Page 89 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF INDIA-ASEAN TIES: AN ASSESSMENT

Rahul Mishra

Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Malaysia
rahul.seas@gmail.com

Abstract
India has more than two millennia old ties with the Southeast Asian countries, with a series of
waves shaping its engagements with the ‘East’. However, India’s engagement with ASEAN
begun only after the end of the Cold War. Since the launch of the Look East policy in 1992, by
the then Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, to 2018, when India and ASEAN have
entered the twenty-sixth years of dialogue relations, their partnership has come a long way
crossing several milestones. In the past twenty-five years, India has not only been able to re-
socialise itself in the politico-security regional architecture of Asia, but has also been able to
successfully join several regional groupings related to security, trade and economic
cooperation. India’s engagement with ASEAN has been elevated with Prime Minister Narendra
Modi – led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s announcement of upgrading
th
Look East Policy to the Act East policy at 12 India-ASEAN Summit in Nay Pyi Taw,
Myanmar in November 2014. India-ASEAN dialogue partnership completed twenty-five years
in the year 2017. The same year, India and ASEAN also completed fifteen years of Summit
level partnership and five years of their Strategic Partnership. This paper assesses twenty-five
years of India’s engagement with ASEAN by analysing the level of institutional engagement
between the two.

Keywords: India-ASEAN relations, Look East policy, Act East policy, Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), ASEAN Regional Forum, Expanded ASEAN
Maritime Forum (EAMF).

1
Introduction
In 2017, India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) completed twenty-
five years of their relationship, which had started with India launching the Look East policy in
1992 under the leadership of then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. Over the years, the Look
East policy has crossed several milestones in strengthening the India-ASEAN relations. In the
process the Look East policy also underwent different phases; starting from phase I (1992 to
2002), to Phase II (2002-2014), and eventually transforming into the Act East policy- its current
avatar, which was launched by Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
government in 2014. In the past quarter-a-century, India-ASEAN ties have achieved major
feats, which have also led to wider acceptance of the Look East/Act East policy as one of the
finest foreign policy success stories of India in recent years.

1 This section draws from author’s paper entitled “India’s Act East Policy and Southeast Asia” presented at the
Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, on January 18, 2018.