VICTORIES & CHALLENGES

An understanding with China on disengagements along the LAC was the highlight in 2024, but new challenges emerged for New Delhi in the neighbourhood and elsewhere

- Rezaul H Laskar

India's foreign policy leaders heaved a sigh of relief as an understanding was hammered out with China after months of negotiations to disengage front line forces on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as 2024 drew to a close, though they were grappling with some other challenges on the regional and global stage.

After a four-year face-off in the Ladakh sector, India and China agreed on October 21 on pulling back troops at the two remaining "friction points" of Demchok and Depsang and for resumption of patrolling on the LAC. The resolution of the military standoff, as external affairs minister S Jaishankar put it, is a "work in progress" as the two sides now have to contend with weightier matters such as de-escalation and normalising the relationship.

While developments on the China front created some important room to manoeuvre, the external affairs ministry will continue to handle several sensitive issues well into the next year-shifts by key neighbours Nepal and the Maldives that moved them closer to China, an adversarial interim government in Bangladesh that closed the year by seeking former premier Sheikh Hasina's extradition, the erosion of the authority of Myanmar's junta, the continuing fallout of conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine, and the unpredictability of the incoming Trump administration in the US.

India will also have to contend with the fallout of the so-called "murder for hire" case, which saw two Indian nationals, including a former intelligence operative, being indicted in a US court for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate pro-Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. A similar case in Canada, the killing of Khalistani radical Hardeep Singh Nijjar, has taken ties to a fresh low.