Buckling up the One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative: Intentions of China and Ramifications for India

One Belt One Road (OBOR) is essentially a Chinese initiative to move up the value chain and to deal with its problems of overproduction of cement, steel and other products. It wants to shed its image as a nation producing cheap products and wants to instead compete with the US, Europe, Japan and Taiwan as a nation, which produces quality goods. Hence it wants to shift its production lines to cheaper countries on the OBOR route to deal with rising wages within its own country. This paper has made an attempt to throw light on the Chinese OBOR project by explaining its salient features. It then goes on to briefly describing as to what the OBOR project means for India. In it, it deals with the perceptions of countries vital to China, viz. Pakistan and China. It then goes on to discuss about the ways and means by which India is and can counter OBOR in the future including India’s measures taken in cooperation with various nations and partners. Finally, the paper concludes by laying down recommendation on what would be the best way for India to tackle OBOR and at the same time live the Indian dream and in fact even make the world to do the same.