1st Edition

Look East to Act East Policy Implications for India's Northeast

Edited By Gurudas Das, C. Joshua Thomas Copyright 2016
    270 Pages 27 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge India

    270 Pages 27 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge India

    270 Pages 27 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge India

    This volume captures the success of India’s Look East Policy (LEP) in promoting economic engagement with neighbouring countries in Asia and simultaneously its limitations in propelling growth in the bordering North Eastern Region — India’s bridge head to South East Asia. It analyses the instrumental role of LEP in bringing a tectonic shift in India’s foreign trade by redirecting the focus from the West to the East, thus leading to a fundamental change in the nature of India’s economic interdependence. Besides discussing foreign trade, it expounds as to how LEP made India play an important role in the emerging Asian security architecture and liberated Indian foreign policy from being centred on South Asia. The essays also enumerate the reasons for LEP’s failure in the North Eastern Region and chart out actionable programmes for course correction that might be factored into its latest edition — the Act East Policy.

    This book will interest scholars and researchers of international relations, international trade and economics, politics, and particularly those concerned with Northeast India.

    List of Tables. List of Figures. List of Maps. List of Abbreviations. List of Contributors. Introduction Part 1. Look East Policy and Regional Engagement 1. Look East Policy: Economic Engagement with ASEAN and East Asian Countries Gurudas Das, Subodh Ch Das and Ujjwal Paul 2. Re-thinking India’s Look-East Policy: Why to Engage China? Yang Xiaoping 3. India-ASEAN Trade and Economic Relations: Ties That Bind Rahul Misra 4. The BCIM Forum: Is it Sustainable? Patricia Uberoi 5. Enhancing Connectivity for Mekong-India Economic Cooperation: Vietnam Perspective Nguyen Huy Hoang 6. Sub-Regional Diplomacy: An Imperative of Our Time Kishan S Rana 7. India’s Myanmar Policy: Implications for India’s North East Gurudas Das 8. India`s Look East Policy: The Energy Security Perspective Suwa Lal Jangu Part 2: Look East Policy and India’s North Eastern Region 9. Look-East Policy and the Continental Route: A Reality Check Falguni Rajkumar 10. Look East Policy and North East India: Space, Region and Existing Reality Gorky Chakraborty 11. Embracing India’s Northeast in BIMSTEC: Experimenting the GMS ECP Model Panchali Saikia 12. Look East Policy and India’s North Eastern Region: Status of Cross-Border Trade and Connectivity Jajati K. Pattnaik 13. Stilwell Road and Development of India’s North-East C. Joshua Thomas 14. Making "Act East Policy" to work for the Development of North Eastern Region of India Gurudas Das, Ujjwal Paul and Tanuj Mathur Index.

    Biography

    Gurudas Das is currently a faculty member at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Assam, India. He has served as Reader at the Department of Economics, North-Eastern Hill University, as Fellow at the Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development and as Lecturer at St Anthony’s College, Shillong. He has also published widely.

    C. Joshua Thomas is Deputy Director at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, North Eastern Regional Centre (ICSSR-NERC), Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Previously, he has worked at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Madras Christian College (Autonomous), Chennai; Wangkhao College, Mon, Nagaland and Union Christian College, Barapani, Meghalaya. He has authored, co-authored and edited several books on Northeast India and has contributed research papers in journals. He is the Managing Editor of Man and Society: A Journal of North-East Studies for the last twelve years.

    "Overall, however, the volume does portray with full energy the current challenges facing one of the most neglected regions of India and which is now increasingly confronted by forces of globalization in Asia."

    Ulises Granados, Asia Pacific Studies Program, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM), Asian Politics & Policy (APP)