Page 93 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

Mishra, 2018

Factors such as the disintegration of the USSR, rise of the Asian Tigers, China’s expanding
influence in India’s neighbourhood including Myanmar, and growing insurgency in the
Northeastern states of India, led New Delhi to inject a new vigour to its policy towards eastern
neighbours. This was driven equally by the imperatives of India’s opening up of economy and
foreign exchange crunch of 1991 (Rai, 2012). The beginning of India’s formal dialogue with
ASEAN begun on January 28, 1992 in Singapore during the fourth ASEAN Summit where
India was granted the status of a sectoral partner. In December 1995, India graduated to the
status of a Full Dialogue Partner of ASEAN. Further on in that series, India and ASEAN
became Summit partners in 2002, and finally turned into Strategic Partners in 2012. Over the
past twenty-five years, India and the ten member countries ASEAN have engaged each other
in as many as thirty dialogue mechanisms, India-ASEAN Summit, East Asia Summit, and
seven Ministerial meetings in a wide range of sectors. According to Ministry of External
Affairs statistics, “India participates in a series of consultative meetings with ASEAN under
the ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations, which include Summit, ministerial meetings, senior
officials meetings, and meetings at the experts level, as well as dialogue and cooperation
frameworks initiated by ASEAN, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Post
Ministerial Conference (PMC) 10+1, the East Asia Summit (EAS), Mekong-Ganga
Cooperation and Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation
(BIMSTEC), which help contribute to enhancing regional dialogue and accelerating regional
integration” (Ministry of Eternal Affairs, Government of India, 2017). Nine out of ten ASEAN
countries were visited by Indian President, Prime Minister or Vice President since May 2014
(Kaur, 2017). While India has expanded the scope of the Act East Policy by including almost
all the countries in its eastern neighbourhood, India-ASEAN relations remain at the core of the
Act East Policy. During his address at the India-ASEAN Summit in September, 2016 in
Vientiane, Laos, Prime Minister Modi reiterated this point and said, “ASEAN is central to
India's 'Act East' policy” (Narendamodi.in 2016). In terms of dialogue relations, Table 1
depicts the major milestones achieved over past twenty-five years.

Table 1: Trajectory of India’s Institutional Engagement with ASEAN

S.No. Institutions Date of Joining
1. India-ASEAN Sectoral Dialogue Partnership 1992
2. India-ASEAN Full Dialogue Partnership 1996

3. ARF Membership 1996

4. India-ASEAN Summit-Level Partnership 2002
5. Treaty of Amity and Cooperation 2003
ASEAN-India Framework Agreement on
6. 2003
Comprehensive Economic Cooperation
7. East Asia Summit membership 2005
8. ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (Signing) August 13, 2009
ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (Entered into
9. January 1, 2010
force)
ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus
10. 2010
membership

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