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India's foreign policy — its multi-alignment doctrine, its simultaneous participation in Quad and BRICS and SCO, its "Neighbourhood First" struggles, its Operation Sindoor military assertion, and its 2025 stress-test of strategic autonomy under simultaneous US tariff pressure, China border deployment, and Pakistan's post-Sindoor diplomatic windfall — reveals a country that is genuinely transitioning from a regional power to a global actor, but doing so against structural constraints and with a foreign policy toolkit that is still being calibrated to match its ambitions.  India is not yet a great power in the classical sense (ability to project and sustain power globally while shaping international rules); but it is unambiguously a major power — one whose support or opposition materially affects the outcomes of any major global issue. Representational Visualization: What India's Foreign Policy Reveals About Its Great Power Ambitions The Foreign Policy magazine...

Operation Sindoor — India's military strikes conducted May 7–10, 2025, on nine terrorist infrastructure sites in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistani Punjab, in response to the April 22 Pahalgamterrorist attack that killed 26 tourists — represents the most significant Indian military action since the 1971 Bangladesh War and has produced the most consequential reshaping of India's regional foreign policy posture in decades.  The ORF Special Report (June 2025) described Sindoor as "the deepest and most extensive military campaign executed by India since the 1971 India-Pakistan war" and as having "decisively altered the security dynamics between India and Pakistan." Representational Visualisation: How Operation Sindoor Reshaped India's Foreign Policy Posture The operation's foreign policy consequences are multidimensional and contested. India's framing: the strikes established a "new response doctrine" — India will respond to...

India's foreign policy choices have direct consequences for businesses operating in India or trading with India — FTA portfolios determine tariff rates; sanctions compliance requirements affect which business partners are permissible; bilateral political relationships shape regulatory treatment of foreign companies; and geopolitical supply chain considerations affect investment decisions in India's manufacturing sector.  The intersection of foreign policy and business is most visible in three areas: India-China relationship dynamics (restricting Chinese FDI while remaining commercially engaged); US-India tariff tensions (US tariffs affecting Indian exports); and India-Russia energy trade (Indian oil purchases creating US secondary tariff exposure for Indian companies' US-market operations). Representational image: How India's Foreign Policy Impacts Business and Trade India's FTA portfolio — UAE CEPA (2022), Australia ECTA (2022), Korea CEPA (2010), Japan CEPA (2011)...

India's Central Asia engagement — through the "Connect Central Asia" policy (launched 2012), the India-Central Asia Summit framework (first virtual summit January 2022, physical summit targeted for 2023), and the SCO framework (India joined 2017) — is among India's most strategically significant but least domestically recognised foreign policy domains.  Central Asia matters to India for several reasons: five countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) with approximately 75 million people; significant energy resources (Kazakh and Turkmen oil and gas); transit routes for India-Russia and India-Central Asia trade (via Chabahar-Afghanistan corridor, challenged by the Taliban's Afghanistan); and the Afghan stability connection — Central Asian instability directly affects India's security environment. Representational Visualization: How India Engages With Central Asia India's Central Asia access challenge is geographic: India has no ...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman I have been a journalist for most of my adult life and this country has become my beat, my burden and perhaps my greatest blessing. This journey has led me to cover India from its plains and its hills, from the coaching centres and the press conferences, from literary festivals, from the front lines of protests to the inside and outside of its policy corridors. I have watched promises made at election rallies dissolve in the unforgiving heat of governance. I have seen individuals become symbols and symbols become power and power become something so sinister that I will leave it unnamed here. I write of these things to establish a vantage point as essential context because what follows is written from the inside, from the ground, with the accumulated scepticism of someone who has seen some bit of this republic to resist, on this particular day, both the celebration and the denunciation that today's milestone will produ...

India's climate diplomacy is shaped by a fundamental tension: India is the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter (behind China and the US) and the third-largest coal producer/consumer; simultaneously, India's 1.4 billion people have per capita emissions of approximately 2 tons CO2 per year (compared to 15 tons for the US, 8 tons for China), meaning India's historical contribution to atmospheric carbon is disproportionately small relative to its population size.  This creates India's core climate negotiating position: India will pursue development (which requires energy, which historically means coal) while contributing to climate solutions (renewable energy, efficiency, adaptation) but will not accept emissions caps that lock India into energy poverty while developed countries maintain higher consumption standards. India's slogan is "Common But Differentiated Responsibilities" (CBDR) — all nations bear responsibility for climate change but devel...