On May 6, APARC’s South Asia Initiative hosted its inaugural conference, on the theme of “A New Agenda for Indian Competitiveness." India faces an intensifying strategic competition with China that will affect not only Indian national security but also the nature of the international system in the Indo-Pacific region. The trajectory of that competition will hinge increasingly on emerging technologies – from artificial intelligence to biotechnology. India’s ability to research, develop, and deploy such technologies will shape not only its military power but also its resilience and self-sufficiency, which the Indian government sees as key national goals in a post-pandemic world. To develop these technologies, India’s national security establishment will need new policy settings — including new relationships with private industry — and new ways of cooperating with key partners, especially the United States.

To that end, the South Asia Initiative’s conference brought together three stakeholder groups that rarely convene in the same forum: academic researchers, government policymakers, and technology industry leaders. The conference’s aim was to create a community of interest among these groups, sensitizing them to the importance of India as a key developer and user of emerging technologies, and conversely, to the importance of those technologies for Indian security and U.S.-India relations.

The conference’s discussions were led and framed by Stanford research scholars and faculty, but they were directed towards addressing policy problems. What role do these technologies play, for example, in military power? How can government and industry best cooperate to foster innovation in defense technology? How can start-up firms navigate this rapidly evolving ecosystem? The conference did not aim to solve any of those problems, but it did seek to start the discussion that might ultimately generate new pathways for U.S.-India cooperation on technology — paths that are better suited to the nature of today’s strategic competition and more rooted in the nature of today’s technology industry.

India’s Defence Secretary, Dr. Ajay Kumar, in the conference’s opening keynote address, laid out some of the challenges facing India. He noted that a handful of large and inefficient Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) account for some 90-95% of Indian defense production, but those DPSUs have a negligible presence in the global market. In large part this is because Indian defense production has comprised of licensed manufacturing or simply assembly and integration of foreign-sourced components, traditionally but decreasingly from Russia. To realize the objective of greater national self-reliance in defense, India recognizes the need to cultivate greater private-sector technology development, and harness the economic potential of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies. India could even seek to leapfrog generations of technology, by focusing on developing the digital technologies that lie at the center of much of contemporary defense innovation. This will only be possible if India encourages greater private-sector research and development, reduces onerous government regulations, and fosters a healthier start-up ecosystem.

Dr. Kumar also reflected on the lessons of the ongoing war in Ukraine. He suggested that it underscored to India the importance of national self-reliance; India now sees its dependence on Russia as a challenge. It also revealed the importance of surprise, not only tactically but in the asymmetric or innovative capabilities a country is able to field against its enemy.

In the conference’s other keynote address, the Under-Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, Jose W. Fernandez addressed the role of technology in broader U.S.-India bilateral relationship. Technology is at the heart of addressing climate change, one of the most pressing strategic challenges facing the United States and India. The two countries are prioritizing the development and protection of cyberspace and telecommunications, as engines of the burgeoning digital economy across the world. From climate to cyberspace, cooperation on technology policies and facilitating private sector cooperation is not only central to the bilateral relationship but also a vital alternative to other actors that seek to use technology for their own, less democratic interests. To address these challenges, India and the United States must strike the right regulatory balance, to support transparent governance, and foster innovation; they must widen their cooperation to include other like-minded countries; and they must facilitate a more balanced flow of educational exchange to strengthen people-to-people links.

Mr. Fernandez further noted that the United States and India work together through various mechanisms. The Quad, for example, is a key multiplier for both U.S. and Indian policy, and India has deepened its cooperation with the Quad. Strategic competition with China requires a common positive vision for the region — an agenda spanning, for example, health, infrastructure, and food security.

The South Asia Initiative’s inaugural conference succeeded in bringing together a new constellation of stakeholders concerned with the role of technology in India’s strategic competitiveness. It initiated a vital conversation on how policymakers and industry can promote defense innovation, in the context of the wider US-India relationship. Critically, for APARC, it also spotlighted some complex issues that merit further scholarly investigation. The South Asia Initiative will incorporate those observations as it continues to develop its lines of research effort in the coming months and years.

The results show that the pandemic’s broad social and economic impact has adversely affected population health well beyond those directly suffering from COVID-19. Study participants with chronic conditions faced significant challenges in managing their symptoms during the pandemic. They experienced a loss of income and difficulties in accessing healthcare or medications, with the resulting delayed and foregone care leading to uncertain longer-term effects. For a nontrivial portion of participants, these factors are associated with the worsening of diabetes symptoms. The threat is twofold among people living in rural populations with limited access, availability, and affordability of healthcare services.

A Global Health Priority

The unintended adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic disease care may also further aggravate inequality in health outcomes. “If the trend continues and no immediate actions are taken to mitigate pandemic impacts,” Eggleston and her colleagues caution, then “the Asia-Pacific region will struggle to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.4 to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by a third relative to 2015 levels and to promote mental health and wellbeing.”

