India & its neighbourhood

The Indus and Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna systems feed hundreds of millions of people, yet they cross some of the world's tensest borders.

Water as an asset

• Food and water security: the Indo-Gangetic canal and groundwater systems underpin South Asia's grain output; rivers supply cities and industry.
• Energy and transport: Bhutan's Chukha, Tala and Mangdechhu projects sell hydropower to India; the India–Bangladesh Protocol routes carry inland cargo.
• Cooperation: the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) survived wars for six decades; the Ganga Waters Treaty (1996) with Bangladesh and the Mahakali Treaty (1996) with Nepal show shared rivers can be negotiated.

Water as a source of conflict

• Between states: India placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance in April 2025 after the Pahalgam attack; the Teesta agreement with Bangladesh remains unsigned; China's dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo proceed without any water-sharing treaty.
• Within states: the Cauvery, Krishna and Mahadayi disputes repeat the upstream–downstream tension at home.
• Aggravators: glacier retreat, erratic monsoons, floods and droughts, population growth and poor data-sharing turn scarcity into suspicion.

Way forward

• Basin-level management, real-time hydrological data-sharing, joint flood forecasting and standing hydro-diplomacy institutions can make rivers instruments of regional cooperation.

Rivers will remain both asset and flashpoint; South Asia's choice is whether to manage them as shared resources or contest them as sovereign ones.

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Launched at the Quad Leaders' Summit in Tokyo (2022), IPMDA shares near-real-time data from commercial satellites with partner states to track 'dark shipping', illegal fishing and other unlawful activity at sea.

How IPMDA bridges SAGAR and the Quad

• SAGAR (2015) cast India as a security provider and capacity-builder in the Indian Ocean; the Quad seeks a free and open Indo-Pacific. IPMDA serves both by offering a public good: awareness of one's own waters.
• Regional fusion centres, including India's Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region at Gurugram, become nodes, so SAGAR's capacity-building gains Quad resources and reach.
• Non-military and demand-driven, it eases smaller states' discomfort with bloc politics and fits MAHASAGAR (2025), which extends SAGAR to mutual security and growth across regions.

Limits of the bridge

• Awareness, not enforcement: IPMDA sees but cannot act; response still rests on national navies and coastguards.
• Dependence on commercial data, Quad funding and uneven Quad momentum; partners guard their strategic autonomy.
• Political reading: China treats it as containment, and some littoral states hesitate to sit inside a Quad architecture.
• Overlap with the Colombo Security Conclave and India's bilateral coastal radar chains needs coordination to avoid duplication.

IPMDA is a useful, low-cost bridge between India's regional vision and Quad strategy; it complements, but cannot replace, India's own capacity and partnerships in the Indian Ocean.

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Since 2013 the BRI has brought Chinese ports, highways, power plants and loans into almost every South Asian country, turning the region into an arena where China, India and Western partners compete for influence.

From regional space to great-power theatre

• Chinese finance gave small neighbours an alternative to dependence on India; the US, Japan and the EU answered with alternative connectivity and Indo-Pacific frameworks, making India one competitor among several.
• Neighbours now bargain between suitors, so domestic politics in Colombo, Kathmandu, Dhaka or Malé carries great-power stakes.

Security implications for India

• Sovereignty: the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which is why India has not endorsed the BRI.
• Maritime encirclement: Hambantota (leased to a Chinese firm for 99 years in 2017), Gwadar and Kyaukphyu raise dual-use port concerns astride India's sea lanes.
• Surveillance: Chinese research vessels in the Indian Ocean and port calls at neighbours' harbours strain India's maritime domain awareness.
• Two-front logic: connectivity through Pakistan and presence in the Bay of Bengal complicate India's continental and maritime planning together.

Implications for regional influence

• Leverage: opaque loans deepened debt distress, most visibly in Sri Lanka's 2022 crisis, giving Beijing political leverage over policy and assets.
• Erosion: neighbours use Chinese finance to bargain with India, diluting the primacy assumed under Neighbourhood First.
• Nuance: BRI lending has slowed since 2020, projects have stalled, and neighbours hedge rather than choose, leaving space for Indian diplomacy.

