Emerging multipolar world could be India's moment

India’s influence today extends well beyond South Asia. Its economic gravity increasingly shapes outcomes across West Asia, Africa, the Indo-Pacific

- By Milinda Moragoda

AS the world enters a new year, it is becoming increasingly clear that South Asia’s existing models of regional cooperation are no longer fit for purpose.

Institutions such as South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — and even The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC, an association of seven countries in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal) — were products of a different geopolitical moment, one defined by relatively stable multilateralism, predictable great-power leadership, and modest regional ambitions. That world has now decisively ended.

The year 2025 will likely be remembered as a turning point. Through a series of disruptive policy choices — most notably the sweeping so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs announced on April 2 —the US signalled its willingness to consciously dismantle key elements of the postwar international economic order that it had itself built and led. That order, despite its flaws, enabled unprecedented global prosperity, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty both within and beyond the US. Its unravelling marks not merely a tactical shift, but a structural transformation of global politics and economics.

What is emerging in its place is a genuinely multipolar world. Power, production, innovation, and influence are no longer concentrated along a single axis. In this new configuration, India stands out not simply as a large country, but as a pivotal pole — economically, technologically, politically, and civilisationally.