News & Analysis from South Asia

Gold remains central to Indian household finances, despite all the best efforts of the state.

The US-backed IMEC corridor sought to bolster resilience against the weaponization of chokepoints. Yet the Iran war closed the very waters the transport corridor relies on, and this is now forcing a rethink on future routes.

India’s deepening engagement in the Mediterranean demonstrates the birth of a uniquely 21st-century kind of statecraft: deterrence by association.

Critical minerals like nickel and tin may power the next economy, but extraction alone will not secure ASEAN’s place in it. Southeast Asia does not need to become the quarry of the energy transition. It needs to become one of its industrial architects.

The institutional framework governing the Thai-Cambodian maritime dispute collapsed with Bangkok’s recent withdrawal from MOU 44. Here’s what the new process might look like.

Southeast Asia is not moving towards China. It is moving away from US dependence.

The Iran war is opening strategic avenues for China to strengthen its international and domestic position in a disrupted world order.

It’s not just economics but geopolitics that’s guiding cable infrastructure decisions in the Indo-Pacific, and what’s being decided now will reverberate for decades to come.

With one of the most important cross-border water-sharing treaties ever signed still on hold, what are the chances that Islamabad and New Delhi open talks on the Indus Waters Treaty, and what forum could help bring about a new diplomatic dialogue?

Despite chronic instability, Pakistan continues to command the attention of major powers across Asia and the Gulf. Geography explains part of this relevance, but so does the state’s ability to manage overlapping external interests.

The Iran war is resurrecting old initiatives for bolder cooperation on energy and food security within ASEAN, but with them comes the now familiar friction between geopolitical alignment and collective decision-making.

Vietnam’s Starlink pilot reflects a new regulatory template for governing foreign-controlled endpoints, one that accepts the new geopolitical reality that AI compute facilities, cloud infrastructures, and data centers are assets of strategic concern to states.

Malacca doesn’t just provide Malaysia with geographic relevance. It also represents industrial opportunity, but only if Kuala Lumpur moves to take advantage of it.

Calls to revoke a 2001 MOU delineating shared borders risk a severe breach in Cambodia–Thailand relations. The ASEAN Cebu summit can help get bilateral relations back on track.

The 'inflation' that matters most in Indonesia today is not found in commentary or critique. It is found in hospital bills, school fees, rent payments, and grocery receipts.