What are the hopes and aspirations of ‘Look East Policy’ of India? Explain. (2016, 15 Marks)
India’s eastward turn, now Act East, has no founding document. Its nearest charter is P. V. Narasimha Rao’s Singapore Lecture of 8 September 1994, India and the Asia-Pacific: Forging a New Relationship, which claimed for India a place in a region it had been written out of. The hopes were economic first, then strategic, civilisational and domestic, and they have grown with India’s own weight since 1991.
Economic hopes
- Markets and capital for an economy liberalised after the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis: India became an ASEAN sectoral partner in 1992 and a full dialogue partner in 1995.
- A large free trade area: the goods agreement (in force 2010) and the services and investment agreements (in force 2015) joined markets of some two billion people.
- Two-way investment: ASEAN capital into Indian highways and ports, auto components, shipping and agro-processing; Indian investment routed mainly through Singapore as hub.
- Northeast Asia too: partnership agreements with South Korea (2010) and Japan (2011). Japan’s backing for Make in India, Digital India and Skill India, and the ¥10 trillion private-investment target of the August 2025 summit, show the aspiration widening.
- Sanjaya Baru (Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance, 2006) supplies the logic: economic performance is the source of strategic weight, not its by-product.
Strategic hopes
- Diversification after the Soviet collapse removed India’s arms supplier and diplomatic patron.
- A seat in Asian institutions: the ASEAN Regional Forum (1996), summit partnership (2002), the East Asia Summit (2005), ADMM-Plus (2010).
- Managing China: Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and Australia share India’s concern at China’s economic and military reach. The hope is hedging through partners’ capacity, not alliance.
- Regional welcome: Singapore had long wanted India in the region’s balance, and with Japan and others it secured India’s East Asia Summit seat over Chinese objections.
- Maritime security in the Malacca approaches, through which much of India’s eastbound trade moves.
Civilisational and domestic hopes
- Soft power from shared Buddhist and Hindu heritage (Angkor, Borobudur, the revived Nalanda University) and a large diaspora.
- The North-East as gateway: Kaladan and the Trilateral Highway were to end the region’s isolation.
How far realised
India–ASEAN trade grew from about US$2 billion in 1991 to US$128.38 billion in 2025–26, and the 2022 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership placed India in ASEAN’s top tier; 2026 is the ASEAN–India Year of Maritime Cooperation under a 2026–30 Plan of Action. Yet the US$200 billion trade target was missed, the deficit reached about US$45 billion in 2024–25, the AITIGA review remains unfinished, the RCEP exit (2019) cost credibility, and Myanmar’s civil war has stalled the land corridors.
Conclusion
The aspiration was to belong to Asia’s economic and strategic order, not merely to trade with it. The political and strategic hopes are largely met; the economic and North-Eastern ones await delivery. India has won friends in the east and now needs the economic depth that would make that friendship consequential.