India’s new role in a changing global climate

For decades, since my childhood, I have read South Asia’s geopolitics shaped by old arguments: borders drawn in 1947, insurgencies born in the Cold War, and rivalries defined by great-power manoeuvring. But the region’s future, as seen through the crystal ball, will be decided not by boots, generals, or ideologues, but by forces far more essential and lifesaving issues like water, wind and weather in this drastic changing climate that is bringing more disasters in response to the greed of the human race and development at the cost of nature and mother earth. Cyclones, floods, sea-level rise and landslides have begun to dictate the rhythms of politics and diplomacy. Governments rise or stumble based on their ability to manage disaster response. And strategic influence increasingly hinges not on military bases or trade corridors, but on who arrives first when calamity strikes, humanity first.

Perhaps, India has read this shift more clearly than most. Looking into its own climate crystal ball, where extreme events arrive with greater ferocity each year, it has begun reshaping not only its domestic response but its foreign policy and regional posture around resilience. Last week’s sad, tragic events in Sri Lanka have only accelerated this transition. As the island country was battered by massive destruction, cyclones, flooding and landslides, India took no time in its response. India, as a neighbour, immediately responded by sending nearby ships, aircraft, medical teams and engineering units and essential food items, moving with a speed that outpaced many multilateral mechanisms. Operation Sagar Bandhu has brought India into the limelight as a dependent neighbrouer reaching for help in golden hours. This humanitarian outreach is an emotional and revealing moment in South Asian diplomacy. Disaster, earlier considered more or less a curse, domestic challenge, is now seen as a geopolitical arena. it will not be wrong to say that India has positioned itself as the Indian Ocean’s first responder.

The images arriving from Colombo, neighbourhoods underwater, hospitals overwhelmed, highways split by landslides, deaths, missing people, houses damaged, bridges gone, spoke of immediate human misery. But the diplomatic signals were clear. Within hours, INS Vikrant and INS Udaygiri, among India’s most capable naval assets, were en route. Helicopters airlifted stranded families. Medical teams stabilised the injured. Supply ships docked even before several global agencies had issued their first public statements. The speed itself was strategic. By deploying modern platforms rather than ageing vessels, India conveyed intent: its best resources are available to its neighbours in moments of crisis.

The contrast with China, whose financial footprint in Sri Lanka is vast but whose operational response was slower, was particularly striking. A Sri Lankan former army officer was quite pleased with the immediate response of India and summed up his sentiment saying: “Money shapes influence, but rescue shapes memory.” As climate shocks grow, memory could become a powerful currency in South Asian geopolitics. Humanitarian assistance is no longer merely charity; it has become statecraft. For nations exposed to monsoon unpredictability and coastal vulnerability, disaster response is emerging as the new language of diplomacy. The old bureaucratic instruments of foreign policy, communiqués, assessments, press statements of support, summits are too slow for the speed of climate catastrophe. A new model is taking shape: Rapid deployment through HARD mission, trust built through rescue and relief.

For India, which has learned since a decade from several past experiences of first responders in times of natural disasters, whether Nepal or Afghanistan, this immediate response in times of need not only offers moral responsibility but also the strategic opportunity. The region is becoming more disaster-prone, and India’s capability, logistical, military, meteorological, makes it a natural responder. But expectations bring risks. A delayed or inadequate response during a future disaster could invite criticism as rapidly as today it earns praise. Thus, India must pair operational speed with capacity-building, training local agencies and volunteers of neighbouring countries, sharing forecasting systems, and investing in training neighbours self-reliance in normal times.

Sri Lanka’s tragedy is part of a broader pattern. South Asia is becoming one of the world’s most climate-exposed regions. Experts warn that sea levels in the Indian Ocean are fast rising. Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten water security. Cyclone frequency is increasing; heat waves and cold waves intensify, and urban floods overwhelm cities from Mumbai to Dhaka. Traditional diplomacy cannot keep pace with this transformation. A new form is required.

Operation Sagar Bandhu illustrates what readiness looks like, pre-positioned assets, rapid deployment, and technical coordination. But long-term stability demands something broader: shared drills, regional command centres, interlinked early-warning systems, and integrated infrastructure planning in pre and post-disaster situations. This is where India’s other long-term initiative enters the picture, one less visible than naval deployments but potentially more consequential for the region’s next half-century.

 India’s Global Vision

Well before Sri Lanka’s floods, India had begun preparing for a century of climate disruption by building international architecture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in 2019, launched the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a multilateral grouping now grown to around 60 member countries and 11 partner organisations, headquartered in New Delhi with the status of an international organisation. Its mission is ambitious: to steer US$10 trillion of infrastructure, new and existing, towards resilience by 2050, benefiting more than 3 billion people. The logic is simple: the roads, bridges, grids and ports built today must be designed for the storms and sea-level realities of tomorrow. CDRI offers its members access to technical expertise, global best practices, risk data, collaborative research and financing. It is a platform that unites governments, businesses, and institutions to rethink infrastructure as a tool of survival, not merely development. If India’s rapid-response operations are the region’s first line of defence, CDRI is its long-term shield, a strategic attempt to ensure that future disasters are less catastrophic, less politicised and less destabilising.

India’s Crystal Ball

Complementing CDRI is a more innovative project: the Virtual Disaster Resilience Infrastructure (VDRI). Think of it as a digital crystal ball, an analytical ecosystem that models how infrastructure behaves under floods, cyclones, heatwaves or earthquakes. By integrating satellite data, climate models, AI simulations and infrastructure inventories, VDRI allows planners to visualise cascading failures. A flood in one district may cripple power grids elsewhere, shut hospitals, disrupt telecom or choke supply chains. Understanding these interactions is essential for designing climate-ready cities. We hope, VDRI will evolve into a global public good, especially for developing states that lack the capacity to build such tools independently. It is here that India’s first-responder diplomacy, its global coalition-building, and its domestic technological investments intersect. Taken together, Sagar Bandhu, CDRI, VDRI, they form the outlines of a new Indian doctrine for the Indian Ocean and wider South Asia. It means immediate humanitarian response through naval and air assets, medium-term capacity-building through training, joint exercises and early-warning sharing and long-term transformation through resilient infrastructure and predictive analytics.

This three-tier approach needs to be institutionalised. It could turn India into not just a crisis responder but a lead climate stabiliser for the region. Small island states and the Global South may see India as an insurance provider, one whose presence reduces their existential risks. India is projecting capability and not dominance, and works with the authorities of the respective country as a lead in the projects. India also helps in capacity building. Instead of rhetoric. Yet the stakes are high. As climate events multiply, India’s responsibilities will grow. The region may soon expect New Delhi to lead not just rescue missions, but a broader regional architecture, disaster reserves, resilience funds, joint planning frameworks and coordinated infrastructure standards.

Analysts note that India has quietly built a disaster-response architecture that projects influence without aggression, “diplomacy through relief,” now on full display in Colombo. With more than 20 HADR-ready naval ships, an airlift fleet ranging from C-130Js and IL-76s to Mi-17s, 16 NDRF battalions, ISRO’s satellite-based mapping and a dedicated coordination desk in the foreign ministry, India’s capacity increasingly rivals that of established global responders. Experts argue that the logical next step is a permanent Indian Ocean HADR Command, training Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and African littoral states to withstand the climate-driven emergencies that will define the region’s future.

Surinder Singh Oberoi, National Editor Greater Kashmir