5 min readJul 7, 2026 07:29 AM IST
First published on: Jul 6, 2026 at 05:18 PM IST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is travelling to Jakarta, Auckland and Melbourne, undertaking a sequence of visits that may define New Delhi’s approach to the Indo-Pacific in the coming decades. A bold and audacious redrawing of the map of this vast maritime region is underway. This effort will seek to recover autonomy for the powers that reside here, and it will recentre the region’s story on good growth and inclusive development, away from the whims of extractive superpower contestation. India envisions a new geometry of collaboration, one not dependent on axioms outlined in Washington or Beijing, but drawn up by those who live here and thus have the most to gain or lose.
The first stop, and the lynchpin of any plan for the Indo-Pacific, is Indonesia. The world’s third-most populous nation is the archetypal Indo-Pacific power. Indeed, it is the nation the term might almost have been coined to describe. The archipelago sits astride every crucial trade route between the two oceans, has abundant natural resources and, like India, is a civilisational state that has long been committed to a “free and active” foreign policy that secures its autonomy.
It is the relationship between India and Indonesia that will set the course for the broader maritime region. And what is often overlooked is that this partnership has already grown manifold. Objectively, Jakarta is one of New Delhi’s most important partners. If you look at goods alone, trade between the two nations, at just under $30 billion a year, is significant. It has overtaken trade between India and the United Kingdom, and runs neck and neck with Indo-German trade. Goods trade will only grow, stimulated by the upgradation of India’s free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and so will services, under-represented and under-reported at present. With a focus on marine logistics, technology and financial services, and new supply chains, this partnership will form the foundation for a free and open trading architecture in the region.
And it will be necessary, as well, for Prime Minister Modi and President Prabowo Subianto to move the relationship forward if the Indo-Pacific is to create a genuinely indigenous and independent security framework. These two maritime powers are the only ones with the scale, capacity and presence required to manage the region’s most vital chokepoints. Together they are the only powers positioned to become net security providers of this ocean, not by invitation from Washington or deference to Beijing, but because the sea lanes are theirs to protect in the first place.
Australia, meanwhile, is India’s breakout partner. A new economic partnership, Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA), was negotiated in 2022, signalling New Delhi’s new vision for trade. But it also built trust, a far scarcer commodity. That trust can serve to underpin the next stage of this relationship. That would require deeper integration: Our financial services, nuclear energy and resource processing industries must be integrated. These are areas where we both have great abilities, and our search is for autonomy, scale, and new technology. The strategic objective, once the habit of cooperation settles, must be defence co-production, where both could serve as trusted enablers of broader regional and global security.
New Zealand is a crucial key to the puzzle and not only because of its own strengths. The innovation island hosts advanced manufacturing capabilities, space and deep technology enterprises and agri-processing innovation, making it a vital component of India’s innovation sectors, food-security imperative and farm-income strategy. With the fourth largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ), the blue economy in its entirety is a natural domain of partnership with Aotearoa.
Alongside Canberra, Wellington will provide another crucial bridge to the Five Eyes security-intelligence ecosystem. This adds further resilience to a still new relationship.
Finally, together, India and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) can become the delivery mechanism for development across the South Pacific and neighbouring parts of ASEAN. They will provide the financing, digital and physical infrastructure, and human capital the region badly needs, as well as a credible alternative to exploitative or unreliable partners. India is, after all, the largest theatre for discovering development solutions for the planet; once that innovative energy is paired with the capital and standing in the Pacific of the ANZAC nations, it offers a development pathway that does not force smaller nations to be burdened with perverse debt or lease a naval base to supposed benefactors.
Modi’s new arc of trust will hold the Indo-Pacific together in these disruptive times. With India at its centre, draw the arc east from India through Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. Then draw it west through the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf and down the eastern seaboard of Africa.
This is the real story of the upcoming tour: The geographical centre of the Indo-Pacific resetting and redrawing an emerging order so that those who share this oceanic domain write the rules instead of just inheriting them.
The writer is president, Observer Research Foundation
With India at its centre, draw the arc east from India through Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. Then draw it west through the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf and down the eastern seaboard of Africa. 
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