Three Decades of India's Eastward Engagement and a Persisting Set of Challenges

Part 1
Year 2022 marks 30 years since India first became a sectoral dialogue partner of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and it is observed by both sides as the 'ASEAN-India Friendship Year'. Southeast Asia is located in New Delhi's 'extended neighbourhood' and lies at the centre of the Indo-Pacific, both geographically and strategically. Today, India and the ten ASEAN member-states together hold about two billion people, which is roughly 30 per cent of the world's population. During the Cold War years, most of countries in the region were formally or informally part of the Western-led system of alliances, which acted as a constraining factor for 'non-aligned' India to cultivate robust ties with the region, particularly at the multilateral level.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union, a key strategic partner of India hitherto, in 1991 left a huge void in its diplomatic and geostrategic space. This was one of the key driving factors that led New Delhi to formulate its 'Look East' policy in the same year, which was rechristened and reinvigorated as 'Act East' policy in 2014. India was made a full dialogue partner of the ten-nation grouping in 1996, and six years later, in 2002, regular annual leaders' summits were initiated, of which the latest in the series was held last year. In the early years since the opening of dialogue relations, the focus was placed on the economic dimension of ties, which diversified into commercial, security and strategic dimensions, in the course of time.

A decade ago, in 2012, India-ASEAN relations were upgraded to the level of 'strategic partnership'. The two sides operationalised a free trade agreement in goods in 2010 and another agreement on services and investment four years later. In 2015, India set up a separate Mission to the bloc and its related forums like the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Jakarta, where the ASEAN is headquartered, to strengthen its engagement with the grouping and the regional processes centred on it. Later in 2018, in a truly historic diplomatic rendezvous, the leaders of all the ten ASEAN countries were welcomed as chief guests for India's Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi.

Soft power edge=
A changing world order, combined with the economic liberalisation of the early 1990s, necessitated New Delhi to look for new friends and new sources of economic capital and investment elsewhere to fill the void left by Moscow. Southeast Asia seemed to be a promising and easy-go destination. However, India's engagement with the region is not something new, and in fact, it goes centuries back, the background of which is important to get a broad perspective on India-ASEAN ties. India has an immense amount of soft power in the region via its centuries-old Buddhist and Hindu civilizational linkages, which also happen to converge which the Sinic civilizational heritage as well.

Indian epics of Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Buddhist literature such as the Jataka Tales are still popular in many Southeast Asian countries and several tourists arrive in India from the region for religious, business, and leisure reasons. Before 1991, India had three waves of engagement with Southeast Asia since the first century C.E., transitioning through ancient, medieval, colonial, and post-colonial stages. The first wave had cultural, commercial and imperial dimensions when Buddhism reached the region via land from India and a further outreach occurred due to the expansionary policies of Tamil thalassocratic powers like the Chola Empire that extended its influence in maritime Southeast Asia, lasting until the 13th century C.E.

After a brief period of disruption in the late medieval era following the Islamic invasions into the Indian subcontinent, the second period began during the British Raj era, which saw colonial expansion and a new dimension of commercial and imperial ties. The third wave began after India's independence from the British in 1947, which continued till 1991. As Western powers retreated from Asia following the Second World War, India tried to assert its regional role by building solidarity with the post-colonial states of eastern Asia. This period saw key initiatives under Indian leadership such as the convening of the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 in New Delhi and the Bandung Conference of 1955 in Indonesia.

However, due to the prevailing Cold War geopolitical imperatives, India's active role in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and its limitations as an economic and military power constrained New Delhi's options to proactively engage with Southeast Asia. The 'Look East' policy of 1991, in fact, constituted a fresh fourth wave of India's engagement with the region, or re-engagement. Today, the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia constitutes about 20% of the country's total diaspora population around the world, numbering 18 million. This fact also plays a significant role in strengthening India-ASEAN relations.

Bridge to Asian regionalism Since the late 1960s, Southeast Asia has been known for cultivating active mechanisms of regional integration that was brought about by the founding of the ASEAN in 1967 by five countries, namely, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Later, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia too joined the bloc, in order, bringing the total membership to 10 countries. India shares a land and maritime border with Myanmar and an exclusive maritime border with Indonesia via the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Cosying up with ASEAN in the post-Cold War context meant heralding in a new era of engagement with Asia's regional institutions, mechanisms and processes.

The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is a ministerial-level diplomatic platform set up in 1993 soon after the Cold War ended, including all countries that had been engaging with the ASEAN. It is the largest and the oldest of all ASEAN-centred institutions and has 27 members, which includes the ten ASEAN member-states, its ten Dialogue Partners, and seven other countries. India became a member of the ARF in 1996. The forum held its 28th annual meeting last year, wherein India co-chaired a workshop on implementing the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982). The founding objectives of this forum include the "fostering of constructive dialogue and consultation on political and security issues of common interest and concern and to make significant contributions to efforts towards confidence-building and preventive diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region".

Similarly, the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) is yet another platform under the ASEAN framework involving its eight Dialogue Partners, namely, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States (collectively referred to as the 'Plus Countries'), towards the goals of strengthening security and defence cooperation and ensuring peace and stability in the region. The inaugural ADMM-Plus was convened in Hanoi in 2010. The ADMM-Plus has been meeting annually since 2017 to allow enhanced dialogue and co-operation within the grouping and with the 'Plus Countries' to collectively deal with common security challenges facing the region.

India is one of the founding members of the East Asia Summit (EAS), another ASEAN-centred diplomatic forum formed in 2005. It emerged out of the 'ASEAN-plus-Six' mechanism, including the ten ASEAN member states, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. Later, Russia and the United States too joined the EAS in 2011, bringing the total membership to 18 countries. The EAS is one of the most crucial components of the ASEAN-led regional framework, primarily because of the contribution it makes in building an environment of strategic trust in the region. Today, the EAS countries represent more than half of the world's population and accounts for 58% of the global GDP.

India is committed to strengthening the EAS and continues to contribute positively to the forum's goals. At the 14th East Asia Summit in Bangkok in 2019, India's Prime Minister Modi announced a new initiative for regional cooperation, known as the 'Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative' (IPOI), aimed at building new partnerships to create a secure and stable maritime domain in the region. It rests upon seven key pillars, namely, maritime security, maritime ecology, maritime resources, capacity building and resource sharing, disaster risk reduction and management, science, technology and academic cooperation, and trade connectivity and maritime transport.

Since India was not one of the Pacific Rim countries, it couldn't be part of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), formed in 1989, or any other trans-Pacific groupings formed later. Other sub-regional groupings which India engages with selected Southeast Asian countries include the 1997-founded Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the 2000-founded Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) groupings.

Trade and connectivity woes Beyond diplomacy, diaspora and cultural ties, there is the aspect of trade. India had signed a free trade agreement (FTA) in goods with the ASEAN in 2009, known as the ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA). It was operationalised the very next year. Later, another agreement on services and investment was signed in 2014 which became effective in the following year. It is now known as the India-ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement. However, ever since India entered into these two FTAs, its trade deficit had risen as imports from the region sharply rose in comparison to its exports to the region.


Bejoy Sebastian is an independent journalist based in India.