India's response

• Neighbourhood First with lines of credit; emergency assistance to Sri Lanka in 2022; Chabahar; BBIN connectivity; IMEC; and Indo-Pacific partnerships with the US and Japan.
• The comparative advantage is trust and proximity: grant-based, transparent, quickly delivered projects that neighbours can own.

India cannot out-lend China, but it can out-deliver: faster projects, transparent finance and partnerships that keep South Asia open, plural and sovereign.

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Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan form India's 'extended neighbourhood' — energy- and mineral-rich, landlocked, and at the crossroads of Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan.

Evolving relations

• Diplomatic: the 'Connect Central Asia' policy (2012), the India–Central Asia Dialogue at foreign-minister level, the first India–Central Asia Summit (January 2022) and shared SCO membership since 2017.
• Economic: uranium from Kazakhstan, the proposed TAPI gas pipeline, and connectivity through Chabahar port, the International North–South Transport Corridor and the Ashgabat Agreement.
• Strategic: counter-terrorism and anti-narcotics cooperation, joint military exercises, and a shared stake in a stable Afghanistan.

Rising geopolitical significance

• Russia's traditional security role, China's economic dominance through the Belt and Road, and Turkey's outreach make the region a contest of influence; the CARs seek India as a balancing partner.

Critical view

• No direct land access: Pakistan and Afghanistan block the shortest route, so trade remains modest and far below China's.
• TAPI has stalled, Chabahar and the INSTC are slow to mature, and India's assistance is small beside Chinese finance.

Way forward

• Operationalise Chabahar and the INSTC, partner on critical minerals, expand digital public goods, scholarships and pharmaceuticals, and use the SCO and the Summit format for regular high-level engagement.

Central Asia is strategically vital but economically under-used by India; connectivity and sustained investment are the key to turning goodwill into influence.

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India's northern and western borders run through high mountains, deserts and marshes, and both carry unresolved disputes: an undemarcated Line of Actual Control with China and a contested Line of Control with Pakistan.

Conflicting issues

• China: an undefined LAC with differing perceptions in the western (Ladakh), middle and eastern (Arunachal) sectors; China's claims on Arunachal Pradesh, its roads and 'model villages' near the line, and the Galwan clash of June 2020, the first fatal one in decades (since then, an October 2024 consensus restored patrolling in Depsang and Demchok).
• Pakistan: the unsettled LoC in Jammu and Kashmir, the Siachen glacier, and the Sir Creek estuary where the boundary and maritime zones remain disputed.

Security challenges

• Traditional: transgressions and face-offs on the LAC; ceasefire violations, infiltration and cross-border terrorism across the LoC.
• Non-traditional: drones dropping arms and narcotics into Punjab and J&K, smuggling, fake currency, tunnels under the fence, and cyber and information operations.
• Terrain and logistics: high-altitude posts, harsh winters and thin road and air links that slow reinforcement, against China's faster infrastructure build-up.

Development under BADP and BIM

• BADP: a centrally supported programme for people living near the international border, funding roads, schools, health centres, drinking water, sports and livelihood projects, with priority to villages closest to the border; 38,715 projects worth ₹7,935 crore had been completed across 16 States and 2 UTs by March 2026.
• BIM: an umbrella scheme (2021–26) for fencing, floodlighting, border roads, border outposts and integrated check posts, plus technology-based surveillance such as the Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System on vulnerable stretches.
• Complementary: the Vibrant Villages Programme (2023) for northern border villages, to check out-migration and keep local communities as the forces' 'eyes and ears'.

Secure borders need hard infrastructure and prosperous border communities in equal measure; sustained investment must go together with steady diplomacy.

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Spread across about 1,200 coral islands south-west of India, the Maldives sits astride the Indian Ocean's east–west sea lanes that carry Gulf energy and Asia–Europe trade, close to Lakshadweep and India's western seaboard.

Geopolitical and geostrategic importance

• Sea lanes: the Eight Degree Channel between Minicoy and the Maldives and the One and a Half Degree Channel are choke points for shipping between the Gulf, the Malacca Strait and East Asia.
• Energy and trade security: disruption or hostile control of these waters would threaten India's crude imports and export routes, so a friendly Maldives is a strategic buffer.
• Policy anchor: the Maldives is central to Neighbourhood First and SAGAR, and to India's role as first responder — Operation Cactus (1988) against a coup attempt, Operation Neer (2014) after Malé's water crisis, and vaccines during the pandemic.
• Development partnership: the Greater Malé Connectivity Project, the coastal radar network, aircraft for surveillance and rescue, the Uthuru Thila Falhu harbour project, and lines of credit.

