Indian and ASEAN Trade Relations With the Changing Framework of India's Look East Policy

Abstract

In 1992 Narshima Rao launched the Look East Policy to tend towards south-eastern neighbours and also to connect with East Asia. The main goal of the Look East Policy is to increase economic cooperation and strategic defence cooperation to balance the growing Chinese domination over South-East Asia and the sea. In 2014, the Government of India would come up with a new phase of the Look East Policy and announced the Act East Policy that can be considered as the new age of economic development, industrialization, and trade. The Act East Policy and Look East Policy both have some similarity. The chapter analyzes the India-ASEAN trade activities after the formation of ASEAN bloc specifically from 2001 to 2018. To fulfil the objectives of study trade indices, similarity and diversification has been used. The study found that with changing framework of India's foreign policy for ASEAN, trade share of India and ASEAN in the bi-lateral arrangement significantly increased.