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Sam Beltran

At a food fair in New Delhi, a vegetable exporter from the Philippines set out its wares: bags of dried moringa and lemongrass, bundles of taro leaves and a bowl of laing, the creamy coconut-milk stew made from them.
The question Dry Tech Manufacturing wanted to answer was simple: could the simple Filipino food it sells under its Sheentaro brand tantalise the taste buds of the world’s most populous country?
India has hundreds of millions of vegetarians, more than any other country on Earth, making it the ideal market for Sheentaro’s plant-based and ready-to-cook products, Dry Tech vice-president Corinne Anne Cordero told This Week in Asia.
“That’s the main reason why we decided to sign up on short notice,” she said of the Indusfood expo, held in Greater Noida at the start of this year.
“With India having a bigger population than China … and a lot of them are vegetarian, we thought they’d be more open to those types of food ingredients.”
Sheentaro’s products were previously showcased at the China-Asean Expo in Nanning and Cordero said the reception was so positive that “when this opportunity in India came about, we said ‘let’s try it again’”.
Southeast Asian nations are increasingly looking to India as an alternative market, arms supplier and technology partner as China and the US vie for regional influence.
India is more than happy to oblige, observers say – though it also knows its limits. It cannot out-trade China, nor can it supplant America’s security umbrella. What is offers instead is room to manoeuvre, free of the demand to choose sides.

That message travelled to Manila last month, where India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, used Asean-led meetings to press the case for deeper cooperation, calling it the only way to “de-risk and diversify”.
He spoke of energy security and food security, and how precarious both had become. Neither these nor public health could be taken for granted in this new “era of volatility and disruption”, Jaishankar said, identifying maritime trade as a further source of anxiety.
A more stable and secure future was in reach, he said, but only by working together: an animating theme of India’s Act East Policy, launched 12 years ago to forge stronger economic, strategic, and cultural ties with Southeast Asia and the broader region.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi were also in the Philippine capital last month for talks with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on the South China Sea, supply chains and security – a reminder of how much great-power rivalry still shapes regional diplomacy.
The economic dimension of India’s engagement push was on full display earlier in July, when Delhi hosted talks on upgrading the Asean-India Trade in Goods Agreement, a decade-old free-trade pact that officials say no longer reflects current realities.

Two-way trade came in at US$128 billion in the 2025-26 financial year, according to India’s Commerce and Industry Ministry – respectable, but only a fraction of the US$1 trillion and change that China did with the bloc.
Analysts say India’s strategy appears to be centred around pairing diplomacy with trade, defence exports and maritime cooperation, offering Southeast Asia a third option beyond the US-China binary.
It is best described as “a search for mutual wins”, according to Arvind Raj, a geopolitical analyst and associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies’ Centre for Multilateralism Studies in Singapore.
A more multipolar neighbourhood would give Southeast Asian nations more choices and more room to hedge, he said – as India, in turn, secured a larger foothold in a region that it had long courted from the margins.
Summitry to substance
For years, India’s Asean diplomacy has been heavy on the ceremony, but light on the delivery.
“Asean sits at the centre of India’s Act East Policy on paper, but for most of the past decade the relationship ran on summitry rather than substance,” said Oorja Tapan, a doctoral researcher of international politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Analysts say the clearest evidence of how that dynamic is beginning to change can be seen in the region’s expanding arsenals.
During a three-day state visit last month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sealed a deal for Jakarta to buy BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles – jointly developed by India and Russia – making Indonesia the third Southeast Asian buyer after Vietnam and the Philippines.

A separate deal for Jakarta to acquire India’s Astra air-to-air missiles was also signed.
Pooja Bhatt, an associate professor of international relations at India’s O.P. Jindal Global University, calls such defence cooperation “not only part of increasing trade with Asean but also a form of strategic signalling” – proof that Delhi can deliver hardware, not just handshakes.
India wanted to become Southeast Asia’s “resident partner”, Tapan said, offering “capability without a formal alliance demand attached” and without asking the region to choose sides.
Pairing defence exports with renewed free-trade negotiations showed that Delhi wanted to be seen as “a dependable partner offering security cooperation, technology-sharing and balanced regional influence”, said Shristi Pukhrem, a visiting fellow at the India Foundation think tank and director of its Act East Centre.

