Foreign Policy Survey 2025: Young India and the Middle East

Key Findings

1. Support for India’s foreign policy remains high. Eighty-six percent of respondents hold a positive perception of India’s foreign policy. Overall support has remained consistently high across all five iterations of ORF’s Foreign Policy Survey so far.
2. India’s urban youth remain committed to multilateralism despite strains in the global order. Seventy-eight percent of respondents view the United Nations as an effective and efficient platform for managing global crises. While 44 percent of respondents believe that cooperation through multilateral institutions should remain India’s preferred mode of engagement over other formats, 92 percent support India’s bid to secure a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.
3. Bilateral economic cooperation with the UAE guarantees growth and prosperity for India. Seventy-six percent of the respondents are of the view that continued bilateral economic cooperation with the UAE will remain essential to India’s growth story.
4. Russia and Japan are deemed India’s most trusted partners amidst declining support for the United States (US). India’s urban youth are most satisfied with India’s bilateral ties with Russia (72 percent) and Japan (69 percent) and believe that both will remain India’s leading partners over the next decade. Support for the US has dropped from 83 percent in 2024 to 56 percent in 2025.
5. Cross-border terrorism and border conflicts with China and Pakistan are viewed as India’s biggest challenges. Ninety-two percent of respondents name cross-border terrorism as India’s biggest foreign policy challenge, followed by border conflicts with China (89 percent) and with Pakistan (88 percent).
6. There is strong urban youth backing for Operation Sindoor and India’s Pakistan policy. Ninety-three percent of respondents agree that Operation Sindoor was an effective response to cross-border terrorism originating from Pakistan. Seventy-eight percent support India’s decision to keep the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in abeyance.
7. Border infrastructure and enhanced troop deployment has furthered India’s regional security goals.  Eighty-one percent of respondents support these activities in the region, followed by support for counter-terrorism initiatives (80 percent), nuclear deterrence (79 percent), maritime exercises and joint patrolling (77 percent), and developing security and defence infrastructure in neighbouring countries (74 percent).
8. Concerns over China’s activities in the neighbourhood persist. As in the previous year, Chinese ownership of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka remains a major concern (71 percent). Other sources of apprehension are Bhutan-China border talks (69 percent) and the docking of Chinese spy vessels and submarines in Sri Lanka and the Maldives (69 percent).
9. Urban youth have little trust in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Among India’s neighbours, respondents trust Nepal the most (66 percent), followed by Bhutan (62 percent) and Thailand (59 percent). Trust for Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan remains the lowest.
10. HADR and connectivity fuel the success of India’s Neighbourhood First Policy. Respondents name India’s role as a first responder in the provision of HADR (81 percent) as the most successful component of the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, followed by connectivity with neighbouring countries (80 percent).
11. India’s involvement in the Middle East is viewed positively. Eighty-five percent of India’s urban youth trust the IMEC to become the future of connectivity efforts in the Middle East.  Eighty percent of respondents consider I2U2 as essential to fostering cooperation efforts in the Middle East.
12. The Middle East is seen as a new hub of economic growth and technological innovation. Seventy-seven percent of respondents view financial capitals in the Middle East as emerging centres of global economic growth and technological innovation.
13. India-Middle East partnership is expected to reshape trade and energy cooperation. Seventy-nine percent of respondents agree that India-Middle East trade cooperation will redefine economic partnerships in the coming decade, while 82 percent expect the relationship to shape the future of energy cooperation.
14. The Indian diaspora is a key architect of growth in the Middle East. Eighty-one percent of respondents consider the Indian diaspora as essential to economic progress and prosperity in the region.
15. US tariff policies under Trump are seen as a sign of economic decline. Seventy-five percent of respondents agree that the Trump administration’s use of trade tariffs signals a decline in the US’s global economic standing.
16. BRICS is an alternative to the West-led global system. Seventy-three percent of respondents see the potential of BRICS as a credible alternative to the West-led global order.
17. FTAs will pave the way for India’s US$10-trillion economy. Eighty-one percent of respondents agree that FTAs are important for India to realise its ambitions of growing into a US$10-trillion economy.