Addressing the pandemic’s unintended negative social and economic impacts on chronic disease care is a global health priority, determine the researchers. They propose several measures to help provide timely care for people with chronic conditions in resource-constrained settings. These include implementing innovations in healthcare delivery models to improve the adoption of healthy lifestyle changes and self-management of chronic disease and mild COVID-19 symptoms, increasing investment in interventions to provide social and economic support to disadvantaged populations, and strengthening primary healthcare infrastructure and support of healthcare providers.

The study was supported in part by funding from Shorenstein APARC’s faculty research award, Stanford King Center for Global Development, and a seed grant from the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education.

This blog post was first published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's The Strategist analysis and commentary site.

The Quad is stronger than ever. The informal ‘minilateral’ grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States has in the past year held its first stand-alone ministerial meeting and its first leaders’ summit, and launched an ambitious project to deliver Covid-19 vaccines. This ‘golden age’ of the Quad is a product of newfound Indian enthusiasm for the grouping, in turn, spurred by the military crisis in Ladakh, where India faces ongoing Chinese troop incursions across the two countries’ disputed border.

But the Quad is not bulletproof. Some experts have suggested that the economic and diplomatic effects of the devastating second wave of the pandemic in India will preoccupy the Indian government, sapping the Quad of capacity for any new initiatives. Others counter that India remains committed to competition with China—which is what really matters for the Quad—although its partners always expected ‘two steps forward, one step back’ from India.

Sign up for APARC newsletters to receive our experts' commentary and analysis.

Related: On the Conversation Six podcast, Tarapore discusses the policy paper on which this blog post is based with Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor of International Politics Rajesh Rajagopalan. Listen:

The pandemic may well prove to be a hiccup in the Quad’s evolution, but a potentially much larger disruption may come from the ongoing Ladakh crisis itself. As I argue in a new ASPI Strategic Insights paper, the crisis has greatly increased the risk of a border war between India and China, which would present a defining test of the Quad. A possible war could either strengthen or enervate the Quad—depending on how India and its partners, including Australia, act now to shape the strategic environment.

Risk is a function of likelihood and consequence. The likelihood of war on the India–China border is still low—both countries would prefer to avoid it—but has risen since the crisis began. Both countries have greatly expanded their military deployments on the border and backed them with new permanent infrastructure to resupply and reinforce them. China has proved its revisionist intent with large and costly military incursions, although its specific objectives and plans remain unknown. And the interaction of both countries’ military strategies and doctrines would, on the threshold of conflict, promote escalation.

The consequences of a possible conflict would be dire for both belligerents and for the region. China — assuming it is the provocateur of conflict—would likely face some political rebuke from states that consider themselves its competitors, but it will work strenuously to reduce those costs, and would likely have priced them in to its calculations of whether to fight. India will suffer high tactical costs on the border, and may also suffer wider harm if China uses coercive cyberattacks against strategic or dual-use targets.

In a costly war, the repercussions may spill over to damage India’s recently developing strategic partnerships, especially with the United States and Australia. Despite generally favorable views of the US, the Indian strategic elite still harbors some latent suspicions. This was highlighted in two episodes in April 2021, when the US Navy conducted a freedom of navigation patrol through the Indian exclusive economic zone, and when the US was slow in delivering Covid-19 vaccine raw materials and other relief. Both instances quickly receded from the Indian public imagination—thanks to quick correctives from Washington—but they did reveal that, under some conditions, Indian perceptions of its new partnerships can be quickly colored by distrust.

A China–India border war may create exactly those conditions. There is a chance that conflict may result in a redoubled Indian commitment to the Quad, if New Delhi judges that it has no option but to seek more external assistance. Conversely, unless a conflict is managed well by India and its partners, it is more likely to result in Indian disaffection with the Quad. India deepened Quad cooperation during the Ladakh crisis partly as a deterrent signal to China, and partly because the Quad is still full of promise. However, after a conflict—when China hasn’t been deterred and has probably imposed significant costs on India—the Quad’s utility would have been tested, and probably not ameliorated India’s wartime disadvantage.

The task before Quad governments is to be sensitized to this risk and implement mitigation strategies before a possible conflict, to buttress the coalition in advance. As I outline in the ASPI paper, they could do this at three levels. First, they could offer operational support—such as intelligence or resupply of key equipment, as the US already has done in the Ladakh crisis—although Quad partners’ role here would be limited. Second, they could provide support in other theatres or domains—with a naval show of force, for example, although cyber operations would probably be more meaningful in deterring conflict or dampening its costs. Third, they could provide political and diplomatic support — signaling to Beijing that a conflict would harm its regional political standing.

For Quad members, the main goal would be to deter conflict in the first place, and, failing that, to preserve the long-term strategic partnership with India for the sake of maintaining as powerful and energetic a coalition as possible to counterbalance China in the long term.