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The India-China reset will be tested in the Northeast

From Arunachal Pradesh and the Brahmaputra to border roads and Southeast Asian connectivity, the northeast could determine how durable the India-China reset becomes.

Amid significant geopolitical fragmentation, New Delhi has brought together countries with widely divergent interests to secure the ambitious New Delhi Declaration. The BRICS Summit was everything that India envisioned it to be. 

It was well coordinated, visually smart, carefully articulated, and achieved a consensus that was particularly significant given tensions within BRICS itself, including the conflict in West Asia and differences between Iran and the UAE. Yet, the grouping arrived at a common declaration and reiterated its commitment to dialogue, multilateralism and a more representative international order.

This was important to India as New Delhi has consistently resisted attempts to define BRICS simply as an anti-Western coalition. It prefers to position the grouping as a platform through which emerging economies can gain greater influence over global rule-making while developing practical mechanisms for cooperation. 

And to that end, Paragraph 5 of the New Delhi Declaration commends India’s 2026 Chairship for its “practical, actionable, inclusive, development-oriented and people-centered approach” built around resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability. 

The Modi-Xi meeting and the India-China reset

However, apart from carefully crafting the New Delhi Declaration and navigating the larger BRICS deliberations, the most watched meeting was clearly between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meeting provided further evidence that the cautious reset of India-China relations is gathering momentum.

President Xi’s presence in New Delhi, his first visit to India in seven years, was itself significant. The two leaders discussed greater economic engagement, connectivity and people-to-people exchanges. But PM Modi made clear that any reset remains conditional and that peace and tranquillity along the border are fundamental to rebuilding the wider bilateral relationship.

This statement naturally brings one’s attention to India’s northeast. Because if India and China are genuinely entering a period of stabilisation, then the ultimate test will be India’s northeast.

Since the Galwan clash of 2020,........

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