'India moving in centripetal direction is bad news for China, Pakistan; provocation would incur heavy costs'

New Delhi, March 13 India moving in a "centripetal direction", as reaffirmed by the results of the just-concluded Assembly elections, is "bad news" for China and Pakistan as any provocation now would see them "incurring heavy costs", says noted social scientist and opinion maker Sreeram Chaulia, whose new book, "Crunch Time", details the paradigm shift in the countrys national security calculus since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014.

Even so, India must "prepare for a more belligerent and aggressive" China in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war, strengthen defenses all along the disputed border and in the Indo-Pacific, invest more in the defence sector and forge "stronger coalitions" with the Quad and Quad-plus countries, Chaulia, professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs at the O.P. Jindal Global University, told in an interview.

At the same time, Pakistan "does not pose any existential threat to India". The Modi government's attempts to keep the Line of Control

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor