The South Asian Neighbourhood: Key to India’s Global Power Ambitions-Sushant Singh

THE TALK
In its quest for global power, India has been focused on its relationship with the big powers. The neighbourhood, other than China and Pakistan, has been often ignored in popular and policy discourse as being essential and critical to India’s global ambitions for a seat at the high table. As Chinese influence increases over the countries of the region, it has complicated the situation for India and presents a challenge for the future. Delhi will have to find a way to deftly navigate this challenge and bring renewed focus on smaller countries of the neighbourhood, failing which India’s global ambitions will remain unfulfilled. What are the reasons for the importance of the neighbourhood and the ways ahead for India?

Sushant Singh, Author, Commentator

Sushant Singh is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and was a lecturer in political science at Yale University in Fall 2019. He was the Deputy Editor of The Indian Express newspaper from 2015, where he reported on strategic affairs, national security, international relations, higher judiciary and investigative agencies. He was awarded the Ram Nath Goenka award for excellence in journalism for reporting on politics and government for the years 2017 and 2018.

He earlier served in the Indian Army for two decades, which included a stint with the United Nations in Cote D’Ivoire in West Africa. He has been invited as a speaker at top academic institutions globally, including Harvard University, MIT, University of Chicago, U-Penn, Kings College and Ashoka University, and has authored a book titled Mission Overseas (Juggernaut Books, 2017) about India’s three overseas military operations and co-authored a book Note by Note: The India Story 1947-2017 (HarperCollins India, 2018), a history of independent India, told alongside the sound of Hindi film music for each of the years.