Maritime security and regional stability amid competition

• China's footprint: infrastructure loans and debt, research-vessel visits and political outreach; the 'India Out' campaign and the 2024 replacement of Indian military personnel with civilians showed how domestic politics can swing alignment.
• Security stakes for India: deny a hostile naval presence near Lakshadweep, maintain maritime domain awareness through the Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region and coastal radars, and counter piracy, drug trafficking and terror.
• Regional stability: the Maldives' climate vulnerability, radicalisation and fiscal stress affect the whole neighbourhood; the Colombo Security Conclave with Sri Lanka and Mauritius provides a coordination platform.
• Recalibration: later in 2024 India extended currency-swap support and the two sides adopted a vision for a comprehensive economic and maritime security partnership, showing that engagement outlasts a hostile election cycle.

A stable, friendly Maldives is a frontline of Indian Ocean security; consistent partnership that respects Maldivian sovereignty is India's best answer to strategic competition in its own neighbourhood.

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The SCO was built for security and economic cooperation across Eurasia, but members carry their quarrels into it: India-China border tensions, India-Pakistan hostility, and Russia's confrontation with the West over Ukraine. Under consensus rules, each rivalry can stall decisions.

The virus of conflict

• China's economic weight, and a consensus rule in a body that keeps bilateral disputes off its agenda, compound the problem.

India's mitigating role

• Counter-terrorism as common ground: presses for firm, non-selective action against cross-border terrorism and works actively through the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS).
• Principled connectivity: insists on sovereignty and territorial integrity, declines to endorse the Belt and Road paragraphs, and offers alternatives in Chabahar and the International North-South Transport Corridor.
• Agenda-setting: the SECURE framework at Qingdao (2018), covering security, economy, connectivity, unity, sovereignty and environment, gives members a shared vocabulary.
• Chairmanship 2022-23: hosted the July 2023 summit and added low-conflict pillars: startups and innovation, traditional medicine, youth, digital inclusion and shared Buddhist heritage.
• Keeps dialogue open with every member and balances SCO with the Quad and BRICS, refusing to treat it as an anti-Western bloc.

Limits

• India's own disputes with China and Pakistan restrict its ability to mediate, and the SCO cannot resolve bilateral issues.

India can best contain the virus by anchoring the SCO to shared goals, terrorism, connectivity and trade, while defending its core interests without paralysing the body.

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Sri Lanka's 2022 crisis of foreign-exchange shortage, suspended debt payments and shortages of fuel, food and medicine tested a relationship that runs back over 2,500 years through Buddhism and Ashoka's son Mahinda, and is framed today by Neighbourhood First and SAGAR.

The crisis

• Heavy foreign borrowing, tax cuts, the pandemic's blow to tourism and remittances, and the 2021 ban on fertiliser imports drained the reserves.

India as first responder

• Finance: assistance close to USD 4 billion in 2022, including a USD 500 million line of credit for fuel, a USD 400 million currency swap, a credit facility for food and medicine, and deferred Asian Clearing Union payments.
• Humanitarian: shipments of medicines, rice, milk powder and fuel, and a line of credit for urea fertiliser.
• Diplomacy: India backed Sri Lanka's engagement with the IMF and other creditors while it sought debt relief.

Strategic stakes and limits

• Indian Ocean security, China's presence at Hambantota and Colombo, refugee flows to Tamil Nadu, Tamil aspirations under the 13th Amendment and the fishermen disputes all shape India's role.
• India earned goodwill as the first responder, but must respect Sri Lankan sovereignty and public opinion and avoid appearing to seek concessions in return for aid.

Timely help proved the friendship in practice; lasting ties will rest on economic integration, respect for sovereignty and attention to Tamil and fishermen concerns.

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BIMSTEC (1997) brings together five South Asian and two Southeast Asian states around the Bay of Bengal; SAARC (1985) covers eight South Asian states. BIMSTEC gained momentum after SAARC stalled; its last summit was in 2014.

Parallel or complement?

• Not a parallel body: BIMSTEC complements SAARC with a different geography and a sectoral agenda; its rise after SAARC stalled only makes it look like one.

