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20 February 2016

Bringing the region back in? Deciphering India’s engagement with South Asia


Jason Miklian (PhD, Norwegian University of Life Sciences) is a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo specialising in South Asian conflict resolution and regional security, and has published on the media and foreign policy, the Maoist insurgency in India and Nepal, and the poli... 

Jayashree Vivekanandan is an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at South Asian University, New Delhi. Her research interests include critical approaches to international relations theory, India's strategic history, memory politics and transboundary resource governan... 



How does India envision South Asia? What do Indian policymakers envisage the country’s regional role to be? The issues and actors that dominate India’s regional foreign policy give a glimpse of the country’s priorities in the region. The much-touted “shift” in Indian diplomacy under Narendra Modi offers us a window into the priorities of the new government and the extent to which continuity from the past shapes its regional policy today. This report explores how India works both above and below the regional level in an effort to secure its regional diplomatic and economic priorities. It examines the following five issue areas that have influenced India’s relations with its neighbours: the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, India as a humanitarian actor, supraregionalism and subregionalism, border politics, and democratisation. The report closes with reflections on what implications these engagements might have for Indian foreign policy in the future, arguing that a more inclusive and engaged leadership by India could help to resolve some of South Asia’s most vexing and intractable challenges.

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