahead. If you are interested in knowing more about the December issue, please click here:

http://en.taiheinstitute.org/UpLoadFile/files/2024/12/31/14452169dd313728-8.pdf

 

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