India’s Foreign Policy in the Changing Global Order: Emerging Challenges and Strategic Priorities
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Abstract
India’s foreign policy is being tested by the slow shift from a United States–led order to a more contested, multipolar system. This paper examines how India has adapted its external conduct, from Nehruvian non-alignment to what scholars now call multi-alignment and strategic autonom. Using a qualitative, analytical method based on scholarly literature, official statements and international datasets published between 2014 and 2021, it assesses the features of the emerging order, the main challenges India faces, and the soft-power resources it can mobilise. The challenges include strategic competition with China, a hostile western frontier, energy dependence, climate and technology risks, and terrorism. The findings suggest that great-power rivalry has widened India’s room for manoeuvre by giving it many willing partners, yet its capacity to use that room is limited by a smaller economic and military base than China’s, unsettled borders and uneven institutional capacity. The paper argues that India’s priorities should be to stabilise its continental frontier, deepen Indo-Pacific partnerships without formal alliance, secure energy and technology supply chains, and invest in global-governance reform and soft power.
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