What are the implications of ‘Look-East’ Policy on the north-eastern region of India? (2022, 15 Marks)
For four decades after 1947 Delhi saw the North-East through a security lens: a frontier of insurgency, the Inner Line and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958. Sanjib Baruah (Postfrontier Blues, 2007) argued that the eastward turn could end this “frontier” governance. The Look East Policy of 1991, renamed Act East in November 2014, duly recast the region as India’s gateway to Southeast Asia. The implications run both ways.
Why the region sits at the centre
- Geography: almost the whole boundary of the eight states is international, and the region joins the rest of India only through the Siliguri corridor.
- A development deficit: Partition cut the old outlets to Chittagong and Kolkata, leaving remoteness, weak communications and thin industry. The hope was that a periphery on the national map would become central on the regional one.
Positive implications
- Security to economy. Foreign policy became an instrument of internal development: trade with ASEAN was to pull in infrastructure, logistics, investment and agro-processing, a liberal interdependence wager on trade as a self-propelling engine of growth.
- Connectivity at home. National highways in the region grew from about 10,905 km (2014) to 16,207 km (March 2025). The Agartala–Akhaura rail link with Bangladesh was inaugurated in November 2023, and the Bairabi–Sairang line (13 September 2025) put Aizawl on the rail map. Asian Highway segments drew Asian Development Bank and Japanese finance through the India–Japan Act East Forum (2017).
- Corridors outward. Kaladan (Kolkata–Sittwe–Paletwa–Zorinpui) would roughly halve the Kolkata–Aizawl distance; the India–Myanmar–Thailand Trilateral Highway begins at Moreh.
- Rebranding. The Rising Northeast Investors Summit (May 2025) markets the region as a destination, not a problem.
Negative and unrealised implications
| Dimension | What happened |
|---|---|
| Development | Thongkholal Haokip (India’s Look East Policy and the Northeast, 2015) finds the region treated as a route, not as livelihoods; Rubul Patgiri and Dilip Gogoi (2022) show the neoliberal model’s thin local dividend |
| Myanmar | Since the 1 February 2021 coup the land routes are unbuildable: Paletwa fell to the Arakan Army in January 2024; the Kalewa–Yagyi stretch is stalled |
| Security | Open routes also carry arms, narcotics and insurgents; Manipur’s conflict from May 2023 shut the Moreh corridor |
| Closure | The Free Movement Regime was ended (February 2024) and fencing of the 1,643 km border approved, over Mizoram’s and Nagaland’s objections; only about 30 km is fenced |
Two further points sharpen the ledger. Manipur returned to an elected government only on 4 February 2026, after almost a year of President’s Rule, and ethnic tension persists. Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, sworn in as President in April 2026 after disputed elections, does not control the Chin and Rakhine stretches the corridors cross. Indigenous anxieties about land, demography and dams also contest openness itself.
Conclusion
Look East has changed how Delhi sees the North-East more than how the North-East lives: positive on infrastructure, ambivalent on development, negative where security closure collides with promised openness. Internal connectivity, power and local enterprise built before external corridors, with community consent, would turn a corridor into a true gateway.