Results of the PROBIT Model

1. There was a strong baseline consensus across almost all the core issues. The high values of the intercepts obtained from the PROBIT models indicate broad approval of India’s foreign policy and strong consensus on security-related questions, including perceptions of China–Pakistan collusion and Operation Sindoor.
2. The respondents’ geographic location emerged as the most consistent differentiator. Geographic location emerged as the most significant variable explaining perceptions on foreign policy approval, security responses, multilateralism, and US economic power.
3. The consumption of news has influenced respondents’ institutional and economic views. Following foreign policy or international news significantly increased approval of India’s foreign policy and optimism about multilateral engagement, trade, and energy cooperation. However, its impact on core security threat perceptions was limited.
4. Income and occupation were important determinants of economic optimism. Perceptions regarding Middle East economic hubs and trade cooperation were significantly conditioned by income and occupational status, with middle-income groups and economically active respondents displaying differentiated optimism.
5. Demographics played a limited role in explaining responses. Age and education did not emerge as statistically significant explanatory variables in most models, suggesting that foreign policy attitudes in 2025 were broadly common across social groups, while the divergences in responses were largely explained by location and information.

Introduction

The global order today is marked by uncertainty. With active conflicts persisting across various strategic theatres, the steady weaponisation of trade and economic interdependence by the US, and the seeming overall collapse of the West-led rules-based order, global stakeholders are increasingly confronted with complex choices to navigate the current world order to uphold their interests and pursue their compulsions.

At a time when uncertainty defines the current global order, the Middle East has emerged as a complex geography. While global attention remains focused on the region’s protracted conflicts and intra- and inter-regional wars, it is also making rapid strides in advancing geo-economic, technological, energy, and environmental cooperation. The Middle East has emerged as an important hub of technological innovation, including Artificial Intelligence and Automated Systems, supported by sustained investments in research and development. Cities in the Middle East now serve as key nodes in global trade and connectivity architectures. Following the success of COP28 in 2023,^[1] the United Arab Emirates and several other countries in the region are taking the lead in fostering cooperation for a just green transition and advancing broader climate and environmental initiatives.

Over the past decade, India-Middle East ties have grown at an unprecedented pace, driven in large part by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to place the region at the centre of India’s foreign policy calculus. While India’s ties with the Middle East have a historical context of ancient trade routes and cultural commonalities, over the last decade the region has emerged as a key area of priority for India. Three critical long-standing interests appear to be driving India’s focus on the Middle East: energy imports from the region; remittances generated by the vast Indian diaspora; and expanding security partnership, particularly in defence procurement and intelligence cooperation.^[2]

Building on this momentum, 2025 was an active period for India-Middle East ties. In 2025, Prime Minister Modi visited three countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia,^[3] Oman, and Jordan.^[4] Furthermore, New Delhi hosted the Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, in February 2025.

As India charts its path towards becoming the world’s third-largest economy, partnerships with the Middle East are likely to remain a cornerstone of its growth strategy. India’s embeddedness in the region is marked by its interest in the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), conceptualised during India’s G20 presidency, and the I2U2 (India-Israel-UAE-USA) grouping. Market complementarities between India and Middle Eastern economic hubs continue to shape the trajectory of India’s economic growth. The India-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2023, along with the India-Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement concluded in December 2025, signals New Delhi’s growing emphasis on strengthening trade ties with the region. Taken together, these developments suggest that the India-Middle East trade partnership could reshape economic alignments in the coming decade.

India remains committed to enduring peace in the region to facilitate a stable order in the Middle East. Its balanced, multi-stakeholder engagement has paved the way to ensure New Delhi’s diplomatic ties with the region remain undisrupted. This, in many ways, has evolved as a critical currency to play a larger role in facilitating dialogue among stakeholders. What Prime Minister Modi said about how this is “not an era of war” encapsulates New Delhi’s active diplomatic engagement with the region. As the crisis in the Middle East remains vulnerable to negatively impacting global de-nuclearisation efforts, New Delhi’s approach of active diplomacy is likely to augur well to usher in stability in the region.

In the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, India exerted effort to garner global support and solidarity, as well as raise awareness about the long arc of cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan, impinging on India’s national security. The Middle East was a vital geography in India’s outreach, with three separate delegations of Members of Parliament visiting various countries across the region.^[5]

Public support remains essential to the credibility and sustainability of foreign policy choices. As India continues to engage the Middle East across the vast spectrum of shared opportunities that presents itself, this volume, ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2025: Young India and the Middle East, assesses how India’s urban youth view the country’s diplomatic, economic, and security partnerships with the region. This edition of ORF’s annual Foreign Policy Survey builds on the findings of the previous iterations (2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024) and delineates how India’s urban youth view the country’s foreign policy choices and its engagements with the Middle East, the evolving world order, and its neighbours.

