Indian Foreign Affairs Journal Vol. 15, No. 2, April–June 2020, 155-171 Pandemic Geopolitics and India Sitakanta Mishra* By now, the world seems to have learned to live with the Corona virus which is likely to cast its spell for some more months. Meanwhile, active and new infection cases have started to decline in many countries, along with a growing momentum in the vaccination drive around the world. Nevertheless, the aftershocks of the pandemic are real. No event since World War II has triggered such distinct global effects on human and state behaviour so rapidly. The pandemic’s transformational effects on global affairs are yet to surface fully. While there is no unanimity yet on the ushering in of a new world order, the pandemic’s upshot is consequential for the current world order. Will 2019-20 be viewed as another turning point in the geopolitical history of the world? Will 2019-20 be a hinge in human history with an ex-post shift in the core concepts that defined pre COVID-19 world politics? Has a transformation process of the fundamental factors of global politics – like the distribution of power, the calculation of interest, or the constitution of global actors – begun? The debate over the pandemic’s transformative effects on geopolitics is gradually unfolding. Many argue that the effects of the pandemic will be more sweeping; others think 2019-20 is unlikely to be an inflection point. Undeniably, pandemics and politics are always intertwined and, for most of human history, pandemics have had considerable effects on international affairs. Extrapolating the Pandemic-Geopolitics Nexus Historically, pandemics have altered the geostrategic dynamics of the time they have occurred: be it the spread of plague from Ethiopia to Athens in 430 BC; the French expedition plans in North America which were disrupted by * The Author, Dr. Sitakantha Mishra, is an Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Studies (SLS), Pandit Deendayal Energy University (PDEU), Gujarat, India. (This article was received from the author on January 27, 2021)