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Asian century in motion:

ASEAN, India, and the new world order

Shuva Raha
September 2025 | International Cooperation

Overview

Home to over 4.75 billion people of illustrious ancient civilisations, many Asian countries are in political, economic and social revivals. Amidst the global upheavals of the day, one is reminded of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion in 2024 at the 21st ASEAN-India Summit in Vientiane, Lao PDR, that the 21st Century is “the Asian century”.

The success of the ASEAN-India Plan of Action (POA) 2021–2025 has encouraged the drafting of the 2026–2030 POA, which promises major advances in investment, co-development, commerce and capacity building in areas such as defence, infrastructure, connectivity, digital economy, renewables, civilian nuclear energy, climate and disaster resilience, and maritime cooperation.

Key Findings

ASEAN and India must effectively deploy their soft power and strategic alliances.
Given ASEAN-India’s extreme vulnerabilities to chronic climate risks, such as floods, droughts and heat stress, as well as disasters such as cyclones and earthquakes, the partners need to unlock low-cost finance at scale to build resilience and adaptive capacity for their communities and infrastructure.
A credit rating system for developing Asian countries, granular climate risk atlases and bespoke risk mitigation mechanisms could unlock investments from sources such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the New Development Bank.
The ASEAN countries should adopt Lifestyles for Environment (LiFE) to mindfully utilise their resources and scientifically build and nurture their blue, green and circular economies to prosper, while conserving the rich biodiversity, unique biomes and cultural heritage of the Indo-Pacific.
ASEAN and India must maximise gains from strategic groups, such as the G20, the Indian Ocean Rim Association, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, the International Solar Alliance, the Global Biofuels Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.
ASEAN and India must invest in building critical thinking and analytical capacities. This includes expanding their soft power via grant-based research and cross-pollination of ideas between their think-tanks and academia.

“Pooling in regional investment, resources and human capital to co-develop locally appropriate and affordable high-quality, low-carbon products and services will deliver jobs, growth and sustainability for the billions of people of Asia.”