Similarities and dissimilarities

• Similar: regional groupings of developing states, run through summits and secretariats (Dhaka and Kathmandu), seeking trade, connectivity and poverty reduction.
• Membership: BIMSTEC leaves out Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives and adds Myanmar and Thailand, bridging South and Southeast Asia.
• Approach: BIMSTEC is sector-driven (transport, energy, security, trade, disaster management) and adopted a Charter only in 2022; SAARC's charter bars bilateral disputes, yet India–Pakistan tensions stalled it.

India's objectives through BIMSTEC

• Neighbourhood First meets Act East: a bridge to Southeast Asia, development of the Northeast through the Kaladan project and the Trilateral Highway, and a forum free of Pakistan's veto.
• Bay of Bengal maritime and energy security, counter-terrorism, disaster response and a balance to China's regional presence.
• Challenges: slow free-trade talks, thin intra-regional trade, funding gaps, Myanmar's political crisis and bilateral frictions.

BIMSTEC is a functional complement to SAARC, not its replacement; India should deliver on connectivity and trade rather than treat it as a political substitute.

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CPEC, a flagship of China's Belt and Road Initiative, is a package of road, rail, pipeline, power and industrial projects linking Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar port on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast.

Brief description

• About 3,000 km of highways, railways, energy projects and special economic zones along the route.
• Gwadar gives China a direct outlet to the Arabian Sea, and gives Pakistan infrastructure it could not fund alone.

Why India has distanced itself

• Sovereignty: the corridor runs through Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, territory India claims; India holds that no country can accept a project that ignores its core concern on sovereignty and territorial integrity.
• Strategy: Gwadar and other ports raise the prospect of a Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean, and the corridor deepens China-Pakistan military and economic ties.
• Security: a China-backed presence in disputed territory hardens the two-front challenge for India's border and maritime security.
• Economics and norms: doubts over debt sustainability, opaque contracts and social and environmental costs; India insists connectivity must be transparent, financially responsible and respectful of international norms.
• Consistent stance: India skipped the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in May 2017 and builds alternatives: Chabahar port with Iran and Afghanistan, the International North-South Transport Corridor and Act East links.

India objects to a corridor that violates its sovereignty, not to connectivity itself; firm diplomacy must go with credible, transparent regional links of India's own.

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China's Belt and Road, Russia's security and economic ties, and the US, Turkey and Gulf states have crowded Central Asia, where India lacks a land route. The Ashgabat Agreement, signed in 2011 by Iran, Oman, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, creates a multimodal transit corridor between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf; India acceded formally in 2018.

Implications for India

• Connectivity: an alternative route to Eurasia through Chabahar and the Gulf, bypassing Pakistan and complementing the International North–South Transport Corridor and the Chabahar arrangement with Iran and Afghanistan.
• Economic: shorter transit and lower costs; access to markets, energy and minerals in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan; simpler customs and transit procedures.
• Strategic: a low-cost answer to the Belt and Road, giving substance to the 'Connect Central Asia' policy (2012) and SCO membership (2017), and a presence where Russia and China dominate.
• Iran factor: the corridor runs through Iranian ports and territory, so US sanctions restored in 2018 complicate payments, shipping and investment.
• Limits: low existing trade, long and costly routes, rail gaps, security risks in Afghanistan and slow progress at Chabahar.

Way forward

• Fast-track Chabahar and rail links, tie the corridor to the North–South route, and use the SCO and India–Central Asia dialogue to widen trade.

Joining the Ashgabat Agreement gives India an inexpensive entry into Central Asia's connectivity network; the gains depend on making Chabahar and the North–South links work despite sanctions and security constraints.

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China's trade surpluses finance infrastructure abroad and a modernising military at home; through the Belt and Road Initiative and port investments it has turned economic reach into strategic presence across Asia.

Economics as a tool of power

• Surplus capital funds ports, roads and loans in India's neighbourhood, buying influence with small states and access for its navy.
• A rising defence budget and naval expansion follow the money.

