Editorial

This issue of the India Quarterly provides a broad menu of articles focusing on regional concerns, growing strategic partnerships, reforms of global institutions and areas of cooperation between states and non-state agencies.

For India, the crisis in Pakistan has raised questions fundamental to the stability of the region. A failed Pakistani state is of no one’s choosing, given its unthink- able strategic and economic outcomes. Pakistan’s ‘deep economic crisis, political paralysis and a resurgent terror threat’, and its declining advantages with friends and partners abroad can only be of deep concern. The crisis is likely to persist given the nexus between its military and religion, as will the potential threats to India from both. As events unfold, India’s need to respond to competitive strategic claims by its neighbours is uppermost. Hence, significant bilateral defence agreements, like the Logistic Exchange Memorandum with the United States, are intended to increase capabilities in the region and in the larger Indo-Pacific region.

Beyond military and defence agreements the competition over strategic space is also embedded in economic initiatives. Motives might seem transparent here but unintended consequences often create security concerns as two articles on China’s foreign economic policy argue. Hence, the agency of African states is important in containing China’s hegemonic intent. But the Digital Silk Road, an offshoot of China’s Belt and Silk Road, also presents a Chinese model of the use of surveillance technologies for governance, impinging on the sovereignty and polity of partner states. On a more promising note, two other articles indicate where cooperation may just be possible between two competitive states, or where culture creates a positive understanding of the other. In one, the author examines the cooperation between India and Pakistan to stem the tide of the locust invasion in 2019–2020, an invasion which impacted food security in both countries. Significantly, cooperation occurred because both were part of regional and international mechanisms to deal with the threats. In another, the authors look at the surprising popularity of Indian films amongst Chinese citizens. Despite the negative outpourings about India on Chinese social media and the strained relations between the two governments, Bollywood has made India familiar to younger Chinese.

Closer home, the outbreak of ethnic violence in Manipur has recently pointed to the many issues surrounding the creation of material spaces in India’s northeast. A discussion of what this entails in one state here, Arunachal, reveals how policymakers need to redefine inclusivity, be sensitive to shifting demographics and common and individual rights to land and resources, and balance security and development in fragile ethnic cultures.

Clearly, the certainty of change in the region, beyond it and within institutions, prompts competitive responses but need also not exclude more cooperative actions where immediate human security needs are concerned.