Given the respondents’ overwhelming support for the UAE as a critical economic and strategic partner, this report offers a special section, ‘India-UAE Spotlight’, on the various aspects of India-UAE relations. The respondents are of the view that economic partnership with the UAE will be a pillar of India’s growth and prosperity. Furthermore, policy frameworks such as the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which seek to consolidate such complementarities are favoured as the most consequential dimension of the bourgeoning bilateral relations between the two countries.

Global geopolitics is undergoing a churn today amidst the war in the Middle East which, along with the subsequent strain in the global energy market, has demonstrated how countries that may not be directly involved in the conflict are left vulnerable to the fallout. The disruptions in the global energy market pose detrimental cascading effects on various other sectors, carrying long-term consequences. Indeed, India’s youth, the primary stakeholders in India’s economy in the coming years, must remain cautious of the trajectory of this conflict. (This survey, however, does not capture the opinions of India’s urban youth about the specific conflict that broke out on 28 February 2026 as the survey was concluded in 2025.)

1.1 Context and Rationale for the Poll

Since 2021, ORF’s Foreign Policy Surveys have sought to map urban youth perceptions of India’s foreign policy, its relations with other countries and regions, and its responses to regional and global crises. The inaugural edition, conducted against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, examined shifts in the global order and India’s response. It surveyed 2,037 respondents aged 18-35, was administered in eight regional languages in addition to English, and covered 14 cities.^[6]

Subsequent editions expanded both sample size and demographic reach. The 2022 edition focused on 75 years of India’s independence, covering 5,000 respondents ages 18-35 across 19 cities, with questionnaires administered in 11 languages.^[7] The third edition examined urban youth perceptions of multilateralism and India’s place in the world.^[8] The fourth edition, released in July 2025, centred on ‘Young India and the China Challenge.’^[9] The emphasis on a particular theme, along with a consistent focus on the broader contours of India’s foreign policy apparatus, has helped ascertain insights into how India chooses to engage with the world. This latest edition focuses on the Middle East and explores how Indian youth perceive India’s growing engagement with the region.

Over time, foreign policy has become an increasingly important factor in a country’s domestic calculus, transitioning from an issue that seemed to capture the interests of only the elites to finally finding resonance with the larger public. Attempts to gauge how different groups in India see and understand India’s international engagement have also increased in response to this change. While over the years, different organisations and individuals have examined Indian public opinion on foreign policy, much of this work has remained fragmented, focusing on individual issues rather than offering a holistic overview.

A survey conducted by the Brookings Institution in 2018 covered 290 respondents from India’s strategic community.^[10] In 2019, Aidan Milff, Paul Stanlinand, and Vipin Narang undertook an assessment of public attitudes towards India’s foreign policy since the 1960s, based on data from the annual and biannual surveys conducted by the Indian Institute of Public Opinion (IIPO) between 1959 and 1988. These IIPO surveys covered 1,000 to 1,500 respondents, targeting individuals with basic literacy levels from the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai.^[11] In their analysis, the authors also take into account the 2006 Chicago Council Survey, which focused on US and international public opinion on the rise of India and China, and the Gallup World Poll conducted between 2008 and 2016.^[12] The Chicago Council survey had responses from 2,458 Indians aged eighteen and above, excluding those without formal education.

In 2009, Devesh Kapur analysed Indian public opinion on foreign policy using data from a pan-India survey conducted between 2005 and 2006, which covered 2,12,563 interviewees and examined perceptions of India’s position in the world.^[13] In 2013, the Lowy Institute and the Australia India Institute released a survey titled India Poll, based on a sample of 1,233 respondents.^[14]

In August 2022, the Stimson Center released findings from ‘Confidence and Nationalism in Modi’s India’, a telephonic survey of 7,000 Indians that assessed public attitudes towards India’s international conflict scenarios. Conducted in 12 languages across 28 Indian states and union territories, the survey focused primarily on China, Pakistan, and the US.^[15] The Bharat Pulse Survey in 2024 polled people across five categories, one of which was foreign policy.^[16]

