In News:

The multilateral military exercise PRAGATI 2026 commenced at Umroi Military Station, Meghalaya, with 12 friendly nations participating alongside India — marking a significant step in India's evolving role as a Preferred Security Partner in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and a concrete expression of its Neighbourhood First and Act East foreign policy doctrines.

What is PRAGATI?

• PRAGATI stands for Partnership of Regional Armies for Growth and Transformation in the Indian Ocean Region, a premier multinational military exercise conducted under the core principles of mutual respect, equality, and shared regional security.
• It provides a unified institutional platform for regional armies to exchange battlefield experiences, harmonise tactical doctrines, and establish joint response mechanisms against contemporary security threats.

Participating Nations

• India hosts 12 friendly nations: Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam — a grouping that reflects India's strategic geography, spanning South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean island states.

Key Features of PRAGATI 2026

• Operational Focus: The two-week exercise concentrates on counter-terrorism (CT) and counter-insurgency (COIN) operations in semi-mountainous and jungle terrain — the precise operational environment that characterises India's northeastern frontier and large parts of Southeast Asia's security landscape.

Training Modules:

• Joint command planning exercises and tactical-level field drills
• Coordinated live-fire simulation operations designed to improve adaptability, endurance, and tactical proficiency
• Intelligence synchronisation — developing real-time, secure intelligence-sharing frameworks in multinational operational environments — a critical capacity gap in regional CT cooperation

Atmanirbhar Bharat Exposition: PRAGATI 2026 uniquely incorporates a defence-tech showcase where Indian domestic companies display indigenous weapons, tactical gear, and military innovations — integrating defence diplomacy with defence export promotion under the Atmanirbhar Bharat framework.

Strategic Significance

• Preferred Security Partner: PRAGATI operationalises India's stated ambition of being the net security provider in the IOR — a role articulated in the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) doctrine and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI). Training together builds practical interoperability for real-world crisis response, whether counter-terrorism, HADR, or maritime security operations.
• Geopolitical Positioning: The participant list is deliberately IOR-centric — covering India's immediate neighbourhood (Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka), ASEAN partners (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Vietnam), and strategic island states (Seychelles). This grouping mirrors the geography of China's expanding maritime footprint — making PRAGATI an implicit instrument of India's IOR balancing strategy.
• Northeast India as a Strategic Hub: The choice of Umroi, Meghalaya as the host location is symbolically and operationally significant — it demonstrates India's confidence in its northeastern security infrastructure and reflects the region's growing importance as India's gateway to Southeast Asia under the Act East Policy.
• Doctrine Building: By harmonising tactical doctrines across 13 armies with varying equipment, languages, and command cultures, PRAGATI contributes to building a regional security architecture that is India-led but genuinely multilateral — a format increasingly preferred by smaller IOR states as an alternative to great-power dependency.