'Look East' policy a distant dream

By Syed Zarir Hussain Oct 11, 2007, 15:54 GMT

Guwahati, Oct 11 (IANS) India's much-hyped 'Look East' policy has come a cropper even before taking off, with the utopian idea drawing flak for its lack of direction and sincerity.

'The Look East policy is not even a written document yet and the harvest of the initiatives is so far nil,' thundered Mani Shankar Aiyar, central minister for Development of Northeastern Region (DoNER).

The minister was speaking at the valedictory function Tuesday at the end of a three-day conference on 'India's Look East Policy - Challenges for Sub-Regional Cooperation' in Assam's main city of Guwahati.

The candid remarks by the DoNER minister go to prove that India's 'Look East' policy is, in fact, a non-starter and lacks focus.

The Guwahati conclave on the 'Look East' policy, the third such meet organised by the Public Diplomacy Division of the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in the last five months, was a real shocker.

India's external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee opened the Guwahati conference Sunday by speaking almost verbatim from a written speech that he delivered June 16 at Shillong.

The fact that New Delhi was harping on the 'Look East' policy without any real commitment to turn the mega dream into reality was established with divergent opinions from two senior central ministers speaking in the Guwahati conference.

Mukherjee said India could emerge as one of the world's fastest growing economies if it was able to boost its 'Look East' policy by strengthening bilateral and regional relations with Southeast Asian countries.

But the DoNER minister countered by saying India's hopes of establishing relations with its immediate South Asian neighbours for business was far-fetched.

'Economic ties with neighbouring countries like Bangladesh were not good, there was an ongoing dispute with China, while Myanmar's own internal problems were hindering trade prospects with the northeast,' Aiyar said in a lengthy speech that numbed the modest gathering into silence.

'The northeast cannot really establish relations with China unless the disputes are resolved,' the minister went on to justify his statement.

Enunciated in the 1990s by then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, the 'Look East' policy had its genesis in the end of the Cold War following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Indian government made a shift in its foreign policy when it embarked on a programme of free market restructuring at home and sought new markets and economic partners abroad, with focus on Southeast Asia because of the geographical contiguity of the northeast with the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) countries.

But the focus shifted when India's information technology and business process outsourcing companies started to concentrate on the US market. Since then, the 'Look East' policy has been rudderless.

The recently concluded Northeast India Trade and Investment Week in Bangkok was also a near farce with most of the trade delegations from the northeast consisting of more politicians than entrepreneurs.

If the 'Look East' policy remains a mere slogan and business summits abroad to woo investors are considered junkets by politicians, prospects of boosting the economy of the northeast will be a distant dream in a region wracked by separatist insurgencies for decades.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service