Foreign policy researcher Joanne Lin concurred that weapons sales alone would not be enough to anchor the relationship.
India’s relevance depended on it delivering across “trade, maritime security, connectivity, tech and supply chains”, said Lin, a senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and visiting scholar at the MIT Centre for International Studies.
“This is why India is trying to address concerns over trade imbalance, rules of origin and possible re-routing of Chinese goods through Asean, while Asean looks forward to market access with fewer barriers.”
Beyond US-China?
Ultimately, India’s pitch boils down to optionality.
Delhi is not seeking “supremacy in Asean”, according to Abhishek Sharma of the Observer Research Foundation think tank in the Indian capital, but rather is trying to advance its own trade interests while pushing for a stronger, more secure – and more multipolar – Indo-Pacific region.
This framing allowed the South Asian nation to cast itself as an independent pole, distinct from both Beijing and Washington and without the associated baggage, said Sharma, a junior fellow with the foundation’s strategic studies programme.
Lin agreed that India functioned as an additional option for Asean rather than a direct replacement for either the US or China.
India’s appeal is more as a balancing and diversification partner
Joanne Lin, foreign policy researcher
“They are looking for partners that can widen their strategic space without forcing them into rigid alignments,” she said of Southeast Asian nations. “India’s strategic autonomy, multi-alignment and Global South positioning resonate with Asean’s own instinct to diversify partnerships and preserve room for manoeuvre.”
In Tapan’s telling, India “lowers the cost of hedging” for the region, due to it being “aligned enough with the West to be useful, [but] non-aligned enough that buying Indian missiles doesn’t read in Beijing as joining a containment bloc”.
Still, Lin was careful not to overstate Delhi’s diplomatic standing within the region.
India “is not yet in the same league as China or the US” in terms of Southeast Asia’s “perceptions of influence”, she said.
“China remains deeply embedded economically, while the US remains central to security calculations. India’s appeal is more as a balancing and diversification partner, useful, non-coercive and increasingly visible, but still needing stronger economic delivery.”
‘Some way to go’
India still had “some way to go” to match the scale of Chinese capital, trade volume and state-driven speed, said Bhatt, the international-relations professor.
China’s trade with Asean was about eight times higher than India’s last year – a gulf that does not look likely to close any time soon.
But Delhi’s diplomacy need not be based on countering China alone.
India and Asean spoke “a common language of non-alignment” and shared “a common belief in the Global South”, Bhatt said.
Soft-power advantages bolster India’s appeal, according to Pukhrem, pointing to Delhi-funded restoration work at heritage sites such as Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and Vietnam’s My Son temples as evidence of outreach that “builds soft power rooted in shared civilisational ties rather than transactional influence”.

Tapan agreed that it was not a case of “India vs China’s clout, but India raising the price of Chinese dominance”.
The recent BrahMos sales had demonstrated regional appetite for Indian weapons systems, she said, further pointing to demand for naval hardware, generic pharmaceuticals and digital public infrastructure “that no Chinese product can substitute”.
Tapan also identified India’s growing appeal as a “China plus one” destination for companies looking to diversify supply chains.
“None of this beats a trillion dollars of trade. But Asean’s operating logic is hedging,” she said. “The realistic question is whether India can be indispensable in the places where China is either unwelcome or absent.”
Lin cautioned against India defining its Asean engagement purely in oppositional terms.
“Asean does not want to be treated as a theatre for India-China rivalry,” she said, adding that Delhi could make the most impact by helping the bloc diversify supply chains, build maritime capacity and strengthen digital and health cooperation.
“India’s broader influence will depend on whether it can also deliver in areas that matter to Asean’s economic and development priorities,” Lin added.


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Ready player 3: India offers Asean a US-China alternative

Illustration: Huy Truong

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar (centre) walks after a group photo during the Asean Post-Ministerial Conference with India in Metro Manila on July 22. Photo: EPA

A mobile crane carries a container to stack at a depot in India’s western state of Gujarat on July 15. Two-way trade with Asean hit US$128 billion last year. Photo: Reuters

Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto (left) and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit a Hindu temple complex in Sleman, Yogyakarta, on July 8. Photo: Indian Press Information Bureau/AFP

A man waves India’s national flag in front of a replica of the BrahMos missile system in Ahmedabad last year. Photo: AFP

India’s S. Jaishankar (centre) joins hands with his Asean counterparts in the Philippines on July 22. Photo: EPA

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese pose for a picture in the stands at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on July 10. Photo: Reuters

The Indian Army’s BrahMos missile launcher is displayed during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi on January 26. Photo: Reuters

US Marines take part during amphibious assault training as part of the Cobra Gold 2026 joint military exercise in Chonburi province, Thailand, in February. Photo: EPA

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his New Zealand counterpart Christopher Luxon onstage during the “Kia Ora Modi” community reception at Spark Arena in Auckland on July 11. Photo: EPA

Why is India’s status among Asean nations rising?

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. File photo: Reuters

US President Joe Biden with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit in November. Photo: via Reuters

A bulldozer demolishes the house of a Muslim man that Uttar Pradesh state authorities accused of being involved in riots, on June 12, 2022. File photo: Reuters 

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India pitches trade, missiles and room to hedge as the US and China vie for regional influence


India pitches trade, missiles and room to hedge as the US and China vie for regional influence.


Ready player 3: India offers Asean a US-China alternative

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}India pitches trade, missiles and room to hedge as the US and China vie for regional influence

India pitches trade, missiles and room to hedge as the US and China vie for regional influence