2024 yearender: Victories and challenges

India’s foreign policy leaders heaved a sigh of relief as an understanding was hammered out with China after months of negotiations to disengage front line forces on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as 2024 drew to a close, though they were grappling with some other challenges on the regional and global stage.

After a four-year face-off in the Ladakh sector, India and China agreed on October 21 on pulling back troops at the two remaining “friction points” of Demchok and Depsang and for resumption of patrolling on the LAC. The resolution of the military standoff, as external affairs minister S Jaishankar put it, is a “work in progress” as the two sides now have to contend with weightier matters such as de-escalation and normalising the relationship.

While developments on the China front created some important room to manoeuvre, the external affairs ministry will continue to handle several sensitive issues well into the next year – shifts by key neighbours Nepal and the Maldives that moved them closer to China, an adversarial interim government in Bangladesh that closed the year by seeking former premier Sheikh Hasina’s extradition, the erosion of the authority of Myanmar’s junta, the continuing fallout of conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine, and the unpredictability of the incoming Donald Trump administration in the US.

India will also have to contend with the fallout of the so-called “murder for hire” case, which saw two Indian nationals, including a former intelligence operative, being indicted in an American court for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate pro-Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. A similar case in Canada, the killing of Khalistani radical Hardeep Singh Nijjar, has taken ties to a fresh low, with both sides expelling six diplomats each during the year.

Two days after the understanding with China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met in Russia on October 23 and agreed to revive several mechanisms to normalise ties and address the border dispute. Since then, the foreign and defence ministers of the two sides have met, followed by talks on December 18 between the Special Representatives on the border issue – National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and foreign minister Wang Yi – that focused on resuming cross-border cooperation, including the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and border trade.

That the two sides were unable to agree on a joint statement on the meeting of Special Representatives and India didn’t sign on for a so-called “six-point consensus” referred to in a Chinese readout pointed to lingering differences and the difficulties in finding common ground on the long-standing border dispute.

Pankaj Saran, a former deputy national security adviser and convener of the think tank NatStrat, said the first indication that India wanted to break the ice with China came in Modi’s interview with Newsweek in April, when the PM spoke of the “need to urgently address the prolonged situation on our borders” and the importance of stable and peaceful ties.

“This process is going to continue in 2025...and it seems China is keen to move forward,” Saran said. “If the objective conditions are created, it is possible to resolve most difficult issues.”

In the coming year, the two sides will have to tackle more weighty issues, including the easing of the visa regime, trade-related matters and the possible need for new border management and confidence-building measures. This, experts believe, will be the true test of the ongoing negotiations.

“The larger issue is how we want to live with China as neighbours. There is a long way to go in normal interstate relations,” Saran said.

Within the neighbourhood, the student-led uprising in Bangladesh that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina in August came as a bolt from the blue for India, which invested heavily in building relations with the Awami League leader and her government over the past decade. India poured billions of dollars into creating trade, energy and physical connectivity with Bangladesh, mainly with an eye on improving access and economic conditions in the northeastern states.

Bilateral ties plummeted after Hasina fled to India and an interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took office in Dhaka. Besides concerted attempts to erase the Awami League’s role in Bangladesh’s independence, the caretaker administration has focused on revitalising relations with Pakistan and reviving the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. In the final weeks of the year, the Yunus-led regime made a formal request to India for extraditing Hasina, adding to the strains in relations.

The downturn in relations with Bangladesh coincided with greater gains by anti-junta resistance forces in Myanmar, including the capture of key military bases and border trade routes that effectively limited the writ of the generals to the centre of the country.

Nepal and the Maldives took several steps during 2024 to forge closer trade and strategic relations with China, though the government in Male was forced to mend ties with New Delhi later in the year because it required assistance to deal with an economic downturn. Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli signed a framework agreement for cooperation under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seven years after the country signed on for the ambitious but flawed connectivity venture. The Maldives forged closer defence ties with China and the leaders in both Kathmandu and Male junked a long-held tradition by travelling to Beijing before coming to New Delhi.

Former ambassador Rajiv Bhatia, distinguished fellow for foreign policy studies at Gateway House, said the implementation of India’s “Neighbourhood First” policy also depends on neighbours. “In 2025, I see South Block devoting a lot of time to our neighbours, and the real headache will be Bangladesh, where anti-India elements have become more assertive.”

With Myanmar’s junta losing control of border regions, India has restructured its policy by engaging with other stakeholders though it is still struggling, Bhatia said. “Sri Lanka and the Maldives are balancing between India and China. India is still in the game though much will depend on what we do,” he said.

India, like countries around the world, has begun preparing for the return of Donald Trump and his unpredictable approach to foreign policy. While Jaishankar has spoken of India being in a “much more advantageous position” than other nations because of its “positive political relationship” with Trump in the past, the president-elect has already begun talking of imposing retaliatory tariffs on the country.

Arun Singh, who was India’s envoy to the US during 2015-16, noted that Trump had done significant work to advance bilateral ties in his first term, including easing restrictions on high-technology trade, reviving the Quad, pivoting towards the Indo-Pacific, starting the 2+2 dialogue of defence and foreign ministers and adopting a clear posture on China.

“On the negative side, we had the withdrawal of benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programme. There is also Trump’s erratic, unpredictable and whimsical decision-making. For instance, he cracked down on Pakistan and then invited [then premier] Imran Khan to Washington and offered to mediate on Kashmir. So, we have to be prepared,” Singh said.