Fresh look at India’s neighbourhood first policy

Xavier observed that the view in India on China is at odds with how the rest of the region views the Asian power

In 2014, the Narendra Modi government came to power with an eye towards reimagining India’s relationships in South Asia, and across the Indo-Pacific. How much has changed and how much has stayed the same after a decade in office? This was the topic of last week’s episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, featuring Constantino Xavier, a Fellow in Foreign Policy and Security Studies at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi.

Fresh look at India’s neighbourhood first policy

On the show, Xavier argued that China’s ambitions in India’s neighborhood have catalysed a more robust Indian policy. “The rise of China in the neighbourhood, post Belt-and-Road Initiative in 2014, has propelled India to watch much more carefully and compete with China in its own neighborhood,” Xavier explained. “So, China now being the largest trading partner of many of India’s neighbouring countries, China being the predominant investor in infrastructure in Sri Lankan ports, in Bangladeshi roads and bridges, and Nepali airports is making India look up and try to rethink how it is operating. As always, competition is the best source of progress and innovation, and we see much more of that happening in recent years.”

Xavier observed that the view in India on China is at odds with how the rest of the region views the Asian power. “In India, aligned with the divergence in India-China relations—which culminated in the Galwan crisis in 2020 and the military skirmish there—you see China portrayed as an existential threat for India, as a massive adversary…China is seen as a threat across government, across civil society, in most quarters,” Xavier argued. “In all other countries [in the neighbourhood], except India, China is seen as a benign, positive actor that is, for the first time, delivering on what other countries were not able to deliver or not willing. So, you have this total dissonance in terms of how you look at China.”

Nowhere is this competition more acute than that in the Bay of Bengal region, the scholar posited. “If you’re serious about connecting the Indian Ocean region with the Pacific Ocean, if you are seeking stronger trade and security linkages between both these spaces, South and Southeast Asia have to come together,” said Xavier. “And that’s exactly where the biggest gap is because of these past fifty years of fragmentation.”

Xavier noted that back in 2011 then U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a very prescient speech in Chennai in which she talks about the Bay of Bengal as the future growth engine of Asia, as an area that has been stagnating, that has been neglected, and that has to be the focus of attention of India, of the U.S., of Japan, and of other Indo-Pacific partners.

But what is happening, today, is a paradox. “Everyone has a geopolitical-security-economic interest in trying to reconnect the Bay of Bengal and South and Southeast Asia,” said Xavier, noting that this is taking place in a global, fractious system where China and the U.S. are competing, and India is pivoting toward the U.S. but also has its own interests. “Everyone is trying to race toward building connectivity and burdening many of these states that frankly had hardly any foreign policy toward economic integration in this region.”