Impact on India

• Trade: India runs a large deficit with China and depends on it for electronics, machinery and pharmaceutical inputs, a vulnerability in any crisis.
• Sovereignty: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir; India stayed away from the Belt and Road Forum of May 2017 on this ground.
• Encirclement: Chinese-financed ports such as Gwadar are read in India as a 'string of pearls'.
• Border: the Doklam standoff of 2017 showed economic strength turning into military pressure.
• Diplomacy: China blocked India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2016 and held up the UN listing of Masood Azhar until May 2019, using its weight with smaller neighbours.

India's response

• Neighbourhood connectivity and Chabahar, Act East, partnerships with Japan, the United States and Australia, and Make in India to cut import dependence.

India must trade with China without depending on it: competitiveness at home, connectivity in the neighbourhood and partnerships abroad are the answer to economic coercion.

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India imports most of the crude oil it uses, and a large share of that oil and of its gas comes from West Asia, so the price and reliability of Gulf supply shape growth, inflation and the current account.

Forms of cooperation

• Supply: as of 2017, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, the UAE and Kuwait were among India's leading crude suppliers, and Qatar its main LNG source under long-term contracts.
• Strategic partnerships: the Riyadh Declaration with Saudi Arabia (2010) and the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the UAE (2017) tie energy to investment and security cooperation.
• Investment and storage: Indian firms sought upstream stakes, as in Iran's Farzad-B gas field (which Iran awarded to an Iranian firm in 2020); under a 2017 agreement ADNOC of Abu Dhabi stores crude in India's strategic reserve at Mangalore.
• Connectivity: Chabahar port in Iran gives India a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan, while the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline has stalled for years.
• Human and financial ties: the Gulf diaspora sends large remittances and gives India a direct stake in the region's stability.

Risks

• Price volatility that feeds inflation and the fiscal deficit.
• Regional conflict: the Iran-Saudi rivalry, tensions among Gulf States and sanctions on Iran that constrain India's choices.
• The Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which India's Gulf oil passes.

Way forward

• Diversify suppliers and routes, expand strategic reserves, lock in long-term contracts and equity oil, invest in renewables and gas, and keep a balanced diplomacy across rival West Asian states.

West Asia will anchor India's energy security for years, so the aim is not to leave it but to make the dependence manageable through diversification, reserves and clean energy.

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People of Indian origin reached South-East Asia through ancient trade, colonial-era labour migration and modern professional migration; today they form significant communities in Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar and other countries.

Economic role

• Historical foundations: labourers on plantations and railways, and traders and financiers such as the Chettiars, whose credit financed agriculture and trade in Burma.
• Today: professionals and entrepreneurs in finance, IT, medicine and trade; Indian-origin business is a visible part of the economies of Singapore and Malaysia.
• Bridge for commerce: they channel trade, investment and tourism between India and ASEAN and give Indian firms local partners.

Social, cultural and political role

• Culture: temples, Deepavali and Thaipusam, cuisine, language and cinema enrich plural societies and extend India's soft power.
• Civic life: they take part in politics, unions and community bodies; citizens of Indian origin have held high office, for example S.R. Nathan as President of Singapore.
• Voice for minorities: Indian-origin leaders have raised the concerns of their communities within host-country politics.

Value to India and challenges

• Diplomacy: the diaspora underpins India's Act East policy and ASEAN engagement, and is engaged through Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
• Challenges: questions of identity and integration, uneven economic status within the community, and episodes of discrimination or restrictive policy, as in the expulsions and nationalisation in Myanmar in the 1960s.

Way forward

• Cultural exchange, education and skill links, channels for diaspora investment, and consular support that respect their citizenship of the host countries.

The Indian diaspora in South-East Asia is an economic and cultural bridge of real value; India gains most when it engages them as citizens of their own countries rather than as an extension of itself.

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Signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 with the World Bank as broker, the Indus Waters Treaty has outlasted three wars and is now tested by climate change and a sharp fall in India-Pakistan trust.

The Treaty in brief

• Division: the three eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India for unrestricted use; the three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan, with India retaining run-of-river hydropower, limited storage and specified irrigation on them.
• Machinery: a Permanent Indus Commission that exchanges data; disputes go stepwise to a Neutral Expert (Baglihar, 2007) or a Court of Arbitration (Kishenganga, 2013).

Ecological implications

• Fixed allocations ignore a changing basin: glacier retreat, a shifting monsoon and rising demand alter flows, yet the Treaty provides no environmental flow or joint basin management.
• Dams and diversions change sediment and flow regimes; the Kishenganga award made India maintain a minimum downstream flow, an early recognition of ecology.