Some issue-specific surveys have also been conducted over the years. These include surveys following the 1991 Gulf War, the 1998 Pokhran-II nuclear tests, the 1999 Kargil war, the 2003 Iraq War, and the 2008 civil nuclear deal, alongside broader surveys assessing public opinion on foreign policy themes.^[17] In 2019, there was a paper on the findings of a survey on the implications of counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir.^[18]

In recent years, there have also been attempts to gauge the perceptions of the youth belonging to India’s neighbouring countries towards India as well as other countries in the region. In 2024, an ORF report, ‘Young Bhutan and the World’, drew insights from a survey of 115 respondents from Bhutan (who were then pursuing higher education) that asked questions about how they perceive India’s role in their country.^[19] In 2024, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also conducted the second edition of a nationally representative online survey of 1,206 Indian-American adults. It had 100 questions covering different aspects of India-US ties.^[20] The Pew Research Center conducted a survey between January and April 2025 to gauge how respondents from 24 countries view India.^[21] It also conducted a survey in 2023 among 2,611 Indian adults to see how Indians view the leadership of the prime minister as well as India’s influence on and relations with other countries.^[22] The Takshashila Institution released their first Pulse of the People: State of India-China Relations Survey Report in 2024, which had 11 questions about India and China and received responses from 655 individuals  between the 16-86 age group.^[23]

The limitations related to some of these surveys include the size of the sample, the demographic chosen, as well as the concentration of responses among only literate, urban individuals. While ORF’s Foreign Policy Survey is also limited to perspectives from the urban youth, it attempts a more encompassing view of India’s foreign policy, targeting a demographic that constitutes over 26 percent of the country’s population.

By examining perceptions of India’s foreign policy trajectory, its relations with other countries, and its standing in its neighbourhood—alongside a focused assessment of New Delhi’s growing partnership with the Middle East—this present survey provides insights into how young Indians expect India to navigate its external engagements. Responses were analysed across multiple parameters like age, employment, gender, occupation, geography, income, and familiarity with the news.

1.2 Sample Design and Description

The 2025 edition of the Foreign Policy Survey is driven by the central question of how India’s urban youth perceive the country’s engagements with the Middle East. It highlights young Indians’ perspectives on the nation’s global engagement, with a particular focus on the Middle East, and on India’s expanding socio-political and economic footprints globally. Conducted by Impetus Research, the survey collected national-level data from a representative sample of 5,058 respondents ages 18-35 across 19 Indian cities. The survey was conducted between 8 October and 26 November 2025. A structured questionnaire was administered in 11 languages (Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and English).

The sample was drawn using a stratified, multi-stage cluster sampling approach. As Census data do not provide population figures for the 18-35 age cohort, the sample frame and state-wise sample size for this group were estimated using linear interpolation based on data from the Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections (November 2019) by the National Commission on Population, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, drawing on the estimated 2018 population derived from the 2011 Census.

Fieldwork was conducted through face-to-face interviews using internet-enabled tablets, ensuring real-time data capture and enhancing response accuracy. Only individuals from urban households were included in the study, maintaining the focus on the urban youth demographic. The survey was programmed to function offline in low-connectivity environments and to synchronise the results in real time when cellular or Wi-Fi networks became available. Additionally, every interviewer was provided with a unique user ID to access the programmed survey. For the ‘India-UAE Spotlight’ questions, 530 respondents from 11 cities were surveyed between the 18-35 age group.

Table 1 presents the sample composition by region. The gender composition of the sample was 55.75 percent (2,820) male and 44.24 percent (2,238) female. To ensure heterogeneity in responses, data were collected by considering various socio-economic characteristics, including income brackets, education qualifications, employment status, and regional representation. The survey included respondents from diverse educational, occupational, and income backgrounds. Detailed breakdowns are provided in Tables 2, 3, and 4.

Table 1: Sample Composition, By Region

Table 2:  Sample Composition, By Education

Table 3: Sample Composition, by Occupation

Table 4: Sample Composition, By Income

1.3 Methodology

The methodology was two-pronged. In the first stage, the report addressed questions relevant to the report’s central concern, presenting the frequency distribution of the surveyed respondents’ perceptions of critical questions related to India’s foreign policy and its relations with countries in the Middle East. In the second stage, econometric analyses—mostly probit models—were employed to examine relationships between respondents’ perceptions and their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. This provided deeper insights into the spatial (across regions) and vertical (education and income) classification of the various responses and explained whether perceptions were determined by socio-economic and regional characteristics.

Read the full report here.

