India’s Look East Policy

India’s Look East Policy: New Era of India-ASEAN Relations

Prof. Man Mohini Kaul

In the Asia of the mid 1960s, when individualism and closed economies were the order of the day, the Southeast Asian countries were the first to realize the benefits of cooperation and were instrumental in the creation of the ASEAN Forum. Leadership in cooperation is not an empty first mover advantage but has real learning and experience benefits that add substantive content to cooperation. Southeast Asia has reaped the benefits of its openness and foresight, though no one could have envisaged just how advantageous this would prove to be. All paths now seem to pass through the ASEAN region and, in particular, it has greatly benefited from strong economic ties within and with neighbouring countries. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is without doubt the most successful example of regional cooperation in Asia. From Indian perspective the success of ASEAN is particularly laudable, as attempt at regional cooperation in South Asia has not proved effective.  Ever since its establishment in 1985, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has been marred by interregional tensions. Even the other initiative in the region – the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) - has not been able to achieve the goals announced with much fanfare at its establishment in 1989

India’s Look  East Policy :  Problems and Prospects

                                                    Prof. C. Ravindranatha Reddy

India’s Look East Policy has become increasingly important element in its foreign policy focus.  It gave a new direction and provided a decisive shift in India’s traditional focus on foreign policy. The Look East Policy is pursued in a multifaceted manner in diverse areas such as improved connectivity, promotion of trade and investment and cultural exchanges, and has also been pursued through constructive engagement with various regional organizations such as ASEAN, East Asian Summit (EAS), Bay of Bengal Initiative for Scientific, Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC).

 India’s Look East Policy and the Indian Diaspora

Dr. Amit Singh

The Indian Diaspora across the world ranks second after the Chinese. People of Indian Origin (PIOs) and Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) are present in all parts of the globe. It has been estimated that the overseas Indian community, numbering over 25 million, is spread over 189 countries. While the history of the Indian Diaspora dates back to the pre-Christian era, large-scale emigration of Indians took place mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries which can be divided into four phases. The colonial period witnessed unprecedented emigration of indentured and other laborers, traders, professionals and employees of the British Government to the European (British, French and Dutch) colonies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. However, it was only post-World War II that the most far-reaching emigration of Indians took place, mainly of professionals, to the developed countries namely England, the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The oil boom in the 1970s and 1980s saw millions of Indians migrating to the Gulf and West Asian countries. In today’s globalised world, Indians in various sectors like IT, medicine, and trade are finding opportunities abroad, which also include a large number of students seeking admission in developed countries, thereby adding to the numbers of the Diaspora. The Indian Diaspora constitutes more than 40 per cent of the population in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam.

Indian Navy and its role in India’s Look East Policy

Anushree Bhattacharyya

India is at present rising in the international order. It is gradually becoming a major player in the ‘Concert of Asia’. Having one of the fastest growing economies, India is using its newly found wealth in modernizing the conventional military capabilities as well as its nuclear and missile technology. This has added vigour to its military strength and makes it the foremost maritime powers in the world. Accordingly, the Indian Navy is recognized as an important player in the Asian waters, which has potential to operate beyond its territorial waters. In fact, the nation sits astride key Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCs) for energy security, and it has been projecting power for purposes as varied as tsunami relief and strategic deterrence. Fellow Asian sea powers therefore are increasingly taking into account India’s naval strength – and not just it’s potential.

India-Myanmar: Growing Engagement Relations

Prof. A. Lakshmana Chetty

                 Look East Policy is a master stroke of the visionary Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who had striven to shape the destiny of India during his five year stint since 1991. It was a right step at a right time in a right direction. It was a natural corollary of the liberalization programme launched in India in the early 1990s. One can easily assert that Look East Policy has been a nonpareil in the history of Independent India in matters of yielding spectacular results. The fact that the successive governments pursued it assiduously speaks of the effectiveness and potentials of the Look East Policy.

India-Japan Relations

Prof. G V C Naidu

Japan was a major target for interaction right from the time India embarked on the economic reform in the early 1990s. In fact, it was Tokyo that New Delhi turned to when it faced with severe foreign exchange crisis and Japan did help India. Once India embarked on market-oriented economic reform programme, once again expectation were high from Japan as a major source of direct investment. India had anticipated Japan to play a role similar to what it had done in most countries in East Asia starting from the early 1970s through massive investments and generous aid to build infrastructure. However, that failed to materialise for a variety of reasons, especially its poor investment climate as compared to China and other Southeast Asian nations. Japan’s ability to invest generously reduced drastically with the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s. Thus, India became least priority area.

India-Thailand in the New Global Order:Looking East to Linking East

                                                    Prof. Tridib Chakraborti

“Our engagement with the ASEAN countries is a key element of India’s vision of an Asian economic community that is based on an open and inclusive architecture. India wishes to partner ASEAN in realizing this vision on the basis of mutual benefit, mutual prosperity and mutual respect….India's engagement with the ASEAN is at the heart of our 'Look East' Policy. We are convinced that India's future and our economic interests are best served by greater integration with our Asian partners.” This was said by the Indian Prime Minister, Man Mohan Singh, at the 7th India-ASEAN Summit and the 4th East Asia Summit, held in Hua Hin, Thailand on 24 October 2009. This speech has been quite deliberately imperative for New Delhi in the context of its ‘Look East’ policy, under the second tenure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, formed in 2009. Although the process of India’s ‘Look East’ policy has been effectively accelerated after P. V. Narashima Rao’s Singapore Speech of 1994, the manner in which India played an effectual role during the two decades in devising this policy with reference to Thailand will be the core subject matter of study of this article, against the uncertainties and obstacles that both have shared in the past.

