POWER 50 · Day 49 — Recent Developments in Foreign Policy, Part 1: India’s Western Arc

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POWER 50 is fifty capsules across fifty days — the entire PSIR syllabus revised once, taken in the order the syllabus is actually built, one topic a day. The method is plain: read the day’s capsule, write the same day, and don’t break the chain. Running alongside are PSIR Dynamics 2026 and the PYQ Vault — 560 previous-year questions across the fifty days, roughly eleven a day — so revision and answer-practice move together.

Day 49 — Recent Developments in Foreign Policy, Part 1

Today we turn to India’s western arc: the Gulf and the wider West Asia, Iran, the UAE, Afghanistan, and the deepening partnership with the United States. The capsule traces the move from a Nehruvian, ideology-driven posture to one built on pragmatism and strategic autonomy — Jaishankar’s “Think West, Act East” and the Modi-era “Link West” turn — and reads the region through realist, liberal and constructivist lenses to ask whether its order is now bipolar, multipolar or hybrid. From there it works through the five stakes that make West Asia matter (energy, diaspora, maritime security, internal security and great-power balance), the arc of India–Iran ties from Chabahar to the 2025 flashpoints and Operation Sindhu, the India–UAE Comprehensive Strategic Partnership built around CEPA and IMEC, two decades of Indian capacity-building in Afghanistan and the recalibration since 2021, and finally Operation Sindoor and the deterrence turn of 2025. This chapter carries 2 × 10-markers, 4 × 15-markers and 4 × 20-markers — among the heavier loads in all of Paper II.

Write before the evening:

1. “The war in Afghanistan is crucial from the point of view of India’s national security. If the Americans withdraw and jihadis emerge with a sense of triumphalism, India will face an increasing onslaught of terrorism.” Comment. (UPSC 2020, 20m)
2. What are the challenges and limitations in India–Iran relations? (UPSC 2023, 15m)
3. India continues to invoke its time-tested policy of strategic autonomy vis-a-vis both the United States of America and Russia by rejecting the US’ offer of mediation on the Kashmir issue and by refusing to criticize Russia in its ongoing war against Ukraine. Comment. (UPSC 2025, 20m)

If you go blank on a name, a phase or a phrase, it is covered in full in the Foundation and OGP class notes and handouts — revise it, then write.