^[1] Manann Donoghoe et al., “The successes and failures of COP28,” The Brookings Institution, December 14, 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-successes-and-failures-of-cop28/

^[2] Dhruva Jaishankar, Vishwa Shastra: India and the World (New Delhi: Penguin Random House India, 2024), pp. 279-280.

^[3] Elizabeth Roche, “Modi’s Saudi Arabia Visit Sets Tone For Long-term Engagement,” The Diplomat, April 28, 2025, https://thediplomat.com/2025/04/modis-saudi-arabia-visit-sets-tone-for-long-term-engagement/

^[4] “Visit of Prime Minister to Jordan, Ethiopia, and Oman (December 15 – 18, 2025),” Ministry of External Affairs of India, December 11, 2025, https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/40443/Visit_of_Prime_Minister_to_Jordan_Ethiopia_and_Oman_December_15__18_2025

^[5] “India’s Global Outreach on Operation Sindoor: Full List of Delegation Members and Destinations,” The Hindu, May 22, 2025, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-diplomatic-push-operation-sindoor-delegation-leaders-countries-mission-details/article69590359.ece

^[6] Harsh Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2021: Young India and the World, August 2021, Observer Research Foundation, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-orf-foreign-policy-survey-2021-young-india-and-the-world

^[7] Harsh V Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2022: India @75 and the World, November 2022, Observer Research Foundation, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-orf-foreign-policy-survey-2022

^[8] Harsh V Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2023: Young India and the Multilateral World Order, Observer Research Foundation, February 2024, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-orf-foreign-policy-survey-2023-young-india-and-the-multilateralworld-order

^[9] Harsh V Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2024: Young India and the China Challenge, Observer Research Foundation, July 2025, https://www.orfonline.org/research/foreign-policy-survey-2024-young-india-and-the-china-challenge

^[10] Dhruva Jaishankar, “Survey of India’s Strategic Community,” Brookings Institution, March 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Survey-of-India%E2%80%99s-StrategicCommunity.pdf

^[11] Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland, “Public Opinion Toward Foreign Policy in a Developing World Democracy: Evidence from Indian Views of China,” SocArXiv, March 2021.

^[12] Marshall M. Bouton et al., “The United States and the Rise of China and India: Results of a 2006 Multination Survey of Public Opinion,” The Chicago Council of Global Affairs, https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/2006-chicago-council-survey

^[13] Devesh Kapur, “Public Opinion and Indian Foreign Policy,” India Review 8, no. 3 (August 13, 2009): 286–305, https://doi. org/10.1080/14736480903116818

^[14] Rory Medcalf, “India Poll 2013” (Sydney, 2013), https://www.lowyinstitute.org/ publications/india-poll-2013

^[15] Christopher Clary, Sameer Lalwani, Niloufer Siddiqui, and Neelanjan Sircar, “Confidence and Nationalism in Modi’s India,” Stimson Center, August 2022, https://www.stimson.org/2022/confidence-and-nationalism-in-modis-india/

^[16] Bharat Pulse Survey Results, NewsX Live, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDPE5u-MQ9P45jltJ4zyl7tJfSPJpih-y

^[17] Shivaji Kumar, “India’s Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: A View from New Delhi,” India Review 17, no. 4 (August 8, 2018): 353–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2018.1510158.

^[18] Gautam Nair and Nicholas Sambanis, “Violence Exposure and Ethnic Identification: Evidence from Kashmir,” International Organization 73, no. 2 (2019): 329–63.

^[19] Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, Young Bhutan and the World, Observer Research Foundation, February 2025, https://www.orfonline.org/research/young-bhutan-and-the-world-a-preliminary-survey-of-perceptions-on-foreign-policy

^[20] Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “Indian Americans at the Ballot Box: Results from the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2024, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/indian-american-voters-election-survey-us?lang=en

^[21] Sneha Gubbala, Andrew Prozorvosky, “How people in 24 countries view India,” Pew Research Center, August 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/13/how-people-in-24-countries-view-india/

^[22] Pew Research Center, “Views of India Lean Positive Across 23 Countries,” Pew Research Center, August 29, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/ global/2023/08/29/views-of-india-lean-positive-across-23-countries/

^[23] Anushka Saxena, Manoj Kewalramani, and Amit Kumar, “Pulse of the People: State of India-China Relations,” December 2024, The Takshashila Institution, https://takshashila.org.in/content/publications/20241217-pulse-of-the-people.html