East Asia Integration - China’s Reservations on India Playing a Leading Role

D.S.Rajan

Since early nineties, integration with East Asia remains an important foreign policy goal for India and to accomplish it, the government has put a Look East Policy in place. India’s leaders could develop a clear understanding of what should form the pillars of that policy; a firm evidence has been the assessment  (Kuala Lumpur, 12 December 2005) of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh that “India’s Look East policy is not merely an external economic policy, it also marks a strategic shift in India’s vision of the world and its place in the evolving global economy. Most of all, it is about reaching out to our civilisational neighbours in South East Asia and East Asia.”

India’s Eastward Engagement: An Indonesian Perspective

Dr. Vibhanshu Shekhar

Introduction

The end of the Cold War and India’s domestic economic liberalization policy offered an appropriate politico-strategic atmosphere for reviving political and economic relationships with ASEAN. With the launch of India’s Look East Policy, the relationship between India and ASEAN during the last eighteen years has acquired a multi-faceted and more complex outlook with the range of cooperation covering almost every aspect of social, political, economic and cultural endeavour of human beings. With the process of inter-regional cooperation witnessing both horizontal and vertical expansion, various initiatives have been taken to further institutionalize and formalize the relationship between India and ASEAN. Once a Sectoral Dialogue Partner of ASEAN, India today shares membership with ASEAN countries in two pan-Asia-Pacific regional frameworks of ARF and EAS and is engaged, since 2001, in the summit level meetings with ASEAN. Indonesia has figured prominently in India’s eastward engagement as an informal leader of ASEAN, the most powerful country in Southeast Asia, a member of the Non-aligned movement, the largest maritime neighbour of India, and an important strategic player in Asia. With its sustained economic recovery, consolidation of democracy and domestic political stability, Indonesia is poised to play an important role in the evolving Asian geopolitics and, in India’s strategic positioning in Asia, especially when they have high stakes in the peace, stability and prosperity of a multi-polar Asia.

India and South Korea: the Mirror of De-linking and Linking Saga

Mohor Chakraborty

The dawn of the 21^st Century, widely acclaimed as the “Asian Century” has brought with it expectations of a greater degree of cooperation among the politically diverse states of Southeast and East Asia on the one hand and India, on the other.   Such an ambitious possibility is contingent upon a set of three significant trends: the rapid and continuing rise of China matched by the diplomatic activism of Japan and South Korea; the ascent of India in the spheres of economics, security, culture and strategic determinism; and the post-recessionary trend of America’s economic decline on the global stage. The smallest territory among the G-20 major economies, South Korea, today is the fourth largest (in terms of economic) in Asia and Seoul is one of the world’s top-10 financial and commercial cities. It is against such a backdrop that India is steadily expanding its footprints through its ‘extended neighbourhood’ policy, based on its inauguration of Phase II of India’s ‘Look East’ Policy,  which was officially declared at the Second India-ASEAN Business Summit, New Delhi, on 4 September 2003, when the then Indian Minister of External Affairs, Yashwant Sinha said:

Indo-Sino Energy Quest in Myanmar

Jagdish Prasad Verma

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India, as the world's number six energy consumer, is also in a more desperate situation as that of China. India currently imports roughly 70% and China around 40% of its oil. Furthermore, China's proven oil reserves stand at 18 billion barrels, compared to 5 billion barrels in India. As the energy needs of both countries continue to grow, their oil imports are set to increase substantially. Due to the size of their populations and their rapid economic growth, India and China face a formidable challenge in their pursuit of energy security. How the two governments seek to meet this challenge is vital to the future political stability of Asia as a whole.

However, this quest for energy security is being impeded by India's sometimes tense relations with energy suppliers, energy transit countries and energy competitors. For example, just as India and China have for centuries engaged in competition for leadership in Asia, the developing world and status on the world stage, so the need for energy security has now raised the possibility of further competition and confrontation in the energy sphere

India’s ASEAN Trade Perspectives Integration

Debashis Chakraborty

In the post-independence phase, India adopted the import-substitution led growth model, as a result of which export pessimism was quite high during sixties and seventies. Consequently, enhancing trade integration with other countries was not accorded due importance. Exports were viewed only as necessary means to meet the foreign exchange requirement to finance imports. The policymakers were motivated by the planned economy framework of Russia and other socialist countries, which emerged as the role model for Indian economy.

The limitation of the above-mentioned growth model became obvious increasingly during eighties, with the rising trade deficit figures. Finally in early nineties, the macroeconomic and external instability forced the country to initiate structural adjustment programme as per IMF recommendation. As a result, a new set of role models were necessary, and the East Asian Tigers given their comparable development level provided quite a handful of them. The economies of South Korea, Singapore etc. experienced massive growth through the ‘Flying Geese’ model, thanks to Japanese investment and technical know-how transmission. The potential trade liberalizations resulting from Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations also prompted the country to go for ‘Look East’, by going for the hitherto untapped export market. In addition, it was expected that integration with East Asia would be instrumental in obtaining technology from that region as well.

Source:World Focus(Journal)