If I had to describe 2025 in one line, I would say “It was a year where the world refused to behave.” What used to be predictable became uncertain, alliances shifted, tariffs returned, neighbours bristled, and the global system stopped pretending it was stable. From elections and trade tensions to wars, protests, and new laws on technology, the past year reminded us how fragile the idea of “normal” really is.
For India, this turbulence didn’t remain on the TV screen. It arrived through multiple channels: borders, trade, technology, compliance, capital flows, energy markets, misinformation, and even workplace anxiety. We were part of the storm, not just observers of it.
India in the Middle of Multiple Systems
- When you sit in India today, you feel pulled in many directions.
- To the north and west, we deal with geopolitical pressure and military posturing.
- To the east and south, we face maritime competition and trade realignments.
- To the west (across oceans), we source energy and capital.
- To the northeast, we look toward semiconductors and technology.
- Internally, we balance elections, polarization, data laws, and rapid digital growth.
We are not a satellite state. We don’t have the luxury of picking a single camp. And we don’t have the bandwidth to indulge ideological purity. We need growth, security, energy, and technology at the same time and these come from different power centres that rarely agree with each other.
The Neighbourhood: No Longer a Quiet Backyard
India’s neighbourhood has structurally changed. It’s no longer a buffer zone; it’s a risk amplifier.
Pakistan: General Munir’s consolidation of power has shifted the political balance once again. Whenever the military takes the driver’s seat, India needs to watch for calibrated provocations and “managed friction.” Not war but distraction. And distraction is a strategic tax.
Bangladesh: With more worrying structural shift. Ideological hardening, religious polarization, and a tilt toward China, Bangladesh have created diplomatic chill and economic uncertainty. The re-emergence of Tarique Rahman, as the president of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has changed the political mood. His return to the centre of Bangladeshi politics brings with it a different style of mobilisation one that energises ideological institutions which have been quietly consolidating influence over the years. For India, these institutions matter because they shape attitudes that outlast electoral cycles.
On a personal note, from my student years, I always carried a certain admiration for Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate whose microfinance innovations put Bangladesh on the global development map at a time when geopolitics barely noticed Dhaka. Empowering the poor and building financial inclusion was his domain not political statecraft, he was perhaps the only broadly acceptable figure capable of temporarily filling a vacuum. But individuals, no matter how distinguished, cannot substitute for the institutional machinery democracy needs to sustain itself. For Bangladesh to regain political confidence, those institutions must resume their role sooner rather than later.
The preceding Sheikh Hasina era, for all its polarising elements, offered a degree of predictability from India’s vantage point. Connectivity projects progressed, counterterror cooperation held, and the Bay of Bengal remained relatively stable. With that chapter closing, the channels that once linked Dhaka and New Delhi commercial, security, and logistical are no longer guaranteed. A Bangladesh that turns inward ideologically while leaning outward toward Beijing for ports and capital creates a far more complex neighbourhood for India.
And the stakes for India are not sentimental; they are concrete and geographic. The eastern corridor, access to the Northeast, and land links to Myanmar and Southeast Asia depend on a stable, pragmatic, and outward looking Bangladesh. Add to this the maritime dimension Chittagong, Payra, and other port infrastructure touching the Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh shifts from being a bilateral relationship to a structural element in India’s Indo-Pacific calculus.
Myanmar & Nepal: Unrest, border instability, refugee flows, and Gen-Z mobilization have positioned these countries as volatility exporters. Not intentionally, but through spillovers.
The takeaway was simple: our neighborhood is not collapsing, but it is becoming harder to manage.
That increases both India’s workload and its strategic bandwidth requirements.
China: Tactical Thaw, Strategic Trust Deficit
Another theme was China. Yes, there has been a small thaw flights resumed, limited visa easing, diplomatic engagement. But we cannot mistake this for genuine normalization it rather is a “tactical pause,” and definitely not a strategic settlement.
China continues to pressure India along two axes simultaneously:
- Continental pressure at the border
- Maritime encirclement through ports and logistics (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan)
In a nutshell I would agree when someone say “China doesn’t need a war to change India’s environment.”
Influence can travel through concrete, cables, and debt just as easily as through tanks.
The US, Trump, and the Reliability Question
The return of President Trump, is a structural problem for India. A more transactional America raises a familiar question:
How reliable is the US as a security partner?
Worried is the fact that US strategic think took a remastered shift about India–Pakistan, undoing years of effort to be de coupled from the subcontinent lens.
At the same time, India still needs the US for:
- Capital
- Technology
- Defence partnerships
- Market access
So the relationship continues, but with more turbulence in the skies ahead.
BRICS, the Gulf, and the Rise of Geo-Economics
If the US brings security and tech, BRICS brings something more abstract: geo-economic options. Now I am clear that BRICS isn’t about anti-dollar slogans — it’s about creating space:
- Alternative payments
- Commodity coordination
- Energy trade
- South-South capital flows
With Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and others in the room, BRICS looks less ideological and more transactional. India remains in it, not because it loves multipolar poetry, but because it needs optionality in finance and energy.
Internal Weather: Elections, Technology, and People
Externally, the weather was turbulent. Internally, it wasn’t calm either.
Elections & Polarization: Political heat could spill into social spaces. Not necessarily destabilizing, but fatiguing for businesses.
AI & Misinformation:
Deepfakes and manipulated narratives could become election season accelerants. Security leaders must now worry about information and perception.
DPDP Act & Compliance:
With India’s data law coming into force, compliance becomes both a cost and a capability upgrade. It forces companies to mature.
Manufacturing & China+1: A real opportunity exists, But India needs skills, infrastructure, and regulatory consistency to capture it.
Weather Outlook for 2026
If 2025 was turbulent, what does 2026 look like? I would say
Externally:
- Pakistan and Bangladesh will demand diplomatic oxygen
- China will remain cold but controlled
- The US will remain useful but transactional
- BRICS will continue quietly gaining geo-economic relevance
- The Bay of Bengal will matter more
Internally:
- Macroeconomics will stay stable
- AI and semiconductor investments will accelerate
- Elections will produce social noise
- misinformation will remain a headache
- Companies will spend more on compliance, less on firefighting
Closing Thought
The world may not settle into neat camps or calm seas anytime soon. But the turbulence is navigable if we read the weather correctly, upgrade our instruments, and stop assuming the sky owes us clear skies.
The coming year may not be peaceful, but it will be workable and for India, that is enough space to move forward.
