Bridge on the Bay

Look East/Act East Policy rides on the regional cooperation in the Southeast Asian region and our northeast region is the engine to further our cause.

At present, India is a member of several trans-regional, regional and sub-regional groupings. To establish itself as a power to reckon with, India needs regional cooperation. It is therefore important for India to establish regional linkages to not only further its interests but also to develop and attract outside business players. India has been playing a far greater role in world politics and world groupings, but it gets embroiled in geopolitics and geo-strategic issues closer home. However, lately, India is emerging as a regional power in the South Asian/Southeast Asian region. This new regional approach is driven by strategic interests, with several ideas, concepts, and principles driving and guiding it. The main idea is ‘intertwined destiny’, driven by the logic that India’s immediate neighbourhood is a prerequisite for it to achieve regional and global ambitions.1 Thus, India is willing to give its immediate neighbours a stake in its prosperity; and this idea has become a priority in its neighbourhood policy for some time.