The whole world awaits the outcome of the current electoral contest for power in New Delhi. After all, the policies and geopolitics of India do have some immediate impact at a global level. But it is South Asia’s seven other countries, including Sri Lanka, that watch most closely for next week’s announcement of the outcome in India’s Lok Sabha national legislature.

As seven states grouped around this single giant of a nation, with the world’s biggest population (just edging out China in 2023) and the fifth largest economy, we, India’s neighbours, are compelled by geography, if not by ethno-cultural affinity, to take serious note and carefully respond to our neighbour. The long land, sea and air borders that we share with India intertwines our eight nations intimately, even more that our demographic kinship.

The South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC) actually has little to boast about in terms of successful regional integration compared with similar other regional groupings in the world community. In fact, as international affairs analysts regretfully point out, despite its sheer economic weight, India does not have the same close and fruitful economic ties with its immediate neighbours as do other regional groupings.

Nearly three quarters of a century since it regained its freedom from foreign domination, India has indeed come a long way from being a poor, overcrowded country, to being the next biggest economy behind the United States, China, Germany, and Japan. In fact India may boast of the ability to produce a bigger variety of things than Japan and Germany – from atom bombs to space ships to EVs and cricket bats and pharmaceuticals – but it does not do much business with its own neighbours!

Massive floods

Even so, the geographical intimacy is such that, if India sneezes, the neighbouring populations do get immensely worried about COVID. Rains on the Indian side could cause massive floods in Bangladesh, courtesy of the Brahmaputra Rive. Likewise, pollution must and does spill over through that same huge river system and the adjoining Ganges system too.

Over-fishing by Indian fisher craft in the Palk Strait and surrounding ocean is a constant threat to the success of Sri Lanka’s fisheries. Conversely, militancy by marginalised ethnic minorities can cross the Palk Strait into insurgent hideouts on the mainland creating risks that include the life of an Indian Prime Minister.

Inter-ethnic strife inside India or in other neighbouring nations have spilled over across land borders on major scales, sometimes accompanied by land wars. Right now, India has border tensions involving minor localised clashes on its borders with Pakistan, especially, but also between local villagers along the border with Bangladesh.

And China’s constant probing forays by its border units is one flashpoint that is extra-regional.

The postures and actions of those in power in New Delhi can thereby have a bearing on literally over a billion people extending from West Asia and Central Asia on the one side to vast waters of the Indian Ocean to the south. And, on the other side, across the Himalayan ranges to the crowded, bustling economic centres of East (China, Japan) and South East Asia.

Second largest                    armed forces

At present India may have the world’s second largest armed forces after China, in terms of troop strength. But Delhi cannot quite match Beijing when it comes to the quality of its firepower. Only the rugged terrain of the Himalayan range is there as an obstacle for the easy resort to conventional military pressures.

Both China and India boast some of the biggest tank armies the world has ever seen but these thousands of main battle tanks, mobile artillery and mechanised forces are all effectively separated by the logistical impossibilities of the Himalaya.

Precisely for this reason, both states has amassed aerial forces also formidable by world standards. Here, however, China has an edge in numbers of aircraft and strength of latest generation aircraft.

But the final balance of military power lies in the possession by both countries of sizeable nuclear armaments. Again, Indian has yet to build up nuclear ordinance to the level of China. But Delhi’s nuclear stockpile is adequate to match that deterrent ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD) capability wielded by Beijing.

But mere military deterrence does not build good relations, nor good business. For that, real, civil, politics and diplomacy must succeed.

That requires political actors to look beyond immediate self-interests within parochial competitive contexts. It is not enough to think one’s own political party or even of the ambitions of one’s own social constituency.

National governance means the accommodation of cross constituency interests and needs.

The challenge is for such domestic politics not to affect the politics of inter-state relations especially among the neighbouring states, the member nations of SAARC.International relations requires taking that same accommodation to another level, toward the interests and needs of the whole Earth community.

The ongoing electoral hustings in India will shape Delhi’s geopolitical strategy. As in many similar competition-based political systems, vote-catching nationalism is good for political success – for the capture of governmental power.

And, the Bharatiya Janata Party is the quintessential nationalist party. Majoritarian religio-ethnic societal dominance has been the principal electioneering theme of the BJP and its many nationalist allies for decades. The BJP and its leading personal Premier Narendra Modi have thrived on this ideological discourse. In this, it is no different from much of South Asia’s domestic politics.

Currently, all opinion polls indicate a historic third term for the BJP, its allied National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and its leader Premier Modi.

Several hundred million more Indian voters will vote this Saturday, June 1, in the seventh and final voting phase of the election process which began in early April. A total of 904 candidates are in the fray to contest from 57 Lok Sabha constituencies in 8 states and union territories.

On this day, voters across all the electoral seats in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh will exercise their franchise. In this phase, voting will also take place in Bihar (8 seats), Chandigarh (1 seat), Jharkhand (3 seats), Odisha (6 seats), Uttar Pradesh (13 seats) and West Bengal (9 seats).

The BJP-NDA regime’s current seat strength in the Lok Sabha is 342, an easy majority over the Opposition alliance led by the Indian National Congress which has just 119 seats.

Many analysts are convinced that if Congress does poorly again, the venerable old party will  fade away and get crowded out by new formations like the Aam Aadmi Party of Arun Kejriwal. Othere is a hope by some that there would be an internal change and the Nehru-Gandhi family will lose its grip on the leadership.

The expectation of a win by Modi implies a continuity of domestic and international policy.

The current neoliberal market economics will continue. While India is a big enough economy to withstand economic strategy failures, any strategic miscalculations at the international level is another matter. The Government or a new one can manage and contain domestic problems.

But internationally, Delhi cannot ‘contain’ problems arising from strategic failures. In the anarchy of current global politics, every power must either survive or become dependent on another power.

Delhi, at present, can be seen to be succeeding in its domestic rule but many analysts worry that Delhi has yet to learn the limits of geostrategic competition.