Jagannath P. Panda

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's study titled ‘New Delhi's ‘Act East’ and India-ASEAN Engagement: What They Mean for India-Korea Relations in the Indo-Pacific’ has been published by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP).

The study examines India’s growing engagement with the ASEAN as emerging as one of the most defining aspects of unfolding the Indo-Pacific in recent years. Connectivity cooperation – both multilateral and country-specific – is the highlighting feature of this expanding engagement between India and the ASEAN. With a focus on the ASEAN, India’s Act East Policy (AEP) is expanding its outreach in Indo-Pacific, and most importantly, seeking new avenues of strategic cooperation with ASEAN dialogue partners including South Korea and Japan.

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• Published: 28 August, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's piece ‘India's 'Multipolar Asia' and China’ has been published at the East Asia Forum, Vol.1, No.2, 2019.

The author argues that India’s vision for a multipolar Asia rests on three critical elements. First, India aims to make global governance more equitable, pluralistic and representative; Second, minor and major powers in Asia must have a shared role in regional decision-making. Third, India’s push for multipolarity is inclusivity, rather than exclusivity. Multipolarity allows space for an external power like the United States to contribute to the region’s evolving security architecture. It also allows India to promote a regional paradigm of ‘shared leadership’ among the three major Asian powers: India, China and Japan. From New Delhi’s perspective, if the United States is excluded from Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposition of an ‘Asia for Asians’ will remain only a nomenclature, making Asia a China-dominated region.

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A longer version of the article can be read at: East Asia Forum Quarterly, Vol.1, No.2, 2019.

• Published: 28 August, 2019

Research Fellow, Dr. Jagannath Panda's co-authored paper "Regionalising India-Japan Relations in Indo-Pacific" is published in the Special Study titled Implementing the Indo-Pacific: Japan's Region-Building Initiatives (August 2019) Edited By Kyle Springer, Senior Research Analyst, Perth USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia.

The chapter evaluates the undercurrents of India-Japan relations to evaluate how and why the two countries are seeking to shape the regional order. It is argued that their shared vision aims to move the relationship beyond bilateralism to a regional framework of socio-economic and political integration that will serve the Indian and Japanese interest in the face of the expanding, and potentially dominating influence of China in the region. The chapter traces the development of this vision and blueprint and identifies the major challenges it must overcome.

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• Published: 27 August, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's co-authored article titled ‘Foreseeing India-China Relations: The Compromised Context of Rapprochement’has been published by ‘Asia-Pacific Issues’, a peer-reviewed publication of the East West Centre, Honolulu, USA.

The article essentially argues India-China relations which witnessed a new wave of optimism for a progressive and engaging partnership, following the Wuhan Summit, the informal 2018 meeting between Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping. Key to this has been continuous exchange of political and official visits from both sides. However, these exchanges might not be sufficient to remove uncertainty and suspicion from their relations. As long as China’s relationship with the United States remains adversarial, China will embrace India—without guaranteeing that it will not adopt a confrontational posture in the future. Their shifting relations, though suggesting an official longing for an upward trajectory, are based on a compromised context. External circumstances have pushed them to rapprochement, but could also drive them apart. Whether India and China will sustain this rapprochement is difficult to foresee.

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• Published: 2 July, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's edited volume ‘India and China in Asia: Between Equilibrium and Equations’ (Routledge: London and New York; 2019) has been published. A number of well-known experts, including Prof. J. Mohan Malik, Prof. John Garver, Prof. Niklas Swarnstrom, Dr. Xu Jian and Dr. Fang Tien-Sze have contributed to the volume.

The book analyses the structure of the India-China relationship and the two prominent powers’ positions with and against each other, bilaterally and globally, in a complex Asian environment and beyond. India and China’s perceptions of one another are evaluated to reveal how the order of Asia is influenced by engaging in different power equations that affect equilibrium and disequilibrium.

Contributors address three critical perspectives of India and China in Asia, which are increasingly shaping the future of Asia and impacting the Indo-Pacific power balance. First, they examine the mutual perceptions of India and China as an integral part of Asia’s evolving politics and the impact of this on the emerging Asian order and disorder. Second, they assess how classical and contemporary characteristics of the India–China boundary and beyond-border disputes or conflicts are shaping Asia’s political trajectory and leaving an impact on the Indo-Pacific region. Additionally, contributors observe the prevailing power equations in which India and China are currently engaged to reveal that they are not only geographically limited to the Asian region. Instead, having a strong global or intercontinental character attached to it, the India–China relationship involves extra-territorial powers and extra-territorial regions.

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• Published: 1 July, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's article titled 'India's 'multipolar Asia' approach and China' has been published in East Asia Forum Quarterly (Vol.11, No.2, April-June 2019), a special volume on ‘China realities’.

Dr. Panda essentially argues that 'an alignment with China is an important feature of India's 'multipolar Asia' conception as it will both protect and enhance India’s rise without contesting China’s rise'.

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• Published: 25 June, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's opinion piece titled ‘India’s Response to China’s Proposed “Asia for Asians”’ has been published by East West Wire, a featured publication of the East West Centre in USA, on May 20, 2019.

Dr. Panda argues in the piece that New Delhi evaluates each opportunity for collaboration with China on a case-by-case basis.

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• Published: 20 May, 2019

A report on the 20th Asian Security Conference, co-authored by Research Fellow, IDSA and Conference Coordinator, Dr Jagannath Panda and Assistant Coordinator, Ms Atmaja Gohain Baruah, was published in the April 2019 issue of India Strategic.

The Asian Security Conference was organised by IDSA on March 26-28, 2019, and sought to discuss the theme of the state of Multipolarism in Asia and the various tectonic shifts that are driving it.

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• Published: 26 April, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr Jagannath Panda’s commentary, titled ‘The India-Japan-Vietnam Trilateral: An “Inclusive” Proposition’ was published by ISPI (Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale) on April 15, 2019.

The commentary analyses the prospects of Vietnam, Indonesia and few other countries in Southeast Asia as a third country partner to India and Japan. More than any other country, Vietnam’s problematic maritime relationship with China in the South China Sea has always made it a strong prospective candidate for becoming a partner of trilateral relationship with India and Japan, writes Dr Panda.

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• Published: 15 April, 2019

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr Jagannath Panda's co-authored article on Chinese Foreign Policy, titled ‘Xi Jinping's Authoritarianism, Chinese Foreign Policy and India’ has been published in Megatrend Review (Megatrend revija) vol.16, No. 1, 2019.

The article argues that Chinese President Xi Jinping has placed great emphasis on power consolidation, focusing on domestic restructuring to enhance the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its ideology. This has compelled political pundits to mull over the bearing of a strong authoritarian Chinese regime on Xi Jinping’s foreign policy. China is already casting strong regional maritime advances and leveraging its economic might over its continental periphery.

In this regard, tensions are rising in the Indo-Pacific region with countries like India and Japan coalescing to balance China’s assertiveness. Nonetheless, the new security architecture of Asia demands balanced strategic maneuvering, exemplified by China and India pushing their bilateral ties forward while striking new deals with other like-minded countries.

• Published: 12 April, 2019