A significant factor that emerged after India launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in May 2025 was the strain in the India-US relationship under the Trump administration, driven by aggressive tariff disputes and policy friction. This indirectly accelerated India’s push to diversify partnerships, prompting New Delhi to lean more pragmatically into closer economic and strategic ties with middle powers such as Australia.
India and China need not share identical geopolitical visions to agree that a stable border, prosperous border communities and transparent rules are preferable to uncertainty. The most useful measure of Nathu La’s success may therefore be not how many tonnes cross the pass, but how routinely two neighbouring systems learn to work together.
December could therefore become much more than Victory Month. It could become a test of whether Bangladesh's next chapter will be written through democratic accommodation or another round of political vengeance. The danger is that a leader returning to face her past could inadvertently reopen the country's deepest wounds.
Russia wants to use the Far East to diversify away from the West, but it risks becoming excessively dependent on China. That is why Southeast Asia, India, Japan and other Asian partners matter to Moscow as they provide Russia with a wider Asian field and fallback and reduces the risk that Russia’s entire eastern pivot becomes a one-way dependence on Beijing.
The stakes extend far beyond a single disrupted meeting or a dozen wrongful arrests. They concern whether Bangladesh will continue down the path of political mimicry, repeating the sins of the Awami League era under a different banner, or whether it can genuinely chart a new course—one in which dissent is not criminalized, mobs are not emboldened, and courts are not politicized.
Regionally, Pakistan is face-to-face with water insecurity, that too at a time when strained ties with India have led to abeyance of the Indus Water Treaty and Pakistan’s dependence on those waters continues. To the northwest, Afghanistan also keeps pressing for its increasing dependence on the Indus waters due to its landlocked geographic location. This keeps ties with Afghanistan strained.
If India is treated as an independent balancer, global multipolarity becomes stable. If the West instead tries to “arm-twist” India, it only drives India closer to Russia–China alignment. A respected, autonomous India helps prevent both Western hegemony and China-centric hegemony — creating a truly balanced order.
Two demographic shifts are increasingly seen to be transforming global economies and labour markets: aging and declining working-age populations, predominantly in the developed economies, and expanding working-age populations, predominantly in the less developed economies.
Digital agriculture offers a path towards farm practice transformation in addition to increased adaptive capacity and mitigation of extreme climate shocks. The strategy involves a package of tools from satellite-based weather forecasting to artificial intelligence-based diagnosis of pests, mobile-based market access platforms, precision irrigation equipment, and monitoring of the health of soil through cloud-based services.
According to Amarnath Motumal, former vice chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 20 or more Hindu girls are abducted and converted monthly in Pakistan. The number of documented cases of non-Muslim girls being compelled to marry Muslim men and convert to Islam as a result of forced marriage has increased noticeably. Girls are forbidden to contact their families after being forced to convert.
The UAE’s financial muscle and India’s AI talent base can together create an ethically grounded, globally competitive AI ecosystem. This collaboration can become a blueprint for cross-regional partnerships that strengthen innovation, digital sovereignty, and sustainable growth across the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
From a realistic perspective, the prospect of a Pakistan-Bangladesh axis does not herald a serious economic or strategic bloc. Instead, it signals the re-emergence of revisionist politics in South Asia. In seeking to rewrite history and align against India, both countries risk ignoring their own domestic crises.
Bangladesh now stands at a perilous crossroads. Either the nation allows this unelected regime to continue dismantling democratic institutions, silencing dissent, and rewriting history—or its citizens rise to reclaim their rights. Democracy cannot endure without inclusivity
Championing a rules-based maritime order in the Indian Ocean, which Sri Lanka has long called for since its 1971 ‘Indian Ocean Peace Zone’ (IOPZ) proposal and ensuring strict adherence to the provisions of the ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea’ (UNCLOS), will reinforce Sri Lanka’s credibility and also encourage cooperative stability in the Indian Ocean.
For Modi, the political cost of appearing to bow to American pressure may be almost as high as the economic cost of resisting it. In the end, the tariffs are not just about commerce. They are a test of whether India can still straddle the fault lines of great-power rivalry—whether the world’s most populous democracy is being forced into the uncomfortable role of choosing sides.
With the Ukraine war and the resulting sanctions making it difficult for Russia to trade with its allies, being barred from using SWIFT or the US dollar, it resulted in Russia resorting to local currencies to trade that resulted in the BRICS currency drawing adverse attention in Washington and gaining global imprtance.
In the end, Yunus may find that his greatest failure is not the scandals that have already emerged, but the corrosion of hope that followed him into office. A nation that once believed it had found a principled steward now sees another operator in the same tired political theater—just with better English and a Nobel medal.
The most probable outcome in Tianjin is what one Indian diplomat called a “tactical pause.” A cooling of tensions, a resumption of some economic and security dialogues, perhaps even a roadmap for regular high-level contact. That would be enough to stabilise the border and signal to Washington that India has options.
India is a responsible nuclear power, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and a civilisation-state that does not live on borrowed credibility. It has the patience to navigate provocation and the capacity to respond decisively. If Pakistan’s military flirts with Armageddon, India will respond “BrahMostically” with unmatched precision and power.
