New Delhi: India’s most credible role in the Arctic lies in being a stabilising, norm-reinforcing force, promoting openness, sustainability, and multilateralism without pretence amid the great-power rivalry in the region.
Although India’s position is often ignored in the evolving landscape, its significance in the region becomes clear when the Arctic is viewed not as a remote polar enclave, but an interconnected system linking climate, oceans, trade, and governance across latitudes, a report said on Thursday
“India’s Arctic engagement has been grounded in science, norms, and diplomacy rather than power or commerce. Since 2008, the Himadri research station in Svalbard has anchored India’s polar presence, enabling sustained contributions to the study of cryosphere dynamics, atmospheric circulation, and Arctic–monsoon linkages. This work is far from academic. Arctic warming alters jet streams, intensifies weather volatility, and affects monsoonal behaviour across South Asia. For India, the Arctic is upstream of food security, disaster resilience, and economic stability,” Sanjay Kumar Verma, a former Indian diplomat, wrote in ‘India Narrative’.
“This scientific credibility has translated into diplomatic acceptance. As an observer at the Arctic Council, India has acted with discipline and restraint, respecting the primacy of Arctic states and indigenous communities. It has avoided rhetorical shortcuts and resisted the temptation to invent geopolitical identities to justify its presence. In a region where legitimacy is earned slowly and guarded carefully, this approach has generated goodwill,” he added.
Verma argues that India does not require “icebreakers, bases, or symbolic” displays of presence in the Arctic.
Rather, he said, it needs coherence — a clearer articulation of why the region matters to India beyond climate research, a deeper connection between Arctic science and its wider diplomatic toolkit, and readiness to work alongside other middle powers to shape shared norms.
According to the report, the Arctic’s growing significance cannot be viewed separately from the broader Indo-Pacific framework.
“As Arctic sea routes alter Asia–Europe connectivity, as polar climate dynamics reshape weather patterns across the Indian Ocean basin, and as governance norms forged in the Arctic begin to influence other global commons, the Arctic and the Indo-Pacific are quietly converging into a single strategic ecosystem. China has already internalised this linkage, treating the Polar Silk Road as a northern extension of its broader connectivity strategy. Russia, too, sees its Arctic posture as inseparable from its Eurasian and Pacific orientation,” it detailed.
“For countries like India, whose strategic outlook is shaped by maritime openness, climate vulnerability, and rule-based order, the Arctic is no longer a peripheral concern; it is a distant but consequential front in a connected geopolitical system,” it further noted.
(IANS)
