Mail Today: Saurabh Shukla
The end of 2012, will bring in a new diplomatic dawn for India; a new push to ‘Look East’ with closer connectivity as the 10 member ASEAN- India commemorative summit gets underway in Delhi on December 20. While coming just a month after the 10th avatar of ASEAN’s annual meet in Cambodia, the summit is largely symbolic but sends a huge message to the rest of the world about India’s global power quotient.
For Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had personally invited many ASEAN leaders, it is a good signal that 9 of the ten ASEAN countries will be represented at the level of head of state or government, with Phillipines sending its Vice President to Delhi.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was established on 8 August 1967 in Bangkok, by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam then joined on 7 January 1984, Vietnam on 28 July 1995, Laos PDR and Myanmar on 23 July 1997, and Cambodia on 30 April 1999. For India, besides the cultural and civilisational links with many ASEAN countries, the big thrust came during the premiership of PV Narasimha Rao, who was instrumental in pushing a ” Look East policy” and India became a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992, which was upgraded to full dialogue partnership in 1996.
Since 2002, India has been having annual summits with ASEAN, with December’s summit marking the 10th anniversary of India’s summit level partnership. Amongst the big ticket takeaways from the meeting, will be a vision document that is in the works, which will chart a way forward on how to change the relationship. And here too, India’s new Look East policy would be guided by trade with a target of $ 200 billion by 2020, considering that the current volume is at $ 78 billion above the trade target of $ 70 billion.
This will also be working to speed up the ASEAN- Indian Free Trade Agreement on services and investment, before the summit. Significantly, the vision document is expected to touch upon the ticklish issue of Chinese efforts to hegemonise the South China sea, with the Delhi vision document calling for freedom of navigation.
Combating sea piracy is another key concern that will find its way into the declaration, and ASEAN countries are keen to have coordinated patrolling with the Indian navy near the straits of Malacca, a major oil supply route for them that is infested by pirates.
India’s quick response to help the tsunami victims in Indonesia has become a focal point of its diplomatic outreach, and ASEAN too is keen to have maritime emergency cooperation with India. While ASEAN- India functional cooperation is diverse and includes cooperation across a range of sectors, the Delhi summit must ensure that there is a time bound delivery targets set in each of these sectors.
Many of these ideas stem from a recommendation of an eminent persons group led by former foreign secretary Shyam Saran that has also recommended an India- ASEAN knowledge initiative. At a juncture when East Asian economies have enormous growth potential, the summit will provide new momentum to India’s Look East policy that fired up in the 1990′ s but in the past has suffered bouts of breathlessness. It is time to ensure that it gets a regular supply of oxygen.
