India maintains strong ties with countries that will assure a free and open Indo-Pacific and guarantee greater connectivity with rest of the world. Analyze. (2025, 15 Marks)
India’s prosperity is seaborne: about 95% of its trade by volume moves by sea, through chokepoints such as Hormuz and Malacca that India does not control. India’s version of the Indo-Pacific, set out at the Shangri-La Dialogue (June 2018), is free, open and inclusive, a geography rather than a coalition. The statement holds, but the ties are issue-based convergences, not alliances, and they deliver openness better than connectivity.
Why India seeks these partners
- Sea lanes and energy: crude import dependence was 88.7% in 2025-26. Iran’s restriction of Hormuz from March 2026 showed how fast a chokepoint becomes a domestic crisis.
- The China factor: Belt and Road lending has bought Beijing port access across the littoral; Hambantota, leased for 99 years in 2017, is the standard warning. C. Raja Mohan’s Samudra Manthan (2012) reads Sino-Indian rivalry as moving to the sea.
- Capability gap: India cannot match China alone, so it pools capacity. This is external balancing in the sense of Kenneth N. Waltz (Theory of International Politics, 1979), pursued without alliance obligations.
The partnership web
| Partner | Openness (security) | Connectivity (economy) |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Foundational agreements; ten-year defence framework (Kuala Lumpur, October 2025) | IMEC (2023), TRUST technology initiative |
| Japan | Logistics pact; 2026 economic-security declaration | ¥10 trillion private-investment target (2025); high-speed rail |
| France, Australia | Logistics access, Indian Ocean surveillance | Critical minerals |
| ASEAN states, EU | BrahMos to the Philippines | Act East corridors; EU FTA concluded (January 2026) |
- The Quad works through public goods: maritime domain awareness (IPMDA) and, at the New Delhi foreign ministers’ meeting (May 2026), a Critical Minerals Framework and an Indo-Pacific Energy Security initiative.
- India’s own architecture: SAGAR (2015) and MAHASAGAR (2025), the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (2019), the IFC-IOR, and IORA, which India chairs for 2025–27.
How the two aims link
Security partners are also capital and technology partners, so maritime awareness and supply-chain resilience reinforce each other. Connectivity, in turn, is India’s answer to the Belt and Road: transparent, sovereignty-respecting and debt-sustainable, though slower. Island states such as Mauritius, where an Indian-built airstrip and jetty opened at Agalega in 2024, show both aims meeting in one project.
The limits
- Inclusive, not containment: India hosted Xi Jinping at the New Delhi BRICS summit (September 2026) and stays in the SCO.
- Partners can coerce: the 50% US tariff of 2025 and the US Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act (2026) show that closeness brings no insulation. No Quad leaders’ summit has met since 2024.
- Under-delivery: IMEC has been slowed by war in West Asia, Chabahar’s US waiver lapsed in April 2026, and the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor remains a vision.
- Trade gap: outside RCEP since 2019, India sits apart from Asia’s main trade architecture.
Conclusion
India’s ties are real but instrumental: they buy awareness, technology and capital, not guarantees or finished corridors. They reflect S. Jaishankar’s convergences and issue-based arrangements. Openness is largely secured; connectivity needs faster financing and deeper trade integration, especially with ASEAN.