Economic implications

• Pakistan's irrigated agriculture depends heavily on the western rivers, so every Indian project on them is read as a threat.
• India uses only part of its entitlement: storage limits and slow project execution keep hydropower and irrigation in Jammu and Kashmir below what the Treaty allows.

Political implications

• The Treaty survived 1965, 1971 and Kargil, a rare example of cooperation, yet each Indian project (Baglihar, Kishenganga) has been contested at length.
• After the Uri attack (September 2016) India reviewed the Treaty's working, with calls to use its full entitlement and speed up projects (since then, in April 2025, after the Pahalgam attack, India placed the Treaty in abeyance until Pakistan credibly ends support for cross-border terrorism).

India's best course is to use its full entitlements, keep the Commission and the dispute mechanism working, and press for basin-wide data sharing, so that the Treaty adapts rather than breaks.

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Launched in the early 1990s under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, the Look East Policy answered two post-Cold War shocks at once: the loss of the Soviet Union as India's principal partner, and the need after the 1991 crisis to plug into Asia's fastest-growing economies.

Economic dimension

• Institutional ladder: ASEAN sectoral dialogue partner (1992), full dialogue partner (1996), annual summits from 2002 and East Asia Summit membership (2005).
• Trade and investment: the India–ASEAN free trade agreement in goods (2010) and a comprehensive economic agreement with Singapore (2005) raised trade and drew investment.
• Connectivity: the Kaladan multi-modal project through Myanmar and the India–Myanmar–Thailand Trilateral Highway aim to turn the landlocked Northeast into a gateway.
• Limits: a widening trade deficit with ASEAN, slow-moving connectivity projects, and late liberalisation of services, where India is competitive.

Strategic dimension

• Balancing: engagement with Southeast Asia and Japan gave India weight against China's growing influence in the region.
• Maritime: securing the sea lanes towards the Malacca Strait through naval exercises, port calls and defence cooperation with Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia.
• Forums: membership of the ASEAN Regional Forum (1996) and the East Asia Summit brought India into Asia-Pacific security dialogue.
• Northeast: treating the region as a bridge to Myanmar and ASEAN linked internal security and development to foreign policy.
• Limits: China's economic weight in ASEAN far exceeds India's; instability in Myanmar and insurgent sanctuaries slow projects; 'looking' outpaced 'acting', which is why the policy was recast as Act East in 2014.

Economically and strategically the policy gave India a lasting presence in the Asia-Pacific; delivery on connectivity and trade will decide whether Act East converts that presence into real leverage.

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SAARC, founded in 1985, decides by consensus, and Article X of its Charter keeps bilateral and contentious issues off its agenda. That design cannot hold when one member's conduct erodes trust across the region, as Pakistan's did in 2016.

Cross-border terrorism

• The attacks on the Pathankot air base (January 2016) and the Uri army camp (September 2016), like the Mumbai attacks of 2008, were traced to Pakistan-based groups.
• After Uri, India declined to attend the SAARC summit due in Islamabad in November 2016; Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan also pulled out, and the summit was postponed.
• Under the consensus rule, a member seen as a source of terror turns cooperation into hostage: no summit, no new agreements.

Interference in internal affairs

• Afghanistan has repeatedly accused Pakistan of sheltering the Taliban and the Haqqani network, which strike Afghan cities and institutions.
• Bangladesh objected to Pakistan's comments on its 1971 war crimes trials as interference in its domestic justice system.
• Pakistan blocked the SAARC Motor Vehicles Agreement at the 2014 Kathmandu summit, so road connectivity moved ahead as BBIN without it.

What it means for SAARC

• Little delivery: SAFTA (2006) has barely raised intra-regional trade, and energy and connectivity projects wait on consensus.
• Counter-view: smaller members also worry about India's size, and the India–Pakistan rivalry is two-sided; SAARC still works in social sectors, such as the South Asian University in Delhi.
• India's response: invest in BBIN and BIMSTEC, keeping regional integration moving while SAARC stalls.

SAARC's future rests on Pakistan ending support to cross-border terror and respecting members' sovereignty; until then sub-regional platforms will carry South Asian integration forward without it.

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