India’s Vaccine Halt, China’s Advance, and Nepal’s Diplomatic Recalibration: A Pragmatic Shift

Author(s)	Mr. Haider Murtaza Nulwala
Country	India
Abstract	The COVID 19 pandemic transformed vaccines into instruments of geopolitical leverage, exposing the fragility of reliance on single suppliers. India’s Vaccine Maitri initiative initially consolidated New Delhi’s image as a humanitarian leader, but the abrupt suspension of exports in March 2021 destabilised regional immunisation and eroded credibility. Nepal, historically tethered to India, confronted a strategic vacuum that compelled diversification. China’s rapid deployment of Sinopharm doses, embedded within the Health Silk Road and Belt and Road Initiative, reframed Beijing as a reliable interlocutor and deepened its entanglement with Kathmandu. This paper employs discourse analysis of policy documents, media narratives, and scholarship to show how India’s reputational turbulence, China’s opportunistic reliability, and Nepal’s adaptive pragmatism converged to redefine South Asia’s balance, positioning reliability and timeliness as decisive determinants of soft power efficacy.
Keywords	vaccine diplomacy, soft power, Health Silk Road, India–Nepal relations, Belt and Road Initiative, small state foreign policy, geopolitical reliability, COVID 19 diplomacy, South Asia, agency in asymmetric geopolitics
Field	Sociology > Politics
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-12-18
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.63810

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