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Indo-ASEAN summit – next phase in India’s Look East policy |
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Harjit Singh
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Singapore to attend the India-ASEAN summit as well as the East Asia Summit to which it has been admitted marks another phase in India’s triumphant “Look East” policy launched by the then Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao. Phase one of the policy was characterized by trade and investment linkages. Phase two is marked by arrangements for Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and establishing of institutional economic linkages between the countries of the region and India. It is also characterised by an expanded definition of `East' extending from Australia to China and East Asia with ASEAN as its core. There have been gains already. South Korea has emerged as a major economic partner of India; while economic ties with Japan need to be upgraded, there has been dramatic growth in Sino-Indian linkages in the last few years. And the potential with Australia and the South Pacific remains to be tapped fully. India’s accession to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation speaks of a growing closeness with South East Asia. It is being seen as another step forward in India’s “Look East” policy.
In the past, India’s engagement with much of Asia, including South East and East Asia, was built on an idealistic conception of Asian brotherhood, based on shared experiences of colonialism and cultural ties. The rhythm of the region, as some experts like to call it, today is determined, however, as much by trade, investment and production as by history and culture.
While in Singapore, Dr. Singh described India’s “Look East” policy as “blossoming and showing results on the ground.” He described the India-ASEAN summits and East Asia Summit to be its “essential pillars and vital for the qualitatively enhanced engagement which India seeks with the region.” At the last summit in Cebu, Philippines in January this year, underlining many facets of cooperation between India and ASEAN, Mr. Singh had said, New Delhi’s “Look East” policy which was initiated a decade and a half ago, marked “a strategic shift” in India’s perspective and is now bearing fruit in the form of intensifying the political dialogue, expanding trade and steadily enlarging people-to-people contacts between all the countries of the region.
To take the India-ASEAN cooperation forward, even as a free trade agreement still awaits smoothening rough edges, Dr. Singh during the Singapore summit made a number of new proposals not only for greater economic integration but also people-to-people contacts, science and technology, health, transport, human resource development and information. He proposed raising the Indo-ASEAN trade from the current level of $30 billion to 50 billion by 2010.
In a development which augurs well for the proposed Indo-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, India and ASEAN agreed to bring down the tariffs on items covered under the sensitive list to a 0-5 per cent by 2018. The two sides are negotiating to get to a consensus formula that would speed up the signing of n Indo-ASEAN FTA by July 2007. He proposed greater connectivity which has seen an unprecedented growth after India during the NDA Government of Mr. Vajpayee made an open skies offer to ASEAN airlines. Dr. Singh noted that there were now 215 direct and indirect flights from India and Singapore alone.
Ever since India became a sectoral dialogue partner of the ASEAN, several initiatives have resulted in trade multiplying fourfold — from $ 3.1 billion in 1991 to about $ 12 billion in 2002 and $30 million in 2007.
The military contacts and joint exercises that India launched with ASEAN states on a low key basis in the early 1990s are also now expanding into full-fledged defence cooperation. India has also quietly begun to put in place arrangements for regular access to ports in Southeast Asia. India's defence contacts have widened to include Japan, South Korea and China. Never before has India engaged in such multi-directional defence diplomacy in Asia.
At the last India-ASEAN summit in Cebu in January this year, Prime Minister Singh as part of India’s “Look East” policy, had unveiled his vision of widening a web of mutually beneficial parnership with the ten-member ASEAN that will be built around a free trade agreement, an open sky policy and enhanced cooperation in agriculture, technology, energy, defence and the war against terror. He told the leaders at the 5th India-ASEAN summit that India is prepared to discuss an open skies policy with the bloc to boost travel and strengthen economic ties.
The second India-ASEAN summit in Bali provided the much-needed thrust and framework for taking the partnership forward. Two broad agreements, for Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and combating terrorism, were signed. India has also acceded to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. The then Prime Minister Vajpayee who led the Indian team to the Indo-ASEAN with the ten ASEAN leaders, went a step further to offer a unilateral open skies policy to specified South-East Asian airlines, which will be free to operate daily flights to the Indian metropolitan centers, outside any bilateral aviation pact. These steps augur well for furthering economic and political cooperation between India and its 10 Southeast Asian neighbours – extending from Myanmar to the Philippines.
But, what is of significance is the framework agreement aimed at creating a Free Trade Area in ten years as provided in the agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation sealed by the Prime Minister with ASEAN at Bali. This pact for comprehensive economic cooperation with ASEAN is complemented by bilateral and sub-regional attempts towards economic cooperation. These include the bilateral free trade agreements with Thailand and Singapore. India, Thailand and Myanmar along with a couple of South Asian countries are partners in BIMSTEC, a sub-regional grouping that is becoming active with the adoption of a free trade area plan and a summit-level meeting in February 2004. India and the Indo-China countries in ASEAN also interact within the framework of Mekong Ganga cooperation.
Gains for India in its greater closeness first as a sectoral and dialogue partner are enormous. New economic trade arrangements of which the framework agreement for a free trade area with ASEAN by 2011 is a key component, holds out the prospects of an expanding geo-political relationship underpinned by geo-economics. Bilateral agreements provide additional strength and point to the steps on which to move forward, building on the experience gained in the process. Security linkages in an increasingly globalising and interdependent world assume equal importance. The Indian Navy has been patrolling the Malacca Straits for years now in cooperation with the countries of the region where joint naval exercises heralded the “Look East’ policy.
Further, the fact that China, Japan and Korea are also partners in the ASEAN cooperative engagement processes opens up many opportunities. Multiple linkages and sub-groupings offer new opportunities to work for mutual benefit and enhance the quality of life of all the developing countries in the region. Proposals like the Asian Highway and the Chinese idea ensconced in the Kunming Initiative now must get a fresh look and impetus.
As India's economic reforms unfold, there is no let-up in the pace of diplomacy towards the region.
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